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 Heine on Shakespeare; a tran^^ 
 
 1 
 
Library 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013360783 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
HEINE ON §HAKESPEARE 
 
 A TRANSLATION OF HIS 
 NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE HEROINES 
 
 By 
 
 Ida Benecke 
 
 " Thy greatest knew thee. Mother Earth; nnstmred 
 He knew thy sons. He probed ^^vm hell to hell 
 0/ human passions^ but of love dejlowered 
 His iwsdont was not, for he knevt thee vteU" 
 
 — Georgb Mesbdith. 
 
 WESTMINSTER 
 
 ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE 
 
 AND CO 1895 
 
^7^3] 
 
 Butler & Tanner, Fkome, and London. 
 
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE 
 
 The following pages, written in 1838, owe 
 their origin to some English engravings of 
 Shakespeare Heroines which had attracted 
 Heine's notice. He thought more highly of 
 the illustrations than of his own words con- 
 cerning the heroines they were intended to 
 pourtray. Nevertheless Heine's work has 
 outlived the fancy portraits which called it 
 forth, and may well be studied by those who 
 have a mind to open their Shakespeare. * 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 TRAGEDIES . 
 Cressida . 
 Cassandra 
 Helen 
 
 JV^VlRGILIA . 
 
 \ Portia 
 •—Cleopatra , . 
 
 Lavinia ■ / - 
 
 Constance 
 
 Lady Percy 
 
 Princess Katharine 
 
 Joan of Arc . 
 
 Margaret . Henry 
 
 Queen Margaret „ 
 
 Lady Grey . „ 
 
 Lady Anne 
 
 Queen Katharine 
 
 Anne Bullen . 
 Lady MacBeth 
 
 JDphelia 
 -Cordelia 
 Juliet 
 
 39 
 
 Troilus and Cressida 41 
 
 )) J) 45 
 
 J) 1, 46 
 
 Coriolanus 49 
 
 . Julius Casar 53 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra 58 
 
 Titus Andronicus 67 
 
 King John 73 
 
 Henry IV. 80 
 
 Henry V. 82 
 
 Henry VI, 83 
 
 VI . (fart I) 85 
 
 (j>arts II. and III.) 87 
 
 (part III) 95 
 
 Richard III. 99 
 
 Henry VIII. 100 
 
 » ., i°3 
 
 Macbeth 1x56 
 
 Hamlet 109 
 
 King Lear 113 
 
 Romeo and Juliet 116 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 _„,- Desdemona 
 
 Othello 121 
 
 Jessica 
 
 . Merchant of Venice 125 
 
 — Portia 
 
 141 
 
 COMEDIES. 
 
 
 )C Miranda . 
 
 the Tempest 153 
 
 TiTANIA 
 
 Midsummer Nighfs Dream 154 
 
 Perdita . 
 
 A Winter's Tale 154 
 
 Imogen . 
 
 Cymbeline 155 
 
 Julia 
 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona 155 
 
 Silvia 
 
 156 
 
 Hero * . 
 
 . Much Ado about Nothing 157 
 
 Beatrice . 
 
 )) J) jj ■'■57 
 
 Helena . 
 
 Airs Well that Ends Well 158 
 
 Celia 
 
 As You Like It 159 
 
 -sJlOSALIND 
 
 160 
 
 ■^Olivia 
 
 Twelfth Night 161 
 
 "^VlOLA 
 
 „ „ 161 
 
 Maria 
 
 „ „ 162 
 
 Isabella . 
 
 Measure for Measure 163 
 
 Princess of FRA^ 
 
 fCE . Lov^s Labouf's Lost 164 
 
 The Abbess 
 
 Comedy of Errors 1 64 
 
 Mistress Page 
 
 . Merry Wives of Windsor 165 
 
 Mistress Ford 
 
 >' >i .! 165 
 
 Anne Page 
 
 j> » „ 166 
 
 Katharine 
 
 Taming of the Shrew 166 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 168 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 I KNOW a good Hamburg Christian who 
 could never get over the fact that our Lord ; 
 and Saviour was by birth a Jew. It distressed ■ 
 him greatly when forced to admit that this, 
 praiseworthy and perfect Man actually be- 
 longed to the company of unclean long-noses, 
 who idle about the streets, who merit all his 
 disdain, and who are specially odious to him 
 when, like himself, they become wholesale 
 dealers in spices and tobacco, and cause the 
 price of his goods to fall in the market. 
 
 Even as Jesus Christ impressed this son of 
 Hamonia, so am I impressed by William 
 Shakespeare. I grow desperate when I reflect 
 that after all he is an Englishman, belonging ( 
 to that most odious nation which God in his 
 anger created. 
 
 It is an odious nation, a joyless country, stiff, 
 old-fashioned, selfish, narrow, English ! Father 
 Ocean would long since have swallowed up 
 this nation, had he not feared the sea-sickness 
 
 9 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 which might thereupon ensue . . . this 
 nation, grey and yawning as a monster, breath- 
 ing forth naught but suffocation and deadly 
 tedium, which will probably eventually hang 
 itself by means of a huge cable. 
 
 And in such a country, issuing from such 
 a nation, William Shakespeare first saw the 
 light of day in April, 1564. 
 
 But the England of those days, the birth- 
 place of the man born in that northern Beth- 
 lehem called Stratford-on-Avon, to whom we 
 owe the gospel of this our world, as we may 
 well name the Plays of Shakespeare — the 
 England of those days must surely have differed 
 widely from the England of this. Indeed they 
 called it Merry England, and it was bright 
 with many colours, fanciful costumes, profound 
 whimsicality, teeming energy, exuberant pas- 
 sions. . . . Life there was a bright tour- 
 nament, where well-born knights played the 
 first part in weal and woe, but where the 
 hearts of the people also beat in unison with 
 the merry trumpet sound. . . . //In place 
 of strong beer people drank light wine, that 
 democratic beverage which by its inebriating 
 effect equalises all who by position and birth 
 stand apart from one another on the dull stage 
 of reality./ 
 
 10 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 All this brilliant merriment has faded away 
 since then, the glad trumpet-sounds have 
 ceased, the fine intoxication is past . . . 
 and the nation, holds in its hands yon book j 
 called the Plays of William Shakespeare as a [ 
 comfort for bad times and as a proof that \ 
 Merry England did actually once exist. ' 
 
 It is a blessing that Shakespeare came in the 
 nick of time, and that he was contemporary 
 with Elizabeth and James. Owing to the im- 
 pulse given by protestantism thought was free 
 and unhampered, whilst customs and beliefs 
 remained unchanged. Though protestantism! 
 encouraged unlimited freedom of thought, 
 manners and beliefs were not affected thereby, 
 and the sunset of chivalry still glowed over 
 that kingdom which was encircled by a halo 
 of glorious poetry. Indeed Catholicism, the 
 national creed of the Middle Ages, was de- 
 stroyed only in theory, it still exerted its magic ' 
 influence over the minds of men, and swayed 
 their manners, customs and beliefs. Only later | 
 on, the puritans succeeded in rooting up blossom 
 by blossom the religion of the past, investing 
 the country with that barren spirit of melan- 
 choly like a cloud of grey fog, which sank at ; 
 last into a lukewarm whining and restlessj 
 pietism, for very lack of life. 1 1 Just as religion 
 
 II 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 still maintained its old form, so also the British 
 monarchy of Shakespeare's time had not yet 
 undergone that sickly change which goes by 
 the name of Constitutionalism — a form of 
 government by no means favourable to art, 
 though it may be favourable to European 
 liberty. With the death of Charles, England's 
 .last true and great king, English poetry ceased 
 to exist, and the poet was thrice happy not to 
 have experienced this miserable event, of which 
 
 y possibly he had a presentiment. Shakespeare 
 is often called an aristocrat. I do not wish to 
 contradict this ; indeed his political views are 
 excusable when we remember how he, with his 
 prophetic insight, could fix upon certain signs 
 of the time, predicting that levelling puritanic 
 age, which, besides destroying the monarchy, 
 
 ! would make an end of all joy, all poetry, all 
 
 j\ genial art. 
 
 Indeed, during the reign of the puritans, art 
 was proscribed in England ; the zeal of protes- 
 tantism was specially directed against the stage, 
 and Shakespeare's very name was forgotten by 
 the English for many years. The expressions 
 of anger contained in the pamphlets of that 
 time astonish us, viz., in the Histrio Mastix of 
 the celebrated Prynne, in which he anathema- 
 tises the stage in screeching tones. Are the 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 puritans to be very seriously blamed for their 
 zeal ? Ah no ! in history, all who remain true ) 
 to their convictions are right, and these dismal 
 Roundheads only acted in obedience to that 
 spirit, intolerant of everything connected with 
 art, which manifested itself as early as the first , 
 centuries of the Church, and continues dowp to i 
 this day in iconoclastic guise. This old impla- 
 cable aversion to everything connected with the 
 stage is nothing more than one side of that 
 hostility which has raged between two hetero- 
 geneous views for the last eighteen hundred 
 years. One opinion had its origin in the barren"! 
 soil of Judaea, the other in the fair fields of 
 Greece. Ah yes ! this hatred between Jeru- 
 salem and Athens, between the holy shrine and 
 the cradle of art, between life in the soul and , 
 the soul in life, has continued for the past y 
 eighteen hundred years ; and the quarrels, the 
 public and private wars of which it has been 
 the cause become manifest to the esoteric 
 student in the history of mankind. When we 
 read in to-day's newspapers that a poor dead 
 actor is refused the ordinary rites of burial by 
 the Archbishop of Paris, we cannot attribute 
 this to the special whim of an ecclesiastic, and 
 only the shortsighted will construe it as narrow- 
 minded malice. We see in this rather the 
 
 »3 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 eiarnestness of an old strife, of a death-struggle 
 against art, turned by the Hellenic spirit into a 
 platform from which to preach the laws of life, 
 as opposed to soul-deadening Judaism. By its 
 persecution of actors the Church made war on 
 the representatives of Greece ; and the poets 
 also, who attributed their divine inspiration to 
 Apollo, making the land of poetry a harbour of 
 refuge for the outlawed divinities -of heathen- 
 dom, frequently had to suffer a similar perse- 
 cution. Or is there perhaps some malicious 
 feeling at the bottom of this ? During the first 
 two centuries actors were the most intolerant 
 enemies of the oppressed church, and the Acta 
 Sanctorum often inform us that these godless 
 actors spent their time in performing on the' 
 Roman stage parodies of the manner of life 
 and miracles of the Nazarene as an amusement 
 for the heathen populace. Or had this bitter 
 strife between the servants of spiritual and 
 temporal creeds its root in mutual jealousy ? 
 
 Next to ascetic zeal we find that republican 
 fanaticism called forth in the puritans hatred 
 for the Old-English stage. Here royalism and 
 noble houses, as well as heathenism and heathen 
 opinions, had their praises sung. I have shown 
 elsewhere how much the puritans of old and 
 the republicans of to-day resemble one another 
 
 14 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 in this respect.' May Apollo and the ever- 
 lasting Muses save us from the dominion of 
 these lastt 
 
 The name of Shakespeare was forgotten for 
 a long period, during the turmoil of these fore- 
 named ecclesiastic and political revolutions, and 
 nearly a century elapsed before he was again 
 held in esteem. After that period however 
 his fame increased from day to day, and he 
 beamed like a spiritual sun over that country 
 which is sunless for nearly twelve months qf_ 
 
 the year, that island of darkness, that Botany 
 Bay minus a southern climate, that smoky, 
 machine-whirring, church-going and wine-bib- 
 bing England, Good Mother Nature never- 
 completely disinherits her children, and whilst 
 she has withheld from Englishmen all beautiful 
 and lovely things, giving them neither a voice 
 for song nor senses for enjoyment, perhaps 
 even endowing them with wrinkled pot-bellies 
 i nstead o f human spii]';, she has given the m j 
 i nstead considera ble cjvic frf^dom, th^ talenl-of7| 
 making themselves co mibrtablein their home s. | 
 and William Shakespeare ! -^ 
 
 / Yes ! He is the spiritual sun, shining upon 
 that land \v'ith warm and beneficent beams. 
 
 1 Viz., characters in Julius Casar in the following pages. 
 
 15 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Everything there reminds us of Shakespeare, 
 and what a halo is thrown by him over the 
 commonest things! Everywhere the envelop- 
 ing wings of his genius enfold us ; his clear 
 eye seems to beam forth on us from every 
 striking countenance we see, and on occasions 
 of great public interest we fancy we perceive 
 him silently nodding to us with an expressive 
 smile. 
 
 I became especially aware of the constant 
 homage paid to Shakespeare during my stay 
 in London while running about all day to 
 gaze upon the so-called sights — every lion 
 called to mind the greater lion — Shakespeare. 
 His historical plays have immortalised all the 
 places I visited, which were thus .familiar to 
 me from my earliest childhood. Not only 
 the educated man, but every man of the people 
 in England is conversant with Shakespeare. 
 Even the stout beef-eater at the tower with his 
 red coat and his red face, pointing out the 
 dungeon at the back of the central gateway 
 where Richard ordered his nephews the young 
 princes to be murdered, reminds us of Shake- 
 speare who has given us a further account of 
 this sad story. The Sacristan at Westminster 
 Abbey also constantly alludes to Shakespeare, 
 in whose tragedies those dead kings and queens 
 
 i6 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 play such a miserable part, and who repose 
 here on their tombs in counterfeit of stone and 
 are shown for eighteenpence. The statue of 
 the great poet himself stands there in life-size 
 representing a striking man with thoughtful 
 brow, holding in his hands a roll of parchment 
 . . . Possibly magic words are written there, 
 and when he moves his white lips at midnight, 
 calling on the dead who repose in their tombs, 
 they come forth in rusty armour and faded 
 court-dress, these knights of the white and the 
 red roses, and the ladies also rise with a sob 
 from their resting-place, and there is a clashing 
 of swords, a laughing and a cursing. Just aa 
 at Drury Lane, where I often saw the plays 
 of Shakespeare, when Kean caused me deep 
 emotion as he ran despairingly across the stage, 
 crying out: 
 
 " A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse ! " 
 
 ; 
 
 Were I to name all the places which re- 
 minded me of Shakespeare, I should have to 
 copy out the entire Guide to London. Es- 
 pecially in the Houses of Parliament did I 
 feel this to be the case, not on account of 
 Westminster Hall, so frequently mentioned by 
 Shakespeare, but on account of the debates 
 I heard there. Here Shakespeare was fre- 
 
 17 B 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 quently mentioned, as well as passages quoted 
 from his works, on account of their historical 
 and not their poetic importance. I was amazed 
 to find that in England Shakespeare is not 
 only looked upon in the light of a poet, but 
 that he is regarded as a historian by influential 
 statesmen and Members of Parliament. 
 
 I here observe that it would be foolish to 
 look for precisely that kind of interest in 
 Shakespeare's historical plays which could only 
 be supplied by a dramatist whose highest aim 
 is the clever manipulation of poetry. Shake- 
 speare's aim was not only poetry, but history ; 
 he could not model his given subject-matter at 
 will, he could not follow his fancy in describing 
 events and characters, and as little as he could 
 observe unity of time and place could he 
 merge his entire interest in a single person or 
 a single event. And yet in his historical plays 
 we find richer, more powerful, and sweeter 
 poetry than in the tragedies of those poets who 
 either invent their own stories, or arrange them 
 as suits their taste, whereby they obtain the 
 strictest symmetry of form and surpass poor 
 Shakespeare in art properly so-called, especially 
 in the enchatnement des scenes. 
 
 Yes, it is a significant fact; the great Eng- 
 lishman is not only a poet but also a historian 
 
 18 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 — he wields the sharp style of Klio as well as 
 Melpomene's dagger. In this he resembles 
 the earliest historians who likewise made no i 
 difiference between poetry and history, and who j 
 not only gave a nomenclature to the past issu- 
 ing in a dusty collection of events, but made 
 truth more beautiful by song, producing from 
 this harmony only the notes of truth. So-called 1 
 objectivity, of which we now hear so much, is 
 nothing but a tiresome lie ; we cannot depict 
 the past without giving it the colour of our 
 feelings. And as the so-called objective his- 
 torian always addresses the present generation, 
 he writes unconsciously in the spirit of his own , 
 times, and this spirit of the times will become ( 
 manifest in his works. In the interchange of 
 epistolary correspondence we detect in like 
 manner the characters of recipient and corre- 
 spondent. So-called objectivity, proudly pas- 
 sive, taking its stand on the golgotha of events, 
 may be regarded as untrue, because we not 
 only require an accurate summary of facts in 
 dealing with historic truth, but also a certain 
 description of the impression made on con- 
 temporaries by such events. Yet herein lies^ 
 the difficulty ; for we want more than an ordi- | 
 nary enumeration of events, we need the capa- 
 city of a poet to whom, Shakespeare says — the 
 
 19 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 very eye and body of the time — have become 
 manifest. 
 
 And not only the occurrences of his own time 
 were manifest to him, but those which are con- 
 tained in ancient records. We have a striking 
 example of this in those tragedies where he 
 gives us so true an account of Rome in its 
 decay. Not only has he portrayed the knights 
 of the Middle Ages ; he has seen into the 
 hearts of ancient heroes, drawing forth from 
 them their inmost thoughts. He could always 
 turn truth into poetry, and knew how to cast 
 a poetic halo over the heartless Romans, this 
 hard cold and prosaic nation, made up of vul- 
 gar greed and clever astuteness, a nation of 
 casuistic soldiery. 
 \ But Shakespeare is stigmatised as wanting 
 in form, even in his Roman tragedies. A 
 talented writer, Dietrich Grabbe, called them 
 poetically adorned chronicles wanting in every 
 point of central interest, in which we fail to 
 perceive who play the important and who the 
 unimportant parts, and in which, though we 
 may dispense with unity of time and place, 
 there is not even unity of action. But the 
 cleverest critics make strange mistakes! Not 
 only the last named unity, but unities of time 
 and place are by no means wanting in the great 
 
INTRODUCTION ; 
 
 poet, only his conceptions are somewhat more 
 elastic than ours.. This world forms the stage, 
 of his plays, and that is his unity of place ; 
 eternity is the period during which his plays 
 come to pass, and that is his unity of time ; 
 and the hero of his plays, the bright central 
 figure, representing the unity of action and 
 comformable to the other two, is— \^Mankind ; 
 a hero who is always dying and always rising 
 again, always loving, always hating, yet in 
 whom love is stronger than hate ; now crawl- 
 ing like a worm, now soaring like an eagle, 
 now deserving a fool's cap, now a laurel- 
 wreath, or still oftener both of these at one 
 and the same time ; the great dwarf, the small 
 gian^the homceopathically prepared divinity, 
 in whom the divine elements may have be- 
 come diluted, but which exist nevertheless. 
 Ah ! let us not overrate the heroism of this 
 hero, for the sake of modesty and very shame ! 
 
 Shakespeare is as true to nature as he is' 
 faithful in delineating history. It is often said 
 that he holds up a mirror to nature. This is 
 not correct, as these words convey a wrong 
 impression concerning the relations in which 
 a poet stands to nature. Nature is not reflected 
 in the poet's mind ; he is endowed with the 
 innate capacity for representing nature, which 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 representation is akin to the most faithful reflec- 
 tion ; he comes into the world a world-wise 
 man, and every part of the external world is 
 immediately understood by him in its entirety 
 when he awakens from the dreams of his child- 
 hood and attains to a knowledge of himself. 
 For his mind bears an impress of the whole, he 
 knows the ultimate reasons of all phenomena, 
 which to the ordinary mind appear problematic, 
 and which to the ordinary investigator seem 
 difficult, if not impossible of solution . 
 Just as the mathematician can immediately 
 explain the whole circle and its centre, if he is 
 shown the smallest part of a circle, so also the 
 poet, in the very act of contemplating the in- 
 finitesimal part of objective things, realises the 
 connection between this part and all other 
 things. He seems to know the circle of things 
 and their centre, he sees things in their widest 
 dimensions and to the inmost core. "^ 
 
 But before the poet awakens to this marvel- 
 lous comprehension he must always be brought 
 in contact with some portion of the objective 
 world. This perception of a fragment of the 
 phenomenal worl4 is reached by means of his 
 senses, and it forms as it were the outward 
 event, determining those inward revelations of 
 which his works are the result. And the 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 greater the poet, the more is our curiosity 
 excited concerning those external occurrences 
 which first called his works into being. We 
 like to hunt up the actual facts of a poet's life. 
 This curiosity is all the more foolish, as accord- 
 ing to what was previously stated, the import- 
 ance of external occurrences bears no proportion 
 to the importance of the creations, emanating 
 from them. These occurrences may be, and 
 usually are, as trivial and insignificant as the 
 poet's life ordinarily is. I say trivial and in- 
 significant, for I will not make use of sadder 
 words. Poets present themselves to the world 
 through the halo of their works, and when 
 looked at from afar, they dazzle us by their 
 glory. Let us never inspect their lives too 
 closely ! We may compare them to those 
 bright beacons, shining athwart lawn and 
 bower, which we take for the stars of the 
 world . . . for diamonds and emeralds, 
 costly jewels, which kings' children, playing 
 in the garden, have hung on to the shrubs 
 and then forgotten ... for bright dew- 
 drops which have rolled away into the high 
 grass, and are now refreshing themselves in 
 the cool night-air, sparkling with joy, until the 
 approach of day, when the rosy dawn draws 
 them back into herself. . . . Ah ! let us 
 
 23 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 not seek the track of these stars, jewels and 
 dewdrops by the light of day! In their stead 
 we shall perceive a poor discoloured worm, 
 crawling miserably across our path, hateful to 
 look upon, and yet which, owing to a curious 
 feeling of pity, we refrain from crushing ! 
 
 In what did the private life of Shakespeare 
 consist ? Little concerning him has come to 
 light in spite of enquiry, and this is a blessing ; 
 only a few unproven, stupid stories concerning 
 the poet's youth and life have been handed 
 down to us. He is said to have killed the 
 sheep of his father, who was a butcher. . , . 
 Perhaps from these were descended those Eng- 
 lish commentators who possibly out of spite 
 taxed him with ignorance and a general in- 
 fringement of the rules of art in his works. 
 Others describe him as a wool-stapler, who 
 failed in business. . . . Poor fellow, he 
 probably thought that by becoming a wool- 
 stapler he would at last be in luck's way. I 
 believe nothing of all this, it ends in much cry 
 and litde wool. I am more inclined to think 
 that the great poet went in for poaching, get- 
 ting into trouble through deer-stalking, for 
 which I cannot utterly condemn him. — Even 
 Master Honest once stole a calf, says a Ger- 
 man proverb. — On this they say he fled to 
 
 24 
 
INTRODUCTION ' 
 
 London, where for a small fee he took charge 
 of great people's horses at the theatre doors. 
 . . . In some such guise are shaped the 
 legends which one stupid old woman gets from 
 another, and which are frequently met with in 
 the history of literature. 
 
 In Shakespeare's sonnets we have an authen- 
 tic record of the events of his life. These I 
 would rather not discuss on account of the 
 acute human misery therein displayed, which 
 occasioned my previous remarks concerning the 
 poet's private life. 
 
 We can easily explain the want of trust- 
 worthy data concerning Shakespeare's life, 
 when we remember the political and eccle- 
 siastical struggles which occurred soon after 
 his death. For a space of time these brought 
 about a positive puritan rule, the unpleasant 
 effects of which continued even down to a later 
 time, and which not only destroyed but brought 
 into sheer oblivion the Elizabethan golden age 
 of English literature. When at the commence- 
 ment of last century Shakespeare's works again 
 came to light, comrrientators had no reliable 
 material on which to base their conclusions. 
 For these they had to fall back on shallow 
 empiricism, if not on more pitiable materialising 
 With the exception of William Hazlitt, England 
 
 , 25 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 has produced no Shakespearian critic of any im- 
 portance. Everywhere we find trifle-monger- 
 ing, egotistic shallowness, conceited enthusiasm, 
 and learned inflation which threatens to burst 
 with joy when it traces any antiquarian, geo- 
 graphical or chronological mistake in the poor 
 poet, and which makes it matter for regret that 
 he did not study the ancients in their mother 
 tongue and that his education had been 
 neglected. For he makes the Romans wear 
 hats, makes ships land in Bohemia, and quotes 
 Aristotle contemporaneously with the Trojan 
 war ! This was past the endurance of a learned 
 English professor, who had graduated as M.A. 
 at Oxford. The forenamed Hazlitt is the only 
 Shakespearian critic who forms an exception 
 and who is pre-eminent in every way. His 
 mind was as brilliant as it was deep, a combina- 
 i tion of Diderot and Borne, full of warm enthusi- 
 ; asm for the Revolution, coupled with an earnest 
 ) love of art, always overflowing with verve and 
 
 esprit ! 
 / " Germans have entered into the mind of 
 Shakespeare better than Englishmen. I will 
 first mention our favourite Gotthold Ephraim 
 Lessing, always foremost in setting a good 
 example. He was the first German who 
 raised his voice in favour of Shakespeare. 
 
 26 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 He laid the weightiest foundation-stone of a 
 temple erected in honour of the greatest of 
 all poets ; and more than this, — he carefully- 
 cleared the ground, on which this temple was 
 to be erected, of its former rubbish. The 
 lightly constructed French booths, proudly ex- 
 hibiting their wares on that ground, were 
 mercilessly torn down by him in his archi- 
 tectural zeal. Gottsched shook the curls of 
 his wig so despairingly that the town of 
 Leipzig quaked, and the cheeks of his spouse 
 grew white with fear, or was this achieved by 
 irieans of a powder-puff? We may say that 
 Lessing's entire Dramaturgie was written to 
 glorify Shakespeare. 
 
 After Lessing comes Wieland. He suc- 
 ceeded, by means of his translations/ in bring- 
 ing about in Germany a better understanding 
 of the great poet's works. The author of 
 Agathon and Musarion, the playful cavaliere 
 servente of the Graces, became suddenly so 
 impressed with English earnestness that he 
 was the man who sang the praises of that 
 very hero who was to conduce to his own 
 downfall. 
 
 Herder was the third great German who 
 sang the enthusiastic praises of Shakespeare. 
 Goethe also did him homage with a great 
 
 27 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 flourish of trumpets; in short, there was a 
 whole race of kings, who one after the other 
 cast in their vote for William Shakespeare, 
 electing him as the emperor-king of literature. 
 
