CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY X.;--r*'- .. .^ < ~"B-" -. 1^ DATE : DUE ^IB— *■ lUliw .1^1 ^yy..^ vm^f^ ^WKHMi^ggE^^ .. f "" r * » I.I GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A. g c^ ^_ One they certainly have. T hey are ex ceptional beings. We have seen already that the hero, witiT" Shakespeare, is a person of high degree or of public importance, and that his actions or sufferings are of an unusual kind. But this is not all. His nature also is exceptional, and generally raises mm 1 1 have given names to the ' spiritual forces ' in Macbeth merely to illustrate the idea, and without any pretension to adequacy. Perhaps, in view of some interpretation of Shakespeare's plays, it will be as well to add that I do not dream of suggesting that in any of his dramas Shakespeare imagined two abstract principles or passions conflicting, and incorporated them in persons ; or that there is any necessity for a reader to define for himself the particu- lar forces which conflict in a given case. 3 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. i. in some respect much above the average level of h umaa ily. This does not— m«an -t-hat— ie- is -a»- Stcentric or a paragon. Shakespeare never drew monstrosities of virtue ; some of his heroes are far from being ' good ' ; and if he drew eccentrics he gave them a subordinate position in the plot. His tragic characters are made of the stuff we find within ourselves and within the persons who sur- round them. But, by an Ji ttensifica,tio n'' of the life which they share with othei^nTtiy SfeTmSEd above them ; and the greatest are raised so far that, if we fully realise all that is implied in their words and actions, we become conscious that in real life we have known scarcely any one resembHng them. ; .Some, like Hamlet and Cleopatra, have genius. Others, like Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, are built on the grand scale ; and desire, passion, or will attains in them a terrible_forcei_^In almost all we observe £~ms^sx;6---^^^^de^^§i;::xa pre- disposition in soE^ particular direction ; 'a total incapacity, in certain circumstances, of resisting the force which draws in this direction ; a fatal tendency to identify th£_ whole being,_wiJtfi,..QJie'^ interest, "object, passion, or habit '"of mind. This, it would seem, is, for Shakespeare, the fundamental tragic trait. It is present in his early heroes, Romeo and Richard H., infatuated men, who other- wise rise comparatively httle above the ordinary level. It is a fatal gift, but it_carries with it a *9ii-*fil-2£^S^5^l ; ^^^ whenThere" is' joined tolT' nobilftyoTmm'ar'or genius, or immense force, we realise the full power and reach of the soul, and the conflict in which it engages acquires that magni- tude which stirs not only sympathy and pity, but admiration, terror, and awe. The easiest way to bring home to oneself the nature of the tragic character is to compare it with a character of another kind. Dramas like CymbeHne§ and the Winter's Tale, which might seem destined^ i LECT. I. THE SUBSTANCE OF TRAGEDY "^ -ii. to end tragically, but actually end otherwise, owe their happy ending largely to the fact that the principal characters fail to reach tragic dimen- sions. ' And, conversely, if these persons were put in the place of the tragic heroes, the dramas in which they appeared would cease to be tragedies. Posthumus would never have acted as Othello did ; 'Othello, on his side, would have met lachimo's challenge with something more than words. If, /like Posthumus, he had remained convinced of his wife's infidelity, he would not have repented her ^ execution ; if, like Leontes, he had come to be- , lieve that by an unjust accusation he had caused her death, he would never have lived on, like Leontes. In the same way the villain lachimo has no touch of tragic greatness. But lago comes nearer to it, and if lagd had slandered Imogen and had supposed his slanders to have led to her death, he certainly would not have turned melancholy and wished to die. One reason why the end of the Merchant of Venice fails to satisfy us is that Shylock is a tragic character, and that we cannot believe in his accepting his defeat and the conditions imposed on him. This was a case where Shakespeare's imagination ran away with him, so that he drew a figure with which the destined pleasant ending would not harmonise. InJ^he cirgiunstanees-where w^.see the hero^aced, ! his tragic t rait^ whichjs also his g rea1;: pq^.Sj i f^ fatal i^ to him. TontneeTtKese circumstances something is<\ reqiiired which a smaller man might have given, but which the hero cannot give. He e rrs, by a ction or omissio n ; and his error, j oimng with othe r cajjsesTKnngfi TYpmvn ruin. T^?. is^|xyay.ssn with Shakespeare. As we have seen, the idea of the j tragttrK^"as a being destroyed simply and solely by external forces is quite alien to him ; and not less so is the idea of the hero as contributing to his destruction only by acts in which we see no 22 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. i. flaw. Biit the fatal imperfection or error, which is never absent, is of different kinds and degrees. At one extreme stands the excess and precipitancy of Romeo, which scarcely, if at all, diminish our regard for him ; at the other the murderous ambition of Richard III. In m ost cases the tragic error involves no conscious breach of right ; in some {e.g. that of Brutus or OthelTo) it is accom- panied by a full conviction afrightj In Hamlet there is a painf-url-trSnscirjusness EHaf duty is being neglected ; in Antony a clear knowledge that the worse of two courses is being pursued ; but Richard and Macbeth are the only heroes who do what they themselves recognise to be villainous. It is important to observe that Shakespeare does admit such heroes,^ and also that he appears to feel, and exerts himself to meet, the difficulty that arises from their admission. The difficulty is that the spectator must desire their defeat and even their destruction ; and yet this desire, and the satisfaction of it, are not tragic feelings. Shakespeare gives to Richard therefore a power which excites astonish- ment, and a courage which extorts admiration. He gives to Macbeth a similar, though less extraordi- nary, greatness, and adds to it a conscience so terrifying in its warnings and so maddening in its reproaches that the spectacle of inward) torment compels ' a horrified sympathy and awe which balance, at the least, the desire for the hero's ruin. The tragic hero with Shakespeare, then, need not be ' good,' though generally he is ' good ' and therefore at once wins sympathy in his error. But it is necessary that he should have so much ; of greatness that in his error and fall we may ' be vividly conscious of the possibilities of human nature.2 Hence, in the first place, a Shakespearean | ^ Aristotle apparently would exclude them. " Richard II. is perhaps an exception, and I must confess that to me he is scarcely a tragic character, and that, if he is nevertheless a LECT. I. THE SUBSTANCE OF TRAGEDY 23 tragedy is never, like some miscalled tragedies, depressing. No one ever closes the book with the feeling that man is a poor mean creature. He may be wretched and he may be awful, but he is not small. His lot may be heart-rending and mysterious, but it is not contemptible. The most confirmed of cynics ceases to be acyxiif while he reads these plays. And with this 'greatness of the tragic hero (which is not always confined to him)' is connected, secondly, what I vejfture to describq' as the centre of thet ragic impr e^on. This central, feeling is the (iiflpression of wilt^ With^ShaJse- ■ speare, at any^'j ai ef the ^ly' aiiSg fear which are \ stirred" by TK'e 'tragic story seem to umtrwlthr-an'd' \ even to merge in, a- profound sense of sadne ss and i iiiystery, which is due' to this impression of waste. ! ' What a piece of work is man,' we cry ; ' so much | more beautiful and so much more terrible than \ we knew ! Why should he be so if this beauty ' and greatness only tortures itself and throws itself away ? ' We seem to have before us a type of the mystery of the whole world, the tragic fact which extends far beyond the limits of tragedy. Everywhere, from the crushed rocks beneath our feet to the soul of man, we see power, intelligence, life and glory, which astound us and seem to call for our worship. And everywhere we see them perishing, devouring one another and destroying , themselves, often with dreadful pain, as though thev came into being for no other end. Tragedy is the typical form of this mystery, because that greatness of soul which it exhibits oppressed, conflicting and destroyed, is the highest existence in our view. IlJ forces the mystery upon us, and it makes us reaUse so vividly the worth of that which is wasted that we cannot possibly seek comfort in the reflection that all is vanity. --' tragic figure, he is so only because his fall from prosperity to adversity is so great. 24 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. i. In this tragic world, then, where individuals, however great they may be and however decisive their actions may appear, are so evidently not the ultimate power, what is this power ? What account can we give of it which will correspond with the imaginative impressions we receive ? This will be our final question. The variety of the answers given to this question shows how difficult it is. And the difficulty has many sources. Most people, even among those who know Shakespeare well and come into real contact with his mind, are inclined to isolate and exaggerate some one aspect of the tragic fact. Some are so much influenced by their own habitual beliefs that they import them more or less into their interpretation of every author who is ' sym- pathetic ' to them. And even where neither of these causes of error appears to operate, another is present from which it is probably impossible wholly to escape. What I mean is this. Any answer we give to the question proposed ought to correspond with, or to represent in terms of the understanding, our imaginative and emotional ex- perience in reading the tragedies. We have, of course, to do our best by study and effort to make this experience true to Shakespeare ; but, that done to the best of our ability, the experience is the matter to be interpreted, and the test by which the interpretation must be tried. But it is extremely hard to make out exactly what this experience is, because, in the very effort to make it out, our reflecting mind, full of everyday ideas, is always tending to transform it by the application of these ideas, and so to elicit a result which, instead of re- presenting the fact, conventionalises it. And the consequence is not only mistaken theories ; it is LECT. I. THE SUBSTANCE OF TRAGEDY 25 that many a man will declare that he feels in\ reading a tragedy what he never really felt, while | he fails to recognise what he actually did feel. It/ is not likely that we shall escape all these dangers in our effort to find an answer to the question regarding the tragic world and the ultimate power in it. It will be agreed, however, first, that this ques- tion must not be answered in ' religious ' language. For although this or that dramatis persona may speak of gods or of God, of evil spirits or of Satan, of heaven and of hell, and although the poet may show us ghosts from another world, these ideas do not materially influence his representation of life, nor are they used to throw light on the mystery ^<. of its tragedy. The Elizabethan drama was almost -■ wholly secular ; and while Shakespeare was writing he practically confined his view to the world of non- theological observation and thought, so that he represents it substantially in one and the same way whether the period of the story is pre-Christian or Christian.^ He looked at this ' secular ' world most intently and seriously ; and he painted it, we can- not but conclude, with entire fidehty, without the wish to enforce an opinion of his own, and, in essentials, without regard to anyone's hopes, fears, or beHefs. His greatness is largely due to this fidelity in a mind of extraordinary power ; and if, as a private person, he had a rehgious faith, his tragic view can hardly have been in contradiction with this faith, but must have been included in it, and supplemented, not aboHshed, by additional ideas. Two statements, next, may at once be made regarding the tragic fact as he represents it : one, that it is and remains to us something piteous, fearful and mysterious ; the other, that the repre- ^ I say substantially ; but the concluding remarks on Hamlet will modify a little the statements above. 26 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. i. sentation of it does not leave us crushed, rebellious or desperate. These statements will be accepted, I believe, by any reader who is in touch with Shake- speare's mind and can observe his own. Indeed such a reader is rather likely to complain that they are painfully obvious.^ But if they are true as well as obvious, something follows from them in regard to our present question. From the first it follows that the ultimate power in the tragic world is not adequately described as a law or order which we can see to be just and benevolent, — as, in that sense, a ' moral order ' : for in that case the spectacle of suffering and waste could not seem to us so fearful and mysterious as it does. And from the second it follows that this ultimate power is not adequately described as a fate, whether malicious and cruel, or blind and in- different to human happiness and goodness : for in. that case the spectacle would leave us desperate or rebellious. Yet one or other of these two ideas will be found to govern most accounts of Shake- speare's tragic view or world. These accounts isolate and exaggerate single aspects, either the aspect of action or that of suffering ; either the close and unbroken connection of charactery will^ dee^ and cg.^trophe^ which, taken alone, shows the individual simply as sinning against, or failing to conform to, the moral order and drawing his just doom on his own head ; or else that pressure of outward forces, that sway of accident, and those blind and agonised struggles, which, taken alone, show him as the mere victim of some power which cares neither for his sins nor for his pain. Such views contradict one another, and no third view can unite them ; but the several aspects from whose isolation and exaggeration they spring are both present in the fact, and a view which would be true to the fact and to the whole of our imaginative experience must in some way combine these aspects. LECT. I. THE SUBSTANCE OF TRAGEDY 27 Let us begin, then, with the idea of fatahty and glance at some of the impressions which give rise to it, without asking at present whether this idea is their natural or fitting expression. There can be no doubt that they do arise and that they ought to arise. If we do not feel at times that the hero is, in some sense, a doomed man ; that he and others drift struggling to destruction like helpless creatures borne on an irresistible flood towards a cataract ; that, faulty as they may be, their fault is far from being the sole or sufficient cause of all they suffer ; and that the power from which they cannot escape is relentless and immov- able, we have failed to receive an essential part of the full tragic effect. The sources of these impressions are various, and I will refer only to a few. One of them is put into words by Shakespeare himself when he makes the player-king in Hamlet say : Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own ; ' their ends ' are the issues or outcomes of our thoughts, and these, says the speaker, are not our own. The tragic world is a world of action, and action is the translation of thought into reality^ We see men and women confidently attempting it. . They strike into the existing order of things in pursuance of their ideas. But what they achieve is not what they intended ; it is terribly unlike it. They understand nothing, we say to our- selves, of the world on which they operate. They fight blindly in the dark, and the power that works through them makes them the instru- ment of a design which is not theirs. They act freely, and yet their gction bin ds them hand and foot. And it makes ^o ditterence whether they meant well or ill. No one could mean better than Brutus, but he contrives misery for his country and death for himself. No one could mean worse 28 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. i. than lago, and he too is caught in the web he .spins' for others. Hamlet, recoiling from the rough &uty of revenge, is pushed into blood-guiltiness he hever dreamed of, and forced at last on the re- venge he could not will. His adversary's murders, and no less his adversary's remorse, bring about the opposite of what they sought. Lear follows an old man's whim, half generous, half selfish ; and in a moment it looses all the powers of dark- ness upon Jiim. / Othello agonises over an empty fiction, 'and, mSaning to execute solemn justice, butchers innocence and strangles love. They understand themselves no better than the world p,bout them. Coriolanus thinks that his heart is iron, and it melts like snow before a fire. Lady Macbeth, who thought she could dash out her own child's brains, finds herself hounded to death by the smell of a stranger's blood. Her husband thinks that to gain a crown he would jump the life to come, and finds that the crown has brought Kim all the horrors of that life. Everywhere, in this tragic world, man's thought, translated into act, is transformed into the opposite of itself. His act, the movement of a few ounces of matter in a moment of time, becomes a monstrous flood which spreads over a kingdom. And _wh.atsoe.ver- he dreams of doing, he achieves fEat_\v:hich-Jie least dreamed- of , his own destruction. P ,* ' All this makes us feel the blindness and help- lessness of man. Yet by itself it would hardly suggest the idea of fate, because it shows man as in some degree, however slight, the cause of his own undoing. But other impressions come to aid it. It is aided by everything which makes us feel that a man is, as we say, terribly unlucky ; and of this there is, even in Shakespeare, not a little.; Here come in some of the accidents already con- sidered, JuHet's waking from her trance a minute too late. Desdemona's loss of her handkerchief LECT. I. THE SUBSTANCE OF TRAGEDY 29 at the only moment when the loss would have mattered, that insignificant delay which cost Cordelia's life. Again, men act, no doubt, in accordance with their characters ; but what is it that brings them just the one problem which is fatal to them and would be easy to another, and sometimes brings it to them just when they are least fitted to face it ? How is it that Othello comes to be the companion of the one man in the world who is at once able enough, brave enough, and vile enough to ensnare him ? By what strange fatality does it happen that Lear has such daughters and Cordelia such sisters ? Even character itself con- tributes to these feelings of fatality. How could men escape, we cry, such vehement propensities as drive Romeo, Antony, Coriolanus, to their doom ? And why is it that a man's virtues help to de- stroy him, and that his weakness or defect is so^ intertwined with everything that is admirable in him that we can hardly separate them even in imagination ? If we find in Shakespeare's tragedies the source of impressions like these, it is important, on the other hand, to notice what we do not find there. We find practically no trace of fatalism in its more i primitive, crude and obvious forms. Nothing, again, makes us think of the actions and sufferings of the persons as somehow arbitrarily fixed before- hand without regard to their feehngs, thoughts and resolutions. Nor, I beheve, are the facts ever so presented that it seems to us as if the supreme fpower, whatever it may be, had a special spite ! against a family or an individual. Neither, lastly, 'do we receive the impression (which, it must be , observed, is not purely fatalistic) that a family, lowing to some hideous crime or impiety in early 1 days, is doomed in later days to continue a career - of portentous calamities and sins. Shakespeare, in- deed, does not appear to have taken much interest 30 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. I. in heredity, or to have attached much importance to it. (See, however, ' heredity ' in the Index.) What, then, is this ' fate ' which the impressions already considered lead us to describe as the ulti- mate power in the tragic world ? It appears to be a mythological expression for the whole system or order, of which the individual characters form an inconsiderable and feeble part ; which seems to determine, far more than they, their native dispositions and their circumstances, and, through these, their action ; which is so vast and complex \ that they can scarcely at all understand it or control its workings ; and which has a nature so definite and fixed that whatever changes take place in it produce other changes inevitably and without regard to men's desires and regrets. And whether this system or order is best called by the name of fate or no,^ it can hardly be denied that it does appear 'as the ultimate-power in the tragic world, and that it has such characteristics as these. But the name ' fate ' may be intended to imply something more — to imply that this order is a blank necessity, totally regardless alike of human weal and of the difference between good and evil or right and wrong. And such an implication many readers would at once reject. They would maintain, on the contrary,, that this order shows characteristics of quite another kind from those which made us give it the name of fate, characteristics which certainly should not induce us 1 1 have raised no objection to the use of the idea of fate, because it occurs so often both in conversation and in books about Shakes- peare's tragedies that I must suppose it to be natural