 This emperor-king was already firmly seated 
 on his throne, when the good knight August 
 Wilhelm von Schlegel, with his squire, Hofrath 
 Ludwig Tieck, bent down in homage before 
 him, assuring all the world that now the king- 
 dom was secure and that the millennium of the 
 great William Shakespeare had come. 
 
 Were I to overlook the great service which 
 A. W. Schlegel has rendered by means of his 
 translation of Shakespeare's Plays and of his 
 readings of the same, I should be guilty of 
 injustice. But actually there is in the latter 
 a want of philosophical substructure, they are 
 pervaded apparently by a frivolous dilettantism, 
 and I cannot praise them unreservedly, on ac- 
 count of several ugly and conspicuous arriere- 
 pensdes. The enthusiasm of A. W. Schlegel is 
 always artificial, an intentionally self-deceptive 
 fit of intoxication, and with him, as with other 
 writers of the romantic school, Shakespeare's 
 apotheosis was intended indirectly to contri- 
 bute towards Schiller's degradation. Schlegel's 
 translation has so far certainly been the most 
 successful, and it follows the rules of a metrical 
 
 28 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 rendering. The feminine character of his 
 genius is here of great use to the translator, 
 and he is able in his colourless cleverness to 
 lean on another mind in all love and fidelity. 
 
 I confess, however, that notwithstanding 
 these virtues I am often inclined to place 
 Eschenburg's translation, done entirely in prose, 
 higher, and for the following reasons ; — the 
 language used by Shakespeare is not peculiar 
 to him, it has come down to him from his fore- 
 fathers and contemporaries, and it is the lan- 
 guage which the dramatic writers of that time 
 had to make use of, whether it suited their 
 taste or not. We need only skim Dodsley's 
 collection of old plays to notice a similar kind 
 of language in all the tragedies and comedies 
 of that time ; the same eupheuism, exaggerated 
 delicacy, artificial word-structure, the same con- 
 ceits, play upon words and bombastic expres- 
 sions which we find in Shakespeare and which 
 stupid people blindly admire. But the under- 
 standing reader when he does not blame them, 
 only excuses them on the plea of their being an 
 excrescence, a necessary condition of the times. 
 But Shakespeare divests himself of this tradi- 
 tional stage-language, and shows himself as he 
 is ; grandly beautiful, with a simplicity which 
 vies with unadulterated nature, delighting us 
 
 29 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 strangely in those portions of his writings where 
 his fullest genius is displayed, and in which he 
 gives vent to his highest inspirations. Indeed 
 in such passages Shakespeare has a certain 
 peculiarity even in his language, which can 
 never be faithfully rendered by the metrical 
 translator, who with bound feet limps along in 
 pursuit of the thought. In the ordinary routine 
 language of the stage, these remarkable pas- 
 sages are lost sight of by the metrical translator, 
 and even Schlegel cannot escape this fate. But 
 why trouble about a metrical translation if it 
 does away with the best part of a poet's work, 
 giving us only that which is imperfect.-* A 
 prose translation which can produce better the 
 unostentatious and natural purity of certain 
 passages is therefore really preferable to a 
 metrical rendering. 
 
 Following closely on Schlegel, L. Tieck has 
 done some good work as an exponent of 
 Shakespeare. This was principally by means 
 of his Dramaturgische Blatter which appeared 
 in the Abend- Zeitung, fourteen years ago, and 
 which created considerable sensation among 
 actors and playgoers. Unfortunately this ami- 
 able scamp, as Gutzkow called him, took secret 
 pleasure in adopting a tone of vague tedious 
 sermonising in these papers. He made up 
 
 30 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 for his ignorance of the classics and even of 
 philosophy, in decorum and solemnity, and we 
 might fancy ourselves in the presence of Sir 
 John Falstaff lecturing the prince. But in spite 
 of the bombastic and pedagogic gravity with 
 which the little man endeavours to hide his 
 philological and philosophical ignorance, we 
 find some extremely clever remarks concerning 
 Shakespeare's heroes in these papers, and here 
 and there we trace that poetic feeling, which we 
 always admired and gladly acknowledged in 
 Tieck's former writing's. 
 
 Ah, this Tieck ! who was once a poet, and 
 might be considered as one of the most aspiring 
 if not one of the greatest ; how is he fallen ! 
 What a miserably curtailed pittance does he 
 now offer us annually, compared to the liberal 
 creations of his muse in the early days of tender 
 legendary lore. Much as we once loved, do we 
 now hate this envious weakling, who slanders 
 the high-souled sorrows of German youth in his 
 gossiping novels. To him we might apply 
 Shakespeare's words : 
 
 " For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds, 
 Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." 
 
 Franz Horn must be named among the great 
 poet's commentators. His expositions of 
 
 31 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Shakespeare are the most complete, and oc- 
 cupy five volumes. They are not wanting in 
 soul, but it is such a faded, rarefied soul 
 that the most soulless stupidity would be 
 preferable. It is strange that this man, who 
 devoted all hfs life to the study of Shakespeare 
 and ardently admired him, was a weak-minded 
 pietist. Possibly however the knowledge of 
 his own soul-languor made him admire Shake- 
 speare's strength ; and when the English Titan 
 thrusts forth Pelion on Ossa in his passionate 
 scenes, scaling the very skies, this poor critic 
 drops his pen in amazement sighing and whim- 
 pering in silence. As a pietist he ought actually 
 to hate that poet whose soul is steeped in the 
 blooming bliss of the gods, and whose every 
 word breathes forth the happiest paganism. 
 He ought to hate this believer in the creed of 
 life, who, while turning away in secret from the 
 creed of death and delighting in the sweet 
 tremors of ancient heroism, refuses to have 
 aught to do with renunciation and hypocrisy! 
 But notwithstanding he loves him, and in his 
 untiring love he would like to convert Shake- 
 speare to the true church. He reasons Shake- 
 speare into a Christian frame of mind; by pious 
 make-believe or by self-deception he discovers 
 this Christian frame of mind in all Shake- 
 
 32 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 speare's Plays and the holy water of his ex- 
 positions forms, as it were, a five-volumed 
 baptism with which he sprinkles this great 
 heathen's head. 
 
 But I repeat, these expositions are not quite 
 without genius. Sometimes Franz Horn gets 
 hold of a good idea ; then he cuts all kinds 
 of tedious sour-sweet faces, groaning and turn- 
 ing himself over and over before the begetting 
 of a thought, and when at last he has seized 
 on a good idea, he smiles expectantly like a 
 weary simpleton. It is really as vexing as it 
 is absurd that Franz Horn, this weak-minded 
 pietist, has reviewed Shakespeare. In juxta- 
 position to this, Grabbe in one of his comedies 
 makes Shakespeare go to hell, where he has to 
 review the works of Franz Horn.^ 
 
 The enthusiastic devotion with which clever 
 actors gave themselves up to the representation 
 of Shakespeare's Plays did more to bring them 
 before the public than the insincere praises, 
 expositions and tedious panegyrics of the critics. 
 In his English letters Lichtenberg gives us 
 some valuable information concerning the 
 masterly way in which Shakespeare's charac- 
 
 ^ "Jokes, Satire, Irony and Insinuations," a Comedy in 
 3 Acts. Dramatic Works of Grabbe. Vol. ii. N.B. Act ii. 
 Scene ii., p. 125. 
 
 33 c 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ters were performed in England during the 
 last century. I say his characters, not his 
 works in toto, for to this day English actors 
 have only noted that which is specially Shake- 
 spearian, not that which belongs to the universal 
 domain of poetry or of art. In the case of 
 Shakespeare's critics who, wearing spectacles 
 dim from over-much study, cannot perceive the 
 simplest, nearest, and most natural things, this 
 narrow conception becomes yet narrower when 
 applied to his plays. Garrick got a better hold 
 of Shakespeare's thought than Dr. Johnson, 
 the John Bull of erudition on whose nose 
 Queen Mab must have skipped about queerly 
 enough, whilst he was writing about the Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream. He certainly did not 
 know why Shakespeare occasioned him more 
 involuntary irritation and desire to sneeze than 
 any other of the poets he criticised. 
 
 Garrick, calling the dead to life by a terrible 
 exorcism, so that they performed their horrible, 
 sanguinary, and absurd deeds in the sight of all 
 spectators, shook the entire English nation, 
 whilst Dr. Johnson dissected Shakespeare's 
 characters like so many dead bodies, displaying 
 thereby his greatest nonsense in Ciceronian 
 English, as he swung himself in awkward self- 
 satisfied style on the antithesis of his Latin 
 
 34 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 periods. But Garrick loved the great poet, and 
 as a reward for such devotion he lies buried in 
 Westminster Abbey, near the foot of Shake- 
 speare's statue, like a faithful dog at his master's 
 feet. 
 
 We owe the introduction of Garrick's method 
 of acting into Germany to the celebrated 
 Schroeder, who was the first to arrange some 
 of Shakespeare's best plays for the German 
 stage. Schroeder, like Garrick, understood 
 neither the poetic nor the artistic value of these 
 plays, he only felt that they were true to nature, 
 and he sought less for the blessed harmony and 
 the inner perfection of a play than to reproduce 
 the single characters, as faithfully as it lay 
 within the bounds of a limited nature so to do. 
 This assertion is permissible, as we have ac- 
 counts of his acting which are still considered 
 of value on the Hamburg stage, as well as 
 Shakespeare's plays arranged by him. These 
 are utterly wanting in poetry and artistic ar- 
 rangement, but they contain a certain easy 
 naturalness, owing to a fusion of the most 
 striking characteristics, and a firm delineation 
 of the most important characters. 
 
 It was this system of naturalness which pro- 
 duced the great actor Devrient, whom I once 
 saw at Berlin with Wolf, who followed the rules 
 
 35 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 of art more closely than the former. Though 
 these two started from quite different points of 
 view, the one following nature, the other art, as 
 the highest good, they met in the domain of 
 poetry, and by means of their opposite methods 
 overwhelmed and delighted the spectators. 
 
 The muses of music and painting have done 
 less for Shakespeare than might have been 
 supposed. Were they jealous of their sisters 
 Melpomene and Thalia, whom the great Eng- 
 lishman had crowned with immortal laurels ? 
 No great composer has been grandly inspired 
 by any Shakespearian play except by Romeo 
 and Juliet and Othello. It is as little neces- 
 sary to praise those sweet-sounding notes which 
 came from the heart of Zingarelli, throbbing 
 like that of a joyful nightingale, as it is to 
 admire the sweet tones in which Pesaro's swan 
 sings of tender Desdemona's bleeding wounds 
 and the dark passions of her beloved. Paint- 
 ing, as all the pictorial arts, has done still less 
 in praise of our poet. The so-called Shake- 
 speare collection in Pall Mall shows the good 
 intention, but the vapid weakness of English 
 painters. They are insipid representations in 
 the style of the older French paintings, without 
 the good taste which these contain. English- 
 men bungle as miserably in painting as they do 
 
 36 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 in music. They are only admirable in portrait 
 painting, and when they can use the engraver's 
 style and lay aside the pallet they surpass all 
 other European artists. Whence comes it that 
 Englishmen, who have so poor a sense of 
 colour, are such great designers, producing 
 masterpieces in copper and steel engraving ? 
 We can see this in the subjoined portraits of 
 women old and young, taken from the Plays of 
 Shakespeare, the excellence of which is mani- 
 fest. In fact, I do not criticise. This preface 
 to the charming work was only meant as a 
 slight bow, such as it is customary to give on a 
 first introduction. I am the doorkeeper, open- 
 ing the picture gallery, and so far you have 
 heard only the jingling of the keys. I shall 
 often, in taking you round, interrupt your con- 
 templations by some cursory remark. Some- 
 times I shall follow the example of those 
 Cicerones who never allow too much enthusi- 
 astic gazing at a picture, with a trifling remark 
 they can disturb our contemplative rapture. 
 
 At any rate I think friends at home will be 
 pleased with this publication. The sight of 
 these lovely women's portraits may banish from 
 their faces those marks of sadness, for which 
 they have so much cause. Why cannot I offer 
 you something more tangible than these beauti- 
 
 37 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ful shadows ? Why cannot I open for you the 
 portals of rosy reality ? Once I thought of 
 breaking the halberds with which they guarded 
 the gardens of delight . . . but my strength 
 failed me, the halberdiers laughed, striking me 
 with their spears, and my bold and generous 
 heart was struck dumb with shame if not with 
 fear. Do I hear you sigh ? 
 
 38 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 39 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 CRESSIDA [ Troilus and Cressida] 
 
 I BEGIN by introducing the staid daughter of 
 Calchas to the honourable public. Pandarus, 
 a brave go-between whose officiousness was 
 almost superfluous, was her uncle. Troilus, a 
 son of the prolific Priam, was her first lover ; 
 she went through all the formalities, pledged 
 him her troth, broke her word with due 
 decorum, and held a sorrowful monologue over 
 the weakness of a woman's heart, before she 
 yielded to Diomede. She is spoken of as 
 a strumpet by Thersites the eavesdropper, 
 who is rude enough always to call things by 
 their names. But possibly he will ultimately 
 have to use gentler language, for this beautiful 
 woman may yet fall to his share as a sweet 
 mistress, passing on from one less worthy hero 
 to another. 
 
 I had my reasons for commencing this collec- 
 tion of pictures by Cressida's portrait. I did 
 
 41 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 not give her the precedence of so many of 
 Shakespeare's grandly ideal creations on 
 account of her virtue, or because she is a 
 type of the generosity of women. The por- 
 trait of this questionable lady comes first 
 because in editing the complete works of 
 Shakespeare I should always allow Troiliis 
 and Ctessida to precede the rest. I do not 
 know why Stevens, in his fine edition of 
 Shakespeare's works, does the same ; but I 
 question whether the motive of this English 
 editor was similar to mine. 
 
 Troiliis and Cressida is the only play in 
 which Shakespeare introduces those same 
 heroes chosen by Greek poets as the dramatis 
 personce of their plays. Thus, while comparing 
 these with the same characters described by 
 the older poets, we get an insight into Shake- 
 speare's method. Whilst -the classic Greek poets 
 seek to glorify reality, rising into idealism, our 
 modern tragic poet peers more into the depths 
 of things ; he discovers the hidden roots of 
 appearances by the keen edge of his spirit, 
 laying bare before our eyes the silent soil 
 wherein they repose. The ancient writers of 
 tragedy, like the sculptors of old, strove after 
 beauty and nobility, glorifying the form rather 
 than that which the form contained, but 
 
 42 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 Shakespeare aimed at truth and the underlying 
 matter. He is thus a master in character- 
 painting, which often causes him to verge on 
 awkward caricature, whereby he divests the 
 heroes of their bright armour and brings them 
 before us in absurdly homely gear. Those 
 writers who criticised Troilus and Cressida 
 according to the rules drawn by Aristotle from 
 the best Greek plays, must often have been 
 in an awkward position, and apt to make ridi- 
 culous blunders. As a tragedy the play did 
 not appear to them sufficiently earnest and 
 pathetic, and all came to pass about as natur- 
 ally as it does with us. The heroes behaved 
 as foolishly and perhaps as barbarously as they 
 do now, the hero in chief is a lout, and the 
 heroine a common wench, of which we have 
 examples enough among our near acquaint- 
 ances . . . and even the most honoured 
 names, celebrities of the heroic ages, such as 
 the great Pelius Achilles, brave son of Thetis, 
 what miserable appearances do they present. 
 On the other hand the play could hardly rank 
 as a comedy, for it teems with life, and there 
 is a grand air about the wise speeches, as we 
 perceive in the meditations of Ulysses, where 
 he dwells on the necessity of authority, and 
 which to this day merit close attention. 
 
 43 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 No, said the critics, a play in which such 
 speeches are delivered cannot be a comedy, 
 and still less could they believe that a poor 
 rogue like the gymnast Massmann, with his 
 small knowledge of Latin and Greek, could be 
 so bold as to make use of these celebrated 
 heroes of the classics, in a comedy ! 
 
 No, Troilus and Cressida is neither a comedy 
 nor a tragedy in the usual sense ; this play 
 belongs to no special kind of fiction, and still 
 less can it be judged by any received standard ; 
 it is thoroughly Shakespearian. We can only 
 testify to its general excellence ; were we to 
 criticise it individually, we should need the help 
 of that new aesthetic science which has yet to 
 be written. 
 
 By registering this play as a tragedy, I 
 would show from the commencement of what 
 importance I consider these titles. My old 
 poetry-master in the school at Diisseldorff once 
 wittily remarked : "those plays which breathe 
 forth the melancholy spirit of Melpomene in- 
 stead of Thalia's happy spirit, belong to the 
 domain of tragedy." Perhaps I was thinking 
 of this when I placed Troilus and Cressida 
 among the tragedies. And in truth it is per- 
 vaded by a gleeful bitterness, a withering irony 
 such as we never find in the plays of the comic 
 
 44 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 muse. Rather is the muse of tragedy every- 
 where perceptible in this play, and her merri- 
 ment and her jokes are a pretence. . . . We 
 seem to look on, whilst Melpomene dances the 
 cancan at a ball oi grisettes, with shameless 
 laughter flitting across her pallid lips, and with 
 death in her heart. 
 
 CASSANDRA \Troilus and Cressidd] 
 
 Here we have the soothsaying daughter of 
 Priam. She is endowed with that terrible 
 knowledge of the future, she proclaims the fall 
 of Troy and calls upon the gods, whilst Hector 
 arms himself for the fight with terrible Achilles. 
 . . . She can already see in her mind's eye 
 her beloved brother dying of his open wounds. 
 , . . In vain she calls upon the gods, no one 
 hears, and she sinks into the abyss of a gloomy 
 fate, as hopelessly lost as her whole blinded 
 nation. 
 
 Shakespeare's beautiful seer only utters a 
 few unimportant words ; to him she is but an 
 ordinary prophet of evil running through the 
 cursed town with her cry of woe. We see her 
 according to the picture ; 
 
 " With eyes aflame, and 
 Hair cast to the winds.'' 
 
 45 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Our great Schiller has given a more lovely- 
 picture of her in one of his most beautiful 
 poems. Here she reproaches the Pythian 
 divinity for the misfortune he has brought upon 
 his priestess, in piercing tones of sorrow. . . . 
 I once had to recite this poem at a public 
 examination at school, and stuck fast at the 
 words : 
 
 "When in sight of coming terror, 
 Let us keep our shelt'ring guise, 
 While we live we're doomed to error, 
 Only death can make us wise." 
 
 HELEN \Troilus and Cressidd] 
 
 This is beautiful Helen wht)se story I cannot 
 entirely relate and explain, or I should have to 
 commence with Leda's egg. 
 
 Tyndarus was her so-called father, but her 
 secret progenitor was a god who according to 
 a frequent ancient custom assumed the shape 
 of a bird, and blessed her mother with a child. 
 She married early and went to reside at Sparta, 
 but we cannot wonder that her beauty caused 
 her to elope from there, making a cuckold of 
 king Menelaus her husband. 
 
 Let any fair lady who feels herself perfectly 
 pure cast the first stone at her poor sister. By 
 this, I do not mean to say that there are no 
 
 46 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 perfectly faithful women. Even the celebrated 
 Eve, the first of her sex, was a pattern of 
 marital fidelity. As she walked hand in hand 
 with her husband, who was clad in his apron of 
 fig-leaves, that world-famed Adam — then the 
 only man living — not the remotest thought of 
 adultery crossed her heart. She only liked to 
 converse with the serpent and this on account 
 of the fine French language which she acquired 
 by this means, being fond of improving her 
 mind. Oh ! ye daughters of Eve, your first 
 mother set you an excellent example ! . . . 
 
 Mother Venus, the immortal goddess of de- 
 light, procured the favour of beautiful Helen 
 for prince Paris. He broke the holy bonds of 
 hospitality and fled to Troy, that safe citadel, 
 with his beautiful prey. . . . We should all 
 have done the same under similar circumstances 
 and in particular we Germans, as we are more 
 learned than other nations and have busied 
 ourselves from youth upwards with Homer's 
 poems. Beautiful Helen is our first love, and 
 even as boys sitting on our forms at school, 
 while our master explained to us those beauti- 
 ful Greek verses in which the aged Trojans 
 could not contain their delight at the sight of 
 Helen . . . even then sweet feelings of de- 
 light surged up wildly in our young inexperi- 
 
 47 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 enced hearts . . . and with blushing cheeks 
 and stammering lips we answered our master's 
 questions on grammar. . . . Later on, when 
 we grew older and rather learned, turning into 
 necromancers able to conjure up the devil, then 
 we demanded beautiful Helen of Sparta at the 
 -hands of this faithful spirit. I have said on a 
 former occasion that in Johannes Faustus we 
 have a true example of the German nation, that 
 nation which in order to satiate its longing 
 thinks more of learning than of life. Though 
 this celebrated doctor, the typical German, ulti- 
 mately thirsts after the enjoyment of the senses, 
 he by no means seeks the object of his choice 
 in the blooming fields of reality, but among 
 mildewy and learned books. And whilst a 
 French or Italian necromancer would have de- 
 sired the most beautiful woman of present times 
 at the hands of Mephistopheles, the German 
 Faust desires a woman who has already been 
 dead a thousand years, and who smiles on him 
 like a beautiful shadow from ancient Greek 
 parchments. Helen of Sparta! This desire 
 is a very significant characteristic of the Ger- 
 man nation. 
 
 Shakespeare has not given more attention to 
 beautiful Helen than to Cassandra in this play 
 of Troilus and Cressida. She appears on the 
 
 48 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 Scenes with Paris and we hear her joking 
 merrily with Pandarus the ancient go-between. 
 She banters him and then desires him to sing 
 a love-song with his bleating old voice. But 
 occasionally a painful shadow of fear and pre- 
 sentiment of a terrible catastrophe overcloud 
 her lightheartedness. From jokes sweet as 
 roses, serpents stretch forth their tiny black 
 heads, and she betrays the tenor of her mind in 
 the words, 
 
 " Let thy song be love : this love will undo us all. Oh, 
 Cupid, Cupid, Cupid!" 
 
 VIRGILIA [Corio/anus] 
 
 Here is the wife of Coriolanus, a shy dove who 
 does not even venture to coo in the presence 
 of her haughty husband. She looks down 
 modestly when he returns victorious from the 
 fight and all rush forward to greet him, and the 
 smiling hero calls her very significantly; "my 
 gracious Silence " ! This silence is the key to 
 her whole character, she is silent as the blushing 
 rose, as the chaste pearl, as the evening star in 
 its longing, as the heart of man in its delight 
 . . . hers is a perfect, rare, passionate silence, 
 more expressive than eloquence or than any 
 rhetorical bombast. She is a shy, tender 
 woman, and presents in her soft loveliness a 
 
 49 D 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 striking contrast to her mother-in-law Volum- 
 nia, the Roman she-wolf, who had once 
 suckled the wolf Caius Marcius with her iron 
 milk. Indeed Volumnia is a true matron, and 
 her young brood sucked in nought but wild 
 courage, rebellious defiance, and scorn of the 
 people, from her patrician breastsy 
 
 In the tragedy of Coriolanus Shakespeare 
 produces for us a hero who, having imbibed 
 virtues and vices at an early age, has gained 
 the laurel-crown of celebrity by foregoing the 
 nobler oak-crown of good fellowship. This 
 brings him to a miserable end, inasmuch as 
 he commits a terrible crime and betrays his 
 country. 
 
 From Troilus and Cressida where the poet 
 borrows his materials from the heroic times of 
 ancient Greece, I turn to Coriolanus in which 
 we can perceive the manner in which he handles 
 Roman events. He here describes the dis- 
 putes between Patricians and Plebeians in 
 ancient Rome. 
 
 I do not maintain that he has kept exactly to 
 the facts of Roman history in the play before 
 us ; but the poet has most thoroughly repre- 
 sented and entered into the spirit of these dis- 
 putes. As there are many events at this 
 present day which bear a resemblance to those 
 
 5° 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 sad quarrels which the privileged Patricians 
 and degraded Plebeians formerly waged with 
 one another, we are better able to judge of this. 
 Shakespeare might be a poet of the present day 
 living in London, and describing the Radicals 
 and Tories of the present time under a Roman 
 mask. We are borne out in this opinion by the 
 great resemblance which exists between ancient 
 Romans and modern Englishmen, as also be- 
 tween their respective statesmen. Indeed a 
 certain prosaic hardness, avarice, bloodthirsti- 
 ness, untiring energy and firmness of character, 
 is as peculiar to the Englishman of this as it 
 was to the Roman of a former age ; only that 
 the latter bore more resemblance to a land rat 
 than to a water rat. They resemble each other 
 in their want of amiability, which each carries to 
 the highest point. The greatest affinity exists 
 between the aristocracy of either nation. The 
 English nobleman, like the Roman aristocrat 
 of ancient times, is patriotic ; his patriotism 
 forms a link of intimacy with the people in spite 
 of divergent political rights, and the result is a 
 complete and united nation of aristocrats and 
 democrats, similar to that which existed in 
 ancient Rome. This is not the case in other 
 countries, where the nobility are less tied to the 
 soil, and where they depend more on the favour 
 
 51 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 of the reigning prince, or where they devote 
 themselves exclusively to the private interests 
 of their own class. Again, the English nobility 
 resemble the Roman, in considering authority 
 the highest, most praiseworthy, and really most 
 lucrative thing to strive after. I say most 
 lucrative, as the highest offices of state are con- 
 trolled by abused favouritism and customary 
 extortion in the England of to-day as in the 
 Rome of old, which means that these positions 
 are bought and sold. The English like the 
 Roman aristocracy, make these positions the 
 aim of a young man's education, and with both, 
 the arts of war and debate are reckoned among 
 the best means for procuring future authority. 
 The tradition of good governing capacities is 
 maintained among English families of rank, as 
 it was formerly at Rome ; and thus the English 
 Tories will probably remain as indispensable and 
 as long in power, as did the senatorial families 
 of ancient Rome. 
 
 But nothing so resembles the present con- 
 dition of England, as the canvassing for votes, 
 described in Coriolanus. With what inward 
 rage and scornful irony do we see the Roman 
 Tory canvassing for the votes of those good 
 citizens whom he despises from the bottom of 
 his heart, but whose votes are indispensable 
 
 52 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 if he is to be elected consul. Only the majority 
 of English lords having earned their scars 
 rather in fox-hunting than in battle, and having 
 learned the art of dissimulation from their 
 mothers, do not now evince such rage and 
 scorn at parliamentary elections, as did the 
 obstinate Coriolanus. 
 
 As ever, Shakespeare shows the greatest 
 impartiality in this play. The aristocrat is right 
 in despising his plebeian voters, for he feels 
 that he behaved more bravely in battle, which 
 the Romans regarded as the greatest virtue. 
 But on the other hand, the poor voters, the 
 people, are also right in opposing him in spite 
 of this virtue ; for he made them understand 
 sufficiently clearly that he would cease to dis- 
 tribute bread in his position of consul, — "but 
 bread is the nation's first right,'' 
 
 PORTIA {Julius Ctssar] 
 
 Cesar's popularity was chiefly based on his 
 liberality and his generosity towards the people. 
 In him the nation recognised the founder of 
 those better times which awaited it in his 
 descendants the emperors, for they allowed the 
 people to enjoy their first right ; they gave 
 them their daily bread. Those cruel and arbi- 
 trary acts of which the emperors were guilty 
 
 S3 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 towards several hundred patrician families, by 
 which their privileges were laughed to scorn, 
 we gladly pardon ; we gratefully recognise in 
 the emperors, the destroyers of that regime of 
 nobles, who allow the people the lowest wages 
 for the hardest service; we honour in them 
 human saviours who introduced civil equality 
 by abasing the great and exalting the lowly. 
 Let patrician Tacitus, that advocate of the past, 
 describe in his poetical and venomous phrase- 
 ology the sins and madnesses of the Caesars ; 
 we know something better of them — they fed 
 the people. ^, 
 
 Caesar prepares th^fall of the Roman aristo- 
 cracy, and the victoly of democracy. Mean- 
 while many old patrfcians are imbued with a 
 spirit of republicanism, they cannot yet bear 
 to see the chief power centred in one person — 
 they cannot live where one individual dares to 
 carry his head higher than they do, though it 
 be the magnificent head of a Julius Caesar, and 
 they sharpen their daggers and kill him. 
 ^ 1 1 is wrongly asserted at the present day that 
 democracy and monarchy are opposed to one 
 another. The ideal democracy is that in which 
 an individual heads the state, representing thus 
 the popular will incarnate, even as God rules 
 the world. Men obtain their safest equality, 
 
 54 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 the most perfect form of democracy, when 
 governed by this incarnation of the popular 
 wfill, representative of God in His Majesty. So 
 also aristocracy and republicanism are not 
 inimical to one another,^ and this is clearly 
 shown in the play before us, where the spirit 
 of republicanism becomes most evident in the 
 haughtiest aristocrats. In the case of Cassius 
 these characteristics are more marked than in 
 Brutus. Long ago we remarked that a certain^ 
 narrow jealousy enduring nothing over it, 
 fosters the republican spirit. It is a petty spirit 
 of envy which hates everything that soars aloft 
 and which cannot even bear to see virtue per^- 
 sonified, fearing that a virtuous man may assert^ 
 his greater in^tividuality too strongly. The ^ 
 republicans of the present day may therefore ^ 
 be likened to deists, whose supreme ambition \\ 
 is modesty — they like to imagine that men are \ 
 but miserable figures modelled in clay, who 
 having been fashioned after one image in the i 
 hands of one creator, are bound to abstain from 
 all proud love of distinction or ambitious pomp. 
 In puritanism the English republicans onc'e*1 
 hailed a similar principle, and this may also be 
 said of the republicans of ancient Rome, — they 
 were in fact stoics. Bearing this in mind the 
 sagacity with which Shakespeare has described 
 
 55 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Cassius is admirable, especially when he is 
 made to converse with Brutus, whilst he hears 
 the people welcoming Caesar with cries of 
 delight, whom they wish to elect as king. 
 
 " I cannot tell what you and other men 
 
 Think of this life ; but for my single self, 
 
 I had as Ijef not be as live to be 
 
 In awe of such a thing as I myself. 
 
 I was born free as Caesar ; so were you : 
 
 We both have fed as well ; and we can both 
 
 Endure the winter's cold as well as he : 
 
 For once, upon a raw and gusty day, 
 
 The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores, 
 
 Caesar said to me, ' Dar'st thou, Cassius, now 
 
 Leap in with me into the angry flood. 
 
 And swim to yonder point ? ' Upon the word. 
 
 Accoutred as I was, I plungdd in 
 
 And bade him follow : so indeed he did. 
 
 The torrent roared ; and we did buffet it 
 
 With lusty sinews, throwing it aside 
 
 And stemming it with hearts of controversy : 
 
 But ere we could arrive the point proposed 
 
 Caesar cried, ' Help me, Cassius, or I sink ! ' 
 
 I, as ^neas our great ancestor 
 
 Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder 
 
 The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber 
 
 Did I the tirfed Caesar, and this man 
 
 Is now become a god ; and Cassius is 
 
 A wretched creature and must bend his body 
 
 If Caesar carelessly but nod on him. 
 
 He had a fever when he was in Spain, 
 
 And when the fit was on him, I did mark, 
 
 How he did shake : 'tis true, this god did shake. 
 
 56 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 His coward lips did from their colour fly ; 
 
 And that same eye, whose bend doth awe the world 
 
 Did lose his lustre : I did hear him groan, 
 
 Ay, and that tongue of his that bade the Romans 
 
 Mark him, and write his speeches in their books, 
 
 Alas it cried, ' Give me some drink, Titinius ' 
 
 As a sick girl. Ye gods, it doth amaze me 
 
 A man of such a feeble temper should 
 
 So get the start of the majestic world. 
 
 And bear the palm alone." 
 
 Caesar himself sees through Cassius perfectly, 
 and his words to Antony are very expressive. 
 
 " Let me have men about me that are fat ; 
 Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights : 
 Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look ; 
 He thinks too much : such men are dangerous. 
 
 Would he were fatter ! — but I fear him not ; 
 Yet if my name were liable to fear, 
 I do not know the man I should avoid 
 So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much ; 
 He is a great observer and he looks 
 Quite thro' the deeds of men : he loves no plays 
 As thou dost, Antony ; he hears no music : 
 Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort 
 As if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit 
 That could be moved to smile at anything. 
 Such men as he be never at heart's ease 
 Whiles they behold a greater than themselves ! 
 And therefore are they very dangerous." 
 
 Cassius is a republican, and as we often find 
 
 57 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 with such men, he prefers the friendship of 
 noble men to the love of tender women. On 
 the other hand Brutus sacrifices himself to the" 
 republic, not because he is a republican by 
 nature, but because virtue is his sole desire, 
 and he regards that sacrifice as the highest 
 duty. He is open to all soft feelings and 
 loves Portia his wife, with tender affection. = — 
 "^ Portia, a daughter of Cato, is Roman in her 
 character, but nevertheless she is lovable, and 
 manifests in her highest flights of heroism 
 womanly feeling and thoughtful womanliness. 
 With anxious love she observes every shadow 
 that crosses her husband's brow, betraying 
 his troubled thoughts. She will know wha^ 
 Plroubles him, with him she will share the 
 .secret that weighs down his spirit . . . 
 And when at last she does know it, she remains 
 a woman, almost dies of the terrible anxiety 
 which she cannot conceal and acknowledges : 
 
 -- "I have a man's mind, but a woman's might. 
 How hard it is for women to keep counsel ! " 
 
 - CLEOPATRA [Antony and Cleopatra\ 
 
 >Now behold the celebrated Queen of Egypt 
 who ruined Antony. 
 
 He knows that this woman is goading him 
 S8 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 on to ruin and wishes to tear himself away 
 from her magic influence. . . 
 
 " I must with haste from hence." 
 
 He flies . . . but only in order to return 
 the more quickly to the flesh-pots of Egypt 
 and to his "Serpent of Old Nile" as he calls 
 her . . , soon he is with her again swelter- 
 ing in splendid Alexandrian mud, and there 
 Octavius relates : 
 
 " I' the market-place on a tribunal silvered 
 Cleopatra and himself m chairs of gold 
 Were publicly enthroned ; at the feet sat 
 Csesarion, whom they call my father's son, 
 And all th' unlawful issue that their lust 
 Since then hath made between them. Unto her 
 He gave the establishment of Egypt ; made her 
 Of lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia, 
 Absolute queen. 
 
 I' the common show-place where they exercise 
 
 His sons he there proclaimed the kings of kings ; 
 
 Great Media, Parthia and Armenia, 
 
 He gave to Alexander ; to Ptolemy he assigned 
 
 Syria, Cilicia and Phoenicia : she 
 
 In the habiliments of the goddess Isis 
 
 That day appeared ; and oft before gave audience 
 
 As 'tis reported, so." 
 
 The Egyptian sorceress takes possession of 
 his head as well as of his heart, and makes 
 
 59 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 havoc of his talent as a great general. Instead 
 of waging war on terra firma where victory 
 has always been his, he gives battle on the 
 uncertain ocean where his courage is of less 
 account ; and thence where this fanciful woman 
 was bent on following him, she suddenly takes 
 to flight with all her vessels, just in the decisive 
 moment of battle, and Antony, "like an amorous 
 drake," pursues her with flying sails, leaving 
 honour and good fortune behind. But the un- 
 happy hero does not suffer his worst defeat 
 owing to Cleopatra's weak-minded fancies alone ; 
 later on she treacherously betrays him, and in 
 secret league with Octavius allows her fleet to 
 go over to the enemy. ... In order to 
 save her own goods in the shipwreck of his 
 happiness, or may be to procure for herself yet 
 greater advantages, shedeceiyes.Jiim in^lhe 
 meanest way. She drives him to d^gair and 
 death by^ her cunning and hypocrisy . " """^^ 
 arid still he loves her devotedly to the end ; 
 indeed his love is only the more inflamed after 
 her betrayal of him. He certainly curses her 
 constant artfulness, he knows her faults and in 
 most brutal language betrays his better discern- 
 ment, telling her the bitterest truths. 
 
 " You were half blasted ere I knew you : — ^ha ! 
 Have I my pillow left unpressed in Rome 
 60 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 Forborne the getting of a lawful race 
 And by a gem of women, to be abused 
 By one that looks on feeders ? 
 
 You have been a boggier ever : 
 
 But when we in our viciousness grow hard — 
 
 Oh misery on't ! — the wise gods seal our eyes ; 
 
 In our own filth drop our clear judgments ; make us 
 
 Adore our errors ; laugh at 's while we strut 
 
 To our confusion. 
 
 I found you as a morsel cold upon 
 Dead Csesar's trencher ; nay, you were a fragment 
 Of Cneius Pompey's ; besides what hotter hours 
 Unregistered in vulgar fame, you have 
 Luxuriously picked out." 
 
 But just as the spear of Achilles could heal 
 the wounds which it had made, so could this 
 lover's lips heal by an embrace the mortal 
 wounds with which his sharp words had pierced 
 the soul of his beloved, . . . and after every 
 evil action to which this old Serpent of the Nile 
 treated the Roman Wolf, and after every howl- 
 ing invective in which the latter indulged in 
 consequence, the more tenderly did these two 
 embrace. Even in dying we find him press- 
 ing on her lips the last kiss of so many 
 kisses. . . 
 
 But she also, the Egyptian Serpent, how she 
 loves her Roman Wolf! Her treacheries are 
 
 6i 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 only the external turns and twists of an evil 
 serpent-nature ; she practises them mechanic- 
 ally from an inborn or habitual proneness to 
 transgress . . . but in the depths of her 
 being she retains the most unchanging love 
 towards Antony ; she is not herself aware that 
 this love is so strong, often she thinks it may 
 be conquered or trifled with. But she errs, and 
 she clearly recognises her error at the moment 
 of losing her beloved for ever, when her sorrow 
 bursts forth in the fine words : 
 
 " I dreamed there was an emperor Antony : 
 Oh such another sleep that I might see 
 But such another man. 
 
 His face was as the heavens ; and therein stuck 
 
 A sun and moon, which kept their course and lighted 
 
 The little O, the earth. 
 
 His legs bestrid the ocean : his reared arm 
 Crested the world ; his voice was propertied 
 As all the tunfed spheres, and that to friends ; 
 But when he meant to quail and shake the orb, 
 He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty 
 There was no winter in't ; an autumn 'twas 
 That grew the more by reaping : his delights 
 Were dolphin-like ; they showed his back above 
 The element they lived in : in his livery 
 Walked crowns and crownets ; realms and islands were 
 As plates dropped from his pocket." 
 62 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 This Cleopatra is a woman. She loves and 
 betrays at the same time. We err in thinking 
 that women cease to love us when they betray 
 us. They do but follow their nature ; and even 
 if they have no desire to empty the forbidden 
 cup to the dregs, they would often like to take 
 a sip, just to touch the cup's edge with their 
 lips at least, in order to taste what poison is 
 like. Besides Shakespeare, no one has treated 
 this phenomenon in the play before us so well 
 as the old Abbe Provost in his novel ; Manon 
 Lescaut. Here there is a resemblance between 
 the intuition of the greatest poet and the calm 
 observation of the coolest prosaist. 
 
 Yes, this Cleopatra is a woman in the most 
 lovely and the most cursed sense. She reminds 
 me of Lessing's words ; " when God created 
 woman, he took too fine a clay." The delicacy 
 of such material can only seldom meet life's 
 demands. Such beings are too good and too 
 bad for this world. With them the sweetest 
 virtues are the cause of the worst sins. When 
 Cleopatra fii^tjcoraes-a^ifliL-iheL-scfin^^Sliake;:^., 
 speare paints the brightlx„capimaus_, spirit by 
 which the "beautiful gueen is always possessed, 
 in delightfuily true colours. This often shows 
 itself in most doubtful questions and desires*.-, 
 and may possibly be regarded as the final cause 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 of all her actions. Nothing is more characteris- 
 tic than the fifth scene of the first act where 
 she desires her attendant to give her a sleep- 
 ing draught of mandrake, in order to while 
 away the time of Antony's absence. Then 
 the devil possesses her to call her eunuch, 
 Mardian. He asks submissively what his 
 mistress wants of him. She answers : 
 
 " not now to hear thee sing ; I take no pleasure 
 in aught an eunuch has : —hast thou affections ? " 
 
 Mardian 
 Yes, gracious Madam. 
 
 Cleopatra 
 Indeed ! 
 
 Mardian 
 
 Not in deed. Madam ; for I can do nothing 
 But what indeed is honest to be done : 
 Yet have I fierce affections and I think 
 What Venus did with Mars. 
 
 Cleopatra 
 
 Oh, Charmian 
 Where think'st thou he is now ? Stands he or sits he ? 
 Or does he walk ? Or is he on his horse ? 
 Oh, happy horse to bear the weight of Antony ! 
 Do bravely, horse ! for wott'st thou whom thou mov'st ? 
 The demi- Atlas of this earth, the arm 
 And burgonet of men. He's speaking now 
 Or murmuring, ' Where's my Serpent of Old Nile ? ' 
 For so he calls me." 
 
 64 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 Were I to express all I think regardless of 
 malicious smiles, I should have to declare my 
 conviction that this flighty feeling and thinking 
 of Cleopatra, which is a sequence of a flighty, 
 idle and unquiet life, bears resemblance to the 
 acts of a certain class of extravagant women. 
 Their expensive housekeeping is not always 
 supplied by conjugal generosity ; often they 
 vex and gladden the hearts of their titular 
 husbands with love and devotion, often with 
 simple love, and always with mad fancies. And 
 this Cleopatra, who could never have defrayed 
 her unheard of luxury from the crown revenues 
 of Egypt, and who received from her Roman 
 lover Antony the extorted treasure of whole 
 provinces as a gift, being in the truest sense 
 a maintained queen — was this Cleopatra really 
 anything else ? 
 
 From this character of Cleopatra, so excitable, 
 flightyTsojmaael^^of^^ 
 passion, there flashes forth an _element of sen- 
 suaI^wil3CaSS- .sulphurous jwit^ which frightens 
 more_yban it ^delights. Plutarch gives us an 
 idea of this comic element, displaying itself 
 rafher in acts than in words, and even at school 
 I laughed heartily at this mystified Antony, 
 who went out fishing with his royal mistress 
 only to hook salted fish. For in secret the sly 
 
 65 E 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Egyptian woman had ordered a number of 
 divers hidden under the water to fasten a salted 
 fish on to the hook of this amorous Roman 
 each time he sent down his line. Our master 
 looked very solemn over this anecdote and 
 severely blamed the wicked wantonness with 
 which the queen treated the lives of her sub- 
 jects, those poor divers, for the sake of a joke. 
 Altogether our master disapproved of Cleopatra, 
 and he seriously drew our attention to the 
 fact that owing to this woman Antony spoiled 
 his entire career as a statesman, becoming 
 entangled in domestic difficulties and ending 
 miserably. ' 
 
 Yes, my old master was right ; it is very 
 dangerous to come in too close contact with 
 a person like Cleopatra. A hero may come to 
 grief thereby, but only a. hero. Here as every- 
 where else steady-going mediocrity is in no 
 danger. 
 
 Cleopatra's position and character have in 
 them~decT3edly comic elemeats. „ This, capri- 
 cious, pleasure-loving, fickle, feverish coquette, 
 this ancient j^arm^/e^^, this goddess, of life 
 flutters and rules over JElgy.pt»- the silent petri- 
 fied land of the dead . . . You know it 
 well that Egypt, that mysterious Mizraim with 
 its narrow Nile valley, in appearance like a 
 
 66 . - 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 coffin ... In the high reeds the crocodile 
 or the hidden child of Holy Writ is shedding 
 its tears . . . We see temples with co- 
 lossal pillars against which hideous forms of 
 sacred animals recline, painted in ugly gaudy 
 colours ... At the doorway the monk of 
 I sis with his hieroglyphical hood nods to us. 
 . . . Mummies hold their siesta in luxurious 
 villas and their gilded mask keeps them from 
 the fly-swarms of decay . . . There stand 
 the narrow obelisks and wide pyramids like 
 dumb thoughts . . . The Moon mountains 
 of (Ethiopia hiding the sources of the Nile nod 
 to us in the back-ground. . . . Every- 
 where we behold death, stone and mystery. 
 . . . And -over this land beautiful Cleoprftra 
 
 reigned as queen. LAks-^H^^' ' 
 
 Great is the wit of Garfl 
 
 LAVINIA \Titus Andronicus\ 
 
 In Julius Caesar we see the last throes of the 
 republican spirit struggling vainly against ap- 
 proaching monarchism. The republic has out- 
 lived itself Brutus and Cassius can only 
 murder the man who first attempted to grasp 
 a royal crown ; they cannot kill monarchism, 
 which is deeply rooted in the needs of the time. 
 Instead of one fallen Caesar we get in the play 
 ■ - 67 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 oi Antony and Cleopatra three other Caesars 
 who boldly attempt to seize the dominion of the 
 world. As a principle the question has been 
 solved, and the war waged between these Tri- 
 umvirs becomes a personal one. Who shall be 
 emperor and master over all men and nations ? 
 In the tragedy of Titus Andronicus we perceive 
 how the unlimited power of one individual 
 follows in the Roman empire the law of all 
 terrestrial things, and that it is doomed to de- 
 cay. Nothing is more despicable than the sight 
 of these later Caesars, who added hollow weak- 
 ness to the madness and the crimes of their 
 Neros and Caligulas. These Neros and Cali- 
 gulas lost their head when at the height of 
 their power ; thinking themselves more than 
 men, they became inhuman ; thinking them- 
 selves gods, they became godless ; we can 
 hardly in our amazement judge of them by 
 ordinary standards on account of their enor- 
 mities. The later Caesars on the other hand 
 are rather objects of compassion, dislike and 
 horror. They lack that heathen self-adoration, 
 that intoxication of solitary majesty, and that 
 terrible irresponsibility . . . Like good 
 christians they are crushed in spirit, the black- 
 cowled confessor has spoken to them seriously, 
 and they have come to regard themselves as 
 
TRAGEDrES 
 
 poor worms depending on the mercy of a more 
 divine majesty with the prospect of some day 
 being tortured and roasted in hell on account of 
 their earthly sins. 
 
 Though the play of Titus Androniais bears 
 the outer garb of heathenism, it has the char- 
 acter of a later christian time and the moral 
 perversion of all ethical and social things is 
 thoroughly Byzantine in tone. This play must 
 certainly be reckoned among Shakespeare's 
 earliest works, though many of his critics 
 dispute its authenticity. It contains a pitiless- 
 ness, a pronounced love of the hideous, a titanic 
 struggle with the divine powers such as we 
 often find in the early works of the greatest 
 poets. The hero is a true Roman, a remnant 
 of the old fossil age, in contradistinction to his 
 demoralised surroundings. Did such men then 
 still exist ? Possibly ; for as we find on the 
 mountain-tops, nature loves to preserve some 
 one example of any type which is about to 
 disappear or to undergo transformation, be it 
 even as a fossil. Titus Andronicus is such a 
 fossilised Roman, and his fossil-like virtue is 
 extremely curious, occurring as it does at the 
 time of the later Csesars. 
 
 The description of the violation and mutila- 
 tion of his daughter Lavinia are among the 
 
 69 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 most terrible scenes to be found in any author. 
 The story of Philomela in Ovid's Metamor- 
 phoses is not nearly as ghastly, for the poor 
 Roman woman has her hands chopped off in 
 order not to betray the authors of this most 
 horrible deed. The father by his inflexible 
 manliness, the daughter by her noble woman- 
 liness, both point to a more moral past. She 
 fears dishonour not death, and very touching 
 are the chaste words in which she entreats the 
 empress Tamora, her enemy, for mercy, just as 
 the empress's sons are about to dishonour her : 
 
 '"Tis present death I beg; and one thing more 
 That womanhood denies my tongue to tell : 
 Oh, keep me from their worse than killing lust, 
 And tumble me into some loathsome pit. 
 Where never man's eye may behold my body, 
 Do this and be a charitable murderer." 
 
 In her maidenly purity Lavinia forms a per- 
 fect contrast to the forenamed empress Tamora; 
 here, as in most of his plays, Shakespeare places 
 two women of entirely different mould next to 
 one another, in order that we may read their 
 characters by the force of contrast. We had an 
 example of this in Antony, and Cleopatra where 
 the -dark, vain, licentious, voluptuous Egyptian 
 woman stands out in strong contrast to the 
 
 70 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 white, cold, moral, intensely prosaic and homely 
 Octavia. 
 
 But Tamora also is a fine creature, and I 
 think it somewhat unjust in the English 
 engraver not to have included her in this 
 collection of Shakespeare's women. She is a 
 beautiful, majestic woman, a bewitching, im- 
 perial figure with the marks of a fallen divinity 
 on her brow, and with an expression in her 
 eyes which denotes consuming desire, one of 
 magnificent wickedness thirsting after red 
 blood. In the very first scene in which 
 Tamora appears Shakespeare, owing to his 
 far-seeing beneficence, appears to condone in 
 advance the horrible acts of which she after- 
 wards becomes guilty towards Titus Andro- 
 nicus. For this stern Roman, untouched by her 
 agonising maternal entreaties, permits her be- 
 loved son to be sacrificed before her very eyes. 
 As soon as the young emperor begins to court 
 her, by which hopes of future vengeance arise 
 in her heart, she pronounces the gleefully 
 ominous words : — 
 
 " I'll let them know what 'tis to let a queen 
 Kneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain.'' 
 
 Even as we excuse her cruelty on account of 
 the over-abundance of misery she had to en- 
 
 71 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 dure, so also the romantic poetry which is 
 breathed forth in her words almost ennobles 
 her execrably low behaviour in becoming the 
 paramour of an odious Moor. Indeed that 
 scene in which the Empress Tamora leaves 
 her suite during the hunt in order to meet her. 
 beloved Moor in the forest, belongs to the 
 weirdly sweet imagination of romantic poetry. 
 
 " My lovely Aaron, wherefore look'st thou sad, 
 When everything doth make a gleeful boast ? 
 The birds chant melody on every bush ; 
 The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun ; 
 The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind 
 And make a chequered shadow on the ground : 
 Under their sweet shade, Aaron, let us sit. 
 And whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds. 
 Replying shrilly to the well-tuned horns. 
 As if a double hunt were heard at once, 
 Let us sit down and mark their yelping noise ; 
 And after conflict such as was supposed 
 The wandering prince and Dido once enjoyed, 
 And curtained with a counsel-keeping cave — 
 We may each wreathfed in the other's arms. 
 Our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber ; 
 Whiles hounds and horns and sweet melodious birds 
 Be unto us as is a nurse's song 
 Of lullaby to bring her babe asleep.'' 
 
 But whilst the eyes of the beautiful empress 
 are lighted up with an expression of passionate 
 longing, flickering bewitchingly like forked 
 
 72 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 lightning over the Moor's dark form, he is 
 thinidng of far more important things, even 
 the execution of most shameful intrigues, and 
 his answer forms a harsh contrast to Tamora's 
 fervent words. 
 
 CONSTANCE [Kingjohn} 
 
 It was on the 29th of August, a.d. 1827, that 
 I gradually fell asleep over the first performance 
 of a new tragedy by E. Raupach at the theatre 
 at Berlin. 
 
 For those of the learned public who are no 
 play-goers and only know standard literature I 
 will observe, that the forenamed E. Raupach 
 is a very useful man, a dealer in tragedies 
 and comedies furnishing the Berlin stage with 
 some new masterpiece from his collection 
 every month. The theatre at. Berlin is an 
 excellent institution, and particularly useful 
 for Hegelian philosophers who at night like 
 to rest from their arduous day's labour of much 
 thinking. The mind can there find a far more 
 natural refreshment than at Wisotzkis. People 
 go to the theatre, lean back lazily in their 
 velvet stalls, peer at their neighbours through 
 eye-glasses or at the legs of the ballet dancer 
 just making her appearance, and if those actor- 
 fellows do not scream too lustily, the spectators 
 
 n 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 gently fall asleep as I did on the 29th of 
 August, A.D. 1827. 
 