to many readers. Yet I doubt whether it would be so if Greek tragedy had never been written ; and I must in candour confess that to me it does not often occur while I am reading, or when I have just read, a tragedy of Shakespeare. Wordsworth's lines, for example, about poor humanity's afflicted will Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny do not represent the impression I receive ; much less do image; which compare man to a puny creature helpless in the claws of a- bird of prey. The reader should examine himself closely on this matter. LECT. 1. THE SUBSTANCE OF TRAGEDY 31 to forget those others, but which would lead us to ^ describe it as a moralj)rder and its, necessity as a i moral necessity. ^ 5 Let us turn, then, to this idea. It brings into the light those aspects of the tragic fact which the idea of fate throws into the shade. And the argument which leads to it in its simplest form ms be stated briefly thus : ' Whatever may be said ■ of accidents, circumstances and t he like, human action is, af ter all, presented to us as the cent iaLl fa rt-in: tragedy, and also as t hfi rn^'^n raii«^f; nGhp h c atastroph e. ' That necessity which so muc h im- r presses u sls,' after"^. cbiRflv-thfi necessary' (!!0I1: '{ ne cuon of action's and rP"''^T " ' ^"^ *"^''°^ actions we, without even raising a question on the subject, hold the agents responsible ; and the tragedy would disappear for us if we did ngt. The critical action is, in greater or less degree! wrong or bad. The catastrophe is, in the main, the return of this action on the head of the agentj It is an example of justice ; and that order whicn^ present alike within the agents and outside them, infallibly brings it about, is therefore just. The rigour of its justice is terrible, no doubt, for a tragedy is a terrible story ; but, in spite of fear and pity, we ac quiesce, because our sense_fll ii^HcFTs I sattsfiedr*"* " ^ "T^owTif this view is to hold good, the ' justice ' of which it speaks must be at once distinguished from what is called ' poetic justice.' ' Poetic justice ' means that prosperity and adversity are distributed in proportion to the merits of the agents. Such ' poetic justice ' is in flagrant contradiction with the facts of life, and it is absent from Shakespeare's tragic picture of life ; indeed, this very absence is a ground of constant complaint on the part of Dr. Johnson. Apda-avn iraQeiv, ' the doer must suffer ' 32 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. i. : — this we find in Shakespeare. We also find that ivillainy never remains victorious and prosperous . ]at the last. But an assignment of amounts of \/ happiness and misery, an assignment even of life "^and deaf h^Jnjjroporti^n -to merit, we do not find. No one who thinks of Desdemona and CordellaTf' or who remembers that one end awaits Richard HI. and Brutus, Macbeth and Hamlet ; or who asks himself which suffered most, Othello or lago ; will ever accuse Shakespeare of representing the ultimate power as ' poetically ' just. And we must go further. I venture to say that it is a mistake to use at all these terms of justice and merit or desert. And this for two reasons. In the first place, essential as it is to recognise the connection between act and conse- quence, and natural as it may seem in some cases I {^.g. Macbeth's) to say that the doer only gets what /he deserves, yet in very many cases to say this would be quite unnatural. We might not object to the statement that Lear deserved to suffer for his folly, selfishness and tyranny ; but to assert that he deserved to suffer what he did suffer is to do violence not merely to language but to any healthy moral sense. It is, moreover, to obscure the tragic fact that the consequences of action cannot be limited to that which would appear to us to follow ' justly ' from them. And, this being so, when we call the order of the tragic world just, we are either using the word in some vague and unexplained sense, or we are going beyond what is shown us of this order, and are appealing to faith. But, in the second place, the ideas of justice and desert are, it seems to me, in all cases — even those of Richard III. and of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth — untrue to our imaginative experience. When j we are immersed in a tragedy, we feel towards dispositions, actions, and persons such emotions as I attraction and repulsion, pity, wonder, fear, horror. LECT. I. THE SUBSTANCE OF TRAGEDY 33 perhapsUhaired.Lbut we do not Jud^^ J This is a point of view whicH~emerges only whei^ in reading a play, we slip, by our own fault or the dramatist's, from the tragic position, or when, in thinking about the play afterwards, we fall back on our everyday legal and moral notions. But tragedy does not belong, any more than religion belongs, to the sphere of these notions ; neither does the imagina- tive attitude in presence of it. While we are in its world we watch what is, seeing that so itj happened and must have happened, feeling that| it is piteous, dreadful, awful, mysterious, but neither! passing sentence on the agents, nor asking whether! ^ the behaviour of the ultimate power towards themj is just. And, therefore, the use of such language' in attempts to render our imaginative experience in terms of the understanding is, to say the least, full of danger.^ ^ Let us attempt then to re-state the idea that the ' ^ ultimate power in the tragic world is a mora l i order. Let us put aside the ideas of justice and merit, and speak simply of good and evil. Let us understand by these wordg, primarily, moral good I and evil, but also everything else in human beings which we take to be excellent or the reverse. Let us understand the statement that the ultimate\ power or order is ' moral ' to mean that it doesl not show itself indiffei^ent to good and evil, or | equally favourable or unfavourable to both, but! shows itself akin to good and ahen from evil. And J ^ It is dangerous, I think, in reference to all really good tragedies, but I am dealing here only with Shakespeare's. In not a few Greek tragedies it is almost inevitable that we should think of justice and retribution, not only because the dramatis persona often speak of them, but also because there is something casuistical about the tragic problem itself. The poet treats the story in such a way that the question. Is the hero doing right or wrong ? is almost forced upon us. But this is not so with Shakespeare. Julius Caesar is probably the only one of his tragedies in which the question sug- gests itself to us, and this is one of the reasons why uiat play has something of a classic air. Even here, if we ask the question, we have no doubt at all about the answer. 34 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. i. understanding the statement thus, let us ask what grounds it has in the tragic fact as presented by Shakespeare. Here, as in dealing with the grounds on which the idea of fate rests, I choose only two or three ut of many. And the most important is this. In hakespearean tragedy the main source of the con- ulsion which produces suflFering and death is never ood : good contributes to this convulsion only rom its tragic impHcation with its opposite in one nd the same character. The main source, on the contrary, is in every case evil ; and, what is more (though this seems to have been little noticed), it is in almost every case evil in the fullest sense, not mere imperfection but plain moral evil. The ilove of Romeo and Juliet conducts them to ideath only because of the senseless hatred of their nouses. Guilty ambition, seconded by diabolic analice and issuing in murder, opens the action in JMacbeth. lago is the main source of the convul- fsion in Othello ; Goneril, Regan and Edmund in King Lear. Even when this plain moral evil is fnot the obviously prime source within the play, it lies behind it : the situation with which Hamlet has to deal has been formed by adultery and murder. / Julius Caesar is the only tragedy in WfiTch one is even tempted to find an exception to this rule. And the inference is obvious. If it is chiefly evil that violently disturbs the order of the world, this order cannot be friendly to evil or indifferent between evil and good, any more than a body which is convulsed by poison is friendly to it or indifferent to the distinction between poison and food. Again, if we confine our attention to the hero, and to those cases where the gross and palpable evil is not in him but elsewhere, we find that the comparatively innocent hero still shows some \ marked imperfection or defect, — irresolution, pre- LECT. I. THE SUBSTANCE OF TRAGEDY c/ 35 — — — . '. -j^ cipit ancy, pride, credulou sness, excessiv-e-simpikity, exc^ssiye^sceptiHjli^ and .the like. These deiects^r imperTecHons are certainly, in the wide sense of the word, evil, and they con- tribute decisively to the conflict and catastrophe. And the inference is again obvious. The ultimate power which shows itself disturbed by this evil and reacts against it, must have a nature alien to it. Indeed its reaction is so vehement and ' relentless ' that it would seem to be bent on nothing short of good in perfection, and to be ruthless in its demand for it. To this must be added another fact, or another aspect of the same fact. Evil exhibits itself i- everywhere as something negative, barren, weak- ening, destructive^pjincigl^f^d^th:" ItlMl^a^ ^ disunites, an3~Tends to annihilate not only its opposite but itself. That which keeps the evil man ^ prosperous, makes him succeed, even permits , him to exist, is the good in him (I do not mean / only the obviously ' moral ' good). When the evil in him masters the good and has its way, it destroys other people through him, but it also de- stroys him. At the close of the struggle he has vanished, and has left behind him nothing that can stand. What remains is a family, a city, a country, exhausted, pale and feeble, but alive through the principle of good which animates it; and, within it, individuals who, if they have not the brilliance or greatness of the tragic character, still have won our respect and confidence. And the \ inference would seem clear. If existence in an order | depends on good, and if the presence of evil is hostile"" to such existence, the inner being or soul of this order must be akin to good. ^ It is most essential to remember that an evil man is much more than the evil in him.. I may add that in this paragraph I have, for the sake of clearness, considered evil in its most pronounced form ; but what is said would apply, mutatis mutandis, to evil as im- perfection, etc. 36 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. i. These are aspects of the tragic world at least as clearly marked as those which, taken alone, suggest the idea of fate. And the idea which they in their turn, when taken alone, may suggest, is that of an order which does not indeed award ' poetic justice,' but which reacts through the neces- sity of its own ' moral ' nature both against attacks made upon it and against failure to conform to it. Tragedy, on this view, is the exhibition of that convulsive reaction ; and the fact that the spectacle does not leave us rebellious or desperate is due to a more or less distinct perception that the tragic suffering and death arise from collision, not with a fate or blank power, but with a moral power, a power akin to all that we admire and revefe~Tn the characters themselves. This per- ception produces something like a feeling of ac- quiescence in the catastrophe, though it neither leads us to pass judgment on the characters nor diminishes the pity, the fear, and the sense of waste, which their struggle, suffering and fall evoke. And, finally, this view seems quite able to do jus- tice to those aspects of the tragic fact which give rise to the idea of fate. They would appear as various expressions of the fact that the moral order acts not capriciously or Hke a human being, but from the necessity of its nature, or, if we prefer the phrase, by general laws, — a necessity or law which of course knows no exception and is as ' ruthless ' as fate. It is impossible to deny to this view a large" measure of truth. And yet without some amend- ment it can hardly satisfy. For it does not include the whole of the facts, and therefore does not wholly correspond with the impressions they produce. Let it be granted that the system or order which shows itself omnipotent against individuals is, in the sense explained, moral. Still — at any rate for the eye of sight — ^the evil against which it asserts itself, and LECT. I. THE SUBSTANCE OF TRAGEDY 37 the persons whom this evil inhabits, are not really something outside the order, so that they can attack , it or fail to conform to it ; they are within it and a .; part of it. It itself produces them, — produces lago i as well as Desdemona, lago's cruelty as well as lago's courage. It is not poii=innpH, it poisnus ji^^jf | Doubtless it shows by its violent reaction that the ; poison is poison, and that its health lies in good. 1 But one significant fact cannot remove another, and ;' the spectacle we witness scarcely warrants the as- sertion that the order is responsible for the good in Desdemona, but lago for the evil in lago. If we make this assertion we make it on grounds other than the facts as presented in Shakespeare's tragedies. Nor does the idea of a moral order asserting itself against attack or want of conformity answer in , full to our feelings regarding the tragic character. ( We do not think of Hamlet merely as failing to| meet its demand, of Antony as merely sinning! against it, or even of Macbeth as simply attacking} it. What we feel corresponds quite as much to the j idea that they are its parts, expressions, products ; ' that in their defect or evil it is untrue to its soul of goodness, and falls into conflict and collision with' itself ; that, in making them suffer and waste them- selves, it suffers and wastes itself ; and that when, to save its life and regain peace from this intestinal struggle, it casts them out, it has lost a part of its own substance, — a part more dangerous and unquiet, but far more valuable and nearer to its heart, than that which remains, — a Fortinbras, a Malcolm, an Octavius. There is no tragedy in its s^ expulsion of evil : the tragedy is that this involves ^ the w aste of pood . ' ^ "" Thus "We are left at last with an idea showing two sides or aspects which we can neither separate nor reconcile. The whole or order against which the individual part shows itself powerless seems 38 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. i. to be animated by a passion for perfection : we cannot otherwise explain its behaviour towards evil. Yet it appears to engender this evil within itself, and in its effort to overcome and expel it it is agonised with pain, and driven to mutilate, its own' substance and to lose not only evil but price- less good. That this idea, though very different from the idea of a blank fate, is no solution of the riddle of life is obvious ; but why should we expect it to be such a solution } Shakespeare was not attempting to justify tlj;pjiyays of Go^^^ or to show the_univgrse_ as a Divine Comed y. Hewzrs' wfiting tragedy, and "tra^a^" would not be tragedy if it were not a painful mystery. Nor can he be said eve;i to point distinctly, like some \S^riters of tragedy, irf any direction where a solution might lie. We find a few references to gods or God, to the influence of the stars, to another life : some of them certainly, all of them perhaps, merely dramatic — appropriate to the person from whose ^ps they fall. A ghost comes from Purgatory to impart a secret out of the reach of its hearer — who presently meditates on the question whether the sleep of death is dreamless. Accidents once or twice remind us strangely of the words, ' There's a divinity that shapes our ends.' More important are other impressions. Sometimes from the very furnace of affliction a conviction seems borne to us that somehow, if we could see it, this agony counts as nothing against the heroism and love which appear in it and thrill our hearts. Some- times we are driven to cry out that these mighty or heavenly spirits who perish are too great for the little space in which they move, and that they vanish not into nothingness but into freedom. Sometimes from these sources and from others comes a presentiment, formless but haunting and even profound, that all the fury of conflict, with tits waste and woe, is less than half the truth, even LECT. I. THE SUBSTANCE OF TRAGEDY 39 an illusion, ' such stuff as dreams are made oaj But the se faint and scattered intimati ons that tKe tr agic w(5rW7"5eIrig but a fragnient of a whole be- yond our v ision, must needs be "a contradiction aKd no ultimate truth, avail noth ing to interprej: tji e myste ry. We remain confronted with the in-; explicable fact, or the no less inexplicable appear-} ance, of a world travailing for perfection, but; bringing to birth, together with glorious good, an evil which it is able to overcome only by self- torture and self -waste. And this fact or appearance is tragedy.^ P Partly in order not to anticipate later passages, I abstained from treating fully here the question why we feel, at the death of the tragic hero, not only pain but also reconciliation and sometimes even exultation. As I cannot at present make good this defect, I would ask the reader to refer to the word Reconciliation in the Index. See also, in Oxford Lectures on Poetry, Hegel's Theory of Tragedy, especially pp. 90, 91.] LECTURE n ONSTRUCTION IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES lving discussed the substance of a Shake- jar'ean tragedy, we should naturally go on to amine the form. And under this head many ngs might be included ; for example, Shake- jare's methods of characterisation, his language, i versification, the construction of his plots. I :end, however, to speak only of the last of these bjects, which has been somewhat neglected ; ^ d, as construction is a more or less technical itter, I shall add some general remarks on Shake- eare as an artist. As a Shakespearean tragedy represents a conflict lich terminates in a catastrophe, any such tragedy ^ The famous critics of the Romantic Revival seem to have paid ry little attention to this subject. Mr. R. G. Moulton has written interesting book on Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (1885). In rts of my analysis I am much indebted to Gustav Frejrtag's Tech- i des Dramas, a book which deserves to be much better known in it appears to be to Enghshmen interested in the drama. I may d, for the benefit of classical scholars, that Freytag has a chapter Sophocles. The reader of his book will easily distinguish, if he res to, the-places where I follow Freytag, those where I difier from n, and those where I write in independence of him. I may add at in speaking of construction I have thought it best to assume in Y hearers no previous knowledge of the subject ; that I have not tempted to discuss how much of what is said of Shakespeare )uld apply also to other dramatists ; and that I have illusteated )m the tragedies generally, not only from the chosen four. J-ECT. II. CONSTRUCTION 41 may roughly be divided into three parts. The first of these sets forth or expounds the situation/ or state of affairs, out of which the conflict arises ; and it may, therefore, be called the Exposition. The second deals with the definite beginning, the growth and the vicissitudes of the conflict. It forms accordingly the bulk of the play, comprising the Second, Third and Fourth Acts, and usually a part of the First and a part of the Fifth. The final section of the tragedy shows the issue of the conflict in a catastrophe.* The application of this scheme of division is naturally more or less arbitrary. The first part glides into the second, and the second into the third, and there may often be difficulty in drawing the lines between them. But it is still harder to divide spring from summer, and summer from autumn ; and yet spring is spring, and summer summer. The main business of the Exposition, which we will consider first, is to introduce us into a little world of persons ; to show us their positions in life, their circumstances, their relations to one another, and perhaps something of their charac- ters ; and to leave us keenly interested in the question what will come out of this conditio© of things. We are left thus expectant, not merely because some of the persons interest us at once, but also because their situation in regard to one another points to difficulties in the future. This situation is not one of conflict,' but it threatens conflict. For example, we see first the hatred of the Montagues and Capulets ; and then we see ^ This word throughout the lecture bears the sense it has Ijere, which, of course, is hot its usual dramatic sense. ' In the same way a comedy will consist of three parts, showing the ' situation,* the ' complication ' or ' entanglement,' and the dinouement or ' solution.' > It is possible; of course, to open the tragedy with the conflict already begun, but Shakespeare never does so. SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. ii. omeo ready to fall violently in love ; and then ; hear talk of a marriage between Juliet and iris ; but the exposition is not complete, and the nflict has not definitely begun to arise, till, in the 3t scene of the First Act, Romeo the Montague 2S Juliet the Capulet and becomes her slave. The dramatist's chief difficulty in the exposition obvious, and it is illustrated clearly enough in e plays of unpractised writers ; for example, in '.morse, and even in The Cenci. He has to impart the audience a quantity of information about itters of which they generally know nothing and ver know all that is necessary for his pur- se.