 When I awoke darkness surrounded me, and 
 I could perceive by the faint glimmer of a lamp 
 that I was by myself in the empty theatre. I 
 was determined to spend the remainder of the 
 night there and tried to fall asleep again. In 
 this I was less successful than some hours 
 previously when the opium fumes of Raupach's 
 verses benumbed my brain. Besides this I was 
 too much disturbed by the gnawing and singing 
 of the mice. A whole colony of mice were 
 audible near the orchestra, and I could not 
 help overhearing their conversation, as I 
 understand the language of all other animals 
 besides Raupach's verses. Their talk was on 
 subjects which must specially interest thought- 
 ful people ; on the final causes of all appear- 
 ances, on the nature of things in themselves, 
 on fate and freewill, on Raupach's great tra- 
 gedy which had shortly before begun proceeded 
 and ended with every imaginable horror before 
 our very eyes. 
 
 " You young people," said an old mouse, 
 " have only seen one or few such plays, but I 
 am old and have seen many, observing them 
 •with careful attention. And I have found that 
 their inherent qualities are all alike, that they 
 
 74 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 are mostly only variations of the same theme, 
 and that frequently they possess the very 
 same expositions, complications and catastro- 
 phes. Always there are the same men and 
 the same passions, merely changing costumes 
 and figures of speech. There are the same 
 incitements to action ; love, hate, ambition, 
 jealousy, whether the hero wear a Roman 
 toga or ancient German armour, a turban or 
 a felt hat, whether he behave in ancient or 
 romantic fashion, simple or adorned, talking in 
 bad iambics or worse trochaics. The whole 
 history of man, which might be divided into 
 various plays, acts and scenes remains ever the 
 same ; it is only a masked recurrence of the 
 same characters and events, an organic circle 
 ever beginning again from the beginning. And 
 if that has once been taken to heart evil can 
 no longer cause vexation, good can no longer 
 cause special delight. We smile at the foolish- 
 ness of those heroes who sacrifice themselves 
 for the good and the happiness of the human 
 race ; we are amused whilst we remain wisely 
 calm." 
 
 A chuckling voice, which appeared to belong 
 to a small shrew-mouse, here hastily remarked ; 
 " I too have made my observations and not 
 only from one standpoint, no troublesome 
 
 75 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 jumps were too much for me. I left the 
 platform and looked at things behind the 
 scenes, and I there made many extraordinary 
 discoveries. This hero whom you have just 
 been admiring is no hero at all, for I heard a 
 youngster call him a drunken wretch, giving 
 him several kicks which he received without a 
 word. That virtuous princess, who seemed to 
 fall a sacrifice to her virtue, is neither a princess 
 nor virtuous, for I saw her take red paint from 
 a small china vase and rouge her cheeks, 
 which gave her a modestly blushing appear- 
 ance. At last she began to yawn . and threw 
 herself into the arms of a lieutenant of the 
 guard, who promised her on his word of 
 honour that she would find excellent herring- 
 salad and a glass of punch in his room. What 
 seemed to be thunder and lightning was only 
 the trundling of some tin-roller and the blazing 
 up of several ounces of resin. And even that 
 stout, honest-looking citizen, with the unselfish 
 and generous exterior, quarrelled avariciously 
 with a lean man whom he called the manager 
 of the theatre, and from whom he desired a few 
 dollars increase in pay. Yes, I saw and heard 
 all with my own eyes and ears ; all the great 
 and -noble things here acted before us are mere 
 deception ; selfishness and egotism are the 
 
 76 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 secret springs of all action, and wise people 
 are not deceived by appearances." 
 
 But here arose a sad and whimpering voice 
 apparently well known to me, though I could 
 not tell whether it belonged to a male or female 
 mouse. This mouse began by complaining of 
 the frivolity of the times, lamented the infidelity 
 and scepticism, and dwelt much on its capacity 
 for loving. " I love you," it sighed forth, "and 
 I tell you the truth. But truth was mercifully 
 revealed to me in a holy hour. I also crept 
 about endeavouring to discover the final causes 
 of the chequered events which came to pass on 
 the stage, endeavouring besides to find a few 
 bread-crumbs in order to appease my bodily 
 wants, for I love you. Suddenly I discovered 
 a somewhat capacious hole or rather box, in 
 in which sat a spare little man, clothed in grey, 
 holding in his hand a roll of paper and repeat- 
 ing to himself in a monotonously low voice all 
 the speeches which were being loudly and 
 passionately uttered on the stage. A mystic 
 shudder passed through my frame, in spite of 
 my unworthiness I had the honour of being 
 admitted into the holy of holies. I beheld my- 
 self in the presence of that mysterious primeval 
 spirit, of the pure soul, by whose will terrestrial 
 things are governed, by whose word they are 
 
 77 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 created, and by whose fiat they can be made 
 and unmade. For I noticed that those very 
 heroes whom I had greatly admired just before, 
 only seemed certain of their parts when they 
 repeated his words in good faith, and that on 
 the contrary they stammered and stumbled 
 pitifully when they kept at a proud distance 
 and did not hear his voice. I saw that every- 
 thing was created by him ; he was the Almighty 
 One in his holy box. On either side of it lamps 
 shone brilliantly, flutes and violins sounded, 
 light and music enveloped him, and he swam 
 in harmonious rays of light and beaming har- 
 monies." 
 
 But finally this speech became so nasal and 
 whimpering that I could not understand much 
 more of it, only occasionally I heard the words, 
 " Preserve me from cats and traps, give me my 
 daily crumbs. I love you for ever and ever ! 
 Amen ! " 
 
 I relate this dream in order to express my 
 opinion regarding the different philosophical 
 standpoints from which the history of terres- 
 trial things is generally viewed, thus at the 
 same time informing people of my views and 
 explaining why I do not burden these light 
 pages with a real philosophy of English his- 
 tory. 
 
 78 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 Indeed I have no desire dogmatically to ex- 
 plain the great events of English history which 
 Shakespeare has glorified in his works ; I only 
 desire to add a few ornamental words to those 
 women's portraits which owe their origin to the 
 poetical works of Shakespeare. As women 
 play nothing less than the chief part in these 
 historical plays, and as the poet never brings 
 them on to the stage as he does in his other 
 plays, with the purpose of describing the per- 
 sons and characters of women, but rather 
 because their co-operation is required in the 
 history of which he treats, I also shall devote 
 but a short space to them. 
 
 Constance comes first, looking very sorrow- 
 ful. Like the Mater Dolorosa she bears her 
 child on her arm. 
 
 " Thy sins are visited in this poor child." 
 
 " All punish'd in the person of this child." 
 
 Madame Stich once performed the part of 
 this sorrowing queen on the Berlin stage with 
 great ability. That good Maria Louisa who 
 at the time of the Invasion represented Queen 
 Constance on the royal stage of France was 
 less successful. However a certain Madame 
 Caroline, who acted some years ago in the 
 
 79 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 provinces, especially in Canton Vendee, did it 
 execrably. She was not devoid of talent or 
 of passion, but she was afflicted with embon- 
 point, which is a misfortune for an actress who 
 desires to appear in the heroic part of a royal 
 widow. 
 
 LADY PERCY ^Henry IV.] 
 
 In this picture she is more plump and full-faced 
 than I had imagined. But possibly the sharp 
 features and slim waist which reveal themselves 
 in her words and which give her spiritual 
 physiognomy a certain stamp, are more inter- 
 esting when contrasted with her well-rounded 
 exterior. She is merry, hearty, and healthy in 
 mind and body. Prince Henry would gladly 
 disgust us with this lovely woman and parodies 
 her and her Percy. 
 
 " I am not yet of Percy's mind the Hotspur of the 
 North ; he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots 
 at a breakfast, washes his hands and sdys to his wife, 'Fie 
 upon this quiet life, I want work.' 'Oh, my sweet Harry,' 
 says she, 'how many hast thou killed today?' 'Give 
 my roan horse a drench,' says he, and answers; 'Some 
 fourteen,' an hour after — ' a trifle, a trifle ! ' " 
 
 The scene in which we are introduced to 
 Percy's home, and in which the blustering 
 
 80 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 hero's wife tames hirii with her boldest words 
 of affection is as charming as it is short ; 
 
 " Come, come, you paraquito, answer me 
 Directly unto this question that I ask : 
 In faith I'll break thy little finger, Harry, 
 An if thou wilt not tell me all things true. 
 
 Percy. 
 
 Away, 
 Away, you trifler ! Love ? I love thee not, 
 I care not for thee, Kate ; this is no world 
 To play with mammets and to tilt with lips j 
 We must have bloody noses and cracked crowns 
 And pass them current too. Gods me, my horse ! 
 What say'st thou, Kate ? What would'st thou have with 
 me? 
 
 Lady Percy. 
 
 Do you not love me, do you not indeed ? 
 Well do not then ; for since you love me not 
 I will not love myself. Do you not love me ? 
 Nay tell me if you speak in jest or no? 
 
 Percy. 
 
 Come wilt thou see me ride ? 
 And when I am o' horseback I will swear 
 I love thee infinitely. But hark you, Kate ; 
 I must not have you henceforth question me 
 Whither I go, nor reason whereabout ; 
 Whither I must I must ; and to conclude 
 This evening I must leave you, gentle Kate. 
 I know you wise but yet no further wise 
 Than Harry Percy's wife ; constant you are ; 
 
 8i F 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 But yet a woman ; and for secrecy 
 
 No lady closer ; for I well believe 
 
 Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know 
 
 And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate." 
 
 PRINCESS KATHARINE IHenry V.] 
 
 We wonder whether Shakespeare really wrote 
 that scene in which Princess Katharine takes 
 an English lesson ; and I question whether the 
 French forms of speech so pleasing to the 
 heart of John Bull, are actually Shakespeare's. 
 An English jargon would have had an equally 
 comic effect, particularly as by using Romance 
 words and constructions, a French turn may 
 be given to English without any loss of gram- 
 mar. An English dramatist using only old 
 Saxon idioms and forms of speech could in like 
 manner give his writings a certain Germanic 
 turn. For English is made up of two hetero- 
 geneous elements ; the Romance and the Ger- 
 manic. When jumbled together, these do not 
 form an organic whole ; they easily part com- 
 pany and then it is difficult to decide which of 
 them is legitimate English. We need only 
 compare the language used by Dr. Johnson or 
 Addison with that of Byron or Cobbett. Surely 
 Shakespeare had no need to make Princess 
 Katharine talk French. 
 
 I may here repeat what I have previously 
 82 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 stated, that Shakespeare is at fault in not 
 making use of peculiar forms of speech in his 
 historical plays, in order to draw a stronger 
 contrast between the Norman-French character 
 of the great nobles and the Anglo-Saxon 
 character of the people. By doing this in his 
 novels Walter Scott achieved his greatest 
 success. 
 
 It was probably an Englishman's ill-will 
 which caused the artist of the portrait before us 
 to give this French princess rather a comical 
 than a beautiful expression. She has the face 
 of a bird, and her eyes look as though they 
 belonged to some one else. Does she wear 
 parrots' feathers on her head, and do they 
 signify her powers of chattering.'* Her small 
 white hands have an inquisitive look. She is 
 made up of a vain love of display and a desire 
 to please, and she knows how to play with her 
 fan. I think her feet flirt with the very ground 
 on which she treads. 
 
 JOAN OF ARC \Henry VI. Part /.] 
 
 Hail to thee, great German Schiller, who hast 
 not only freed yon grand figure from Voltaire's 
 ugly sarcasm, but hast effaced from it the blot 
 with which even Shakespeare invested it. . . ^__ 
 Indeed I do not know whether Shakespeare's 
 
 83 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 mind was imbued with an Englishman's anti- 
 pathy to the French, or whether it was ob- 
 scured by the superstition of the Middle Ages 
 when he represented this brave maiden as a 
 witch, in league with the dark powers of hell. 
 He describes her as calling upon the demons of 
 the lower regions, and regarded in this light 
 there is a reason for her cruel execution. 
 Every time I walk across the small market 
 place at Rouen where the maiden was burned 
 and where a miserable statue commemorates 
 this wicked deed, my anger breaks forth ! To 
 kill by torture ! Even then this was the man- 
 ner in which the English behaved towards their 
 beaten foes ! Next to the rock of St. Helena 
 this Rouen market place remains as a hateful 
 witness of English generosity ! 
 
 Ah yes ! Even Shakespeare is guilty of 
 injustice towards this noble maiden who saved 
 her country, and he treats her in an unfriendly 
 and unloving manner, even if he does not pro- 
 claim himself her decided enemy. And even 
 if she saved her country with the aid of hell, 
 she still deserves respect and admiration. 
 
 Or are the critics right, who hold that those 
 passages in which the maid makes her appear- 
 ance, as also Parts II. and III. of Henry 
 VI. are not by Shakespeare .'* They maintain 
 
 84 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 that he only revised this trilogy which he took 
 from older plays. I would gladly be of their 
 opinion for the sake of the Maid of Orleans, 
 but their arguments are untenable. In many 
 parts these doubtful plays bear the full impress 
 of Shakespeare's genius. 
 
 MARGARET [Henry VI. Part I.'] 
 
 Here we see the beautiful daughter of Duke 
 Regnier as a girl. Suffolk appears leading her 
 prisoner, but before he is aware of it she has 
 bewitched him. He reminds us of the recruit 
 calling out to his captain from the sentry-box ; 
 " I have taken a prisoner," — the captain re- 
 plies, — "bring him to me then," — the poor 
 recruit answers ; " I am unable to do so, for my 
 prisoner will not let me go ! " 
 Suffolk says : 
 
 " Be not offended. Nature's miracle, 
 Thou art allotted to be ta'en by me : 
 So doth the swan her downy cygnets save. 
 Keeping them prisoners underneath her wings. 
 Yet if this servile usage once offend, 
 Go and be free again as Suffolk's friend. 
 {She turns away as if going.) 
 Oh stay ! I have no power to let her pass ; 
 My hand would free her but my heart says no. 
 As plays the sun upon the glassy streams, 
 Twinkling another counterfeited beam 
 So seems this gorgeous beauty to mine eyes. 
 8S 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Fain would I woo her, yet I dare not speak : 
 
 I'll call for pen and ink and write my mind<: — 
 
 Lie de la Pole ! disable not thyself; 
 
 Hast not a tongue? Is she not here thy prisoner ? 
 
 Wilt thou be daunted at a woman's sight ? 
 
 Ay, beauty's princely majesty is such. 
 
 Confounds the tongue and makes the senses crouch. 
 
 Margaret. 
 
 Say, Earl of Suffolk, if thy name be so— 
 What ransom must I pay before I pass ? 
 For I perceive I am thy prisoner. 
 
 Suffolk (aside). 
 
 How canst thou tell she will deny thy suit 
 Before thou make a trial of her love ? 
 
 Margaret. 
 Why speak'st thou not ? What ransom must I pay ? 
 
 Suffolk {aside). 
 
 She's beautiful and therefore to be wooed : 
 She is a woman, therefore to be won." 
 
 By marrying her to his king, thereby becom- 
 ing her recognised subject and her secret lover, 
 Suffolk finds he can retain her as his prisoner. 
 
 I do not know whether this liaison be- 
 tween Suffolk and Margaret is founded on fact. 
 But Shakespeare possesses the seer's vision 
 which can often perceive things not contained 
 in chronicles, but which are nevertheless true. 
 He can even remember those evanescent 
 
 86 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 dreams of the past, which Clio forgot to note, 
 possibly bright dreamy visions which do not 
 disappear with actual events like common 
 shadows, but which cling to the earth like 
 spirits, and which are distinctly seen of those 
 Sunday-born mortals, by us called Poets, whilst 
 ordinary mortals of the work-day world go 
 about their business unconcernedly, noting no- 
 thing of all this. 
 
 QUEEN MARGARET {Hen.VI. Parts IT. and in.'\ 
 
 In this picture we see the same Margaret as 
 queen and wife of Henry VI. The bud has 
 sprouted and we see the full-blown rose, but it 
 contains a hideous canker. She is become a 
 hard and wicked woman. Both in the actual 
 and the fictitious world, the horror of that 
 scene in which she hands the weeping duke of 
 York a frightful kerchief steeped in his son's 
 blood, mockingly advising him to dry his tears 
 therewith, is unexampled. Terrible are the 
 words : 
 
 " Look, York, I stained this napkin with the blood 
 That valiant Clifford with his rapier's point 
 Made issue from the bosom of the boy ; 
 And if thine eyes can water for his death 
 I give thee this to dry thy cheeks withal. 
 Alas, poor York ! but that I hate thee deadly, 
 I should lament thy miserable state. 
 87 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 I prithee grieve to make me merry, York ; 
 Stamp, rave and fret that I may sing and dance." 
 
 Had beautiful Margaret's lips stood apart in 
 this picture, we should have seen pointed teeth, 
 like those of a carnivorous animal. 
 
 In the following play oi Richard III., she is 
 become physically hideous, for she has lost her 
 pointed teeth. She can no longer bite but only 
 curse, and she murmurs forth slanders and 
 curses as she wanders through the royal cham- 
 bers, a spectral old woman with toothless mouth 
 and evil tongue. 
 
 Shakespeare awakens in us a certain feeling 
 of pity even for this unnatural woman on ac- 
 count of her love for wild Suffolk. We cannot 
 deny the truth and fervour of her sinful passion. 
 The farewell scene between the two lovers is 
 very beautiful, and there is great tenderness in 
 Margaret's words ; 
 
 " Go, speak not to me ; even now be gone — 
 Oh go not yet ! Even thus two friends condemned 
 Embrace and kiss and take ten thousand leaves 
 Lother a hundred times to part than die. 
 Yet now farewell, and farewell life with thee." 
 
 And Suffolk answers ; 
 
 " 'Tis not the land I care for, wert thou hence ; 
 A wilderness is populous enough, 
 88 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 So Suffolk had thy heavenly company : 
 For where thou art, there is the world itself 
 With every several pleasure in the world ; 
 And where thou art not, desolation." 
 
 When afterwards Margaret cries out in her 
 deep despair, as she bears her lover's bloody 
 head in her hand, we think of terrible Chriem- 
 hilda in the song of the Nibelungen. No 
 words of comfort can penetrate the iron mask 
 with which she hides her woes. 
 
 I stated previously that I should abstain 
 from all historical and philosophical remarks 
 concerning Shakespeare's historical plays. The 
 theme of these plays can never wax old so long 
 as a fluctuating warfare is kept up betwixt the 
 necessities of modern industry and the rem- 
 nants of mediaeval feudalism. Here it is less 
 easy to express a decided opinion than in those 
 plays treating of Roman history, and possibly 
 unvarnished truth might not be welcome. 
 However I will venture on one remark. 
 
 I do not sympathise with those German 
 critics who so heartily agree with the English 
 when they allude to the French wars, mentioned 
 by Shakespeare. Here the English had neither" 
 poetical feeling nor right on their side. These 
 wars were partly the result of a vulgar love of 
 pillage, shielding itself under worthless excuses 
 
 89 
 
/ / 
 
 HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 a^jpertaining to the Succession ; and partly they 
 were maintained and carried on for the sake of 
 low mercantile interests. It is the same in our 
 own times, only that in the nineteenth century 
 they fought about coffee and sugar, whereas 
 wool was the subject of discord in the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth centuries. 
 "- Michelet correctly remarks in his clever book 
 on French history : 
 
 " The explanation of the battles of Crfi9y 
 and Poitiers may be found in the offices of 
 London, Bordeaux, and Bruges merchants. 
 The original England and the English race 
 owe their origin to wool and meat. England 
 was a meat factory before it became a great 
 cotton and iron factory. This nation always 
 loved to occupy itself with cattle-breeding and 
 to feed on meat. Thence come their fresh 
 complexions, their strength, their beauty, con- 
 sisting in short noses and flat occiputs. And 
 here I mention one of my personal impressions ; 
 I had seen London and a great part of England 
 and Scotland ; to me it all seemed more won- 
 derful than comprehensible. I only received 
 a true impression of England's vast extent on 
 my return-journey, when I travelled across 
 from York to Manchester. It was a foggy 
 morning and the country appeared to me not 
 
 90 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 only surrounded but flooded by the ocean. 
 Almost half the landscape was bathed in faint 
 sunshine. The newly-built red-tiled houses 
 would have stood out almost too vividly against 
 the rich green lawns, had not the moving sea- 
 fog somewhat modified these screaming colours. 
 Flaming factory-chimneys towered over rich 
 meadows covered with sheep. Cattle-breeding, 
 agriculture, industry, all were comprised in this 
 small space, one overtopping the other, one 
 feeding on the other ; the meadows were nour- 
 ished by the fog, the sheep fattened on the 
 meadows, human beings lived on blood. 
 
 Any one living in this consuming climate 
 which is always fostering his hunger, must 
 spend his life in work. Nature compels him 
 to do this. But he knows how to be avenged ; 
 he makes nature work and subdues her by 
 means of iron and fire. All England pants 
 from this warfare. Man appears angry and in 
 despair. Observe his red face and his restless 
 and beaming countenance. He might be drunk ; 
 but his head and hand are firm and steady. 
 He is only intoxicated with blood and strength. 
 He regards himself as a machine which he 
 fills with provender until it runs over, for he 
 has to gain from it as much activity and quick- 
 ness as possible. 
 
 91 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 In the middle ages the Englishman was 
 much as he is now : too well fed, driven to work 
 and of warlike propensities lacking industrial 
 occupations. 
 
 England, though engaged in agriculture and 
 cattle-breeding, did not as yet possess manu- 
 factories. Englishmen supplied the raw ma- 
 terial, whilst others made it ready for use. 
 Wool was to be had on one side of the channel, 
 the workman on the other. English cattle- 
 traders and Flemish cloth-manufacturers lived 
 on "good and inseparable terms, whilst princes 
 fought and quarrelled. A century's war was 
 the result of the French attempt to break this 
 league. The English kings certainly wished 
 to conquer France, but the nation only desired 
 freedom in trade, free import stations and a free 
 market for English wool. The Commons sat 
 in judgment over the king's demands, sur- 
 rounding a great woolsack, gladly voting him 
 pecuniary and military aid.' 
 
 There is something very curious in this 
 mixture of industry and chivalry. When 
 Edward, seated at the round table, swore a 
 proud oath that he would conquer France, and 
 when the solemn and absurd knights tied a red 
 bandage across one of their eyes to signify 
 their oath, none of them were foolish enough to 
 
 92 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 make war at their own expense, The simple 
 piety of the Crusaders is a thing of the past. 
 The knights are only mercenaries, paid agents, 
 armed commis voyageurs in the pay of London 
 and Ghent merchants. 
 
 In order to gain the people's attention 
 Edward has to put himself very much on a 
 level with the people, to divest himself entirely 
 of pride, to flatter the cloth-merchants and 
 weavers, to shake hands with his godfather 
 the brewer Artevelde, and to hold forth from a 
 cattle-trader's writing-desk. Very comic inci- 
 dents occur in the English tragedies of the 
 fourteenth century. The noblest knights 
 always bore some likeness to Falstafif. In 
 France, Italy, Spain, in the beautiful countries of 
 the South, Englishmen are as greedy as they 
 are brave. We look on at Hercules swallowing 
 an ox. They actually come to feed on the 
 land. But the land avenges itself on them and 
 conquers them with its fruits and its wine. 
 Their princes and armies fare too sumptuously 
 on food and drink, dying of indigestion and 
 dysentery." — 
 
 Let us compare the French, that moderate 
 people who are less inclined to become drunk 
 with wine than with their inborn enthusiasm, to 
 this mercenary nation of gluttons. This was 
 
 93 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ever the cause of their misfortunes, and thus 
 we see how they succumbed to the English 
 already in the middle of the fourteenth century 
 owing to their superabundant chivalry. This 
 happened at Cre9y where the French are more 
 to be admired in their defeat than the English 
 in their victory, which they obtained in un- 
 
 , chivalrous fashion by means of foot-soldiers. 
 
 \..^-^ . . Up to that time war had been one 
 great tournament between horsemen of equal 
 rank ; but at Cre9y the infantry of a new era 
 makes its appearance, giving an ignoble death- 
 blow to the cavalry of romance ; the poetry of 
 warfare vanishes in the prose of a strictly 
 organised battle-order, and cannons come on to 
 the scene. The old King of Bohemia, who in 
 the midst of blindness and old age fought at 
 this battle as a vassal of France, felt that a new 
 time was coming, that chivalry was at an end 
 and that in future horsemen would succumb to 
 men on foot. He said to his knights ; "I 
 earnestly beseech you to lead me into the thick 
 of the fray, so that I may once again beat about 
 me with a good sword-thrust." They obeyed 
 him, and binding their horses to his, rushed 
 with him into the thick of the battle, and next 
 morning were all found dead on the backs of 
 their dead horses which were still bound to- 
 
 94 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 gether. The French fell at Cr^gy and Poitiers 
 like this King of Bohemia with his knights ; 
 they died but they died in their saddles. 
 England had the victory but France the gloryT"" 
 Ah yes ! Even in defeat the French can throw 
 their opponents into the shade. Since the days 
 of Cr^9y and Poitiers down to Waterloo, the 
 triumphs of Englishmen have always been a 
 disgrace to humanity. In spite of her impartial 
 coldness Clio remains a woman and has a heart 
 for chivalry and heroism ; and I am assured 
 that she notes on her memorial tablets with a 
 heart full of bitter cursing, the victories of the 
 English nation. i:=_^ 
 
 LADY GREY \_Henry Vl.Partlll.'] 
 
 Lady Grey was a poor widow, who appeared 
 before Edward in fear and trembling, beseech- 
 ing him to restore to her children their patri- 
 mony, which after her husband's death had 
 come into the possession of their enemies. The 
 voluptuous king, who cannot shake her modesty, 
 is so enraptured by her charming tears, that 
 he places a crown upon her head. History 
 shows us what troubles for both sprang from 
 this union. 
 
 We wonder whether Shakespeare has kept 
 true to history in his delineation of this king's 
 
 95 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 character. I again observe that he could 
 always fill up the gaps of history. His kings 
 are always so true to life, that according to an 
 English author we might frequently imagine 
 that he had all his life been chancellor to any 
 one of the kings he chooses to depict. Another 
 evidence of his trustworthiness may be found 
 in the strong likeness which exists between his 
 kings of ancient date and ours of the present 
 day, and whom, as their contemporaries, we 
 can the more easily criticise. 
 
 We may say of this poet what Friedrich 
 Schlegel says of the historian. He is a 
 prophet, casting backward glances on the past. 
 Were it permissible for me to hold up a mirror 
 to one of our most celebrated royal contempo- 
 raries, I could show that Shakespeare composed 
 this king's death-warrant not less than two 
 hundred years ago. Indeed, in beholding this 
 great excellent and decidedly grand monarch 
 we are overcome with a certain feeling of 
 horror, such as we feel when we meet any one 
 in the light of day, who has appeared to us 
 in our dreams at night. When eight years ago 
 we saw him riding through the streets of the 
 capital " bowing bareheaded lower than his 
 proud steed's neck," we always thought of 
 those words in which York describes Boling- 
 
 96 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 broke's entry into London. His cousin, the 
 Richard II. of a later date, knew him well 
 always read his character, and once correctly 
 observed ; 
 
 " Ourself and Bushey, Bagot here and Green, 
 Observed his courtship to the common people ; 
 How he did seem to dive into their hearts 
 With humble and familiar courtesy ; 
 What reverence he did throw away on slaves ; 
 Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles, 
 And patient underbearing of his fortune. 
 As 'twere to banish their affects with him. 
 Off goes his bonnet to an oyster wench ; 
 A brace of draymen bid God speed him well. 
 And had the tribute of his supple knee. 
 With ' thanks my countrymen, my loving friends.' " 
 
 The likeness is indeed terrible. The present 
 Bolingbroke, who ascended the throne after the 
 downfall of his royal cousin, gradually retaining 
 a firm hold over it, appeared just as the Boling- 
 broke of old ; he is a cunning hero, a cringing 
 giant, a hypocritical Titan. With terrible and 
 revolting calmness he keeps his claw enveloped 
 in a velvet glove ; with this he strokes public 
 opinion, whilst he eyes his prey from afar and 
 never pounces down upon it till safely within 
 reach. May he succeed in conquering his 
 enemies and preserving peace to the nation 
 until his death, on which occasion he will 
 
 97 G 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 repeat to his son those words long since com- 
 posed for him by William Shakespeare, 
 
 " Come hither, Harry, sit thou by my bed ; 
 And hear I think the very latest counsel 
 That ever I shall breathe. God knows, my son. 
 By what by-paths and indirect crook'd ways 
 I met this crown ; and I myself know well 
 How troublesome it sat upon my head : 
 To thee it shall descend with better quiet, 
 Better opinion, better confirmation ; 
 For all the soil of the achievement goes 
 With me into the earth : it seemed in me 
 But as an honour snatched with boisterous sound ; 
 And I had many living to upbraid 
 My gain of it by their assistances ; 
 Which daily grew to quarrel and to bloodshed, 
 Wounding supposed peace : all these bold fears 
 Thou see'st with peril I have answered ; 
 For all my reign hath been but as a scene 
 Acting that argument : and now my death 
 Changes the mode ; for what in me was purchased 
 Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort ; 
 So thou the garland wear'st successively, 
 Yet tho' thou stand'st more sure than I could do. 
 Thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green ; 
 And all my foes which thou must make thy friends 
 Have but their stings and teeth newly ta'en out ; 
 By whose fell working I was first advanced. 
 And by whose power I well might lodge a fear 
 To be again displayed ; which to avoid, 
 I cut some off and had a purpose now 
 To lead out many to the Holy Land, 
 Lest rest and lying still might make them look 
 Too near unto my state. Therefore, my Harry, 
 98 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 Be it thy course to busy giddy minds 
 With foreign quarrels ; that action hence borne out 
 May waste the memory of the former days : 
 More would I but my lungs are wasted so 
 That strength of speech is utterly denied me, 
 How came I by the crown, oh ! God forgive ; 
 And grant it may with thee in true peace live." 
 
 LADY ANNE [Richard III.'] 
 
 The favour of women, as of good fortune, is 
 a free gift ; it comes to us without our knowing 
 how or why. But there are men who by force 
 of an iron will can defy fate, and these obtain 
 their ends by flattery, by striking women with 
 terror, or firing them with pity, or by giving 
 them occasion to sacrifice themselves. This 
 last is a favourite role with women ; it makes 
 them look well in the eyes of others and gives 
 them tender tearful enjoyment in their solitary 
 hours. 
 
 Lady Anne is won by all these qualities. 
 Like honey, flattering words fall from terrible 
 lips . . , That same Richard who inspires 
 her with all the fears of hell, who has murdered 
 her beloved husband and the fatherly friend 
 whom she has just followed to the grave, that 
 Richard flatters her. ... He orders the pall- 
 bearers to put down the bier in a commanding 
 voice, and in that moment the beautiful sufferer 
 
 99 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 is wooed . . . The lamb beholds the 
 wolfs fangs with horror, but suddenly sweet 
 sounds of flattery issue from the wolf's dia- 
 phragm . . . there is a sudden revulsion 
 of feeling in this poor lamb, for the wolfs 
 flattery has an exciting and intoxicating effect. 
 . . . And King Richard speaks of his sor- 
 row and misery, so that Anne cannot refuse 
 him her sympathy, especially as this wild man 
 is not very quarrelsome by nature . . . 
 And the unhappy murderer has a conscience ; 
 he speaks of repentance and says that a good 
 self-sacrificing wife may teach him better ways. 
 . . . And Anne decides to become Queen 
 of England. 
 
 QUEEN KATHARINE [Henry VIIL] 
 
 In spite of the great virtues which I have to 
 acknowledge in her, I have an insurmountable 
 dislike to this princess. As a married woman 
 she was a pattern of social fidelity. As a queen 
 she was most dignified and majestic. As a 
 Christian she was virtue personified. But she 
 inspired Dr. Samuel Johnson with a voice to 
 sing her highest praise, and of all the women 
 described by Shakespeare she is his special 
 favourite. He mentions her with tender pathos 
 , . . and this is insufferable. Shakespeare 
 
 lOO 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 did his best to idealise the good woman but 
 this is in vain, when we perceive that this beer- 
 barrel Dr, Johnson is overcome by tender 
 delight at her sight and runs over in her praise. 
 Were she my wife I could make such praise 
 a ground of separation. Possibly it was not 
 owing to the charms of Anne Bullen, but to 
 some Dr. Johnson of that period, raving about 
 the faithful, dignified, and pious Katharine, that 
 she became estranged from the poor king. 
 Did Thomas More, who with all his excellence 
 was somewhat of a pedant, stiff and indigestible 
 like Dr, Johnson — did he sing her praises too 
 loudly ? His enthusiasm cost the good chan- 
 cellor somewhat dear, as the king in return 
 secured his entrance into heaven. 
 
 I do not know whether most to admire 
 Katharine for putting up with her husband for 
 fifteen entire years, or Henry for putting up 
 with his wife for so long a period .■* The king 
 was not only very capricious and passionate and 
 always opposed to his wife's wishes ; — that is 
 often the case in marriages, which nevertheless 
 beaV the test of time perfectly until death puts 
 a stop to quarrels — but the king was both a 
 musician and a theologian, and both in finished 
 imperfection. Not long ago I heard a delight- 
 fully curious chorale composed by him which 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 was about as bad as his treatise de Septem 
 Sacramentis. The poor woman must surely 
 have been greatly plagued with his musical 
 compositions and theological writing. His 
 love of plastic art was Henry's best quality, and 
 possibly some of his worst likes and dislikes 
 sprang from his love of the beautiful. Katha- 
 rine of Arragon was still pretty in her twenty- 
 fourth year, when Henry who was eighteen 
 married her, though she had been his brother's 
 widow. But her beauty probably did not in- 
 crease with age, especially as her piety drove 
 her to scourge herself, to fast, to keep virgils, 
 and to mortify her flesh in every possible way. 
 Her husband often complained of these ascetic 
 practices, and I also should have found this 
 very objectionable in a wife. 
 
 But I have another cause of prejudice ; this 
 queen was the daughter of Isabella of Castile 
 and the mother of Bloody Mary. What shall 
 I think of the tree which sprang from such an 
 evil seed and bore such evil fruit ? 
 
 Even if history bears no trace of her cruelty, 
 the wild haughtiness of her race in which She 
 wishes to be imposing through her rank is dis- 
 played on every occasion. In spite of her 
 much-practised Christian humility she is always 
 possessed with well-nigh heathenish rage, if the 
 
 102 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 formalities of customary etiquette are not al- 
 ways strictly observed or if she is denied her 
 royal title. She retained this indelible pride 
 till she breathed her last, and Shakespeare 
 makes her say in her last words : 
 
 " Embalm me, 
 Then lay me forth ; although unqueened yet like 
 A queen and daughter to a king, inter me, 
 I can no more." 
 
 ANNE BULLEN [ffetify VII/.] 
 
 It is generally supposed that lovely Anne 
 Bullen's charms first occasioned Henry's qualms 
 of conscience respecting his marriage with 
 Katharine. Even Shakespeare hints at this, 
 and when the new queen appears among the 
 crowd on the coronation day one of the young 
 noblemen exclaims : 
 
 " Heaven bless thee ! 
 Thou hast the sweetest face I ever looked on — 
 Sir, as I have a soul she is an angel ; 
 Our king has all the Indies in his arms 
 And more and richer when he strains that lady : 
 I cannot blame his conscience." 
 
 We get an idea of Anne Bullen's beauty when 
 in the following scene the poet describes the 
 enthusiasm which her appearance created at 
 the coronation. 
 
 103 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 By the minute description which Shakespeare 
 gives of the coronation of EHzabeth's mother, 
 we can see how devotedly he loved his great 
 queen. These details appear to give a sanction 
 to the daughter's right of succession, and it was 
 given to a poet to satisfy the entire public con- 
 cerning the disputed legitimacy of his qiieen. 
 And this queen deserved his loving zeal ! To 
 her there seemed no sin against royal dignity 
 in permitting the poet to put on the stage 
 all her ancestors, even her own father, with 
 terrible impartiality. And not only as a queen 
 but as a woman she never sets any limits 
 to the rights of poetry. Just as Shakespeare 
 was allowed the greatest freedom of speech in 
 political matters, so also was he permitted to 
 use the boldest words respecting sexual rela- 
 tions. Elizabeth was not offended at the most 
 extravagant and the wittiest manifestations of 
 healthy passion, and this "maiden queen" 
 even desired that Sir John Falstaff should 
 once be put on the stage as a lover. To her 
 witty suggestion we owe the Merry Wives 
 of Windsor. 
 
 Shakespeare could not bring his English 
 historical plays to a better conclusion than by 
 representing a future of better promise in its 
 swaddling clothes ; namely in that scene of 
 
 104 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 Henry VIII., where the newly-born Elizabeth 
 is carried across the stage. 
 
 But has Shakespeare faithfully delineated the 
 character of Henry VIII., his queen's father? 
 Though the truth is less loudly proclaimed than 
 in his other plays he does express it, and the 
 gentler tone he assumes makes all reproaches 
 appear the more impressive. This Henry VIII. 
 was the worst of all kings, for whilst other 
 wicked princes only raged against their ene- 
 mies, he raged against his friends and his love 
 was always more dangerous than his hate. The 
 marriage stories of this royal Bluebeard are 
 terrible. And we perceive a certain foolish and 
 horrible gallantry in the midst of these horrors. 
 When ordering Anne Bullen's execution, he in- 
 formed her he had engaged the cleverest exe- 
 cutioner in England. The queen thanked him 
 for his tender attention, and placing both her 
 white hands round her neck called out in a gay 
 light-hearted manner; " I have only a thin 
 little neck and I am easy to behead." 
 
 The axe with which they beheaded her is 
 not large either. I saw it in the arsenal of 
 the Tower of London, and strange thoughts 
 crept over me as I held it in my hands. 
 
 Were I the queen of England that axe should 
 be cast to the bottom of the sea. 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 LADY MACBETH IMacbethl 
 
 From thte so-called historical plays, I turn to 
 those tragedies which are entirely based on 
 imagination, or which are drawn from old 
 legends and stories. Macbeth forms a transi- 
 tion-play to these, and in this play Shake- 
 speare's genius takes its freest and boldest 
 flight. The materials of the play which are 
 not historical are taken from an old legend, 
 and yet the play lays some claim to historic 
 fact as the ancestor of the royal house of 
 England plays a part in it. Macbeth was 
 performed in the reign of James I., who is 
 known to have been a descendant of the 
 Scotch Banquo. Shakespeare took note of 
 this when he introduced into his play several 
 prophecies in honour of the reigning dynasty. 
 
 In Macbeth the critics seize the opportunity 
 of dwelling on the difference which is manifested 
 between ancient and modern dramatists in their 
 treatment of the idea of destiny. I only make 
 a passing observation thereupon. 
 
 Shakespeare differs from the ancients in his 
 view of destiny just as the sisterhood of witches 
 who appear in his tragedy differ from the sooth- 
 saying women who greet Macbeth with the 
 promise of a crown in the old northern legend. 
 
 io6 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 In this th ese— strange— w omen ar e eviden tly 
 Valkyrias, terrible goddessea, of the upper 
 regions, who ^over over battle-fi elds and 
 prognosticate victory or defeat. They may 
 be^onsidered the real "a^]^JeF§lQOJfimari~ des- 
 tiny, as this was determined by the result of 
 battles' in the warlike north. With Shake- 
 speare they turn into malfcious witches ; Jje 
 divests them of the awful grace of northern 
 witchcraft turning them into hybrid monsters, 
 who act in strange hobgoblin fashion. They 
 are bent on destruction, owing to a spiteful 
 love of mischieFor by order of the devil ; they 
 are the servants of evil and whosoever gives 
 ear to their decrees is lost body and soul. 
 The heathen Fates of the ancients, endowed 
 with praiseworthy and magical beneficence 
 have therefore been christianised by Shake- 
 speare. The destruction of his hero is not 
 the result of fore-ordained necessity, something 
 unalterably fixed, like the ancient idea of 
 destiny, but it is traceable to the allurements 
 of hell, which in unseen ways enmesh human 
 hearts. Macbeth is conquered by the power 
 of the devil, the root of all evil. 
 
 It is interesting to draw a comparison 
 between Shakespeare's witches and those of 
 other English poets. We see that Shake- 
 
 107 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 speare could not quite lose sight of the ancient 
 heathen conception, and his magical apparitions 
 are therefore infinitely more imposing and re- 
 spectable than Middleton's witches, who give 
 signs of a more evil and dissolute nature. 
 These practise meaner tricks, only harm the 
 body without being able to touch the soul and 
 at their worst can only call forth in us feelings 
 of jealousy, envy, concupiscence and such-like 
 qualities. 
 
 Within the last twelve years in Germany 
 Lady Macbeth's reputation, which for two 
 hundred years was considered extremely bad, 
 has altered considerably to her advantage. 
 Pious Franz Horn remarked in Brockhause's 
 Conversations- Blatt that the poor lady had 
 been greatly misunderstood, that she dearly 
 loved her husband, and was endowed with 
 an affectionate spirit. This view was sup- 
 ported by the learned, erudite, and philosophic 
 Ludwig Tieck, and not long after we beheld 
 Madame Stich, billing and cooing sentiment- 
 ally in the character of Lady Macbeth at the 
 Court Theatre. Many a heart in Berlin was 
 touched by her -tones and many a beautiful 
 woman wept at the sight of this good Lady 
 Macbeth. This happened, as I said, twelve 
 years ago at the time of the restoration, when 
 '■:-'• 1 08 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 love reigned supreme. Since then we are 
 become love's bankrupts, and it is owing to 
 people like the Queen of Scotland, who entirely 
 engrossed our sympathies during the restora- 
 tion, that we are no longer able to fall desper- 
 ately in love with many a crowned head, 
 though they may deserve our homage. 
 
 I do not know whether Germans still defend 
 the aforenamed lady's character. However 
 much has changed since the July revolution, 
 and possibly, even in Berlin, people have come 
 to see that the good Lady Macbeth may be a 
 very beast. 
 
 OPHELIA [Hamlei] 
 
 Here we have poor Ophelia loved by Hamlet 
 of Denmark. She was a beautiful fair girl and 
 even when I wished to go to Wittenberg to 
 pay my adieux to her father I was touched by 
 the tender magic of her voice. The old gentle- 
 man was good enough to send me on my way 
 with all the good maxims not put in practice 
 by himself, and at last he summoned Ophelia 
 to bring wine as a parting beverage. On the 
 approach of the dear child holding the salver 
 gracefully and modestly, and gazing on me 
 fixedly with her large glistening eyes, I became 
 
 109 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 confused and seized an empty glass instead of 
 a full one. She smiled at my mistake. Then 
 already her smile was wonderfully bright and 
 a melting tenderness flitted across her lips, 
 which proceeded possibly from kissing elves 
 who kept watch at the corners of her mouth. 
 
 After my return from Wittenberg when I 
 was again welcomed by Ophelia's smile my 
 scholastic subtleties forsook me and I only 
 pondered on the delightful thought, — " what 
 is the meaning of that smile, that voice, of those 
 tender, mysterious tones as of a flute ? Whence 
 do those eyes receive their beneficent beams .-* 
 Are they reflections of heaven, or does heaven 
 only reflect those eyes ? Is that smile con- 
 nected with the silent music of the spheres, or 
 is it only an earthly sign of heavenly harmon- 
 ies ? " One delightful day which we spent in 
 the palace gardens of Elsinore, joking and 
 tenderly prattling, our hearts in the first bloom 
 of love. ... I can never forget how 
 wretchedly poor the song of the nightingales 
 seemed in comparison with Ophelia's heavenly 
 voice, and how miserably shy the flowers looked 
 with their bright and solemn faces when com- 
 pared with Ophelia's lovely smile. Like a 
 lovely spirit her slender form hovered beside 
 me. 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 Ah yes ! it is the curse of weak mortals that 
 they always begin by letting out their spleen 
 on their best and dearest friends when they 
 have had to suffer some terrible injustice. Poor 
 Hamlet began by disturbing his own reason, 
 that precious jewel, and owing to a feigned 
 confusion of ideas rushed into the awful abyss 
 of actual madness paining his poor Ophelia 
 with bitter sarcasms. . . . Poor thing, to 
 crown it all he stabbed her father, taking him 
 for a rat. . . . And then her reason also 
 forsook her 1 . . . But her madness is not 
 so terrible, so ominously brooding as that of 
 Hamlet, it rather seems to rock her sick brain 
 to sleep with tender melodies . . . her soft 
 voice melts into song and her thoughts are 
 entwined with abundant flowers. She sings 
 and plaits wreaths as she crowns herself and 
 smiles blissfully, poor child ! . . . 
 
 " There is a willow-grass aslant a brook, 
 That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream ; 
 There with fantastic garlands did she come 
 Of crow flowers, nettles, daisies and long purples 
 That liberal shepherds give a grosser name 
 But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them : 
 There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds 
 Clambering to hang, an envious shver broke ; 
 When down her weedy trophies and herself 
 Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide 
 III 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 And, mermaid like, awhile they bore her up ; 
 Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, 
 As one incapable of her own distress, 
 Or like a creature native and indued 
 Unto that element : but long it could not be 
 Till that her garments, heavy with their drink. 
 Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay 
 To muddy death." 
 
 But why relate this sad story ! From your 
 earliest childhood you have all known it, and 
 many a time you have wept for Hamlet of 
 Denmark who loved poor Ophelia. He loved 
 her more than a thousand brothers with all their 
 love put together could have done, and he w^as 
 driven mad because his father's ghost appeared 
 to him, and because the world was out of joint 
 and he too weak to set it right. He lost his 
 reason because he had forgotten the meaning 
 of action through much thinking in German 
 Wittenberg, because he had to choose between 
 going mad or doing a desperate deed, and 
 because altogether he had as a man distinctly 
 mad tendencies. 
 
 We know Hamlet as well as our own faces 
 which often appear to us in the glass, and which 
 nevertheless we know less thoroughly than we 
 might imagine ; for were we to meet anyone 
 precisely like ourselves in the streets we should 
 stare instinctively with secret dismay at the 
 
 112 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 strange well-known features, without being 
 aware that we had looked upon ourselves. 
 
 : CORDELIA \King Lear] 
 
 In this play, says an English writer, there are 
 traps and snares for the reader. Another 
 remarks that this play is a labyrinth in which 
 the critic may go astray if he is not strangled 
 by the Minotaur who there resides, were he 
 only to use his critical pruning-knife in self- 
 defence. And indeed it i* an awkward thing 
 to criticise Shakespeare whose words constantly 
 strike us as the sharpest criticism of our own 
 words and acts. Therefore we can hardly pass 
 judgment on this play where his genius mounts 
 to a bewildering height. 
 
 I only venture to approach the portals of 
 Shakespeare's wonderful edifice — the mise-en- 
 scene which immediately strikes us. We leave 
 both our workaday and holiday thoughts behind 
 us in the very first scenes and find ourselves sur- 
 rounded by the great events which are to over- 
 whelm and purify our minds. Thus Macbeth 
 commences with the meeting of the witches, 
 and not only is the Scotch captain who appears 
 before us in the flush of victory enslaved by 
 their prophecy but our own hearts are unswerv- 
 ingly taken captive as we watch the play until 
 
 113 H 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 all is fulfilled and ended. At the commence- 
 ment of Macbeth the wild and confusing horror 
 of the bloody world of enchantment takes pos- 
 session of us, and equally so in the opening 
 scenes of Hamlet do we shudder with horror 
 at the pale spirit-world, and until all is over and 
 the air of Denmark is again purged of the 
 human corruption which pervades it, we cannot 
 rid ourselves of ghostly night-thoughts and of 
 the nightmare of mysterious fear. 
 
 In the first scenes of King Lear we watch 
 with interest how the life-history of others be- 
 gins proceeds and ends. The poet here pre- 
 sents us with a play more horrible than all the 
 horrors of the world of enchantment or of 
 spirits. He shows us human passion break- 
 ing through all reasonable bounds, raging in 
 the terrible majesty of royal madness, and 
 emulating outraged nature at her wildest. But 
 I think the wonderful power and playful fancy 
 with which Shakespeare could always manage 
 his materials ends here. In this play he is far 
 more governed by his genius than in Macbeth 
 and Hamlet, where with artistic calm he could 
 bring in juxtaposition the brightest sparks of 
 wit and the darkest shadow of spiritual night, 
 painting the happiest still-life in close proxi- 
 mity to the wildest acts. Yes, in Macbeth we 
 
 114 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 are smiled upon by quiet and contented nature; 
 swallows build their quiet nests in the eaves 
 of that very castle where the bloodiest deed 
 was accomplished ; throughout the play a 
 pleasant Scotch summer not too hot or cold 
 enwraps us, everywhere we behold beautiful 
 trees and green foliage and at last a whole 
 forest marches up to us ; Birnam Wood comes 
 to Dunsinane. In Hamlet also the loveliness 
 of nature presents a contrast to the solemnity 
 of events. Though the hero's heart remains 
 dark as night, the sun in spite of it rises again 
 with a tender flush. Polonius is an amusing 
 fool ; they play at comedies with one another 
 and poor Ophelia sits beneath green trees and 
 makes wreaths of bright blooming flowers. 
 But these contrasts betwixt nature and the 
 action of the play are not to be found in King 
 Lear and the unbridled elements vie with the 
 mad king in their howling and their fury. Can 
 an unusual moral event have any influence 
 over so-called dead matter .■* Is there an out- 
 ward visible and intentional harmony betwixt 
 this and the human mind ? Did Shakespeare 
 recognise this and intend to represent it } 
 
 As we said before, already in the first scene 
 of this tragedy we find ourselves plunged into 
 the thick of events and a sharp eye can prog- 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 nosticate the storm however clear the sky. 
 King Lear's mind is overshadowed by a small 
 cloud which in time will thicken to the blackest 
 spiritual night. He who parts with everything 
 in this manner is already mad. In the opening 
 scene we get to know the characters of the 
 Timight5Fs"as"'v^ir"S"tHe"mTnd of' the Tiero, and 
 Cofd'elia's'^ilent tenderness greatly touches us 
 at ^Ee"outset. She . is a modecri Antigone sur- 
 passing her ancient sister in warmth oLfeeling, 
 — a pure spirit as J^he king only begins to per- 
 ceive in his madness. Is she perfectly pure? 
 I carfsee in Tier some of her father's obstinacy. 
 But true love is very timid and hates mere 
 verbiage ; it can only weep and bleed to death. 
 There is great tenderness in^ Cordelia's sorrow- 
 fuIIy~BTtter allusion to the hypocrisy of her 
 sisters, and it resenibles the irpriy occasionally'' 
 made use of by the Gospel- Hero, the master of 
 charity. She unburdens herself of her righteous 
 anger__an3_ proves her^ noble„,,miiid- •-by"-the 
 words 
 
 " Sure I shall never marry like my sisters. 
 _To love my father all." .,.,. '"" 
 
 JULIET [Romeo and Juliet] 
 
 Every play of Shakespeare has indeed its 
 special soil, period, and local peculiarity. Just 
 
 ii6 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 as the characters in these plays, so also have 
 the heaven and earth therein depicted their 
 special physiognomy. In Romeo and Juliet 
 we have suddenly crossed the Alps and fihd 
 ourselves in the beautiful garden of Italy. 
 
 " Know'st thou the land where the pale lemon blows ? 
 
 And midst dark glistening leaves the golden orange 
 glows? " 
 
 / 
 
 Shakespeare chose sunny Verona as the 
 scene of those bold deeds of love which he 
 meant to depict in Romeo and Juliet. Not 
 the above-named pair, but love itself is the 
 hero of this play. With the temerity of youth 
 love comes on to the stage, fronting every 
 inimical condition and overcoming everything 
 . . . for during the great battle it does not 
 fear taking refuge in death — that most terrible 
 but also most certain of boon-fellows. Love 
 in league with death cannot be overcome — it 
 is the highest and most victorious of passions ! 
 But its all-subduing might consists in its bound- 
 less generosity, in its transcendent unselfish- 
 ness, in its contempt of the life which it burns 
 to sacrifice. There is no yesterday in its eyes, 
 and it thinks of no to-morrow. . . . Only 
 the present moment is its desire, but this must 
 be sacrificed wholly without stint or grudge 
 
 117 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 , . . None of it shall be hoarded up for the 
 future, and it despises the warmed up remnants 
 of the past. . . . Night in front of me, 
 night at back of me. . . . It is a pillar of 
 fire walking between two dark hosts. . . . 
 Whence comes it ? . . . From unimaginable 
 tiny sparks. . . . How does it end ? . . . 
 It leaves no trace and we fail to understand 
 where it is gone . . . the wilder it burns 
 the sooner does it become extinct . . . but 
 that does not hinder it from sacrificing all to 
 its burning desires as though its heat were of 
 everlasting duration. 
 