^ But the process of merely acquiring in- rmation is unpleasant, and the direct imparting it is undramatic. Unless he uses a prologue, erefore, he must conceal from his auditors the ;t that they are being informed, and must tell em what he wants them to know by means lich are interesting on their own account. These ;ans, with Shakespeare, are not only speeches but tions and events. From the very beginning of e play, though the conflict has not arisen, things e happening and being done which in some gree arrest, startle, and excite ; and in a few 3nes we have mastered the situation of affairs thout perceiving the dramatist's designs upon . Not that this is always so with Shakespeare. the opening scene of his early Comedy of Errors, d in the opening speech of Richard III., we feel at the speakers are addressing us ; and in the cond scene of the Tempest (for Shakespeare grew last rather negligent of technique) the purpose When the subject comes from English history, and especially en the play forms one of a series, some knowledge may be as- ned. So in Richard III. Even in Richard II. not a little know- ge seems to be assumed, and this fact points to the existence of a Dular play on the earlier part of Richard's reign. Such a play sts, though it is not clear that it is a genuine Elizabethan work. J the Jahrbuch d. deutschen Sh.-geseUschaft for 1899. i-ECT. n. CONSTRUCTION 43 of Prospero's long explanation to Miranda is pal- pable. But in general Shakespeare's expositions are masterpieces.^ His usual plan in tragedy is to begin with a short scene, or part of a scene, either full of Hfe and stir, or in some other way arresting. Then, having secured a hearing, he proceeds to con- versations at a lower pitch, accompanied by little action but conveying much information. For ex- ample, Romeo arid Juliet opens with a street-fight, Julius Caesar and Coriolanus with a crowd in commotion ; and when this excitement has had its effect on the audience, there follow quiet speeches, in which the cause of the excitement, and so a great part, of the situation, are disclosed. In Hamlet and Macbeth this scheme is employed with great boldness. In Hamlet the first appearance oh the Ghost occurs at the foi-tieth line, and with such effect that Shakespeare can afford to intro- duce at once a conversation which explains part of the state of affairs at Elsinore ; and the second appearance, having again increased the tension, is followed by a long scene, which contains no action but introduces almost all the dramatis personae and adds the information left wanting. The opening of Macbeth is even more remarkable, for there is probably no parallel to its first scene, where the senses and imagination are assaulted by a storm of thunder and supernatural alarm. This scene is only eleven lines long, but its influence is so great that the next can safely be occupied with a mere report of Macbeth's battles, — a narrative which would have won much less attention if it had opened the play. ''■ This is one of several reasons why many people enjoy reading him, who, on the whole, dislike reading plays. A main cause of this very general dislike is that the reader has not a lively enough imagination to carry him with pleasure through the exposition, though in the theatre, where his imagination is helped, he would experience little difficulty. SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. n. When Shakespeare begins his exposition thus he nerally at first makes people talk about the ro, but keeps the hero himself for some time t of sight, so that we await his entrance with riosity, and sometimes with anxiety. On the her hand, if the play opens with a quiet con- rsation, this is usually brief, and then at once e hero enters and takes action of some de- led kind. Nothing, for example, can be less :e the beginning of Macbeth than that of King ar. The tone is pitched so low that the con- rsation between Kent, Gloster, and Edmund is itten in prose. But at the thirty-fourth line it is oken off by the entrance of Lear and his court, d without delay the King proceeds to his fatal /ision of the kingdom. This tragedy illustrates another practice of Shake- eare's. King Lear has a secondary plot, that lich concerns Gloster and his two sons. To ike the beginning^ of this plot_^uite- clear, and rnark It off„irom. theTnain action, Shakespeare :es it a separate exposition. The great scene the division of Britain and the rejection of rdelia and Kent is followed by the second ;ne, in which Gloster and his two sons appear )ne, and the beginning of Edmund's design is iclosed. In Hamlet, though the plot is single, are is a little group of characters possessing a rtain independent interest, — Polonius, his son, d his daughter ; and so the third scene is de- ted wholly to them. And again, in Othello, since )derigo is to occupy a peculiar position almost roughout the action, he is introduced at once, )ne with lago, and his position is explained before 2 other characters are allowed to appear. But why should lago open the play ? Or, if this ;ms too presumptuous a question, let us put it in ; form. What is the effect of his opening the play .? it that we receive at the very outset a strong MCT. n. CONSTRUCTION 45 impression of the force which is to prove fatal to the hero's happiness, so that, when we see the hero himself, the shadow of fate already rests upon him. And an effect of this kind is to be noticed in other tragedies. We are made conscious at once of some power which is to influence the whole action to the hero's undoing. In Macbeth we see and hear the Witches, in Hamlet the Ghost. In the first scene of Julius Caesar and of Coriolanus those qualities of the crowd are vividly shown which render hopeless the enterprise of the one hero and wreck the ambition of the other. It is the same with the hatred between the rival houses in Romeo and Juliet, and with Antony's infatuated passion. We realise them at the end of the first page, and are almost ready to regard the hero as doomed. Often, again, at one or more points dur- ing the exposition, this feeling is reinforced by some expression that has an ominous effect. The first words we hear from Macbeth, ' So foul and fair a day I have not seen,' echo, though he knows it not, the last words we heard from the Witches, ' Fair is foul, and foul is fair.' Romeo, on his way with his friends to the banquet, where he is to see Juliet for the first time, tells Mercutio that he has had a dream. What the dream was we never learn, for Mercutio does not care to know, and breaks into his speech about Queen Mab ; but we can guess its nature from Romeo's last speech in the scene : My mind misgives Some consequence yet hanging in the stars Shall latterly begin his fearful date With this night's revels. When Brabantio, forced to acquiesce in his daugh- ter's stolen marriage, turns, as he leaves the council- chamber, to Othello, with the warning. Look to her. Moor, if thou hast eyes to see ; She has deceived her father, and may thee. SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. n. is warning, and no less Othello's answer, ' My life •on her faith,' make our hearts sink. The whole the coming story seems to be prefigured in itony's muttered words (i. ii. 120) : These strong Eg57ptian fetters I must break. Or lose myself in dotage ; d, again, in Hamlet's weary sigh, following so on on the passionate resolution stirred by the jssage of the Ghost : The time is out of joint. Oh cursed spite. That ever I was bom to set it right. These words occur at a point (the end of the rst Act) which may be held to fall either within 2 exposition or beyond it. I should take the mer view, though such questions, as we saw at Lrting, can hardly be decided with certainty, le dimensions of this first section of a tragedy pend on a variety of gauses, of which the chief ;ms to be the comparative simplicity or com- ;xity of the situation from which the conflict ses. Where this is simple the exposition is Drt, as in Julius Caesar and Macbeth. Where it complicated the exposition requires more space, in Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and King Lear. completion is generally marked in the mind the reader by a feeUng that the action it con- ns is for the moment complete but has left a )blem. The lovers have met, but their families ; at deadly enmity ; the hero seems at the height success, but has admitted the thought of mur- ring his sovereign ; the old king has divided his igdom between two hypocrital daughters, and has ected his true child ; the hero has acknowledged lacred duty of revenge, but is weary of life : and ask. What will come of this ? Sometimes, I may d, a certain time is supposed to elapse before ; events which answer our question make their LECT. II. CONSTRUCTION 47 appearance and the conflict begins ; in King Lear, for instance, about a fortnight ; in Hamlet about two months. We come now to the conflict itself. And here one or two preliminary remarks are necessary. In the first place, it must be remembered that our point of view in examining the construction of a play will not always coincide with that which we occupy in thinking of its whole dramatic effect. For example, that struggle in the hero's soul which sometimes accompanies the outward struggle is of the highest importance for the total effect of a tragedy ; but it is not always necessary or desirable to consider it when the question is merely one of construction. And this is natural. The play is meant primarily for the theatre ; and theatrically the outward conflict, with its influence on the for- tunes of the hero, is the aspect which first catches, if it does not engross, attention. For the average playgoer of every period the main interest of Hamlet has probably lain in the vicissitudes of his long duel with the King ; and the question, one may almost say, has been which will first kill the other. And so, from the point of view of construction, the fact that Hamlet spares the King when he finds him praying, is, from its effect on the hero's fortunes, of great moment ; but the cause of the fact, which lies within Hamlet's character, is not so. In the second place we must be prepared to find that, as the plays vary so much, no single way of regarding the conflict will answer precisely to the construction of all ; that it sometimes appears possible to look at the construction of a tragedy in two quite different ways, and that it is material to find the best of the two ; and that thus, in any given instance, it is necessary first to define the opposing sides in the conflict. I will give one 48 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. n. or two examples. In some tragedSes, as we saw in our first lecture, the opposing forces can, for practical purposes, be identified with opposing persons or groups. So it is in Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. But it is not always so. The love of Othello may be said to contend with another force, as the love of Romeo does ; but Othello cannot be said to contend with lago as Romeo contends with the representatives of the hatred of the houses, or as Macbeth contends with Mal- colm and Macduff. Again, in Macbeth the hero, however much influenced by others, supplies the main driving power of the action ; but in King Lear he does not. Possibly, therefore, the conflict, and with it the construction, may best be regarded from different points of view in these two plays, in spite of the fact that the hero is the central figure in each. But if we do not observe this we shall attempt to find the same scheme in both, and shall either be driven to some unnatural view or to a sceptical despair of perceiving any principle of construction at all. With these warnings, I turn to the question whether we can trace any distinct method or methods by which Shakespeare represents the rise and development of the conflict. (i) One at least is obvious, and indeed it is followed not merely during the conflict but from beginning to end of the play. There are, of course, in the action certain places where the tension in the minds of the audience becomes extreme. We shall consider these presently. But, in j;ddition^ there is, all through the tragedy, a constant^alt ernation of risesand_ialls in this tension or^in the emotioS pilKKofthe work, a regular sequence of more excit- ing and less exciting sections. Some kind of varizr- tion of pitch is to be found, of course, in all drama, for it rests on the elementary facts that relief must be given after emotional strain, and that contrast LECT. II. CONSTRUCTION 49 is required to bring out the full force of an effect. But a good drama of our own time shows nothing approaching to the reetdarityt with which in the plays of Shakespeare and of his contemporaries the principle is a4)plied And the main cause of this difference lies simply in a change of theatrical arrangements. In Shakespeare's theatre, as there was no scenery, scene followed scene with scarcely any pause ; and so the readiest, though not the only, way to vary the emotional pitch was to in- terpose a whole scene where the tension was low between scenes where it was high. In our theatres there is a great deal of scenery, which takes a long time to set and change ; and therefore the number of scenes is small, and the variations of tension have to be provided within the scenes, and still more by the pauses between them. With Shake- speare there are, of course, in any long scene varia- tions of tension, but the scenes are numerous and, compared with ours, usually short, and variety is given principally by their difference in pitch. It may further be observed that, in a portion of the play which is relatively unexciting, the scenes of lower tension may be as long as those of higher ; while in a portion of the play which is specially exciting the scenes of low tension are shorter, often much shorter, than the others. The reader may verify this statement by comparing the First or the Fourth Act in most of the tragedies with the Third ; for, speaking very roughly, we may say that the First and Fourth are relatively quiet acts> the Third highly critical. A good example is the Third Act of King Lear, where the scenes of high tension (ii., iv., vi.) are respectively 95, 186 and 122 Hues in length, while those of low tension (i., iii., v.) are respective^ 55, 26 and 26 lines long. Scene vii., the last of thej Act, is, I may add, a very exciting scene, though it follows scene vi., and therefore tne tone of scene vi. is greatly lowered during its final thirty lines. SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. ii. (2) If we turn now from the differences of tension the sequence- of events within the conflict, we all find the principle of alternation at work again another and a quite independent way. Let us • the sake of brevity call the two sides in the nfiict A and B. Now, usually, as we shall see esently, through a considerable part of the play, rhaps the first half, the cause of A is, on the whole, vancing ; and through the remaining part it is ;iring, while that of B advances in turn. But, derlying this broad movement, all through the nfiict we shall find a regular alternation of smaller vances and retirals ; first A seeming to win some aund, and then the counter-action of B being own. And since we always more or less decidedly efer A to B or B to A, the result of this oscillating )vement is a constant a lternation of hope and ir, or rather of a mixed state pred'omiiiSirtiy4Tope- rind a mixed state predominantly apprehensive. 1 example will make the point clear. In Hamlet e conflict begins with the hero's feigning to be sane from disappointment in love, and we are own his immediate success in convincing Polonius. it us call this an advance of A. The next scene ows the King's great uneasiness about Hamlet's jlancholy, and his scepticism as to Polonius's planation of its cause : advance of B. Hamlet ftipletely baffles Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, 10 have been sent to discover his secret, and he ranges for the test of the play-scene : advance A. But immediately before the play-scene his liloquy on suicide fills us with misgiving ; and his )rds to Opheha, overheard, so convince the King at love is not the cause of his nephew's strange haviour, that he determines to get rid of him by nding him to England : advance of B. The play- ;ne proves a complete success : decided advance A. Directly after it Hamlet spares the King at ayer, and in an interview with his mother un- LECT. II. CONSTRUCTION 51 wittingly kills Polonius, and so gives his enemy a perfect excuse for sending him away (to be executed) : decided advance of B. I need not pursue the illustration further. This oscillating movement can be traced without difficulty in any of the tragedies, though less distinctly in one or two of the earliest. (3) Though this movement continues right up to the catastrophe, its efifect does not disguise that much broader effect to which I have already alluded, and which we have now to study. In all the trage- dies, though more clearly in some than in others, one side is distinctly felt to be on the whole ad- vancing up to a certain point in the conflict, and then to be on the whole declining before the re- action of the other. There is therefore felt to be a critical point in the action, which proves also to be a t urning point . It is critical sometimes in the sense that, until it is reached, the conflict is not, so to speak, clenched ; one of the two sets of forces might subside, or a reconciliation might somehow be effected ; while, as soon as it is reached, we feel this can no longer be. It is critical also because the advancing force has apparently asserted itself victoriously, gaining, if not all it could wish, still a very substantial advantage ; whereas really it is on the point of turning downward towards its fall. This Crisis, as a rule, comes somewhere near the middle of the play ; and where it is well marked it has the effect, as to construction, of dividing the play into five parts instead of three ; these parts showing (l) a situation not yet one of conflict, (2) the rise and development of the conflict, in which A or B advances on the whole till it reaches (3) the Crisis, on which follows (4) the dechne of A or B towards (5) the Catastrophe. And it will be seen that the fourth and fifth parts repeat, though with a reversal of direction as regards A or B, the move- ment of the second and third, working towards the SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. ii. tastrophe as the second and third worked towards s crisis. In developing, illustrating and qualifying this itement, it will be best to begin with the tiragedies which the movement is most clear and simple, lese are Julius Caesar and Macbeth. In the -mer the fortunes of the conspiracy rise with ;issitudes up to the crisis of the assassination II. i.) ; they then sink with vicissitudes to the tastrophe, where Brutus and Cassius perish. In e latter, Macbeth, hurrying, in spite of much in- ird resistance, to the murder of Duncan, attains e crown, the upward movement being extra- dinarily rapid, and the crisis arriving early : his use then turns slowly downward, and soon stens to ruin. In both these tragedies the sim- city of the constructional effect, it should be ticed, depends in part on the fact that the con- ading forces may quite naturally be identified th certain persons, and partly again on the :t tlia.t the defeat of one side is the victory of e other. Octavius and Antony, Malcolm and icduff, are left standing ovef the bodies of their 3S. This is not so in Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, cause here, although the hero perishes, the side posed to him, being- the more faulty or evil, nnot be allowed to triumph when he falls. Other- se the type of construction is the same. The rtunes of Romeo and Juliet rise and culminate their marriage (ll. vi.), and then begin to de- ne before the opposition of their houses, which, ied by accidents, produces a catastrophe,, but is ereupon converted into a remorseful reconcilia- )n. Hamlet's cause reaches its zeinth in the ccess of the play-scene (in., ii.). Thereafter the action makes way, and he perishes through the ot of the King and Laertes. But they are not owed to survive their success. LECT. 11. CONSTRUCTION 53 The aanstruction in the remaining JRoman plays follows the same plan, but in both plays (as in Richard II. and Richard III.) it suffers from the intractable nature of the historical material, and is also influenced by other causes. In Coriolamis the hero reaches the topmost point of success when he is named consul (11. iii.), and the rest of the play shows Jiis decline and fall^ but in this de- cline he attains again for a time extraordinary power, and triumphs, in a sense, over his original adversary, though he succumbs to another. In^ Antony and Cleopatra the advance of the hero's cause depends on his freeing himself from the heroine, and he appears to have succeeded when he becomes reconciled to Octavius and marries Octavia (iii. ii.) ; but he returns to Egypt and is gradually driven to his death which involves that of the heroine. There remain two of the greatest of the tragedies, and in both of them a certain difficulty will be felt. King Lear alone among these plays has a distinct double action. Besides this, i t is impossible, , I t hink, from the point of view of construction, to r egard the iiero as the leading figure. U . we .