 Woe betide us if this great fire breaks out a 
 second time. We need the belief in its immor- 
 tality, and we know by saddest experience that 
 eventually it feeds upon itself . . . thence 
 the difference in the kind of melancholy, pro- 
 duced by a first and a second love ... In 
 the first case we think our passion can only 
 cease with tragic death, and really if the threat- 
 ening difficulties cannot otherwise be overcome 
 we easily resolve to step into the tomb with our 
 beloved. . . . But in the case of our second 
 love we remember that our wildest and happiest 
 feelings change gradually into a tame luke- 
 warmness and that the day will come when we 
 shall gaze indifferently on those lips, eyes, and 
 
 ii8 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 limbs, which now fill us with a strange delight 
 . . . Ah! this thought is sadder than any 
 presentimeht of death . . . It is a hopeless 
 feeling when in the midst of passionate excite- 
 ment we think of future emptiness and luke- 
 warmness, and know by experience that these 
 highly poetical heroic passions will come to a 
 miserable end ! . . . 
 
 These highly poetical heroic passions ! 
 They behave like stage-beauties, rouge their 
 cheeks, dress gorgeously, and wander about 
 proudly, declaiming in measured iambics . . . 
 but when the curtain falls the poor beauty 
 returns to her workaday clothes, washes the 
 rouge from her cheeks, hands over her jewels 
 to the master of the wardrobe and drags 
 herself along, hanging on the arm of the first- 
 come quarter-sessions clerk whilst she talks 
 bad German, creeps with him into an attic, 
 yawns and lies down snoring, no longer listen- 
 ing to the words, — " you acted divinely, on 
 my honour ! " . . . 
 
 I cannot venture to impute any blame to 
 Shakespeare. I admire him for allowing 
 Romeo to be in love with Rosalind at the 
 commencement before he is introduced to 
 Juliet. Although this second love seizes him 
 heart and soul, his mind is haunted by a certain 
 
 119 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 doufet which reveals itself in ironic words, re- 
 minding us of Hamlet. Or does a man love 
 more strongly the second time jiist because he 
 then loves with a better knowledge of himself ? 
 To a woman a second love is impossible for 
 her nature is too delicate to survive a second 
 time this terrible upheaval of her mind. Look 
 at Juliet. Could she endure a second time 
 superhuman delights and horrors, so as to drink 
 her misery to the dregs in spite of all her fears ? 
 I think this poor fond creature, this poor victim 
 of the great passion had had enough with once. 
 / Juliet loves for the first time and loves with 
 the strength which belongs to a healthy body 
 and soiil. She is fourteen years old, which in 
 Italy is as much as seventeen years of northern 
 reckoning. She is a rosebud opening in young 
 splendour before our eyes, preparing for Ro- 
 meo's embrace. She has not learned what 
 love is from secular or religious books ; the sun 
 has told it her, and the moon has repeated it 
 and her own heart echoed the refrain when she 
 believed herself alone at night. But Romeo 
 stood beneath the balcony and heard her speak, 
 taking her at her word. Her love is charac- 
 terised by truth and health. The maiden 
 breathes forth health and truth, and very touch- 
 ing are the words in which she says : 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 " Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face, 
 Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek 
 For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night. 
 Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny 
 What I have spoke, but farewell compliment ! 
 Dost thou love me ? I know thou wilt say ' aye ' ; 
 And I will take thy word : yet if thou swear'st, 
 Thou may'st prove false ; at lover's perjuries, 
 They say Jove laughs. Oh, gentle Romeo, 
 If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully ; 
 Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won, 
 I'll frown and be perverse and say thee nay. 
 So thou wilt tStoo ; but else not for the world ; 
 In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond ; 
 And therefore thou may'st think my ' haviour ' light : 
 But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true 
 Than those that have more cunning to be strange, 
 I should have been more strange, I must confess, 
 But that thou overheard'st, ere I was 'ware. 
 My true love's passion : therefore pardon me ; 
 And not impute this yielding to light love. 
 Which the dark night hath so discovered." 
 
 DESDEMONA {OthelloA^ 
 
 I OBSERVED in passing that Romeo's character 
 had in it some of Hamlet's characteristics. And 
 in truth here and there a tinge of northern 
 solemnity overshadows this ardent soul. In 
 comparing Desdemona to Juliet we also'per- 
 ceive this northern element ;/she remains her- 
 self in the midst of her wildest passion and 
 controls herself with clear self-consciousness:^ 
 
 121 ^'^ 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Juliet loves, thinks and acts. Desdemona 
 loves, feels and obeys, not her own will but her 
 stronger instinct. Her excellence consists in 
 this : that wickedness can never master her 
 noble nature as virtue can. She would surely 
 have remained in her father's palace a timid 
 child devoted to household duties, had not the 
 Moor's voice sounded in her ears, and though 
 she dropped her eyelids she felt his glance in 
 his words and in his stories or, as she expressed 
 it, " in his mind " ; and this suffering, noble, 
 beautiful, pale spirit-face, bewitched her irresist- 
 ibly. Her father, the wise senator Brabantio, 
 was right ; some mighty magic drew this shy 
 and tender child towards the Moor, making her 
 fearless at the sight of the ugly black mask 
 which the common crowd took for Othello's 
 real face. . . . 
 
 Juliet's love is active, Desdemona's passive. 
 She is the sun-flower not knowing that she 
 always turns toward the sun, a true daughter of 
 the south, tender, sensitive, patient, like those 
 slender great-eyed women who smile upon us 
 from Sanskrit poems with their lovely and ten- 
 der faces. I am always reminded of Kalidasa, 
 the Indian Shakespeare, and his Sacontala 
 when I think of her. 
 
 Possibly the English engraver has thrown 
 
 122 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 too strong an expression of passion into Desde- 
 mona's face. But I fancy I have already re- 
 marked that there is a pleasurable interest in 
 drawing comparisons between faces and charac- 
 ters. At any rate this face is very beautiful 
 and especially charming to the writer of these 
 pages, as it reminds him of that great beauty, 
 who hitherto is only known to his inner con- 
 sciousness and who, heaven be praised, never 
 regarded him too critically ! 
 
 " Her father loved me, oft invited me ; 
 Still questioned me the story of my life. 
 From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes. 
 That I have passed. 
 
 I ran it through, even from my boyish days 
 To the very moment that he bade me tell it : 
 Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances. 
 Of moving accidents by flood and field ; 
 Of hair-breadth 'scapes ; i' th' imminent deadly breach 
 Of being taken by the insolent foe, 
 And sold to slavery ; of my redemption thence 
 And 'portance in my travels' history : 
 Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, 
 Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven, 
 It was my hint to speak — such was the process : 
 And of the cannibals that each other eat. 
 The Anthropophagi and men whose heads 
 Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear 
 Would Desdemona seriously incline : 
 But still the house-affairs would draw her thence, 
 Which ever as she could with haste despatch, 
 123 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 She'd come again and with a greedy ear 
 
 Devour up my discourse : — which I observing, 
 
 Took once a pliant hour ; and found good means 
 
 To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart, 
 
 That I would all my pilgrimage dilate 
 
 Whereof by parcels she had something heard. 
 
 But not intentively : I did consent ; 
 
 And often did beguile her of her tears. 
 
 When I did speak of some distressful stroke 
 
 That my youth suffered. My story being done, — 
 
 She gave me for my pains a world of sighs : 
 
 She swore — in faith 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange, 
 
 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful ; 
 
 She wished she had not heard it ; yet she wished 
 
 That heaven had made her such a man : she thanked me ; 
 
 And bade me if I had a friend that loved her, 
 
 I should but teach him how to tell my story. 
 
 And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake ; 
 
 She loved me for the dangers I had passed ; 
 
 And I loved her that she did pity them." 
 
 This tragedy is considered one of Shake- 
 speare's latest works, as Tt^us Andronicus is 
 considered the earliest. There as here the 
 poet loves to dwell on the passion with which 
 an ugly Moor could inspire a beautiful woman. 
 The mature man returned to a problem which 
 had engaged his youthful attention. Did he 
 explain the riddle .■* And is the solution as 
 true as it is beautiful ? A weary sadness 
 sometimes creeps over me when I think that 
 possibly honest I ago with his wicked jokes 
 
 124 ^ 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 concerning Desdemona's love for the Moor 
 may have some right on his side. But 
 Othello's words in which he refers to his wife's 
 moist hands are to me more distasteful than 
 anything else. 
 
 There is in the Arabian Nights just as 
 strange and striking an example of love for a 
 Moor as we get in Titus Andronicus and in 
 Othello. In this case a beautiful princess who 
 is also a wizard, after putting her husband into 
 a statue-like trance gives him a daily flogging, 
 because he has murdered her lover, an ugly 
 negro. The princess, crying out in her agony 
 at the negro's death-bed, excites our pity. She 
 appears to keep him alive by her magic art 
 whilst she covers him with despairing kisses ; 
 and she would like by a magic greater yet, by 
 love itself to awaken him out of this semi- 
 trance to a yet fuller life. This story of a 
 passionate and mysterious love related in the 
 Arabian Nights struck my fancy while still a 
 boy. 
 
 JESSICA [Merchant of Venice\ 
 
 When I saw this play acted at Drury Lane a 
 beautiful pale Englishwoman standing beside 
 me burst into tears at the end of the fourth 
 act, crying out several times, " the poor man is 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 wronged." She had a refined classical face 
 and large dark eyes which I could not forget 
 for they had wept for Shylock. 
 
 On account of these tears I must place 
 
 The Merchant of Venice among Shakespeare's 
 
 tragedies although he intended it as a comedy 
 
 surrounding it by merry masks satyrs and 
 
 cupids. Possibly Shakespeare thought it would 
 
 { please the public were he to represent a greedy 
 
 ' were- wolf, a dread mythical creature thirsting 
 
 for blood, thereby losing his daughter and his 
 
 ducats, besides exciting general ridicule. But 
 
 the poet's genius, the world-spirit which reigns 
 
 [ in him, always supersedes his individual will. 
 
 L-- Thus it came to pass that notwithstanding 
 
 the obvious caricature which Shylock presents, 
 
 Shakespeare has justified in him an unfortunate 
 
 race whom Providence for some secret cause 
 
 has burdened with the hatred of the low and 
 
 high-born populace, and who has not always. 
 
 consented to return love for hate. 
 
 But what do I say ? Shakespeare's genius 
 rises above the mean quarrels of two parties 
 \ entertaining opposite beliefs, and his play does 
 I not actually represent either Jews or Christians 
 j but oppressors and oppressed. We also hear 
 ' the madly painful shouts of joy whenever the 
 latter are able to pay back with interest the 
 
 126 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 injuries inflicted on them by their proud tor- 
 turers. There is not the slightest trace of 
 religious differences in this play, and in Shy- 
 lock, Shakespeare represents a character whose 
 nature it is to hate his enemy. In a similar 
 manner we find that Antonio and his friends 
 are by no means apostles of that divine gospel 
 which commands men to love their enemies. 
 Shylock replies to the man wishing to borrow 
 money of him ; 
 
 " Signor Antonio, many a time and oft 
 In the Rialto you have rated me 
 About my moneys and my usances : 
 Still have I borne it with a patient shrug ; 
 For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe : 
 You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog ; 
 And spit upon my Jewish gabardine, 
 And all for use of that which is mine own. 
 Well then it now appears you need my help : 
 Go to then ; you come to me and you say, 
 * Shylock, we would have moneys ' : — you say so ; 
 You that did void your rheum upon my beard, 
 And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur 
 Over your threshold : moneys is your suit. 
 What should I say to you ? Should I not say 
 ' Hath a dog money ? is. it possible 
 A cur can lend three thousand ducats ? ' Or 
 Shall I bend low, and in a bondman's key. 
 With bated breath, and whispering humbleness, 
 Say this, — 
 
 ' Fair Sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last ; 
 127 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 You spurned me such a day ; another time, 
 You called me dog ; and for these courtesies 
 I'll lend you thus much moneys ' ? " 
 
 And Antonio answers : 
 
 " I am as like to call thee so again, 
 To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too." 
 
 Have we here an example of christian love ! 
 Christianity would have been satirised had 
 Shakespeare typified it by Shylock's enemies, 
 men who hardly deserved to loosen his shoe- 
 latchets. The bankrupt Antonio is a weak- 
 spirited mortal without energy, without power 
 to hate, and therefore without power to love, a 
 dull worm whose flesh was really not good for 
 much else than to serve as " bait for fish." 
 Besides this he certainly does not return the 
 fleeced Jew his three thousand ducats. Neither 
 does Bassanio, who according to an English 
 critic is a regular fortune-hunter, return him his 
 money ; this man borrows money for the pur- 
 pose of setting himself up in grand style to 
 marry a wealthy wife and to obtain a rich 
 dowry, for he says to his friend : 
 
 " 'Tis not unknown to you, Antonio, 
 How much I have disabled mine estate. 
 By something showing a more swelling port 
 Than my faint means would grant continuance : 
 128 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 Nor do I now make moan to be abridged 
 From such a noble rate ; but my chief care, 
 Is to come fairly off from the great debts, 
 Wherein my time, something too prodigal. 
 Hath left me gaged. ..." 
 
 As to Lorenzo, he is an accomplice in a 
 most infamous robbery by which according to 
 Prussian law he would be condemned to fifteen 
 years' penal servitude after being branded and 
 put in the pillory, although he had a liking for 
 the beauties of nature for moonlight scenes 
 and music as well as for jewels and ducats. 
 The other noble Venetians, Antonio's friends, 
 also seem to regard money with favour and 
 they have naught but words, coined air for 
 their poor friend in the midst of his misfor- 
 tunes. Our good pietist Franz Horn remarks 
 with perfect truth, though somewhat feebly, 
 " we may well ask the question here, how was 
 it possible for Antonio to be so overwhelmed 
 by his misfortunes .■* All Venice knew and 
 valued him, his good friends were informed of 
 the terrible bond and knew besides that the 
 Jew would not retract a word. Yet they let 
 day after day slip by until the three months 
 are gone, and with them every hope of deliver- 
 ance. It would surely have been comparatively 
 easy for those good friends who appeared to 
 
 129 I 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 surround the regal merchant in crowds, to col- 
 lect three thousand ducats in order to save a 
 human life, and such a life ! But these things 
 are always rather inconvenient and so the dear 
 good friends do nothing — nothing whatever — 
 because they are only so-called friends, or, if 
 you will, semi or three-quarter friends. They 
 greatly pity the excellent merchant who for- 
 merly entertained them so well, but they do 
 this in a calm manner and revile Shylock to 
 their heart's content heaping bitter words on 
 him. This also they can do without incurring 
 any risks, and they then probably all imagine 
 Ihat they have done their duty. Much as we 
 are bound to hate Shylock we can understand 
 even him for somewhat despising these people, 
 which he has every right to do. Indeed, 
 eventually he seems to mistake the absent 
 Gratiano for these others when he alludes in 
 cutting words to the previous inaction and 
 present bluster classing him with them thus, 
 
 " Till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond 
 Thou but oifend'st thy lungs to speak so loud ; 
 Repair thy wit, good youth, or it will fall 
 To cureless ruin — I stand here for law ! " 
 
 Or are we to take Lancelot Gobbo as a type 
 of Christianity ? Oddly enough Shakespeare 
 
 130 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 has nowhere expressed himself more decidedly 
 on this subject than in a conversation between 
 this rogue and his mistress. In reply to 
 Jessica's words 
 
 " I shall be saved by my husband ; he hath made me a 
 christian" 
 
 Lancelot Gobbo answers : 
 
 " Truly the more to blame he ; we were christians enow 
 before ; e'en as many as could well live, one by another. 
 This making of christians will raise the price of hogs ; if we 
 grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher 
 on the coals for money." 
 
 Indeed with the exception of Portia, the 
 character of Shylock is the most worthy in the 
 play. He loves money and makes no secret 
 of his passion crying it out on the open market 
 place. . . . But something he prizes more 
 than money, namely the easing of his wounded 
 spirit, the just vengeance for inexpressible 
 injuries, and though they offer him ten times 
 the amount of the borrowed sum he refuses it. 
 He will not accept the three thousand even ten 
 times tl;iree thousand ducats, if instead he can 
 procure a pound of his enemy's flesh. Salarino 
 asks him ; 
 
 " What wilt thou with this flesh ? " 
 131 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 and he answers : 
 
 " To bait fish withal : if it will feed nothing else, it will 
 feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me and hindered me 
 half a million ; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, 
 scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, 
 heated mine enemies ; and what's his reason ? I am a Jew. 
 Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, 
 dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same 
 food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same 
 diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by 
 the same winter and summer as a Christian is ? If you 
 prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not 
 laugh ? if you poison us, do we not die ? and if you wrong 
 us, shall we not revenge ? if we are like you in the rest, we 
 will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, 
 what is his humility ? revenge : if a Christian wrong a Jew, 
 what should his sufferance be by .Christian example ? why 
 revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute ; and it 
 shall go hard but I will better the instruction." 
 
 Yes indeed though Shylock loves his money 
 there are things he prizes infinitely more, 
 among other things his daughter ; " Jessica, 
 my child." Though he curses her in over- 
 whelming and passionate anger, longing to see 
 her dead at his feet with the jewels in her ears 
 and the ducats in her coffin, he loves her never- 
 theless more than all his jewels and his ducats. 
 Thrust out of public life and christian society 
 into the narrow limits of household joys, the 
 poor Jew found himself entirely dependant on 
 
 132 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 family ties, and these assume in him patheti- 
 cally tender proportions. He would not have 
 given away the turquoise ring once given him 
 by his wife Lea for a " forest of monkeys."-- 
 When in the court of justice Bassanio ad- 
 dresses the following words to Antonio : 
 
 " Antonio, I am married to a wife 
 Which is as dear to me as life itself j 
 But life itself, my wife, and all the world, 
 Are not with me esteemed above thy life : 
 I would lose all, ay sacrifice them all 
 Here to this devil, to deliver you." 
 
 And when Gratiano adds : 
 
 " I have a wife whom I protest I love ■ 
 I would she were in heaven, so she could 
 Entreat some power to change this currish Jew." 
 
 Then Shylock begins to tremble for the fate 
 of his daughter who has married among people 
 who can sacrifice their wives to their friends, 
 and he says to himself in an aside and not 
 aloud : 
 
 " These be the Christian husbands ! I have a daughter 
 Would any of the stock of Barabbas 
 Had been her husband rather than a Christian i " 
 
 This passage, these silent words, are beautiful 
 Jessica's death warrant. It was no loveless 
 father whom she deserted, robbed and betrayed 
 
 133 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 . . . Oh disgraceful betrayal ! She even 
 makes common cause with Shylock's enemies, 
 and when at Belmont they slander him, Jessica 
 does not look down, the colour does not leave 
 her cheeks and she utters base words concern- 
 ing her father . . . Oh abominable out- 
 rage! She has no soul, only the mind of an 
 adventuress. She found the strict honourable 
 home of the embittered Jew tedious, until it 
 seemed to her a hell. The merry sound of 
 drums and fifes had too great attractions for 
 her frivolous mind ! Did Shakespeare mean to 
 depict a Jewess? No indeed, he only describes 
 a daughter of Eve, one of those beautiful birds 
 who finding themselves fledged, flutter away from 
 the parental nest to the beloved mate. Desde- 
 mona followed the Moor, Imogene followed 
 Posthumus in like manner ! It is the custom 
 of women. We perceive in Jessica a certain 
 timid shame which she cannot overcome when 
 she has to dress in boy's clothes. Perhaps in 
 this we may recognise the mysterious shyness 
 peculiar to her race owing to which quality its 
 daughters possess a special charm ! Possibly 
 the chastity of the Jews has its root in the 
 dislike they always manifested towards that 
 oriental worship of the senses and sensuality. 
 This used to thrive abundantly among their 
 
 134 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 neighbours the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyr- 
 ians and Babylonians, and to the present day 
 maintains its position undergoing various trans- 
 formations. The Jews are a pure and temperate , 
 race, I might almost call them a people devoted! 1 
 to abstract thought, and in purity of morals ; ; 
 they closely approach the Germanic races. 
 Possibly the purity of Jewish and Germanic 
 women is not of much account, but it impresses 
 us as something very lovely, graceful and touch- 
 ing. We weep at the sight of those women 
 who after the defeat of their Cimbrian and 
 Teuton husbands implore Marius to hand them 
 over as slaves to the priestesses of Vesta rather 
 than to his soldiers. ^ 
 
 We are struck by the close relationship which 
 exists between these two moral peoples, the 
 Jews and the Germans. It did not come about 
 in historic fashion because the bible, that great 
 family chronicle of the Jews, served as a text- 
 book for the whole Germanic race, nor yet 
 because the Jews and the Germans were always 
 the unrelenting enemies of the Romans and 
 therefore naturally in league with one another. 
 There is a deeper reason, and both nations 
 were originally so alike that ancient Palestine 
 might be regarded as an eastern Germany just 
 as the Germany of to-day might be regarded as 
 
 I3S 
 
Li! 
 
 HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the native soil of God's word, the home of 
 prophecy and the stronghold of pure spiritu- 
 ality. 
 
 But not only does Germany resemble Pales- 
 tine, the rest of Europe is placing itself on a, 
 level with the Jews. I say " on a level with," 
 for the Jews always bore within themselves that 
 modern principle which is only now becoming 
 visibly prominent in the nations of Europe. 
 
 The Greeks and Romans were passionately 
 attached to the soil, to their fatherland. The 
 northern intruders of a later date who settled 
 down among Greeks and Romans, attached 
 themselves to the persons of their respective 
 chieftains, and in place of the patriotism of 
 ancient times we get in the middle ages faithful 
 vassals paying allegiance to their sovereign. 
 But from of old the Jews obeyed only the law, 
 abstract thought, like our republicans of the 
 present day, who regard neither country nor 
 king, but who worship the law. Ah yes ! 
 Cosmopolitanism had its origin on the shores 
 of Judsea, and though, as we heard before, that 
 Hamburg dealer in spices was filled with con- 
 cern, Christ was nevertheless a true Jew, and 
 founded the gospel of humanity. In allusion 
 to Jewish republicanism I remember to have 
 read in Josephus of certain republicans at 
 
 136 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 Jerusalem who resisted, and bravely fought 
 against the royalist Herodians, refusing every 
 man the title of " Sir " and hating Roman 
 absolutism with a deep hatred. Their creed 
 was liberty and equality. Ah ! the delusion 
 of it ! 
 
 But what is the final reason of that hatred 
 which exists at the present day in Europe 
 between those disciples of the mosaic law and 
 the gospel of Christ and of which the poet 
 gives us such a terrible picture in the Merchant 
 of Venice when he puts abstract things into 
 concrete form ? Is it the old enmity between 
 brother and brother begun by Cain and Abel 
 at the world's commencement concerning the 
 different ways of praising God ? Or is re- 
 ligion only the excuse and do men hate one 
 another for the sake of hating one another, as 
 they love one another for the sake of loving 
 one another .'' Who, in this enmity is at fault ? 
 As an answer to this question I will quote 
 some words from a private letter which is a 
 vindication of Shylock's enemies as well as of 
 him. 
 
 "I do not blame the hatred with which 
 the multitude persecute the Jews ; I only con- 
 demn the grievous errors which gave rise to 
 this hatred. The common people are always 
 
 137 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 right as regards the cause, there is always a 
 correct instinct at the bottom of their dislikes 
 as of their likes ; but they do not know how 
 to formulate their ideas correctly and their 
 anger generally affects the scapegoat of wrong 
 conditions of time and place, the person rather 
 than the cause. The people are poor, they 
 cannot procure the means of a pleasurable 
 existence, and though the ministers of a state- 
 religion assure them "that we are on earth 
 to deny ourselves and to obey the powers that 
 be, in spite of hunger and thirst" — they not- 
 withstanding have a secret longing to procure 
 themselves enjoyment, and they hate those 
 who having the means to procure these things 
 hoard them in their boxes and safes. They 
 hate the rich and rejoice when they can devote 
 themselves heart and soul to this hatred in the 
 name of religion. The common people always 
 hated in the Jews the owners of the money- 
 bags ; always golden coin caused the lightnings 
 of popular anger to descend on the Jews. And 
 age by age it belonged to the spirit of the 
 times to make this hatred its watchword. In 
 the middle ages this watchword assumed the 
 gloomy form of the catholic church, and they 
 killed the Jews and plundered their homes 
 "because Christ had been crucified." This 
 
 138 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 was as logical as the behaviour of those black 
 Christians of San Domingo, who at the time 
 of the massacres ran about with a crucifix 
 calling out in their fanaticism ; 
 
 " Les blancs I'ont tu^ tuons nous les blancs." 
 
 You laugh at those poor negroes, my friends ; 
 but I assure you at that time the West Indian 
 planters did not laugh. They were put to the 
 sword in revenge for the death of Christ, much 
 as some centuries previously the European 
 Jews had been massacred. But the black 
 Christians of San Domingo also had right on 
 their side ! The white men spent their time 
 idly in the lap of luxury, whilst the negroes 
 had to work for them in the sweat of their 
 black brows, receiving as a reward a small 
 supply of rice and many floggings ; the negroes 
 represented the common people ! 
 
 We no longer live in the middle ages and 
 the common people are growing more en- 
 lightened. They do not kill the Jews on the 
 spur of the moment or cast a religious halo 
 over their hatred. We can no longer lay claim 
 to this childlike, devoted faith ; the traditional 
 hatred clothes itself in modern phraseology and 
 the mob in club-houses as in parliaments holds 
 forth against the Jews with its mercantile, in- 
 
 139 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 dustrial, scientific or even philosophical argu- 
 ments. Only consummate hypocrites give 
 their hatred the colour of religion and per- 
 secute the Jews for Christ's sake ; the majority 
 openly confess that material interests are at 
 the bottom of it all, and they place every pos- 
 sible barrier in the way of those Jews who 
 wish to turn their industrial capacities to 
 account. Here in Frankfort only twenty- four 
 professing Jews may marry so that they may 
 not multiply too fast, lest there should arise 
 too strong a competition betwixt them and 
 Christian merchants. This explains why the 
 Jews are hated ; we can perceive in this enmity 
 no trace of the sad and fanatical monk-like 
 mien, but we recognise the limp and enlight- 
 ened features of the shop-keeper, afraid of being 
 out-done in his trade by the mercantile mind of 
 the Israelite. 
 
 Are the Jews to blame however that this 
 mercantile spirit has assumed in them such 
 alarming proportions ? It has its origin in that 
 absurd idea of the middle ages when trade was 
 considered a thing of slight importance, and 
 when business, even money transactions, were 
 looked upon as something ignoble and dis- 
 graceful. Therefore those portions of trade 
 which had to do with gain, especially monetary 
 
 140 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 transactions were placed in the hands of the 
 Jews, thus they necessarily became the cleverest 
 bankers and merchants, being excluded from 
 all other crafts. They were forced into grow- 
 ing rich and their wealth made them hated ; 
 and though Christians have given up their pre- 
 judices concerning trade and have become as 
 great rogues and as wealthy as the Jews, the 
 latter are still pursued by the hatred of the 
 multitude, which has been handed down from 
 generation to generation. The people con- [ 
 tinue to consider themselves representatives { 
 of the moneyed classes and hate them in pro- i 
 portion. You perceive in the world's history I 
 both are right ; both " hammer and anvil." 
 
 PORTIA [Merchant of Venice] 
 
 " Critics have been apparently so dazzled 
 and engrossed by the amazing character of 
 Shylock that Portia has received less than 
 justice at their hands; while the fact is that 
 Shylock is not a finer or more finished char- 
 acter in his way than Portia is in hers. These 
 two splendid figures are worthy of each other 
 — worthy of being placed together within the 
 same rich frame- work of enchanting poetry and 
 glorious and graceful forms. She hangs beside 
 the terrible, inexorable Jew, the brilliant lights 
 
 y I ' ■■■ " " — i i g u ii i- rii m . „». wJ 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 of her character set off by the shadowy power 
 of his, like a magnificent beauty-breathing 
 Titian by the side of a gorgeous Rembrandt. 
 
 Portia is endued with her own share of those 
 delightful qualities which Shakespeare has 
 lavished on many of his female characters ; 
 but besides the dignity, the sweetness and 
 tenderness which should distinguish her sex 
 generally, she is individualized by qualities 
 peculiar to herself ; by her high mental powers, 
 her enthusiastic temperament, her decision of 
 purpose and her buoyancy of spirit. These 
 are innate ; she has other distinguishing quali- 
 ties more external and which are the result 
 of the circumstances in which she is placed. 
 Thus she is the heiress of a princely name and 
 countless wealth ; a train of obedient pleasures 
 have ever waited round her ; and from infancy 
 she has breathed an atmosphere redolent of 
 perfume and blandishment. Accordingly there 
 is a commanding grace a high-bred airy ele- 
 gance, a spirit of magnificence in all that she 
 does and says as one to whom splendour has 
 been familiar from her very birth. She treads 
 as though her footsteps had been among 
 marble palaces, beneath roofs of fretted gold, 
 o'er cedar floors and pavements of jasper and 
 porphyry, amid gardens full of statues and 
 
 142 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 flowers and fountains and haunting music. 
 She is full of penetrative wisdom, and genuine 
 tenderness and lively wit ; but as she has never 
 known want, or grief, or fear, or disappoint- 
 ment, her wisdom is without a touch of the 
 sombre or the sad ; her affections are all mixed 
 up with faith and hope and joy, and her wit 
 has not a particle of malevolence or causticity!" 
 The above words are taken from Mrs. 
 Jameson's work entitled Mbral, Poetical and 
 Historical Women. In this book only Shake- 
 speare's characters are discussed and the quo- 
 tation gives us an insight into the mind of 
 this authoress, probably a Scotchwoman. Her 
 words concerning Portia as contrasted with 
 Shylock are as beautiful as they are true. If 
 we consider Shylock in the usual way, as a 
 type of that stern, serious, inartistic Judaea, 
 Portia appears on the other hand as a type of 
 those after-blossoms of Greek intellect which 
 in the sixteenth century spread their beautiful 
 scent from Italy over the world, and which we 
 now love and revere under the name of the 
 Renaissance. Portia also represents bright 
 happiness as contrasted with gloomy mis- 
 fortune, which we see typified in Shylock. All 
 her thoughts are blooming, rosy, and pure ; her 
 speech is penetrated with warm happiness and 
 
 143 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 her similes, which she generally borrows from 
 mythology, are full of beauty. In Shylock's 
 /thoughts and words, borrowed only from old 
 ((testament metaphors, we get a dismal, pungent 
 and ugly contrast. His wit is spasmodic and 
 pungent, he borrows his metaphors from loath- 
 some objects and his very words are com- 
 pressed discords, shrill and hissing. Men 
 resemble their homes. We perceive how this 
 servant of Jehovah will not suffer either an 
 image of God, or of man made in God's image, 
 to enter his "honourable house"; he even 
 shuts out every sound from the hearing thereof, 
 namely from the windows, so that sounds of 
 heathen mummery shall not gain entrance 
 there ... in the beautiful palace at Bel- 
 mont, on the other hand, we find a luxurious 
 and ideal country home surrounded by light 
 and music Adorned suitors wander about 
 joyfully among pictures, marble statues and 
 high laurels, dreaming of love's mysteries, 
 whilst Signora Portia reigns over them in all 
 her glory, resplendent as a goddess, " golden 
 hair adorning her temples." 
 
 By force of contrast the two chief figures in 
 the play become so individualised that we 
 positively believe them to be actual human 
 beings, instead of a poet's fantastic creations. 
 
 144 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 To us they appear still more life-like than 
 ordinary mortals, as neither time nor death 
 can alter them and their hearts are quickened 
 by immortal pulsations,, by divine poetry. 
 When we visit Venice and wander through 
 the Doge's Palace we know very well that we 
 shall not meet Marino Falieri either in the 
 senators' hall or on the grand staircase ; — the 
 arsenal may remind us of old Dandolo, but we 
 shall not seek out the blind hero in any of the 
 golden galleys ; — possibly for a moment we may 
 think of proud Carmagnole when at the corner 
 of Via Santa we perceive a snake hewn in 
 stone, and at the other corner a winged lion 
 holding in its paw the snake's head. But at 
 Venice we think far more of Shakespeare's 
 immortal Shylock than of these historical 
 personages who have long since lain moulr 
 dering in their graves. And when we cross 
 the Rialto, we seek him everywhere and fancy 
 that he must be standing behind some pillar 
 clothed in his long Jewish gabardine, with a 
 distrustful and calculating expression of coun- 
 tenance, and occasionally we imagine we hear 
 him crying out in his husky voice, "three 
 thousand ducats — well." 
 
 I at any rate, peripatetic dream-hunter as I 
 am, looked about on the Rialto to see if I could 
 
 145 K 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 spy out Shylock. 'I might have been the 
 bearer of good news, such as that of my 
 Parisian Lord Shylock becoming the mightiest 
 peer in Christendom after being decorated by 
 their Catholic Majesties with the order of 
 Isabella, founded in memory of the Moors' and 
 Jews' expulsion from Spain. But he was not 
 to be found on the Rialto, and I settled to go 
 in search of my old friend to the synagogue. 
 Here the Jews were just celebrating the feast 
 of Passover looking like a congregation of 
 ghosts as they stood there in their white 
 scarves, mysteriously bowing their heads. The 
 poor Jews had stood there since the early 
 morning fasting and praying, having taken 
 nothing since the previous evening. Prior to 
 this they had besought the pardon of their 
 friends for any possible offence they might 
 have given them throughout the year, in order 
 that they in like measure might receive God's 
 pardon for their sins ; — this is a beautiful custom 
 and strangely enough we find it practised by 
 those very people who have remained strangers 
 to the gospel of Christ. 
 
 Unfortunately I cannot withhold a discovery 
 which I made whilst in search of old Shylock 
 among these pale-faced suffering Jews. I had 
 that same day visited the lunatic asylum at San 
 
 146 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 Carlo, and now at the synagogue I perceived 
 in the Jews' faces that same strange, ; half- 
 staring, half-restless, half-sly, half-cunning, half- 
 timid expression, which shortly beifore I had 
 noticed in the lunatics at San Carlo. This 
 indescribably strange look did not so much 
 portend absence of mind as the supremacy of 
 a fixed idea. Is it possible that the belief in 
 that God of thunder preached by Moses has 
 become the fixed idea of an entire nation, 
 which refuses to swerve from its belief in spite 
 of the strait waistcoat and the shower bath 
 which have been administered to it for the 
 past two thousand yea,rs ; — much as that mad 
 lawyer whom I saw at San Carlo, and who 
 would not be persuaded that the sun was not a 
 cheese and that its beams were not maggots, 
 one of which was eating its way into his 
 brain ! 
 
 I have no desire to question the value of^ 
 such a fixed idea. I only wish to say that its 
 exponents are too weak to retain the mastery 
 over their idea, and are weighed down by it! 1 
 until they are past cure. What martyrdom\ I 
 have they not already suffered for the sake of 
 this idea ! What greater martyrdom may there 
 not yet be in store for them ? I shudder at 
 the thought, and a great pity thrills through 
 
 147 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 my frame. During the whole of the middle 
 ages down to the present day the dominant 
 belief was not in direct opposition to the idea 
 which Moses gave the Jews, by which he 
 bound them in holy words and with which he 
 circumcised them. They did not actually differ 
 from Christians or Mahometans nor did they 
 preach a different doctrine ; they only inter- 
 preted it differently and gave it another name. 
 But if ever Satan in the garb of that wicked 
 pantheism, from which may all the saints of the 
 Old and New Testament as well as the Koran 
 defend us — if ever Satan gain the upper hand, 
 then the poor Jews will have to suffer a perse- 
 cution which will far outweigh any of their 
 previous sufferings. 
 
 I could not see Shylock, though I looked 
 about on every side in the synagogue at 
 Venice. And yet I fancied he must be hiding 
 under one of those white scarves, praying with 
 more fervour than his fellow-believers, and 
 sending up his prayers with wild passion — 
 almost delirium — to the throne of Jehovah, the 
 stern God ! I did not see him. But towards 
 evening, when, according to the belief of the 
 Jews, the gates of heaven are closed and no 
 prayer can gain admission, I heard a voice 
 
 148 
 
TRAGEDIES 
 
 swimming in such tears as are never shed by 
 mortals . .■. . it was a sobbing which 
 might have moved a stone . . . they 
 were groans such as could only be produced 
 from a heart which had buried away in its 
 depths the martyrdom suffered by an entire 
 persecuted race for the length of eighteen 
 hundred years ... it was the death- throe 
 of a soul sinking down in its prostration at 
 heaven's gate , . . and this seemed to me 
 a familiar voice, and I fancied I had heard it 
 before calling out in its agony, 
 
 " Jessica ! my child ! " 
 
 149 
 
COMEDIES* 
 
 * See pp. 184-185 for Heine's explanation why he only 
 quotes passages from Shakespeare's Comedies, without 
 further elucidation of each play taken separately. 
 
 151 
 
COMEDIES 
 
 MIRANDA. 
 (The Tempest — Act III., Scene I.) 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 Wherefore weep you ? 
 
 Miranda. 
 At mine unworthiness that dare not offer 
 What I desire to give ; and much less take 
 What I shall die to want. But this is trifling ; 
 And all the more it seeks to hide itself, 
 The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning ! 
 And prompt me, plain and holy innocence ! 
 I am your wife if you will marry me ; 
 If not, I'll die your maid : to be your fellow 
 You may deny me ; but I'll be your servant, 
 Whether you will or no. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 My mistress dearest ; 
 And I thus humble ever. 
 
 Miranda. 
 
 My husband then ? 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 Ay with a heart as willing 
 As bondage e'er of freedom : here's my hand. 
 IS3 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 TITANIA. 
 
 (Midsummer Night's Dream — Act II., Scene III.) 
 
 [Enter Titania with her train. 
 
 Titania. 
 
 Come now, a roundel and a fairy song ; 
 Then for the third part of a minute hence ; 
 Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds ; 
 Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings, 
 To make my small elves coats ; and some keep back 
 The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders, 
 At our quaint spirits, sing we now asleep ; 
 Then to your offices and let me rest. 
 
 PERDITA. 
 (The Winter's Tale— ^rf IV., Scene III.) 
 
 Perdita. 
 
 Come, take your flowers : 
 Methinks I play as I have seen them do 
 In Whitsun pastorals ; sure this robe of mine 
 Does change my disposition. 
 
 Morizel. 
 
 What you do 
 Still betters what is done. When you speak sweet 
 I'd have you do it ever ; when you sing, 
 I'd have you buy and sell so ; so give alms ; 
 Pray so ; and for the ordering your aifairs 
 To sing them too ; when you do dance I wish you, 
 A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do 
 Nothing but that ; move still, still so, 
 IS4 
 
COMEDIES 
 
 And own no other function ; each your doing 
 So singular in each particular, 
 Crowns what you're doing in the present deeds, 
 That all your acts are queen's. 
 
 IMOGEN. 
 (Cymbeline — Act II., Scene II.) 
 
 Imogen. 
 
 Gods! 
 From fairies and the tempters of the night, 
 Guard me, beseech ye ! 
 
 [Sleeps. Jachimo comes from the trunk. 
 
 Jachimo. 
 The crickets sing and man's o'erlaboured sense 
 Repairs itself by rest. Our Tarquin thus 
 Did softly press the rushes, ere he wakened 
 The chastity he wounded. — Cytherea, 
 How bravely thou becom'st thy bed ! fresh lily ! 
 And whiter than the sheets ! That I might touch ! 
 But kiss ; one kiss ! Rubies unparagoned, 
 How dearly they do't ! — 'Tis her breathing that 
 Perfumes the chamber thus ; the flame o' the taper 
 Bows towards her ; and would underpeep her lids. 
 To see the enclosed lights, now canopied 
 Under these windows, white and azure, laced 
 With blue of Heaven's own tinct. 
 
 JULIA. 
 (The Two Gentlemen of Verona — Act IV., Scene II.) 
 
 Julia. 
 How many women should do such a message ? 
 Alas, poor Proteus thou hast entertained 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 A fox to be the shepherd of thy lambs ! — 
 
 Alas, poor fool ! why do I pity him, 
 
 That with his very heart despiseth me ? 
 
 Because he loves her he despiseth me ; 
 
 Because I love him, I must pity him. 
 
 This ring I gave him when he parted from me. 
 
 To bind him to remember my good-will : 
 
 And now am I — unhappy messenger — 
 
 To plead for that which I would not obtain ; 
 
 To carry that which I would have refused ; 
 
 To praise his faith which I would have dispraised. 
 
 I am my master's true-confirmfed love ; 
 
 But cannot be true servant to my master, 
 
 Unless I prove false traitor to myself. 
 
 Yet will I woo for him ; but yet so coldly, 
 
 As heaven it knows, I would not have him speed. 
 
 SILVIA. 
 
 (The Two Gentlemen of Verona— ^<:/ IV., Scene IV.) 
 
 Silvia. 
 Here, youth, there is my purse ; I give thee this 
 For thy sweet mistress' sake, because thou lov'st her. 
 Farewell. 
 
 Julia. 
 And she shall thank you for't if e'er you know her 
 
 \JExit Silma with attendants. 
 A virtuous gentlewoman, mild and beautiful, 
 I hope my master's suit will be but cold. 
 Since she respects my mistress' love so much. 
 Alas 1 how love can trifle with itself ! 
 Here is her picture ; let me see ; I think 
 If I had such a tire this face of mine 
 Were full as lovely as is this of hers ; 
 156 
 
COMEDIES 
 
 And yet the painter flattered her a little, 
 Unless I flatter with myself too much. 
 Her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow ; 
 If that be all the difference in his love, 
 I'll get me such a coloured periwig. 
 Her eyes are grey as glass ; and so are mine ; 
 Ay, but her forehead's low and mine's as high. 
 What should it be that he respects in her 
 But I can make respective in myself? 
 
 HERO. 
 (Much Ado about Nothing — Act IV., Scene I.) 
 
 Friar Francis. 
 Lady, what man is he you are accused of? 
 
 Hero. 
 They know that do accuse me ; I know none : 
 If I know more of any man alive 
 Than that which maiden modesty doth warrant. 
 Let all my sins lack mercy !— Oh, my father, 
 Prove you that any man with me conversed 
 At hours unmeet, or that I yesternight 
 Maintained the change of words with any creature. 
 Refuse me, hate me, torture me to death. 
 
 BEATRICE. 
 (Much Ado about Nothing — Act III., Scene I.) 
 
 Hero. 
 But nature never framed a woman's heart 
 Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice 5 
 Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes. 
 Misprising what they look on ; and her wit 
 157 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Values itself so highly, that to her 
 All matter else seems weak ; she cannot love, 
 Nor take no shape nor project of affection. 
 She is so self-endeared. 
 
 Ursula. 
 Sure — sure such carping is not commendable. 
 
 Hero. 
 
 No, nor to be so odd, and from all fashions 
 
 As Beatrice is, cannot be commendable ; 
 
 But who dare tell her so ? If I should speak, ^ 
 /She'd mock me into air ; oh, she would laugh me) 
 lOut of myself, press me to death with wit ! ^ 
 
 Therefore let Benedick, like covered fire, 
 
 Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly ; 
 
 It were a better death than die with mocks, 
 
 Which is as bad as die with tickling. 
 
 HELENA. 
 (All's Well that Ends Well — Act I., Scene III.) 
 
 Helena. 
 
 Then, I confess, 
 Here on my knee, before high heaven and you. 
 That before you and next unto high heaven 
 I love your son : — 
 
 My friends were poor but honest ; so's my love ; 
 Be not offended ; for it hurts not him. 
 That he is loved of me : I follow him not. 
 By any token of presumptuous suit, 
 Nor would I have him till I do deserve him : 
 Yet never know how^ that desert should be. 
 I know I love in vairt, strive against hope ; 
 158 
 
COMEDIES 
 
 Yet in this captious and intenible sieve, 
 
 I still pour in the waters of my love, 
 
 And lack not to lose still ; thus Indian-like, 
 
 Religious in mine error, I adore 
 
 The sun that looks upon his worshipper. 
 
 But knows of him no more. My dearest Madam, 
 
 Let not your hate encounter with my love. 
 
 For loving where you do. 
 
 CELIA. 
 (As You Like it — Aci I., Scene 11.) 
 
 Rosalind. 
 
 From henceforth I will coz and devise sports. Let me 
 see ; what think you of falling in love ? 
 
 Celia. 
 
 Marry. I prithee do, to make sport withal ; but love no 
 man in good earnest ; nor do further in sport neither than 
 with safety of a pure blush thou may'st in honour come off 
 again. 
 
 Rosalind. 
 
 What shall be our sport then ? 
 
 Celia. 
 
 Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from 
 her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed 
 equally. 
 
 Rosalind. 
 
 I would we could do so ; for her benefits are mightily 
 misplaced; and the beautiful blind woman doth most 
 mistake in her gifts to women. 
 
 IS9 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Celia. 
 
 Tis true ; for those that she makes fair she scarce makes 
 honest ; and those that she makes honest, she makes very 
 ill-favoured. 
 
 ROSALIND. 
 
 (As You Like it — Act III., Scene II.) 
 
 Celia. 
 Didst thou hear these verses ? 
 
 Rosalind. 
 
 Oh yes, I heard them all and more too; for some of 
 them had in them more feet than the verses would bear. 
 
 Celia. 
 That's no matter ; the feet might bear the verses. 
 
 Rosalind. 
 
 Ay, but the feet were lame, and could not bear them- 
 selves without the verse, and therefore stood lamely in the 
 verse. 
 
 Celia. 
 
 But didst thou hear without wondering how thy name 
 should be hanged and carved upon the trees ? 
 
 Rosalind. 
 
 I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before 
 you came ; for look here what I found on a palm-tree ; I 
 was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was 
 an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember. 
 
 i6o 
 
COMEDIES 
 
 OLIVIA. 
 (Twelfth Night — Act L, Scejte V.) 
 
 Viola. 
 Good Madam, let me see your face. 
 
 Olivia (unveiling). 
 
 Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate 
 with my face ? You are now out of your text ; but we will 
 draw the curtain and show you the picture. Look you, 
 Sir, such a one I was this present ; is't not well done ? 
 
 Viola. 
 Excellently done, if God did it all. 
 
 Olivia. 
 'Tis in grain. Sir, 'twill endure wind and weather. 
 
 Viola. 
 
 'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white 
 Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on. 
 Lady, you are the cruellest she alive. 
 If you will lead these graces to the grave 
 And leave the world no copy. 
 
 VIOLA. 
 
 (Twelfth Night — Act II., Scene IV.) 
 
 Viola. 
 
 My father had a daughter, loved a man. 
 As it might be perhaps, were I a woman, 
 I should your lordship. 
 
 l6l L 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Duke. 
 And what's her history ? 
 
 Viola. 
 A blank, my lord. She never told her love, 
 But let concealment like a worm i' the bud 
 Feed on her damask cheek ; she pined in thought ; 
 And with a green and yellow melancholy, 
 She sat like Patience on a monument, 
 SmiUng at grief. Was not this love indeed ? 
 We men may say more, swear more ; but indeed 
 Our shows are more than will ; for still we prove 
 Much in our vows but little in our love. 
 
 Duke. 
 But died thy sister of her love, my boy ? 
 
 Viola. 
 I am all the daughters of my father's house. 
 And all the brothers too. . . . 
 
 MARIA. 
 (Twelfth Night — Act /., Scene III.) 
 
 Sir Andrew. 
 Fair lady, do you think you have fools in hand ? 
 
 Maria. 
 Sir, I have not you by the hand. 
 
 Sir Andrew. 
 Marry, but you shall have, and here's my hand. 
 
 Maria. 
 Now, Sir, thought is free. I pray you bring your hand 
 to the buttery bar, and let it drink. 
 
 162 
 
COMEDIES 
 Sir Andrew. 
 Wherefore, sweet-heart ? What's your metaphor ? 
 
 Maria. 
 It's dry, Sir. 
 
 ISABELLA. 
 (Measure for Measure — Act II., Scene IV.) 
 
 Angela. 
 
 Admit no other way to save his Hfe, — 
 As I subscribe not that, nor any other, 
 But in the loss of question — that you, his sister. 
 Finding yourself desired of such a person. 
 Whose credit with the judge or own great place. 
 Could fetch your brother from the manacles 
 Of the all-binding law ; and that there were 
 No earthly mean to save him, but that either 
 You must lay down the treasures of your body 
 To this supposed, or else to let him suffer ; 
 What would you do ? 
 
 Isabella. 
 
 As much for my poor brother as myself ; 
 That is, were I under the terms of death, 
 Th' impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies. 
 And strip myself to death as to a bed, 
 That long I have been sick for, ere I'd yield 
 My body up to shame. 
 
 163 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 PRINCESS OF FRANCE. 
 (Love's Labour's Lost — Act IF., Scene I.) 
 
 Costard. 
 God dig-you-den-all ! Pray you which is the head lady ? 
 
 Princess. 
 Thou shalt know her, fellow, by the rest that have no 
 heads. 
 
 Costard. 
 Which is the greatest lady, the highest ? 
 
 Princess. 
 The thickest and the tallest. 
 
 Costard. 
 The thickest and the tallest ! it is so ; truth is truth. 
 An your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit, 
 One o' these maid's girdles for your waist should be fit. 
 Are not you the chief woman? You are the thickest 
 here. 
 
 THE ABBESS. 
 (Comedy of Errors — Act V., Scene I.) 
 
 Abbess. 
 And thereof came it that thy man was mad. 
 The venom-clamours of a jealous woman 
 Poison more deadly than a mad-dog's tooth. 
 It seems his sleeps were hindered by thy railing ; 
 And therefore comes it that his head is light. 
 Thou say'st his meat was sauced by thy upbraidings ; 
 Unquiet meals make ill digestions ; 
 Thereof the raging fire of fever bred ; 
 164 
 
COMEDIES 
 
 And what's a fever but a fit of madness ? 
 
 Thou say'st his sports were hindered by thy brawls : 
 
 Sweet recreation barred what doth ensue 
 
 But moody moping and dull melancholy, 
 
 Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair ; 
 
 And at her heels a huge infectious troop 
 
 Of pale distemperatures and foes to life ? 
 
 In food, in sport and life-preserving rest 
 
 To be disturbed would mad or man or beast ; 
 
 The consequence is then thy jealous fits 
 
 Have scared thy husband from the use of wits." 
 
 MISTRESS PAGE. 
 (Merry Wives of Windsor — Act II., Scene II.) 
 
 Mistress Quickly. 
 That were a jest indeed ! — they have not so little grace 
 I hope ! — that were a trick indeed ! But Mistress Page 
 would desire you to send her your little page, of all loves. 
 Her husband has a marvellous infection to the little page ; 
 and truly Master Page is an honest man. Never a wife in 
 Windsor leads a better life than she does ; do what she 
 will, say what she will, take all, pay all, go to bed when she 
 list, rise when she list, all is as she will ; and truly she 
 deserves it ; for if there be a kind woman in Windsor, she 
 is one. You must send her your page ; no remedy. 
 
 MISTRESS FORD. 
 
 (Merry Wives of Windsor — Act /., Scene III.) 
 
 Falstaff. 
 No quipps now. Pistol. — Indeed I am in the waist two 
 yards about ; but I am now about no waste ; I am about 
 thrift. Briefly, I do mean to make love to Ford's wife. I 
 
 165 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 spy entertainment in her; she discourses, she carves, she 
 gives the leer of invitation. I can construe the action of 
 her familiar style ; and the hardest voice of her behaviour 
 to be EngUshed rightly is, " I am Sir John Falstaff's ! " 
 
 ANNE PAGE. 
 (Merry Wives of Windsor — Act I., Scene J.) 
 
 Anne. 
 Will't please your worship to come in. Sir ? 
 