^- t empt t o do so. we must either n nd th e^crisis in tii e first Act (for after it liar's c niifgft iTrlrifwn- \^ ^rcl|, ^nd this IS absurd ^ r else we must, say that the usual movement is present but its direction is reversed, the hero's cause first sinking to the lowest poiat (in the Storm^scenes) and then rising again. But this also will not do ; for though his fortunes may be said to rise again for a time, they rise only to fall once more to a catastrophe. The truth is, that after the First Act, which is really filled by the exposition, Lear suffers but hardly initiates action at all ; and the right way to look at the matter, from the point of view of construction, is to regard Goneril, Regan and Edmund as the leading characters. It is they who, in the conflict, initiate 54 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. ii. action. Their fortune mounts to the crisis, where the old King is driven out into the storm and loses his reason, and where Gloster is blinded and expelled from his home (iii. vi. and vii.). Then the counter-action begins to gather force, and their cause to decline ; and, although they win the battle, they are involved in the catastrophe which they bring on Cordelia and Lear. Thus we may still find in King Lear the usual scheme of an ascending and a descending movement of one side in the conflict. The case of Othello is more peculiar. In its whole constructional effect Othello differs from the other tragedies, and the cause of this difference is not hard to find, and will be mentioned presently. But how, after it is found, are we to define the principle of the construction ? On the one hand the usual method seems to show itself. Othello's fortune certainly advances in the early part of the play, and it may be considered to reach its topmost point in the exquisite joy of his reunion with Desdemona in Cyprus ; while soon afterwards it begins to turn, and then falls to the catastrophe. But the topmost point thus comes very early (ii. i.), and, moreover, is but faintly marked ; indeed, it is scarcely felt as a crisis at all. And, what is still more significant, though reached by conflict, it is not reached by conflict with the force which after- wards destroys it. lago, in the early scenes, is indeed shown to cherish a design against Othello, but it is not lago against whom he has at first to assert himself, but Brabantio ; and lago does not even begin to poison his mind until the third scene of the Third Act. Can we then, on the other hand, following the precedent of King Lear, and remembering the probable chronological juxtaposition of the two plays, regard lago as the leading figure from the point of view of construction ? This might at first LECT. II. CONSTRUCTION 55 seem the right view ; for it is the case that Othello resembles Kin^ Lear in having a hero more act eH' ugon_t han act ing, or rather a hero driven to HcV by"being acte'a~upon. But then, if lago is taken as the leading figure, the usual mode of construc- tion is plainly abandoned, for there will nowhere be a crisis followed by a descending movement, lago's cause advances, at first slowly and quietly, then rapidly, but it does nothing but advance until the catastrophe swallows his dupe and him together. And this way of regarding the action does positive violence, I think, to our natural impressions of the earlier part of the play. I think, therefore, that the usual scheme is so far followed that the drama represents first the rise of the hero, and then his fall. But, however this question may be decided, one striking peculiarity remains, and is the cause of the unique effect of Othello. In the first half of the play the main con- flict is merely incubating ; then it bursts into life, and goes storming, without intermission or change of direction, to its close. Now, in this peculiarity Othello is quite unlike the other tragedies ; and ii\ the consequent effect, which is that the second half* of the drama is immeasurably more exciting than, the first, it is approached only by Antony and Cleopatra. I shall therefore reserve it for separate consideration, though in proceeding to speak further of Shakespeare's treatment of the tragic conflict I shall have to mention some devices which are used in Othello as well as in the other tragedies. 3 Shakespeare's general plan, we have seen, is to show one set of forces advancing, in secret or open opposition to the other, to some decisive success, and then driven downward to defeat by the re- . action it provokes. And the advantages of this plan, as seen in such a typical instance as Julius 56 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. ii. Caesar, are manifest. It conveys the movement of the conflict to the mind with great clearness and force. It helps to produce the impression that in his decline and fall the doer's act is returning on his own head. And, finally, as used by Shakespeare, it makes the first half of the play intensely interesting and dramatic. Action which effects a striking change in an existing situation is naturally watched with keen interest ; and this we find in some of these tragedies. And the spectacle, which others ex- hibit, of a purpose forming itself and, in spite of outward obstacles and often of inward resist- ance, forcing its way onward to a happy con- summation or a terrible deed, not only gives scope to that psychological subtlety in which Shakespeare is scarcely rivalled, but is also dramatic in the highest degree. Bxit when the crisis has been reached there come difficulties and dangers, which, if we put Shake- speare for the moment out of mind, are easily seen. An immediate and crushing counter-action would, no doubt, sustain the interest, but it would precipi- tate the catastrophe, and leave a feeling that there has been too long a preparation for a final effect so brief. What seems necessary is a momentary pauge, followed by a counte r^acti on which mounts at first slowly, and afterwards, as it gathers force, with quickening speed. And yet the result of this arrangement, it would seem, must be, for a time, a decided slackening of tension. Nor is this the only difficulty. The persons who represent the counter-action and now take the lead, are Hkely to be comparatively unfamiliar, and therefore un- welcome, to the audience ; and, even if famiUar, they are almost sure to be at first, if not permanently, less interesting than those who figured in the ascending movement, and on whom attention has been fixed. Possibly, too, their necessary promi- LECT. II. CONSTRUCTION 57 nence may crowd the hero into the back-ground. Hence the point of danger in this method of construction seems to lie in that section -of the play which follows, the crisis and has not yet approached the catastrophe. And this section will usually comprise the Fourth Act, together, in some oases, with a part of the Third and a part of the Fifth. Shakespeare was so masterly a playwright, and had so wonderful a power of giving life to un- promising subjects, that to a large extent he was able to surmount this difficulty. But illustrations of it are easily to be found in his tragedies, and it is not always surmounted. In almost all of them we are conscious of that momentary pause in the action, though, as we shall see, it does not generally occur immediulMy after the crisis. Sometimes he allows himself to be driven to keep the hero off the stage for a long time while the counter-action is rising ; Macbeth, Hamlet and Coriolanus during about 450 lines, Lear for nearly 500, Romeo for about 550 (it matters less here, because Juliet is quite as important as Romeo). How can a drama in which this happens compete, in its latter part, with Othello ? And again, how can deliberations between Octavius, Antony and Lepidus, between Malcolm and Macduff, between the Capulets, between Laertes and the King, keep us at the pitch, I do not say of the crisis, but even of the action which led up to it ? Good critics — ^writers who have criticised Shakespeare's dramas from within, instead of applying to them some standard ready-made by themselves or derived from dramas and a theatre of quite other kinds than his — have held that some of his greatest tragedies fall off in the Fourth Act, and that one or two never wholly recover themselves. And I believe most readers would find, if they examined their impressions, that to their minds fulitis Caesar, Hamlet, King Lear 58 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. ii. and Macbeth have all a tendency to ' drag ' in this section of the play, and that the first and perhaps also the last of these four fail even in the catastrophe to reach the height of the greatest scenes that have preceded the Fourth Act. I will not ask how far these impressions are justified. The difl&culties in question will become clearer and will gain in interest if we look rather at the means which have been employed to meet them, and which certainly have in part, at least, overcome them. (fl) The first of these is always strikingly effective, sometimes marvellously so. The crisis in which the ascending force reaches its zenith is followed quickly, or even without the slightest pause, by a reverse or counter-blow not less emphatic and in some cases even more exciting. And the effect is to make us feel a sudden and tragic change in the direction of the movement, which, after as- cending more or less gradually, now turns sharply downward. To the assassination of Caesar (iii. i.) succeeds the scene in the Forum (in. ii.), where Antony carries the people away in a storm of sympathy with the dead man and of fury against the conspirators. We have hardly realised their victory before we are forced to anticipate their ultimate defeat and to take the liveliest interest in their chief antagonist. In Hamlet the thrilling success of the play-scene (in. ii.) is met and undone at once by the counter-stroke of Hamlet's failure to take vengeance (iii. iii.) and his misfortune in kiUing Polonius (in. iv.). Coriolanus has no sooner gained the consulship than he is excited to frenzy by the tribunes and driven into exile. On the marriage of Romeo follows immediately the brawl which leads to Mercutio's death and the banishment of the hero (ii. vi. and iii. i.). In all of these instances excepting that of Hamlet the scene of the counter- stroke is at least as exciting as that of the crisis, perhaps more so. Most people, if asked to mention LECT. II. CONSTRUCTION 59 the scene that occupies the centre of the action in Jidius Caesar and in Coriolanus, would mention the scenes of Antony's speech and Coriolanus' banish- ment. Thus that apparently necessary pause in the action does not, in any of these dramas, come directly after the crisis. It is deferred ; and in several cases it is by various devices deferred for some little time ; e.g. in Romeo and Juliet till the hero has left Verona, and Juliet is told that her marriage with Paris is to take place ' next Thursday morn ' (end of Act in.) ; in Macbeth till the murder of Duncan has been followed by that of Banquo, and this by the banquet-scene. Hence the point where this pause occurs is very rarely reached before the end of the Third Act. (b) Either at this point, or in the scene of the counter-stroke which precedes it, we sometimes find j a peculiar effect. (We are reminded of the state of " affairs in which the conflict beganT) The opening of Julius Caesar warned us that, among a people so '- unstable and so easily led this way or that, the enterprise of Brutus is hopeless ; the days of the RepubUc are done. In the scene of Antony's speech we see this same people again. At the be- ginning of Antony and Cleopatra the hero is about to leave Cleopatra for Rome. Where the play takes, as it were, a fresh start after the crisis, he leaves Octavia for Egypt. In Hamlet, when the counter-stroke succeeds to the crisis, the Ghost, who had appeared in the opening scenes, reappears. Macbeth's action in the first part of the tragedy followed on the prediction of the Witches who remised him the throne. When the action moves orward again after the banquet-scene the Witches ppear once more, and make thoje fresh promises /hich again drive him forward, (This repetition of a first effect produces a fat eful feeling . It gener- ally also stimulates expectation as to the new movement about to begin. In Macbeth the scene 6o SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. n. is, in addition, of the greatest consequence from the purely thea/trical point of view. (c) It has yet another function. It shows, in Mac- beth's furious irj-itabihty and purposeless savagery, the intemajkjggtiQjj which accompanies the outward decHnJroThis fortunes. And in other plays .also the exhibition of such inner changes forms a means by which interest is sustained in this difficult section of a tragedy. There is no point in Hamlet where we feel more hopeless than that where the hero, having missed his chance, moralises over his irreso- lution and determines to cherish now only thoughts of blood, and then departs without an effort for England. One purpose, again, of the quarrel-scene between Brutus and Cassius (iv. iii.), as also of the appearance of Caesar's ghost just afterwards, is to indicate the inward changes. Otherwise the introduction of this famous and wonderful scene can hardly be defended on strictly dramatic grounds. No one would consent to part with it, and it is in- valuable in sustaining interest during the progress of the reaction, but it is an episode, the removal of which would not affect the actual sequence of events (unless we may hold that, but for the emotion caused by the quarrel and reconciliation, Cassius would not have allowed Brutus to overcome his objection to the fatal policy of offering battle at Philippi). (d) The quarrel-scene illustrates yet another favourite expedient. In this section of a tragedy Shakespeare often a££eaJs_ie_j3i_ei»Q!tion ,diffiwjent from any of those excited in^the first half of the play, ana~sb provides novelty and~generally also"VeTief. - As a rule this new emotion is pathetic ; and the pathos is not terrible or lacerating; ' but, even if painful, is accompanied by the sense of beauty and by an outflow of admiration or affection, which come with an inexpressible sweetness after the ten- sion of the crisis and the first counter-stroke. So LECT. II. CONSTRUCTION 6i it is with the reconciliation of Brutus and Cassius, and the arrival of the news of Portia's death. The most famous instance of this effect is the scene (iv. vii.) where Lear wakes up from sleep and finds Cordelia bending over him, perhaps the most tear- compelling passage in literature. Another is the short scene (iv. ii.) in which the talk of Lady Mac- duff and her little boy is interrupted by the entrance of the murderers, a passage of touching beauty and heroism. Another is the introduction of Ophelia in her madness (twice in different parts of iv. v.), where the effect, though intensely pathetic, is beautiful and moving rather than harrowing ; and this effect is repeated in a softer tone in the de- scription of Ophelia's death (end of Act iv.). And in Othello the passage where pathos of this kind reaches its height is certainly that where Desde- mona and Fmilia converse, and the willow-song is sung, on the eve of the catastrophe (iv. iii.). {e) Sometimes, again, in this section of a tragedy we find humorous or semi-humorous passages. On the whole such passages occur most frequently in the early or middle part of the play, which naturally grows more sombre as it nears the close ; but their occasional introduction in the Fourth Act, and even later, affords variety and relief, and also heightens by contrast the tragic feelings. For example, there is a touch of comedy in the conversation of Lady Macduff with her little boy. Purely and delight- fully humorous are the talk and behaviour of the servants in that admirable scene where Coriolanus comes disguised in mean apparel to the house of Aufidius (iv. v.) ; of a more mingled kind is the effect of the discussion between Menenius and the senti- nels in V. ii, ; and in the very middle of the supreme scene between the hero,. Volumnia and Virgilia, little Marcus makes us burst out laughing (v. iii.). A little before the catastrophe in Hamlet comes the grave-digger passage, a passage ever welcome, but 62 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. ii. of a length which could hardly be defended on purely dramatic grounds ; and still later, occupying some hundred and twenty lines of the very last scene, we have the chatter of Osric with Hamlet's mockery of it. But the acme of audacity is reached in Antony and Cleopatra, where, quite close to the end, the old countryman who brings the asps to Cleopatra discourses on the virtues and vices of the worm, and where his last words, ' Yes, forsooth : I wish you joy o' the worm,' are followed, without the inter- vention of a line, by the glorious speech, Give me my robe ; put on my crown ; I have Immortal longings in me. . . . In some of the instances of pathos or humour just mentioned we have been brought to that part of the play which immediately precedes, or even contains, the catastrophe. And I will add at once three remarks which refer specially to this final section of a tragedy. (/) In several plays Shakespeare makes here an appeal which in his own time was evidently powerful : he introduces scenes of battle. This is the case in Richard III., Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. Richard, Brutus and Cassius, and Macbeth die on the battle- field. Even if his use of this expedient were not enough to show that battle-scenes were extremely popular in the EHzabethan theatre, we know it from other sources. It is a curious comment on the futility of our spectacular effects that in our theatre these scenes, in which we strive after an ' illusion ' of which the EUzabethans never dreamt, produce comparatively httle excitement, and to many spectators are even somewhat distasteful.^ And although some of them thrill the imagination of the reader, they rarely, I think, quite satisfy the 1 The end of Richard III. is perhaps an exception. LECT. 11. CONSTRUCTION 63 dramatic sense. Perhaps this is partly because a battle is not the most favourable place for the ex- hibition of tragic character ; and it is worth notice that Brutus, Cassius and Antony do not die fighting, but commit suicide after defeat. The actual battle, however, does make us feel the greatness of Antony, and still more does it help us to regard Richard and Macbeth in their day of doom as heroes, and to mingle sympathy and enthusiastic admiration with desire for their defeat. (g) In some of the tragedies, again, an expedient is used, which Freytag has pointed out (though he sometimes finds it, I think, where it is not really employed). Shakespeare very rarely makes the least attempt to surprise by his catastrophes. They are felt to be inevitable, though the precise way in which they will be brought about is not, of course, foreseen. Occasionally, however, where we dread the catastrophe because we love the hero, a momeQ | occurs, just before it, in which a gleam of false^hope hghts up the dark ening scene ; and, though we know it is false, Traifecfs~TIs7 Far the most remarkable example is to be found in the final Act of King Lear. Here the victory of Edgar and the deaths of Edmund and the two sisters have almost made us forget the design on the lives of Lear and Cordelia.) Even when we are reminded of it there is still room for hope that Edgar, who rushes away to the prison, will be in time to save them ; and, however familiar we are with the play, the sudden entrance of Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms, comes on us with a shock. Much slighter, but quite perceptible, is the effect of Antony's victory on land, and of the last outburst of pride and joy as he and Cleopatra meet (iv. viii.). The frank apology of Hamlet to Laertes, their reconciliation, and a delusive appear- ance of quiet and even confident firmness in the tone of the hero's conversation with Horatio, almost 64 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. ii. blind us to our better knowledge, and give to the catastrophe an added pain. Those in the audience who are ignorant of Macbeth, and who take more simply than most readers now can do the mysterious prophecies concerning Birnam Wood and the man not born of woman, feel, I imagine, just before the catastrophe, a false fear that the hero may yet escape. {h) I will mention only one point more. In some cases Shakespeare spreads the catastrophe out, so to speak, over a considerable space, and thus shortens that difficult section which has to show the development of the counter-action. This is possible only where there is, besides the hero, some character who engages our interest in the highest degree, and with whose fate his own is bound up. Thus the murder of Desdemona is separated by some distance from the death of Othello. The most impressive scene in Macbeth, after that of Duncan's murder, is the sleep-walking scene ; and it may truly, if not literally, be said to show the catastrophe of Lady Macbeth. Yet it is the opening scene of the Fifth Act, and a number of scenes in which Macbeth's fate is still approaching intervene before the close. Finally, in Antony and Cleopatra the heroine equals the hero in importance, and here the death of Antony actu- ally occurs in the Fourth Act, and the whole of the Fifth is devoted to Cleopatra, Let us now turn to Othello and consider briefly its exceptional scheme of construction. The ad- vantage of this scheme is obvious. In the second half of the tragedy there is no danger of ' dragging,' of any awkward pause, any undue lowering of pitch, any need of scenes which, however fine, are more or less episodic. The tension is extreme, and it is relaxed only for brief intervals to permit of some slight relief. From the moment when lago begins LECT. 11. CONSTRUCTION 65 to poison Othello's mind we hold our breath. Othello from this point onwards is certainly the most exciting of Shakespeare's plays, unless possibly Macbeth in its first part may be held to rival it. And Othello is such a masterpiece that we are scarcely conscious of any disadvantage attending its method of construction, and may even wonder why Shakespeare employed this method — ^at any rate in its purity— in this tragedy alone. Nor is it any answer to say that it would not elsewhere have suited his material. Even if this be granted, how was it that he only once chose a story to which this method was appropriate } To his eyes, or for his instinct, there must have been some disadvan- tage in it. And dangers in it are in fact not hard to see. In the first place, where the conflict develops very slowly, or, as in Othello, remains in a state of incubation during the first part of a tragedy, that part cannot produce the tension proper to the cor- responding part of a tragedy like Macbeth, and may even run the risk of being somewhat