 Slender. 
 No, I thank you forsooth heartily ; I am very well. 
 
 Anne. 
 The dinner attends you, Sir. 
 
 Slender. 
 I am not a-hungry, I thank you forsooth. Go, Sirrah, for 
 all you are my man, go wait upon my cousin Shallow. (Exit 
 Simple^ A justice of peace sometime may be beholden 
 to his friend for a man. — I keep but three men and a boy 
 yet, till my mother be dead. But what though ? yet I live 
 like a poor gentleman born. 
 
 Anne. 
 I may not go in without your worship. They will not 
 sit till you come. 
 
 KATHARINE. 
 (Taming of the Shrew — Act II., Scene I.) 
 
 Petruchio. 
 Say that she rail ; why then I'll tell her plain. 
 She sings as sweetly as a nightingale. 
 166 
 
COMEDIES 
 
 Say that she frown ; I'll say she looks as clear 
 As morning roses newly washed with dew. 
 Say she be mute and will not speak a word ; 
 Then I'll commend her volubility, 
 And say she uttereth piercing eloquence. 
 If she do bid me pack, I'll give her thanks 
 As though she bid me stay by her a week. 
 If she deny to wed, I'll crave the day 
 When I shall ask the banns and when be married. 
 But here she comes ; and now, Petruchio, speak. 
 
 {Mnfer Katharine.) 
 Good morrow, Kate ; for that's your name, I hear. 
 
 Katharine. 
 
 WeU have you heard, but something hard of hearing ; 
 They call me Katharine that do talk of me. 
 
 Petruchio. 
 
 You lie in faith ; for you are called plain Kate, 
 And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the cursed. 
 
 167 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 In the preface to this collection of pictures 
 I mentioned how Shakespeare became popular 
 in England and Germany, and how occasion- 
 ally there arose some understanding of his 
 works. Unfortunately I am unable to give as 
 glowing a report of the romance countries ; in 
 Spain to this day the poet is unknown. Italy 
 possibly remains in voluntary ignorance in 
 order to ward off any transalpine rivalry from 
 her great poets ; and France, the home of 
 acknowledged taste and elegant manners, long 
 imagined that the great Englishman received 
 sufficient honour at her hands when she called 
 him a clever barbarian, trying to mock as little 
 as possible at his coarseness. However the 
 political revolution which this country ex- 
 perienced was followed by a literary revolution 
 possibly surpassing the former in terrorism, 
 and on this occasion Shakespeare was raised 
 to the skies. Certainly the French in their 
 literary as in their political revolutions are 
 never quite honest ; in the one as in the other 
 they sing the praises of any hero not for his 
 
 169 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 real worth, but for the momentary advantage 
 which may accrue to their cause by means of 
 such laudations. This is why we find them 
 one day singing the praises of what another 
 day they find they must deprecate and vice 
 versa. For the past ten years that section of 
 society which has taken part in the literary 
 revolution entertains the blindest admiration 
 for the name of Shakespeare. But it remains 
 very questionable whether the movement has 
 called forth in these men any really con- 
 scientious appreciation or even proper under- 
 standing. The French have too strong a 
 family likeness with one another ; they have 
 too completely drunk in the conventional lie 
 with their mother's milk, to feel any great 
 liking or sympathy for that poet who breathes 
 forth the truth of nature in every word. 
 French writers have certainly for some time 
 past earnestly and unintermittently striven 
 after such naturalness ; in very despair they 
 strip off as it were their conventional habili- 
 ments, showing themselves in terrible naked- 
 ness. . . . But some fashionable rag, 
 which in spite of this has still clung to them, 
 gives sign of their inherited artificiality and 
 calls forth an ironic smile on the part of the 
 German beholder. These writers always bring 
 
 170 
 
c6:^CLusiON 
 
 to my mind those illustrations accompanying 
 certain novels in which the immoral love affairs 
 of the eighteenth century are represented. 
 Instead of the gentlemen's and ladies' paradi- 
 siacal habiliments made after nature's pattern, 
 the former retain their pigtails and the latter 
 their high coiffures and high-heeled shoes. 
 
 It was not owing to direct criticism that the 
 French got a certain insight into the great 
 poet's mind ; they obtained this indirectly by 
 means of dramatic works, more or less copied 
 from Shakespeare ; — in this, Victor Hugo is 
 pre-eminent. I do not mean that he is, in the 
 generally accepted sense, a copyist of the great 
 Englishman. Victor Hugo's genius must be 
 placed in the front rank and we must admire 
 his capacity to soar and to create ; he can give 
 expression to his thought, he is the greatest 
 French poet, but the noisy whirlpool of the 
 present age fills his Pegasus with strange 
 timidity, causing it to turn away from those 
 waters in which it sees reflections of the light 
 of day. ... It rather seeks refreshment 
 from those neglected springs situated among 
 the ruins of the past where once upon a time 
 Shakespeare's winged steed slaked its immortal 
 thirst. I do not know whether any clear wate 
 is to be found in these old springs half empty 
 
 171 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 and turbid ; but there is more of muddy slime 
 than of the Hfe-giving properties of that ancient 
 EngHsh Hippocrene. His poems are want- 
 ing in bright clearness and healthy harmony 
 . . . and occasionally I confess I have a 
 terrible suspicion that this Victor Hugo is the 
 ghost of an English poet of Elizabeth's best 
 period, a dead poet risen from the grave with 
 a bad grace, in order to write a few posthu- 
 mous works in another country and another 
 period, so as to escape the rivalry of the great 
 Shakespeare. Victor Hugo indeed greatly 
 reminds me of men like Marlow, Decker, 
 Haywood and others who resembled their 
 great contemporary in language and style, but 
 who were unlike him in penetrative power and 
 love of the beautiful, in his terrible and his 
 smiling grace, in his revelation of nature . . . 
 and alas ! added to Marlow' s, Decker's, and 
 Haywood's shortcomings, we find in Victor 
 Hugo one of still greater magnitude ; he is 
 wanting in life. The former suffered from 
 superabundant heat, the blood circulated wildly 
 in their veins, and their poetical works were 
 written emanations of their life's history, of 
 their joys and their sorrows. But Victor Hugo, 
 greatly as I admire him, has for me, I con- 
 fess, something dead, gloomy, spectral, some- 
 
 172 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 thing of a risen Vampyre. ... He does 
 not awaken our enthusiasm, he completely 
 exhausts it. . . . He does not cast a 
 poetic halo over our tumultuous feelings ; he 
 terrifies them with some ghastly caricature 
 . . . death and ugliness are his curse. 
 
 Some time ago a young lady whom I know 
 well, expressed herself in a very significant 
 manner concerning Hugo's mania for the 
 hideous. She said : I am reminded in Victor 
 Hugo's muse of that strange princess who 
 wished to marry the ugliest man, and with this 
 intention proclaimed throughout the country 
 that on a certain day all the specially deformed 
 bachelors were to assemble at her palace as 
 suitors. . . . She did indeed procure for 
 herself an assemblage of cripples and cari- 
 catures ; it might have been a gathering of the 
 characters mentioned by Hugo in one of his 
 works . . . but Quasimodo won the bride. 
 
 After Victor Hugo I mention Alexander 
 Dumas ; he also assisted towards the better 
 understanding of Shakespeare in France. If 
 Hugo, by means of his extravagance in the 
 domain of the hideous, accustomed the French 
 to require in the drama something more than a 
 fine draping of the passions, Dumas occasioned 
 in his compatriots a great liking for the natural 
 
 173 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 expression of their passions. But with him 
 the passions are all in all, and they usurp the 
 place of pure poetry in his poetical works. 
 This certainly made his writing more effective 
 for the stage. In the representation of the 
 passions he accustomed the public to Shake- 
 speare's boldest flights ; and those who had 
 once enjoyed Henry III. and Richard Dar- 
 lington did not complain of want of taste in 
 Othello and Richard III. The reproach 
 of plagiarism attributed to him by some 
 was as absurd as it was unjust. Certainly 
 Dumas occasionally borrowed something from 
 Shakespeare in his passionate scenes, but 
 Schiller appropriated things quite as boldly 
 without incurring blame. And even Shake- 
 speare borrowed to a large extent from his 
 predecessors. Even this poet had to face the 
 assertion of some crabbed pamphleteer who 
 maintained that his best plays were borrowed 
 from previous authors. On this ridiculous 
 occasion Shakespeare is called a raven, adorn- 
 ing himself with a peacock's plumage. The 
 Swan of Avon held his peace, possibly think- 
 ing in his immortal soul : ' I am neither raven 
 nor peacock,' as he rocked himself carelessly 
 on the blue waves of poetry, smiling up at 
 heaven's golden thoughts, the stars. 
 
 174 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 Count Alfred de Vigny has also to be named 
 here. This author, having a good knowledge 
 of English, studied Shakespeare's works more 
 carefully than any other. He translated some 
 of the plays very efficiently, and this study had 
 a very good influence on his own writings. 
 We may assume that the Count de Vigny, with 
 the sensible and critical taste so essentially his, 
 studied Shakespeare's genius more than most 
 of his countrymen attempted to do. But the 
 talents of this man as well as his thought and 
 feeling are chiefly engaged in examining the 
 microscopically small, and owing to their elabo- 
 rate delicacy his works are peculiarly precious. 
 Therefore I can well imagine that he must 
 sometimes have been startled at the forms of 
 superhuman beauty which Shakespeare as it 
 wer-e chipped off from the great granite blocks 
 of poetry. . . . He must have regarded 
 them in surprised admiration, like a jeweller 
 gazing at the colossal gates of the Florence 
 Baptistry. Though these were the result of a 
 single casting, they nevertheless look delicate 
 and lovely as though carved like the finest 
 jewelry. 
 
 If the French find it sufficiently difficult to 
 enter into Shakespeare's tragedies, his comedies 
 almost entirely pass their comprehension. The 
 
 175 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 poetry of passion they can grasp, they can 
 even up to a certain point understand the 
 truth of character-painting, for their hearts 
 have learned to throb wildly, passion is their 
 speciality, and with their analytic understand- 
 ing they can dissect a given character into its 
 finest parts, and can foresee the phases through 
 which such a one will pass should it come into 
 juxtaposition with certain realities of life. But 
 all this experimental knowledge is of little use 
 to them in the magic garden of Shakespeare's 
 comedies. They lose their wits at the very 
 gates, their hearts can lead them nowhither, 
 and they do not possess the mysterious wand 
 by the very touch of which the castle would 
 fly open. They gaze in amazement through 
 the golden bars as they perceive knights and 
 ladies, shepherds and shepherdesses, fools and 
 wise men, wandering about among high trees ; 
 they see the lover and his beloved reposing in 
 the shade talking tenderly to one another, they 
 behold some mythical creature rushing past, 
 possibly a stag with silver antlers or a shy 
 squirrel jumping out of the foliage and hiding 
 its head in the beautiful maiden's lap . . . 
 and they see mermaids with green hair and 
 glistening veils plunge forth from the brooks, 
 and suddenly the moon appears . . . and 
 
 176 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 then they hear a nightingale sing . . . and 
 they shake their wise little heads at all this 
 incredibly stupid stuff! Ah, yes ! the French 
 may possibly have wit to understand the sun, 
 but not the moon, and still less the happy 
 sobbing and sad rapture of nightingales' voices. 
 Indeed neither their empirical acquaintance 
 with human passions, nor their positive world- 
 wisdom are of the least use to the French 
 when they attempt to understand the appear- 
 ances and voices which meet their eyes and 
 ears in the magic garden of Shakespeare's 
 comedies. . . . Sometimes they imagine 
 they see a human face which turns into a 
 landscape on their approach, what they had 
 taken for eyebrows was a hazel-bush, the nose 
 turned into a rock, and the mouth was a small 
 streamlet similar to those well-known lantern 
 slides which we sometimes meet with. . . . 
 And vice versa that which the unfortunate 
 French took for an extraordinarily-shaped tree 
 or for a strange stone becomes on closer 
 observation a real and hugely expressive 
 human countenance. If they take the greatest 
 trouble to overhear a lovers' dialogue in the 
 shade of the trees, they are placed in a yet 
 more awkward position, . . . they hear 
 well-known words, but these words have 
 
 177 M 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 another meaning, and then they declare that 
 these people know nothing of warm love, of 
 the great passion. These lovers were offering 
 one another by way of refreshment cleverly 
 manufactured ice, instead of the inspiring wine 
 of love . . . and they did not perceive 
 that they were birds in fancy dress, talking a 
 peculiar language which can only be learned 
 in dreams or in very early childhood. . . . ■ 
 But the worst that can befall the French wait- 
 ing at the gates of Shakespeare's comedies, is — 
 the moment when a sportive west wind blows 
 across one of the flower beds of that magic 
 garden, bearing on its wings a delicious scent. 
 . . . " What can ^^«if be ? " 
 
 I must in justice mention a French author 
 who showed some cleverness in copying Shake- 
 speare's comedies, and who exhibited rare sus- 
 ceptibility for true poetry by the choice of his 
 models. This is Alfred de Musset. Five years 
 ago he composed several small dramas which 
 entirely resemble Shakespeare's comedies in 
 construction and manner. With French ease 
 he has appropriated to himself the fancifulness, 
 — not the humour, — with which they abound. 
 We find in these pretty trifles no absence of 
 tolerably correct though very flimsy poetry. It 
 was only a pity that this young author had read 
 
 178 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 not only the French but Byron's version of 
 Shakespeare. This led him to affect an appear- 
 ance of satiety and spleen common to this 
 nobleman, that being the fashion among the 
 young Parisians of his day. The rosiest youths 
 and healthiest greenhorns declared that they 
 had lost all capacity for enjoyment, they pre- 
 tended to a hoary freezing of the soul, and got 
 themselves up in dishevelled and lazy fashion. 
 
 Certainly since then poor Monsieur Musset 
 has retrieved his error and he is no longer 
 blasd in his poems ; but alas ! instead of affected 
 ruin his poems now contain the far sadder 
 traces of a real decay of body and mind. . . . 
 Ah me ! this writer reminds me of those arti- 
 ficial ruins which used to be built in eighteenth 
 century palace gardens, those freaks of childish 
 fancy which arouse our gentle pity when they 
 ultimately fall into decay and crumble away 
 into actual ruin. 
 
 The French, as I have noted, are not very 
 capable of entering into the spirit of Shake- 
 speare's comedies, and among their critics I 
 have found only one who had the faintest con- 
 ception of their latent and mysterious power. 
 Who is this one exception ? Gutzkow signal- 
 ises the elephant as the doctrinaire among 
 animals. And such a wise and very clumsy 
 
 179 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 elephant has best succeeded in penetrating the 
 indwelHng spirit of Shakespeare's comedies. 
 Indeed it is difficult to believe that it is Mon- 
 sieur Musset who has been the most successful 
 in criticising these graceful and sportive visions 
 of the modern muse. For the admiration and 
 information of the reader I here translate a 
 passage from a work published by Ladvocat 
 of Paris in 1822, and which is entitled, De 
 Shakespeare et de la poisie dramatique par F. 
 Guizot : 
 
 "These comedies of Shakespeare resemble 
 neither those of Moliere, Aristophanes, nor those 
 of the Romans. With the Greeks and later 
 on with the French, comedy arose by means of 
 an unhampered but also careful study of actual 
 life, and it was the aim of comedy to represent 
 this on the stage. In the early period of art, 
 comedy was distinguished from tragedy, and 
 the more art progressed the more marked was 
 this distinction. The reason of this is self- 
 evident. Man's destiny and nature, man's 
 passions, employments, character and the inci- 
 dents of his life, have in them both serious and 
 humorous elements, and these can be observed 
 and represented as well in the one way as in 
 the other. This two-sidedness of man's nature 
 and of the world has opened two separate paths 
 
 180 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 for dramatic composition, but whilst choosing 
 one or the other for its arena art has never 
 turned away completely from the representation 
 of reality. Aristophanes may scourge with 
 boundless play of imagination the wickedness 
 and foolishness of the Athenians, Moliere may 
 himself criticise the faults of credulity avarice 
 jealousy, pedantry, family-pride, parvenu vanity 
 and even of virtue itself. What matters it 
 that both poets treat of entirely different sub- 
 jects, — that the one has depicted on the stage 
 the whole of life and an entire nation ; the 
 other, episodes of private life, family life and 
 the absurdities of the individual ; — this differ- 
 ence in the subject-matter of comedy is a con- 
 sequence of the difference in time, place and 
 civilisation. . . . But the plays of Aris- 
 tophanes as of Moliere are always based on 
 reality and the actual world. The customs and 
 beliefs of their century, the wickedness and 
 foolishness of their fellow-citizens, in fact the 
 nature and life of man, is that which kindles 
 and sustains their poetic fancy. Comedy is 
 therefore a product of the world which sur- 
 rounds the poet, and it approaches far more 
 closely than tragedy the outward manifestations 
 of reality. . . . 
 
 " Not so with Shakespeare. In his days in 
 i8x 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 England, nature and human destiny, the subject 
 matter of dramatic art, had not yet received 
 this distinction and classification at its hands. 
 The poet, desiring to reproduce these on the 
 stage, regarded them in their completeness 
 with all their accompanying admixtures and 
 contrasts ; and public taste was not offended 
 by such an action on his part. Comedy, this 
 portion of human reality, might be made use 
 of wherever truth demanded or suffered its 
 presence, and it was quite homogeneous to 
 English civilisation that tragedy, whilst appro- 
 priating something of comedy, did not thereby 
 lose the dignity of truth. This being the con- 
 dition of the stage and of public taste, how 
 could actual comedy be represented ? How 
 could it take its place as a special form of 
 composition and bear the distinguishing name 
 of comedy ? This was brought about by cast- 
 ing aside every fact in which the limits of 
 / that which is peculiar to comedy were neither 
 i observed nor acknowledged. This form of 
 comedy did not restrict itself to the representa- 
 t tion of certain manners and minutely described 
 I characters, nor did it seek to pourtray men in 
 ' a ridiculous though true fashion. It became a 
 phantastic and romantic work of imagination, 
 a harbour for all those delightful impossibilities 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 which a careless or fickle fancy weaves into a 
 texture, in order to produce all manner of gay 
 combinations which enliven and interest our 
 imagination without exactly appealing to the 
 verdict of common sense. Pleasing pictures, 
 surprises, merry intrigues, amazed curiosity, 
 disappointed hopes, misunderstandings and 
 amusing actions which induce men to assume 
 a disguise, formed the material of these harm- 
 less kaleidoscopic plays. The composition of 
 the Spanish plays which were beginning to 
 find favour in England made suitable settings 
 and patterns for these plays, and could easily 
 be adapted to those chronicles and romances, 
 those French and Italian stories which, like the 
 stories of chivalry, were much appreciated by 
 the public. We can imagine that Shakespeare's 
 attention was attracted at an early age by this 
 rich mine of romance and ethereal kind of 
 poetry. Nor does it surprise us that he, with 
 his fresh and glowing imagination, loved to 
 hover about those materials outside the domain 
 of the strictest common-sense, from which he 
 could produce every kind of serious and strong 
 effect at the expense of probability. This 
 poet, whose mind and whose fingers worked 
 with equal ardour and whose manuscripts bore 
 scarcely any traces of correction, must have 
 
 ^S3 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 found special pleasure in these kaleidoscopic 
 plays, full of freedom and adventure, in which 
 his manifold faculties could be manifested with- 
 out exertion. He could pour all his experi- 
 ences into his comedies, and indeed he did this 
 without the addition of that logical combination 
 which could never be adapted to a system such 
 as his, in which every part of a composition is 
 made subordinate to the whole and in which 
 every particular manifests the depth, greatness 
 and unity of the work. It would be difficult to 
 find in Shakespeare's tragedies any conception, 
 situation, act of passion, measure of guilt or 
 of virtue, which might not in equal measure 
 be found in his comedies. But what in his 
 tragedies falls into abysmal depths, what proves 
 terrible in its overwhelming consequences, what 
 follows a strict rule of cause and effect, that 
 in his comedies iis scarcely dwelt on and only 
 becomes apparent for a moment in order to 
 bring about some passing effect and to turn as 
 quickly into some new combination." 
 
 Verily this " elephant " is right. The spirit 
 pervading Shakespeare's comedies may be 
 likened to a gay butterfly flying from flower 
 to flower and seldom touching the dom a in oL 
 reality We can only express a decided opinion 
 about Shakespeare's comedies in comparison 
 
/ conclusionT 
 
 with those realistic forms of cortedy natural to 
 the ancients/ and to the French 
 
 I pondered long last night over the problem 
 whether it be possible to give any positive ex- 
 planation of the spirit pervading Shakespeare's 
 comedies. I fell asleep after much ruminating, 
 and dreamed that I was sailing by starlight in 
 a tiny boat on a lake of great magnitude 
 where many barges, filled with masked people, 
 musicians and torches passed by, with sounds 
 and bright lights, now ^approaching now re- 
 ceding. I saw garbs of every period and 
 nation, Greek tunics of ancient times, knights' 
 cloaks of the middle ages, oriental turbans, 
 shepherd hats with flying streamers, weird 
 shapes of wild and of tame animals. . . , 
 Sometimes a well-known form greeted me 
 . . . sometimes beloved philosophers bowed 
 as they passed by . . . but all this speedily 
 vanished, and whenever I listened to a happy 
 song, issuing from one of the passing barges, it 
 was soon lost in silence, and instead of merry 
 fiddles I heard the melancholy bugles of 
 another barge. . . . Sometimes both of 
 these together were borne across to me on the 
 wings of the night wind, and then delicious 
 harmonies ensued from these mingled notes. 
 . , . The waters sounded pleasantly and 
 
 i8S 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 were tinged with magic reflections from the 
 torches, and the bright pleasure boats with 
 their strangely masked crew sailed on sur- 
 rounded by light and music. ... A lovely 
 woman standing at the helm of one of the 
 barges called out to me in sailing by : " well, 
 friend, do you want to define the spirit per- 
 vading Shakespeare's comedies ? " I do not 
 know whether I assented, but the beautiful 
 woman immediately dipped her hand into the 
 water, dashing some of the glittering spray on 
 to my face so that I awakened to a peal of 
 universal laughter. 
 
 Who was the lovely woman who made fun 
 of me in my dreams ? She bore a gay cap and 
 bells on her ideally beautiful head, a white 
 satin dress with flying ribbons was draped 
 around her slender form, and in her bosom 
 she wore a blooming thistle. Perhaps she was 
 the goddess of fancy, that strange muse, who 
 was present with her kisses at the births of 
 Rosalind, Beatrice, Titania, Viola and by what 
 other names these lovely children of Shake- 
 peare's comedies may be called. Possibly in 
 kissing them she bestowed on these gay young 
 heads all her moods, fancies, and whims, and 
 i/iai may have influenced their hearts. The 
 women of Shakespeare's comedies resemble 
 
 i86 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 the men ; — their passions are free from that 
 terrible earnestness, that fatalistic necessity 
 which are manifested in his tragedies. Here 
 also Cupid wears a bandage across his eyes 
 and he bears in his hand a quiver with arrows. 
 But in his comedies the arrows contain more 
 feathers than poisoned darts, and the tiny god 
 sometimes winks roguishly from beneath his 
 bandage. Even the flames burn less than 
 they glitter, yet they are flames, and love bears 
 the character of truth in Shakespeare's come- 
 dies as in his tragedies. Yes, truth is always 
 the characteristic mark of Shakespeare's love 
 in whatsoever form it may appear, whether it 
 be represented by Miranda, Juliet, or even 
 Cleopatra. 
 
 In mentioning these names more casually 
 than of set purpose I may remark that they 
 typify the three most important forms of love. 
 Miranda's love does not need historical in- 
 fluences in order to attain its highest ideal, it 
 is the flower springing from virgin soil from a 
 land where only spirits dwell. Ariel's songs 
 have formed her heart, and sensuality has 
 never appeared to her in any other form than 
 in that of the detestably ugly Caliban. There- 
 fore the love with which Ferdinand inspires 
 her is not exactly an artless love, but one of 
 
 187 
 
HEINE ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 blissful simplicity of primitive almost awful 
 purity. Juliet's love as well as her surround- 
 ings and the period at which she lived, belong 
 rather to mediaeval romance approaching the 
 renaissance period. It is bright as the court 
 of the Scaligers and strong as the noble families 
 of Lombardy who, with their infusion of Ger- 
 man blood could love as strongly as they could 
 hate. Juliet represents the love of a youthful 
 somewhat turbulent, but sound and healthy 
 period. She is filled with the passionate 
 ardour and strong belief of such a time, and 
 even the cold decay of the tomb cannot van- 
 quish her confidence or extinguish her love. 
 But our Cleopatra represents the love of a 
 sickly civilisation, of a beautiful time whose 
 loveliness is fading away, and which adorns 
 itself with artificially curled and scented locks 
 containing many a grey hair ; of a time all the 
 more anxious to drink up the contents of a 
 cup the emptier that cup becomes. There is 
 neither faith nor fidelity in this love but it is 
 none the less warm and wild for that. The 
 impatient woman knowing in her anger that 
 this fire cannot be quenched pours oil on to 
 the flapies, throwing herself upon them in 
 bacchanalian mood. She is a coward at heart 
 driven on by her love of destruction. Love is 
 
 i88 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 always a kind of madness more or less beauti- 
 ful, but in the case of this Egyptian queen it 
 develops into the most terrific insanity . . . 
 her love is a raging comet madly dashing 
 around the firmament with its tail of fire, 
 frightening if not wounding all the stars as it 
 goes upon its course, and at the end exploding 
 miserably like a rocket which bursts into a 
 thousand sparks. 
 
 Yes, beautiful Cleopatra, we may liken thee 
 to a terrific comet, and thou hast ruined thy 
 contemporaries as well as thyself. . . . 
 With Antony the old heroic Roman period 
 comes to a miserable end. 
 
 But to what can I compare you, O Juliet and 
 Miranda .-' Again I search the heavens for 
 your prototype. Possibly it is hidden behind 
 the stars too far off to reach my sight. Per- 
 haps if the scorching sun possessed the moon's 
 tenderness I might compare thee to th^ sun, O 
 Juliet ! Perhaps if the tender moon possessed 
 the sun's heat I might compare thee to the 
 moon, O Miranda ! 
 
 Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing: Works, Frome, and London. 
 189 
 
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