fiat. This seems obvious, and it is none the less true because in Othello the difficulty is overcome. We may even see that in Othello a difficulty was felt. The First Act is full of stir, but it is so because Shakespeare has filled it with a kind of preliminary conflict be- tween the hero and Brabantio, — a personage who then vanishes from the stage. The long first scene of the Second Act is largely occupied with mere conversations, artfully drawn out to dimensions which can scarcely be considered essential to the" plot. These expedients are fully justified by their success, and nothing more consummate in their way is to be found in Shakespeare than Othello's speech to the Senate and lago's two talks with Roderigo. But the fact that Shakespeare can make a plan succeed does not show that the plan is, abstractedly considered, a good plan ; and if the scheme of con- 66 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. ii. struction in Othello were placed, in the shape of a mere outline, before a play-wright ignorant of the actual drama, he would certainly, I beUeve, feel grave misgivings about the first half of the play. There is a second difficulty in the scheme. When the middle of the tragedy is reached, the audience is not what it was at the beginning. It has been attending for some time, and has been through a certain amount of agitation. The ex- treme tension which now arises may therefore easily tire and displease it, all the more if the matter which produces the tension is very painful, if the catastrophe is not less so, and if the limits of the remainder of the play (not to speak of any other consideration) permit of very little relief. It is one thing to watch the scene of Duncan's assassi- nation at the beginning of the Second Act, and another thing to watch the murder of Desdemona at the beginning of the Fifth. If Shakespeare has wholly avoided this difficulty in Othello, it is by treating the first part of the play in such a manner rthat the sympathies excited are predominantly jjpleasant and therefore not exhausting. The scene in the Council Chamber, and the scene of the re- union at Cyprus, give almost unmixed happiness to the audience ; however repulsive lago may be, the humour of his guUing of Roderigo is agreeable ; even the scene of Cassio's intoxication is not, on the whole, painful. Here we come to the great temptation-scene, where the conflict emerges into life (hi. iii.), with nerves unshaken and feelings much fresher than those with which we greet the banquet- scene in Macbeth (in. iv.), or the first of the storm- scenes in King Lear (iii. i.). The same skill may be observed in Antony and Cleopatra, where, as we saw, the second half of the tragedy is the more exciting. But, again, the success due to Shake- speare's skill does not show that the scheme of construction is free from a characteristic danger; LECT. 11. CONSTRUCTION 67 and on the whole it would appear to be best fitted for a plot which, though it may cause painful agitation as it nears the end, actually ends with a solution instead of a catastrophe. But for Shakespeare's scanty use of this method there may have been a deeper, though probably an unconscious, reason. The method suits a plot based on in trigu e. It may produce intense sus- pense. It may stir most powerfully the tragic feel- ings of pity and fear. And it throws into relief that aspect of tragedy in which great or beautiful lives seem caught in the net of fate. But it is apt to be less favourable to the exhibition of character, to show less clearly how an act returns upon the agent, and to produce less strongly the impression of an inexorable order working in the passions and actions of men, and labouring through their agony and waste tn-vyajdc; gnnH Now, it seems clear from his tragedies that what appealed most to Shake- speare was this latter class of effects. I do not ask here whether Othello fails to produce, in the same degree as the other tragedies, these impressions ; but Shakespeare's preference for them may have been one reason why he habitually chose a scheme of construction which produces in the final Acts but^ little of strained suspense, and presents the catas- | trophe as a thing foreseen and following with a psychological and rnoraPhecessity on the action exhibited in the first part of the tragedy. 4 The more minute details of construction cannot well be examined here, and I will not pursue the subject further. But its discussion suggests a question which will have occurred to some of my hearers. They may have asked themselves whether I have not used the words ' art ' and ' device ' and ' expedient ' and ' method ' too boldly, as though 68 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. ii. Shakespeare were a conscious artist, and not rather a writer who constructed in obedience to an extra- ordinary dramatic instinct, as he composed mainly by inspiration. And a brief explanation on this head will enable me to allude to a few more points, chiefly of construction, which are not too technical for a lecture. In speaking, for convenience, of devices and expedients, I did not intend to imply that Shake- speare always deliberately aimed at the effects which he produced. But no artist always does this, and I see no reason to doubt that Shakespeare often did it, or to suppose that his method of con- structing and composing differed, except in degree, from that of the most ' conscious ' of artists. The antithesis of art and inspiration, though not mean- ingless, is often most misleading. Inspiration is surely not incompatible with considerate workman- ship. The two may be severed, but they need not be so, and where a genuinely poetic result is beiag produced they cannot be so. The glow of a first conception must in some measure survive or re- kindle itself in the work of planning and executing ; and what is called a technical expedient may ' come ' to a man with as sudden a glory as a splendid image. Verse may be easy and unpremeditated, as Milton says his was, and yet many a word in it may be changed many a time, and the last change be more 'inspired' than the original. The difference be- tween poets in these matters is no doubt consider- able, and sometimes important, but it can only be a difference of less and more. It is probable that Shakespeare often wrote fluently, far Jonson (a better authority than Heminge and Condell) says so ; and for anything we can tell he may also have constructed with unusual readiness. But we know that he revised and re-wrote (for instance in Love's Labour's Lost and Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet) ; it is almost impossible that he can have worked LECT. II. SHAKESPEARE AS ARTIST 69 out the plots of his best plays without much re- flection and many experiments ; and it appears to me scarcely more possible to mistake the signs of deliberate care in some of his famous speeches. If a 'conscious artist' means one who holds his work away from him, scrutinises and judges it, and, if need be, alters it and alters it till it comes as near satisfying him as he can make it, I am sure that Shakespeare frequently employed such conscious art. If it means, again, an artist who consciously aims at the efifects he produces, what ground have we for doubting that he frequently employed such art, though probably less frequently than a good many other poets .'' But perhaps the notion of a 'conscious artist' in drama is that of one who studies the theory of the art, and even writes with an eye to its ' rules.' And we know it was long a favourite idea that Shakespeare was totally ignorant of the ' rules.' Yet this is quite incredible. The rules referred to, such as they were, were not buried in Aristotle's Greek nor even hidden away in Italian treatises. He could find pretty well all of them in a book so current and famous as Sidney's Defence of Poetry. Even if we suppose that he refused to open this book (which is most unlikely), how could he possibly remain ignorant of the rules in a society of actors and dramatists and amateurs who must have been incessantly talking about plays and play- writing, and some of whom were ardent champions of the rules and full of contempt for the lawlessness of the popular drama } Who can doubt that at the Mermaid Shakespeare heard from Jonson's lips much more censure of his offences against ' art ' than Jonson ever confided to Drummond or to paper ? And is it not most probable that those battles between the two which Fuller imagines, were waged often on the field of dramatic criticism 1 If Shakeapeare, then, broke some of the ' rules,' it 70 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. ii. was not from ignorance. Probably he refused, on grounds of art itself, to trouble himself with rules derived from forms of drama long extinct. And it is not unlikely that he was little interested in theory as such, and more than likely that he was im- patient of pedantic distinctions between ' pastoral- comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individ- able or poem unhmited.' But that would not prove that he never reflected on his art, or could not explain, if he cared to, what he thought would be good general rules for the drama of his own time. He could give advice about play-acting. Why should we suppose that he could not give advice about play-making } Still Shakespeare, though in some considerable degree a ' conscious ' artist, frequently sins against art ; and if his sins were not due to ignorance or inspiration, they must be accounted for otherwise. Neither can there be much doubt about their causes (for they have more than one cause), as we shall see if we take some illustrations of the defects themselves. Among these are not to be reckoned certain things which in dramas written at the present time would rightly be counted defects. There are, for example, in most EHzabethan plays pecuharities of construction which would injure a play written for our stage but were perfectly well-fitted for that very different stage, — a stage on which again some of the best-constructed plays of our time would appear absurdly faulty. Or take the charge of improbability. Shakespeare certainly has improbabilities which are defects. They are most frequent in the winding up of his comedies (and how many comedies are there in the world which end satisfactorily ?). But his improbabilities are rarely psychological, and in some of his plays there occurs one kind of im- LECT. II. SHAKESPEARE AS ARTIST 71 probability, which is no defect, but simply a characteristic which has lost in our day much of its former attraction. I mean that the story, in most of the comedies and many of the tragedies of the Elizabethans, was intended to be strange and wonderful. These plays were tales of romance dramatised, and they were meant in part to satisfy the same love of wonder to which the romancies appealed. It is no defect in the Arthurian legends, or the old French romances, or many of the stories in the Decameron, that they are improbable : it is a virtue. To criticise them as though they were of the same species as a realistic novel, is, we should all say, merely stupid. Is it anything else to criti- cise in the same way Twelfth Night or As You Like It } And so, even when the difference between comedy and tragedy is allowed for, the improb- ability of the opening of King Lear, so often cen- sured, is no defect. It is not out of character, it is only extremely unusual and strange. But it was meant to be so ; like the marriage of the black Othello with Desdemona, the Venetian senator's daughter. To come then to real defects, {a) one may be found in places where Shakespeare strings tOr gether a number of scenes, some very short, in which the dramatis personae are frequently changed ; as though a novelist were to tell his story in a succession of short chapters, in which he flitted from one group of his characters to another. This method shows itself here and there in the pure tragedies {e.g. in the last Act of Macbeth), , but it appears most decidedly where the historical material was undramatic, as in the middle part of_ Antony and Cleopatra. It was made possible by the absence of scenery, and doubtless Shake- speare used it because it was the easiest way out of a difficulty. But, considered abstractedly, it is a defective method, and, even as used by 72 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. ii, Shakespeare, it sometimes reminds us of the merely narrative arrangement common in plays before his time. (&) We may take next the introduction or ex- cessive development of matter neither required by ihejikit nor essential to the extabi tion of c hargg^er : e.g. the references in Hamlet to theatre -quarrels of the day, and the length of the player's speech and also of Hamlet's directions to him respecting the delivery of the lines to be inserted in the ' Murder of Gonzago.' All this was probably of great interest at the time when Hamlet was first presented ; most of it we should be very sorry to miss ; some of it seems to bring us close to Shake- speare himself ; but who can defend it from the point of view of constructive art ? (c) Again, we may look at Shakespeare's solilo- quies. It will be agreed that in listening to a soliloquy we ought never to feel that we are being addressed. And in this respect, as in others, many of the soliloquies are master-pieces. But certainly in some the purpose of giving information lies bare, and in one or two the actor openly speaks to the audience. Such faults are found chiefly in the early plays, though there is a glaring instance at the end of Belarius's speech in Cymbeline (in. iii. 99 ff.), and even in the mature tragedies something of this kind may be traced. Let any- one compare, for example, Edmund's soliloquy in King Lear, i. ii., ' This is the excellent foppery of the world ' with Edgar's in ii. iii., and he will be conscious that in the latter the purpose of giving information is imperfectly disguised.^ ' I do not discuss the general question of the justification of solilo- quy, for it concerns not Shakespeare only, but practically all drama- tists down to quite recent times. I will only remark tiiat neither soliloquy nor the use of verse can be condemned on the mere ground that they are ' unnatural.' No dramatic language is ' natural ' ; dl dramatic language is idealised. So that the question as to soliloquy must be one as to the degree of idealisation and the balance of LECT. II. SHAKESPEARE AS ARTIST 73 (d) It cannot be denied, further, that in many of Shakespeare's plays, if not in all, there are inconsistencies and contradictions, and also that questions are suggested to the reader which it is impossible for him to answer with certainty. For instance, some of the indications of the lapse of time between Othello's marriage and the events of the later Acts flatly contradict one another ; and it is impossible to make out whether Hamlet was at Court or at the University when his father was murdered. But it should be noticed that often what seems a defect of this latter kind is not really a defect. For instance, the difficulty about Hamlet's age (even if it cannot be resolved by the text alone) did not exist for Shakespeare's audience. The moment Burbage entered it must have been clear, whether the hero was twenty or thirty. And in like manner many questions of dramatic interpretation which trouble us could never have arisen when the plays were first produced, for the actor would be instructed by the author how to render any critical and possibly ambiguous passage. (I have heard it remarked, and the remark I believe is just, that Shakespeare seems to have relied on such instruc- tions less than most of his contemporaries ; one fact out of several which might be adduced to prove that he did not regard his plays as mere stage- dramas of the moment.) {e) To turn to another field, the early critics were no doubt often provokingly wrong when they cen- sured the language of particular passages in Shake- speare as obscure, inflated, tasteless, or ' pestered with metaphors ' ; but they were surely right in the general statement that his language often shows these faults. And this is a subject which later criticism has never fairly faced and examined. advantages and disadvantages. (Since this lecture was written I have read some remarks on Shakespeare's soliloquies to much the same effect by E. Kilian in the Jahrbueh d. deutschen Shakespeare- Gesellschaft for 1903.) 74 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. ii. (/) Once more, to say that Shakespeare makes all his serious characters talk alike,^ and that he constantly speaks through the mouths of his dra- matis personae without regard to their individual natures, would be to exaggerate absurdly ; but it is true that in his earlier plays these faults are traceable in some degree, and even in Hamlet there are striking passages where dramatic appropriate- ness is sacrificed to some other object. When Laertes speaks the lines beginning, For nature, crescent, does not grow alone In thews and bulk, who can help feeling that Shakespeare is speaking rather than Laertes ? Or when the player-king discourses for more than twenty lines on the instability of human purpose, and when King Claudius afterwards insists to Laertes on the same subject at almost equal length, who does not see that Shakespeare, thinking but little of dramatic fitness, wishes in part simply to write poetry, and partly to impress on the audience thoughts which will help them to understand, not the player-king nor yet King Claudius, but Hamlet himself, who, on his side, — and here quite in character — has already enlarged on the same topic in the most famous of his soliloquies ? [g) Lastly, like nearly all the dramatists of his day and of times much earlier, Shakespeare was fond of 'gnomic' passages, and introduces them probably not more freely than his readers like, but more freely than, I suppose, a good play-wright now would care to do. These passages, it may be ob- served, are frequently rhymed {e.g. Othello, i. iii. 201 ff., II. i. 149 ff.). Sometimes they were printed in early editions with inverted commas round them, ^ If by this we mean that these characters all speak what is recognisably Shakespeare's style, of course it is true ; but it is no accusation. Nor does it follow that they all speak alike ; and in fact they are far from doing so. LECT. 11. SHAKESPEARE AS ARTIST 75 as are in the First Quarto Polonius's 'few precepts' to Laertes. K now we ask whence defects hke these arose, we shall observe that some of them are shared by the majority of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and abound in the dramas immediately preceding his time. They are characteristics of an art still un- developed, and, no doubt, were not perceived to be defects. But though it is quite probable that in regard to one or two kinds of imperfection (such as the superabundance of 'gnomic' passages) Shake- speare himself erred thus ignorantly, it is very un- likely that in most cases he did so, unless in the first years of his career of authorship. And certainly he never can have thought it artistic to leave in- consistencies, obscurities, or passages of bombast in his work. Most of the defects in his writings must be due to indifference or want of care. I do not say that all were so. In regard, for example, to his occasional bombast and other errors of diction, it seems hardly doubtful that his perception was sometimes at fault, and that, though he used the English language like no one else, he had not that sureness of taste in words which has been shown by some much smaller writers. And it seems not unlikely that here he suffered from his comparative want of ' learning,' — that is, of familiarity with the great writers of antiquity. But nine-tenths of his defects are not, I believe, the errors of an inspired genius, ignorant of art, but the sins of a great but negligent artist. He was often, no doubt, over-worked and pressed for time. He knew that the immense majority of his audience were incapable of distinguishing between rough and finished work. He often felt the de- gradation of having to live by pleasing them. Probably in hours of depression he was quite indifferent to fame, and perhaps in another mood the whole business of play-writing seemed to him 76 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lecx. ii. a little thing. None of these thoughts and feelings influenced him when his subject had caught hold of him. To imagine that then he ' winged his roving flight ' for ' gain ' or ' glory,' or wrote from any cause on earth but the necessity of expression, with all its pains and raptures, is mere folly. He was possessed : his mind must have been in a white heat : he worked, no doubt, with the furia of Michael Angelo. And if he did not succeed at once — and how can even he have always done so ? — he returned to the matter again and again. Such things as the scenes of Duncan's murder or Othello's temptation, such speeches as those of the Duke to Claudio and of Claudio to his sister about death, were not composed in an hour and tossed aside ; and if they have defects, they have not what Shakespeare thought defects. Nor is it possible that his astonishingly individual conceptions of character can have been struck out at a heat : prolonged and repeated thought must have gone to them. But of small inconsistencies in the plot he was often quite careless. He seems to have finished off some of his comedies with a hasty and even contemptuous indifference, as if it mat- tered nothing how the people got married, or even who married whom, so long as enough were married somehow. And often, when he came to parts of his scheme that were necessary but not interesting to him, he wrote with a slack hand, like a craftsman of genius who knows that his natural gift and acquired skill will turn out some- thing more than good enough for his audience : wrote probably fluently but certainly negUgently, sometimes only half saying what he meant, and sometimes saying the opposite, and now and then, when passion was required, lapsing into bombast because he knew he must heighten his style but would not take the trouble to inflame his imagi- nation. It may truly be said that what injures such LECT. II. SHAKESPEARE AS ARTIST 77 passages is not inspiration, but the want of it. But, as they are mostly passages where no poet could expect to be inspired, it is even more true to say that here Shakespeare lacked the conscience of the artist who is determined to make everything as good as he can. Such poets as Milton, Pope, Tennyson, habitually show this conscience. They left probably scarcely anything that they felt they could improve. No one could dream of saying that of Shakespeare. Hence comes what is perhaps the chief difficulty in interpreting his works. Where his power or art is fully exerted it really does resemble that of nature. It organises and vitalises its product from the centre outward to the minutest markings on the surface, so that when you turn upon it the most searching light you can command, when you dissect it and apply to it the test of a microscope, still you find in it nothing formless, general or vague, but everywhere structure, character, indi- viduality. In this his great things, which seem to come whenever they are wanted, have no com- panions in literature except the few greatest things in Dante ; and it is a fatal error to allow his care- lessness elsewhere to make one doubt whether here one is not seeking more than can be found. It is very possible to look for subtlety in the wrong place in Shakespeare, but in the right places it is not possible to find too much. But then this characteristic, which is one source of his endless attraction, is also a source of perplexity. For in these parts of his plays which show him neither in his most intense nor in his most negligent mood, we are often unable to decide whether something that seems inconsistent, indistinct, feeble, exag- gerated, is really so, or whether it was definitely meant to be as it is, and has an intention which we ought to be able to divine ; whether, for example, we have before us some unusual trait \.^Z SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. ii. in character, some abnormal movement of mind, only surprising to us because we understand so very much less of human nature than Shakespeare did, or whether he wanted to get his work done and made a slip, or in using an old play adopted hastily something that would not square with his own conception, or even refused to trouble himself with minutiae which we notice only because we study him, but which nobody ever notices in a stage performance. We know well enough what Shakespeare is doing when at the end of Measure for Measure he marries Isabella to the Duke — and a scandalous proceeding it is ; but who can ever feel sure that the doubts which vex him as to some not unimportant points in Hamlet are due to his own want of eyesight or to Shakespeare's want of care ? LECTURE m SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGIC PERIOD— HAMLET Before we come to-day to Hamlet, the first of our four tragedies, a few remarks must be made on their probable place in Shakespeare's literary career. But I shall say no more than seems necessary for our restricted purpose, and, therefore, for the most part shall merely be stating widely accepted results of investigation, without going into the evidence on which they rest.^ ' It may be convenient to some readers for the purposes of this book to have by them a hst of Shakespeare's plays, arranged in periods. No such hst, of course, can command general assent, but the following (which does not throughout represent my own views) would perhaps meet with as Uttle objection from scholars as any other. For some purposes the Third and Fourth Periods are better considered to be one. Within each period the so-called Comedies, Histories and Tragedies are respectively grouped together ; and for this reason, as weU as for others, the order within each period does not profess to be chronological (e.g. it is not impUed that the Comedy of Errors preceded i Henry VI. or Titus Andronicus). Where Shakespeare's authorship of any considerable part of a play is questioned, widely or by specially good authority, the name of the play is printed in itaUcs. Ftrst Period (to 1595 ?). — Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Midsummer-Night's Dream ; I Henry VI., 2 Henry VI., 3 Henry VI., Richard III., Richard II. ; Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet. Second Period (to 1602 ?). — ^Merchant of Venice, All's Well (better in Third Period ?), Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado, As You Like It, Merry Wives, Twelfth Night ; King John, I Henry IV., 2 Henry IV., Henry V. ; Julius Caesar, Hamlet. So SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. hi. Shakespeare's tragedies fall into two distinct groups, and these groups are separated by a con- siderable interval. He wrote tragedy — pure, like Romeo and Juliet ; historical, like Richard HI. — in the early years of his career of authorship, when he was also writing such comedies as Love's Labour's Lost and the Midsummer-Night's Dream. Then came a time, lasting some half- dozen years, during which he composed the most mature and humorous of his English History plays (the plays with Falstaff in them), and the best of his romantic comedies (the plays with Beatrice and Jaques and Viola in them). There are no tragedies belonging to these half-dozen years, nor any dramas approaching tragedy. But now, from about 1601 to about 1608, comes tragedy after tragedy — Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Timon of Athens, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus ; and their companions are plays which cannot indeed be called tragedies, but certainly are not comedies in the same sense as As You Like It or the Tempest. These seven years, accordingly, might, without much risk of misunderstanding, be called Shakespeare's tragic period.^ And after it he wrote Third Period (to 1608 ?). — Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure ; Othello, King Lear, Timon of Athens, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus. Fourth Period.— ^Pericles, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, Tempest, Two Noble Kinsmen, Henry VIII. 1 The reader will observe that this ' laragic period ' would not exactly coincide with the ' Third Period ' of the division given in the last note. For Julius Caesar and Hamlet fall in the Second Period, not the Third ; and I may add that, as Pericles was entered at Stationers' Hall in 1608 and pubUshed in 1609, it ought strictly to be put in the Third Period — ^not the Fourth. The truth is that Julius Caesar and Hamlet are given to the Second Period mainly on the ground of style; while a Fourth Period is admitted, not mainly on that ground (for there is no great difEerence here between Antony and Coriolanus on the one side and Cymbeline and the Tempest on the other), but because of a difference in substance and spirit. If a Fourth Period were admitted on grounds of form, it ought to begin with Aniony and Cleopatra. LECT. III. THE TRAGIC PERIOD 8l no more tragedies, but chiefly romances more serious and less sunny than As You Like It, but not much less serene. The existence of this distinct tragic period, of a time when the dramatist seems to have been occupied almost exclusively with deep and painful problems, has naturally helped to suggest the idea that the 'man' also, in these years of middle age, from thirty-seven to forty-four, was heavily burdened in spirit ; that Shakespeare turned to tragedy not merely for change, or because he felt it to be the greatest form of drama and felt him- self equal to it, but also because the world had come to look dark and terrible to him ; and even that the raiUngs of Thersites and the maledictions of Timon express his own contempt and hatred for mankind. Discussion of this large and difficult subject, however, is not necessary to the dramatic appreciation of any of his works, and I shall say nothing of it here, but shall pass on at once to draw attention to certain stages and changes which may be observed within the tragic period. For this purpose too it is needless to raise any question as to the respective chronological posi- tions of Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. What is important is also generally admitted : that Julius Caesar and Hamlet precede these plays, and that Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus follow them.^ If we consider the tragedies first on the side of their substance, we find at once an obvious difference between the first two and the remainder. Both Brutus and Hamlet are highly intellectual by nature and reflective by habit. Both may even be called, in a popular sense, philosophic ; Brutus may be called so in a stricter senses Each, 1 1 should go perhaps too fax if I said that it is generally admitted that Timon of Athens also precedes the two Roman tragedies ; but its precedence seems to me so nearly certain that I assume it in what follows. 82 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. hi. being also a ' good ' man, shows accordingly, when placed in critical circumstances, a sensitive and almost painful anxiety to do right. And though they fail — of course in quite different ways — ^to deal successively with these circumstances, the failure in each case is connected „rathfir._ffiith^J;heir intellectual nature and reflective ha bit than with any yielding to passion-^HenaTtFiFnaine^ tragedy of thought,' which Schlegel gave to Hamlei^~mSy be given also, as in effect it has been by Professor Dowden, to Julius Caesar. The later heroes, on the other hand, Othello, Lear, Timon, Macbeth, Antony, Coriolanus, ha ve, one and a ll, passionate natures, and, speaking rougnly, we may attribute theTragic failure in each of these cases to passion. Part ly for this reason, the later playsare wilder and stormier than the first^t woT We see a greater m ass of hurhan nature In^comiaQtioB^nd we see Shake -~" speare's own powers exhibited on a larger scale. Finally, examination would show that, in all these respects, the first tragedy, Julius Caesar, is further removed from the later type than is the second, Hamlet. These two earlier works are both distinguished from most of the succeeding tragedies in another though a kindred respect. Moral evil js not so intently scrutinised or so fully JlqplayRdigJth^^tTr In Julius Caesar, we may almost say, everybody means well. In Hamlet, though we have a villain, he is a small one. The murder which gives rise to the action lies outside the play, and the centre of attention within the play Hes in the hero's efforts to do his duty. It seems clear that Shakespeare's interest, since the early days when under Marlowe's influence he wrote Richard III., has not been directed to the more extreme or terrible forms of evil. But in the tragedies that follow Hamlet the presence of this interest is equally clear. In lago, in the ' bad ' people of LECT. HI. THE TRAGIC PERIOD 83 King Lear, even in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, human nature assumes shapes which inspire not mere sadness or repulsion but horror and dismay. If in Timon no, monstrous cruelty is done, we still watch ingratitude and selfishness so blank that they provoke a loathing we never felt for Claudius ; and in this play and King Lear we can fancy that we hear at times the saeva indignatio, if not the despair, of Swift. This prevalence of abnormal or appalling forms of evil, side by side with vehement passion, is another reason why the convulsion depicted in these tragedies seems to come from a deeper source, and to be vaster in extent, than the conflict in the two earlier plays. And here again Julius Caesar is further removed than Hamlet from Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. But in regard to this second point of difference a reservation must be made, on which I will speak a little more fully, because, unlike the matter hitherto touched on, its necessity seems hardly to have been recognised. All of the later tragedies may be called tragedies of passion, but not all of them display these extreme forms of evil. Neither of the last two does so. Antony and Coriolanus are, from one point of view, victims of passion; but the passion that ruins Antony also exalts him, he touches the infinite in it ; and the pride and self-will of Coriolanus, though terrible in bulk, are scarcely so in quality ; there is nothing base in them, and the huge creature whom they destroy is a noble, even a lovable, being. Nor does either of these dramas, though the earlier depicts a corrupt civilisation, include even among the minor characters anyone who can be called villainous or horrible. Consider, finally, the impression left on us at the close of each. It is remarkable that this impression, though very strong, can scarcely be called purely tragic ; or, if we call it so, at least the J 84 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. in. feeling of reconciliation which mingles with the obviously tragic emotions is here exceptionally well-marked. The death of Antony, it will be remembered, comes before the opening of the Fifth Act. The death of Cleopatra, which closes the play, is greeted by the reader with sympathy and admiration, even with exultation at the thought that she has foiled Octavius ; and these feelings are heightened by the deaths of Charmian and Iras, heroically faithful to their mistress, as Emilia was to hers. Uii Coriolanus the feeling of recon- ciliation is even stronger. The whole interest towards the close has been concentrated on the question whether the hero will persist in his revengeful design of storming and burning his native city, or whether better feelings will at last overpower his resentment and pride. THe stands on the edge of a crime beside which, at least in ^ outward dreadfulness, the slaughter of an individual — looks insignificant.^ And when, at the sound of his mother's voice and the sight of his wife and child, nature asserts itself and he gives way, although we know he will lose his life, we care little for that : he has saved his soul. Our relief, and our exultation in the power of goodness, are so great that the actual catastrophe which follows and mingles sadness with these feelings leaves them but Httle diminished, and as we close the book we feel, it seems to me, more as we do at the close of Cymbeline than as we do at the close of Othello. In saying this I do not in the least mean to criticise Coriolanus. It is a much nobler play as it stands than it would have been if Shakespeare had made the hero persist, and we had seen him amid the flaming ruins of Rome, awaking suddenly to the enormity of his deed and taking vengeance on himself ; but that would surely have been an ending more strictly tragic than the close of Shakespeare's play. Whether this close was simply due to his LECT. HI. THE TRAGIC PERIOD 85 unwillingness to contradict his historical authority on a point of such magnitude we need not ask. In any case Coriolanus is, in more than an outward sense, the end of his tragic period. It marks the transition to his latest works, in which the powers of repentance and forgiveness charm to rest the tempest raised by error and guilt. If we turn now from the substance of the tragedies to their style and versification, we find on the whole a corresponding - difference between the earlier and the later. The usual assignment of Julius Caesar, and even of Hamlet, to the end of Shakespeare's Second Period — the period of Henry V. — is based mainly, we saw, on con- siderations of form. The general style of the serious parts of the last plays from English history is one of full, noble, and comparatively equable eloquence. The ' honey-tongued ' sweetness and beauty of Shakespeare's early writing, as seen in Romeo and Juliet or the Midsummer-Night's Dream, remain ; the ease and lucidity remain ; but there is an accession of force and weight. We find no great change from this style when we come to Julius Caesar,^ which may be taken to mark its culmination. At this point in Shakespeare's literary development he reaches, if the phrase may be pardoned, a limited perfection. Neither thought on the one side, nor expression on the other, seems to have any tendency to outrun or contend with its fellow. We receive an impression of easy mastery and complete harmony, but not so strong an impression of inner power bursting into outer life. Shakespeare's style is perhaps no- where else so free from defects, and yet almost every one of his subsequent plays contains writing which is greater. To speak familiarly, ^That play, however, is distinguished, I think, by a deliberate endeavour after a dignified and unadorned simplicity, — a Roman simplicity perhaps. 86 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. in. we feel in Julius Caesar that, although not even Shakespeare could better the style he has chosen, he has not let himself go. In reading Hamlet we have no such feeling, and in many parts (for there is in the writing of Hamlet an unusual variety ^) we are conscious of a decided change. The style in these parts is more rapid and vehement, less equable and less simple ; and there is a change of the same kind in the versification. But on the whole the type is the same as in Julius Caesar, and the resemblance of the two plays is decidedly more marked than the difference. If Hamlet's soliloquies, considered simply as compositions, show a great change from Jaques's speech, ' All the world's a stage,' and even from the soliloquies of Brutus, yet Hamlet (for instance in the hero's interview with his mother) is hke Julius Caesar, and unlike the later tragedies, in the fullness of its eloquence, and passages like the following belong quite definitely to the style of the Second Period : Mar. It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated. The bird of dawning singeth all night long ; And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad ; The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strike. No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm. So haUow'd and so gracious is the time. Hor. So have I heard and do in part believe it. But, look, the mom, in russet mantle clad. Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hiU. This bewitching music is heard again in Hamlet's farewell to Horatio : If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart. Absent thee from felicity awhile. And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain. To teU my story. 1 It is quite probable that this may arise in part from the fact, which seems hardly doubtful, that the tragedy was revised, and in places re-written, some Uttle time after its first composition. LECT. III. THE TRAGIC PERIOD 87 But after Hamlet this music is heard no more. It is followed by a music vaster and deeper, but not the same. The changes observable in Hamlet are afterwards, and gradually, so greatly -developed that Shake- speare's style and versification at last become almost new things. It is extremely difficult to, illustrate this briefly in a manner to which no just exception can be taken, for it is almost impossible to'ftnd in two plays passages bearing a sufficiently close re- semblance to one another in occasion and sentiment. But I will venture to put by the first of those quota- tions from Hamlet this from Macbeth : Dun. This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air Nimbly and sweetly recooMnends itself Unto our gentle senses. Ban. This guest of summer. The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here : no jutty, frieze. Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle ; Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed. The air is delicate ; and by the second quotation from Hamlet this from Antony and Cleopatra : The miserable change now at my end Lament nor sorrow at ; but please your thoughts In feeding them with those my former fortunes Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o' the world. The noblest ; and do now not basely die. Not cowardly put off my helmet to My countrjmian, — a Roman by a Roman Valiantly vanquish'd. Now my spirit is going ; I can no more. It would be almost an impertinence to point out in detail how greatly these two passages, and especially the second, differ in effect from those in Hamlet, written perhaps five or six years earher. The versification, by the time we reach Antony and Cleopatra, has assumed a new 88 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. hi. type ; and although this change would appear comparatively slight in a typical passage from Othello or even from King Lear, its approach through these plays to Timon and Macbeth can easily be traced. It is accompanied by a similar change in diction and construction. After Hamlet the style, in the more emotional passages, is heightened. It becomes grander, sometimes wilder, sometimes more swelling, even tumid. It is also more con- centrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical. It is, therefore, not so easy and lucid, and in the more ordinary dialogue it is sometimes involved and obscure, and from these and other causes deficient in charm.i On the other hand, it is always full of life and movement, and in great passages produces sudden, strange, electrifying effects which arp. rarely found in earlier plays, and not so often even in Hamlet. The more pervading effect of beauty gives place to what may almost be called explosions of sublimity or pathos. There is room for differences of taste and pre- ference as regards the style and versification of the end of Shakespeare's Second Period, and those of the later tragedies and last romances. But readers who miss in the latter the pecuHar enchantment of the earlier will not deny that the changes in form are in entire harmony with the inward changes. If they object to passages where, to exaggerate a Httle, the sense has rather to be discerned beyond the. words than found in them, and if they do not wholly enjoy the movement of so typical a speech as this. Yes, like enough, high-battled Caesar will Unstate his happiness, and be staged to the show. Against a sworder ! I see men's judgements are A parcel of their fortunes ; and things outward iThis, if we confine ourselves to the tragedies, is, I think, especially the case in King Lear and Timon. LECT. III. THE TRAGIC PERIOD 89 Do draw the inward quality after them. To suffer all aUke. That he should dream, Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will Answer his emptiness ! Caesar, thou hast subdued His judgement too, they will admit that, in traversing the impatient throng of thoughts not always completely embodied, their minds move through an astonishing variety of ideas and experiences, and that a style less generally poetic than that of Hamlet is also a style more invariably dramatic. It may be that, for the purposes of tragedy, the highest point was reached during the progress of these changes, in the most critical passages of Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Suppose you were to describe the plot, of Hamlet to a person quite ignorant of the play, and suppose you were careful to tell your hearer nothing about Hamlet's character, what impression would your sketch make on him ? Would he not exclaim : ' What a sensational story ! Why, here are some eight violent deaths, not to speak of adultery, a ghost, a mad woman, and a fight in a grave ! If I did not know that the play was Shakespeare's, I should have thought it must have been one of those early tragedies of blood and horror from which he is said to have redeemed the stage ' .? And would he not then go on to ask : ' But why in the world v did not Hamlet obey the Ghost at once, and so save seven of those eight lives } ' This exclamation and this question both show the same thing, that the whole story turns upon the peculiar character of the hero. For without this ^ The first, at any rate, of these three plays is, of course, much nearer to Hamlet, especially in versification, than to Antony and Cleopatra, in which Shakespeare's final style first shows itself practi- cally complete. It has been impossible, in the brief treatment of this subject, to say what is required of the individual plays. 90 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. hi. character the story would appear sensational and horrible ; and yet the actual Hamlet is very far from being so, and even has a less terrible effect than Othello, King Lear or Macbeth. And again, if we had no knowledge of this character, the story would hardly be intelligible ; it would at any rate at once suggest that wondering question about the conduct of the hero ; while the story of any of the other three tragedies would sound plain enough and would raise no such question. It is further very probable that the main change made by Shakespeare in the story as already represented on the stage, lay in a new conception of Hamlet's character and so of the cause of his delay. And, lastly, when we ex- amine the tragedy, we observe two things which illustrate the same point. First, we find by the side of the hero no other figure of tragic proportions, no one like Lady Macbeth or lago, no one even like CordeHa or Desdemona ; so that, in Hamlet's ab- sence, the remaining characters could not yield a Shakespearean tragedy at all. And, secondly, we find among them two, Laertes and Fortinbras, who are evidently designed to throw the character of the hero into reUef. Even in the situations there is a 'curious paralleHsm ; for Fortinbras, like Hamlet," is the son of a king, lately dead, and succeeded by his brother ; and Laertes, like Hamlet, has a father slain, and feels bound to avenge him. And with this paralleHsm in situation there is a strong contrast in character ; for both Fortinbras and Laertes possess in abundance the very quality which the hero seems to lack, so that, as we read, we are tempted to ex- claim that either of them would have accomplished Hamlet's task in a day. Naturally, then, the tragedy of Hamlet with Hamlet left out has become the \/ symbol of extreme absurdity ; while the character itself has probably exerted a greater fascination, and certainly has been the subject of more discussion, than any other in the whole literature of the world. LECT. Til. HAMLET 91 Before, however, we approach the task of exam- ining it, it is as well to remind ourselves that the virtue of the play by no means wholly depends on this most subtle creation. We are all aware of this, and if we were not so the history of Hamlet, as a stage-play, might bring the fact home to us. It is to-day the most popular of Shakespeare's tragedies on our fetage ; and yet a large number, perhaps even the majority of the spectators, though they may feel some -mysterious attraction in the hero, certainly do not question themselves about his character or the cause of his delay, and would still find the play exceptionally effective, even if he were an ordinary brave young man and the obstacles in his path were purely external. And this has probably always been the case. Hamlet seems from the first to have been a favourite play ; but until late in the eigh- teenth century, I believe, scarcely a critic showed ..that he perceived anything specially interesting in the character. Hanmer, in 1730, to be sure, re- marks that ' there appears no reason at all in nature why this young prince did not put the usurper to death as soon as possible'; but it does not even cross his mind that this apparent ' absurdity ' is odd and might possibly be due to some design on the part of the poet. He simply explains the absurdity by observing that, if Shakespeare had made the young man go 'naturally to work,' the play would have come to an end at once ! Johnson, in like manner, notices that ' Hamlet is, through the whole piece, rather an instrument than an agent,' but it does not occur to him that this pecuhar circumstance can be anything but a defect in Shakespeare's management of the plot. Seeing, they saw not, Henry Mackenzie, the author of l^he Man of Feeling, was, it would seem, the first of our critics to feel the 'indescribable charm' of Hamlet, and to divine something of Shakespeare's intention. ' We see a man,' he writes, ' who in 92 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. hi. other circumstances would have exercised all the 'J moral and social virtues, placed in a situation in which even the amiable qualities of his mind serve but to aggravate his distress and to perplex his conduct.' ^ How significant is the fact (if it be the fact) that it was only when the slowly rising sun of Romance began to flush the sky that the wonder, beauty and pathos of this most marvellous of Shakespeare's creations began to be visible ! We do not know that they were perceived even in his own day, and perhaps those are not wholly wrong who declare that this creation, so far from being a characteristic product of the time, was a vision of the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come. But the dramatic splendour of the whole tragedy is another matter, and must have been manifest not only in Shakespeare's day but even in Hanmer's. It is indeed so obvious that I pass it by, and proceed at once to the central question of Hamlet's character. And I believe time will be saved, and a good deal of positive interpretation may be intro- duced, if, without examining in detail any one theory, we first distinguish classes or types of theory which appear to be in various ways and degrees in- sufficient or mistaken. And we will confine our attention to sane theories ; — for on this subject, as jan all questions relating to Shakespeare, there are plenty of merely lunatic views : the view, for ex- ample, that Hamlet, being a disguised woman in love with Horatio, could hardly help seeming un- kind to Ophelia ; or the view that, being a very clever and wicked young man who wanted to oust his innocent uncle from the throne, he ' faked ' the Ghost with this intent. 1 The Mirror, i8th April, 1780, quoted by Fumess, Variorum Hamlet, a. 148. In the above remarks I have reUed mainly on Fumess's collection of extracts from early critics. LECT. III. HAMLET 93 But, before we come to our types of theory, it is necessary to touch on an idea, not unfrequently met with,^, which would make it vain labour to discuss or propose any theory at all. It is sometimes said that Hamlet's character is not only intricate but unintel- ligible. Now this statement might mean something quite unobjectionable and even perhaps true and important. It might mean that the character can- not be wholly understood. As we saw, there may be questions which we cannot answer with certainty now, because we have nothing but the text to guide us, but which never arose for the spectators who saw tfamlet acted in Shakespeare's day ; and we shall have to refer to such questions in these lectures. Again, it may be held without any improbability that, from carelessness or because he was engaged on this play for several years, Shakespeare left in- consistencies in his exhibition of the character which must prevent us from being certain of his ultimate meaning. Or, possibly, we may be baffled because he has illustrated in it certain strange facts of human nature, which he had noticed but of which we are ignorant. But then all this would apply in some measure to other characters in Shakespeare, and it is not this that is meant by the statement that Hamlet is unintelligible. What is meant is that Shakespeare intended him to be so, because he him- self was feeling strongly, and wished his audience to feel strongly, what a mystery life is, and how im-. possible it is for us to understand it. Now here, surely, we have mere confusion of mind. The mys- teriousness of life is one thing, the psychological unintelligibility of a dramatic character is quite another ; and the second does not show thq first, it shows only the incapacity or folly of the dramatist. If it did show the first, it would be very easy to sur- pass Shakespeare in producing a sense of mystery : we should simply have to portray an absolutely nonsensical character. Of course Hamlet appeals 94 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. hi. powerfully to our sense of the mystery of life, but so does every good tragedy ; and it does so not because the hero is an enigma to us, but because, having a fair understanding of him, we feel how strange it is that strength and weakness should be so mingled in one soul, and that this soul should be doomed to such misery and apparent failure. (i) To come, then, to our typical views, we may lay it down, first, that no theory will hold water which finds the cause of Hamlet's delay merely, or mainly, or even to any considerable extent, in ex- ternal difficulties. Nothing is easier than to spin a plausible theory of this kind. What, it may be asked,^ was Hamlet to do when the Ghost had left him with its commission of vengeance ? The King was surrounded not merely by courtiers but by a Swiss body-guard : how was Hamlet to get at him } Was he then to accuse him publicly of the murder ? If he did, what would happen ? How would he prove the charge ? All that he had to offer in proof was — a ghost-story ! Others, to be sure, had seen the Ghost, but no one else had heard its revelations. Obviously, then, even if the court had been honest, instead of subservient and corrupt, it would have voted Hamlet mad, or worse, and would have shut him up out of harm's way. He could not see what to do, therefore, and so he waited. Then came the actors, and at once with admirable promptness he arranged for the play- scene, hoping that the King would betray his guilt to the whole court. (Unfortunately the King did not.j It is true that immediately afterwards Hamlet got'4iis chance ; for he found the King defenceless on his knees. But what Hamlet wanted was not a private revenge, to be followed by his own impri- sonment or execution; it was public justice. So ^ I do not profess to reproduce any one theory, and, still less, to do justice to the ablest exponent of this kind of view, Werder {Vorlesungen iiber Hamlet, 1875), who, by no means, regards Hamlet's difficulties as merely external. LECT. III. HAMLET 95 he spared the King ; and, as he unluckily killed Polonius just afterwards, he had to consent to be despatched to England. But, on the voyage there, he discovered the King's commission, ordering the King of England to put him immediately to death ; and, with this in his pocket, he made his way back to Denmark. For now, he saw, the proof of the King's attempt to murder him would procure belief also for the story of the murder of his father. His enemy, however, was too quick for him, and his public arraignment of that enemy was prevented by his own death. A theory like this sounds very plausible — so long as you do not remember the text. But no unsophis- ticated mind, fresh from the reading of Hamlet, will accept it ; and, as soon as we begin to probe it, fatal objections arise in such numbers that I choose but a few, and indeed I think the first of them is enough. {a) From beginning to end of the play, Hamlet never makes the slightest reference to any external difficulty. How is it possible to explain this fact in conformity with the theory ? For what conceivable reason should Shakespeare conceal from us so care- fully the key to the problem ? {b) Not only does Hamlet fail to allude to such difficulties, but he always assumes that he can obey the Ghost,^ and he once asserts this in so many words (' Sith I have cause and will and strength and means To do't,' iv. iv. 45). (c) Again, why does Shakespeare exhibit Laertes quite easily raising the people against the King .? Why but to show how much more easily Hamlet, whom the people loved, could have done the same thing, if that was the plan he preferred ? (fi?) Again, Hamlet did not plan the play-scene in the hope that the King would betray his guilt to ' I give one instance. When he spares the King, he speaks of killing him when he is drunk asleep, when he is in his rage, when he is awake in bed, when he is gaming, as if there were in none of these cases the least obstacle (iii. iii. 89 ff.). 96 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. hi. the court. He planned it, according to his own account, in order to convince himself by the King's agitation that the Ghost had spoken the truth. This is perfectly clear from ii. ii. 625 flf. and from HI. ii. 80 ff. Some readers are misled by the words in the latter passage : if his occulted guilt Do not itself unkennel in one speech. It is a damned ghost that we have seen. The meaning obviously is, as the context shows, ' if his hidden guilt do not betray itself on occasion of one speech,' viz., the 'dozen or sixteen lines' with which Hamlet has furnished the player, and of which only six are delivered, because the King does not merely show his guilt in his face (which was all Hamlet had hoped, in. ii. 90) but rushes from the room. It may be as well to add that, although Hamlet's own account of his reason for arranging the play- scene may be questioned, it is impossible to suppose that, if his real design had been to provoke an open confession of guilt, -he could have been unconscious of this design. (e) Again, Hamlet never once talks, or shows a sign of thinking, of the plan of bringing the King to public justice ; he always talks of using his ' sword ' or his ' arm.' And this is so just as much --after he has returned to Denmark with the com- mission in his pocket as it was before this event. Wh«n he has told Horatio the story of the voyage, he does not say, ' Now I can convict him ' ; he says, ' Now am I not justified in using this arm .? ' This class of theory, then, we must simply reject. But it suggests two remarks. It is of course quite probable that, when Hamlet was ' thinking too precisely on the event,' he was considering, among other things, the question how he could avenge his father without sacrificing his own life or freedom. And assuredly, also, he was anxious that his act of LECT. III. HAMLET 97 vengeance should not be misconstrued, and would never have been content to leave a 'wounded name ' behind him. His dying words prove that. (2) Assuming, now, that Hamlet's main difficulty — almost the whole of his difficulty — ^was internal, I pass to views which, acknowledging this, are still unsatisfactory because they isolate one element in his character and situation and treat it as the whole. According to the first of these typical views, Hamlet was restrained by conscience or a moral scruple ; he could not satisfy himself that it was ri ght to avenge his father. "This idea7 like the first, can easily be made to look very plausible if we vaguely imagine the circumstances without attending to the text. But attention to the text is fatal to it. For, on the one hand, scarcely anything can be produced in support of it, and, on the other hand, a great deal can be produced in its disproof. To take the latter point first, Hamlet, it is impossible to deny, habitually assumes, without any questioning, that he ought to avenge his father. Even when he doubts, or thinks that he doubts, the honesty of the Ghost, he expresses no doubt as to what his duty will be if the Ghost turns out honest : ' If he but blench I know my course.' In the two soliloquies where he reviews his position (11. ii., ' what a rogue and peasant slave am I,' and iv. iv., ' How all occasions do inform against me ') he reproaches himself bit- terly for the neglect of his duty. When he reflects on the possible causes of this neglect he never mentions among them a moral scruple. When the Ghost appears in the Queen's chamber, he con- fesses, conscience-stricken, that, lapsed in time and passion, he has let go by the acting of its com- mand ; but he does not plead that his conscience stood in his way. The Ghost itself says that it comes to whet his ' almost blunted purpose ' ; and conscience may unsettle a purpose but does not 98 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. hi. I blunt it. What natural explanation of all this can be given on the conscience theory ? And now what can be set against this evidence ? One solitary passage.^ Quite late, after Hamlet has narrated to Horatio the events of his voyage, he asks him (v. ii. 63) : Does it not, thinks't thee, stand me now upon— He that hath kill'd my king and whored my mother, Popp'd in between the election and my hopes. Thrown out his angle for my proper life. And with such cozenage — is't not perfect conscience ^ To quit him with this arm ? and is't not to be damn'd To let this canker of our nature come In further evil ? Here, certainly, is a question of conscience in the usual present sense of the word ; and, it may be said, does not this show that all along Hamlet really has been deterred by moral scruples ? But I ask first how, in that case, the facts just adduced are to be explained : for they must be explained, not ignored. Next, let the reader observe that even if this passage did show that one hindrance to Hamlet's action was his conscience, it by no means follows that this was the sole or the chief hindrance. And, thirdly, let him observe, and let him ask him- self whether the coincidence is a mere accident, that Hamlet is here almost repeating the words 1 It is surprising to find quoted, in support of the conscience view, the line ' Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,' and to ob- serve the total misinterpretation of the soliloquy To be or not tope, from which the line comes. In this soliloquy Hamlet is not thinking of the duty laid upon him at all. He is debating the question of suicide. No one oppressed by the ills of life, he says, would continue to bear them if it were not for speculation about his possible for- tune in another life. And then, generalising, he says (what applies to himself, no doubt, though he shows no consciousness of the fact) that such speculation or reflection makes men hesitate and shrink like cowards from great actions and enterprises. ' Conscience ' does not mean moral sense or scrupulosity, but this reflection on the con- sequences of action. It is the same thing as the ' craven scru ple of tbigking ^too precisely on the ev ent ' of the speech in iv. iv. As to thisuseoi 'conscience,' see scKmidt, s.v. and the parallels there given. The Oxford Dictionary also gives many examples of similar uses of 'conscience,' though it unfortunately lends its authority to the misinterpretation criticised. LECT. III. HAMLET 99 he used in vain self-reproach some time before (iv. iv. 56) : How stand I then, That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd. Excitements of my reason and my blood. And let all sleep ? Is it not clear that he is speculating just as vainly now, and that this question of conscience is but one of his many unconscious excuses for delay ? And, lastly, is it not so that Horatio takes it ? He declines to discuss that unreal question, and answers simply. It must be shortly known to him from England What is the issue of the business there. In other words, ' Enough of this endless procrasti- nation. What is wanted is not reasons for the deed, but the deed itself.' What can be more significant ? Perhaps, however, it may be answered : " Your explanation of this passage may be correct, and the facts you have mentioned do seem to be fatal to the theory of conscience in its usual form. But there is another and subtler theory of conscience. According to it, Hamlet, so far as his explicit con- sciousness went, was sure that he ought to obey the Ghost ; but in the depths of his nature, and unknown to himself, there was a moral repulsion to the deed. The conventional moral ideas of his time, which he shared with the Ghost, told him plainly that he ought to avenge his father ; but a deeper conscience in him, which was in advance of his time, contended with these explicit conventional ideas. It is because this deeper con- science remains below the surface that he fails to recognise it, and fancies he is hindered by cowardice or sloth or passion or what not ; but it emerges into light in that speech to Horatio. And it is just because he has this nobler moral nature in him that we admire and love him.' loo SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. hi. Now I at once admit not only that this view is much more attractive and more truly tragic than the ordinary conscience theory, but that it has more verisimilitude. But I feel no doubt that it does not answer to Shakespeare's meaning, and I will simply mention, out of many objections to it, three which seem to be fatal, {a) If it answers to Shakespeare's meaning, why in the world did he conceal that meaning until the last Act ? The facts adduced above seem to show beyond question that, on the hypothesis, he did so. That he did so is surely next door to incredible. In any case, it certainly requires an explanation, and certainly has not received one. (b) Let us test the theory by reference to a single important passage, that where Hamlet finds the King at prayer and spares him. The reason Hamlet gives himself for sparing the King is that, if he kills him now, he will send him to heaven, whereas he desires to send him to hell. Now, this reason may be an unconscious excuse, but is it believable that, if the real reason had been the stirrings of his deeper conscience, that could have masked itself in the form of a de- sire to send his enemy's soul to hell ? Is not the idea quite ludicrous ?^^^(c) The theory requires us to suppose that, when the Ghost enjoins Hamlet to avenge the murder of his father, it is laying on him a duty which we are to understand to be no duty but the very reverse. And is not that sup- position wholly contrary to the natural impression which we all receive in reading the play ? Surely it is clear that, whatever we in the twentieth century may think about Hamlet's duty, we are meant in the play to assume that he ought to have obeyed the Ghost. The conscience theory, then, in either of its forms we must reject. But it may remind us of points worth noting. In the first place, it is certainly true that Hamlet, in spite of some appearances to the LECT. III. HAMLET 101 contrary, was, as Goethe said, of a most moral nature, and had a great anxiety to do right. In this anxiety he resembles Brutus, and it is stronger in him than in any of the later heroes. And, secondly, it is highly probable that in his intermin- able broodings the kind of paralysis with which he was stricken masked itself in the shape of conscien- tious scruples as well as in many other shapes. And, finally, in his shrinking from the deed there was probably, together with much else, something which may be called a moral, though not a conscientious, repulsion : I mean a repugnance to the idea of falling suddenly on a man who could not defend himself. This, so far as we can see, was the only plan that Hamlet ever contemplated. There is no positive evidence in the play that he regarded it with the aversion that any brave and honourable man, one must suppose, would feel for it ; but, as Hamlet certainly was brave and honourable, we may presume that he did so. (3) We come next to what may be called the sentimental view of Hamlet, a view common both among his worshippers and among his defamers. Its germ may perhaps be found in an unfortunate phrase of Goethe's (who of course is not responsible for the whole view) : ' a lovely, pure and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it can- not bear and must not cast away.' When this idea is isolated, developed and popularised, we get the picture of a graceful youth, sweet and sensitive, full of delicate sympathies and yearning aspirations, shrinking from the touch of everything gross and earthly ; but frail and weak, a kind of Werther, with a face like Shelley's and a voice like Mr. Tree's. And then we ask in tender pity, how could such a man perform the terrible duty laid on him } How, indeed ! And what a foohsh Ghost even to suggest such a duty ! But this conception, I02 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. hi. though not without its basis in certain beautiful traits of Hamlet's nature, is utterly untrue. It is too kind to Hamlet on one side, and it is quite un- just to him on another. The 'conscience' theory at any rate leaves Hamlet a great nature which you can admire and even revere. But for the 'sentimental' Hamlet you can feel only pity not unmingled with contempt. Whatever else he is, he is no hero. But consider the text. This shrinking, flower- like youth — how could he possibly have done what we see Hamlet do } What Hkeness to him is there in the Hamlet who, summoned by the Ghost, bursts from his terrified friends with the cry : Unhand me, gentlemen ! By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me ; the Hamlet who scarcely once speaks to the King without an insult, or to Polonius without a gibe ; the Hamlet who storms at Ophelia and speaks daggers to his mother ; the Hamlet who, hearing a cry behind the arras, whips out his sword in an instant and runs the eavesdropper through ; the Hamlet who sends his ' school-fellows ' to their death and never troubles his head about them more ; the Hamlet who is the first man to board a pirate ship, and who fights with Laertes in the grave ; the Hamlet of the catastrophe, an omnipotent fate, before whom all the court stands helpless, who, as the truth breaks upon him, rushes on the King, drives his foil right through his body,^ then seizes the poisoned cup and forces it violently between the wretched man's hps, and in the throes of death has force and fire enough to wrest the cup from Horatio's hand (' By heaven, I'll have it ! ') lest he should drink and die ? This man, the Hamlet of the play, is a heroic, terrible figure. He would 1 The King does not die of the poison on the foil, like Laertes and Hamlet. They were wounded before he was, but they die after him. LECT. in. HAMLET 103 have been formidable to Othello or Macbeth. If the sentimental Hamlet had crossed him, he would have hurled him from his path with one sweep of his arm. This view, then, or any view that approaches it, is grossly unjust to Hamlet, and turns tragedy into mere pathos. But, on the other side, it is too kind to him. It ignores the hardness and cynicism which were indeed no part of his nature, but yet, in this crisis of his life, are indubitably present and painfully marked. His sternness, itself left out of sight by this theory, is no defect ; but he is much more than stern. Polonius possibly deserved nothing better than the words addressed to his corpse : Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell ! 1 took thee for thy better : take thy fortune : Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger ; yet this was Ophelia's father\ _and. whatever he _de agrved, it- pMi°r and beautiful. We know this from himself. The world for him was herrlich wie am ersten Tag — ' this goodly frame the earth, this most excellent canopy the air, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire.' And not nature only : ' What a piece of work is a man ! how noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in form and moving how express and admirable ! in action how like an angel ! in apprehension how like a l god ! ' This is no commonplace to Hamlet ; it is 1 the language of a heart thrilled with wonder and / swelling into ecstasy. Doubtless it was with the same eager enthu- \ siasm he turned to those around him. Where else in Shakespeare is there anything like Ham- let's adoration of his father ? The words melt into music whenever he speaks of him. And, if there are no signs of any such feeling towards his mother, though many signs of love, it is charac- teristic that he evidently never entertained a suspicion of anything unworthy in her, — charac- teristic, and significant of his tendency to see only what is good unl^s he is forced to see the reverse. For we find this tendency elsewhere, and find it going so far that we must call it a dispositionk to idealise, to see something better than what is •' there, or at least to ignore deficiencies. He says to Laertes, ' I loved you ever,' and he describes Laertes as a ' very noble youth,' which he was far from being. In his first greeting of Rosencrantz 112 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. hi. and Guildefistern, where his old self revives, we trace the same affectionateness and readiness to take men at their best. His love for Opheha, too, which seems strange to some, is surely the most natural thing in the world. He saw her innocence, simplicity and sweetness, and it was like him to ask no more ; and it is noticeable that Horatio, though entirely worthy of his friend- ship, is, like Ophelia, intellectually not remarkable. To the very end, however clouded, this generous, disposition, this ' free and open nature,' this un-/ suspiciousness survive. They cost him his life ; for the King knew them, and was sure that he was too ' generous and free from all contriving ' to ' peruse the foils.' To the very end, his soul, however sick and tortured it may be, answers instantaneously when good and evil are presented to it, loving the one and hating the other. He is called a sceptic who has no firm belief in anything, but he is never sceptical about them. And the negative side of his idealism, the aversion to evil, is perhaps even more developed in the hero of the tragedy than in the Hamlet of earlier days. It is intensely characteristic. Nothing, I believe, is to be found elsewhere in Shakespeare (unless in the rage of the dis- illusioned idealist Timon) of quite the same kind as Hamlet's disgust at his uncle's drunkenness, his loathing of his mother's sensuality, his astonish- ment and horror at her shallowness, his contempt for everything pretentious or false, his indifference to everything merely external. This last charac- teristic appears in his choice of the friend of his heart, and in a certain impatience of distinctions of rank or wealth. When Horatio calls his father ' a goodly king,' he answers, surely with an em- phasis on ' man,' ^ He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again. LECT. III. HAMLET 113 He will not listen to talk of Horatio being his ' servant.' When the others speak of their ' duty ' to him, he answers, ' Your love, as mine to you.' He speaks to the actor precisely as he does to an honest courtier. He is not in the least a revolu- tionary, but still, in effect, a king and a beggar • are all one to him. He cares for nothing butT human worth, and his pitilessness towards Polonius jf and Osric and his 'school-fellows' is not wholly/ due to morbidity, but belongs in part to his originalj character. Now, in Hamlet's moral sensibility there un-\ doubtedly lay a danger. Any great shock that/ life might inflict on it would be felt with extreme intensity. Such a shock might even produce tragic ^ results. And, in fact, Hamlet deserves the title _ ' tragedy of moral idealism ' quite as much as the title ' tragedy of reflection.' (3) With this temperament and' this sensibility we find, lastly, in the Hamlet of earlier days, as of later, intellectual_genius. It is chiefly this that makes him so different from all those about him, good and bad alike, and hardly less different from most of Shakespeare's other heroes. And this, though on. the whole the most important trait in his nature, is also so obvious and so famous that I need not dwell on it at length. But against one prevalent misconception I must say a word of warning. Hamlet's intellectual power is not a specific gift, like a genius for music or ^ mathematics or philosophy. It shows itself, fit- fully, in the affairs of life as unusual quickness of perception, great agiHty in shifting the mental attitude, a striking rapidity and f ertihty in resource ; so that, when his natural belief in others does not make him unwary, Hamlet easily sees through them and masters them, and no one can be much less like the typical helpless dreamer. It shows itself in conversation chiefly in the form of 114 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. hi. wit or humour ; and, alike in conversation and in soliloquy, it shows itself in the form of imagina- tion quite as much as in that of thought in the stricter sense. Further, where it takes the latter shape, as it very often does, it is not philo- sophic in the technical meaning of the word. There is really nothing in the play to show that Hamlet ever was ' a student of philosophies,' un- less it be the famous lines which, comically enough, exhibit this supposed victim of philosophy as its critic : There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.^ His philosophy, if the word is to be used, was, like Shakespeare's own, the immediate product of the wondering and meditating mind ; and such thoughts as that celebrated one, ' There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,' surely needed no special training to produce them. Or does Por- tia's remark, ' Nothing is good without respect,' i.e., out of relation, prove that she had studied metaphysics } Still Hamlet had speculative genius without being a philosopher, just as he had imaginative genius without being a poet. Doubtless in happier days he was a close and constant observer of men and manners, noting his results in those tables which he afterwards snatched from his breast to make in wild irony his last note of all, that one may smile and smile and be a villain. Again and again we remark that passion for generalisation which so occupied him, for instance, in reflections suggested by the King's drunkenness that he quite forgot what it was he was waiting to meet upon the battlements. Doubtless, too, he was always considering things, 1 Of course ' your ' does not mean Horatio's philosophy in par- ticular. ' Your ' is used as the Gravedigger uses it when he says that ' your water is a sore decayer of your . . . dead body." LECT. III. HAMLET 115 as Horatio thought, too curiously. There was a necessity in his soul driving him to pene- trate below the surface and to question what others took for granted. That fixed habitual look which the world wears for most men did not exist for him. He was for ever unmaking his world and rebuilding it in thought, dissolving what to others were soHd facts, and discovering what to others were old truths; There were no old truths for Hamlet. It is for Horatio a thing of course that there's a divinity that shapes our ends, but for Hamlet it is a discovery hardly won. And throughout this kingdom of the mind, where he felt that man, who in action is only like an angel, is in apprehension like a god, he moved (we must imagine) more than content, so that even in his dark days he declares he could be bounded in a nutshell and yet count himself a king of infinite space, were it not that he had bad dreams. If now we ask whether any special danger lurked here, how shall we answer ? We must answer, it seems to me, ' Some danger, no doubt, but, granted the ordinary chances of life, not much.' For, in the first place, that idea which so many critics quietly take for granted — the idea that the gift and the habit of meditative and speculative thought tend to produce irresolution in the affairs of life — would be found b)?i no means easy to verify. Can you verify it, for example, in the lives of the philosophers, or again in the lives of men whom you have personally known to be addicted to such speculation .? I cannot. Of course, individual peculiarities being set apart, absorption in any intellectual interest, together with withdrawal from affairs, may make a man slow and unskilful in affairs ; and doubtless, individual peculiarities being again set apart, a mere student is likely to be more at a loss in a sudden and great practical ii6 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. in. emergency than a soldier or a lawyer. But in all this there is no difference between a physicist, a historian, and a philosopher ; and again, slowness, want of skill, and even helplessness are something totally different from the peculiar kind of irresolu- tion that Hamlet shows. The notion that specu- lative thinking specially tends to produce this is really a mere illusion. In the second place, even if this notion were true, /"it has appeared that Hamlet did not live the Hfe of S a mere student, much less of a mere dreamer, and ^i^that his nature was by no means simply or even /one-sidedly intellectual, but was healthily active. /Hence, granted the ordinary chances of life, there •y\ would seem to be no great danger in his intellectual (^tendency and his habit of speculation ; and I would go further and say that there was nothing in them, taken alone, to unfit him even for the extraordinary call that was made upon him. In fact, if the message of the Ghost had come to him within a week of his father's death, I see no reason to doubt that he would have acted on it as decisively as Othello himself, though probably after a longer and more anxious deliberation. And therefore the Schlegel-Coleridge view (apart from its descriptive value) seems to me fatally untrue, for it implies that Hamlet's procrastination was the normal response of an over-speculative nature con- fronted with a difficult practical problem. , On the other hand, under conditions of a peculiar y kind, Hamlet's reflectiveness certainly might prove dangerous to him, and his genius might even (to i/ exaggerate a little) become his doom. Suppose that violent shock to his moral being of which I spoke ; and suppose that under this shock, any possible action being denied to him, he began to ;sink into melancholy ; then, no doubt, his imagina- tive and generalising habit of mind might extend [ the effects of this shock through his whole being LECT. III. HAMLET 117 and mental world. And if, the state of melancholy being thus deepened and fixed, a sudden demand for difficult and decisive action in a matter i connected with the melancholy arose, this state might well have for one of its symptoms an endless and futile mental dissection of the required deed. And, finally, the futility of this process, and the shame of his delay, would further weaken) him and enslave him to his melancholy still more. Thus the speculative habit would be one indirect cause of the morbid state which hindered action and it would also reappear in a degenerate form as one of the symptoms of this morbid state. ^ Now this is what actually happens in the play. Turn to the first words Hamlet utters when he is alone ; turn, that is to say, to the place where the author is likely to indicate his meaning most plainly. What do you hear } 0, that this too too solid flesh would melt. Thaw and resolve itself into a dew ! ,0r that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter ! O God ! God ! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. Seem to me all the uses of this world ! Fie on't ! ah fie ! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. Here are a sickness of life, and even a longing 1 for death, so intense that nothing stands between Hamlet and suicide except religious awe. And< what has caused them } The rest of the soliloquy so thrusts the answer upon us that it might seem impossible to miss it. It was not his father's death ; that doubtless brought deep grief, but mere grief for some one loved and lost does not make a noble spirit loathe the world as a place full only of things rank and gross. It was not the vague suspicion that we know Hamlet felt. Still less was it the loss of the crown ; for though ii8 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY lect. hi. the subserviency of the electors might well disgust him, there is not a reference to the subject in the soliloquy, nor any sign elsewhere that it greatly .occupied his mind. It was the moral shock of /the sudden ghastly disclosure of his mother's true ■nature, falling on him when his heart was aching (with love, and his body doubtless was weakened 'by sorrow. And it is essential, however disagree- able, to realise the nature of this shock. It matters little here whether Hamlet's age was twenty or thirty : in either case his mother was a matron of mature years. All his life he had believed in her, we may be sure, as such a son would. He had seen her not merely devoted to his father, but hanging on him like a newly-wedded bride, hanging on him As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on. He had seen her following his body ' like Niobe, all tears.' And then within a month — ' God ! a beast would have mourned longer ' — ^she married again, and married Hamlet's uncle, a man utterly contemptible and loathsome in his eyes ; married him in what to Hamlet was incestuous wedlock ; ^ married him not for any reason of state, nor even out of old family afifection, but in such a . way that her son was forced to see in her action I not only an astounding shallowness of feeHng j but an eruption of coarse sensuality, ' rank and 1 gross,' ^ speeding post-haste to its horrible delight. ^ This aspect of the matter leaves us comparatively unafEected, but Shakespeare evidently means it to be of importance. The Ghost speaks of it twice, and Hamlet thrice (once in his last furious words to the King). If, as we must suppose, the marriage was universally admitted to be incestuous, the corrupt acquies- cence of the court and the electors to the crown would naturally have a strong effect on Hamlet's mind. " It is most significant that the metaphor of this soliloquy reappears in Hamlet's adjuration to his mother (iii. iv. 150) : Repent what's past ; avoid what is to come ; And do not spread the compost on the weeds To make them ranker, LECT. III. HAMLET 119 Is it possible to conceive an experience more desolating to a man such as we have seen Hamlet to be ; and is its result anything^buti perfectly natural ? It brings bewildered horror, ( then loathing, then despair of human nature. His ' whole mind is poisoned. He can never see Ophelia in the same light again : she is a woman, and his mother is a woman : if she mentions the word ' brief ' to him, the answer drops from his lips like venom, ' as woman's love.' The last words of the soliloquy, which is wholly concerned with this subject, are, But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue !