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SHAEESPEAEE COMMENTAEIES 
 
' Sutjeots OE which I should find it difficult not to say 
 too much, though certain, after all, that I should still 
 leave the better pait unsaid, and the gleaning for othei^ 
 richer than my own harvest' Colebidge 
 
SHAKJESPEiRE COMMENTAEIES 
 
 DE. G. G. GEETINtJS 
 
 PKOFESSOE AT HEIDELEEEO 
 
 TEANSLATED UNDEE THE AUTHOE'S SUPBEINTENDENCE 
 
 F, E. BUNNfiTT 
 
 NEW EDITION, EEVISED BY THE TRANSLATOB 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDEK, & CO., 15 WATEELOO PLACE 
 
 1875 
 
 \Ttiis PPbri is CopyrighQ 
 
/\. 6 134^^ 
 
TBANSLATOE'S PEEFACE. 
 
 Without undervaluing in the least degree the laborious 
 researches of those English critics who, by a careful 
 collation of manuscripts, by archaeological research, and 
 historical investig3,tion, have restored and illustrated the 
 text of Shakespeare, it may be safely asserted that to 
 Germany we owe, if not the fovnders, yet the most ablQ 
 and systematic among the disciples of that school of 
 Shakespearian critics who have illustrated rather his 
 thought than his language, his matter than his manner, 
 who have studied his writings rather as those of a mora- 
 list, a thinker, a master of human nature, and a poet of 
 all places and of all time, than as those of an Enghsh 
 writer of a certain epoch. The labours of what may be 
 not unfairly called the Enghsh school of Shakespearian 
 critics are invaluable, since without them the language 
 in which the morahst and the poet has spoken would 
 have been often little understood, and to tlieir efforts for 
 the elucidation of many otherwise obscure passages we 
 owe much of our intelligent appreciation of the language 
 of the great dramatist. A higher place, however, must 
 be, perhapsj assigned to those who, -With minds well 
 •qualified for the task, have devoted their attention to the 
 illustration of those eternal truths enshrined . in that lan- 
 guage—truths which lie hidden to the common eye, and 
 
vi TBANSLATOB'S FSEFACE. 
 
 ■which, if they are to be comprehended in their full 
 meaning, demand patient study aijd investigating perse- 
 verance. 
 
 Among the disciples of this latter school will be found' 
 the names of some English writers, such as Colpridge, 
 Lamb, Hazlitt, and others. Johnson also treated the 
 poet in an ethical point of view, and if his work on the 
 subject added little to his fame, it showied, as Ma,caulay 
 remarks, how attentively he had during many years 
 observed human hfe and human natm-e. But it is not 
 my intention in these few prefatory' words to enter into- 
 any detailed notice of the works upon Shakespeare which 
 have appeared in' England, America, France, and Grer^ 
 many. Each of these countries may reckon among its. 
 scholars men who have conscientiously studied the genius, 
 the ethics, and the art of the great poet ; and the labours, 
 of Hudson, Guizot, Schlegel,. Goethe, Ulrici, and others 
 have from time to time brought, forth much valuable 
 material, and have met with due appreciation. 
 
 The relation in which this work of Gervinus stands 
 to these previous commentaries he has himself so fully 
 pointed out in his Introduction that it is needless for me 
 to enlarge upon it here. He has indeed so far followed 
 in the steps of his predecessors in regarding his author 
 not only as a poet and a dramatist, but as a moralist, and 
 a master of human nature. But he has done more than 
 this. Taking up the idea which Goethe only suggested 
 in his criticism on Hamlet, he has pursued the course 
 which the German poet indicated. He has perceived one 
 ruling idea pervading every play, linking every part, 
 every character, every episode, to one single aim. He 
 has pointed out the binding thread in things which before 
 seemed disconnected, and has found a justification for 
 much that before seemed needlessly offensive and even 
 
TBANSLATOB'8 PSEFACE. vii 
 
 immoral. And in doing this, in thus weaving together 
 materials apparently scattered, and in giving us a guiding 
 thread through the intricacies of the plot, he has opened 
 out to us a new source of interest, and has afforded a yet 
 firmer basis to our former appreciation of the works of 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 It is for this reason that he holds a distinguished 
 place among the commentators on Shakespeare in his 
 own country, and standing thus alone in the path he has. 
 taken, his work will be a welcome addition to English 
 Literature. His ' History of German Poetry,' and his 
 ' History of the Nineteenth Century,' have already given 
 his name a world-wide reputation, and' have placed him 
 in the highest rank as a critic of art and as a philo- 
 sophical historian. 
 
 It only remains for me to add that I have undertaken 
 this work with the author's sanction and under his super- 
 vision. It has led me more and more deeply to appre- 
 ciate the views it unfolds, and the personal advantage 
 and enjoyment I have derived from their consideration 
 will, I trust, be shared by many readers. 
 
 F. E. BUIWETT. 
 
 Oetober 1862. 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 OF 
 
 THE GEEMAN AUTHOR. 
 
 The delineation of the great British poet which I now 
 pubhsh sprung from a series of happy hours in which 
 for many years I made Shakespeare's works a subject 
 of continual reflection, and drew the purest enjoyment 
 from their elucidation. 
 
 After 'the completion of my ' History of German. 
 Poetry,' I was desirous to return to my original work, 
 the loijg-forsaken field of political history. My intention 
 was, and it still is, to follow up the conclusion of that 
 historical record of our literature by venturing to under- 
 take the history of our own time, to exhibit to the 
 Oerman people as in a mirror the picture of the present, 
 to hold before them their dishonour, their vocation, and 
 their hopes, and to point out to them ' the very age and 
 body ' of this period, a period which more and more 
 promises to become a great and important one, and to 
 xeward the trpuble of the historical observer. Events 
 iave since corresponded to this expectation ; they hold 
 out to the historian a still more alluring task, and at the 
 same time open to him a more instructive school. They 
 
X FBEFAOE'OF 
 
 have drawn me also for a while from my post of obser- 
 vation into the whirlpool of active life, into a labyrinth 
 from which, although appearances may contradict it, 
 there is for the present no prospect of a satisfactory and 
 definitive issue. - 
 
 Amid these agitations of political hfe, and amid inves- 
 tigations into the base motives of the historical world, I 
 longed for some refuge for self-collectedness and compo- 
 sure, and felt the necessity of raising the soul above the 
 low ground of reahty. This necessity was not to be 
 disregarded. 
 
 The recent period of our civilisation and history, 
 affords sufficient explanation of the reason why we are 
 wont in Germany to regard the fine arts and their pro- 
 ductions as indispensable. The present, however, calls 
 us, as it were, from these dear and cherished tendencies 
 to the field of active life, which can be won by no half 
 efforts, and which claims our united powers. Divided 
 between these contending necessities, how may we satisfy 
 both without doing damage to the one ? 
 
 The demands of our country, the duties of the day, 
 and the active vocations of life are uncompromising ; 
 these must first be satisfied, enjoyment and intellectual 
 ease must accommodate themselves to them. But the 
 enjoyments of the mind may themselves be of such a 
 kind as to become a spur to our activity and efficiency of 
 action, provided they are of a nature to keep our ideas 
 healthy and not to over-refine the feelings, to engage the 
 heart and imagination as well as the practical under- 
 standing, and to strengthen the will in its resolves. The 
 works of the Muses which possess this property in a high 
 degree, are altogether few, but these few rank among 
 the first and greatest. 
 
 In the intellectual 'history of England and Germany 
 
THE GERMAN AUTHOB. xi 
 
 there are two men, the one born in this, the other in that 
 land, who maintained in these later centuries the old 
 Teutonic kindred and fellowship, the possession of whom 
 the two nations share, and for the higher appreciation of 
 whom they mutually strive. The similar position which 
 they occupied among the most practical and the most 
 eminently intellectual people places ' these mediators' 
 between two nations ' prominently in that middle posi- 
 tion where they reconcile and unite contradictory quali- 
 ties ; and in this union lies .a sure pledge of human 
 greatness. A similar interesting picture is perhaps not 
 again presented by the whole mental history of humanity. 
 These men, therefore, and their relation to these two 
 nations, have ever given me much to think of and admire ; 
 and they are drawn closer to me at the present time, 
 when their works are especially suitable to our peculiar 
 condition. 
 
 England has naturahsed our Handel and numbered 
 him amongst her own ; in lasting tradition, and amid all 
 the corruptions of prevailing tastes, she has cherished his 
 pure melody and gratefully preserved his memory ; she 
 has gathered materials for his life, and collected his works 
 in an edition worthy of them. To him, a Luther in over- 
 flowing fulness, in , strong and vehement character, in 
 Prqtestant-rehgious depth, in wide sway over the inner 
 world of feehng, and in wonderful power. of utterance, to 
 him must we repair if we would flee away from the 
 errors of the musical world in a dull and distracted age ; 
 for in him alone among musicians of later date can we 
 understand what the ancients have said of the vigorous 
 Doric art as a moral means of culture, and of its enno- 
 bling and strengthening influence upon the character and 
 will of man. He has been, perhaps, more justly appreci- 
 ated by the Enghsh ; he has remained their national 
 
xii JPREFACE OF 
 
 favourite among musicians, alfliougli in natural and 
 musical character no truer German could be found, and 
 although his, art is intrinsically interwoven with the 
 history of our poetry and its highest qualities. But of 
 this, perhaps, another time. 
 
 To the Shakespeare of England we , gladly boast of 
 having done still greater justice ; certain it is that through 
 industry and love, just as England did with our Handel, 
 we have won the great poet for ourselves, though 
 England has not suffered herself to be robbed of the 
 poet in the same manner as we have been of the musician. 
 With regard to intellectual enjoyment, which on that 
 crossway between active and contemplative life can in 
 itself afford us the highest satisfaction without enervating- 
 us for the duties of outward action, there is no richer 
 source than this poet, who with the magic of imagina- 
 tion fascinates the enthusiastic mind of youth, and with 
 the thoughtfulness and ripeness of his judgment offers 
 inexhaustible food for the mature powers ; who hardens - 
 and sharpens the spirit for actual and active life in its 
 widest extent, raising it at the same time far above all 
 barriers to the contemplation of eternal blessings ; who 
 teaches us at once to love and to disregard the world, ta 
 hold it under our control and to renounce it. With' 
 these qualities Shakespeare has robbed us of delight irt 
 much other poetry, but for aU that we rehnquish he 
 indemnifies us a hundredfold. Even in our own great 
 poets, our Goethe and Schiller, he has made us doubt j 
 and it is well known that in a new school in Germany- 
 there prevails a belief in a future second German Shake- 
 speare, who will found a greater dramatic art than the 
 two. poets we have named. Until he comes, until this 
 belief has become active enough to displace Shakespeare, 
 standing as we are on the threshold of a new political 
 
THE GERMAN AUTHOR. xiii 
 
 life, and needing practical mental culture, it must, at all 
 events, be rather advantageous than the reverse to main- 
 tain and extend this tendency of the public taste, and to 
 attempt anew to naturalise the old Shakespeare among 
 us more and more, even at the risk of casting our own 
 poets still further in the shade. A similar benefit would 
 it be to our intellectual life if his famed contemporary 
 Bacon were revived in a suitable manner, in order 
 to counterbalance the idealistic philosophy of Gerniany. 
 Por both these, the poet as well as the philosopher, 
 having looked deeply into the history and pohtics of their 
 people, stand upon the level ground of reality, notwith- 
 standing the high art of the one and the speculative 
 notions of the other. By the healthfulness of their own 
 mind they influence the healthfulness of others, whilp in 
 their most ideal and most abstract representations they 
 aim at a preparation for hfe as it is ; for that life which 
 forms the exclusive subject of aU political action. Our 
 tame poetry, sometimes romantic and fantastic, sometimes 
 homely and domestic, and oiu" spirituaHstic philosophy 
 failed in this ; and it behoves us to consider whether such- 
 can be the school qualified to prepare us for the vocation 
 towards which we are striving so eagerly. In England, 
 in the land of pohtical supremacy, it would not be ac- 
 knowledged as such. For no one will be so full of 
 delusion and folly as to think that, a poet and a philo- 
 sopher thus quaHfied have been cast by chance among a 
 people thus conditioned! One national spirit and the 
 same practical hearty sense of life which has created this 
 state and this popular freedom have also fashioned a 
 poetry so full of life, and a philosophy so rich in expe- 
 rience. And the more decidedly we acquire and culti- 
 vate appreciation and dehght in such productions of the 
 mind, the more decidedly shall we ripen into a capacity 
 
Xiv FSEFACE OF 
 
 for fashioning our own active life into conformity with 
 that which these migrated forefathers have exhibited to 
 all the world for imitation. 
 
 This book is intended to lead to the study of the poet 
 ■of whom it treats. Let it then be read, not cursorily nor 
 in , parts, but connectedly and as a whole, and always 
 -with the poet at hand. Much would otherwise remain 
 ■obscure, much would appear fancifiil, and much would 
 «eem' to be imputed to the poet, whilst my simple 
 •endeavour has been to allpw him as much as possible" to 
 explaiQ himself. The results of my reflections, little 
 strained as they are, wiU on some points offer nothing 
 new, and on others wiU. surprise many. Thus we need 
 no longer prove to most readers the poetical beauty and 
 the intellectual superiority , of Shakespeare's works ; on 
 the other hand, the splendid moral grandeur of the poet 
 has hitherto remained in many parts concealed to us by 
 the externals of form and style. When first the veil 
 that shrouds him is removed, we perceive, in this moral 
 respect also, a greatness in this man which rivals every 
 •other point in him, but which will strike many persons 
 as singular in this age, in which we are accustomed to 
 ■consider mental greatness inseparable from free-thinking 
 and immorality. 
 
 The criticising severity of my literary judgments, and 
 my discouraging reception of the poetical attempts of 
 our day, have often met with reproof. It pleases me to 
 have here an opportunity of showing that I can also 
 praise and love. And if praise and love are more suit- 
 able than blame to strengthen and animate our struggling 
 hterature, then certainly must the picture which I here 
 sketch apply the spur of emulation to every gifted soul. 
 Por the work is performed with persevering love, the 
 
THE GERMAN AUTHOB. XV 
 
 subject is chosen with exclusive love, and all extraneous 
 accessories have been expressly kept aloof, in order to 
 rivet the eye of the beholder upon the one object of 
 admiration. 
 
 These reflections on the British poet are on the whole 
 a necessary completion to my ' History of German 
 Poetry.' For Shakespeare, from his diffusion and in- 
 fluence, has become a German poet almost more than 
 any of our native writers. But apart from this influence 
 of Shakespeare upon our own poetic culture, throughout 
 my work upon German poetry my eye was steadily fixed 
 upon the highest aims of ,all poetic art, and amongst 
 them upon Shakespeare's writings. This made my 
 verdicts severe, because, having befoi^e me this highest 
 example, partial dissatisfaction,^ even at the greatest works 
 of our first native poets, could not be wholly concealed. 
 Perhaps many may now be more reconciled with those 
 verdicts when the standard of measurement has been 
 here made more apparent. Perhaps, too, from the 
 radical difference of the two works, we may learn better 
 to recognise the difference between the historical and , 
 sesthetic criticism of poetical productions'. 
 
 * The. gain which I myself have _ derived from these 
 considerations upon Shakespeare appears to me immea- 
 surable. It may seem as if httle that is original is.ac- 
 comphshed by placing oneself merely as the judge and 
 interpreter of another. But when this judgment is exer- 
 cised upoiL a great man, whose art in its power and 
 extent fathoms all things, whose own wisdom, moreover^ 
 does not lie before lis as direct tradition, but requires 
 . ^n operation of the mind to purify it from the elements 
 of poetic characterisation, then this occupation possesses 
 all the benefits which can be afibrded by a practical 
 
xvi ' PBEFACE OF THE GEBMAN AUTHOE. 
 
 knowledge and study of man, attempted by concentrating 
 the mind on the worthiest subjects of reflection ; its 
 advantage as well as its enjoyment can scarcely be placed 
 in comparison with that of any other work, and it 
 arouses all the energy of the inner self-activd life. 
 
 Gervinus. 
 
 Heidelberg, 1849-50. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PACE 
 
 Tkanslatoe's Preface . . . . , . . . v 
 
 Pkbfacb of the German Author . . . . . ix 
 
 Introduction . . . . . . . . 1 
 
 Shakespeare at Stratford . . . . .23 
 
 Shakespeare's Descriptive Poems . . . ■ . . 36 
 
 A Shakespeare in London and on the Stage . . 45 
 
 Dramatic Poetry before Shakespeare . . . 46 
 
 Tkb Stage ....... .84 
 
 Shakespeare's first Diiamatio Attempts . . . . 101 
 
 TiTtrs AndAonicus and Pekiclbs .... 102 
 
 Henry VI. 113 
 
 The Comedy of Errors and the Taming of the Shrew 133 
 
 Second Period of Shakespeare's Dramatic Poetry . . 149 
 
 I. Love-plays ....... 151 
 
 The Two Gentlemen of Verona . . . . 15'r 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost and All's Well that ends Well 164 
 
 Midsummer-Night's Dream . . . . . X8t 
 
 EoMEO AND Juliet . . . . . . 204 
 
 The Merchant of Venice . . . . . 230 
 
 11. Historical Plays . ... . . . 248 
 
 Richard III. . . . . . . . 259 
 
 ElCHARD II. . . . . . . . 2^9 
 
 Henry IV. (Part I.) . . . . . , 298 
 
 Henry IV. (Part II.) . . . . . 331 
 
 a2 
 
xviii CONTENTS. 
 
 FAGB 
 
 Henry V 339 
 
 King John . . . . . • • 353 
 
 III. Comedies . . . . . . • 3T2 
 
 The Mbkky Wives of Windsok . . . . 377 
 
 As Yotr iiKE It ..... . 386 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing . . . . . 406 
 
 Twelfth-Night ; ok, What You Will . . . 423 
 
 IV. Shakespeabe's Sonnets . . . . . 441 
 Thikd Period op Shakespeabe's Deamatio Poetky i . . 475 
 
 Measure for Measure .... 485 
 
 'Othello . . - . . . . . . _505 
 
 Hamlet . . . . . . ... 548 
 
 Macbeth ........ 583 
 
 King Lear . . . . . . . . 611 
 
 Cymbeline ....... 644 
 
 ' Troilus and Ceessida ... . . 679 
 
 Julius C.a;sAR ....... 698 ^ 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra . . . . . . 722 
 
 . CoRioLANus :...... 746 
 
 TiMON OF Athens . . . . . . . 769 
 
 The Tempest . ... . . . . 787 
 
 ^-The Winter's Tale . . . . .801 
 
 Henry VIII .818 
 
 Shakespeare . . . . . . . . 830 
 
INTEODUCTION/ 
 
 <=J««o 
 
 ^It is a disgrace to England, that even now, 258 years after Shak- 
 spere's death, the study of him has been so narrow, and the criticism, 
 however good, so devoted to the mere text and its illustration, and 
 to studies of single plays, that no book by an Englishman exists which , 
 deals in any worthy manner with Shakspere as a whole, which tracks 
 the rise and growth of his genius from the boyish romanticism or the 
 sharp ypungmanishness of his early plays, to the magnificence, the 
 splendour, the divine intuition, which mark his ablest works. The 
 profoTlnd and generous "Commentaries" of Gervinus — an honour to a 
 German to have written, a pleasure to an Englishman to read — is still 
 the only book known to me that comes near the true treatment and the 
 dignity of its subject, or can be put into the hands of the student who 
 Wants to know the mind of Shakspere.' 
 
 These words were written by me in the autumn of 1873, when I 
 founded ' The New Shakspere Society,' and have appeard in that 
 Society's Prospectus up to this day. Their truth has been confirmd by 
 all the best judges to whom I have spoken about Gervinus's ' Com- 
 mentaries ' since. One of the ablest of these, my friend Professor 
 J. K. Seeley — a student of Shakspere from hip youth — said, on 
 returning the book to me, ' The play of Cpmbeline had always 
 puzzld me ; and now, for the first time, Gervinus has eXplaind it. I 
 could not have believd before, that any man could have taught me, at 
 my time of life, so much about one of Shakspere's plays. It is all 
 clear now.' In Germany G ervinus's book still holds its ground as the 
 best sesthetic work on our great poet, and is respected by all thoughtftil 
 men. 
 
 My strong conviction of its value leads me, however unworthy for 
 the task, to say now a few words of recommendation of the book to my 
 English fellow-students of Shakspere, and to note, for ithe use of be- 
 ginners, a few points that may help them in their work : 1 . On Gervinus's 
 book. 2. On the change in Shakspere's metre as he advanct in life, 
 
 • By i". J. Fninivall, Esq., M.A., Trin. Hall, Cambr., Founder and Director of the 
 New Shakspere Society, the Chaucer Society, the Early English Text Society, &o. 
 
XX INTSODUCTiON.—% 1. Gervinus's View of Sha&spere^ 
 
 and on ' Metrical Tests.'_ 3. On the spurious portions of plays calld 
 Shakspere's, and the use of metrical tests in detecting them. 4. Oa 
 noting the progressive changes in Shakspere's language, imagery^ 
 and thought. 5. On the succession of Shakspere's plays. 6. On 
 the helps for. studying them. I want just to teU a beginner now^ 
 ■what I wish another student had told me when I began to read 
 Shakspere. 
 
 § 1. Most Englishmen who read Shakspere are content to r^ad 
 his plays in any 'haphazard order, to enjoy and admire them — some- 
 greatly, some not much — without any thought of getting at the- 
 meaning of them, and at the man who lies beneath them; without 
 any notion of tracing the growth of his mind, from its first upshoot 
 till the ripening of its latest fruits. Yet this is not the way in which 
 the works of Shakspere, the chief gloiy of English literature, should 
 be studid. Carefully and faithfully is every Englishman bound to 
 follow the course of the most splendid imagination of his land, and to 
 note its purpose in every mark it leaves of its march. Shakspere 
 must be studied chronologically, and as a whole. In this task the- 
 student will get most real and welcome help from Professor Gervinus. 
 The Professor starts with Shakspere's earliest poems, the Venus 
 and Adonis, (full of passion and of Stratford country life), and Lucrece^ 
 (of which Chaucer's Troylus must surely have been the model) ; then 
 reviews his life in London, — -wild in its early days, — and the condition 
 of the stage when Shakspere joind it ; next, his earliest dramatic 
 attempts, his toucliings of Titus- Andronicus (Pericles must be put 
 later), and Henry VI., Part I., snd his recast of 2 and 3 Henri/ VI. ; 
 with his farces The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew ^ 
 Then the works of his Second Period, in four divisions: 1. His 
 erotic or love-pieces. 2. His historical plays. 3. His comedies o!f T/ie 
 Merry Wives, As You Like It, MuCh Ado, and Twelfth Night. 4. 
 His Sonnets. Next, the Professor treats the great Third Period of 
 Shakspere's Tragedies, headed by the tragi-comedy Measure for Mea- 
 sure, and winding-up with the purposeful and peaceful comedies of 
 later age, tlie Tempest and Winter's Tale, md' Henry F7//., which 
 (says Mr. Spedding) Shakspere plannd, but wrote less than half 
 of (1,166 lines), Fletcher writing the rest (1,761 Imes). 
 
 Shakspere's course is thus shown to have run from the amorous- 
 ness and ftin of youth, through the strong patriotism of early manhood, 
 to the wrestling with the dark problems that beset the man of middle 
 age, to the time of gloom which weighd on Shakspere (as on so 
 many men) in later life, when, though outwardly successful, the world 
 seemd all against him, and his mind dwelt with sympathy on scenes of 
 faithlessness of friends, treachery of relations and subjects, ingratitude 
 of children, scorn of his kind ; till at last, in his Sti-atford home again, 
 peace came to him, Miranda and Perdita in their lovely freshness ^nd 
 charm greeted him, and he was laid by his quiet Avon's side. 
 
INTRODUCTION— I I. Characteristics of Gervinus. xxi 
 
 In his last section, ' Shakespeare,' Gervinus sets before us his view 
 of the poet and his works as a whole, and rightly claims for him the 
 highest honour as the greatest dramatic artist, the rarest judge of men 
 and human affairs, the noblest moral teacher, that Literature has yet 
 known. 
 
 What strikes me most in Gervinus is his breadth of culture and 
 view, his rightness and calmness of judgment, his fairness in looking 
 at both sides of a question, his noble earnest purpose, his resolve ,to 
 get at the deepest meaning of his author, and his reverence and love 
 for Shakspere. No one can read his book without seeing evidence 
 of a range of reading and study rare indeed among Englishmen. No 
 one can fail to notice how his sound judgment at once puts the new ' 
 ' Aftaire du Colliet,' — the Perkins folio forgeries, &c.,^ — in its true light ; 
 how he rejects the ordinary biographer's temptation — to which so many 
 English Shakspereans yield — of malting his hero an angel ; how he 
 takes the plain and natural meaning of the ' Sonnets' as their real one, 
 and yet shpws us Shakspere rising irom his vices to the height of a 
 great teacher of men. No one can fail to see how Gervinus, noble- 
 natured and earnest himself, is able to catch and echo for us the 
 'still small voice' of Shakspere's hidden meaning even in the lightest 
 of his plays. No Englishman can fail to feel pleasure in the heartfelt 
 tribute of love and praise that the great Historian of German Literature 
 gives to the English Shakspere. 
 
 No doubt the book has shortcomingSj if not faults. It is German, 
 and occasionally cumbrous ; it has not the fervour and glow, or the 
 delicacy and subtlety, of many of Mrs. Jameson's Studies ; it does 
 not do justice to Shakspere's infinite humour and fun ; it makes, 
 sometimes, little odd mistakes.^ But stiU it is a noble and generous 
 
 ' The old forgeries printed by Mr. CoEier as genuine were the documents 
 from the Ellesmere (or Bridgwater Hoiise) and Dulvrich College Libraries, a 
 State Paper, and the latter additions to the Dulwich Letters (see Dr. Ingleby's 
 Complete View). I, in common with many other men, have examind the originals 
 with his prints of them. Mr. Collier printed one more name to one document tlian 
 was in it when produc'd. See Mr. A. E. Brae's opinion at p. 13 of ' Collier, 
 Coleridge, and Shakespeare: a Review, by the Author of "Literary Cookery,'" 
 1860. None of Mr. Collier's statements . should be trusted till they have been 
 verified. .The entries of the actings of Shakspere's Plays in Mr. Peter Cunning- 
 ham's ' Eev.els at Court ' (Shakespeare Society, 1842), pp. 203-5, 21,0-11, are also 
 printed from forgeries , (which Sir T. Duifus Hardy has shown me), though 
 Mr. Halliwell says he has a transcript of some of the entries, made before Mr. 
 Cunningham was born. Thus the following usually relied-on dates are forgd : 
 1G05, Moor of Venis, Merry Wives, Measure for Measure, Errors, Lovds Labours 
 Lost, Henry V., Merchant of Venice. 1612, Tempest, Winter's Tale. 
 
 ' Professor Seeley notices three : — 1. In the comment on 1 Henry IV. GeTnijias 
 takes, as literal and serious (p. 309) Hotspur's humourous exaggeration of Morti- 
 mer's keeping him nine hours listening to devils' names : 
 
 I tell you what : 
 He held me last Night at least nine howres 
 In reckning vp the seuerall Devils Names 
 That were his Lackaeyes. (III. i. 155-8, Folio, p. 61, col. 1.) 
 
sxii INTEODUCTIOK—% 2. Meirieal Tests. 
 
 book, whicli no true lover of Shakspere can read -without gratitude 
 and respect, 
 
 § 2. Though Gervinus's criticism is mainly sesthetio,? yet, in settling 
 the dates and relations of Shakspere's plays, he always shows a keen 
 appreciation of the value of external evidence, and likewise of the 
 metrical evidence, the markt changes of metre in Shakspere's verse 
 as he advanot in life. As getting the right succession of Shakspere's 
 plays is 'a condition precedent' to following the growth of his mind, 
 and as 'metrical tests' are a great help to this end, though they have 
 had, till lately, little attention given to them in England, ^ I wish to say 
 a few words on them. 
 
 Admitting (as I contend we must admit) that Love's Labours Lost 
 is Shakspere's earliest wholly-genuine play, and contrasting it Avith 
 his latest. The Tempest, Cymbeline,' and Winter's Tale, we find that — 
 (I.), while in Love's Labours Lost the 5-measure ryming lines are 
 1,028, and the blank verse only 579 ; in The Tempest such ryming 
 lines are 2, and the blank verse 1,458, while in the Winter's Tale there 
 are no 5-measure ryming lines to 1,825 blank verse ones. Again, 
 (II.) Shakspere's early blank verse was written on the model of ryming 
 verse, nearly every line had a pause at the end ; but as he wrote on, he 
 struggld out of these fetters into a freer and more naturaWine, which 
 
 "When Hotspur of course means ten or twelve minutes, or perhaps even five. 
 'Certainly poor evidence that Hotspur is patient when in repose, pliable and yield- 
 ing like a lamb ! 2. Gervinus (p. 310) misses the humour of Hotspur's speech to 
 Kate his wife (II. iii. Folio, p. 56, col. 2) : 
 
 Sot. Come, wilt thou see me ride ? 
 
 ' And when I am a horsebaelie, I will sweare 
 I loue thee infinitely, ' 
 
 though he is right in saying Hotspur does love his wife, and that because he ban- 
 ters her. 3. He turns Desdemona's words into Othello's own (p. 517), ' She gave 
 him a " world of sighs ; " and she swore (even in remembrance the Moor deemed it 
 strange and wondrus pitiful) that she wished she had not heard his story.' 
 Whereas Shakspere says, I. iii. ■159-162, Folio; p. 314, col. 1 : 
 
 She gaue me for mj- paines a world of [sighs] : 
 
 She Swore, in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange, 
 
 'Twas pittifull, 'twas wondrous pittifuU : 
 
 She wish'd she had not heard it. . . . 
 
 Professor Dowden (who refers to the notice of Gervinus in vol. vi. of the Shakspere 
 JahrhiieK) thinks that Gervinus often goes much astray, as in what he says of 
 Mercutio ; and that his strong historical tendency imports meanings into the plays 
 which are not there, as when he calls Hamlet a culturd man in an age of rude 
 force, whereas it's an age of Osric, Polonius, universities, &c. The inconsistency, 
 such as it is, seems to me in the facts, and not in Gervinus. 
 
 ' Mr. Halliwell complains of this word being stretcht to include 'psychological 
 and philosophical.' 
 
 ^ Malone in 1778 pointed out the value of the Eyme-Test in settling the 
 priority of one early play over another. He also noticed the unstopt or run-on 
 line test, which the late Mr. Bathurst brought more markedly under the notice of 
 modern folk by his little book (1857) on Shakspere's differences of versification. 
 
INTRODUCTION.— % 2. The Vmtopt-IAne and Pause Tests. xxiii 
 
 often ran-on into the next, took the pause from the end, and put it in or 
 near the middle of the line. Contrast these three extracts : — 
 
 LOVES LABOUES LOST, II. 1.13-34. 
 (Folio, p. 126, revised.) 
 
 Frin. Good Lord Boyet, Biy beauty, 
 
 though but mean, 
 Needs not the painted flourish of your 
 
 praise. 
 Beauty is bought by iudgement of the 
 
 eye. 
 Not vttred by base sale of ohapmens 
 
 tongues. 
 I am lesse proud to heare you tell my 
 
 worth, 
 Then you much ■willing to be counted 
 
 •wise. 
 In spending your -wit in the praise of 
 
 mine. 
 But now to taske the tasker: good 
 
 Boyet, 
 You are not ignorant, all-telling fame 
 Doth noyse abroad, Nauar hath ihade>a 
 
 TOW, 
 
 Till paineful studie shall outweare three 
 
 yeares. 
 No woman may approach his silent 
 
 Court : 
 Therefore, to's -seemeth it a needfull 
 
 course. 
 Before we enter his forbidden gates. 
 To know his pleasure; and, in that 
 
 behalfe, 
 Bold of your worthinesse, we single you. 
 As our best mouing.faire soliciter. 
 Tell him, the daughter of the King of 
 
 France, 
 On serious businesse craning quicke 
 
 dispatch, 
 Importunes personall conference with 
 
 his glace. 
 HastS ; signifie so much ; while we at- 
 tend. 
 Like humble visag'd suters, his high will. 
 
 LEAE, IV. iii. 17-25. 
 
 (Fi'om -the Quarto o£ 1608, sig. L 7, ed. 
 Steevena ; Dyce, vii. 318, revised.) 
 Kent. then it mou'd her, 
 
 Gent. Not to a rage : patience and sor- 
 row stroue ' 
 Who should expresse her goodliest. You 
 
 have scene 
 Sun-shine and raiue at once : her smiles 
 
 and teares 
 Were _like a better day : those happy 
 
 smilets 
 That plaid on her ripe lip, seem'd not 
 
 to know 
 What guests were in her eyes ; which 
 
 parted thence 
 As pearles from diamonds dropt. In 
 
 briefe, sorrow 
 Would be a rarity most belou'd, if all 
 Could so become it. 
 
 THE WINTERS TAIE, III. u. 282-243. 
 
 Folio, p. 288, ool. 1. 
 
 Leo. Thou didst speake bfit well 
 
 When most the truth : which I receyue 
 
 much b6t|ter 
 Then to be pittled of thee. Prethee, 
 
 bring me 234 
 
 To the dead bodies of my Queene, and 
 
 Sonne ; 
 One graue shall be for both. Vpon 
 
 them shall [237 
 
 The causes of their death appeare (vnto 
 Our shame perpetuall). Once a day He 
 
 vis I it 
 The ChappeU where they lye ; and teares 
 
 shed there 
 ■Shall be my recrea|tion. So long as 
 
 Na|ture 240 
 
 Will bearevp with this exercise, so long 
 I dayly vow to VS6 it. Come and leade 
 
 I me 242 
 
 To these sorrowes. 
 
 The dullest ear cannot fail to recognize the difference between the 
 early Love's Labours Lost pause or dwelling on the end of each line, 
 and the later Lear's and Winter's Tale disregard of it, with (III.) the 
 following shift of the pause to or near the middle of the next line. In 
 short, the proportion of run-on lines to end-pause ones in three of ,the 
 earliest and three of the latest plays of Shakspere is as follows : — 
 
xxiv INTEOBUCTION.—% 2. The Extra-SyttahU and Weak-EncUng Tests. 
 
 Broportion of 
 
 Earliest Flays unsfcopt lines to 
 
 end-stopt ones 
 
 Iioues Labour's Lost . 1 in 18'14 
 The Comedy of Errours . 1 in 107 
 •The Two Gentlemen of! 
 Verona . . .J 
 
 ■ 1 in 10 
 
 Latest Plays 
 
 The Tempest . 
 Cymbeline King of Bri- 
 taine . . . . 
 The Winter's Tale ^ 
 
 Proportion of 
 unstppt lines to. 
 end-stopt ones 
 
 . 1 in 3-02 
 
 1 in 2-52 
 1 in 2-12 
 
 Again, note that all the above Lovers Labours Lost lines have 
 only five measures, or ten syllables, each ; and not one weak ending, 
 that is, a final unemphatic word, or a word that clearly belongs to the 
 next line, while in The Winter's Tale extract there are four lines with 
 extra syllables (240 having one also before the central pause) and three 
 with w;eak endings, 234, 237, 242. In these points contrast the Love's 
 Labours Lost lines also with the two following passages, fi-om The 
 Winter's Tale, (Act ii., sc. i., 1. 158-170; Folio, p., 283), and Shak- 
 spere's part of Henry VIII. : — 
 
 Lord. I had rather you did lacke then I (my Lord) 
 
 Vpon this ground : and more it would content j me 159 
 
 To haue her Honor true, then your Buspit|ion, ' 
 
 Be blam'd for't how you might. 
 Leo. AVhy, what neede we 161 
 
 Commune with you of this? hut rather fol|low 
 Our forcefuU instigation ? Our prerog|atiTe 
 Cals not your Counsailes, hut our naturall good|nesse 
 Imparts this : which, if you, or stupified. 
 Or seeming so, in skill, cannot or will | not 
 Hellish a truth, like vs, informe your seines ; 
 We neede no more of your aduice : the mat|ter, 
 The losse, the gaine, the ord'riug on't, is all 
 ^ Properly ovirs. {Winter's Tale, ii. i. 158-170.) 
 
 Here (IV.) are seven lines with extra syllables,' and (V.) two hnes,, 
 159, 161, with 'weak-endings,' the coming of which in any number 
 is a sure sign of Shakspere's late work (see the Postscript). Again, 
 take, for the weak ending, Henry VIII., Act in., sc. ii., 1. 97-104 ; 
 Folio, p. 220, col. 2 :— 
 
 ' Professor Hertzberg's table of the proportion of 1 1-syllable lines to all the 
 others (12-syllable and short lines too) in the following 17 plays is given intha 
 lutroduction to his German translation of Cymbeline, as follows : — 
 
 
 Per cent. 
 
 
 Per cent. 
 
 Lo-K,e's Labour's Lost- 
 
 . 4 
 
 As You Like It 
 
 . 18 
 
 Titus Andronicus 
 
 . 6 
 
 Troilus and Cressida 
 
 . 20 
 
 King John 
 
 . 6 
 
 All's Well 
 
 . 21 
 
 Kiohard II. 
 
 . 11-39 
 
 Othello . 
 
 . 26 
 
 Errors 
 
 . 12 
 
 Winter's Tale . 
 
 . 31-09 
 
 Merchant of Venice . 
 
 . 15 
 
 Cymbeline 
 
 . 32 
 
 Tw6 Gentlemen 
 
 . 15 
 
 Tempest . 
 
 . 33 
 
 Shrew ,. 
 
 . 16 
 
 Henry VIII. . 
 
 . 44 
 
 Eichard ni. . 
 
 . 18 
 
 
 
INTBOVUCTION.—l 2. The Weak-Ending Teat. XXV 
 
 What though I ItnoTC her ver|tuous 
 And -well deseruing ? Yet, I kncj-w her for 98 
 
 A splesny Lutheran, and not -wholsome to 99 
 
 Our cause, that she should lye i' th' bpsome of lOO 
 
 Our hard-rul'd King. Againe, there is sprung up 
 An Heretique, an Arch-one ; Cranmer, one 
 Hath crawl'd, into the fauour of the King, 
 And is his Oracle. 
 
 Three weak endings in three consecutive lines, 98-100 ; only one 
 end-stopt line in 7 ; one with an extra syllable. These are notes of 
 Shakspere's latest plays ; indexed, his share in Henry VIII. was almost 
 certainly his last work. Or take Mr. Spedding's beautiful instance 
 from Cymbeline, Act iv., so. ii., 1. 220-4 ; Folio, p. 389, col. 1 : — 
 ' Thou shalt not laeke 
 
 The Flower that's like thy face. Pale Primrose, nor 221 
 
 The azur'd Hare-bell, like thyVeines: no, nor 222 
 
 The leafe of Eglantine, whom not to slan|der, 
 
 Out-sweetned not thy breath. 
 
 ' I doubt whether you will find a single case in any of Shakspere's 
 undoubtedly early plays of a line of the same structure. Where you 
 find a line of ten syllables ending with a word of one syllable — that 
 word not admitting either of emphasis or pause, but belonging to the 
 next line, and forming part of its first word-group — you have a metrical 
 effect of wTiich Shakespeare grew fonder as he grew older ; frequent in 
 his latest period ; up to the end of his middle period, so far as I can 
 remember, unknown.' (Mr. Spedding's letter to me on his 'Pause- 
 Test' 'New SJiakspere Soc.'s Trans.,' 1874, p. 31.) ^Professor W. 
 A, Hertzberg counts seventy-two weak endings in the 2,407 (omitting 
 the songs and other lyrical pieces) of Gyinbeline, or 1 to 33'43, sho'yping 
 its very late date, 1611 (?) There are other metrical tests, of which 
 (VI.) the abandonment of doggrel — used only in five plays, all early 
 or earlyish — and (VII.) the use of 6-measure lines, are "two. No one 
 test can be trusted ; all must be combind and considerd, and us'd as 
 helps for the higher sesthetic criticism. Every student should work at 
 these tests for himself.' As material that may help him in using the 
 
 ' Don't turn your Shakspere into a mere arithmetic-book, and fancy you're a 
 great critic because you add up a lot of rymea or end-stopt Hues, and do a great 
 many sums out of your poet. This is mere clerk's work ; but it is. needed to im- 
 press the facts, of Shakspere's changes in metre on your mind, and to help others, 
 as well as yourself, to data for settling the succession of the plays. Metrical tests 
 are but one branch of the tree of criticism. Mr. Hales's seven tests for the growth 
 of Shakspere's art and mind in his plays are : 1. External Evidence (entries in the 
 Stationers' Registers, Diaries, &c.) 2. Historical Allusions in the Plays. 3. 
 Changes of Metre. 4. Change of Language and Style; then, Development of 
 Dramatic Art, as shown in 5. Power of Characterization, and 6. Dramatic Unity. 
 7. (the most important of all) Knowledge of Life (not only knowledge of its facts, 
 but a growth of moral, insight, and of belief in moral laws ruling men, and the 
 course of world). See my report of his two Lectures on Shakspere in The Academy, 
 Jan. 17, 1874, p. 63 ; Jan. 31, p. IV. 
 
XXVI 
 
 INTRODUCTION.— % 3. Metrical Table. 
 
 ryme-test, I reprint from the 'New Sh. Soc.'s Trans.,' 1874, p. 16, Mr. 
 Fleay's ' Metrical Table of Shakespeare's Plays,' though the order of 
 the plays is not rightly given in it — tas been since largely alterd by its 
 ■compiler — and though it has not been verifi'd by any other counter : — 
 
 METEIOAIi TABLE OF SHAKSPEEE'S PLATS. 
 
 I. PLAYS OF PIBST (RHYMING) PERIOD. 
 
 Love's L. Lost. 
 Uidsum. 'S. S. 
 Com. of Errors. 
 'Stjoni. and Jul. 
 3ichard n. 
 
 Hichard m. 
 Sing John, 
 i Henry IV. 
 2 Heniy IV. 
 
 Henry V. 
 
 T. Gent, of V. 
 Tiler, of Ven. 
 Twelf. Night. 
 tbA you TJkQ it. 
 Merry Wives. 
 ISuchAdo, &c. 
 
 AU's Well. 
 Ideas, for Ke. 
 
 Troylus and C. 
 
 JSacbeth. 
 
 Cymheline. 
 
 Runlet. 
 
 Othello. 
 
 Xing Lear, 
 
 2789 
 
 losn 
 
 .WO 
 
 102S 
 
 m 
 
 .82 
 
 g 
 
 236 
 
 71 
 
 194 
 
 4 
 
 12 
 
 13 
 
 
 
 2261 
 
 441 
 
 878 
 
 731 
 
 138 
 
 63 
 
 29 
 
 168 
 
 
 — 
 
 . — 
 
 6 
 
 3 
 
 . — 
 
 1770 
 
 240 
 
 1160 
 
 380 
 
 — 
 
 -^ 
 
 137 
 
 64 
 
 — 
 
 109 
 
 .3 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 — 
 
 3002 
 
 40.5 
 
 2111 
 
 486 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 lis 
 
 62 
 
 28 
 
 — 
 
 10 
 
 20 
 
 16 
 
 4? 
 
 2644 
 
 — 
 
 2107 
 
 637 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 148 
 
 12 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 11 
 
 17 
 
 26 
 
 22 
 
 II. HISTORIES OP SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 3599 
 
 65? 
 
 3374 
 
 170 
 
 
 
 
 
 670 
 
 2.1.53 
 
 — 
 
 2403 
 
 1.10 
 
 — 
 
 — ! 
 
 64 
 
 3170 
 
 1464 
 
 1622 
 
 •84 
 
 — 
 
 — . 
 
 60 
 
 3437 
 
 1860 
 
 1417 
 
 74 
 
 7 
 
 15 
 
 203 
 
 3320 
 
 1631 
 
 1678 
 
 101 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 291 
 
 _ _ — 
 
 20 
 
 39 
 
 13 
 
 23 
 
 12 — — 
 
 1 
 
 » 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 4 — — 
 
 16 
 
 17 
 
 Ifi 
 
 16 
 
 [Pistol 64 1.] 
 
 3 
 
 13 
 
 7 
 
 ^— 
 
 [Pirt. ,, ( 
 1671.]" ~ 
 
 2 
 
 13 
 
 10 
 
 4 
 
 III. COMEDIES OF SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 2060 
 
 409 
 
 1510 
 
 116 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 203 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 18 
 
 8 
 
 in 
 
 S2 
 
 R 
 
 2705 
 
 673 
 
 1896 
 
 93 
 
 34 
 
 9 
 
 297 
 
 4 ■ 
 
 — 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 16 
 
 9.9. 
 
 1! 
 
 2684 
 
 1741 
 
 763 
 
 120 
 
 — 
 
 60 
 
 152 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 8 
 
 21 
 
 23 
 
 R 
 
 2904 
 
 1681 
 
 925 
 
 71 
 
 130 
 
 97 
 
 211 
 
 10 
 
 -_ 
 
 8 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 33 
 
 1 
 
 3013 
 
 2703 
 
 227 
 
 69 
 
 — 
 
 19 
 
 32 
 
 [Pistol 39 1.] 
 
 
 .1 
 
 3 
 
 
 2823 
 
 2106 
 
 643 
 
 40 
 
 18 
 
 16 
 
 129 
 
 22 
 
 — 
 
 - 
 
 2 
 
 7 
 
 16 
 
 4 
 
 IV. COMEDIES OF THIRD PERIOD. 
 
 2981 11463 11234 1' 2801 2 
 2809 1134|1574l 73 22 
 
 12 I 22B| 8 I 14 
 
 iS 
 
 V. TRAGEDIES OP THIRD PERIOD. 
 
 [84 1. in vision] 
 [86 1. in play] 
 
 3423 
 
 1186 
 
 2025 
 
 196 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 441 
 
 1993 
 
 158 
 
 1.588 
 
 lis 
 
 129 
 
 
 399 
 
 3448 
 
 638 
 
 2685 
 
 107 
 
 
 32 
 
 726 
 
 3924 
 
 1208 
 
 2490 
 
 81 
 
 . — 
 
 60 
 
 508 
 
 3324 
 
 541 
 
 2672 
 
 86 
 
 — 
 
 25 
 
 646 
 
 3298 
 
 903 
 
 2238 
 
 74 
 
 — 
 
 83 
 
 567 
 
 10 
 
 46 
 
 62 
 
 13 
 
 U 
 
 23 
 
 43 
 
 a 
 
 8 
 
 IS 
 
 31 
 
 IS 
 
 20 
 
 63 
 
 55 
 
 11 
 
 19 
 
 66 
 
 71 
 
 13 
 
 18 
 
 34 
 
 116 
 
 22 
 
 
 
 VI 
 
 . PLAYS OP FOURTH PERIOD. 
 
 
 
 
 Julius CsBsar.; 
 
 2440 
 
 165 
 
 2241 
 
 34 
 
 
 
 
 
 S69 
 
 ^ _.. 
 
 14 
 
 31 
 
 55 
 
 6 
 
 Coriol^us. - 
 
 3392 
 
 829 
 
 2621 
 
 42 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 70S 
 
 — — 
 
 3 
 
 33 
 
 76 
 
 
 Antony and C. 
 
 3964 
 
 255 
 
 2761 
 
 42 
 
 — 
 
 
 
 613 
 
 ^ . . 
 
 14 
 
 38 
 
 84 
 
 31 
 
 Tempest. 
 
 2068 
 
 458 
 
 1458 
 
 ■2 
 
 — 
 
 96 
 
 476 
 
 [641. inmasq.] 
 
 9. 
 
 16 
 
 47 
 
 5 
 
 ■Winter's Tale. 
 
 2V6S 
 
 844 
 
 1825 
 
 
 
 — 
 
 67 
 
 639 
 
 [32 1. in chor.] 
 
 8 
 
 14 
 
 19 
 
 IS 
 
 6 
 
 33 f 
 
 14 
 47 
 
 VII. PLAYS IN WHICH SHAKSPERE WAS NOT SOLE AUTHOR. 
 
 SenryVm. 2754 67? 2613 16 — 12 1196 [46 1. in Prol 
 
 Two Noble K. " — '---•- 
 
 Pericles. 
 Timon of A. 
 
 2754 
 
 67? 
 
 2613 
 
 16 
 
 _ 
 
 12 
 
 1195 
 
 2734 
 
 179 
 
 2468 
 
 54 
 
 — 
 
 33 
 
 1079 
 
 2886 
 
 418 
 
 1436 
 
 225 
 
 89 
 
 — 
 
 120 
 
 2358 
 
 596 
 
 1660 
 
 ,184 
 
 18 
 
 — 
 
 267 
 
 & i^ilogue]. 
 1, Gower]. 
 
 VIIL 
 
 £om. and Jul. 
 Samlet. 
 Henry V. 
 J&erry Wives. 
 
 T. of Shrew. 
 Titus Andron, 
 1 Henry VI. 
 i Henry VI. 
 BHenrjrVI. 
 Contention. 
 True Tragedy. 
 
 - I 
 
 2 
 
 19 
 
 IS 
 
 3 
 
 9 
 
 19 
 
 46 
 
 17 
 
 17 
 
 49 
 
 .59 
 
 26 
 
 15 
 
 28 
 
 64 
 
 30 
 
 FIRST SKETCHES IN EARLY QUARTOS. 
 
 2066 
 
 261 
 
 1461 
 
 854 
 
 
 
 92 
 
 2068 
 
 509 
 
 1462 
 
 54 
 
 43 — 
 
 209 
 
 1672 
 
 898 
 
 774 
 
 .30 
 
 
 104 
 
 1395 
 
 1207 
 
 148 
 
 40 
 
 38 [fairies 
 
 19 
 
 28 I - I - 
 
 [361. in play] 
 
 IX. DOUBTFUL PLAYS. 
 
 7 
 
 26 
 
 SO 
 
 SI 
 
 13 
 
 45 
 
 76 
 
 37 
 
 1 
 
 25 
 
 36 
 
 31 
 
 — 
 
 1 
 
 — 
 
 5' 
 
 2671 
 
 616 
 
 1971 
 
 169 
 
 16 
 
 — 
 
 260 
 
 _ 
 
 
 
 49 
 
 4 
 
 IK 
 
 It 
 
 
 2625 
 
 43 
 
 2338 
 
 144 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 1,54 
 
 — 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 S 
 
 
 
 2693 
 
 — 
 
 2379 
 
 314 
 
 . — 
 
 — 
 
 140 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 7 
 21 
 
 3U32 
 
 448 
 
 2562 
 
 122 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 265 
 
 _ 
 
 
 
 
 
 S 
 
 25 
 
 15 
 
 2904 
 
 — 
 
 2749 
 
 166 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 346 
 
 __ 
 
 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 11 
 
 14 
 
 
 1962 
 
 381 
 
 1671 
 
 44 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 .54 
 
 _ 
 
 __ 
 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 16 
 
 32 
 
 iilUl 
 
 "" 
 
 2036 
 
 ti6 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 148 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 14 
 
 21 
 
 29 
 
 83 
 
 92 
 
JNTBOSUCTION.—^ 3. Metrical Tests for genuine Work xxvii 
 
 That the ryme-test fails to place Shakspere's Plays in their right, 
 order, I have shown on pages 32-5 of the 'New Sh. Soc.'s Trans.' 1874 ; 
 but its value, in combination with other tests, is great. Prof. Ingram 
 has tabulated the results of his search with the weak-ending test, so- 
 valuable for Shakspere's late plays, and it will be given in my Post- 
 script, p. xlix. 
 
 § 3. Besides helping in settling the order of Shakspere's plays^ 
 metrical tests give important aid in — 1, suggesting, by their differing 
 proportions in different acts, possibly different dates for portions of his. 
 genuine plays ; and 2, different authors in doubtful plays, and drawing^ 
 definite lines between spurious and genuine work ; but these testa 
 must never be allowd to override the higher criticism : that must be 
 judge. To take point 2 first. In his undergraduate days at Cambridge 
 (1829-33) Mr. Tennyson pointed out — to Mr. HaUam, among others, 
 who unwisely pooh-poohd the notion — that Fletcher's hand was^ 
 largely in Henri/ VIII. Later, his friend Mr. James Spedding (the 
 learned and able editor of ' Bacon's Works,' &c.) publisht his working- 
 out of Mr. Tennyson's hint, ^ in an analysis of the play, in 'The 
 Gentleman's Magazine' for August 1850. Mr. Spedding first showd, — 
 by their having markedly the characteristics of Shakspere's style> 
 and the rest of the play not having these '' notes ' of authorship, but 
 having other ' notes ' of Fletcher's hand, — that the scenes below markt 
 Shakspere were his, and those marked Fletcher his. ' Mr. Spedding 
 then applied the extra-syllable (or feminine-ending) test, and I (in 
 1873) the end-stopt-line test, with the following result : — 
 
 Act 
 
 Scene 
 
 lines 
 
 Extra ByJl. 
 
 Proportion. 
 
 Author 
 
 ITnstopt line. 
 
 L 
 
 1 
 
 225 
 
 63 ' 
 
 1 to 3-5 . 
 
 Shakspere 
 
 1 to 1-83 
 
 
 2 
 
 215 
 
 74 
 
 „ 2-9 
 
 jj 
 
 „, 1-86 
 
 
 3&4: 
 
 172 
 
 100 
 
 „ 1-7 
 
 Hetcher 
 
 „ 3-84 
 
 11. 
 
 1 
 
 164 
 
 .97 
 
 „ 1-6 
 
 5» 
 
 „ 2-96 
 
 
 2 
 
 129 
 
 77 , 
 
 „ 1-6 
 
 
 „ 3-43 
 
 
 3 
 
 107 
 
 41 
 
 „ 2-6 
 
 Shakspere 
 
 „ 2-37 
 
 
 4 
 
 230 
 
 . 72 
 
 „ 31 
 
 ,j 
 
 „ 2-13 
 
 III. 
 
 1 
 
 166 
 
 .119 
 
 „ 1-3 
 
 Fletcher 
 
 „ 4-83 
 
 
 *2 
 
 193 
 
 62 
 
 ., 3- 
 
 Shakspere 
 
 „ 2- 
 
 
 3 
 
 257 
 
 152 
 
 „ 1-6 
 
 Fletcher 
 
 „ 3-43 
 
 IV. 
 
 ■l 
 
 116 
 
 •57 
 
 „ 2- 
 
 jj 
 
 „ 3- 
 
 
 2 
 3 
 
 80 
 93 
 
 51 
 51 
 
 „ 1-S 
 „ 1-8 
 
 '* ' 
 
 } „ 4-55 
 
 
 1 
 
 176 
 
 68 
 
 „ 2-5 
 
 Shakspere 
 
 „ 2-28 
 
 V. 
 
 2 
 
 217 
 
 115 
 
 „ 1-8 
 
 Fletcher 
 
 „ 4-77 
 
 
 3 
 
 (almost a 
 
 U prose or r 
 
 ough verse) 
 
 „ 
 
 „ 5-01 
 
 
 4 
 
 37 i 
 
 44 
 
 „ 1-6 
 
 " 
 
 „ 6-41 
 
 * To exit of the King. The rest of ii. is made iii. 
 In short, the proportion of Shakspere's double, endings,^ was 1 to. 
 
 ' Mr. S. Hickson had arrivd before, privately and independently, at the same 
 result. See Prof. Ingram's confirmation on p. xlix. n. helow. 
 
 2 Calld also extra syllahles, or feniinine endings. Very rarely in Shakspere, 
 
xsviii INTEODlTGTION.—l 3. Metrical Tests for genuine WorR. 
 
 3, of Fletcher's 1 to 1-7 ; of Shakspere's unstopt lines, 1 to 2-03, of 
 Fletcher's 1 to 3-79, both tests making Shakspere's part of the play 
 Ms latest work. Mr. Spedding's division of the play between Shak- 
 spere and Fletcher was confirrad independently by the late Mr. S. 
 Hickson, in 'Notes and Queries,' ii. 198, Aug. 24, 1850; and by 
 Mr. Fleay in ' New Sh. Soc. Trans.,' 1874, Appendix, p. 23.* It may 
 te" lookt on as certain. Again, Mr. Tennyson us't in his under- 
 graduate days to read the genuine parts of Pericles to his friends 
 in college. He read them to me in London last December (1873). 
 He pickt them out by his ear and his knowledge of Shakspere's hand. 
 Last April Mr. Fleay sent me, as genuine, the same parts of Pericles, 
 got at mainly'by working metrical tests. Sidney Walker, Gervinus 
 {nearly), Delius and others, had before attaind - the same result. 
 Shakspere wrote the Marina story in Acts iii. iv. v., tess the brothel 
 scenes and the Gower choruses. These, Rowley wrote, says Mr. Fleay, 
 ■while G. Wilkins wrote Acts i. and ii. and arrangd the play. (' New Sh. 
 Soc. Trans.,' 1874, p. 195, &c.) Further, the late Mr. Samuel Hickson, 
 in the 'Westminster and Foreign Quarterly' for April 1847, and 
 working after Mr. Spalding and other critics,' restord to Shakspere 
 his portion of Tlie Two Nolle Kinsmen, which was not publisht till 
 1634< as 'Written by the memorable worthies of the time: Mr. John 
 Fletcher, and Mr. William Shakspeare, Gent.' Mr. Hickson workt 
 on aesthetic grounds, and showd that Shakspere designd the under- 
 plot as well as the main plot of the play, and wrote Acts I. ; H. i. ; HL 
 i. ii. ; IV. iii. (prose); V. all but scene ii. The rest Fletcher wrote, as is 
 shown by its weaknessvwhen compard with Shakspere's part, and its 
 more frequent use of the extra final syllable. Mr. Hickson's division of the 
 play has been confirmd by the double-ending test and the end-stopt 
 line test, which show that while in the 1,124 Shakspere-lines in the 
 play there are 321 with extra final syllables or double endings, that is, 
 1 in 3'5, and only 1 line of 4-measures, in the 1,398 Fletcher-lines 
 there are 771 with double endings, or 1 in l'"8, nearly twice as many 
 as in Shakspere, and 14 lines of 4-measnres. Also in Shakspere's 
 lines the proportion of unstopt lines to end-stopt ones is 1 in 2*41, while 
 in Fletcher's it is I'in 5'53. See ' Appendix to New Sh. Soc. Trans.,* 
 1874, where Mr. Spedding's and Mr. Hickson's Papers are reprinted. 
 Again, the spurious parts of Timon of Athens had been more or 
 less completely pointed out by Charles Knight and others. By 
 metrical tests, with some slight help on jesthetic grounds from me, Mr. 
 Fleay has, as I beUeve, rightly separated the genuine part of the play 
 
 ' more frequently in Hetcher, the last syllable is dwelt on : — ' Up with a course or 
 two, and tack about, boys.' Two Noble Kinsmen, Fletcher, in., v. 10 (see, also ii., 
 ii., 63, 68, 71, 73). 
 
 ' Mr. Tennyson always held that Shakspere wrote much of The Two Noble 
 •Kinsmen. So did Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and De Quincey. See page 1, below. 
 
WTBOSUCTION.—^ S. Gmmne and spurious Work. xxix 
 
 "from the spurious, except in one instance, and printed it in the ' New 
 Sh. Soc.'s Trans.,' 1874, p. 153-194. Once more. Farmer nearly 100 
 years ago said that Shakspere wrote only the Petruchio scenes in the. 
 Taming of the Shnew. Mr. Collier hesitatingly adopted this view. 
 Mr. Grant White devdlopt it, and I (and Mr. Fleay afterwards) turnd it 
 into figures, making the' following parts Shakspere's, though, in many 
 "places they are workt up by him from the old Taming of a Shrew : — 
 Induction; Act XL, sc. i., 1. 1jS8-326 (? touching 115-167); III. ii. 
 1-125, 151-240; IV. i. (and ii. Dyce) ; IV. iii. v. (IV. iv. vi. Dyce) ; 
 V. ii., 1-180 ; in short, the parts of Katharine and Petruchio, and 
 almost all Grumio, with the characters on the stage with them, and 
 possible occasional touches elsewhere. (' New Sh. Soc. Trans.' 1874, 
 103-110.) The re^t is by the alterer and adapter of the old A 
 ■Shrew, probably Marlowe, as there are deliberate copies or plagiarisms 
 •of him in ten passages (G. White). 
 
 The Cambridge editors, Messrs. Clark and Wright, have laltely 
 ■opend an attack, in their Clarendon-Press edition, on the genuineness 
 of certain parts of Macbeth, and the attack has been inconsiderately 
 developt by Mr. Fleay' in the ' New Sh. Soc.'s Trans.,' 1874. So far 
 as the assault is on the Porter's speech, it seems to me a complete 
 failure ; ^ and the notion that a fourth-rate writer like Middleton could 
 Lave written the grim and pregnant humour of that Porter's speech, I look 
 ■on as a mere idle fancy. Mr. Hales thinks that the change to the trochaic 
 metre in Hecate's speeches, and their inferior quality, point to a differ- 
 ent hand, perhaps Middleton's ; ^ but that is all of the play that he or I 
 (who still hesitate *) can yet surrender. The wonderful pace at which 
 the play was plainly "written— a feverish haste drives it on — will account 
 for many weaknesses in detail. The (probably) after-inserted King's- 
 evil lines are manifestly Shakspere's. Mr. Fleay's late attack on the 
 
 ' See Mr. Hales's excellent Paper on ' The Porter in Macbeth ' in The New Sh. 
 Soc. Trans., 1874^ Also De Quincey on the Knocking, Works, xiii. 192-8 ; 
 Furness's Macbeth, p. 437. 
 
 ^ P.S. — Mr. Fleay's attack on the Porter's speech is no-w witlidrawn. His 
 attempt to make spurious the last three acts of The Jkiio Gentlemen has also been 
 wisely -withdra-wu. His theories, "when not confirming former results, should be 
 • lookt on "Bith the utmost suspicion. 
 
 ' Middleton is selected, because in his Witch (p. 401-2 Furness's Macbeth) is 
 a song ' Come a"way, come a-way,' which Davenant (-who professt to be Shakspere's 
 son by an inn-keeper's "wife) inserted in his version of Shakspere's Macbeth (p. 337, 
 Puiness) at the point (III. v. 33) "where Shakspere or his editors put Come away, 
 come away, in the Folio. Also at the Folio's ' Musicke a^id a Song. JBlai^e 
 Spirits,' IV." i. 43, Davenant inserts Middleton's song 'Black spirits and -white, 
 red spirits and gray' (p. 404, p. 339, Furness), "with variations. 
 
 * Compare "with the stilted Witch speeches Lncianus's charm-lines in Handet, 
 III. ii. 26fi-271. (Consider "whether Hamlet's speech for the players of a dozen or 
 sixteen lines (II." ii. 566, III. ii. 1, 86) is III. ii. 197^223, or is never deliverd, 
 as his own excited utterance (III. ii. 272-5), and the King's remorseful rising 
 (276) bring on the crisis which the speech was perhaps intended (III. ii. 86) to 
 provoke. See Prof. Seelej^ and Mr. Malleson hereon, in If. Sh. Soc. Trans., Pt. 2 or 3. 
 
XXX INTBODUCTION.—iZ. Eichardlll.; Henry VI. 
 
 genuineness of parts of Julius Ccesar ('New Sh. Sec. Trans.,' 1874, 
 Part 2.) is so groundless, weak and vague, as hardly to deserve mention. 
 ' Richard HI. has yet to be dealt with. The continuous strain of the 
 women's speeches, and the monotonous 5-measure end-stopt line, have 
 been thought by some to point to a second h^nd in the play, probably 
 Marlowe's. But Mr. Spedding is strongly opposd to this view. 
 . In 1 Henry VI. every reader, will, I apprehend, see, like Ger- 
 vinus (p. 101), three hands, though all may not agree in the parts of 
 the play they assign to those hands. Eeading it independently, though 
 hastily, before I knew other folks' notions about it, I could not recog- 
 nize Shakspere's hand till II. iv., the Temple-Garden scene ' (as Hallam 
 notes). Whether Shakspere wrote more than II. iv., IV. ii. ; '^ perhaps 
 IV. i. iv. 12-46 ; possibly IV. v., I have not had time to work out : but 
 a new ryming man seems to me to begin in IV. vi. vii. ; and the first 
 hand seems to write V. ii. iv.,^ if not all V. 
 
 For the argument that Marlowe, Peele, and Greene, wrote ITie Con- 
 tention and True Tragedy,-— ^q foundations of the 2nd and 3rd Parts of 
 Henry VI., — Malone's essay should be consulted. (Variorum ed. of 
 1821, vol. xviii., p. 555.) On the other side, for the fallacious argu- 
 ment (from the unity of historical view, &c.) that Shakspere wrote aU 
 the Three Parts of Henry VI., as well as The Contention and True 
 Tragedy, Charles Knight's essay in his ' Pictorial Shakspere ' (Histories, 
 vol. ii., Library ed. vol. vii.) should be read. For the argument from 
 style, that in lifting or altering 1,479 lines from The Contention for 
 
 ' This scene has a very large proportion of extra-syllatle lines ; 30 in 134, or 
 1 in 4-46. It has 6 run-on lines, or 1 in 22-33, JI. ii. 1-15 may have a touch of 
 Shakspere, tut are probably Marlowe. 
 
 2 Compare 1. 28, Folio, p. Ill, col. 2 : — 
 
 ' Ten thousand French hane tane the Sacrament 
 To ryue their dangerous Artillerie 
 Vpon no Christian soule but English Talbot.' 
 
 -with Sic. II., v. ii. 17, Folio, p. 42, col. 2 :— 
 
 ' A dozen of them heere haVjC tane the Sacrament. . , , 
 To kill the King at Oxford.' 
 
 ' Mr. Grant AVhite ' ventures to express the opinion that the greater part of 
 the Krst Part of King Henry the Sixth -was ' originally -written by Greene, whose 
 style of thought and versification may be detected throughout the pmy, beneath 
 the thin embellishment -mth which it was disguised by Shakespere, and especially 
 in the first and second Scenes of the first Act ; that traces of Marlowe's furious 
 pen may be, discovered in the second and third scenes of Act II. ; and I should be 
 inclined to attribute the couplets of the fifth, sixth, and seventh Scenes of Act IV. 
 to Peele (for their pathos is quite like his in motive, and it must be remembered 
 that Shakespeare has retouched them), were it not that Peele could hardly hav^ 
 -written so many distichs without Ifalling once into a peculiarity of rhyme which 
 constantly occurs in his works, and which consists in making an accented syllable 
 rjiyme -mth one that is unaccented.' (Cp. royal, withal ; ago, rainbow ; way, Ida ; 
 deny, attorney, &(;., in ' The Arraignment of Paris.') 
 
INTBOSUOTION.—l 3. Henry Vl, Mtus, Edw. III. xxxi 
 
 Henry VI., Part 2; and 1,931 lines frona True Tragedy for Henry VL, 
 Part 3, Shakspere was but transferring (but with few exception^) hia 
 own early work to his later recast of these plays, see Mr. E. Grant 
 White's very able essay in his New York edition of Shakspere, vol. 
 vii., p. 403, &c.' Mr. Grant White's view has just been confirmd by 
 Mr. Eives's Essay on Henry VI. (Bell, 2s.). But one can hardly believe 
 that all the present 2 and 3 Henry VI. is Shakspere's, however early one 
 may suppose him to have written it. To 2 Henry VI. he added 1,551 
 fresh lines, to 3 Henry Vl. 973 fresh lines. The lifted lines are dis- 
 tinguisht by the absence of inverted commas in the text of Malone, and , 
 in the editions printed from his, of which G. Bell and Sons' small-type 
 3s. 6d. book in Bohn's series is one. The lines markt with 'a single in- 
 verted comma ' were, as Malone thought, retoucht and greatly improvd 
 by Shakspere ; while those markt "by ' double inverted commas ' were 
 his own original production. It is a very great pity that later editors 
 have not foUowd this most instructive arrangement. To its want, 
 when reading the play, my own indecision about the authorship is due. 
 The New Shakspere Society will no doubt soon publish a parallel-text 
 edition of 2 and 3 Henry VI., and 2'Ae Contention and True Tragedy. 
 
 Titus Andronicus one would only be too glpid to turn out of 
 Shakspere's plays, so repulsive are its subject and .the treatment of it. 
 But the exlernal evidence is too strong for us.^ He no doubt retoucht 
 it; and Mr. H. B. Wheatley has collected in the 'New Sh. Soo.'s 
 Trans.,' 1874, p. 126-9, the passages in which he thinks he sees 
 Shakspere's hand. See, too, Gervinus, p. 102-6, below. 
 
 Lastly, Mr. E. Simpson and myself feeling — as must often have 
 been felt before — that Act II. of King Edward III. (Tauchnitz ' Five 
 Doubtful Plays of William Shakespeare,- 1869,' Is. 10^.), the King's 
 making love to the Countess of Salisbury, was either Shakspere's, or 
 worthy ,of him in his early manhood, askt Mr. Fleay to examine the 
 
 ' Mr. E. Grant White's ' opinion is, that the Rrst Part of The Contention ^ 
 The True Tragedy, and probably an early form of the First Part of King Henry 
 the Sixth, iinknown to us, were -written by Marlowe, Greene, and Shakespeare (and 
 perhaps Peele) together .... soon after the arrival of Shakespeare in London ;. 
 and that ho, in taking passages, and sometimes whole Scenes, from those plays for- 
 his King Henry the Sixth did little more than to' reclaim his own' (vii. 407). 
 'We find, then, that .... Shakespeare retained 2,299 lines of the old version in, 
 the new, that he wrote 2,52i lines especially for the new version, and that 1,111 
 lines of the new version are alterations or expansions of passages in the old. 
 That is, more than three-fourths of the Second and Third Parts of King Henry 
 the Sixth may be regarded — with slight allowance for unobliterated traces of his- 
 co-laborers — as Shakespeare's own in every sense of the word ; and to the re- 
 mainder he probably has as good a claim as to many passages which he found in 
 prose in various authors, and which were transmuted into poetry in their passage- 
 through the magical alembic of his brain.' — E. Grant White, Shakespeare's Works, 
 vii, 462. 
 
 ^ In the Preface to Titus in my big Folio edition you ^ill find a new theory on 
 this subject. — J. 0. (Halliwell) Phillipps. 
 
 b 
 
xxxii INTRODUCTION.— I 3. Early and late Work in Flays. 
 
 play. He added to it the two pages from the entry of the King in Act 
 I. so. ii., and then said that in this King-Coxintess Episode the propor- 
 tion of ryme-lines to verse-lines is 1 to 7 ; in the other parts of the 
 play, 1 to 20; in the episode the proportion of lines with double 
 endings (extra syllables or feminine endings) to regular 5-measure lines 
 is 1 to 1>0 ; in the rest of the play it is 1 to 25. As the episode contains 
 ' expressions like hugi/, vasture, &c., which are either of frequent occur- 
 rence in Shakspere, or have the true ring of his coinage in them'; as 
 it introduces ' two, new characters ' (Derby and Audley) who 'are 
 afterwards developt after a totally different fashion,' and a third, ' Lo- 
 dowick, the King's poet-secretary,' who is confind to the episode only, he 
 concluded that Shakspere did write this episode (' Academy,' April 25, 
 1874, p. 462). The question of Shakspere's having taken any part 
 in the other ' doubtful plays ' formerly assignd to him, needs further 
 investigation. 
 
 We must now hark back to point 1 (p. xxvii.), the help that metrical 
 tests give in suggesting or confirming different dates for different periods 
 of a play. Thisds a question to'be approacht with very great caution, 
 and one on which trust in one test may lead to ridiculous absurdities. 
 We have as yet no comparative tables of the differences of metrical 
 peculiarities in the different acts and scenes of Shakspere's plays, nor 
 do we know whether any working test could be got from them if 
 we had. But we do know that Shakspere retouoht and enlargd 
 certain plays, and we are bound to see whether we can recognize in 
 them his later work. Lovers Labours Lost, for instance, which we 
 feel sure — from its excessive word-play, its prevalence of ryme 
 and end-stopt lines, its large use of doggrel, its want of dramatic 
 development (it is a play of conversation and situation), its faint 
 characterisation, &c. — must have been written quite early, say 
 before 1590, is stated by the Quarto of 1598 (the earliest known) to 
 have been ' Newly corrected and augmented.' ' So with AlVs Well — 
 
 ' I telieye tliat Berowne's last speech in Act III., at least his lines 305-8 in 
 IV. iii., and' possibly V. ii. 315-334 (though more in the earlier style) are later 
 insertions. Dyce says on IV. iii. 299-304 (Globe), 312-319 (as compard with 
 ■320, &c.), 'Nothing can he plainer than that in this speech we have two pas- 
 sages, both in their original and in their altered shape, the compositor having 
 ■confounded the new matter with the old.' Mr. Spedding wrote thus on Saturday, ' 
 Teh. 2, 1839: 'Finished Lov^s Labour's Lost. Observe the inequality in the 
 length of the Acts ; the first being half as long again, the fourth twice as long, 
 the fifth three times as long, as the second and third. This is a hint where to lo(* 
 for the principal additions and alterations. In the first Act I suspect Biron's re- 
 monstrance against the vow (to begin with) to be an insertion. In the fourth, 
 nearly the whole of the close, from Biron's burst " Who sees the heavenly Eosaline " 
 (IV. iii. 221). In the fifth, the whole of the fii'st scene between Holofernes and 
 ■Sir Nathaniel bears traces, to me, of the maturer hand, and may have been inserted 
 iodily. . The whole close of the fifth Act, from the entrance of Mereade (V. ii. 
 723), has been probably rewritten, and may bear the same relation to the original 
 
INTBODUCTION.—l 3. Early and late Work in, Flays. xxxiii 
 
 -possibly,' the recast of Loues Labours Wonne (Meres), — The Merchant 
 of Venice (in which I agree with Mr. Hales that the casket scenes at least 
 are earlier work), perhaps Midsummer NigMs Dream, and other plays. 
 And we are bound to search and see whether we can detect any of these 
 augmentations — if not corrections — ^by their fiillei thought and riper 
 style. Study of the parallel-text Quartos wiU largely help in this. 
 
 In the case of Troilus and Cressida, as Mr. Alexander J. Ellis 
 (our great authority on Early English and Shaksperean Pronunciation 
 and Metre) said to me, there are clearly three stories: 1. Of Troylus 
 and Cressida. 2. Of Hector. 3. Of Ajax, Ulysses, and the Greek 
 Camp2 — of which he car'd only to read the third, so far was it above 
 the other two. The point must have been notict often before. To 
 the parts of the play dealing with these three stories, Mr. Fleay has 
 applied the ryme-test, with the following result ('New Sh. Sec. Trans.,' 
 1874, p. 2), pointing to three different dates for the different parts of 
 the play. That there are two, an early, and a late, I do not doubt ; 
 the three dates I do doubt : — 
 
 Troylus story 
 
 Hector story 
 
 Ajax story 
 
 
 72 
 
 50 
 
 16 
 
 Ehyme lines 
 
 607 
 
 798 
 
 873 
 
 Verse lines 
 
 1 :8-4 
 
 1 : 13-6 
 
 1 : 54-5 
 
 ratio 
 
 Discussions of the Parliament Scene in Richard II., All's Well, The 
 
 copy which Eosaline's speech " Oft have I heard of yon, my Lord Biron," &c. (V. 
 ii, 851-864) bears to the original speech of six lines (827-832), which has been 
 allowed by mistake to stand. There are also a few lines (1-3) at the opening of 
 , the fourth Act which I have no doubt were introduced in the corrected copy. 
 Prince. Was that the king, that spurr'd his horse so hard 
 
 Against the steep uprising of the hill ? 
 Boget. I know not ; but I think it was not he. 
 It was thus that Shakspere learnt to shade off his scenes, to carry the action 
 beyond the stage. Thus, in Romeo and Juliet, I. ii., old Capulet and Paris enter 
 talking : — 
 
 But Montague is bound as well as I 
 In penalty alike, &c. 
 
 which was introduced in the amended copy.' 
 
 ' Professors DeUus, Hertzberg (who has specially gone into the point), Ingram 
 and Dowden hold that the style, verse, and plot all belong to one period." Craik's 
 and Hertzberg's view that iow's Labours Wonne is The Taming of the Shrew 
 cannot be supported in the face of the original Taming of {A) Shrew. 
 
 2 The Troylus story is in I.'i. 1-107, ii. 1-321 ; II. i. 160, ii., iii. 1-33 ; IV. 
 j., ii., iii., iv. 1-141, v. 12-53; *IV. v. 277-293; *V. i. 89-93, ii., iii. 97-115, iv. 
 20-24, V. 1-5, vi. 1-11. (*In all the Act V. scenes, and in IV. v. 277-293, Ulysses 
 or'Diomed comes in ; the stories overlap.) The Hector story is in I. i. 108-119, 
 iii. 213-309; n. ii.; in. i. 161-172; IV. iv. 142-150, v. 1-11, 64-276; *V. i., 
 iii. 1-97, v., &c. to the end (except sc. vii. viii. ix., and epilogue, probably spurious). 
 — Fleay. Dyce says, ' That some portions of it, partieula,rly towards the end, ara 
 from the pen of a very inferior dramatist, is unquestionable ; and they belong . . . 
 perhaps to the joint production of Dekker and Chettle,' mentioned in Henslowe'a 
 Diary, p. 147, &e., ed. Shakespeare Soc. - 
 
 b2 
 
xxxiv INTEODTJCTION.—l i. Tests of Shaksper^s Growth: 
 
 Two Gentlemen (very, feeble, as I think), and Twelfth Night, are also • 
 contained in Mr. Fleay's paper. 
 
 § 4. As Shakspere's change of metre was but one of the signs of 
 the growth of his art and power, the student must watch for all further 
 manifestations of that growth in the poet's work ; daring use of 
 words, crowding new and fuller meanings into them, so as often to 
 produce obscurity - (specially in Macbeth and Zear'); change from 
 fancy to imagination in figures of speech ; increase in power of making 
 his characters live, so that they become real men and women to you; 
 deepening of purpose; heightening of tone ; broadening of view ; the 
 insight growing greater' as the art became perfect. To this end, 
 registers should be made of all peculiar phrases, happy uses of words, 
 and striking metaphors in the plays, as successively read ; the parallel- 
 texts of the first and second Quartos of Borneo and Juliet (now in 
 the press for the New Sh. Soc, edited by Mr. P. A. Daniel), of Hamlet 
 . (edited by Josiah Allen, with preface by Samuel Timmins ; Sampson 
 Low, 1860), and other plays, when publisht, should be compard. . 
 Shakspere's treatment of the same thought or subject at different 
 periods of his life should also be compard ; take, for instance, the 
 pretty impatience of Juliet, to get news Of Eomeo out of her nurse in 
 Borneo and Juliet ; of Eosalind to get news of her lover, Orlando, 
 out of Celia, in the later As You Like It ; and of Imogen to get 
 tidings of her husband, Posthumus, out of Pisanio, in the still' later 
 Cymheline, III., ii. Again, the separation in storm and shipwreck 
 of the family of -fflgeon, and the re-union of father, child, and mother 
 in the early Comedy ^of Errors, should be compard with the nearly- 
 like re-union, if not separation, in the much later Pericles, &c. For 
 incidents, take Mr. Spedding's happy instance of Shakspere's treat- 
 ment of the face of a beautiful woman just dead : 
 
 1. Borneo and Juliet, second edition (1599), not in the first 
 edition, therefore presumably written between 1597 and 1599 : — 
 
 Her 1)10011 is settled^ and her joints are stiff. 
 Life and these lips have long been separated. 
 Death lies on her, Wee an untimely frost 
 Upon, the fairest flower of all the field. 
 
 2. ' Antony and Cleopatra' (1608, according to Delius, &c.) : — 
 
 If they had swalloVd poison, 'twould appear 
 By external swelling ; Imt she looks like sleep, 
 As she would catch another Anthony 
 In her strong toil of graoe. 
 
 3. ' Cypibeline ' (date disputed, but / say one of the latest [? 1611] 
 plays) : — 
 
 How found you him ? [Imogen disguisd as a youth.] 
 
 Stark, as you see. 
 Thus smiling, as some fly had tickled slumber, 
 Not as death's dart being laughed at. His right cheek 
 Eeposing on a cushion. 
 
 ' Mr. Hales, in Academy, Jan. 17, 1874, p. 63, col. 3. 
 
INTRODUCTION— I i. Tests of Shaksperc's Growth. xxxv 
 
 ■' The -cliflEerence in the treatment in these three cases represents the 
 progress of a great change in manner and taste : a change which could 
 not be put on or oiF like the fashion, but was part of the man ' (' New 
 Sh. Soc.'s Trans.,' 1874, p. 30). Beautiful as the tender pathos of the 
 first image, Fancy-bred, is, we must yet feel that in the second and third 
 the Imagination of the poet dwells no longer on the outside, but goes 
 to the very heart of the matter. Cleopatra is shown in the deepest 
 desire of her life ; Imogen in her purity smiling unconsciously at death.* 
 Of stage situations and business, Shakspere started with a perfect 
 mastery : his first two plays. Lovers Labours Lost and Errors, prove 
 
 ' Compare, in Mr. Euskin's . chapter " Of Imagination Penetrative," ' Modern 
 Painters,' Vol. II.,' Part II., § 2, Chap. III., p. 158, ed. 1848, his instance of lips 
 described by Paney, dwelling on the outside, and Imagination going to the heart 
 and inner nature of everything. The bride's lips red (Sir John Suckling) ; fair 
 Eosamond's, struck by Eleanor CWarner) ; the lamp of life, ' as the' radiant 
 clouds of morning through thin clouds ' (Shelley) ; and then the bare bones of 
 Yoriek's skull (HaTidet V. i. 207) :— 
 
 'Here hung those Ups that I have kissed, I know not how oft! Where be 
 your gibes now ? your gambols ? your songs ? your flashes, of merriment, that were 
 wont to set the table on a roar ? ' 
 
 ' There is the essence of life, and the full power of imagination. 
 
 ' Again compare Milton's flowers in Lycidas with Perdita's (in the Winter's 
 Tah). In Milton it happens, I think generally, and in the case before us most 
 certainly, that the imagination is mixed and broken with fancy, and so the strength 
 of the ima.gery is part of iron and part of clay : — 
 
 ' Bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies, {Imagmation) 
 The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine, {Nugatory) 
 The white pink and the pansy freak'd with jet, (Fancy) 
 The glowing violet, {Imagination) 
 
 The musk rose and the well-attir'd woodbine, {Fancy, vulgar) 
 With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, {Imagination) 
 And every flower that sad embroidery wears.' {Mixed) 
 
 * Then hear Perdita : — 
 
 ' 0, Proserpina, 
 Por the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall 
 From Dis's waggon. Daffodils, 
 That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 The winds of March with beauty. Violets, dim. 
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
 Or Cytherea's breath. Pale primroses 
 That die unmarried, ere they can behold 
 Bright Phcebus in his strength, a malady 
 Most incident to maids.' , 
 
 ' Observe how the imagination in these last lines goes into the very inmost 
 soul of every flower, after having toucht them all at first with that, heavenly 
 timidness, the shadow of Proserpine's, and gilded them with celestial gathering ; 
 and never stops on their spots or bodily shapes ; while Milton sticks in the stains 
 upon them, and puts us off with that unhappy freak of jet in the very flower that, 
 without this bit of paper-staining, would have been the most precious to us of all. 
 ' There is pansies : that's for thoughts.' (Ophelia, in Hamlet.) 
 
XXXvi INTRODUCTION.— %■ b. ShaJcsper^s First Penod. 
 
 it, and his undoubtedly prior training as an actor,' render it probablte'^ 
 but in characterization his growth from Loves Labours Lost to. 
 Henry IV. was wonderfully rapid and sure. Much higher than that 
 he could not grow, though he could spread his branches over all the . 
 earth. In knowledge of life he increast to the end ; ^ in wisdom ho 
 ripend ; leaving his works to us, a joy and possession for ever. 
 
 § 0. These works I would have the student read in the following . 
 order, setting aside Titus Andronicus (quite early) and Henry VL 
 (recast before' Henry IV.), till he is able to judge of them for himself. 
 
 Shakspere began his career with Love — its vagaries and its 
 sorrows, — Fun, and Light Comedy, Venus and Adonis (full of youth- 
 ful passion, and notes of his Stratford country life ^) ; Love's Labour's 
 Lost (full of brilliant word-play and wit); The Comedy of JErrors 
 (a farce full of bustle and fun, yet with a pathetic backgrotmd, p. 135) ; 
 Midsummer Night's Dream (a wedding-play, joining fairyland to Strat- 
 ford clowndom, first revealing a genius to which any height must be 
 within reach) ; The Two Gentleman of Verona (showing, besides much 
 comedy, the quick versatile Italian nature that so took Shakspere, 
 and the evils of self-abandonment to love, p. 152). Then, in more 
 serious vein, he coupld Love with Pathos and Tragedy, and in the 
 Southern passion and dpspair of Romeo and Juliet showd again a 
 genius never equalld by any but himself. "With this beautiful and 
 pathetic playx should be read Shakspere's earlier Lucreee^ (in 
 which he rivaUd the tender pity of Chaucer's Troylus), and the king- 
 and-countess episode in Edward III. (see p. xxxi. above), in which (if 
 
 ' Though the earliest print of Shakspere's name as an actor is 1594 (found 
 by Mr. Halli-well), yet Mr. E. Simpson's quotations about 'feathers' in The 
 Academy, April 4th, 1874, p. 368, eol. 2, show that Greene, when calling Shak- 
 spere an upstart crow ' beautified with our feathers' (G.'s posthumus Groatesworih 
 of Wit, 1592) meant to speak of him as an actor, and evidently then a well-known 
 one, as well as an author. In 1598 Shakspere acted in Ben Jonson's ' Every Maa 
 in his Humour: ' see p. 72 of this comedy in Jonson's WorJca, 1615. 
 
 '' Mr. Hales, in Academy, Jan. 17, 1874, p. 63, col. 3. 
 
 " In the ' Venus ' it is not only the well-known descriptions of the horse (1. 260- 
 318), and the hare-hunt (1. 673-708), that show the Stratford man, but the touches 
 of the overflowing Avon (72), the two silver doves (366), the milch doe and fawn 
 in some brake in Charlecote Park (875-6), the red morn (453), of which the 
 weatherwise say : — 
 
 A red sky at night 's a shepherd's delight ; 
 A red sky at morning 's a shepherd's warning ; 
 
 the hush of the wind before it rains (458), the many clouds consulting for foul 
 weather (972), the night owl (531), the lark (853), &c. &c. ; just as the artist 
 (289) and the shrill-tongued tapsters (849) show the taste of London life:— 
 F. J. P., in The Academy, Aug. 15, 1874, p. 179, col. 1. 
 
 ■• It must have been written some time after the Venus as its proportion of 
 unstopt lines is 1 in 10-81 (174 such lines to the poem's 1,865) against the Venus's 
 1 in 25-40 (47 run-on lines in 1,194). The tide through old London Bridge is in 
 1. 1,667 otLuerece. 
 
INTBODUCTION.—% 5. ShaJcsperds Second Period. 
 
 XXXVll 
 
 it be his) his first pure noble English woman-and-'wife appears." This 
 same Pathos and Tragedy he took with him when he began his first 
 national and patriotic, or Historical Plays, with Richard II. without 
 comedy, or prose, but with its noble Gaunt, and its weak and erring 
 king meeting the death he deservd. The feeling heightend in 
 Michard III. (a play in which everything is sacrifict to one charac- 
 ter, — aU is on the strain throughout (possibly with some of Marlowe's 
 ' furious line,' — rand) which is in intensity^ the precursor of Macbeth) ; 
 it was continu'd through King John (a panorama of fine scenes 
 almost unconnected, save by Paulconbridge, but picturing that passionate 
 love and yearning of Constance for her boy, which no one who has lost 
 a child can ever forget') ; though lessend in his recast of Henry VI., — 
 
 ' I put this forward only as a question deserving the careful attention of 
 students. Having read this episode three times, I cannot say positively that it is 
 Shakspere's. I think it worthy of him in his younger days (the play TvaB acted before 
 1596) ; and I do not think that Mr. Neil's point (p. 90) makes against this, that if 
 Shakspere had teen the author of Edward III. he would hardly have -written thus 
 of Lucrece: — 
 
 Arise, true English lady ! whom our isle 
 
 May better boast of, than e'er Soman might 
 
 Of Iter, whose ransacked treasury hath iaslt'd 
 
 The vain endeavour of so many pens. 
 
 Tauchnitz ed. p. 30, at foot. 
 This is just what the author of a Zuorece should have said of his own and others' 
 work. And, as Mr. Hales says, the two following passages look like the tame 
 man's work : — 
 
 Out with the moon-line ! I will none of 
 
 it! 
 And let me have her liken'd to the sun ! 
 Say, she hath thrice more splendour 
 
 than the sun, 
 That her perfection emulates the sun, 
 That she breeds sweets as plenteous as the 
 
 sun. 
 That she doth thaw cold winter like the 
 
 sun. 
 That she doth cheer fresh summer like 
 
 the sun, 
 And, in this application to the sun, 
 Bid her be free and general as the sun. 
 Who smiles upon the basest weed that 
 
 grows, 
 As lovingly as on the fragrant rose. 
 
 Hdw. III. ii. 1, Tauchnitz ed., p. 16. 
 
 -Bass. , Sweet Portia, 
 
 If you did know to whom I gave the 
 
 ring. 
 If yon did know for whom I gave the 
 
 ring. 
 And would conceive for what I gave the 
 
 ring, 
 And how unwillingly I left the ring, 
 When nought would be accepted but the 
 
 ring, 
 You would abate the strength of your 
 
 displeasure. 
 For. If you had known the virtue of 
 
 the ring. 
 Or half her worthiness that gave the 
 
 ring, 
 Or your own honour to contain the ring, 
 Tou would not then have parted with 
 
 the ring. 
 
 Merchant of Venice, v. i. 193-202 : 
 Globe, p. 203, col. }. 
 
 ' I take Shylock to be Shakspere's intensest male character, Timon and Lear 
 the next. Constance (in King John) the most intense female character. 
 
 ' If the date of King John is 1596 — which I doubt, — ^then those most touching 
 speeches of Constance about her boy Arthur may be fairly linkt with Shakspere's 
 feelings on the death of his own only boy Hamnet, who was buri'd on August 11, 
 1596, at Stratford. 
 
XXXViii INTRODXJCTiqN.—l 6. Shaks^er^s Second Period. 
 
 if that comes here — (Part II. with its noble Gloster and the rich humour 
 •of Cade ; Part III. with its fierce Margaret, its Warwick and York). 
 Shakspere brightend again in The Merchant of Venice (with its Portia 
 graceful, loving, witty, and wise, though the strain is still seen 
 in Shy lock) ; and then perhaps re- wrote the amusing Petruchio-Ka- 
 tharine-Grumio scenes in The Taming of the Shrew, with its most 
 racy Induction (see p. xxix.). In his three comedies of Falstafi", or 
 the First and Second Parts of Henry IV. and the Merry Wives, ' 
 he culminated in humour and comic power. ^ Never equalld has Fal- 
 staff been, and never will be, I believe. The drama of Shakspere's 
 hero, Henry V. (in 1599),^ then closd the connected series of his 
 historical plays,* with its splendid bursts of patriotism — possibly against 
 
 ' The Merry Wives was a piece hastily wiitten to please ftueen Elizabeth : so 
 says tradition ; and rightly, I belisve. No doubt it was revis'd ; but for intrinsic 
 merit it cannot stand for a moment by Henry IV. 
 
 ' Henry IV., or at least the First' Part df it, must have been written in or 
 about 1597, the proudest year of Shakspere's early life, when, not quite thirty- 
 three, he bought New Place, ' the great house ' of Stratford. , 
 
 ' In 1699 also, Shakspere became a partner in some of the profits of the Globe. 
 See the "Memorial of Cutbert Burbage, and Winifred his brother's wife, and William 
 his Sonne," in 1635, to the Lord Chamberlaine, discovered by Mr. J. 0. HaUiwell in 
 1870, made public by him in 1874, printed by me from the Eecord Office MS. in 
 The Academy, March 7, and since issued privately by Mr. HaUiwell. ' The father 
 of us, Cutbert and Richard Burbage, was the first builder of playhowses, and was 
 himselfe in his younger yeeres a player. "The theater " hee built with many hundred 
 poundes taken up at interest. The players that lived in those first times had only 
 the profitts arising from the dores ; but now the players receave all the commings 
 in at the dores to themselves, and halfe the galleries from the houskepers [the 
 owners or lessees of the theatre]. Hee built this house upon leased ground, by 
 which meanes the lan(Jlord and hee had a great suite in law, and, by his death, the 
 like troubles fell on us his sonnes : wee then bethought us of altering from thence, 
 and at like expeuce built the Globe [a.d. 1599 : Mr. HaUiwell says] with more 
 aummes of money taken up at interest, whicLlay heavy on us many yeares ; and 
 to ourselves wee joyned those deserveing men, Shakspere, Hemings,, CondaXl, JPhitips, 
 and' others, partners in the profittes of that they call the. House. . . . 
 
 ' Thus, Eight Honorable, as concerning the Globe, where wee ourselves are but 
 lessees. Now for the Blackfriers : that is our inheritance ; our father purchased it 
 at extreame rates, and made it. into a playhouse with great charge and trouble: 
 which after was leased out to one Evans that first sett up the boyes commonly 
 caUed the Queenes Majesties Children of the Chappell. In processe of time, the 
 boyes growing up to bee men, which were Underwood, Field, Ostler, and were 
 taken to strengthen the King's service ; and the more to strengthen the service, 
 the boyes dayly wearing out, it was considered that house would bee as fitt for 
 ourselves, and soe [we] purchased the lease remaining from Evans, with our 
 money, and placed men players, which were Hemings, Condall, Shakspeare^ S[c. 
 This could not have been tiU, or after the year 1603, when James succeeded 
 Elizabeth, and there was a. 'King's service.' Besides, the Warrant of King 
 James making Shakspere's company the King's Company, and which bears date 
 May 17th, 1603, mentions only the Globe, as this Company's ' now usuaU house.' 
 
 * Henry VIII., not part of the series, was added at the end of Shakspere's life. 
 See Mr. Eichard Simpson's able Paper on the ' Politics of Shakspere's Historical 
 
INTRODUCTION.— I 5. ShaMperis Third Period. xxxix 
 
 the contemporary glorification of the great Henri Quatre of France — 
 though they cannot save the play from its weakness as a drama, neces- 
 sitated by a battle ( Agincourt) standing for its plot. It was succeeded by 
 a brilliant set of comedies, possibly for the newly-opend Globe theatre : — 
 Much Ado about Nothing (glittering with stars of wit and richest 
 humour : — Ivhat do not the names Benedick and Beatrice, Dogberry and 
 Verges mean to a Shakspere-reader's ear?—); As Tou Like It with 
 its moral, ' Sweet are the uses of adversity,' its freshness of greenwood 
 life, wherein men ' fleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden 
 world ' ; and yet with its melancholy Jaques, who will not be com- 
 forted or glad, a prelude to the sadder time so close at hand. Twelfth 
 Night (with its pompous goose of a Malvolio, its sharp Maria, its Toby 
 Belch and Andrew Agueoheek, its cross-purposes jn love). AlVs 
 Well (possibly the recast of Love's Labours Wonne, with its unpleasant 
 plot of a willing wife hunting and catching her unwilling husband, 
 but with- its inimitable braggart ParoUes). 
 
 Here Shakspere's 'Sonnets' should be read, and the tender sensi- 
 tive nature that producd them commund with. Over and over again 
 must they be read, till at least their main outlines are clear. The key 
 to them is No. cxliv. on ' the man right fair,' who is the poet's ' better 
 angel,' and ' the worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.' That Gervinus's 
 interpretation of them (p. 461— 463)^from Armitage Brown — is right, 
 I h^ive no doubt. The later ' Sonnets ' are the best preparation for 
 Hamlet. 
 
 Undoubtedly at this time a shadow of darkness fell upon Shak- 
 spere. What causes brought it, we cannot certainly tell. Private 
 reasons the ' Sonnets ' show. He was deserted by his mistress— 
 wrongly but madly lovd by him, in spite of the struggles of his better 
 nature — for his dearest friend; and this for a time severd their friend- 
 ship, never to be restord again as it first was. Public reasons there 
 were : his great patron and friend Southampton ' was declard traitor 
 and imprisond in 1601 ; was threatend with death, and in almost 
 
 Plays'in TheNew Shai'spereSoc.'s Trans., 1874:Or-5. Heargues ' that Shakspere 
 was of the Essex party, against Burghley and Cecil ; that in Henry VI. and Sichard 
 II. he showd Elizabeth misled by Leicester, and then by Bujghley(she herself said 
 she was Eichard II.); that John was aimd at the many callers for foreign inter- 
 vention in her time, his wars were hers of 1585 ; Henry IV. showd how she ns'd 
 and cast off helpers, and picturd the Northern Eebellion in her reign (1569).; 
 Henry V. told her how foreign war united a nation, and brought about religious 
 toleration at home (this was Essex's policy) ; Henry VIII. brought out the end of 
 the constantly falling state of the old nobility, (which Shakspere, in common with so 
 many Elizabethans, lamented,) and the consummation of the full power of the 
 Crown, two threads running through English history and. Shakspere's Historical 
 Plays. Shakspere's changes of the Chronicles were not only for dramatic effect, 
 but to show the lessons he wisht them to teach on the political circumstances of 
 his time.' 
 
 ' This is Mr. Hales's suggestion. In the dedication to Lucrece, Shakspere says 
 to Southampton, ' The lore I dedicate to your lordship is without end.' 
 
xl INTBOD]JCTION.—% S. Sliahspere's Fowth Period of Calm. 
 
 daily danger of it till Elizabeth's own death in 1603 set him free 
 through King James : the rebellion and execution of Essex, South- 
 anipton's friend and the cause of his ruin, to whom Shakspere had two 
 years before alluded with pride in his Prologue to Henry V., Act v. 
 1. 30. At any rate, the times were out of joint. Shakspere was 
 stirrd to his inmost depths, and gave forth the grandest series of 
 Tragedies that the world has ever seen : Hamlet (followd by the 
 tragi-comedy Measure for Measure), Julius Ccesar, Othello, Machethf 
 Lear, Troilus and Gressida (see p. xxxiii.), Antony and Cleopatra^ 
 Coriolanus, Timon; showing what subjects were then kin to his 
 frame of. mind; how he felt, and struggld with, the stern realities 
 of life ;. how he dwelt on the weakness and baseness of men, their 
 treachery as friends and subjects, their lawless lust and ungovernd 
 jealousy as lovers, their serpent-Hke ingratitude ,as children, their 
 fickleness and disgustfulness as the many-headed mob, fit only to be 
 spit upon and curst : over all he held the terrors of conscience and the 
 avenging sword of fate. 
 
 But Shakspere could not end thus. After the darkness came 
 light ; after the storm, calm ; and in the closing series of his plays — 
 three tragedies, two comedies, and one history — inspird, I believe, by 
 his renewd family-life at Stratford • — he speaks of reconciliation and 
 peace. His Tragedies now, for the first time, end happily ; his Comedies 
 have a quite new fiilness of meaning and love ; his History (though 
 partly by Fletcher's mouth) speaks an injurd wife's forgiveness of deepest 
 wrongs, and prophesies blessings. AH the plays turn on broken family 
 ties united, or their breach forgiven unav'engd. With wife and 
 daughters again around him, the faultful past was rememberd only that 
 the present union might be closer. In Pericles (see p. xxviii.) the be- 
 reavd king finds once more his lost daughter, whose snpposd death had 
 made him dumb ; and then both are united to the wife-and-mother 
 whose seeming corpse had been colnmitted to the waves. In The Two 
 Nolle Kinsmen (see p. xxviii.), in which Shakspere again went back to 
 Chaucer, his early teacher (p. xxxvi.) and delight, the forsworn brother 
 (Arcite) dies repentant, recommending his brother (Palamon) to Emelye, 
 his first love. In Gymheline the true wife Imogen-r-' the most per- 
 fect ' Imogen — ^wrongly and hastily mistrusted, rises from desertion and 
 seeming death, to forgive and clasp to her ever-loving heart the husband 
 who had doubted her : no Desdemona end for her.^ 
 
 ' ' Unless Thomas Greene, the Town Clerk of Stratford, was living at New 
 Place with his ' cosen Shakspere ' or his family, Shakspere cannot well have 
 retired thither till after September 1609, as Greene then said a G. Brown might 
 stay longer in his house, "the rather because I perceyved I might stay another 
 yere at New Place." By Juno 21, 1611, Thomas Greene is probably in his new 
 house, as an order -was made that the town is ' to repare the churchyard wall at 
 Mr. Greene's dwelling place.' — Halliwell's Hist, of New Place. 
 
 ' Note, too, how, in Cymbeline, Shakspere contrasts the evils of court life with tha 
 simplicity and innocence of country life, life then around him, as I contend. 
 
ISTEODUCTION.—l 5. ShaJcsper^sFowrth Period. xli 
 
 In The Tempest — ^wherein Shakspere ' treads on the confinea 
 of other worlds' — wherein his new type of Stratford maiden isidealizd 
 into Miranda, ' so delicately refind, all but ethereal, in her virgin inno- 
 cence ' (Mrs. Jameson),-^-his lesson is still of the breaking of family 
 ties — brother and brother — repented of and forgiven : — 
 
 The rarer action is 
 In virtue than in vengeance : they, being penitent, 
 The sole drift of my purpose doth extend 
 Not a froune further.— V. i. 27-30 ; Fol. p. 16, col 2. 
 
 If with this play he really meant to end his poetic life,' to break 
 the staff of his enchantment, ' bnry it certain fathoms in the earth, and,, 
 deeper than did ever plummet sound,' drown his book (v. i. 54-7,) he 
 changd his mind, and in the Winter's Tale gave us again the noble- 
 wife, Hermione, calm in her dignity, saintlike in her patience, forgiving 
 her basely jealous and vindictive husband, while he tmited them again 
 — as in Pericles — with their lost daughter Perdita, sweet with the 
 fragrance of her Stratford flowers of spring, artless and beautiful, 
 tender and noble -naturd, as Shakspere alone could make her. 
 
 In Henry VIII. he returns again to the deserted wife. Katharine 
 the divorced, pious, affectionate, simple, magnanimous, — in one .sense, 
 * the triumph of Shakespeare's genius and his wisdom ' (Mrs. Jameson,, 
 pp. 379, 384) — forgives her ruffian husband ' all, and prays God to do so 
 likewise-' : — 
 
 tell him, in death I blest him, 
 For so I will. Mine eyes grow dimme : Farewell. 
 
 Fol. p. 226. 
 
 ' » . . 
 
 ' Prof. Karl Elze's attempt, in 1872, to prove that the Tempest was written m 
 
 1604, seems to me a failure. It may be thus stated : Because Ben Jonson in 1614 
 (Introduction to Bartholomew Fair) plainly sneerd at Shakspere's Tempe^ and 
 Winten's Tale [which must therefore, surely, have been two of his latest plays, and 
 freshest in the audience's mind], therefore his allusion in Volpone 1607 (acted 
 1606), when speaking of Guarini — 
 
 ' All our English writers, 
 I mean such as are happy in the Italian, 
 Will deign to steal out of this author, mainly. 
 Almost as much as from Montagnie . . .' 
 
 was a cut at Shakspere's borrowing from Montaigne in The Tempest, 11. i. 147, &e., 
 — although he never borrowd from Guarini; — and therefore The Tempest was 
 written in 1604. That the poorer original of Shakspere's 'gorgeous palaces' 
 , vanishing, is in the Earl of Sterline's Z'anMs( 1603); that Lord Southampton joind 
 in fitting out a ship to sail to Virginia in 1605 (so that Caliban can be turnd 
 into a native American, and Prospero into Lord Southampton !), and that a pam- 
 phlet in 1604 deseribd ' a monstrous Fish that appeard in the form of a Woman 
 from her waist upwards,' cannot strengthen the knees of Prof- Elze's weak 
 hypothesis, is but too plain. All the metrical and aesthetic evidence is in favour 
 of the late date of the Tempest (? 1610) which Jonson's allusion in Bartholomew 
 Fair confirms. Pfof. Elze's date of 1603 for Henry VUI. must also be given up. 
 
Xlii INTBODUCTigN.— % 6. Shakspere's Fourth Period. 
 
 And thus, forgiven and forgiving,* full of the highest wisdom and of 
 peace, at one with farjiily, and friends, and foes, in harmony with Avon's 
 ilow and Stratford's level meads, Shakapere closd his life on earth.^ 
 
 ' It is certain, I think, that in his latest plays', of the Fourth Period, Shak- 
 ■spere was also teaching himself the lesson of forgiveness for the •wrongs and 
 disappointments he had sufferd, and -which were reflected in the Tragedies of his 
 Third Period. See on this my friend Prof. Dowden's forthcoming ' Mind and Art 
 of Shakspere' (H. S. King & Co.), with its fine and right likening of Shakspere 
 to a ship, beaten and storm-tOst, but yet entering harbour with sails fuU-set, to 
 anchor in peace. I quote it from the MS. of his Lectures : — 
 
 ' There are lovers of Shakspere so jealous of his honour that they are unable 
 to suppose that any grave moral flaw could have impaired the perfection of his 
 life and manhood. To me Shakspere appears to have been a man who, by strenuous 
 •effort and -with the aid of the good powers of the world, saved himself, — so as by 
 fire. Before Shakspere zealots demand our attention to ingenious theories to 
 •establish the immaculateness of Shakspere's life, let them show that his writings 
 never offend. When they have shown that Shakspere's poetry possesses the proud 
 virginity of Milton's poetry, they may then go on to show that Shakspere's youth 
 was devoted to an ideal of moral purity aiid elevation like the youth of Milton. 
 I certainly should not infer from Shakspere's writings that he held himself with 
 virginal strength and pride remote from the blameful pleasures of the world. 
 What I do not find anywhere in the plays of Shakspere is a single cold-blooded, 
 hard or selfish line — all is warm, sensitive, vital, radiant with delight, or a-thrill 
 with pain. And what I dare to affirm of Shakspere's life is, tha:t whatever its 
 sins may have been, they were not hard, selfish, deliberate, cold-blooded sins. 
 The errors of his heart originated in his sensitiveness, in his imagination (not at 
 'first strictly trained to fidelity to the fact), in his quick sense of" existence, and in 
 the self-abandoning devotion of his heart. There are some noble lines by Chapman 
 in which he pictures to himself the life of great energy, enthusiasms and passions, 
 which for ever stands upon the edge of utmost danger, and yet for ever remains in 
 absolute security : — 
 
 Give me a spirit that on life's rough sea 
 
 Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind 
 
 Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack, 
 ' And his rapt ship runs on lier side so low 
 
 That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air ; 
 
 There is no dainger to tjie man that knows 
 
 What life and death is ; there's not any law 
 
 Exceeds his knowledge ; neither is it lawful 
 
 That he should stoop to any other law. 
 
 Such a master-spirit pressing forward under strained canvas was Shakspere. 
 If the ship dipped and drank water, she rose again ; and at length we see her 
 within view of her haven, sailing under a large, calm wind, not without tokens of 
 stress of weather, but if battered, yet unbroken, by the waves. It is to dull 
 lethargic lives that a moral accident is fatal, because they are tending no whither, 
 and lack energy and momentum to right themselves again. To say anything 
 ■against decent lethargic vices and timid virtues, anything to the advantage of the 
 •strenuous life of bold action and eager emotion which necessarily incurs risks 
 and sometimes suffers.^is, I am aware, " dangerous." Well, then, be it so ; it is 
 dangerous.' 
 
 2 In his History of New Place, Mr. Halliwell has suggested a more probable 
 cause for Shakspere's death than the no doubt groundless traditional one (after 
 1662) of the drinking bout with Drayton and Ben Jonson, namely, that the 
 
INTBODUCTION.—% 5. 8hahs;pere to be read Chrmologioally. xliii 
 
 IJow all that I have, written on the succession of Shakspere's works 
 in relation to the man Shakspere is liable to the ohjector's ' Pooh ! all 
 stuff ! Shakspere wrote comedies and tragedies for his company just 
 as the BurbageS told him to. His comedies were produc'd for some 
 leading comic actor, and his tragedies for his friend and partner Eichard 
 Burbage, the great tragedian. Neither j-efleoted his own feelings, except 
 professionally, any more than Macbeth's or Othello's did Burbage's 
 s when he acted them.' Take it so, if you will ; but still, I say. Do 
 follow the course of Shalcspere's mind; still do commune with the 
 creations of his brain as they flowd from it ; stiU note his wondrous 
 growth in that sensibility and intensity, far beyond aU other men's, 
 that enabld him to throw himself into all the varid figures of his. 
 plays with ever-increasing power and skill ; stUl watch his greatening^ 
 of wisdom and knowledge of life, his dazzling wit and ever-flowing 
 hiimour ; still gaze at, and glory in, his dream of, nay, his breathing 
 and living Fair Women, who enchant even Taine, and win the reverence 
 of Gervinus and all true-sould men — beside whom Dante's Beatrice 
 alone is fit to stand : — and then ■ ask yourself whether the choice of 
 Shakspere's series of subjects was fixt ,by others' orders, or chance,. 
 or by iis own frame of mind, his own mood ; whether his young pliys. 
 of love and fun, of patriotism and war,' of humour and wit, showd his 
 own early manhood or not, his time of successful struggle, and happy 
 enjoyment of its fi.-uits ; whether the dark questionings of ' Hamlet,' 
 the mingling with lawlessiiess, treachery, hatred, revenge, had nothing 
 to do with his own later inner life ; whether the reconciliation and peace 
 of his latest plays were independent of his new quiet home-life at 
 Stratford with its peace. I am content to abide by your answer. De- 
 pend on it 'that what bur greatest Victorian pOeteSs, Mrs. Barrett 
 Browning, though a lyrist, said of her own poetry, is i true, to a great 
 extent, of Shakspere in his dramas, ' They have my heart and life in 
 them ; they are not empty shells.' The feelings were in his soul ; he 
 put them into words ; and that is why the world is at his feet. 
 
 pigsties and nuisances which the Corporation hoolts show to Iia-('e existed in 
 Chapel Lane, which ran the whole length of New Place, bred the fever of which 
 Shakspere is said to have died. 
 
 Mr.' Halliwell gives several extracts from the books, as '1605: the Chamber- 
 laines shall gyve warning to Henry Smyth to plucke downe his pigges cote which 
 is built nere the chappie wall, and the house of office ( = privy) there.' — New 
 Place, p. 29. 
 
 ' They had, and naturally, their leaven of pathos and tragedy, as I have shown 
 above. 
 
xliv 
 
 INTRODUCTION.—^ 5. Order of Shaksfperga Plays. 
 
 Tbiai Tabib of the Oedeb op Shakspeee's Piays. 
 
 fThis, like all other tables, must be lookt on' as merely tentative, and open to 
 modification for any good reasons. But if only it comes near the truth, then 
 reading the plays in its order will the sooner enable the student to find out its 
 mistakes. (M. stands for ' mentioned Tpj iiancis Ileres in his PaUadis Tamia, 
 1698.') In his introductory Essays to Shakespeare s Dramatisehe WerJce (Ger- 
 man Shakespeare Society) Prof. Hertzberg dates Titus 1587-9, Lov^s Ldbours 
 Lost 1S92, Comedy of Errors about New Year's Dajr 1591, Two Gentlemen 1592, 
 AWs Well 1603, Troilus and Cressida 1603, and CymbeUne 1611. Mr. Grant 
 "White dates Eichm-d II. 1695, Bichard III 1593-4.] 
 
 
 Supposd Date 
 
 Earliest 
 Allusion 
 
 Date ot Publioa- ' 
 tion 
 
 PlEST PeEIOD. 
 
 
 
 
 Venus and Adonis .... 
 
 1586-7 
 
 
 1693* 
 
 . Titus Andronicus toucht up . 
 
 (?) 1588 
 
 1594 M 
 
 [(?) 1694] 1600 
 
 Love's Labours Lost 
 
 1588-9 
 
 1698 M 
 
 1598 (amended) 
 
 [Loves Labours Woune . 
 
 ] 
 
 1598 M 
 
 
 Comedy of Errors .... 
 
 1589-91 
 
 1694 M 
 
 1623 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream (? 2 dates) 
 
 1590-1 
 
 1558 M 
 
 1600 
 
 Two Gentlemenof Verona 
 
 1590-2 
 
 1598 M 
 
 1623 
 
 (?) 1 Henry VI. toucht-up 
 
 (?) 1590-2 
 
 
 1623 
 
 (•?) Troilus and Cressida, begun 
 
 
 
 
 (?) Lucrece 
 
 
 1594 
 
 1594 
 
 Borneo and Juliet .... 
 
 (?) 1591-3 
 
 1595 M 
 
 1597 
 
 (?) A Lover's Complaint . 
 
 
 
 
 Eiohardll 
 
 (?) 1693-4 
 
 ?1695M 
 
 1697 
 
 Eichardni 
 
 1694 
 
 ?1595M 
 
 1597 
 
 2 & 3 Henry VI. recast . 
 
 (?) 1694-5 
 
 
 1623 
 
 John . . . . 
 
 1595 
 
 1698 M 
 
 1623 
 
 Second Period. 
 
 
 
 
 Merchant of Venice 
 
 (?) 1696 
 
 1598 M 
 
 1600t 
 
 Taming of the Shrew, part 
 
 
 
 (?) 1596-7 
 
 
 1623* ' 
 
 1 Henry IV. . 
 
 
 
 1696-7t 
 
 1598 M 
 
 1598 
 
 2 Henry IV. . 
 
 
 
 1597-8t 
 
 1598 M 
 
 1600 
 
 Merry Wives . 
 
 
 
 1698-9 
 
 1602 
 
 1602 
 
 Henry V. 
 
 
 
 15991 
 
 1699 
 
 1600 
 
 Much Ado 
 
 
 
 1599-1 600t 
 
 1600 
 
 1600 
 
 As y6u Like it 
 
 
 
 1600$ 
 
 1600 
 
 1623§ 
 1623 
 
 Twelfth Night 
 
 
 
 1601| 
 
 1602 
 
 All's WeU (?L's. L. Wonne recast) 
 
 
 1601-2 
 
 
 1623 
 
 Sonnets 
 
 
 (?) 1692-1602 
 
 1598 M 
 
 1609 
 
 Thied Period. 
 
 
 
 . -^ 
 
 Hamlet 
 
 Measure for Measure 
 
 1602-3t 
 (?) 1603 
 
 (?) 
 
 1603* 
 1623 
 
 Julius Caesar 
 
 (?) 1601-3 
 
 (?) 
 
 1623 
 
 Othello 
 
 (?) 1604 
 
 1610 
 
 1622 
 
 * Enterd 1 year before at Stationers'. Hall, 
 t Enterd 2 years before at Stationers' Hall. 
 \ May be_lookt-on as fairly certain. 
 § Enterd in the Stationers' Eegisters in 1600. 
 ' 'The Taming of a Shrew' was publisht in 1604. 
 
INTRODUCTION.— % 6. Helps to reading Shaispere. 
 
 xlv 
 
 Trial Table of the Order of Shahpere's Vlays — continu'd. 
 
 SuppoBd.Date ^^^ Date o^. PubUca- 
 
 Maoteth .... 
 
 Lear ..... 
 Troilus and Cressida (?) completed 
 Antony and Cleopatra 
 Coriolanus . . . . 
 Timon, part .... 
 
 POTIETH PbBIOD. 
 
 Pericles, part . 
 
 Two Noble Kinsmen, part 
 
 Tempest. 
 
 Cymbeline 
 
 Winter's Tale , 
 
 Henry VIII., part . 
 
 1605-6t 
 , 1605-6t 
 1606-7 
 1606-7 
 (?) 1607-8 
 1607-8 
 
 1608t 
 
 1609-12 
 (?) 1610 
 
 1610-12 
 (?) 1611 
 
 1613J; 
 
 1610 
 1606 
 1609 . 
 1608 (?) 
 
 1608 
 
 ?1614 
 
 1611 
 1613 (?) 
 
 1623 
 
 1608* 
 
 1609 
 
 1623 
 
 1623 
 
 1623 
 
 1609* 
 
 1634 
 
 1623 
 
 1623 
 
 1623 
 
 1623 
 
 * Enterd 1 year before at Stationers' Hall. 
 \ May be lookt-ou as fairly certain. 
 
 § 6. Now of a few helps to reading Shakspere. 1. As to Text : have 
 the ' Globe ' edition (Maomillan, 3«. 6d,) because its lines , are num- 
 berd, amd for sound text ; but do riot ruin your eyes by reading it. 
 For reading, get a small 8vo. clear-type edition like Singer's, with notes 
 — a cheap re-issue, in half-crown volumes, is just coming out (Gf. Bell 
 and Sons). Get (if you can afford it) Mr. Fumess's admirable Variorum 
 edition of Borneo and Juliet and Macbeth (15s. each, A. E. Smith) ; 
 Hamtet is preparing ; (the other plays will slowly follow) ; and, 
 for their notes, Messrs. Clark and Wright's little Clarendon-Press edition 
 of plays at 2s. or 2s. &d. each (their 8vo. Cambridge edition with most 
 valuable fiiU collations, is out of print); and Craik's Julius Ccesar. 
 
 2. Glossaries, &c. : Mrs. Cowden's Clarke's ' Concordance ' to the 
 Plays (25s.), and Mrs. H. H. Fumess's to the Minor Poems (15s.); 
 Dr. Schmidt's most useful ' Shakespeare-Lexicon' (vol. i., A to L, 13s. 6rf. 
 WiUiams and Norgate), which well arranges the passages under their 
 senses, and the parts of speech of the head-word ; Dyce's ' Glossary ' (last 
 vol. of his Shakspere), and Nares's 'Glossary' (2 vols., 24s., A. E. Smith). 
 
 3. Grammar and Metre:. Dr. Abbott's 'Shakespearian Grammar' 
 (Macmillan, 6s.) indispensable ; but with some misscansions that will 
 ' absolutely sear ' •you, as Mr, Ellis says, and over some of which you wiU 
 groan, as we did in concert at the Philological Society when Professor 
 Mayor read them (see his Paper in ' Phil. Soc. Trans.,' 1874, now in 
 the press. Dr. Abbott, I need not say, ridicules our scannings). W. 
 Sidney Walker's three volumes of Shakspere Text- criticism (15s., A. E. 
 Smilii) are excellent.' C. Bathurst's capital little half-crown volume 
 
 ' Dr. Ingleby describes his just piiblisht StUl lAon as ' indications of a 
 
xlvi INTRODUCTION.— % 6. Helps to reading Shahspere, 
 
 on the end-stopt and tmstopt line, — ' Changes in Shakespeare's Versifi- 
 cation at different Periods of his Life ' (J. W. Parker and Son) — is 
 unluckily out of print. 4. Pronunciation : Mr. A. J. Ellis's ' Early- 
 English Pronunciation with Special Eeference to Chaucer and Shake- 
 speare ' (three Parts, 30«., Asher and Co. ; or Part iU. only, the Shake- 
 speare Part [p. 917-96], 10s. 5. Commentaries : First, Gervinus's 
 'Commentaries' (14s., Smith and Elder)'; second, Mrs. Jameson's 
 ' Characteristics of Women,' that is, Shakspere's Women — an enthu- 
 siastic and beautiful book (5s., Eoutledge) ; third, S. T. Coleridge's 
 ' Shakespeare Lectures,' &c., from vol. ii. of his ' Biographia Literaria ' 
 (3s. &d. : Howell, Liverpool). Then, if you wish for more books, Hud- 
 Son's ' Shakespeare, Ms Life, Art, and Characters ' (of his twenty-five 
 greatest plays) (2 vols., 12s., Ginn, Boston, U.S. ; Sampson Low, &c.) ; 
 T. P. Courtenay's matter-of-fact ' Commentaries on the Historical 
 Plays' (2 vols., Colburn, 1840) ; Prof. Dowden's forthcoming, 'Mind 
 and Art of Shakspere ' (H. S. King and Co.) ; Schlegel's ' Dramatic 
 Art' (3s. M.), and Hazlitt's thin ' Characters of Shakespfeare's Plays' 
 (2s., G. Bell and Sons) ; Mr. John E. Wise's charming little book on 
 ' Shakespeare : his Birthplace and its Neighbourhood (3s. 6d., Smith 
 and Elder) ; Mr. Eoach Smith's ' Eural Life of Shakespeare ' (? 2s. &d., 
 George BeU and Sons). And certainly buy a copy of Booth's admirable 
 Eeprint of the First Folio of 1623 (12s. 6d., Glaisher, 265, High Hol- 
 born; with the Quarto of 'Much Adoe,' for Is.) For tl^e facts of 
 ShakspSre's Life, chronologically arrangd, Mr. S. Neil's cheap little 
 ' Shakespeare : a Critical Biography ' (Houlston and Wright) is the 
 best book. On the ' Sonnets,' get the best book, Armitage Brown's 
 (? 6s., A. E. Smith) ; for the allegorical view of them, Mr. E. Simpson's. 
 ' Philosophy of Shakespeare's Sonnets ' (3s. Qd., Triibner) ; for useful 
 information and a mistaken theory, Mr. Gerald Massey's book — the 
 edition sold oiF at 5s. 6(f. (Eeeves and Turner). — Of course, subscribe 
 a guinea a year to the New Shakspere Society (Hon. Sec. A. G. Snel- 
 grove, Esq., London Hospital, E.), read its Papers, and work its Texts, 
 specially the parallel ones. 
 
 Get one or two likely friends to join you in your Shakspere work, 
 if you can, and fight out all your and their difficulties in common : 
 worry every line; eschew the vice of wholesale emendation. Get up 
 a party of ten or twelve men and four or six women to read the plays 
 in succession at one another's houses, or elsewhere, once a fortnight, 
 and discuss each for half an hour after each reading. Do all you can 
 to further the study of Shakspere, chronologically and as a whole, 
 throughout the nation. 
 
 systematic Hermeneutio [science of interpretation] of Shakspere's text.' It is 
 strongly against plausible emendations, and is well worth careful study. 
 
 ' Prof. Dowden, who has been through all the German commentators, thinks 
 Kreyssig's VorUsungen ilber Shakespeare (a big book), and ShaTcespeare-Fragm 
 (a little book), the best popular introduction in German to Shakspere. 
 
JNTEODUCTION.—% 6. A Visit to Siratforc^tpon-Avon. xlvii 
 
 Lastly, go to Stratford-upon-AYon, and see the town where 
 Shakspere was born, and bred, and died ; the country over which he 
 wanderd and playd when a boy, whose beauties and whose lore, as a 
 man, he put into his plays. Go either in spring, in April, ' when the 
 greatest poet was born in Nature's sweetest time,' and let Mr. Wise 
 (' Shakespeare : his Birthplace and its Neighbourhood,' p. 44, 58, &c.) 
 tell you how ' everything is full of beauty ' that you'll see ; or go in Ml 
 summer, as I did one afternoon in July this year. See first the little 
 low room where tradition says Shakspere was born, though his father 
 did not buy the house till eleven years after his birth ; ' look at the foun- 
 dations of ' New Place,' walk on the site of Shakspei'e's house, in ihe 
 garden whose soil he must often have trod, thinking of his boyhood and 
 hasty marriage, of London, with its trials and triumphs, and the wonders 
 he had created for its delight ; follow his body, past the school where he 
 learnt, to its grave in the Avon-side church ringd with elms ; see the 
 worn slab that covers his bones, with wife's and daughter's beside ; 
 look up at the bust which figures the case of the brain and heart that 
 have so enricht the world, which shows- you more truly than anything 
 else what Shakspere was like in the flesh ; try to see in those hazel 
 eyes, those death--drawn lips,^ those ruddy cheeks, the light, the mer- 
 riment, the itendemess, the wisdom, and love that once were theirs ; walk 
 by the fuB and quiet Avon's side, where the swan sails gently, by 
 which the cattle feed ; ask yourself what word sums up your feelings 
 on these scenes : and answer, with me, 'Peace ' ! 
 
 Next momiag, walk up the Welcombe road, across the old common 
 lands whose enclosing Shakspere said ' he was not able to bear : ' 
 when up Eowley Bank, turn round ; see the town nestle under its cir- 
 cling hills, shut in on the left by its green wall of trees. The corn is 
 golden beside you. Meon HOI meets the sky in your Iront; its shoulder 
 slants sharply to the spire of the church where Shakespeare's dust lies : 
 away on the right is Broadway, lit with the sun ; below it the ridge of 
 
 ■ He mm/ have rented it before ; but I expect that the former house, in Henley 
 Street, in- which John Shakspere dwelt, would have a better claim to be 'the birth- 
 place,' if it were now known. 
 
 ' ' We may mention — on the authority of Mr. Butcher, the very courteous 
 clerk of Stratford Church, who saw the examination made — that two years ago 
 Mr. Story, the great American sculptor, when at Stratford, made a very careful 
 examination of Shakspere's bust from a raised scaffolding, and came to the con- 
 clusion that the face of the bust was modelled from a death-mask. The lower 
 part of the face was very death-like ; the upper lip was elongated and drawn up 
 from the lower one by the shrinking of the nostrils, the first part of the face to 
 ' go ' after death ; the eyebrows were neither of the same length nor on the same 
 level ; the depth from the eye to the e^r was extraordinary ; the cheeks were of 
 different shapes, the left one being the more prominent at top. On the whole, 
 Mr. Story felt certain of the bust being made from a death-mask.' — F. J. F., in 
 The Academy, Aug. 22, 1874, p. 206, col. 3. The Academy, our ' leading literary 
 paper,' should be read for Shakspere news. 
 
Xlviii INTROSTJGTION.—l 6. A Visii to Stratford-upon-Avon. 
 
 Eoomer Hill, yellow for harvest on the right, passing leftwards into a 
 dark belt of trees to the church, their hollows filled with blue haze. In 
 this nest is Shakspere's town. After gazing your fill on the fair 
 scene before you, walk to the boat-place, paddle out for the best view 
 of the elm-framd church, then by its river-borderd side to the stream 
 below ; get a beautiftil view of the tower through a vista of trees 
 beyond the low waterfall ; then pass by cattle half-knee deep in the 
 shallows, sluggishly whisking their tails, happily chewing the cud ; go 
 under Wire-Brake bank, whose trees droop down to the river, whose 
 wood-pigeons greet you with coos; past many groups of grey willows, 
 with showers of wild roses between ; feathery reeds rise beside you, 
 birds twitter about, the sky is blue overhead, your boat glides smoothly 
 down stream : you feel the sweet content with which Shakspere must have 
 lookt on the scene. Later, you wander to Shottery, to Ann Hathaway's 
 cottage, where perchance in hot youth the poet made love. Then you ride 
 through Charlecote's taU-elmd park, and see the deer whose ancestors 
 he may have stolen ; on to Warwick, with its castle rising grandly from 
 Avon bank ; back to Stratford, with a glorious view fi:om the hiU, on 
 your left in your homeward ride.' Evening comes : you stroll again 
 by the riverside, through groups of townsfolk plea,santto see, in well-to- 
 do Sunday dress. From Cross-o'-th'-Hill you look at the fine view of 
 church and town, backt-by the Welcombe HUls ; through Wire Brake * 
 and ripe corn, you walk to the bridge that brings you to the opposite 
 level bank of the stream. Then you lie down, chatting of Shakspere 
 to your friend, while lovers in pairs pass lingering by, and the twilight 
 comes. Then again you say that the peace of the place was fit for 
 Shakspere's end, and that the memory of its quiet beauty will never 
 away from your mind. 
 
 Yes, Stratford will help you to understand Shakspere. 
 
 These pages aim at giving, shortly, to beginners, such parts of the 
 result of my last year's work at Shakspere — in scanty leisure — as I 
 wish some one had given me on my first start at him. Of their im- 
 maturity, beside the ripeness of Gervinus, and of their unworthiness 
 to appear before his book, I am only too painfully conscious. But as I 
 have gone among working-men and private friends, I- have been askt 
 to put some of these things in print; and for my haste in thus doing it 
 I willmgly risk the blame of those who know far more than I do, being 
 
 ' If you can, get on to mind Kenilworth, where Shakspera may have seen 
 Leicester's pageants 'before Elizabeth, in 1S75 (sea my edition of Captain Cose, 
 Ballad Society), to use in Midsummer Night's Dream. Heaven forbid that he 
 should haye turnd the great mason Captain into Bottom ! 
 
 The young Stratford folk call their Sunday-evening stroll through this 
 wooded bank, ' Going to Chapel,' That their devotions interested the attendants, 
 I can say. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xlix 
 
 assurd that what I have written will be of use to others who know 
 somewhat less than myself. "Work at Shakspere, serious intelligent 
 work, is what I want, from thousands of men and women who have 
 hitherto neglected him. If they will give me that, they may abuse as 
 they like, the mistakes they may find in these hints. 
 
 My thanks are due to my friends Professors Hertzberg, Wagner, 
 Seeley, and Dowden, Mr. Spedding, Mr. Hales, Dr. Abbott, Mr. Halli- 
 well. Dr. Ingleby, Mr. Aldis "Wright, Mr. "Wheatley, Mr, Malleson, 
 &c. for their hints on this Introduction, 
 
 P. J. FCENIVALL, 
 
 S S*. Gbohgb's Sotabs, N.W. 
 ■Sept. 16, 1874. 
 
 P.S — Prof. Ingram, of Triu. Coll., Dublin, hag jjist (Nov. 8) sent 
 . me his Paper on the weak- and light-endings in Shakspere. The 16 
 weak-endings are ' and, but (^L. sed, and=ea;cepi), by, for, from, if, 
 on, nor, or, than, that, to, with,' The 54 light-endings are ' am, are, 
 art, b^, been, but (=only), can, could, did*, do*, does*, dost*, ere, had*, 
 has*, hast*, have*, he, how^, I, into, is, like, may, might, shall, shalt, 
 she, should, since, so*, such*, they, thou, though, through, till, upon, was, 
 we, were, what^, when*, where*, which, while, whilst, who*, whom*, 
 why*, will, would, yet (=tamen), you,' Here is an extract from his 
 
 ' Except in the oomtination as if, 
 
 ^ Only when us'd as auxUiaries. 
 
 " When not directly interrogative, 
 
 ' When foUowd immediately hy as. Such also, when followd by a substan- 
 tive with an indefinite article, as ' Such a man.' 
 
 " When not directly interrogative. Prof. Ingram's Paper will appear in The 
 New Shakspere Societt/'s Transactions, Part 2, He says : — 
 
 ' The weak-endings do not come in by slow degrees, but the poet seems to have 
 thrown himself at once into this new structure of verse ; 28 examples occurring in 
 Antony and Cleopatra, whilst there are not more than two in any earlier play. , , . 
 
 ' As long as the light-endings remain very few, no conclusion with respect to 
 the order of the plays can be based on them. 
 
 ' But the very marked increase of fheir number in Macbeth, showing a strong 
 development of the same tendency which, further on, produced the large number 
 of weak-endings, seems to show that it was the latest of the plays preceding the 
 weak-ending period, ... 
 
 ' An examination of the weak-endings in Henri/ VIII. strikingly confirms the 
 oouclusions of Mr. Spedding respecting the two different systems of verse which 
 co-exist in that play. In the Shaksperian portion, as marked off by him, there 
 are 45 light-endings against 6 in Fletcher's part, and 37 weak-endings against 1 
 inFletcher's part. And these weak-endings occur in every Shaksperian scene. 
 The one weak-ending in Fletcher's portion occurs in a scene (iv. 1) which has not 
 been uniformly assigned to Fletcher, and which, it is curious to observe, of all the 
 Shaksperian scenes in the play approachps, in the matter of the feminine ending, 
 nearest to Fletcher. . . . The date, also, which has been assigned by Mr, Spedding 
 
1 
 
 INTBODVCTIOm 
 
 table of these endings in the late plays, whose order alone they help 
 to settle : — 
 
 No. of 
 
 light 
 
 endings 
 
 Macbeth 
 
 Timon 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra 
 Coriolanus . . . . 
 Pericles (Shakspere part) 
 
 Tempest- 
 
 Cymbeline 
 
 ■Winter's Tale . . . . 
 
 Two Noble Kinsmen 
 
 (non-Pletclier part) . 
 
 HemyVm. (Sh's. part) 
 
 No. of 
 
 weaji 
 endings 
 
 21 
 15 
 71 
 60 
 20 
 42 
 78 
 57 
 
 50 
 45 
 
 2 
 ? 
 
 28 
 44 
 10 
 25 
 52 
 45 
 
 34 
 87 
 
 No. of 
 
 Verse lines 
 
 in play 
 
 1112 
 2803 
 2563 
 719 
 1460 
 2692 
 1825 
 
 1378 
 1146 
 
 Percentage 
 of Ught 
 
 1-35 
 2-53 
 2-34 
 2-78 
 2-88 
 2-90 
 3-12 
 
 3-63 
 3-93 
 
 of 
 'endings 
 
 Percentage 
 of both 
 together 
 
 ? 
 
 1-00 
 1-71 
 1-39 
 1-71 
 1-93 
 2-47 
 
 2-47 
 8 23 
 
 3-53 
 4-06 
 4-17 
 4-59 
 4-83 
 6-59 
 
 6-10 
 7-16 
 
 to Shakspere's portion of Henry VIII. is confirmed by the Table, in opposition to 
 the views of Elze and others. It appears to be without doubt his latest -work ; a 
 conclusion which quite falls in with what is known from an external source as to 
 the production in 1613 of a play which there is every reason to believe was the 
 same. 
 
 'With respect to The Two Noble Kmsmen, the weak-ending test confirms what 
 has been otherwise shown by Mr. Hicksou and others, namely, that here again 
 there are two different systems of verse. In Fletcher's part there are 3 light end- 
 ings to SO in the other portion, and 1 weak-ending to 34. The weak-endings are 
 found in every non-Fletoherian scene but two. One is i. 4, in which there are, 
 exclusive of a song, but six lines in all. The other is iii. 3, which, curiously 
 enough, as Mr. Purnivall remarks, the stopt-line test would give to Fletcher. The 
 scene is one about which, notwithstanding what has been said by Mr. Hickson, 
 there is not much to mark the authorship. 
 
 ' The answer to the question — Who was the author of the non-Fletcherian 
 portion of this play ?— does not force itself on my mind with the same clear 
 evidence as the conviction that the non-Shaksperian part of Hemy VIII is by 
 Fletcher. The choice of the story, in which the passion is, after all, of an artificial 
 kind, the toleration of the " trash " which abounds in the underplot, the faintness 
 (as I must persist in calling it) of the characterization, and, in general, the absence, 
 except in occasional flashes, of the splendid genius which stows itself aU through 
 the last period of ShakSpere, I have always found very perplexing. In reading 
 the (so-called) Shaksperian part of the play, I do not often feel myself in contact 
 with a mind of the first order. Still, it is certain that there is much in it that is 
 like Shakspere, and some things that are worthy of him at his best ; that the 
 manner, in general, is more that of Shakspere than of any other contemporary 
 dramatist ; and that the system of verse is one which we do not find in any other, 
 whilst it is, in all essentials, that of Shakspere's last period. I cannot name any 
 one else who could have written this portion of the play. The weak-ending affords 
 a ready test of the' correctness of Knight's notion that Chapman was the writer. 
 I have examined the play of Bussy ^Ambois, and do not find in it a single instance 
 of the weak-ending, and, turning rapidly over Chapman's whole works, I see no 
 evidence that he was ever at all given to it. If Shakspere be— as we seem forced 
 to believe— the author of the part of The Two Noble Kinsmen, now usually at- 
 tributed to him, this will take its place in the series of his works between the 
 Winter's Tale and Henri/ VIW 
 
SHAKESPEAEE COMIENTAEIES. 
 
 INTKODUCTIOK 
 
 There are in the present day a number of writings upon 
 Kterature and men of letters, whichj undertaken in consequence 
 of some chance impulse, are treated with passing interest, 
 received as superficial novelties, and read with transient 
 curiosity. 
 
 Not so would I wish myself or others to estimate these re- 
 flections on Shakespeare. I cannot desire to ofifer them as a 
 trifling recreation, for they treat of one of the richest and most 
 im|Jortant subjects which could he chosen. 
 
 For these reflections concern a man who by nature was so 
 lavishly endowed, that even where the standard by which to 
 estimate him was most wanting (as among the critics of the 
 Eomanic nations), an innate genius within him was ever 
 divined, and a spirit unconscious of itself was admired in him ; 
 while those who understood how to penetrate into his works 
 with an unprejudiced mind agreed more and more in the 
 slowly acquired conviction that no age nor nation could easily, 
 in any branch of knowledge^ exhibit another man in whom the 
 riches of genius, natural endowments, original talent, and 
 versatility of power, were so great as in him. 
 
 And what is still more, these reflections concern a man who 
 made the freest use of these liberal gifts of, nature. Shake- 
 speare was filled with the conviction — and he uttered it in 
 various ways — that nature has not given to man, but has only 
 lent to him ; that she only gives him, that he should give again. 
 He had gained the experience that it is not enough in the life 
 
2 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 of an aspiring man to have once entered the path of honour, 
 but that it is important ever undeviatingly to persevere in its 
 track. And he followed out this conviction with the most un- 
 tiring effort, whilst from the beginning to the end of his 
 public career he displayed an activity which appears utterly in- 
 comprehensible, to us Germans especially, who have seen a 
 G-oethe and a Schiller (no insignificant men, indeed) struggling 
 on in toilsome labour. 
 
 These reflections concern a man whose poetical superiority 
 is felt universally, even by those incapable of accounting for it ; 
 whilst the intelligent thinker whp is most thoroughly conver- 
 sant with him, and can view him in his relations to the history 
 of poetry in its full extent, sees him stand in the centre of 
 modern dramatic literature in the place which Homer occupies 
 in the history of epic poetry, as the revealing genius of this 
 branch of art, and as one whose course and example can never 
 with impunity be forsaken. 
 
 Lastly, these reflections concern a man whose entire merit 
 cannot be measured by his poetic greatness alone. His works 
 have been often called a secular Bible ; Johnson said that from 
 his representations a hermit might learn to estimate the affairs 
 of the world ; how often too has it been repeated, that in his 
 poems the world and human nature can be seen as in a mirror ! 
 These are no exaggerated expressions, but reasonable, well- 
 founded opinions. Human nature is not merely presented by 
 him as in the ancient drama, in its typical characters ; it is 
 portrayed in his poetical creations in distinct individualised 
 forms. We look within upon the inner life of the man in all its 
 conditions ; we gain a glimpse into the dealings of all classes and 
 ranks, into all kinds of family and private life, into all phases 
 of public history. We are introduced into the life of the 
 Eoman aristocracy, Eepublic, and monarchy ; into the mythic 
 heroic age of the first inhabitants of Gatd and Britain ; into the 
 adventurous world of the romantic period of chivalry and the 
 Middle Ages, and upon the soil of English history both of 
 mediaeval and modern date. Upon all these epochs, and upon 
 all these manifold circumstances, the poet looks from a superior 
 point of view, so exalted above prejudice and party, above 
 people and age, and with such a soundness and certainty of 
 judgment in matters of art, custom, politics, and religion, that 
 he appears to belong to a later and riper generation ; he dis- 
 plays, in all the general or special conditions of the inner and 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 outer life, a wisdom and a knowledge of human nature which 
 constitutes him a teacher of unquestionable authority ; he has 
 derived his views of morality so richly from his observation of 
 the outer world, and he has so refined them by a rich iimer life, 
 that he deserves more than perhaps any other writer to be 
 trustfully chosen as a guide ia our passage through the world. 
 
 To study earnestly and eagerly the works of such a man, 
 rewards every trouble and demands every effort. If we speak 
 of poetry, the general reader thinks only of the highly-wrought 
 productions of the day, and of the worthless novels which fill up 
 tedious hours, and satisfy the need created and rendered habi- 
 tual by our over-abundant literature. JjTo thoughtful man can 
 take pleasure in this mental craving ; there is on the contrary 
 an old and excellent rule, that for self-cultiu:e a little of the 
 good should be read, but that Kttle again and again. In no 
 case will the application of this rule be so richly rewarded as 
 in the study of Shakespeare. For he is ever new, and he caimot 
 satiate, Not only he Tnay, but he m/wst be often read, and read 
 with the accuracy with which we are accustomed at school to 
 read the old classics ; otherwise we seize not even the outer 
 shell, much less the inner kernel. Every younger reader of 
 Shakespeare will have made the experience that the mere sub- 
 ject of his plays, the plot, the action, even during the reading, 
 is only with effort fully apprehended ; and that soon, after one 
 or even many readings, it is again wholly forgotten. As long 
 as it stands thus with Shakespeare's plays, they have not been 
 tmderstood ; to draw nearer to him demands honest industry 
 and earnest endeavour. 
 
 Such is not only the experience of every single man, but of 
 the whole world. For two hundred and fifty years have men 
 toiled over this poet ; they have not grown weary, digging in 
 his works as in a mine, to bring to light aU the noble metal 
 they contain ; and those who have been most active have been 
 humble enough at last to declare that scarcely a single passage 
 of this rich mine has been yet exhausted. And almost two 
 centuries of this period had passed away before the men appeared 
 who first recognised Shakespeare's entire merit and capacity, and 
 divested his pure noble form of the confusion of prejudices 
 which had veiled and disfigiured it. 
 
 How was it that this poet should so long remain an enigma 
 to the whole literary world and history ? that so extraordinary 
 a man should be so tardily appreciated, and even now should be 
 
 B 2 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 by many so imperfectly understood ; and this, too, a poet who 
 was in no wise indistinct concerning himself, and whom indeed 
 many of his contemporaries seem to have fully valued ? 
 
 To these questions there lies one answer in the character of 
 his works themselves, and this answer will be obvious to us of 
 itself at the conclusion of these reflections. The cause of the 
 tardy appreciation of our poet lies above all in this, that he is 
 an extraordinary man ; the ordinary alone is comprehended 
 quickly ; it is only the commonplace that is free from mis- 
 conception. 
 
 But another answer to the question lies in histor}'. And 
 out of her records I will mention in these introductory remarks 
 the not unknown circumstances which caused a great spirit like 
 this, whose mental energy had been so justly esteemed, to be so 
 completely forgotten ; I will then point out in what manner 
 and through whose merits he was by degrees rescued from this 
 .oblivion ; and in conclusion I wiU state in what relation this 
 present work stands to similar past ones, which undertook the 
 task of an explanation of Shakespeare's writings. 
 
 Before the time in which Shakespeare wrote (from 1590- 
 1615), there existed in England no literatxire which was 
 peculiarly the possession of the people. There were English 
 poets, but no national English poetry ; the most famous were 
 learned men, who studied Latin and Italian poetry, and wrote 
 in iniitation of their model. Their sonnets, their allegories and 
 their tales, could do little for a national poetry. Into the 
 circle of these men Shakespeare entered with his narrative 
 poems and sonnets. Even in these smaller works, with aU 
 their pure modesty and humility, the self-reliance of the poet 
 was decidedly expressed. In his sonnets he promises the young 
 friend to whom they are addressed an immortality through his 
 verses which shall endure as ' long as men can breathe or eyes 
 can see ; ' he challenges Time to do his utmost ; in spite of his 
 destroying power, his beloved shall, through his poetry, live in 
 eternal youth. By his verses he will raise to him a monument 
 ' which eyes, not yet created, shall o'erread,' and ' tongues to be' 
 his being shall rehearse, when aU ' the breathers of this world 
 are dead.' Such virtue had his pen, that he shall still live, 
 ' where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.' 
 
 This self-reliance of the poet must have greatly increased 
 with time, when he looked back on the w6rk of his life. In 
 Henry the Eighth's time, the stage was in its rough beginning ; 
 
WTRODUCTIOX 5 
 
 under Elizabeth it became the place where a national English 
 literature first found a home. The chivalric epopee, the Italian 
 novel and lyric, were borrowed feom the stranger ; but with the 
 ' foundation of the drama the Saxon genius of the people was 
 awakenfed, and the stage became a national property. The 
 people streamed from the churches to the playhouses; the 
 court and the nobles encouraged works of dramatic art ; protec- 
 tion from the upper classes, favour among the lower, and the 
 importance of its own productions, raised the stage in a quarter 
 of a century from the humblest to the highest position. Its 
 intrinsic value, Shakespeare might well say, had been given to 
 it by himself alone ; celebrated protectors of the stage among 
 the nobility were his especial patrons ; two very different rulers 
 in turn favoured his works particularly, and the people delighted 
 in the representation of his characters. 
 
 This estimation of the poet was anticipated and partly 
 fathomed by his contemporaries, even when they could not 
 justly appreciate it. Among them no one has more beautifully 
 expressed the admiration of the age than Ben Jonson, who has 
 been so often decried as an envier and an enemy of our poet. 
 But in truth it was Shakespeare who first introduced him to 
 the world and to the stage, and he was allied with him in a 
 lasting friendship, which redounded as much to the high 
 honour of both as did that union between our own G-erman 
 poetic Dioscuri; and although Jonson's narrower intellectual 
 horizon prevented him, from estimating entirely the extent of 
 Shakespeare's genius, he was yet ever sufiS,ciently forgetful of 
 self to acknowledge with warm enthusiasm the honourable 
 heart and the free open nature of his friend's character, as well 
 as the high soaring of his richly imaginative and poetic mind. 
 In his 'Poetaster ' (1601) he uttered a eulogy upon Virgil's art 
 and worldly wisdom, . wbich, it is believed, was pointed at 
 Shakespeare's gareat present- fame^ and -predicted his greater 
 future glory — 
 
 That which he has writ 
 Is with such judgment labour'd and distili'd 
 Through all the needful uses of our lives, 
 That, could a man remember but his lines, 
 He should not touch at any serious point, 
 But he might breathe his spirit out of him. 
 
 , His learning savom's not the school-like gloss, 
 That most consists in echoing words and terms, 
 
6 INTBODITCTION. 
 
 And soonest wins a mam an empty name ; 
 Nor any long or far-fetch'd circumstance 
 Wrapp'd in the curious generalties of arts ; 
 Eut a direct and analytic sUm 
 Of all the worth and first effects of arts. 
 And for his poesy, 'tis so ramm'd with life, 
 That it shall gather strength of life with being, 
 And live hereafter more admir'd than now. 
 
 In his verses to the memory of his friend, published with 
 the first edition of his works in 1623, he exalts Shakespeare 
 above the English dramatists, whom it was certainly not diflS- 
 cult to excel; he wishes moreover to call 'thundering Aeschylus,' 
 Euripides, Sophocles, and the Eoman dramatists to life, ' to heare 
 his Buskin tread, and shake a stage,' for when ' his Sockes were 
 on,' no one ' of all that insolent Greece or haughtie Eome sent 
 forth,' or who since ' did from their ashes come,' could compare 
 to liim. ' Triumph, my Britaine,' he continues : 
 
 thou hast one to showe, 
 
 To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. 
 He was not of an age, hut for all time 1 
 
 And all the Muses still were in thei^ prime, 
 "When like Apollo he came forth to warme 
 
 Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme ! 
 Nature herselfe was proud of his designes. 
 
 And ioy'd to weare the dressing of his lines ! 
 Which were so richly spun and wouen.so fit. 
 
 As since, she will vouchsafe no other wit. 
 The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes, 
 
 Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please; 
 But antiquated, and deserted lye, 
 
 As they were not of Nature's family. 
 Yet must I not giue Nature all : Thy Art, 
 
 My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. 
 For though the Poet's matter Nature be, 
 
 His Art doth giue the fashion ... 
 
 For a good Poet's made, as well as borne. 
 And such wert thou. Locke, how the father's face 
 
 Lines in his issU'e, euen so, the race 
 Of Shakespeare's minde and manners brightly shines 
 
 In his well-tomed and true-filed lines ; 
 In each of which he seemes to shake a Lance, 
 
 As brandish't at the eyes of Ignorance. 
 Sweet Swan of Auon : what a sight it were, 
 
 To see thee in our waters yet appeare, 
 And make those flights upon the bankes of Thames, 
 
 That so did take Eliza and our James ! 
 
WTBODUCTION.. 7 
 
 But stay, I see thee in the Hemisphere 
 Aduanc'd, and made a Constellation there ! 
 
 Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage. 
 Or influence, chide or cheere the drooping Stage ; 
 
 Which, since thy flight fro' hence, hath monm'd like night, 
 And despaires day, but for thy Volumes light. 
 
 How came it then — I repeat the question — that this Poet, 
 whose worth was not unknown to himself, nor to the penetra^' 
 tion of the discerning, nor to the instinct of the masses in 
 his own time, should have been almost forgotten a few years 
 after his death, and for more than a century should have 
 been wholly misunderstood? — ^The following is the solution 
 of this enigma. 
 
 The favour which the poet enjoyed could in his life have 
 been in no wise universal, because his art itself was a con- 
 temned profession. The spirit of the austerely moral reli- 
 gious age was in large circles of society hostilely opposed to 
 the luxurious worldly works of the stage. Serious natures also 
 in the literary world ridiculed compassionately the activity of 
 the frivolous stage-poets who hoped for immortality from their 
 iambics ; the jealous among them attacked the art as a public 
 scandal and corruption. Like the chivalric epic poets of the 
 fourteenth century, many of the dramatic poets (like Grreene 
 and Grosson) repented in later years of their former profane 
 writings, implored their friends to leave the sinful art, and 
 ended by writing on religious subjects as an atonement for the 
 past. The warmest defenders of the drama must have them- 
 selves confessed that it was a matter needing support. The 
 clergy, the magfistrates, and the municipality, steadily opposed all 
 theatrical matters. Thus the dramatic art in England had at the 
 period of its highest excellence to protect itself against the 
 threatenings and persecutions of active, important, and dreaded 
 adversaries. The dramatic art was indeed often enriching in a 
 high degree to the poet and actot ; but as in almost all times, 
 and at that time to a much greater extent than now, it was 
 infected with a moral stain. On the spot, where the alluring 
 attraction of the art was direct and immediate, the poet was 
 elevated for the moment by the ensnaring charm ; outside the 
 doors, where the marvel-had not been seen, he was disregarded 
 and unknown. 
 
 But this was not the only thing which caused at this time 
 the name and calling of a poet to be held in disrepute. Matters 
 
8 JNTRODUCTIOH. 
 
 were not so prosperous with writers of that day as with our own 
 German poets of the last century, who appeared at a time when 
 poKtical life lay fallow, when no opposing or rival activity 
 produced a disturbing and diverting influence, when the 
 literary movement absorbed the entire life of the people and 
 outweighed every other interest. With Shakespeare's time we 
 may date the true beginning of English greatness ; the religious 
 energy of the people, the art and knowledge peculiar to the 
 genius of the nation, and the commencement of the future 
 political and maritime power of England, lie like a bud of rich 
 promise within the period of Elizabeth's reign. With surprising 
 rapidity arose the spirit of enterprise, the commerce, and the 
 industry of the Island kingdom; foreign policy received a great 
 and national basis b^ the Protestant movement against Spanish 
 and Eomish principles ; the destruction of the ' Invincible 
 Armada (1588), destined by Spain for the conquest of England, 
 and the bold contests by sea, producing at the time a race of 
 great sea-heroes, decided the political superiority of little 
 England over the world-wide monarchy of Spain; after Elizabeth's 
 death Scotland was united to England, and then began the 
 first prosperous colonial undertakings (1606), by which the 
 outward power of the kingdom was extended and the internal 
 obstacles to commerce removed. In this young political 
 activity, in this freshly animated national feeling, literature 
 could only form a part, and that part small and obscure, in the 
 great march of excited popular life, and only a small share of 
 that divided interest was directed to the literature of the drama. 
 Thus it was that two men of the first literary rank, namely 
 such a philosopher as Francis Bacon, and such a poet as 
 Shakespeare, if not absolutely overlooked in that much excited 
 period, were by no means universally known, and that they 
 themselves gave probably but little attentipn to their several 
 works. 'The fame of poets such as Ariosto and Tasso, Racine 
 and MoU^re, Goethe and Schiller, passed quickly over the 
 whole European world; of Shakespeare, no one abroad had 
 heard in the seventeenth century, and even the evidence of his 
 fame at home is sought out in later times with difficulty and 
 toil. Thus the mere notoriety of the poet had to struggle at 
 the very first with the whole weight of unfavourable circum- 
 stances ; an understanding of his works was still less possible. 
 His plays were only written for representation ; those who did 
 not see them never knew them; it was with the dramatist 
 
INTSOBUCTIOXr. & 
 
 as with the actor, whose sad lot it is that his art cannot be 
 made permanent, as it passes away with the moment. The 
 plays were not designed for reading; their appearance in print 
 was for the most part fraudulently obtained, and was regarded as 
 an injury to the stage, which was the proprietor of the manu- 
 script, and moreover as prejudicial to the renown of the poet, 
 who not rarely invented his scenes (as Marston says of his own) 
 ' only to be spoken and not to be read.' Thus only the half 
 of Shakespeare's dramas were printed during his life, and not 
 a siagle one under his superintendence and revision. Not till 
 seven years after his death did his works, collected by his 
 fellow-actors, appear in a folio edition (1623), of imcertain 
 and imwarranted value ; the older quarto editions of single 
 plays (inveighed against, it is true) appeared in this with all 
 their senseless faults by the side of the newly-added, and equally 
 carelessly revised pieces. This edition was re-published in 1632. 
 At that time the plays of the poet were still held in popular 
 honour ; but already a Fletcher had surpassed the master in 
 the favour of the over-excited stage public ; and with the 
 characteristic lack at that period of all criticism in English 
 literature, there were no reviewers who might have discerned 
 the pre-eminence of Shakespeare's works, and might have 
 demonstrated the grounds of their superiority. Not long 
 afterwards the whole stage was swept away by the altered cm-rent 
 of the national life. 
 
 In 1642 began the civil religious wars in England, and in 
 the same year all theatres in England were closed ; austerely 
 religious, puritanic zeal, conquered at length in its long struggle 
 with the profane stage, and tolerated no longer its unhallowed 
 works. The same fate befell English literature after Shakes- 
 peare's time that had befallen it in the fifteenth century after 
 Chaucer's : the civil wars had so convulsed the nation and its 
 civilization, that no refuge for it remained. Twenty years 
 of bloodshed, and a complete revolution of pubUc and private 
 life, almost effaced the remembrance of Shakespeare's literary 
 epoch. When at the Eestoration, mider Charles II. and James 
 XL, with the court diversions and a gayer life, the stage was 
 also revived, the characters of the Shakesperian pieces became, 
 it is true, again the test of theatrical skill ; and the taste of the 
 Saxon people returned even now with a predilection for their 
 favourite, which seemed to the learned of the day as blame- 
 worthy as it was inexplicable ; but the strong, riotous interest 
 
10 mTEODUCTION. 
 
 in the stage that had existed in Shakespeare's time seized the 
 multitude no more ; the theatre was formed after the frivolous 
 and light taste of the court, and was no longer susceptible of 
 those great and earnest works. French literature speedily 
 began to rule the world ; the taste for antique and stifif rules 
 of a^rt was in direct opposition to the popular character, and to 
 the free spirit of the works of Shakespeare. This taste reached 
 its highest point of contrast in the poetical productions of an 
 Addison and Pope, and in the criticism of Thomas Eymer, who 
 ascribed to an "ape more taste and knowledge of nature than 
 Shakespeare possessed, and pretended to find often more 
 meaning, expression, and humanity, in the neighing of a horse 
 and in the growling of a mastiff, than in Shakespeare's tragical 
 flights. When, in 1709, Nicholas Eowe undertook an edition 
 of Shakespeare's works, and attempted to sketch his life from 
 tradition, he found that scarcely anything was known of such a 
 wonderful man ; that even the orig;inals of his writings were 
 hardly preserved, and that all that could be gathered of his 
 life was a couple of unvouched-for anecdotes, which even at the 
 present day the most diligent inquiry has only been able to 
 replace by a few avithentie facts. From the Eestoration until 
 Garrick's tinie, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, 
 many of Shakespeare's plays were indeed performed, but they 
 were in general most unworthily disfigured. At this time he 
 was read and valued by Milton, the greatest poet whom England 
 since Shakespeare has possessed, a man whose single appreciation 
 might have been of more importance to our dramatist than 
 that of ' the million.' He declared that in the ' deep impression ' 
 of his 'Delphic lines' he had sepulchred himself in such, 
 pomp, ' that kings, for such a tomb, would wish to die ; ' and 
 yet even he regarded him only as the child of an unbridled 
 fancy, as a sweet singer of ' native wood-notes wild.' 
 
 When, in the eighteenth century, literature stepped in 
 advance of politics and religion, England began, with the 
 revival of the older literature, to resuscitate Shakespeare's also* 
 The re-awakening interest in his works, and the slowly increas- 
 ing estimation of his value, is first perceived by a long series 
 of editions. From Eowe's first attempt in 1709 to produce 
 a corrected reprint, there has appeared every ten years at least 
 anew edition of Shakespeare's works; Pope's in 1725, Theobald's 
 in 1733,Hanmer'sin 1744, Warburton's in 1747, and Capell's in 
 1768; besides Johnson's iii 1765 ; which with the addition of 
 
INTEOLUCTION. 11 
 
 various readings and explanations, and under the united efforts 
 of Steevens in 1766, Malone 1790, Eeed 1793, Chalmers 1811, 
 and Boswell 1821, has more and more opened the way for the 
 understanding of the poet. For the estimation indeed of his 
 intellectual merit and artistic value, these works offered little 
 that is useful ; all the earlier among them, up to Steevens and 
 Malone, were written under the tyranny of the French taste 
 and the most haughty disregard and depreciation of the poet. 
 The oracle of this taste was Voltaire. In his youth, after his 
 residence in England, he had indeed himself proudly introduced 
 Shakespeare into France ; impelled by him he had written 
 Brutus in 1730, he had praised the English stage on account 
 of its abundance of action, and had timidly imitated sonie 
 of its freedoms. But when, from 'the first French translation, 
 analyses and elaborations of Shakespeare's plays by Delaplace 
 and Ducis began to spread abroad the fame of the British poet ; 
 when the criticism of Arnaud and Mercier ventrured indeed to 
 attack the classical style ; when Letourneur, in his translation 
 of Shakespeare in 1776, exalted the barbarous poet even 
 above Corneille and Eacine; then Voltaire's early favour was 
 turned into the bitterest enmity. In the dissertation upon 
 tragedy in the presence of Semiramis, he gave his opinion that 
 Nature had blended in Shakespeare all that is most great and 
 elevating with all the basest qualities that belong to barbarous- 
 ness without genius ; he called Hamlet a rude play, which 
 would not be endured even by the lowest mob in France and 
 Italy ; he ventiued to say that it was the firuit of the imagina- 
 tion of an intoxicated savage ! Thus sesthetio narrow-minded- 
 ness judged of the greatest phenomenon of modern poetry ; but 
 it was the judgment of an oracle. How should the commen- 
 tators advance further, who had in themselves much less poetry 
 than even Voltaire, amongst whom the acute Warburton 
 declared, speaking of Shakespeare, that he had only looked 
 through this hmd of writers in his younger days, to refresh 
 himself after more grave employments ? Thus it was easy for 
 those who regarded the general judgments of these interpreters 
 to ridicule their pedantic sittings, their sesthetic fancies, their 
 paltry corrections, and their assumed superiority over the poet ; 
 and our Eomanticists in Germany scornfully despised them. 
 This was neither due nor honourable. These editors received 
 the poet's works as something totally foreign to them in 
 language, habits, and circumstances; the -later among them 
 
12 WTEOSUCTION. 
 
 since Joknson, have with their unwearied investigation of 
 iiumerous and worthless sources, rendered the poet readable and 
 enjoyable in language and matter; by suitable explanations 
 they have transformed obscure passages into beauties, and by 
 ingenious conjectm'es they have converted single deformities of 
 language into true and, even here and there, elevated poetry. 
 These laborious works first discovered to the nation the hidden 
 treasures of the poet ;, the givers and receivers were earnest in 
 seeking to understand the subject-matter of the poet which 
 was so indispensable to the spiritual perception of his writings, 
 and without which those German critics and translators would 
 have been debarred even from acquaintance with their favourite. 
 For the inner understanding of the poet, these editions of his 
 works have, as I have said, offered little that was useful ; that 
 little was limited to isolated, , psychological, and aesthetic 
 remarks. In Warburton, in Johnson, and in Steevens (the 
 most intelligent of all), there are excellent explanations of 
 certain passages, traits, and characters, which burst forth amid 
 prejudices and false, judgement, as proofs of how the greatness 
 of the poet prevailed more and more even over the narrow 
 minds of these criticisers. But, like Voltaire and most of the 
 French critics, they held fast their prejudices, without feeling 
 how absurd it was to believe that ip one man the extreme of 
 coarseness could be united in glaring contrast with the greatest 
 sublimity ; even a Villemain (in his essay on Shakespeare in 
 1839) could in one breath speak of the rude and barbarous 
 genius, and of his unattainable tenderness in the treatment of 
 female character. In accordance with this partial investigation, 
 and with these passing flashes of perception, alternating with 
 greater darkness, was the treatment of Shakespeare on the 
 stage, both in Germany and England. The jubilee two hun- 
 dred years after Shakespeare's birth, celebrated in Stratford in 
 1764, denotes about the time when the poet's works were 
 revived by Garrick upon the English stage. Then women 
 urged for his monument in Westminster, clubs were formed 
 for the performance of his plays, and Gurrick promoted the 
 study of his characters. He banished all the stiff pomposity of 
 the French drama, all straining for effect, and all preposterous 
 representation ; and reinstated in their rights nature, simplicity, 
 and genuine humour. . Annually he produced about eighteen 
 of Shakespeare's plays, and endeavoured to purify them from 
 past disfigurement. But aU that we know of the histrionic 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 concerns of this period sufficiently shows that only single 
 actors conceived the idea of single parts ; of a play as a whole, 
 as Shakespeare must have conceived it, there was no idea. 
 Thus Schroeder, in Germany, attained to a wonderful height of 
 success in the representation of Shakespeare's characters, but 
 he too stood alone. It is said that an actress, who played the 
 part of Gonerilwith him in King Lear, was so agitated by Lear's 
 curse, that she would never again set foot upon the stage ; the 
 anecdote does all honour to Schroeder's playing, but it may be 
 conjectured that the actress was far from sharing his art. 
 Thus slowly, and by the aid of commentators, an understanding 
 of isolated passages and poetic beauties was obtained ; through 
 actors and through a series of writings upon the leading figures 
 of the Shakespeare dramas, an imderstanding of single cha- 
 racters and psychological truths was arrived at, but the whole 
 of the poet and of each of his single works remained an enigma. 
 The alterations of Shakespeare's plays by Garrick and Schroeder 
 furnishes evidence in itself, only too plainly, that these judges 
 were themselves far from a just perception of them. Neverthe- 
 less, this was the especial period of the revival of Shakespeare 
 in England ; it was at the same time the period of his first 
 introduction into Germany. For the clear perception and 
 estimation of Shakespeare, as well as for the ripening of 
 ova: own germinating dramatic art, this was of equally decided 
 importance. 
 
 The man who first valued Shakespeare according to his 
 full desert was indisputably Lessing. One single passage, 
 where, in his ' Dramaturgie,' he speaks of Eomeo and Juliet, 
 shows plainly that he apprehended his plays in their innermost 
 nature, and this with the same unbiassed mind with which the 
 poet wrote them. With aU the force of a true taste, he pointed 
 to Wieland's translation of the English dramatist, when scarcely 
 any one in Germany knew him. Not long before Shakespeare 
 had been seriously compared amongst us with Gryphius, now 
 Lessing appeared and discovered in the great tragic poet an 
 accordance with the highest pretensions of Aristotle. The 
 English editors and expositors of his works were yet under the 
 Gallic yoke, when Lessing cast aside the French taste and the 
 opinion of Voltaire, and with one stroke so transformed the age, 
 that we now ridiculed the false sublimity of the French drama, 
 as they had formerly laughed at English barbarism. Lessing's 
 recommendation of the English poet was closely followed by 
 
14 INTBODUCTION. 
 
 Eschenburg's translation, and a completely altered taste among 
 our young dramatists. A rude counterpoise to the exaggerations 
 of Frencli conventionality appeared for the moment necessary, 
 in' order to restore the even balance of judgment. In Goethe's 
 youthful circle in Strasburg they spoke in Shakespeare's 
 puns, jokes, and pleasjantries ; they wrote in his tone and style ; 
 they exhibited aU the coarseness and nakedness of nature in 
 contrast to French gloss and varnish, and felt themselves, from 
 identity of character, as much at home with the Germanic 
 nature of Shakespeare as with Hans Sachs. In the camp of 
 these free spirits the cry was for power and nature, and the 
 result was the exaggeration of both in caricature ; this appears 
 both in the pictures from Shakespeare's works by the painter 
 Fuseli, and in the poetical imitations of KUnger and Lenz. 
 But this enthusiastic appropriation and devotion, this poetic 
 imitation of the English master, even in the youthful works of 
 Schiller and Goethe, led nevertheless, to a totally different and 
 a more spiritual kind of understanding. The distortion and 
 extravagance of their early opinions passed in time from the 
 minds of these men, who as poets and critics were equally 
 prepared to take a wholly different view of the study of Shakes- 
 peare to that of .the English commentators of old ; the poet for 
 the first time stands before us in the tmassuming truth of 
 nature. In ' Wilhelm Meister ' Goethe produced that charac- 
 teristic of Hamlet, which is like a key to all works of the poet ; 
 here all separate beauties are rejected, and the whole is ex- 
 plained by the whole, and we feel the soul of the outer frame- 
 work and its animating breath, which created and organised the 
 immortal work. Unfortunately Goethe went no further in ex- 
 planation of the poet ; he thought later, that all was inadequate 
 that could be said about him, although he knew well that he 
 had found the entrance to his innermost shrine. He was, like 
 Voltaire, out of humour, moreover, that Shakespeare should 
 have surpassed him in importance ; he had once wished to 
 emulate hiTn ; later he felt that the great poet would sink him 
 to the bottom. 
 
 Shakespeare rocked the cradle of our newly-born dramatic 
 poetry in the last century, and nursed its youthful efforts. This 
 immense gain from the revived poet could not be acknowledged 
 by Germany with slight recompense. With us the reverse of that 
 which had happened in England in the eighteenth century now 
 ensued. We wrote no critical notes upon the poet ; wanting the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 materials, we wanted also the vocation for the task. , We trans- 
 lated him ; and while the English possess a series of editions, 
 we have, from Wieland and Eschenburg to Schlegel and Voss, 
 and even down to the disciples of Tieck and many subsequent 
 stragglers, a number of translations, ever newly issued and ever 
 newly read. If in the English editions the annotations almost 
 concealed the text, these translations gave us for the most part 
 the text without any notes. This has accustomed us to another 
 manner of reading the poet. While the Englishman lingered 
 perhaps over isolated passages, we, on the contrary, destitute of 
 all explanations, read rapidly on ; we were careless about parts, 
 and compared to the English reader we lost many separate 
 beauties and ideas, but we enjoyed the whole more fuUy. For 
 this enjoyment we were chiefly indebted to the translation of A. 
 W., Schlegel, which even Englishmen read with admiration. 
 The archaisms are here erased, the rough words of the period 
 gently modified, yet the whole character is faithfully maintained. 
 The sensibility of the Grerman nature, the flexibility of our lan- 
 guage, and the taste and mind of the translator, procure for this 
 work equally great and lasting honour. More than any other 
 effort on behalf of the, English poet, this translation has made 
 him our own. Admiration reached a fresh point. And this 
 rather with us than in England. For it is to me beyond a doubt 
 .that the criticism of the old English editors, such as that of 
 Courtenay's for example, not long ago, would have been quite 
 impossible with us in Germany, even in one such exception. 
 Old prophecies concerning the poet's futm-e seemed to be accom- 
 plished. For truly with us has happened that which Leonard 
 Digges, a contemporary of Shakespeare, wrote of his works. 
 They would keep In'Tn yoimg, he declared, for all time ; and the 
 day would come when every thing modern would be despised, 
 every thing that was not Shakespeare's would be esteemed an 
 abortion ; then every verse in his works would rise anew, and the 
 poet be redeemed from the grave ! 
 
 However great were the merits of our Eomanticists in having 
 arranged Shakespeare's works for our enjoyment, even they have 
 only slightly contributed to the inner imderstanding after which 
 we seek, and to the unfolding of the human nature of the poet 
 and the general value of his works. In A. W, Schlegel's ' Dra- 
 matic Lectures ' (1&12) the plays are singly discussed. All here 
 testifles to poetic delicacy and sensibility ; all is fair, alluring, 
 inspiring — a panegyric of a totally different kind to the criticising 
 
16 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 characteristics of the English expositors. But the delineation 
 affords no more than this ; no more than the contrast of admi- 
 ration compared with the former blame; no more than the 
 application of a natural taste to the works of the poet, in oppo- 
 sition to the French prejudices of the former period. Full of 
 suggestion as the work is, it fell far short of satisfying even 
 Schlegel's nearest friends. 
 
 The plan which Groethe had designed in ' Wilhelm Meister ' 
 was not continued. In 1823 Franz Horn, in five volumes on 
 Shakespeare, diluted the Schlegel characteristics still more. 
 Tickled by that insipid humour which was intended to exhibit 
 the comic power of our Komanticists, he took especial delight in 
 the clowns, and regards the poet, even in his most earnest moods, 
 •through a medium of sarcastic • ridicule ; his unqualified praise, 
 coupled with so much absurdity, is almost an insult. Subse- 
 quently Tieck for many years excited our expectation of a com- 
 prehensive work on Shakespeare ; he gave much evidence of a 
 deep study of the poet and his time, and still further tokens of 
 a secret wisdom and initiation ; but the promised whole appeared 
 not, and the fragments which did appear promised nothing. 
 
 The great zeal for Shakespeare manifested in German litera- 
 ture reacted in the beginning of this century upon England. 
 When Nathan Drake in 1817 published his ample work upon 
 Shakespeare and his times, the idolatry of the poet had passed 
 already to his native land. An aesthetic study of the poet is 
 little cared for by Drake ; his great industry is bestowed upon 
 the delineation of the period ; the ' poetic antiquarian ' was to 
 be contented ; but the work has the merit of having brought 
 together for the first time into a whole the tedious and scattered 
 material of the editions and of the many other valuable labours of 
 Tyrwhitt, Heath, Eitson, Monck Mason, Seymour and Douce, &c. 
 A totally different treatment of the poet had been attempted by 
 Coleridge even before Drake. From 1811 to 1812 he had held lec- 
 tures upon Shakespeare, so much in Schlegel's mind and manner, 
 that a dispute arose as to the priority of merit of the two sesthetio 
 philosophers. Coleridge's genuine lectures were never printed ; 
 only a few fragments are remaining, just to prove to us that he 
 of all Englishmen first measured the poet by a true standard. 
 He declaimed against the French notion that in Shakespeare 
 all was the emanation of a genius unconscious of himself, ' that 
 he grew immortal as it were in his own despite ' ; he justly con- 
 tended that his judgment was commensurate with his genius 
 
INTRODUCTIOy. 17 
 
 that he was no wild luaua naturce, and that his so-called ' irre- 
 gularity ' was only the dream of a few pedants. 
 
 He advanced the assertion — then a bold one in England — that 
 not merely the splendour of different parts constituted the great- 
 ness of Shakespeare, by compensating for the barbarous shape- 
 lessness of the whole, but that he considered the aesthetic form 
 of the whole equally admirable with the matter, and the 
 judgment of the great poet not less deserving our wonder than 
 his innate genius. He (and since him Campbell and many 
 other enthusiastic admirers) placed him quite out of comparison 
 with other poets ; he declared it an absurdity to prefer him 
 seriously to Eaeine and Corneille, or to compare him with Spen- 
 ser and Milton ; to his mind he was so exalted above all, that 
 he could only compare him with himself. ' 
 
 A wide-spread interest in Shakespeare and in the literature 
 of his time has been again excited in England of late years. 
 Yet still, as in the last century, this interest most characteris- 
 tically clings to the matter alone. It would almost seem as if 
 England had i especially resigned to her women (Jameson, 
 Griffith, Montagu and others) the task of handling Shake- 
 speare's intellectual side, although this cannot surely be a 
 woman's work. The Percy, Camden, and Shakespeare Societies 
 emulate each other in the publication of rare sources ; the works 
 of the poetical contemporaries of Shakespeare have appeared in 
 excellent editions, especially in the hands of Dyce ; and since 
 Collier's first debate as to the groimd o£ a new edition of Shake- 
 speare, we may date in England a new period of Shakespeare 
 criticisms, in which no longer cavilling fault-finders, but enlight- 
 ened admirers, have purified and explained the works of the 
 poet. For a time Collier and Charles Knight maintained the 
 field alone ; recently Dyce, Howard Staimton, Singer in a new 
 revision of his careful edition of 1826, and Halliwell with his 
 splendid edition, have formed a more complete cluster; and 
 urged by this animating spirit of emulation, even in Germany, 
 Delius, Tycho Mommsen, F. A. Leo and others, have been car- 
 ried away by these philological efforts in a manner hardly to be 
 expected from foreigners. Unfortunately with this eagerness of 
 the English at the present day is entwined the history of a 
 long-prepared and long-continued literary fraud, which a witty 
 writer has called a new affaire du, ColUer : an extensive web 
 of deceptions, in which not only has the life of Shakespeare 
 been falsified with pleasing inventions, but the text of his works, 
 
 c 
 
18 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 has been threatened with an invasion of alterations, the dan^ 
 gerous novelty of which awakened the attention of the critic, 
 and rendered his eye so acute that the deception, hardly suspected, 
 was at once discovered and proved.' Painful as it is to see the 
 history of Shakespeare's after-life disfigured by this high treason 
 against the crowned head of the English language and literature, 
 perpetrated on this very poet, to whom no human vice was so 
 detestable as falsehood and forgery, I must be allowed to pass 
 over this interlude with this slight mention, since the famous 
 readings of the Bridgewater and Perkins folios, even if they 
 were well authenticated, would hardly have afifected my special 
 task, which is only concerned with the general psychological 
 and sesthetic examination of the poet. On this point nothing 
 of importance has occurred in England throughout the period 
 which has witnessed so many new movements and endeavours 
 with regard to Shakespeare, 
 
 Thus we ever return, when we seek a model-explanation of 
 Shakespeare's works, to Goethe and his interpretation of Hamlet. 
 Upon this reinarkable play the most glaringly opposed opinions 
 have centred ; the turning-point of the true appreciation of the 
 poet was to issue from these conflicting views. Voltaire, who 
 had read this piece in order to criticise and make use of it, saw in 
 it only a heap of disconnected and confused scenes. His verdict 
 deserves never to be forgotten. ' Hamlet ' — thus he charac- 
 terizes the drama — ' is mad in the second act, and his mistress 
 is so in the third ; the prince, feigning to kill a rat, kills the 
 father of his mistress, and the heroine throws herself into the 
 river. They bury her on the stage ; the grave-diggers utter 
 quodlibets worthy of them, holding skulls in. their hands ; 
 prince Hanilet replies to their disgusting follies with coarse- 
 ness not less disgusting. During this time one of the actors 
 makes the conquest of Poland. Hamlet, his mother, and his 
 step-father, drink together on the stage ; they sing at table, they 
 quarrel, they strike, and they kill.' Now arose Groethe, and 
 this same alleged chaos suddenly appeared as an harmonious 
 world full of admirable order. He pointed out one single bond 
 which linked together the apparently disconnected scenes and 
 
 ^ I Qontent myself with referring to the works of two paleographs who 
 have decided this matter ; — Hamilton, ' An Encjuiry into the Genuineness 
 of the MS. Corrections in Mr. S. P, Collier's Annotated Shaiespeare,' folio, 
 1632 : London, 1860. Inglehy, ' A Complete View of the Shakespere Con- 
 troversy :' London, 1861, ( 
 
mTRODUOTIOX 19 
 
 characters, one. single thought, to which fevery action and every 
 figure may be traced. Every inconsistency of character finds 
 its explanation, every offending passage its justification, every 
 £ipparently incidental part or action its necessity, every hetero- 
 geneous episode its connection with the whole. The explanation 
 justified that declaration of Coleridge's, that the form and 
 structure of Shakespeare's .plays are indeed as worthy of admi- 
 ration as they had before been decried as barbarous. This result 
 of Groethe's examination was so new and striking, that he felt 
 himself obliged to oppose the traditional opinion ; so accus- 
 tomed was the world to see in Shakespeare only the Muses' 
 untutored child of nature, that it was confounded to be obliged 
 suddenly to seek in his works a systematic, well-digested, and 
 artistic design, which constituted him just as calm and superior 
 a thinker as he had previously been estimated a wild natural 
 genius. 
 
 And yet in the interpretation of this play we can go even 
 further than Groethe went, and the work- becomes clearer at 
 every step and increases in attraction and depth. And more 
 than this ; in almost each of Shakespeare's works the same 
 structure, upon one undeviating plan, is to be shown, as in 
 Hamlet. Not in all in like manner ; not in the apprentice-^ 
 works of his early youth, and not in the same degree in the 
 first fruits of his independent creations as in his jiper produc- 
 tions ; but throughout gradually from the first it may be seen that 
 Shakespeare instinctively worked out his plays from one single 
 idea, thus preserving their spiritual unity and in a new manner 
 satisfying the severe demands of art made by the oldest 
 aesthetics. 
 
 It was to be expected that the exaip.ple of Groethe's explana- 
 tion of Hamlet would not be lost. What he did for the single piece 
 it would soon be wished to see carried out for the whole. To 
 make this attempt is my present task. Now that the way has 
 been once indicated, it will be yet oftener done ; the effort has 
 been already made ; although only in Grermany, and even there, 
 scarcely in Groethe's exact meaning. At the prime of the new 
 romantic school, when the British writer forced his way to Italy, 
 when in 1821 and 1822 they strove even again in France after 
 better translations of Shakespeare,' when the ' Grlobe ' maintained 
 
 ^ Only quite lately a complete and completely true and unvarnished 
 prose translation has Ibeen imdertaken in Fiance by Frangois Victor Hugo. 
 (1859.) 
 
 c 2 
 
20 mTRODUCTtON. 
 
 the Teutonic tendencies of art, when an English theatre in 
 Paris (1827) introduced the poet in perfect form, and young 
 dramatists undertook to follow his flight, Ghaizot suffered him- 
 self to be impelled to a spirited study of Shakespeare (1821, 
 1858), not however by Goethe, but by Schlegel. Yet he too. 
 paused at the controversy of the time, without wishing to decide 
 it ; the controversy, namely, as to whether the dramatic systettt 
 of the Englishmah were not better than Voltaire's — a question 
 Lessiag had long ago settled. He saw that it was obstinate to deny 
 the art and rule in Shakespeare's plays. Striving to discover it for 
 himself and for others, he was on the track of the rule of their 
 motal unity. He perceived with admiration their structure upon 
 one ruling idea, which referred every part to one and the same 
 aim, and at every step revealed the profundity of the plan as 
 well as the greatness of the execution ; but he found this tmity 
 of idea in tragedy alone, and not in comedy, where the more 
 concealed it lies, it is only observed with all the greater nicety ; 
 moreover he contented himself with having pointed it out gene- 
 rally, without proving it in detail in his analysis, on which all 
 however hinged. In H. N. Hudson's lectures on Shakespeare 
 ( 1 848), this great aesthetic question has been hardly glanced at. 
 Every critic of Shakespeare will highly rejoice at this American's 
 fine appreciation and estimate of the poet on the whole ; on the 
 other hand in the development of single characters he is 
 throughout impeded by the absence of individual points of view, 
 and the want of an extensive knowledge of human nature. The 
 reader will above all see with surprise, with respect to the in- 
 ternal structure of the plays, that this critic was not even aware 
 of a moral unity in them ; that he overlooked all poetic justice^ 
 and saw a kind of moral confusion prevail throughout. If this 
 were just, the attempt to give a more profound explanation of 
 Shakespeare's works would be hardly worth whUe. The best 
 part of his art would fall to the ground ; for if poetry does not 
 exhibit the rule of moral justice, it degrades itself to a lower 
 position than that of genuine history. Among the German 
 interpreters, Ulrici has attempted to tread the path pointed out 
 by Goethe, which I alSo purpose to pursue. 
 
 It must ever be the case that interpreters, ociSupifed with the 
 same predilection upon the same subject, should meet upon 
 many points. Yet it seems to me that our philosophical method 
 of examination is not applicable to the poetry of a period the 
 philosophy of which sought knowledge in a manner totally dif- 
 
JNTBODUCTIOX. 21 
 
 ferent to our own ; it is not applicable, to the works of a poet of 
 honest healthy mind, whose eye and ea,r were his pilot and steers- 
 man through life and the world ; whp, rich as he was in philosophic 
 profoundness, was still further removed than Groethe from philo- 
 sophy itself. And just so far should we place philosophy from his 
 poetry ; for the effect will ever be discordant, when , the barren 
 field of speculation approaches too closely this fresh green of 
 reality. 
 
 Shakespeare's works should properly only be explained by 
 representation. . For that, and for that alone, were they written. 
 The separation of dramatic poetry from histrionic art, through 
 ■which both arts have suffered, was unknown in Shakespeare's time. 
 The main difficulty to the understanding of his plays lies thus 
 alone in this, that we read them and do not see them ; for fidl 
 Bs they are of poetic beauties, of psychological characteristics, of 
 moral worldly wisdom, of references and allusions to the circum- 
 stances and persons of the time, they divert attention to the 
 ■most different points, and place a difficulty in the way of the 
 comprehension and enjoyment of the whole. But when they 
 are performed by actors who are equal to the poet, a division of 
 labour takes place, which, by the interposition of a second art, 
 assists us to the easier enjoyment of the first. Actors who 
 understand their parts relieve us of the trouble we have in 
 leading, of separating perhaps twenty different characters, and 
 understanding them and their mutual relations. The appearance, 
 the words, the behaviour of each actor, explain to us, without 
 effort, as in a picture, the fig^ures and the mainspring of the 
 action ; by the finest threads they guide us through the in- 
 ■tricacies of the plot, and lead us by an easy way into the most 
 inner and secret part of the artistic structure. The critic there- 
 fore who so explains Shakespeare's works that he prepares the 
 actor for the perception of the whole play and of his part, and 
 aids him, as it were, in producing such an intelligent and perfect 
 representation as woidd afford the true artistic interpretation of 
 the play, that critic would in my opinion be the best exponent 
 of the poet, and would have seized the only method which places 
 no constraint upon his works. 
 
 But if the works of Shakespeare were singly explained in this 
 manner, there yet remains another and more difficult task; 
 namely, so to arrange these evidences of the poet's activity, that 
 being brought before us not in systematic combination but in their 
 true succession, they should in their internal connection lead us 
 
22 .mTBODUCTION. 
 
 again frojn the scattered variety to one higher conunon point, t6 
 the creative spirit of the poet. Let this genius of the poet be 
 ■watched in its developmentj be discerned and traced out in its 
 imperfect embryo, in its growth, and in its finished form, by 
 comparing the abundant contents of his trorks and the scanty 
 sources concerning his life ; let even a faint image be sketched 
 of the mental condition, the personal peculiarity, and circum- 
 stances of the great man, — between both, between his inner 
 life and his poetry, let a bridge be thrown with a few speaking 
 touches, and a connection pointed out, which may show that with 
 Shakespeare^ as with every rich poetic nature, no outer routine 
 and poetic propriety, but inner experiences and emotions of the 
 mind 'were the deep springs of his poetry, — ^then for the first 
 time we should have reached a point which would bring us 
 near the poet ; we should gain a complete idea of his personal 
 existence, and obtain a full picture, a living view of his mental 
 stature. And human as we are in our weakness,' believing that 
 we possess our gods, only wken we have brought them into 
 human form, so we have also the natural desire to know in their 
 personal arid human aspect the minds whom we honour in their 
 works. But in this matter almost every source is hypothetic 
 and fragmentary in its nature, and it is to be feared that the 
 delineation produced may be rather a poem of the historian 
 than a history of the poet. A similar hazard, however, attends 
 every historical recital. Every historical work of art reflects the 
 mind of the narrator no less than the subject presented ; and 
 this only acquires a living reality for the hmnan mind, when it 
 has been received and newly fashioned by the creative power of 
 human genius. The attempt, therefore, may be ventured on, 
 even in the danger of finding in the following narration more 
 fiction than truth. 
 
SHAKESPEAEE AT STEATFOED. 
 
 In a note to Shakespeare's sonnets, Steevens wrote for our in- 
 formation the following sentence : — ' Concerning the poet's cir- 
 cumstances, all that we know with any certainty of Shakespeare 
 is, that he was born in Stratford-on-Avon, married, and had 
 children; that he went to London, where he appeared as an 
 actor, and wrote poems and plays ; that he returned to Strat- 
 ford, made his will, died, and was buried.' If good fortune had 
 not preserved for us the lives of all poets — at which Thomas 
 Haywood, a prolific poet, a contemporary and acquaintance of 
 Shakespeare, worked for more than twenty years — all further 
 curiosity on the subject would most probably be left imsatisfied. 
 For this inadequacy of our knowledge of Shakespeare's outer 
 life we are sometimes consoled with the idea that the history 
 of his mind on the other hand is all the more complete. This 
 is true ; but we must at the same time acknowledge that we 
 must notwithstanding seek the necessary starting-point for the 
 history of this mind in the scanty information concerning 
 Shakespeare's life. With this intention we select from the few 
 touches of his outer history only that which could have influ- 
 enced the inner character and the formation of the poet's mind. 
 
 In this matter we shall not too pedantically disdain to take 
 into consideration suppositions which, from the uncertainty that 
 surrounds them, can only be regarded as possible and probable ; 
 for even a mere supposition, though it casts but a doubtful 
 twilight upon the history of Shakespeare's development, is for 
 our purpose far more important than the most certain state- 
 ments as to his goods and chattels, upon which in England so 
 much industry has been bestowed. 
 
 The Shakespeare family, ever since the fourteenth century, 
 had spread and multiplied in Warwickshire. It was not originally 
 
24 SHAKESPEABE AT STEATFOED. 
 
 established in Stratford-on-Avon, the birth-place of. "William 
 Shakespeare ; the poet's father, John Shakespeare, probably 
 first settled there about 1551. This man, in the city records, was 
 once termed a glover ; but we find him afterwards also desig- 
 nated as a yeoman, and occupied with agricultural pursuits; 
 and again other doubtful, although old traditions, make him a 
 wool-stapler or a butcher ; all of which can be easily combined 
 if we think of him as a small proprietor, who endeavoured to 
 turn his produce in com, cattle, wool, and leather to account as 
 a local merchant. John's father, Eichard Shakespeare of Snit- 
 terfield, near Stratford, the grandfather of our poet, seems to 
 have been a tenant of Eobert Arden, of Wilmecote. 
 
 A union between the two families was formed by John 
 •Shakespeare, who in 1557 married Maria, the youngest of 
 Eobert Arden's seven daughters, a year after her father's death. 
 The Ardens were one of the most considerable and most opulent 
 Warwick families ; we know that they rivalled the Dudleys, at 
 ■the period that Leicester stood at the height of his power ; the 
 marriage was thus an evidence of John Shakespeare's position, 
 and intimates that he must have been in good circumstances — 
 prosperous, if not rich. This is confirmed by other evidence. 
 In the year 1564 we have the opportunity of comparing his 
 charitable contributions with those of other inhabitants of 
 Stratford, and these place him in the second rank in the corpo- 
 ration. He was the owner of several houses, and in the city 
 records he appears gradually rising in rank and importance, as 
 juryman, constable, chamberlain, alderman, and at last (from 
 Michaelmas 1568 to Michaelmas 1569), as bailiff of Stratford, 
 Ithe highest place in the corporation. 
 
 John Shakespeare lived till 1601, his wife till 1608 ; both 
 Kved to see the success and prosperity of their much-famed son. 
 William Shakespeare was baptized on the 26th April 1564; 
 many biographers are pleased to give credence to an utterly 
 uncertain tradition, that he was born on the 23rd April^ the 
 day on which he also died. Of the eight children of John 
 Shakespeare, four sons and four daughters, he was the eldest 
 son. He survived the plague which burst out soon after his 
 •birth ; Providence preserved him ; several of the other children 
 •died early; one brother, Edmund, was subsequently an actor 
 with him at the same theatre. 
 
 There was in Stratford a free grammar-school, where the 
 sons of all members of the corporation were educated gratui- 
 
SHAKESPEARE AT STBATFOBD. 25 
 
 tdusly. Here William Shakespeare must have learned the 
 rudiments of the classical languages, which at that time were 
 far more cultivated than now. We shall seize this first oppor- 
 tunity to touch briefly in this place on the much-disputed point 
 of Shakespeare's education and acquirements. According to an 
 unproved tradition in Eowe's life of Shakespeare, the father of 
 our poet, being in needy circumstances, was under the necessity 
 of withdrawing his son prematurely from school, and he is said 
 to have then become a schoolmaster in the country. Two 
 other reports at the end of the seventeenth century, one of which 
 comes from the lips of a parish-clerk at Stratford, 80 years of 
 age, relate that William learned the butcher trade of his father. 
 All three communications intimate an interruption and defi- 
 ciency in the poet's education, in which we readily believe, 
 however much we may admire the self-instruction with which 
 he subsequently must have compensated for it. In the days of 
 his first successes, Shakespeare, in one of his sonnets, in depicting 
 a wide gap, employs the image of the distance between learning 
 and his ' rude ignorance ; ' and a true scholar like Ben Jonson 
 might say of him, in the consciousness of his own learning, that 
 he had possessed 'small Latin and less Greek.' Farmer has 
 thus unnecessarily taken the trouble to prove that Shakespeare 
 read Plutarch not in Greek, but in the English translation. 
 Alexander Dyce, however, makes a remark upon this, which in 
 fact decides the whole strife concerning the poet's education and 
 knowledge. ' If he could not read Plutarch in the original,' 
 says the reverend critic, ' I will only observe that not a few 
 worthy gentlemen of our day, who have taken their degrees in 
 Oxford or Cambridge, are in the same case.' 
 
 To us Germans the nature and condition of Shakespeare's 
 ■education may be made perfectly clear by one Word of com- 
 parison. Our Goethe and Schiller appear, compared to Voss, 
 just as Shakespeare does compared to Ben Jonson. They read, 
 ■they understood their Homer, only in a German translation. But 
 that the one learned to scan from Voss, and the other, at anad- 
 'Vanced age of life, consulted Humboldt as to whether he still ought 
 to study Greek, affords no conclusion as to their whole intellectual 
 training. Just as little can Shakespeare's small amount of 
 Greek witness against the cultivation of- his mind, or even 
 against the extent of his information. We may rather venture 
 to say, that Shakespeare had in his time few equals in the range 
 of his manifold knowledge. How too, in this respect, have the 
 
26 .SHAKESPEARE AT STRATFORD. 
 
 opinions of the present day changed from those of an earlier 
 date ! The commentators of the last century, on account of a 
 few historical, geographical and chronological errors, looked down 
 iipon the ignorant poet with an air of superiority. Now, how- 
 ever, whole volumes are written to prove his knowledge of true 
 and fabulous natural history, to evidence his familiarity with 
 the Bible, to establish his agreement with Aristotle, and to 
 make him one and the same person as the philosopher Bacon ! 
 Now a legal authority like Lord Campbell (' Shakespeare's Legal 
 Acquirements Considered,' 1859) has seriously examined a former 
 conjecture, which even contemporaries seem to have shared; 
 namely that Shakespeare, before his transition to the stage, had 
 been employed in the office of an attorney ; and although the 
 severe judge, owing to the want of satisfying proofs, declares 
 the inference drawn from such a partial representation of the 
 poet's knowledge of law to be as ventm-esome as inferring his 
 education at a naval or sporting school on account of his know- 
 ledge of hunting and shipping, still even he considers that it 
 would require gifts of no ordinary kind for a man to contract, 
 by mere presence at judicial proceedings or by intercourse with 
 attorneys, that fluency and technical accuracy of expression, and 
 those allusions to law matters and forms, which are so striking 
 in Shakespeare's works. Armitage Brown moreover concluded, 
 from the poet's Italian knowledge, that he must have travelled 
 in Italy ! And if we will not assume, as most decidedly contrary 
 to the principles of the moral character of our poet, that he 
 took great pains to affect a knowledge of the Latin, French, 
 Italian, and even Spanish languages, we must confess that he 
 has shown greater acquaintance with these languages than is 
 acquired in mere pastime. With respect to his classical learn- 
 ing, it has been rightly alleged, in behalf of his more funda- 
 mental knowledge of Latin, that he used single words of this 
 language in the genuine original signification which they have 
 lost with their adoption into English. Any one who chose to 
 gather together proofs of his extensive reading, would find a 
 wide and vast field of literature with which the poet was fami- 
 liar; and while we discover matter for criticism in his know- 
 ledge of history and geography, we must not forget that at 
 that time chronicles were the only histories of which he knew, 
 and that geography was rarely a subject for study. Yet if we 
 were to believe that Shakespeare's wanton anachronisms in the 
 Midsummer Night's Dream or in the Winter's Tale arose from 
 
8HAKESPEABE AT STBATFOED. 27 
 
 pure ignorance, we should be committing the same absurdity 
 as that English critic who condemned Groethe seriously for the 
 superstition with which, in the beginning of his autobiography, 
 he has discussed the constellations at his birth* 
 
 Let us return to the history of the poet's youth. Little to 
 be relied on has reached our knowledge, but sufficient to aLlloW 
 us to guess that his earliest experiences must have planted in 
 his mind an abundance of deep impressions which may have 
 subsequently become rich sources for his poetic creations. A 
 course of misfortunes befell him and his house at the period 
 when passion, sensibility, and imagination are strongest in men ! 
 he had to eat the bitter bread of tribulation and to pass through 
 the deep water of sorrow — that school of great minds and power- 
 ful characters. From his fourteenth year the old prosperity of 
 his father's house was broken up ; a stroke of misforttme befell 
 his mother's family, the Ardens ; his own indiscretion and self- 
 created distress followed ; and thus we see that he had not only 
 to experience a season of adversity, but also one of indignity^ 
 which developed side by side his good and bad qualities. We 
 will singly pass in review the main facts. 
 
 From 1578, when William was fourteen years oldj the 
 affairs of the father, John Shakespeare, declined. He was 
 obliged in this and 'the year following to mortgage an estate 
 (Ashbies) in Wilmecote, and shortly after to sell his wife's share 
 in other possessions in Snitterfield ; moreover we find, that in 
 the years 1578-9 he was exempted from all poor rates and 
 other public contributions. From the last year, being ' warned,' 
 he ceased to attend the halls, and on this account in 1586 he 
 was superseded by another in his position as alderman, appa- 
 rently without his own wish or consent in the matter. Just 
 about this time we find, as the return to a distringas, that there 
 was nothing to seize ; and soon afterwards we find him degraded 
 even to imprisonment for debt. In the year 1592 his name 
 appears in the report of a commission, which had to take note 
 of those who did not come monthly to church, according to royal 
 command; and the memorandum is subjoined, that John 
 Shakespeare ' coome not to churche for feare of processe for 
 debte.' In the documents which relate to these domestic cir- 
 cumstances, he is now always designated as a ' yeoman.' Perhaps 
 he had given up his retail trade for agricultural pursuits, and 
 had thus fallen into difficulties. From all this it may be in- 
 
28 .SHAKESPEARE- AT STEATFOBD. 
 
 ferred, and we find it subsequently confirmed, that the children 
 were early thrown upon themselves and, their own resources, 
 
 A misfortune of another ^ind befell his mother's family, the 
 Ardens, when our poet was in his nineteenth year. The head of 
 this family was Edward Arden, of Park HaU. The jealousy of 
 the two Warwick houses of Arden and Dudley has been slightly 
 referred to before. It was deadly between this Edward Arden 
 and the notorious Earl of Leicester, , a character so familiar to 
 all readers of Schiller's 'Maria Stuart' and "Walter Scott's 'Kenil- 
 worth.' When Leicester in the year 1575, in the famous festi- 
 vities at Kenilworth, entertained and wooed Queen Elizabeth,, 
 he was carrying on at the time a criminal intercourse with the 
 Countess of Essex, whom he married after the death of her 
 husband in 1576. Even before she was his wife, Edward Arden 
 had uttered harsh expressions to Leicester with regard to this 
 intercourse which his power and insolence kept concealed from 
 the court and queen ; possibly this may have happened during 
 the festivities at Kenilworth, and Leicester's connexion may 
 thus have been, made known to the queen, who ended her 
 sojourn at the castle of Kenilworth by sudden departure. These 
 reproaches excited in Leicester an irreconcilable hatred towards 
 Arden. He entangled him in a charge of high treason, and 
 Edward was executed in the year 1583. 
 
 However, apart from the impoverished Shakespeares, the 
 leading branches of the Arden family may have stood, it is easy 
 to understand that this fall would be deeply felt by the former. 
 The circumstances exhibit both families in decline and mis- 
 fortune; the hard lines of- life's discipline may have been 
 stamped by them on the mind of the young poet. These cir- 
 cumstances may have been healthful for the formation of his 
 character, for at the same time we discover traits of a youthful 
 levity to which these grave family events were well fitted to 
 act as a counterbalance. 
 
 It was to Nicholas Eowe, who in 1709 wrote a life of our 
 poet, that the actor Betterton related the oft-told anecdote of 
 Shakespeare's deer-stealing, which he had heard at Stratford. 
 He had fallen, so the story goes, into bad company, and had 
 taken part in some deer-stealing at Charlcote, the property of 
 Sir Thomas Lucy ; he had been prosecuted by Sir Thomas, and 
 had revenged himself with a satirical ballad, a stanza of which 
 is elsewhere preserved ; this had redoubled the persecution 
 against him to such a degree, that he was obliged to leave Stratford 
 
SBAKESPEAEE AT STEATFOSD. 29 
 
 and go to Londoiii "What warrant there is for this story, what' 
 genuineness belongs to the preserved stanza of the tallad 
 upon Sir Thomas Lucy, we cannot say. Country people near 
 Stratford to this day point out indeed to strangers a statue of 
 Diana with the hindj which they exhibit as the poacher Shake- 
 speare ; and if Betterton's authority were of this kind, the 
 anecdote would certainly be very suspicious. An external con- 
 firmation of it, however, is indeed strongly indicated in the in- 
 troductory scene of the Merry Wives of Windsor, The poet is 
 thought to have here immortalized that story of his youthj 
 transferring his deer-stealing to Falstaflf, and ridiculing in the 
 person of the proud Eobert Shallow, to whom he assigned a shield' 
 with twelve luces. Sir Thomas Lucy himself, whose arms bore 
 actually three ; and in the same manner the Welsh priest pro- 
 nouncing the English word luces as lowsie, the wit of the stanza 
 of the ballad,' which is' still extant, turns entirely -upon this; 
 dialectic perversion of the name Lucy. 
 
 But apart from these circumstantial proofs, the anecdote 
 carries with it decided marks of a most characteristic trait. 
 In the domain of literatm-e and art, as little as in that of 
 politics, can rapid and great changes in these branches of 
 the cultivation of a people take place, without producing an 
 anarchical transition state, and this is generally exhibited 
 most strikingly in the irregular and strong-minded charac- 
 ters through whom these changes are effected. The men wh& 
 were instrumental in a complete revolution in our Grerman 
 dramatic poetry, Wagner and Lenz, and indeed those greater 
 ones also, who more speedily rose to moral dignity and honour — 
 Klinger, Groethe and Schiller — appear in their youth to have 
 been the prey of the same strong passions, the same Titan-Uke 
 nature, and the same disregard of conventional habits and re- 
 straints, as they depicted in their early poems. The case is 
 similar with the dramatists, who revived the English stage in 
 Shakespeare's time ; only that the few traits which we possess of 
 them are, according to the character of the age, far more 
 
 ' A parliament member, a justice of peace, 
 At home a poor scarecrowe, at London an asse — 
 If lowsie is Lucy as some vollie miscall it, 
 Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befaU it. 
 Ke thinks himself great, 
 Yet an asse in his state 
 We allow by his ears but with asses to mate. 
 
30 SHAKESPEARE AT STBATFOBS. 
 
 coarsely drawn. The names of Marlowe and (jreene, in connec- 
 tion' with Shakespeare, correspond in the English drama to the 
 place which those youthful friends of Groethe occupy in Germany, 
 in. the manner of their poetry, in their envious literary jealousy, 
 and in their whole moral bearings. Marlowe, both by word and 
 writing, is said to have depreciated and scorned at religion ; 
 satirical poems call him a swearer and blasphemer, an associate 
 of all who reject the law of Grod ; his poetical contemporaries 
 deplored that his wit, bestowed by heaven, consorted with vices 
 born of hell. Eobert Greene was a decayed clergyman, and 
 died, it is said, of immoderate wine-drinking ; his violent 
 opponent, Doctor Gabriel Harvey, laid to his charge the most 
 scandalous life, and appealed for confirmation of it to the general 
 cognisance of the city of London ; even Greene himself spoke 
 at last of his works as follies in a tone of repentance, which 
 does not testify to a happy conscience. It was also known of 
 Peele, Thomas Nash, and Lodge, that they led an unruly un- 
 steady life, persisting in no regular industry ; all except the last 
 died early, and Marlowe by violence. In the fashion of these 
 wildlings, Shakespeare's yoilthful habits may likewise have 
 begun ; it is not improbable that in the bad company which 
 Eowe describes, he may have led the life which he subsequently 
 depicts so strikingly in Henry IV, His deer-stealing may easily 
 have been the most innocent part of his life. The age regarded 
 this careless existence, such as tavern-life, robbing of gardens 
 and dancing round ,the May-pole — ^the oftblamed, though never 
 discontinued customs of the young — rather as wantonness than 
 as crime ; just as we designate the peculations of the school-boy 
 by a forbearing expression {schiessen, to shoot), which almost 
 reminds one of poaching. , There are, however, other and as it 
 seems indisputable testimonies existing, which prove the young 
 Shakespeare to have been also addicted to dissolute habits of a 
 different character. 
 
 We might indeed already infer these habits from a series of 
 Shakespeare's poems, at the close of his collection of sonnets ; 
 poems which, with just as much unvarnished morality as 
 candour, declare the poet's connection with a married woman, 
 who shared a faithless love between him and one of his friends. 
 The English have .endeavoured in every possible manner to dis- 
 pute the prosaic truth of the subject of these poems, and thus 
 their moral conclusions. The aesthetic infallibility of the poet 
 was of less moment to them, th^n that as a man their favourite 
 
SHAKESPEARE AT 8TEATF0BD. 31 
 
 should be a- faultless saint. It is a -trait which does just as 
 much honour to the moral feeling of the nation as it is prejudi- 
 cial to their investigating sense of truth, and perhaps even to 
 their estimate of human nature. ' For why,' says Boaden, in his 
 writings on Shakespeare's sonnets, 'why should we be so jealous 
 of making the poet such a spotless creature as the world never 
 saw ! a being who so immeasurably surpasses us in mental gifts, 
 and who may not betray his race by the slightest moral fault ? 
 True, when repented error seduces not to imitation, it is better 
 to stifle our presumption, whilst we show the greatest amongst 
 us by no means stainless.' At any rate we cannot do justice tp 
 the mind of the poet himself, who valued, simple truth above 
 everything, unless, in gathering together the characteristics of 
 Ms Ufe, we make him no better than he has represented him-? 
 self. 
 
 Shakespeare married, in his nineteenth year, Anne Hatha- 
 way, a young woman seven or eight years older than himself, 
 the daughter of a wealthy freeholder at Shottery near Stratford. 
 Whether consideration for the necessitous circumstances of the 
 family, or the rashness of a violent passion, urged .to this early 
 marriage, we know not. The young couple married in the end 
 of November 1582, and had a daughter Susanna baptized as 
 early as May 26, 1583. From this circumstance CoUier infers 
 the latter cause, and perceives in it the main reason for the 
 sinall degree of happiness which, according to these accounts, 
 characterised Shakespeare's married life. Others of Shakes- 
 peare's biographers have contradicted this consequence, assert7 
 ing that instances of such early births after marriage were at 
 that time abundant, because the betrothal was regarded as the 
 consummation of the marriage ; but this custom itself would 
 witness rather to the moral license of the age than to the moral 
 restraint of the couple, who — exceptionally, of course — delighted 
 in its freedoms ; the sorry conclusions which we draw from 
 these evil auspices with regard to Shakespeare's domestic 
 condition, would, not be weakened by this plea. For Shakes- 
 peare's married life was undoubtedly no happy one. His wife 
 brought him twins after two years, and they had no more 
 children. When he soon after settled in London, he continued, 
 for some time at any rate, his free life ; and this we do not 
 merely gather from the sonnets ; no regard to a dear wife and a 
 happy family circle ' appeared to restrain him. As Eobert 
 Greene kept his wife in Lincolnshire, Shakespeare 9,lsp left hi^ 
 
32 SHAKESPEARE AT STEATFOBD. 
 
 behind him at Stratford; he liked her better as the watcher 
 over his economical circumstances at home, than as witness of 
 his fame in the capital. He saw her again in his regular, 
 annual visits to Stratford, whither he returned while yet full of 
 vigour ; but this was rather the proof of his sincere disinclina- 
 tion to the ' public life ' of the theatre, than a heartfelt incli- 
 nation for domestic life with his wife. In his will he only 
 sparingly and meanly bequeathed to her his second-best bed.: 
 In an economical and business point of view, we might indeed 
 clear this strange legacy from the reproach of neglect, for the 
 widow of a freeholder was entitled by the law of the land to her 
 dowry ; but as regards the social relations of the couple, one 
 sad token will ever remain, that the testator in his last wiU, in. 
 which he devotes a little remembrance to so many even non- 
 relatives, mentioned none of the Hathaways, and leaves not a 
 word of love for his wife. We have, therefore, indeed some 
 reason to give credit to the bitter experiences of Shakespeare's- 
 married life ; and we may be pardoned if, in searching through 
 his works, we fancy we meet with direct outbursts of feeling 
 upon this portion of his history. Were the circumstances which 
 accompanied his marriage the ' fore-bemoaned moan ' upon 
 which the poet looked back repentantly in his sonnets ? Was ifc 
 accident, that just in his earlier dramas the pictures of bad im-. 
 perious women, such as he never subsequently depicted, filled 
 his fancy ? that in Henry VI., when he re-touched it, he gave 
 such double force to the traits of character with which he had 
 endowed the terrible wives of -the King and Grloster, as if ta 
 unbmrden his own heavy heart ? With how much true convic- 
 tion, as out of self-drawn experience, he utters the warning in 
 'Twelfth Night.' (ii. 4.) 
 
 Let the woman take 
 An elder than herself; so wears she to him, 
 So sways she level in her hushand's heart. 
 
 And with what sorrowful confession does he add the reason why 
 this proportion is the more natural one — a reason which reflects 
 little honour on the man : 
 
 For, however we do praise om-selves, 
 Our fancies are more g^ddy and unfirm, 
 More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, 
 Than women's are. 
 
 To Shakespeare's settlement in London we shall return 
 presently. He continued there, as we have said, his dissipated 
 
SffAKESFEAEE AT STSATFOIiD. 33 
 
 life ; at any rate, two anecdotes are told which, if they are to 
 be relied on, would prove it. On his journeys to and from 
 Lpndon, wrote Aiibrey about 1680, he would often put up at 
 the crown at Oxford with John Davenanit. He and his wife 
 were fond of him ; he stood godfather to their son "William, and 
 the evil world inferred more than friendship between the 
 beautiful and witty Mrs, Davenant and the poet. Olie day the 
 little William ran quickly home, and being asked why he ran 
 so, he replied, he wanted to see his godfather. ' You are a 
 good boy,' said the interrogator, ' but you must not needlessly 
 use God's name.' . The young William Davenant subsequently 
 made much of his acquaiatance and relationship with Shakes- 
 peare, so that he has even been given the credit of having 
 invented this story. Another is told by a contemporary of the 
 name of Manningham, about 1602, during the lifetime of the 
 poet. The wife of a London citizen, carried away with admir- 
 ation for Shakespeare's friend, Eichard Burbage, when acting 
 as Eichard III., invited him one evening to her house, and told 
 him to knock at the door under the name of Eichard III. 
 William Shakespeare heard the invitation, and knowing the 
 word, anticipates his friend. Soon after his appearance a 
 second Eichard III. is announced. But the wanton possessor of 
 the fair lady's company sends back his friend : William the 
 Conqueror goes before Eichard III. 
 
 These anecdotes may indeed seem mere inventions; the 
 first may be truly only the application of a current witticism to 
 the poet; historical legends often arise in' this maimer as retro- 
 spective conclusions from authentic facts. Because Shakespeare 
 was a poet, we might say, the report origiaated that he killed 
 his father's calves in ' a high style ' and rnade a speech at the 
 time ; because he was acquainted with hunting and horses, 
 some make him a poacher, others a herseboy. So also that story 
 of roguish wooing may well have been imputed to the poet of 
 the, famous love-scene between Venus and Adonis. But as it is 
 related by a contemporary, this seems less probable. Besides, 
 we do not readily impute such inventions to a character which 
 is considered honest and sober. Added to this, a poetical 
 counterpart, as it were, to the last anecdote is to be found in 
 those evil-esteemed sonnets, of which we spoke before. 
 
 The poet depicts in those sonnets (127-152) the singular 
 woman with whom^ he exchanged a sinful affection ; he describes 
 her as ugly, black in complexion, hair, and eyes, considered 
 
 D 
 
34 8HASE8PEABE AT STBATFOBD. 
 
 beautiful by none, and -with no charm for any physical sense. 
 .-That which drew her to him was her music, her intellectual 
 grace, and an aptness which clothed the ugly with beauty and 
 raised in his eyes ' the worst in her above all best.' In vain 
 he struggled against this passion, in vain he called to aid 
 his reason, and even his hate. ■ For she ensnared his much- 
 loved young friend, whom the remaining sonnets extol; but 
 even this perfidy he forgave her, which seems to have been 
 rather an act of wantonness, for the passion was not returned ; 
 so that it must be admitted we are looking upon a flippant 
 and thus upon no tender intercourse between two lovers, such as 
 the above-mentioned anecdote between Burbage and Shakespeare 
 would lead us to presume. 
 
 It was an unrestrained life that Shakespeare led in his 
 youthful years ; in addition to his poaching and his love ad- 
 ventures, there appears his resolve to separate himself from 
 his family and to become an actor ; a step at that time 
 taken readily by no one who did not set universal opinion at 
 defiance. He himself recognises in his sonnets the ' disgrace ' 
 and ' blots ' that clung to him ; he confesses that he was con- 
 tinually renewing his ' old offences of affections ! ' Had he not 
 drunk so deeply of the cup of passion, he would scarcely have 
 depicted with those master-touches the power of sensuous 
 courses, he would scarcely have pictured with such fervour and 
 depth the charm of their allurement and the curse that Hes in 
 their excess. Had he not once crossed the threshold of crime, 
 how could he so accurately and profoundly have penetrated into 
 its most innermost recesses ? Man issues from the hand of 
 nature, endowed for good or for bad, and unfortunately pre^ 
 dominant propensities have ever the hardest struggle. If the 
 man comes out of the conflict victorious, he bears away with 
 him a spoil which without the conflict had been unattainable ; 
 the moderation to which he returns is found by none who have 
 not stumbled against extremes. The period in which Shakes^ 
 peare lived was one in which natural and sensual powers were 
 strongly developed, but these were counterbalanced by religious 
 habit, by tenderness of conscience, and by much intellectual 
 vigour. As the age, so was the poet himself. He exulted when 
 young in his physical energies, and spoke of himself in his early 
 years as old, when he began to obey the dictates of his reason, 
 and to follow out his intellectual impulses. Just as Goethe and 
 Schiller early withdrew from the dissolute habits of their 
 
8SAKESPEAEE AT STRATFORD. 35 
 
 youtli and youthful associates, so did Shakespeare : he consorted 
 with his contemporaries Marlowe and Grreen at first as his equals, 
 but he knew them, as his Prince Henry knew the wild company 
 which pleased his youthful inclination, and he discarded these 
 habits like the prince, when he was called to better things. 
 We shall subsequently endeavour to discover, from his personal 
 poems, when this inner reformation in him took place. But if we 
 may venture to gather the condition of his noind from the poems, 
 written at different times in the paroxysm of passion, we should 
 say that he, like Goethe, although in different combination, 
 possessed that happy nature which is endowed with moderation 
 and sdf-command even in moments of passion, and with a 
 degree of composure even in the midst of tumult. Thus we 
 shall see, in the next chapter, that in the two descriptive poems 
 which we possess from his pen, the firstlings of his Muse, he 
 gives early proof of this peculiar double nature. Both poems 
 in form and matter correspond to this early period of unre- 
 strained passion, and originated in it. But the one, full of 
 stoic severity, exhibits the victory of mind and morals ; present- 
 ing a qontrast to the other, which, full of tender charm, 
 depicts the base rule of the senses. The picture of the struggle 
 between mind and sensuality, between reason and desire, as it 
 must have shattered the poet himself, is still more distinctly 
 deHneated in the sonnets which are addressed to that unbeau- 
 teous charmer; in all of them he chides his easily befooled 
 senses, and the conquered spirit scorns the conqueror Lust, 
 without being able to raise itself from its defeat. The 129th of 
 his sonnets expresses this frame of mind in the most striking 
 manner : 
 
 The expense of spirit in a waste of shame 
 
 Is lust in action ; and till action, lust 
 
 Is jierjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, 
 
 Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, 
 
 Enjoyed no sooner, but despised straight, 
 
 Past reason hunted, and no sooner had 
 
 Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait. 
 
 On purpose laid to make the taker mad; 
 
 Mad in pursuit, and in possession so ; 
 
 Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme ; 
 
 A bliss in proof — and proved, a very woe ; 
 
 Before, a joy proposed ; behind, a dream. 
 
 All this the world well knows ; yet none knows well 
 
 To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. 
 
 D 2 
 
SHAKESPEAEE'S DESCEIPTIVE POEMS. 
 
 Of the two narrative or rather descriptive poems which we 
 possess of Shakespeare, the one (Venus and Adonis) was first 
 printed in the year 1593, the other (Lucrece) in 1594. Both are 
 dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. The poet himself, ia 
 his dedication, calls Venus and Adonis his first work, but 
 Lucrece belongs indisputably to the same period. Both poems 
 were certainly revised at publication. Their first conception 
 may place them at a period previous to Shakespeare's settlement 
 in London. Everything betrays that they were written in the 
 first passion of youth. 
 
 We at once perceive how completely in matter and treat- 
 ment they are interwoven with the youthful circumstances and 
 moods of the poet, at which we have hastily glanced. The 
 subject of Venus and Adonis is the goddess of love wooing the 
 cold yet insensible boy, and her laments upon his sudden 
 deatii. In the first part the poet has endowed the wooer with 
 all the charms of persuasion, beauty, and passionate vehemence j 
 with all the arts of flattery, entreaty, reproach, tears, and 
 violence ; and in so doing he appears a Crcesus in poetic ideas, 
 thoughts, and indages, a master and victor in the matter of love, 
 a giant in passion and sensual power. From this point of view, 
 the whole piece is one brilliant error, such as young poets so 
 readily commit : immoderate sensual fervour mistaken for 
 poetry. Yet in the opinion of the time this poem alone 
 placed Shakespeare in the rank of aidmired poets. The very 
 point we mention gave the poem at once its attractive power. 
 All that had at that time been read in similar mythological 
 poems by English and Italian writers, upon the nature and 
 effects of love, were elaborate imaginative works, more brilliant 
 in words than profound in truth of feeling. But here love 
 
SHAKESPEAEE'S DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. 37 
 
 appeared as a ' spirit, all compact of fire,' a real paroxysm and 
 passion defying all the artificial bombast of delineation. Thus, 
 by its truth to nature, the poem had a realistic efifect beyond 
 any similar mythological and allegorical pictures. Like Goethe's 
 Werther, it was proverbially held as the model of a love-poem ; 
 it was frequently reprinted, and called forth a series of imita- 
 tions ; and poets praised it as ' the quintessence of love,' as a 
 talisman and pattern for lovers, from which might be learned 
 the art of successful wooing. 
 
 Grlowing as are the colours with which Shakespeare has 
 portrayed this passion, his delight in the subject of his. picture 
 has never betrayed him into exclusive sensuality. He knows 
 that he is sketching, not the image of human love in which 
 mind and soul have their eimobling share, but the image of a 
 purely sensual desire, which, purely animal, like ' an empty 
 eagle,' feeds on its prey. In the passage where he depicts the 
 wooing of Adonis' horse which had broken loose from its rein, 
 his intention is evidently to compare the animal passion in the 
 episode with that of the goddess, not in opposition but in 
 juxtaposition. Eebukingly Adonis tells the loving goddess 
 that she should not call that love, which even he, the poet, 
 names careless lust, ' beating reason back, forgetting shame's 
 pure blush, and honour's wrack.' This purer thought, which 
 more than once occms in the poem, is yet, it must be admitted, 
 half concealed by the grace of the style and by the poet's 
 lingering on sensual descriptions. 
 
 In Lucrece, on the contrary, this purer thought lies in the 
 subject itself, which seems intentionally to be selected as a 
 counterpart to the first poem; in opposition to the blindly 
 idolised passion, the poet places the chastity of the matron, in 
 whom strength of will and morality triumph in a tragic form 
 over the conquest of lust. The delineation of the seduction 
 scene in Lucrece is neither more modest nor more cold ; it might 
 even appear that in the colouring of the chaste beauty there 
 lay still more alluring warmth than in any passage of Venus 
 and Adonis. Yet the repentance and atonement of the heroine, 
 the vengeance of her unstained sprd, and her death ; all these 
 are treated in a totally different manner, in a more elevated 
 tone and with corresponding emphasis. The poet indeed 
 significantly leaves the narrower limits of the description of a 
 single scene, and gives the situation of the heroine a great 
 historical background. The solitary Lucrece, whilst she con- 
 
38; SHAKESFEASE'S DESCBIPTIVE POEMS. 
 
 templates suicide, stands in meditation before a picture of the 
 destruction of Troy, and the reader is led to observe the similar 
 fate which the fall of Lucrece brought upon the Tarquinians and 
 the rape of Helen upon the family of Priam. If the poet in 
 Venus and Adonis, led on by the tender heart of Ovid, was 
 absorbed in presenting a merely voluptuous picture which 
 would have been a fitter subject for the painter, we see him 
 here assuming a higher standard of morality, and, evidently in- 
 cited by Virgil, casting a glance towards that field of great 
 and important actions in which he afterwards became so 
 eminent. To exhibit such contrasts was a necessity of Shake- 
 speare's versatile mind ; they are a characteristic of his nature 
 and his poetry ; they appear here in the first beginnings of his 
 art, and recur incessantly throughout all his dramatic works. 
 Our own Groethe delighted in the repetition of one favourite 
 form of character, which he reproduced only slightly changed in 
 Weisslingen and Werther, in Clavigo, Ferdinand, and Egmont ; 
 this would have been impossible with Shakespeare. It lay in 
 his nature to work out a given subject to that degree of 
 perfection and completeness which renders a recurrence to 
 it diflScult, and rather invites to a path with a directly opposite 
 aim. 
 
 To those who only know Shakespeare through his dramas, 
 these two poems present in their structure a totally foreign 
 aspect. Whilst in the dramas, with their conversational form, 
 everything tends to action, in the narrative form of these 
 poems everything lies in words. Even where an opportunity 
 occurs, all action is avoided ; in Venus and Adonis not even the 
 boar's hunt is recounted ; in Lucrece the eventful cause and 
 consequence of the one described scene is scarcely mentioned t 
 in the description of the situation itself all is lost in rhetoric. 
 Before his deed, Tarquin in a lengthy reflection holds ' disputa- 
 tion 'tween frozen conscience and hot burning will ; ' after it, 
 Lucrece in endless soliloquy inveighs against Tarquin, night, 
 opportunity, and time, and loses herself in vague reflections as 
 to her suicide. Measured by the standard of nature that marks 
 the other works of the poet, this would be the height of un- 
 naturalness in a woman of modest retirement and cold wUl. 
 That which in Shakespeare's dramas so wonderfully distinguishes 
 his sqliloquies, namely the art of expressing infinite feelings by 
 a few grand touches, is not here exhibited. Only two small 
 indications of it do we meet with in Lucrecej the places where 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. 39 
 
 she questions the maid upon Tarquin's departure, and asks for 
 ' paper, ink, and pen,' although they are near her ; and where 
 she sends away the groom, who blushes from bashfulness — but, 
 as sAe believes — 'to see her shame;' in these passages the 
 psychological poet, such as we know him, glances forth. Every- 
 where, besides, in this more important of the two poems, his 
 representation of Lucrece suffers from an inner lack of truth, 
 and shares the faulty structure of the Italian pastoral poetry. 
 Its distinctive characteristic are those so-called conceits, strange 
 and startling ideas and images, profound thoughts lavished on 
 shallow subjects, sophistry and artificial wit in the place of 
 poetry, imagination directed to logical contrasts, acute distinct 
 tions, and epigprammatic points. The poet here works after a 
 pattern which he surpasses in redundancy ; he takes a false track 
 with his accustomed superiority ; he tries an artistic mannerism, 
 and carries it beyond its originators. He carries it to a height 
 at which he himself, as it were, becomes conscious of the 
 extravagant excess, of the strange alternation of sublimity and 
 flatness, which is peculiar to this style. This impression is 
 made by the passage in which Lucrece writes the letter to her 
 husband and passes her criticisms upon it : 
 
 This is too curious-good, this blunt and ill : 
 Much like a press of people at a door 
 Throng her inventions, wtich shall go before. 
 
 In one of his earliest comedies. Love's Labour Lost, 
 Shakespeare repudiates this kind of style. There, in the person 
 of Biron, while he designates most excellently the peculiarities 
 of this kind of poetry, he bids farewell to the 
 
 Taffata phrases, silken terms precise, 
 Three-pil'd hyperboles, spruce affection, 
 Figures pedantical : these summer-flies 
 Have blown me full of maggot ostentation. 
 
 And, indeed, it was just in the amatory style, to which these 
 peculiarities especially belonged, that Shakespeare first and for 
 ever discarded them ; and whilst no poetry was ever so decidedly 
 conventional as this conceit-poetry of the Italian school, none 
 is more opposed to this conventionality than that of Shake- 
 speare's dramas. In many passages of his works, something of 
 the false glitter of the art yet remains ; in many parts he used 
 it. purposely for some definite aim. In his tragic pathos, espe- 
 cially, he has been reproached with degenerating into pomposity 
 
40 SBAKESPEABE'S DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. 
 
 and bombast. And it is certain that he sincerely delighted ih' 
 the grandiloquence of Seneca and in the glowing style of Virgil. 
 The admiration of the account of Pyrrhus' death, which he places 
 in the lips of such a judge as Hamlet, leaves us no doubt of it. 
 Lucrece bears the same character of diction in many parts. No 
 German can read this poem without being reminded of Schil- 
 ler's attempt to translate Virgil into stanzas. The delight of 
 young students in the Eoman master was similar, and proceeded 
 from similar causes : youth receives a greater impression of the 
 heroic from the grandiloquent than from the simple grandeur of 
 Homer ; the Latin type of epic art is more readily received 
 than the Greek ; thus Goethe cherished a preference for Virgil, 
 until he had read Homer with greater ease in German. It is 
 for this reason that Shakespeare was a Virgilian even in his 
 sympathies ; as in Lucrece in the freshness of early impressions, 
 so at a later period he is always on the side of the Trojans in all 
 allusions to the great Homeric myth. We must remember that, 
 according to tradition,' the ancient Britons are descended from the 
 Trojans, and that this illustrious pedigree was held in remem- 
 brance in dramatic poems ; and in one of Shakespeare's last works, 
 Troilus and Cressida, we must keep clearly before us these early 
 youthful feelings, if we would understand the poem. 
 
 That a poet of such common sense as Shakespeare should, 
 in the beginniag of his career, fall into this over-refinement of 
 art, in which he reminds us of a Marini and a Hoffmannswaldau, 
 is much easier to conceive, than that he could so quickly aban^ 
 don it in order to point out to all futurity the path of nature. 
 We must remember that the chivalric poetry of the Middle 
 Ages was a conventional art, which in the fifteenth century had 
 degenerated in all parts of western Europe into crudeness and 
 vmnaturalness. From this crudeness it was rescued by the far- 
 famed Italian epic poets, who studied in the sixteenth century 
 from the works of the ancients. But the want of nature in the 
 material obtained from the romances of chivalry, could not be 
 overcome; they endeavoured in vain to form a pure work of art 
 out of a basely-chiselled statue. The more rapidly, however, 
 that chivalry and knightly customs declined in the sixteenth 
 century, the more speedily was interest lost in the subject-mat- 
 ter of those Italian masters, such as Ariosto and Tasso; and 
 admiration rested alone on their excellent structure, their har- 
 monious versificationj, and their refined, courtly language. 
 
SHAICESPEABE'S DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. 41 
 
 Poetry had become subjectless, and the form was now the 
 highest point at which the poet aimed. But when the technical 
 in art becomes the principal thing, the form soon becomes over- 
 refined ; and at the same time human nature, the subject and 
 theme of poetry, becomes falsified. Matter and form, the 
 poetical expression as well as the contemplation of human nature, 
 are then fashioned according to an arbitrary law ; convention- 
 ality, and not nature, dictates the poet's path. The extreme point 
 of this psychological and sesthetical vmnaturalness was reached 
 by the allegorical and pastoral poetry of the Spanish and Italian 
 poets of the sixteenth century, which occupied in its full extent 
 the vacant place of the fast vanishing chivalric epos. The pas- 
 toral romances of Ribeyro, of Saa, de Miranda, Sannazar and 
 Montemayor, ruled the world ; the ' Diana ' of the last writer was 
 admired, circulated, and enlarged as much as Ariosto's ' Orlando 
 Furioso.' No wonder that this taste now penetrated also into 
 England, where Italian literature had once already, in Chaucer's 
 time, exercised influence, and where the Italian lyric not long 
 before Shakespeare's time had been introduced by Sir Thomas 
 "Wyatt and his friend, the noble Earl of Surrey. As Chaucer 
 adopted Boccaccio, and Surrey Petrarca, so Sir Philip Sidney, 
 who died in the year that Shakespeare came to London, intro- 
 duced pastoral poetry into England ; his ' Arcadia ' is an equal 
 imitation of Sannazar and Montemayor. Men such as these 
 (Surrey and Sidney) were quite calculated to prepare a new era 
 for poetry in England. It was just the period when the Eefor- 
 mation created a favourable atmosphere for dll cultivation, when 
 scholastic philosophy was losing gfround in the schools, when 
 antiquity and its literature was revived, and when through the 
 art of printing a general sympathy for all literature had been 
 diflfused. Already at the court of Henry VIII. witty amuse- 
 ments, plays and masks, had been made a vehicle for allegory 
 and pastoral poetry;; but it was imder Elizabeth that the golden 
 age of • revived art and knbwledge flourished under the fostering 
 hand of a queen who was herself a lover of the fine arts, was 
 learned in language and music, read Greek and Latin authors, 
 and made dilettante attempts in lyric poems. The admired 
 art of the South now streamed towards England, without 
 meeting with any resistance in a national literature; and 
 promoted by a new, cultivated, and art-loving nobility, who 
 since Henry VIII.,. like the small Italian princes and Spanish 
 
42 SHAKESPEAEE'S DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. 
 
 grandees of the sixteenth century, took art and literature imder 
 their o'wn protection and peculiar care. 
 
 To this class of men — with whom art ennobled life, and life 
 dignified art — ^belonged that imfortunate Surrey, who in the 
 prime of life fell a sacrifice to the snares of Lord Hertford and 
 the tyranny of Henry VIII. To the same class also belonged 
 the short-lived "Wyatt, whom report and even his own poems 
 placed in suspicion of having been too intimate with the royal 
 Anne Boleyn; and Philip Sydney, over whose equally early, 
 grave the laments of admiring scholars were poured forth in all 
 tongues. To it also belonged Ealeigh, the famous naval hero, 
 who like Surrey died guiltless on the scaffold ; Lord Vaux, Tho- 
 mas Sackville, the Earls of Dorset, Oxford, Pembroke and South- 
 ampton, the two latter contemporaries of Shakespeare. Poetry 
 cast its light on the life and the character of several of these 
 nobles. Their influence was extraordinary, and their taste 
 ruled the English literatmre. The sublimity of the Petrarchian 
 lyric, the purity of versification, the courtly refinement of taste 
 after the Italian model, emanated from them ; but in its train 
 also followed that unnaturalness and distortion which belonged 
 to their patterns. The favourite of Sidney and Ealeigh was 
 Edmund Spenser, whose ' Faerie Queene ' delighted men of his 
 own and of a later day by the harmony of its verse and the 
 bright colouring of its poetic pictures. With Surrey arose a 
 multitude of sonnet-writers and Petrarchists, up to the time of 
 Shakespeare.- Among their number was Daniel, a protege of 
 the Earl of Pembroke, whose mother was a sister of Sidney, and 
 herself a poet ; Drayton was a favourite of the Earl of Dorset. 
 Their lyric poems bear the character of the Italian style ; in the 
 English sonnets of titiat day — even in Shakespeare's — we are 
 offended everywhere by subtleties, quibbles, and ingenuities, 
 peculiar to that pastoral style of poetry. Many of these poets 
 drew directly from the source of Italian art : Daniel wrote his 
 sonnets in Italy ; Eich was the translator of Italian tales ; the 
 dramatists Lilly and Greene, and the actor Kempe, who belonged 
 to Shakespeare's company, had been themselves in Italy. Thus 
 it was that England in the sixteenth century was inundated 
 with Italian lyrics, pastorals, allegories, dramas, and tales ; that 
 in opposition to the rising drama appeared the declining epic ; 
 that a foreign art struggled with a native art, and a learned 
 and aristocratic style with a national taste. It was a cosmo- 
 politan and wide-spread literature, which had for support the 
 
SHAKESFEABE'3 DE8CBIPTIVE POEMS. 43 
 
 weiglit of half Europe, the taste and the prejudice of courts, of 
 the refined world, of the learned and the cultivated. 
 
 In the midst of these circumstances Shakespeare appeared. 
 How was it possible that he should not have reverenced ^this 
 taste and this school of art ? His non-dramatic works, his 
 sonnets, and the two poems we are considering, place him 
 among the number of those clients of the nobles, those scholars 
 trained in a foreign school, thoSe lyric and epic poets, at whose 
 head stands Edmund Spenser. If we possessed nothing from 
 Shakespeare but these poems, we should rank him among the 
 Draytons, Spensers, and Daniels, and not a doubt would have 
 arisen over the nobility and dignity of his school and education. 
 Both the poems mentioned betray in matter and title the learned 
 Latin school ; in their treatment of the old myths and stories, 
 and in the evident traces of the influence of Virgil, they seem 
 to bespeak a poet who was not superficially g,cquainted with 
 the poetic art of the ancients. A learned and competent con- 
 temporary (Meres) said of them, in rapturous praise, that in 
 ' the honey-tongued poet lived the sweet witty soul of Ovid.' 
 But in his sonnets he indisputably attained more of the poetic 
 gloss and depth of thought of the best Italian sonnet-writers 
 than any of his numerous rivals in England. Towards many 
 of those men, and towards several of their noble patrons, he stood 
 in some literary or personal connection. To the Earl of South- 
 ampton he dedicated the two poems we have discussed ; he must 
 have known Sir Walter Ealeigh, for he visited in London the 
 club founded by him in Friday Street. Edmund Spenser, pro- 
 bably a "Warwickshire man, was among the first to reverence 
 Shakespeare's genius, whom as early as 1594, after his first 
 tragic attempts, he extols under the pastoral name Action, with 
 an allusion to his warlike name, because his ' Muse, full of high 
 thoughts' invention, doth, like himselfe, heroically sound.' 
 With Daniel's sonnets those of Shakespeare exhibit the greatest 
 inner affinity, and even outwardly the form is imitated of the 
 three stanzas and the concluding couplet ; from Daniel's ' Eosa- 
 mond' Shakespeare borrowed the seven-lined stanza of his 
 Lucrece. Cuimingham has discovered in the twenty-first of 
 Shakespeare's sonnets evident allusions to those of Drayton, and 
 comparing the sonnets 80 to 83, it is indisputable that Shake- 
 speare intended by him the ' better spirit ' who threatened to 
 deprive him of the favour of the friend and patron to whom his 
 sonnets are addressed. With this Warwickshire man also Shake- 
 
44 SBAKESPEAEE'S DESCBIPTIVE POEMS. 
 
 speare may have felt the bond of fellow-citizenship. Everywhere 
 we see him in the closest contact with this school of poetry, in 
 personal association with the nobles who fostered and protected 
 it, in greater or less accordance with its poetic tendency. It 
 is later in his dramas that we first meet with proofs that he 
 had reformed the taste for the southern lyric, and changed it 
 into delight in the homely sincerity of national Saxon song. 
 But by that time he was standing forth in full maturity as the 
 people's poet, who had forsaken the learned and courtly art ; as 
 the national poet, who had cast the foreign school into shadow ; 
 as the dramatic poet, who had made epic poetry forgotten ; as 
 the Shakespeare who had eclipsed Spenser and all his contem- 
 poraries. 
 
SHAKESPEAEE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 .Shakespeare left his native town, of Stratford in the year 1586, 
 or at the latest in 1587. He was then between twenty-two 
 and twenty-three years old. Whether he did so to obtain a 
 better lot for his needy family by the exercise of his talents ; 
 or, as one tradition tells us, to escape the prosecution of Sir 
 Thomas Lucy ; or as another asserts, out of love for poetry and 
 dramatic art, is not to be determined. Ifothing seems more 
 natural than that all three motives co-operated in calling forth 
 the determination so decisive for his future life. 
 
 That in a man of this rapid maturity of mind the gift as 
 well as the love of poetry and the drama was early awakened, is 
 a matter of course. Food and nurture for it he foimd without 
 difficulty in his native town and county. Since 1569 — thus 
 fromi the time of his earliest youth — companies of ' Players ' be- 
 longing to the Earls of Leicester, Warwick, Worcester, and 
 others, performed almost yearly at Stratford, in the course of 
 their travels through the kingdom. But what might have 
 still more prompted Shakespeare's resolve to become an actor, 
 was the fact that several of the players, with whom he was 
 afterwards acquainted, came originally from Warwickshire. One 
 (Thomas Greene) of the Earl of Leicester's company was from 
 Stratford itself; H^minge, the friend of Shakespeare and the 
 editor of his works ; Slye, Tooly, and probably also Thomas 
 Pope,, were from the same county, James Burbage, the 
 builder of the Blackfriars Theatre, left this county for London — 
 a man, who in the history of the English drama, has the signi- 
 ficance of our own Koch, Ackerman, and similarly enterprising 
 talents in Grermany; and his famous son Eiehard was the 
 literary confidant of Shakespeare. How easily may he not 
 thus have early formed a connection with one or other of these 
 
46 SHAKESPEABEIN LONBON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 men ; how easily may not his poetic talent even in Stratford 
 have excited their attention, and even there opened the way 
 to the early fame and rapid success which followed immediately 
 on his bold resolve to settle in the capital. 
 
 We must here interrupt our account of Shakespeare's life 
 and literary career, in order to learn the circumstances by which 
 he was surrounded in Lpndon on his entrance upon his new 
 chilling. As briefly as possible, that we may not leave the poet 
 too long, we will show when and how dramatic poetry was de- 
 veloped in England, how the stage arose and progressed, in 
 what state Shakespeare found both the poetic and histrionic 
 art, how the company which he entered stood in relation to 
 other dramatic concerns, and what position he himself at first 
 and afterwards occupied in the same. 
 
 DEAMATIC POETEY BEFOEE SHAKESPEAEE. 
 
 It is far from our intention to treat the history of the 
 English drama before Shakespeare in a comprehensive manner. 
 Even with the greatest prolixity it would afford no clear 
 pictute to the Grerman reader, because all history of literature 
 suffers from the disadvantage of being intelligible only when 
 the main sources are studied side by side with it, and this ia 
 the present case cannot be demanded from the German public. 
 We will therefore only consider dramatic poetry before Shake- 
 speare from the one poiat of view ; namely, what it afforded to 
 our poet, what his draniatic art owes to the poetry of earlier 
 times, and could or must have borrowed from it. In so doing 
 we shall perceive that only in the most general sense, but in 
 this to a great extent, could he have obtained anything from 
 the past history of the English stage. There was not either 
 before or in his time, a single dramatist of decided value, to 
 whom he could have looked as a model. He learned the 
 profession from numbers of existing plays ; essentially his own 
 teacher, he conceived the true idea of the art from the striving 
 efforts of scholars, among whom there 'was no master. We 
 shall therefore be spared the trouble of burdening our readers 
 with many names ; we shall arrange the performances of dramatic 
 art before and during the time of Shakespeare, in distinct 
 
DBAMATIC POETBY BEFOBE SHAKE8PEABE. 47 
 
 groups, and seek to draw from each the result -which mere 
 tradition and habit imposed upon the poet. By this means 
 we shall perceive throughout a connecting link uniting Shake- 
 speare's poetry with those different groups, and while we gain 
 explanations with regard to Shakespeare, a light may thus be 
 cast by the poet, well known as he is to the reader, upon those 
 matters connected with his art which are unknown to 
 him. 
 
 The drama has everywhere had a religious origin. As in 
 ancient times it arose from the sacred chorus, so in Christian 
 ages it sprxmg principally from the Easter festivaL The 
 Catholic passion-rites with which Grood Friday was celebrated, 
 the representation of the Crucified laid in the grave, and again 
 ■on Easter Sunday raised for the feast of the Eesurrection, were 
 called Mysteries. During the Middle Ages this name was 
 given to the sacred plays which in all parts of Europe formed 
 the commencement of the modern drama; their primitive 
 subject was always the representation of the passion, sufferings, 
 and death of Christ, and their origin thus essentially belonged 
 to those religious rites. Thus in St. Peter's in Eome, at the 
 present day, on Grood Friday the history of the Passion taken 
 from the Gospel is sung in recitative in allotted parts, and the 
 performance carries the mind back to the commencement of the 
 later drama. The cloister and the chilrch were therefore the first 
 theatres, priests were the first actors, the first dramatic subject 
 was the Passion. The first dramas were the Mysteries^ These 
 representations extended in time over manifold subjects ; some- 
 times a Miracle-play would .be performed in honour of the 
 Saints on their feast-days ; sometimes, at the greater Christian 
 festivals, such as Whitsuntide and Corpus Christi, a more 
 comprehensive mystery — comprising the mysterious relations of 
 the Creation and the Fall to the life and death of Jesus, combined 
 into one great picture of perhaps 30 to 40 single plays — would 
 unite a series of Old Testament scenes with the representation 
 of the work, sufferings, and death of Christ, into one immense 
 whole, requiring three, four, or even eight days, for its per- 
 formance. Soon these sacred dramas found their way from the 
 church to the street ; from the clergy to the laity ; and even to 
 artisans, who would perform a Miracle-play for the feast of 
 their patron saint, or would select separate pageants from the 
 Mysteries, according as their purport referred to their trade. 
 Subsequently actors and jugglers by profession took possession 
 
48 SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 of these plays ; they became, as it were, stationary in London, 
 but they were carried about in the country to all fairs 
 and markets in all towns and villages, up to the time of Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 If we consider that these Miracle-plays, undisturbed by 
 every other kind of dramatic art, circulated among the people 
 and took root among them for many hundred years — ^upheld 
 by the delight of the masses in spectacles, and inwardly sup- 
 ported by their imapproachably sacred material — ^we augur at 
 once that a habit so long fostered even in^ its early, rude, 
 and artless beginning, would impose a law on the later drama 
 even at the time of its artistic perfection; a law which the 
 boldest genius would only cast aside, at the risk of frighteniii^ 
 away the people whom he sought to attract. The epic character 
 of the modern drama was determined by the early and for a 
 long time exclusive matter of the sacred plays ; the historical 
 mode of treatment was enjoined, and the rich fulness of the 
 material was required. The Greek drama arose in juxtapositiott 
 to the perfect epic of Homer, and could not have attempted to 
 vie with it in the representation of lengthened, varied, poly- 
 mythical action. The praise of the ancient drama could be no 
 other than that which Aristotle gave it ; with small means it 
 produced the effect of the stately epos. It lay in the skilfiil 
 contrast of the representation of simple actions and catastrophes. 
 Modem times, on the contrary, when for centuries the elements 
 of the drama remained unformed, had no imposing epos before 
 them ; the drama arose out of the gospel-story, and subse- 
 quently out of chivalric poems and historical chronicles full of 
 facts and action ; nothing, moreover, was to be abridged of the 
 first sacred material of the Bible ; not a crumb of this precious 
 food was to be lost ; the brief gospel narrative rather demanded 
 amplification. All these sources in their nature, and condition, 
 required the extent of form and the fulness of material which 
 has become the property of the inodern drama. This result 
 was already long determined, when Shakespeare began to write. 
 And he most certainly would not have wished to oppose this 
 law, which the age and the nation had created, and which tradi- 
 tion and custom had sanctioned, when even a Lope de Vega, 
 when even in a much more advanced age our own SchiUer, had 
 the discernment to perceive, that with an enforced imitation of 
 the classic drama its effective power was destroyed ; that every 
 national character has its particular development, every age its 
 
DRAMATIC FOETEY BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 49 
 
 peculiarity, every tradition its right, and that a poet who would 
 render himself worthy of being transmitted to posterity should 
 have a careful regard for this right and for this course of dei- 
 velopment. 
 
 With this species of sacred drama therefore the history of 
 the English stage begins ; and until the fifteenth century, when 
 it reached its greatest extent, it had met with no important com- 
 petitor. About this period a second group of allegorical dramas, 
 which had their origin in the schools, competed with the former 
 and finally took its place. The so-called Moralities, in ^heir 
 original form of an essentially religious nature, bear the same 
 relation to the Mysteries as the mystical allegories of the 
 Middle Ages did to the allegorical interpretations of the poetical 
 harmony of the gospel, which preceded them ; the substance 
 of the Christian story, which the Miracle-play represents by 
 delineating events, is treated by them in abstract precepts, and 
 in metaphorical, allegorical, and scenic performances. In the 
 Miracle-plays single allegorical figures took part in the play, 
 such as Death, Truth, Justice, and others ; in the Moralities 
 these and other conceptions appear; human feelings, passions, 
 crimes, and virtues are personified ; and these form exclusively 
 the acting or rather speaking personages of this lifeless drama. 
 The central point of the Mysteries — the sacrifice of Christ and 
 the redemption from the Fall — ^is in moral abstraction the 
 struggle between good and evil; and this, in general, is the 
 subject which these abstract pieces, the Moralities, touch upon. 
 The strife 1 of the powers of good and evil for influence over 
 human nature is the uniform theme of the oldest Moralities 
 which have been discovered in England. By degrees the subject 
 of these pieces left the sphere of religion and approached nearer 
 real life. The struggle between the good and evil principle is 
 now rather viewed from the point of universal morality ; the doc- 
 trine now turns against all worldliness, againstall dependence on 
 those outward blessings, which, in opposition to intellectual and 
 moral possessions, appear as emanations from the principle of 
 evil. If the Mysteries were only barren action, containing little 
 infusion of reflection, on the other hand the moral lesson is the 
 beginning, middle, and end of these plays, which without action 
 and motion are drawn out in solemn stiff dialogues between 
 lifeless phantorns. It is as if they seek to open the inner eye 
 and to unfold thought, so that in the external framework of the 
 •drama a deep spiritual purport may be deposited. With this 
 
50 8HAKESPEABE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 aim they confine themselves to the most spirtual treatment of 
 their spiritual subject ; they avoid the attractions of diverting 
 actions ; Horace's union of the beautiful and the useful seems 
 to them unnecessary, and they grant poetry the useful alone. 
 
 With the same energy as the Miracle-plays with their rich 
 story had accustomed the growing drama to the representation of 
 action, the Moralities, openly exhibiting their didactic character, 
 gave it, by their moral teachings an ethical tendency. As this 
 style, which continued prevalent in England through the whole 
 lOf the fifteenth century, lasted till Shakespeare's time and long 
 after him, we can easily imagine how forcibly the necessity of a 
 higher range of thought and a moral tendency in the drama must 
 have impressed itself upon the poets. As long as the drama in 
 ^'England was no profession, dramatic works were therefore 
 regarded and created from a moral point of view. 
 
 In that healthful and natural age which had not yet sought 
 to separate morality, mind, and art, the dramatic poets of Eng- 
 land were all united in the principle that it was the vocation of 
 the drama to ennoble morals, however frequently a mistaken 
 application and practice might err against the good theory. 
 They hit upon this principle and clung to it from the simplest 
 of all grounds-^-namely, because the subject of their dramas was 
 action and nothing but action ; for actions are not conceivable 
 without ethical conditions, xinless they be such as moral philo- 
 sophy itself calls indifferent actions, and in that case they are 
 .much more indifferent to art than to morality. Sir Philip Sidney 
 had already extolled the first English tragedy, ' Ferrex and 
 Porrex,' in Horace's spirit, on account of its representation of 
 the moral in the form of the beautiful. And in Shakespeare's 
 time, men such as Massinger, Ford, Ben Jonson, and ThomaS 
 jHeywood, expressly and emphatically gave the stage the high 
 vocation of uniting grace with purity of morals, and they justi- 
 fied the works of dramatic art by their ethical aims.* Trained 
 
 * In his ' Apology for Actors * Heywopd imputes to Melpomene the fol- 
 lowing significant words : 
 
 Am I Melpomene, the buskin'd muse, 
 That held in awe the tyrants of the world, 
 And playde their lives in puhlick theaters, 
 Making them fear to sinne, since fearlesse I 
 Prepar'd to wi^yte. their lives in crimson inke, 
 And act their shames in eye of all the world ? 
 Have- npt I whipt Vice with a scourge of Steele, 
 Unmaskt stern Murther, sham'd lascivious Lust ? 
 
DBAMATIC POETEY BEWOEE SHAKESFEAME. 51 
 
 in this spirit of the more serious and severe tendency of the 
 English drama, Shakespeare, elevated far above his companions, 
 and reflecting upon the deepest concerns of human nature and 
 its relations, formed his dramas on that great principle that it 
 is the first and last aim of this art ' to show virtue her own 
 feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the 
 time its form and pressure ; ' he pressed forward to that artistic 
 height where one common and spiritual idea rules each of his 
 works, and so pervades it that it invests the visible form of 
 action with an invisible but all-forming, all-animating soul. 
 However infinitely removed from this high point of art were 
 those Mysteries, in which the poetic power was yet too small to 
 sufifer the near-lying thought to glance forth from the action, 
 and those Moralities, which, on the other hand, knew not how 
 to clothe- the thought with any real bodily' action, we can yet 
 understand that the strict one-sided development of these dif- 
 ferent elements of the drama must have facilitated its future 
 blending and hindered the loss of either of these elements in 
 their union. 
 
 The saeredness of the Mysteries, the spirituality of the 
 Moralities, and the ideal loftiness of both, appeared to demand a 
 contrast in the representation of real common life, if the ele- 
 ments of the drama were fully to assimilate. If the higher 
 elements of the drama originated in church and school, this 
 contrast of the comic and burlesque, in its -first independent 
 ' dramatic form, was to originate in the coiu-t. Since the comrtly 
 art of the Troubadours and Minnesingers in the twelfth and thir- 
 teenth centuries, singers, story-tellers, minstrels, bards, jugglers, 
 and merry-makers had collected round the princely patrons of 
 art. The necessity for intellectual musical entertaiimient of a re- 
 flective or comic nature centred thus in the courts. In rough, 
 warlike times, as in the fourteenth century, these people were 
 thrown more into the background ; in more peaceful times, as in 
 
 Pluct off the visar from grimme Treasons face, 
 And made the sunne point at their ugly sinnes ? 
 Hath not this powerfullhand tam'd fiery rage, 
 Kild poysonous Envy with her owne keene daits, 
 Choak't up their covetous mouth with moulten gold. 
 Burst the vast womhe of eating Gluttony, , 
 And drownd the drunkards gall in juice of grapes ? 
 I have showed Pryde his picture on a stage, 
 Laid ope the ugly shapes his steele-glasse hid, 
 And made him passe thence meekely. 
 
52 SHAKESPEABE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 the fifteenth century, they again emerged everywhere. If there 
 had been anywhere in Europe a peaceful refuge where they 
 had found shelter, they wandered again from thence out into 
 the world; for their art, in spite of the difference of language, was a 
 common property. Thus we know that in the fifteenth century 
 German poets carried their art to Denmark and Norway, and 
 Bavarian and Austrian court-minstrels to England. Jugglers, 
 players, court-fools, and singers, thus hecame the immediate 
 originators and guardians of the love of spectacle, which since 
 the fourteenth century had superseded the more modest delight 
 of listening to the song of the poet. Pleasure in all possible 
 spectacles, in disguises and mummeries, became at this period 
 universal. There was no festivity, no visit to or reception at 
 courts and towns, at which allegorical or historical personages, 
 costly dressed, did not appear in honour of the guests ; no great 
 banquet at which a pantomine, a pageant, and tableaux-vivants 
 with shifting scenes, were not represented. Those dumb plays, 
 the Interludes (entremets), came over from France to England 
 as early indeed as Edward III.'s reign. Under Henry VIIL 
 these pageants were more formally exhibited ; costly disguises 
 and masks were usual at that time ; banquets at court and in 
 private were interrupted by interludes. Thus, in the play of 
 Henry VIII., the poet, following an historical tradition, intro- 
 duces the king as he and his suite surprise Cardinal Wolsey in 
 a pastoral mask. Allegory predominated in all these amuse- 
 ments ; the simpl'e pleasure of disguise led to it, and in pastoral 
 plays, and court-masks of all kinds, it probably arrived at dra-^ 
 matic perfection as early, and indeed earlier, than in the Mo- 
 ralities. Yet it was precisely in the festivities of the court that 
 the drama first cast off allegory, and passed from dead generalities 
 into, the details of actual life. One John Heywood — a learned 
 man, originally a player on the spinet, a witty coinpanion and 
 epigrammatist— wrote in 1520 at the court of Henry VIII. a 
 series of interludes, which cast aside allegory, and turned in 
 the most realistic manner to the most ordinary affairs of life, 
 without however repudiating the instructive tendency, but 
 moderating it by jest and irony. The little that is left of this 
 interlude is only upon a somewhat higher scale than the 
 dramatic drolleries of Hans Sachs. There are no exact plays, 
 nor even scenes, which evolve an action, but only comical dia- 
 logues and disputes, taken from low and common life, enlivened 
 by droll, rude, and healthful popular wit, and sometimes weari- 
 
JDBAMATIC POETRY BEFOBE SHAKE8FEABE. 53 
 
 some and tedious from unseasonable diffuseness. We know that 
 this Heywood formed a kind of epoch with his comic court- 
 plays ; we can therefore easily imagine that similar plays, 
 imitated in the lower stratum of society, among burghers and 
 rustics; would prove infinitely more clumsy. We can readily 
 believe that the spectacle or pageant of the Nine Worthies, 
 which the good Armado performs in Love's Labour Lost, 
 and the ' tedious brief scene ' of Pyramus and Thisbe, in the 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, are caricatures, which are not far 
 removed from the actual occurrence. We are told of a Henry 
 Goldingham, who was to represent Arion in a water-play before 
 Queen Elizabeth, and who was to reveal himself in the same way 
 as, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, Bottom proposes to 
 Snug, when he is to act the Lion. Yet how delighted was the 
 age even with trifles ! — an age of which that might be said, in a* 
 universal sense, which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of 
 Theseus : that it took ' the best in this kiild only for shadows ; 
 and the worst for no worse, if imagination amend them.' We 
 read the clown's jig at the present day at the conclusion of 
 Twelfth Night, though scarcely knowing what to make of it, a 
 song which the clown had to chant dancing with drum and pipes ; 
 but it was with these siniple metrical compositions — recited drol- 
 leries and farces with comic refrains, solo parts without dialogue — 
 that Tarlton, Elizabeth's court-jester, enchanted the most refined 
 public in London even at a period when the stage was advan- 
 cing towards perfection. For these farces were performed with 
 that gravity of dry humour which moves the most melancholic, 
 and turns Democritus out of Heraclitus. 
 
 No branch of the drama was so early developed in England, 
 from none has Shakespeare received more, and from none has 
 he learned so directly, as from these farces of the jesters of the 
 court and people. Wit and fancy, humour and satire, in the 
 realistic sixteenth century— the coarse nature of which con- 
 trasted strongly with the boasted stateliness of the chivalry of 
 the fifteenth — were the common possession of the European 
 world. Men such as Eabelais, Cervantes, Hans Sachs, and 
 Fischart, and the poets of the Italian burlesque, belonged to 
 that period. Numerous popular jesters, the children of a native 
 mother-wit, conveyed this property to the lower classes ; and 
 there is a whole world of truth in the observation of Shakespeare, 
 that at this period the toe of the peasant came so near the heel 
 of the courtier, that he galls his kibe. But in no land did this 
 
54 SHAKESPEABE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 popular wit appear in such concentrated power and such extensive 
 diffusion as among the Saxon race in England. This charac- 
 teristic must of necessity be displayed in dramatic art ; and thus 
 the clowns — those droll figures of unconscious humour, called, 
 in Germany natural fools (natiirliche Narren), and whom Shake- 
 speare also distinguished by the name natural from the fine 
 court-fools, who with conscious wit lashed at folly — these droll 
 figures were the favourites of the public theatre at that period;, 
 and even in our own day the chord is . still touched^ when 
 in London the Dogberrys and clowns of this sort appear upon 
 the stage. In no branch is Shakeispeare more indebted to the 
 past, and in none is he less original than in this; although 
 to us Germans it is just the characteristics of the comic 
 figures and their jests which appear as his most distinguishiag 
 peculiarity. 
 
 The divisions which we have represented, namely Mysteries, 
 Mora,litiesy and Comic Interludes, and the purely exclusivei 
 character of their original nature and form, were not long 
 retained; In many ways they were miagled or joined together ; 
 new elements and ingredients, and lower forms of the drama, 
 were added to the two first styles, or were developed out of 
 them. The Mysteries especially, if we consider them in the 
 perfect form which they reached in the fifteenth century, have 
 within them not only the nature of the historical drama and 
 the elements of the Moralities, but their very substance and 
 purport gave rise to the comic interlude and the carnival merry- 
 m&,king. The secular scenes, joined to the history of the 
 Passion, the annoimcement to the Shepherds, the denial of 
 Peter and others, gave rise to humorous and burlesque treat- 
 ment, and the Mysteries, like the Easter-rfeast itself, in the ex- 
 travagance of Lent and the severe festival of the Easter-week, 
 soon contained in themselves the elements of the comic and thei 
 sublime side by side. In the same manner the serious allegoric 
 interlude, whether spoken or merely acted, grew out of the 
 original matter of the Miracle-play. At all times prophetic 
 applications to gospel history were sought for in the stories of 
 the Old Testament ; the Mysteries therefore inserted, at op- 
 portime passages, in the representation of the history of the 
 Passion, an interlude which treated of the corresponding matter 
 in the Old Testament: thus after the scene. of Christ's betrayal 
 through Iscariot, the typical story of the selling of Joseph was 
 introduced in an intermezzo, expressed in few words like the 
 
DEAMATIC POETRY SEFOBE SHAKESPEARE. 55 
 
 interlude in Hamlet ; or it was represented in a pantomime, a 
 dumb-play or a tableau, as is the case in Pericles and in many 
 secular dramas in Shakespeare's time. And like the Mysteries, 
 the Moralities soon stepped out of their severe original form. 
 As soon as they had emerged from the religious sphere into the 
 moral, it was easy to venture a step further into citizen life. 
 Classes of society now appeared personified ; the purport became 
 more and more practical morality and criticism of daily life ; 
 satirical allusions to passing events, persons, and circumstances, 
 were added ; church and state afiairs were dramatised. In the 
 reign of Henry VIII. the Moralities, the now prevailing kind of 
 ■drama, became, as it were, the receptacle for dramatic compo- 
 sition of every kiad. The allegorical figures, the symbolic treat- 
 ment, and the moral tendency, stiU held their ' ground, though 
 the drama of the church and of the schools, both Mysteries and 
 Moralities, more and more gave place to the independent, artistic, 
 and secular drama ; the different kinds were blended together ; 
 we meet with romantic plays and historical dramas in England, 
 which are full of elements of the Moralities. But where the 
 blending of the different kinds appears most glaring and at the 
 ■same time most frequent, is in the combination of the vulgar 
 ;and the burlesque with the sublime and the pathetic. In the 
 midst of the serious matter of those religious plays, and in the 
 solemn dogmatic tone of the moral ones, comic elements had 
 early penetrated. In the French and German Mysteries they 
 were limited to the interludes; in the English, the national 
 element, wherever it was allowable, pervaded the evangelic, but 
 more frequently the Old Testament matter, in the coarsest comic 
 scenes, giving indeed to these sacred pieces that realistic 
 •character which remained the distingmshing feature of the 
 English stage. The usual comic character in the Miracle-plays 
 •enacted the devil in a ridiculous and terrific form. In the 
 Moralities he usually appears associated with Vice — a fig-ure to- 
 which, in not a few passages of Shakespeare's plays, allusions 
 occur, which are for the most part lost in the &erman trans- 
 lation. Vice here appears as a fool and jester, iu a long varie- 
 gated dresp, with wooden dagger, carrying on his sport with men 
 and with his hellish subject. We may remember that this 
 mode of thought, which regarded the principle of evil at once 
 as the type of the ridiculous, and human sinfulness as folly, 
 prevailed throughout Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries. In this merry age, evil was thus rather exposed to 
 
56- SHAKESPEABE IN LONDON ANJD ON THE STAGE. 
 
 derision than to repentance. The most serious moral doctrine 
 and the coarsest manner of comic representation went hand in 
 hand. To a certain extent the comic element was ever com- 
 l?ined with the peculiar matter and subject of the plays. But 
 even this did not satisfy. The laughter-loving age desired 
 greater stimulant ; they inserted merry, humorous jests, fight- 
 ing scenes, and droll interludes, into the stiff action of the 
 Moralities, which had not the slightest reference to the real 
 subject. This practice was also afterwards transferred to the 
 regular drama, and thus in the first English tragedies the most 
 extravagant jests were intermingled, in no wise in connection 
 with the main action, but merely serving the purpose of exciting' 
 laughter. But even this also did not satisfy. The fool was' 
 allowed to conclude the play with absurd jigs, to fill up the 
 time between the acts with jests, and to introduce into his part 
 all extravagances of improvisation. Philip Sidney complains 
 in his 'Apology of Poetry' of this unsuitable practice of 'mingling 
 kings^and fools, not because the matter so carrieth it, but 
 thrusting in the clown by head and shoulders, to play a part in 
 majistical matters with neither decency nor discretion ; so as 
 neither the admiration and commiseration, nor right sportfulness, 
 is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained.' 
 
 This mixture also of various elements Shakespeare unhe- 
 sitatingly accepted as a legacy of the age : he felt that he could 
 change the passive debts in this inheritance into active stock, 
 and that he could new coin the defects into as many virtues. In 
 his most admired plays — in the Merchant of Venice, in Lear, 
 and Cymbeline — he has developed side by side a twofold 
 action, but by the deep inner union between them he has 
 more than doubled the aesthetic no less than the ethical value 
 pf these works. His contemporaries and fellow-dramatists were- 
 imable to reach this stage of art-intelligence. The dramas of 
 his whole company, both predecessors and successors, from 
 Lilly to Fletcher, are full of double, even of threefold actions ;' 
 but it is rather the exception than the rule, if they happen to- 
 have reference to each other, and it may be ascribed almost more- 
 to chance than to design ; even the plays in which unity is re- 
 garded are frequently only dramatic scenes without any central 
 dramatic point. As to the practice of intermingling jesting 
 elements in a serious action, the dramatists around Shakespeare- 
 knew but little what course to take, even when they regarded 
 it as a bad habit. With almost all, comic scenes insinuated' 
 
DBAMATIC FOETSY BEFOEE SHAKESFEAEE. 57 
 
 themselves, without any essential and distinct hearing, into 
 the main action, from -which without injury they could he 
 dissevered. With Lilly and Heywood they appear even in 
 antique mythological material. Marlowe suited himself to this 
 taste of the age, although he wished to avoid it ; he wrote his 
 ' Tamhurlaine ' (1586) in the declared intention of carrying his 
 readers from the fancy of jigs and buffoonery to the serious 
 development of an exciting historicaland political action. Never- 
 theless, even against his own inclination, he inserted the usual 
 comic scenes for -the people : his puhlisher afterwards omitted 
 them in the printing of ' Tamhurlaine,' because they detracted 
 from so ' honourable and distingiiished a history.' Not so was it 
 with Shakespeare. Unrelentingly he banished from the stage 
 the extreme buffoonery of the fools and their unseasonable 
 freedoms. When he mingled the king and the fool, jest and 
 earnestness, tragic and comic parts, he did so on the condition 
 on which even Sidney, the lover of the antique, seemed to ap- 
 prove of it, namely that the matter itself demanded it. He 
 accommodated himself to the popular taste only in the convic- 
 tion that even to this peculiarity of the rude stage he could give a 
 more refined turn. He developed the character of the fool in 
 the cleverest manner in comedy, but he knew how to use it also 
 for the most trag;ic effects. He did not disdain the broadest 
 caricature, not however only as a means of exciting laughter, 
 but as a vehicle for conveying the profoundest reflections upon 
 hmnan life. He sketched the most grotesque scenes, but he 
 knew how to link with them the most sublime matter. While 
 his drolL conceits appear for the most part jests indulged in 
 for their own sake, a touch of contrast .or of necessary characte- 
 rization combines them ever with the main action of the piece. 
 In the play where the fool and the king are thrown into the 
 closest intercourse (Henry and Falstaff ), this connection in itself 
 forms the plot of the piece. 
 
 Till the reign of Henry VIII,, and even in the early part of 
 that of Elizabeth, the English stage had no special theatre, and 
 no votaries by profession ; or if it had, they had no regular 
 duties ; there were neither poets nor actors who were exclu- 
 sively devoted to this one work. But under Henry VIII. the 
 dramatic elements began to collect and form. The first trace 
 of players by profession, who travelled about the kingdom, is to 
 be found in the reign of Henry VI., the first of the English kings 
 who patronised literature, after the warlike race of the Edwards 
 
58 SII4KESPEABE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. » 
 
 and Henrys kad passed away. In Edward IV.'s reign Henry 
 Bourchier, afterwards Earl of Essex, maintained a company of 
 players ; and the cruel Eichard III. had, when Duke of Glou- 
 cester, a set of actors, of whom it appears doubtful whether 
 they were singers or actors, or both united. But as soon as the 
 national peace was established under Henry VII., there were to 
 be found at court two different organized companies of royal 
 actors ; and several nobles — ^the Dukes of Buckingham, Northum- 
 berland, Oxford, Norfolk, Gloucester, and others-— had players in 
 their service, who at times performed at court, and travelled under 
 the name and protection of their patrons. Their art was thus 
 diffused through the country, so that soon, even in the larger 
 towns, established companies of actors were to be found. But 
 at the court of Henry VIII. the organization of these artistic 
 entertainments considerably advanced. An ostentatious and 
 cultivated prince, he loved festivities of an intellectual cha- 
 racter ; and under his rule the germs of the English stage lay in 
 embryo, ready for their full development, which took place 
 with Elizabeth. In the circle of his court there was a distin- 
 guished jester (William Sommers), a personage who in England 
 evidently passed direct from the court to the stage; there 
 was a laurelled poet (Skelton), whose works Dyce has edited ; 
 there were men and choristers belonging to the royal chapel, 
 who played before him ; and from these came that John Heywood 
 who since the year 1590 had been writing the humorous inter- 
 ludes already mentioned. At the same time the' companies of 
 the nobles continued playing ; masters and scholars from St. 
 Paul's and other schools performed pieces; at Eton, it was 
 usual, at the feast of St. Andrew, to act a Latin or English 
 play ; even the students at the courts of law began to produce 
 dramas. Nevertheless all this gave the histrionic art no fixed 
 station as yet, and thus there. were still no dramatic poets who 
 had devoted themselves entirely to this branch of art. Under 
 Henry VIII. there were few learned patrons of the fine arts ; 
 church disputes distracted the clergy, the nobles had yet scarcely 
 begun to care for the poetic art, and the taste of a Surrey and a 
 Wyatt inclined to the lyric style of Italy. What attraction 
 could they find in the drama in the hands of a Heywood or a 
 Skelton, or in the acting of awkward artisans? From their 
 Petrarch they had derived the highest perceptions of art ; tut ■ 
 the drama in England was hitherto a rough child of nature 
 without grace, and, as it would seem, without ' capability of 
 
DBAMATIC POETBY' BEFOBE SHAKESPEABE. 59 
 
 itnprovement. What pleasure should men, who considered 
 revived antiquity and ancient mythology as indispensable to 
 poetry, find in the insipid Mysteries ? How shoidd they care 
 for the old-fe,shioned Moralities, when they had read Boccaccio's 
 and Bandello's tales, and Poggio's ' Facetise ? ' 
 
 But the revival of ancient art soon asserted its influence 
 over English poetry. We have already mentioned that the lyric, 
 allegoric, and pastoral poetry of Italy was here largely diffused ; 
 upon the drama also it could not fail to have its effect. The 
 dramatic models of the ancients, and the French and Italian 
 imitations, were known in England ; and this fact is indisputably 
 highly important, directing as it did the dramatic art-movement 
 of the age, which was roused by its own poWjCr and instinct. 
 As early as 1520, im.der Henry VIII., a play of Plautus was 
 represented. In Elizabeth's reign, plays by Terence and Euri- 
 pides appeared among the dramas peformed ; the ' Phenician 
 Women ' of the latter, under the title of ' Jocasta', was translated 
 by Grascoigne in 1566, the same person who was then conducting 
 the representations of the ' Supposes ' from Ariosto at Grray's 
 Inn ; about ten. years later the ' History of Error ' was performed 
 before Elizabeth, probably an elaboration of the ' Mencechmi ' of 
 Plautus. Before the ' Jocasta', therfe had appeared translations 
 and elaborations of Seneca's collected tragedies. The first pieces 
 ('Troades', 'Thyestes ' and the furious 'Hercules') were revised and 
 here and there amplified from 1559 to 1561 by Jasper Heywood, 
 the son of John ; this was the case also with the pieces which 
 the learned Studley undertook; namely, 'Medea,' 'Agamemnon,' 
 ' Hippolytus ' and ' Hercules ' ; the rest were translated by Alex. 
 Nevyle, Nuce, and Newton ; the whole collection, completed as 
 early as 1566, was printed in 1581, shortly before the poetic 
 school, previous to and contemporary with Shakespeare, first 
 made its tragic attempts, and the influence exercised by it is 
 too lightly esteemed. Among the tragedies which were played 
 before Elizabeth after the appearance of these of Seneca from 
 1568 to 1580, there are eighteen upon classical and mytho- 
 logical subjects ; proofs sufficient of the manner in which th^ 
 knowledge and delight in these matters rapidly gained ground. 
 But far more important than this introduction of classical 
 subjects must have been the influence of the ancient drama in 
 improving the dramatic form and the artistic feeling of the 
 poet. The history of the modern drama proves imiversally 
 that the poetic nature of nations, however productive may have 
 
60 SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 been its creative power, had no longer that ripening power of 
 gaining from the drama an enjoyable fruit, without the graft of 
 ancient art. As soon as these highly-praised works of Plautus 
 and Seneca were naturalized in England, it followed as a first- 
 result that more highly intellectual minds, and persons of more 
 elevated condition, became interested in dramatic poetry : this 
 in itself Tvould raise the drama from its rough elements into' 
 regular treatment and form. This effect appeared .almost im- 
 mediately in tragedy and comedy. At the time when the 
 translations of Seneca were completed, the English possessed 
 already three farces : ' Ealph Eoister Bolster ' (certainly as early 
 as between 1530-40), the subject of which is a gallant wooing 
 the affections of a betrothed lady and his unceremonious rejec- 
 tion; 'Jack Juggler' (1563), in which the pbrsonage of this 
 name endeavours to persuade the hero of the piece, that he is- 
 not himself, but some one else ; and ' Grammer Gurton's Needle' 
 (1566), where the story turns upon a lost needle, the disappear- 
 ance of which gives the rogue Diceon an occasion for a series 
 of mischievous acts. All three pieces discarded the influence 
 of the earlier styles, the absence of action that marked the 
 interludes of Heywood, and the unnaturalness of the Moralities, 
 the last of the three even rejecting all moralizing tendency; , 
 all three refer to Terence and Plautus, and are suggested by 
 Latin comedies. Viewed in comparison with Heywood's inter-r 
 ludes, the most extraordinary progress is to be perceived, a 
 progress alone made possible by the contemplation of those> 
 ancient models ; the gap between them and Heywood's pieces 
 is the same as that in Germany between Frischlin's Latin plays 
 in the spirit of Terence and Hans Sachs' natural dramas. The 
 authors of the first and third of the pieces mentioned are' 
 known ; Nicholas Udall, the writer of the first, was a learned 
 antiquarian, a master at Eton and the author of other pieces ; 
 John Still, the author of the last, was a Master of Arts, Arch- 
 deacon of Sudbm-y, and subsequently Bishop of Bath. A similar 
 position also may be assigned to the first English tragedy, 
 which was suggested by Seneca, and which likewise appeared a 
 few years after Elizabeth ascended the throne. The famous 
 'Ferrex and Porrex ' (or Gorboduc) was first represented in 1561. 
 The piece was composed by one of those patrons of knowledge, 
 one of thosfe sonnetteers among the nobility, Thomas Sackville 
 (Lord Buckhurst and Earl of Dorset), in conjunction with his 
 poetic friend Thomas Norton. It formed an epoch in the 
 
• DEAMATIC POETBY BEFORE SHAKESPEAME. 61 
 
 history of the English stage, not so much from its regularity of 
 style and structure, nor from the introduction of iambic verse, 
 as that a man belonging to the upper classes of society should 
 attempt this kiud of poetry. From this time the attention of 
 the Sidneys and of all the Maecenas' among the nobility, whom 
 "we have before known as the fosterers of the courtly and learned 
 Italian style, was also fixed upon this branch of art ; regular 
 plays were produced in greater numbers, and performed before 
 the art-loving queen. During the thirty years which elapse 
 between her succession to the throne and Shakespeare's appear- 
 ance in London, we possess the names of a series of fifty-one 
 plays, now for the most part lost, which were performed before 
 her. From the mere titles of these we may infer that the 
 regular drama gained ground more and more, and by degrees 
 attained that point at which we shall find it when Shakespeare 
 undertook its further improvement. 
 
 However decidedly the ancient drama had, from the middle 
 of the sixteenth century, begun to form and fashion the form- 
 less drama of England, its influence could not extend so far as 
 to annul the habits ,of four centuries, to erect a learned court 
 stage in the place of the popular theatre, to set aside national 
 subjects and figures, to introduce the antique with chorus and 
 chorus-singers instead of the free imshackled form, and to im- 
 pose the constraint of the so-called unities of time and place. 
 In the above-named farces, which were intended as imitations 
 ■of the Latin comedies, there is none indeed of the urbanity of 
 Terence ; they throughout exhibit the unconstrained tone 'and 
 the happy humour of the Saxon people. The tragedy of ' Porrex 
 :and Ferrex ' places indeed, as in the ancient tragedy, the action 
 behind the scene, and concludes every act with a chorus ; still 
 from the allegorical pantomimes which precede the acts, and 
 from an excessively sententious mannerism, it is only too visibly 
 ^allied to the Moralities ; there is no idea of any regard to the 
 unities. We have before mentioned that, previous to 1580, 
 •eighteen represented plays are recorded, the ma,tter of which is 
 borrowed from old myths or histories ; but all that is preserved 
 -ta us of this kind shows us what a small share the spirit 
 -of the antique had in the' conception of the subject, or the form 
 •of the antique in the dramatic treatment. We will not refer 
 to a composition so crude as Preston's ' Cambyses,' in whose 
 ■' vein ' the noble Falstaff enacts Bang Henry ; but even the most 
 ■educated gentlemen and scholars who were most conversant with 
 
62 SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 dramatic poetry and belonged to the royal stage, though study- 
 ing the ancients, exhibited little of the ancient style. 
 
 Erom Eichard Edwards, who was esteemed by his contem- 
 poraries as a phoenix of the age, we have the ' tragic comedy ' 
 of ' Damon and Pythias,' which was intended to have been written 
 according to the rules of Horace. In the relation in which the 
 poet has placed the philosophers Aristippus and Carisophus to 
 the court of Dionysius, we are reminded somewhat of the 
 parasites of the Latin comedies ; but the really serious parts are 
 so stiff, that they have nothing in common with the classic 
 school. In the burlesque scenes inserted, Grrim, the collier of Croy- 
 don — a favourite of the popular English stage — ^is introduced, 
 and amusements of the lowest taste are depicted, such as cud- 
 gellings and wine-drinkings, shaving and pick-pocketing. From 
 1580 John Lilly (born about 1553) ruled the court stage, until 
 the group of tragic poets around the young Shakespeare cast 
 hini into the shade. In a series of dramas of unequal value 
 ('Dramatic Works,' ed; Fairholt, 1858), he laid the founda- 
 tion of a more refined comedy, which was performed by the 
 children of the Chapel Eoyal. In his plays the antique lies 
 most characteristically side by side with English manners and 
 matters, in an utterly disunited combination. Among them, 
 ' Mother Bombie ' is, as regards subject, a purely popular farce, 
 but at the same time it is designed in the purest style of 
 Terence. The pastoral play ' Galatea ' is a Greek legend trans- 
 ported into Lincolnshire, and acted by classically-named shep- 
 herds, by the side of whom stand caricatures of the most 
 taodern style, alchymists and astrologers. In ' Endymion,' an 
 accurate imitation of Plautus' bully appears in a mytholo^cal 
 material, which in the fashionable Italian manner of conceits is 
 manufactured into a flattering glorification of the queen. In 
 ' Midas,' the fables of this Phrygian king are dramatised ; in it, 
 however, the English spectators at once saw a satire upon 
 Philip II., the lord of the American Eldorados. In ' Alexander 
 and Campaspe,' all the witty anecdotes and sallies which' 
 antiquity heaped upon Alexander and Diogenes are put together 
 as in a Mosaic ; but with a perfectly modern ease, lightness, and 
 perspicuity of language, from which Shfikespeare learned most 
 directly the prose of his comic scenes. In all these pieces there 
 remains scarcely a touch of antique nature, of the aesthetic sense 
 of form, and of the arranging and sifting spirit of the ancient 
 dramatists. Thus George Whetstone also, the author of ' PromoS' 
 
DSAMATia POETRY BEFOBE SffAKESPEASE. 63 
 
 ■ and Cassandra ' (1578), (the foundation of Shakespeare's Measure 
 for Measure), announces himself as a scholar of the antique, 
 complains of the improbabilities upon which the English dramas 
 are founded, and of the rough way in which they are executed ; 
 but his manner in the stiff ten-act piece places him also among 
 the many who at that time saw and commended the better 
 course, and followed the -bad. Even the art of much more 
 genuine scholars of antiquity could not break through the nature 
 of a people, nor restrain and divert the poetical remembrances and 
 traditions of the romantic Middle Ages ! After those noble 
 poets and their adherents had remodelled lyric and epic poetry 
 in the spirit of the classic restoration in Italy, it was in the 
 highest degree probable that they woidd make the attempt to 
 refine also the rough popular drama according to the higher 
 conceptions of the ancients. Philip Sidney, in his ' Apology of 
 Poetry' (1587), had energetically appealed to the precepts and 
 examples of ancient art ; taking Euripides as his model, he in- 
 sisted upon the representation of catastrophes, and ridiculed the 
 romantic pieces, which begin an action ab avo. Samuel Daniel, 
 whom we have already mentioned as a sonnettist, rested on this 
 honoured authority, and, disgusted by the vain contrivances and 
 coarse foUies of the stage, he wrote his ' Cleopatra' in 1594, and 
 subsequently his ' Philotas,' completely in imitation of the Greek 
 tragedy, and strictly observing the unities ; Brandon followed 
 him in his ' Octavia ' in 1598 ; Lady Pembroke had preceded him 
 in 1590 with a translation of ' Antonius ' by Cramier ; and in 
 1594 the ' Cornelia ' of this Frenchman, translated by Kyd, ap- 
 peared in print. But all these works of a courtly or aristo- 
 cratic art fell like lost drops in the stream of the popular plays, 
 and perished more decidedly than the similar attempts of our 
 own Stolberg and Schlegel. Who that has seen this pompous 
 declamatory piece of Garnier's, and has compared it with the 
 fresh life of an English original, even of the roughest kind ; who 
 that would at all weigh the development of the French stage in 
 comparison with the English, would have wished that these 
 ,poems should have had a greater influence ? — poems which 
 might have diverted the taste of the age from the dramatic laws of 
 the Middle Ages with their thousand years of poetical traditions, 
 and from the poetic mirror of a great present ftiU of mighty capa- 
 bilities, and might have led it to formal, perhaps faultless works 
 of art, which nevertheless were but a dead exercise of style. 
 Just as revived art in Italy was not satisfied with imitating^ 
 
€4 SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 old forms, but; incited Petrarch and Ariosto to give a higher 
 artistic character to the spirit and subjects of the traditions of 
 the Middle Ages-, so was it also with the drama in England. 
 The epos of the Italian poets, the romances , of chivalry, the 
 newly-circulated Greek romances, the national ballads, the 
 countless tales full of exquisite falDles and legends from the 
 Middle Ages ; all these formed a matter too important to be set 
 aside by the restoration of the ancient drama. The abundance 
 of this material, the delight in its purport, the romantic spirit 
 which had conjured forth in it a thousand beauties and still 
 more exquisite designs, overcame the forms of the classical 
 models, and allowed but little room for the antique material. 
 In the series of dramas which were represented before Elizabeth 
 between 1558 and 1580, we find in addition to the eighteen old 
 historical or mythological plays, a similar number in which the 
 subjects are drawn from chivalric romances and novels. The 
 romantic dramas of this kind presented the most natural and 
 severe contrast to the antique. Some among them manifest in 
 the most simple manner a tendency to the epic form, and very 
 naively exhibit the transition from this style to the dramatic. 
 In ' Pericles,' John Grower, from whose epic story the matter 
 is borrowed, is the explainer and arranger of the play ; and 
 in Middleton's ' Mayor of Quinborough ' Eaynulph i Higdon 
 performs the part of the chorus and the introducer of the play, 
 the subject of which (Hengist and Horsa) is taken from the 
 Chronicles ; a similar exhibitor appears in other pieces of the 
 game kind, where the action is carried on by pantomimes intro- 
 duced, which require the explanation of these 'presenters.' 
 Plays of this kind pandered to the inclinations of the lower 
 orders, who craved more profuse matter, and would see some- 
 thing for their shilling ; they exhibited an utter disregard of 
 time and scene, making the fantastic the rule, in spite of the 
 outrage thus caused to realistic friends of the antique, such as 
 Ben Jonson, and no less so to those idealistic adherents of the 
 antique style who wished to restore the form of the old drama 
 in its entire purity. At the close of the sixteenth century, 
 when Daniel and Brandon had produced their entirely classical 
 models, this taste still prevailed ; Shakespeare's Pericles most- 
 nearly represents it to the German reader. Just as this piece^ 
 hurrying from action to action, from place to place, disregards 
 probability or expressly derides it, so in Thomas Heywood's 
 * Pair Maid of the West,' a romance full of adventwes is made 
 
DRAMATIC, POETRY BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 65 
 
 into two dramas ; and of a similar character are his ' Four'' 
 Prentices of London,' Peele's ' Old Wives' Tale,' Eowley's ' Birth 
 of Merlin,' ' The Thracian Wonder,' alleged to be by Webster and 
 Eowley, and the like. The copious change of facts and scene, 
 the simple treatment and plot, the romantic subject and fabulous 
 spirit of these pieces, made them dear to the people ; and Thomas 
 Heywood, when his ' Prentices' was printed in 1615, says ex- 
 pressly, that at the time of its origiit this style was customary, 
 though with the more cultivated taste of later years it was 
 ^abandoned.' This accords personally with what Grosson asserts 
 in his work, ' Plays Confuted in Fife Acts ' (printed about 1580), 
 ■as to the sources and nature of those plays which are taken from 
 tales of knight-errantry. He finds, he tells us, that ' The Palace 
 -of Pleasure,' 'The Golden Ass,' 'The Ethiopian History," Amadis 
 of France,' and ' The Eound Table,' are ransacked to furnish the 
 playhouses of London. The pieces based on these romances 
 ihe thus characterizes : ' Sometimes you shall see nothing but 
 ■the adventures of an amorous knight, passing from country to 
 ■country for the love of his lady, encountering many a terrible 
 monster, made of brown paper ; and at his return he is so wonder- 
 fiilly changed that he cannot be known but by some posy 
 in his tablet, or by a broken ring, or a handkerchief, or a piece 
 of copkle-shell.' In a similar manner Sidney, in his ' Apology 
 of Poetry,' depicts the bold treatment of time in these romantic 
 plays: ' Ordinary it is that two young princes fall in love : 
 after many traverses, she is got with child, delivered of a fair 
 boy ; he is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and is ready to 
 get another child, and all this in two hours' space.' These 
 absurdities, he adds, the most commonplace players in Italy 
 ihad laid aside. 
 
 But for this very reason the Italians have acquired no 
 ■drama of importance, and still less a Shakespeare. For owing 
 ■to the small interest felt in antique plays by the few cultivated 
 and distinguished people in Italy and France, no dramatic art 
 •could take root as in England, where the interest was based 
 upon the broad foundation of the sjrmpathy of all classes and 
 conditions of the people, inasmuch as it rested on the very 
 ground of popular education, and made use of aU the elements 
 and materials which were accessible to the people ; and where, 
 as Shakespeare says, the theatre was a, mirror, not to reflect the 
 life of a past world, but the life of the present. The efforts for 
 the revival of ancient art and for the recognition of the old 
 
 p 
 
66 SHAKESPEABE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 rules of art, in opposition to tlie confused extravagances oif the 
 romantic drama, could not possibly have been unknown tO' 
 Shakespeare. He could not indeed have been blind to the 
 laultitude of dramas around him, into which had penetrated the 
 form of the Latin .comedy, the romantic extravagant element of 
 the old domestic Sicilian comedy, as well as the simple domestic 
 element of the Attic. He was certainly acquainted with those 
 pieces of Lilly and Marston, which were directly suggested by , 
 Terence ; and he must have lived in intercourse with Ben Jonson 
 and Beaumont, Chapman and . Heywood, who followed occasion- 
 ally the track of Plautus. And in his own plays, how often are we 
 not carried back direct to Plautus, now by outward details and 
 scenery, now by the play and banter of words among his wits, 
 and now by a single trait in the delineation of sharp outlines of 
 character, such as among misers, boasters and others. He had 
 thus read the translated plays of Seneca and the Latin comic 
 writers as much as others; in the poetic sea of the old myths 
 and legends he had bathed like a man, who is best acquainted 
 with the element. In Titus Andronicus, if it proceeds from 
 Shakespeare, we shall see how entirely he is at home in this 
 region. In the Comedy of Errors hfe has worked at a play of" 
 Plautus. In the Taming of the Shrew, the ' Supposes ' of Ariosto 
 is the foundation — a piece written in the spirit of the Latin 
 comedies. Shakespeare was thoroughly acquainted with the works ■ 
 of Seneca ; in his Cymbeline, aft-er the manner of this poet, he- 
 makes the presiding divinity appear and speak in the same 
 antique metre in which Heywood and Studley had imitated the 
 Latin tragedist. If Shakespeare had had occasion at any time to 
 name his ideal, and to denote the highest examples of dramatic 
 art which lay before him, he would have named none but Plautus 
 and Seneca I Were these, perhaps, mere external guides ? "Was 
 this admiration merely a repetition of the much talked-of fame 
 of these poets ? Was his comprehension of antiquity not darkened 
 by the spirit of the age ? Which, however, of his contem- 
 poraries could have apprehended a pipce of the old world with 
 such a clear eye as he did the Eoman nature in the three 
 histories of Coriolanus, Csesar, and Antony ? We justly dis- 
 tinguish the excellent Chapman, who in the middle of Shake-^ 
 speare's career translated Homer, and by a bold form of language 
 and Mthful adherence to the original might be named a wonder 
 of the age, and whom Pope should have learned from rather 
 than blamed ; but let us read Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, ' 
 
SBAMATia F.OETRY BEFOEE SHAKESPEARE. 67 
 
 and ask ourselves whether this wonderful counterfeit imitation 
 of the Homeric heroes were possible to any man who had not 
 grasped thoroughly the , substance and spirit of the old epic 
 poets ? whether the parody here produced did not demand a 
 totally different understanding of the poet than that required 
 by the translation ? whether the caricature in the one case did 
 not betray far more the eye of an artist than the copy in the 
 other? But it is just the independent position towards the 
 father of poetry (which Shakespeare assumes in this play) which 
 proves to us how little this man was formed to bend to any 
 authority, example, or rule, or to reverence exclusively any style. 
 His art was a vessel which afforded a receptacle for all materials 
 in all ages. To reject the fulness of the material, or to con- 
 dense it for the sake of an obsolete theatrical law, could never 
 occur to him. He appropriated to himself Pericles, and subse- 
 quently he wrote the Winter's Tale, a play which would have 
 attracted the ridicule of a Sidney had it not been much later. 
 But, while he treated these subjects, he did not forsake the old 
 rule from ignorance ; he did not once in silence pass it over. 
 He knew well that, in the dramatic treatment of an historical 
 subject, the great theme is mutilated by the representation in 
 successive scenes ; but this could not induce him, for the sake of 
 this dtawback, to yield the essential of which the art was capable. 
 In his Henry V., in iive highly poetical prologues, he invites the 
 auditors to transport themselves by the powers of the imagi- 
 nation over these mistreatments of time and scene ; and this is 
 the b6ld manifesto against that rule which it behoved a poeb 
 like Shakespeare to make. So also Marston, in a preface to his 
 'Wonder of Women' (1606), has with hearty good- will given a 
 blow to the defender of the antique rule, declaring that he will 
 not be constrained within the limits of an historian, but will 
 have the extension allowed to a poet. If the Winter's Tale, 
 inasmuch as it combirfes the history of two generations, is indeed 
 a tale as its title intimates, why should not a tale be brought 
 upon the stage ? In the prologue to the second part (4th Act) 
 Shakespeare makes Time speak in dark generalities that which 
 he himself, in the name of his creative art, would significantly 
 enough say respecting the stage^law of unity of time, which he 
 purposely rejects : 
 
 Impute it not a crime, 
 To mej or my awift passage, that I sEde 
 O'er sixteen years, and leave the growth untried 
 F 2 
 
68 SHAKE8FEABE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 Of that wide pass ; since it is in my power 
 
 To o'erthrow law and in one self-bom hour 
 
 To plant and o'erwhelm custom. Let me pass 
 
 The same I am, ere ancient'st order was, 
 
 Or what is now received : I witness to 
 
 The times that brought them in ; so shall I do 
 
 To the freshest things now reigning : and make stale 
 
 The glistering of the present, as my tale 
 
 Now seems to it. 
 
 The form of an unmeaning law, which is linked to the 
 humour of the taste of the age, could not be more significantly 
 rejected. But it was necessary that, in the stead of this rejected 
 outward law, he' should establish an inner and eternal one. 
 How Shakespeare did this, our discussions in the course of this 
 work will show. And at its conclusion we shall find Schiller's 
 remark completely justified, namely, that Shakespeare's new art 
 is perfectly consistent with the true old law of Aristotle ; and 
 more than this, that out of it a yet more spiritual law can be 
 deduced than that of Aristotle — a, law created for the moulding 
 of a far richer material than that belonging to ancient tragedy, 
 and necessarily arising out of the very nature of the modem 
 •drama. 
 
 To retain the epic qharacter of the popular drama, but to 
 take from it its deformity and to allow the ancient models to 
 effect a refinement of the form, this was the instinctive tendency 
 and work of the more accomplished poets who, from 1560 till 
 Shakespeare's time, bpgan to give the English drama an artistic 
 character. In this work the superiority of nature over art, 
 which is throughout the characteristic of the northern poetic 
 character, became at 'once apparent. This new-birth of the 
 English art-dra/ma manifests itself in a homogeneous group of 
 -tragedies, which from- their more concise action and more 
 distinct form are in direct opposition to those vague epic^ 
 romantic plays. The plays to which we refer are all severe 
 tragedies, mostly of a bloody character. They are almost all 
 grouped round Marlowe's ' Tamburlaine,' but they are called 
 . forth by the remote influence of that first English art-tragedy, 
 the ' Ferrex and Porrex ' of Lord Sackville, just as much as that 
 was by Seneca. Those of this group which precede 'Tambur^ 
 laine' and are more independent of its influence, approach 
 nearer the classic form ; for instance, the tragedy of ' Tancred 
 and Gismunda,' which Eobert Wilmot composed with four 
 other pupils of the Temple, and represented in 1558 ; and the 
 
DEAMATIG POETRY BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 69 
 
 " Misfortunes of Arthur,' by Thomas Hughes, which was performed 
 in Greenwich in 1587, when the famous Bacon took a part. 
 These plays, like ' Ferrex and Porrex,' shift the action behind 
 the scene, are essentially dialogue and relation, and are tan- 
 gibly and avowedly ruled by the influence of Seneca. In 
 this respect Marlowe's ' Tamburlaiae ' is more independent ; it 
 appeared in 1586, just as Shakespeare came to London, who 
 thus freshly encountered the immense effects which this piece " 
 made upon the stage, and the revolution which it occasioned in 
 dramatic poetry. This play transplanted to the national stage, 
 if not for the first time, yet with greater energy, the iambic 
 blank verse, which allowed the actor all the pathos to which he 
 had been accustomed in the declamation of tlie older fourteen- 
 syllabled rhymes, but admitted of more nature and motion. 
 The heroic purport of this great double tragedy was announced 
 with solemnity ; the high style of the stately action was equalled 
 by the bombastic style of the delivery ; the people were to be 
 satiated with a series of battle-pieces ; the rhetorical sublimity 
 was to content the more refined guests. The piece fell upon a 
 favourable soil. In the same year (1586) London saw the great 
 tragedy of the cruel execution of Babington and his fellow-con- 
 spirators ; in the following year fell the head of Mary Stuart, 
 in the next happened the destruction of the Spanish Armada ; 
 such tragedies in "actual life have ever accompanied stage 
 tragedy, when the reception it has met with has been great and 
 lasting. Dirring" these years, therefore, tragedies in Marlowe's 
 style arose in numbers. Kyd's 'Spanish Tragedy' (1588) and 
 - Jeronimo,' which was added to it by another poet as a first part, 
 shared the fame and the popularity of ' Tambm'laine,' and even 
 surpassed it; Peele's ' Battle of Alcazar,' Grreene's ' Alphonso ' and 
 ' Orlando Furioso,' Lodge's ' Marius and Sylla ; ' Nash's ' Dido,' at 
 which Marlowe himself worked ; ' Locrine,' which is often 
 regarded as a work of Shakespeare ; and Titus Andronicus, which 
 stands among Shakespeare's writings ; are all pieces which ap- 
 peared within a few years after ' Tamburlaine,' and collectively 
 betray a decided affinity of spirit, both as to form and subject. 
 In every respect these plays occupy the same position as our 
 Silesian dramas by Gryphius and Lohenstein. They are 
 similarly written in that exaggerated pathos, and in that gran- 
 diloquent and rhetorically pompous style, which is characteristic 
 of the beginner who aspires after mere effect. Unlimited 
 passions are aroused, and their expression is everywhere carried 
 
70 SSJJCESPEARE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 to exaggeration. Noisy actions and bloody atrocities shake the 
 strong nerves of the spectator ; powerful characters are distorted 
 in caricature ; in ' Tamburlaine ' the struggling tyrants act and 
 treat each other like wild beasts, and even thp circumstance 
 ■which in Marlowe's intention was to ennoble the principal hero, 
 (and which by contrast forms the main effect of the drama), 
 namely, that when satiated with blood he is gentle and peace- 
 able, that the conqueror of the world reverences beauty and is 
 conquered by love, even this proceeds from the animal nature of 
 men. "The matter of all these pieces is, upon nearer consideration, 
 much more homogeneous than might be imagined. It turns 
 upon the one point which was also ever the ready theme iu the 
 ancient drama, that first and most simple idea of tragedy, 
 , namely, the experieiice that blood demands blood, according to 
 the words of iEschylus : ' for murder, murder — and for deeds, 
 retaliation.' The thought of revenge and retaliation is,, there- 
 fore, the absorbing one in almost all these plays. It is so even 
 in . ' Ferrex and Porrex,' where brother kills brother, and in 
 revenge the mother stabs the murderous son, in consequence of 
 which the nobles of the land exterminate the whole blOody 
 house. In Hughes' ' Arthur,' the house of this king, for the sin 
 .of incest, meets with the punishment of fate in the mutual 
 .death of father and son. In ' Tamburlaine' this trait appears 
 less forcibly, only that the piece concludes with the dark stroke 
 of destiny which fatally befals Tamburlaine, when he proposes 
 ■ to burn the temple of Mahomed. The catastrophe in " Locrine ' 
 turns upon the vengeance of the repudiated Guendeline towards 
 Locrine and the Scythian queen Estrilde. The ' Spanish Tragedy' 
 and ' Jeronimo ' are intrinsically revenge-pieces ; in the former, 
 the spirit of the murdered Andrea appears with vengeance as 
 the chorus at the beginning of the piece ; the murderer of this 
 Andrea is Balthasar, who has drawn upon himself the vengeance 
 of the betrothed of Andrea, and by the murder of her second 
 lover Horatio has also excited the vengeance of Horatio's father 
 Jeronimo; the spirit of Horatio stimiilates the father to the 
 • dangerous work of revenge, to accomplish which more surely 
 Jeronimo feigns himself mad, until at last, in a play which he 
 performs with Balthasar and his accomplice, he attains his end. 
 From these hasty glimpses we see that this piece had an influence 
 iipon the plan of Hamlet, and still more closely upon Titus An- 
 dronicus and the feigned madness of the avenger Titus. This 
 play also is fully imbued with the idea of vengeance. And this 
 
DRAMATIC POETRY BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 71 
 
 itheme especially — the concealment of vengeance or of crime 
 behind dissembled madness or depression — appears to have much 
 occupied the dramatic taste of the day ; it is brought into play 
 even in a less tragic piece by Webster and Marston, the ' Mal- 
 content ' (1604), in Ford's ' Broken Heart,' and in Webster's 
 ' Vittoria Corombona' (1612), Thehorrors of vengeance, however, 
 which those Spanish tragedies and Titus Andronicus multiply, 
 are by no means the worst. Chettle's ' Hoffman, or Vengeance 
 for a Father ' (1598), exceeds these by far; and in Marlowe's 
 ' Maltese Jew' (1589-90) the heroBarabas exhibits, as it were, 
 the whole hereditary hatred of the Jews compressed into one 
 individual, and the poet invents all imaginable deeds of 
 vengeance, with which the abominably mal-treated Jew vents 
 his smothered rage upon the Christian race.' 
 
 We mention only this one group of bloody tragedies, in 
 order to characterise the state of things at the time of Shakes- 
 peare's arrival in London. A wild, rival activity of rude talents 
 and of rude characters surged around him. The inharmonious 
 and unformed nature of these works reflected the nature of the 
 age and the authors in a faithftd. daguerreotype. They are the 
 products of a chaotic world of mind, which the whole circiun- 
 stances of the public life in town and court rendered yet mor6 
 confused ; of a world in which splendour and vulgarity, true love 
 of art and coarse feeling, and a true desire after a higher intel- 
 lectual existence and the utmost licentiousness of habit, are 
 tstruggling together. The excess of passion in the characters of 
 these plays is only a copy of that which the life of these poets 
 themselves partly exhibited ; the overstrained sentiments and 
 modes of action of their heroes is only an imitation of the over- 
 strained imagination and talent of the poets themselves ; the 
 morbid and spasmodic tendencies, the constraiaed violence and 
 force of the actions, speeches, and men which they represent, is 
 only the copy of the passionate storm exhibited in the life of 
 these Titanic natures, who jolted against the proprieties of life 
 and its barriers, with something of the same coarseness and 
 unrestraint as the youthful associates and poetic friends who 
 gathered round the young Goethe and Schiller. It is a strange 
 circmnstance that Marlowe in his dramas attempted the subject 
 of Faust, which suggested itself to many of Groethe'g friends, 
 and into which Groethe himself compressed the whole substance 
 of the Titanic period of his youth. If Shakespeare really wrote 
 Titus Andronicus, his early efforts were devoted entirely to the 
 
72 8HJXESFEAEE IN LONDON ANB ON THE .STAGE. 
 
 ruling school ; Ms Pericles may be regarded as representing the 
 style of the epic-romantic dramas, his Henry VI. that of the 
 historical dramas, and his Titus that of the tragedies just al- 
 luded to. But -whatever great or small share he may have had 
 in thfese plays, they form the conclusion of this period, and a 
 new one is commenced which must and which can alone bear 
 ^is name, because no other work even of a later age belongs to 
 it save his own. Such is the cleft that separates the poet from 
 his. successors and -predecessors, both with regard to sesthetics 
 and ethics.. The wild nature, and the untutored feelings of those 
 Marlowe friends and pupils, touched no chord within, even 
 though in the early exuberance of youth the life and actions of 
 his companions may have infected him. If he wrote his Adonis 
 and Lucrece while yet in Stratford, how mild and tender, and 
 how utterly free from the bloody delight of those tragedies, is: 
 ■his treatment of the mournful circmnstances delineated in these 
 poems ! In his first independent tragedy, in Richard III., the 
 thought of avenging retribution is indeed predominant, but how 
 differently conceived and how magnificently executed! In 
 Hom.eo and Juliet, the tragic idea is at once introduced in its 
 ■greatest depth, in a manner that would have appeared incon- 
 ceivable had not an excellent previous work pointed out the 
 path. . In Hamlet, above all, the idea of revenge which so much 
 K)ccupied the poets of Shakespeare's time, is made the very 
 theme of the tragedy ; but what a mild light of human morality 
 is cast on the poet by his > solution of this theme when he is 
 compared with the rude and abandoned minds of his pred&-, 
 cessors ! He who knows the relation in which Goethe's ' Tasso ' 
 
 ■stands to the similar inventions of his unbridled youthful friends, 
 will at once recognise the similar relation existing between 
 Hamlet and works such as the ' Spanish Tragedy ; ' he will feel 
 that in Shakespeare a softer spirit dwelt, even though in an 
 unsettled mood, he might have written Titus Andronicus; he 
 will perceive that this poet, like Goethe, separated himself early 
 and resolutely from the tendency of art and morals prevailing^ 
 among his early poetic associates. Speedily, therefore, he began in 
 his works to deride this mode of poetry, ridiculiug the ' Spanish 
 
 .Tragedy,' in parodising quotations, and placing derisively 
 
 , in the lips of the swaggering Pistol the bombast of ' Tambur- 
 laine ' and ' The Battle of Alcazar.' But still more than by these 
 
 ' parodies of single passages, the early withdrawal of Shakespeare 
 from the works of subordinate minds and talents is exhibited by 
 
DRAMATIC POETBY BEFORE SHAKESPEAEE. 73 
 
 the nature of the first dramas acknowledged as his own. These 
 were comedies and not bloody tragedies ; they were comedies of 
 a more refined style, comedies of which England previously had 
 scarcely possessed a trace. Among the many remains of Shakes- 
 peare's early efiforts, there is no work which shows such refine- 
 ment as the two first of these independent creations, Love's 
 Labour Lost and the Two Gentlemen of Verona. 
 
 Not quite so great as the cleft which separates Shakespeare 
 from his predecessors in tragedy and comedy, is that which 
 divides him from them in history ; here the transition is more 
 gentle, because the same comparatively rich soiurces of Holinshed 
 and other Chronicles were equally at the command of all poets ; 
 because the prepared material, borrowed from history, and held in 
 patriotic reverence, did not admit of the extravagances to which 
 the dramatists abandoned themselves in their freer subjects, and 
 because sober reality here confined them to one element and thus 
 healthfully counteracted their unrestrained nature. The group 
 of historical dramas from English history, which appeared 
 shortly before atid at the same time as Shakespeare's historical 
 plays, consists for this reason of works less attractive and 
 imaginative, perhaps, but still amongst the most creditable, 
 which the English stage at that time produced, and which 
 indisputably must have exercised the most beneficial effect upon 
 the public mind, ^hat these plays are more nearly allied to 
 those of Shakespeare's than all others, arises doubtless from the 
 relation in which these pieces frequently stand to Shakespeare's 
 own poetry, or in, which they ought to be placed with regard to 
 it. His Henry VL is only an appropriation of the works of 
 foreign poets ; to the first part Shakespeare added but little ; 
 the two last parts are merely remodelling^ of two extant plays, 
 which by many critics (especially Grerman) are indeed regarded 
 as first sketches by Shakespeare himself, but which proceed 
 imdoubtedly from the pen of one of his most qualified prede- 
 cessors, either Eobert Grreene, as Collier is inclined to assume, 
 or Marlowe, to whom Dyce awards them. Shakespeare's plays 
 of Henry IV. and V. sprang from an older but very coarse 
 historical drama, which was represented previous to 1588. 
 There is also a Latin Ejchard IIL (before 1583), and an English 
 ' true tragedy of Eichard IIL' (about 1588), both insignificant 
 works, the latter of which Shakespeare imdoubtedly knew, 
 though scarcely in one line has he used it. King John, on the 
 contrary, rests upon a better piece, printed as early as 1591, 
 
74 8HAKE8PEABE IN LONDON AST) ON THE STAGE. 
 
 ■which ofifered much available matter for retention, and therefore 
 has been often regarded as an earlier work of Shakespeare's: 
 Thus Tieck and Schlegel have erroneously declared some 
 historical plays of the burgher class, such as ' Cromwell.' and 
 ' John Oldcastle,' to be Shakespeare's works ; and Tieck even 
 asserted this with regard to the ' London Prodigal ' and an 
 'Edward III.' which appeared about 1595. This latter piece 
 exhibits a few touches of the Shakespeare dramas, and is embel- 
 lished with many a skilful ornament of choice construction and 
 rare images ; yet it has nothing of Shakespeare's deeper power of 
 invention and delineation of character. Whoever remembers his 
 treatment of the popular favorite Percy, and those few verses 
 in which he makes Edward III. look down smiling upon his 
 lionhearted son from the height in the heat of battle, will not 
 believe that the same poet should have depicted, such a faintly 
 drawn Black Prince as that in ' Edward III.' Notwithstanding, 
 the play is the work of a superior mind. And indeed the. 
 highest talents emulated each other in this style of writing, 
 ■which in the last ten years of the sixteenth century may 
 almost be called predominant. Prior to 1590 we have indeed 
 a play, ' Edward I.,' by George Peele, which begins promisingly, 
 but ends without form and with extravagant redundancy of 
 matter. There is an ' Edward IL' (1593), by Marlowe, which 
 being freer from bombast and better arranged as to matter 
 and language than the rest of his works, might have furnished 
 Shakespeare with a direct model. As regards the composition, 
 we find, it is true, in the history of the weak Edward IL, 
 surrounded as he is with favourites and rebels, the characters 
 and situations of Eichard II. and Henry IV. ; but the result is 
 nothing but a chronicle in scenes, not possessing even the shai-ply 
 drawn characters and the passionate agitation of Hemy VI. 
 There is even nothing in this play of the natural freshness 
 exhibited in the popular scenes among the Welsh rebels in 
 Peele's ' Edward I.' And scenes like these are by far the most 
 refreshing part of history, because they present the freest scope 
 and usually the most attractive characters. They stand in the 
 same proportion to the serious parts of history as the ballad 
 does to the chronicle. The heroes, too, of these episodical 
 passages which are less fettered by historical material, such as 
 Eobin Hood and the like, have not unfrequently been the 
 heroes of ballads ; and personages such as the magician Faust, 
 Peter Fabel, Friar Rush, and Bacon, Collier Grim, and others, 
 
VEAMATIC FOETBY BEFOBE SHAKESPEABE. 75 
 
 had been popular favourites in living tradition long before tbey 
 came upon the stage. Eobin Hood was brought upon the stage 
 by Munday in two pieces ! ' The Earl of Huntingdon ' at the 
 close of the ststeenth century ; also the ' Magic C6ntest of John- 
 a-Kent and John-a-Cumber,' in imitation of Eobert Greene's 
 ' Bacon and Bungay.' The latter is perhaps also the author 
 of 'The Pinner of Wakefield' (about 1590), in which the 
 robber-hero Greorge Grreene is brought into collision with 
 .another herculean combatant of the same sort : in such pieces 
 the ballad with its bold touches is rendered suitable for the 
 stage by being merely put into dialogue, just as is the case 
 with the chronicle in the simple historical plays. The hardy 
 popular nature bursts forth here through all bombastic pathos 
 and Italian conceits ; it is as faithfully portrayed as in our own 
 rustic poetry and merry tales at the time of the Eeformation ; 
 the woodland and country scenes in these plays breathe fresh- 
 ness and natural life. More refined and more finished than 
 this ' Pinner ' is the ' Merry Devil of Edmonton ' (first printed 
 in 1608), which by some is imputed to Drayton, by others to 
 Shakespeare ; but in this piece we may rather trace Shake- 
 speare's influence, in the poaching scenes and comic personages 
 contained in it. This is the case also with Thomas Hey- 
 wood's ' Edward IV.' (about' 1600), in the first part of which the 
 old ballad of ' The Tanner of Tamworth ' has been excellently 
 treated, and is full of freshness and natural humour. In all 
 these ballad-pieces there is a touch of the free movement and 
 the powerfully described characters of the Shakespeare poetry ; 
 there is none of the monotonous diction of the common 
 histories and tragedies ; all moralizing and rhetoric is abolished ; 
 the poets throw themselves entirely into the situation before 
 them ; the scholar and the writer is overcome, the poet has 
 forgotten himself, he has vanished in the actors and the action ; 
 it was here that Shakespeare's art began to assume a new and 
 independent position. And as we before intimated, it is in 
 these histories and ballad-pieces alone that his poetry^ appears 
 entwined in a closer manner with that of his contemporaries ; in 
 all others it presents itself rather as a transplanted nursling, 
 upon which a far nobler fruit has been grafted. 
 
 "We will add only a few words upon the externals of the 
 
 ■ style, and the history of the diction and versification of the 
 
 . English drama. The old Mysteries were for the greater part 
 
 written in rhyming couplets, which consist of short verses in 
 
76 SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 alternating rhymes; the Moralities were mostly composed in 
 short verses with coupled rhymes. In the more finished plays 
 of Skelton longer rhymes of ten to fifteen syllables appear ;. 
 these longer lines prevail also With Edwards, Udall, and Still ; 
 they are employed by the translators of Seneca. They have 
 been called Alexandrines, though they were meant to imitate the 
 ancient trimeter. The learned authors of ' Ferrex and Porrex ' 
 first introduced the rhyipeless iambics of five feet, which 
 subsequently became the accepted metre of the modem drama. 
 But at that time the fashion did not prevail ; the short blank 
 verse was found more agreeable to the ear, but the rhyme was; 
 dispensed with unwillingly. This is, as is well known, frequently 
 apparent hei'e and thfere in Shakespeare's works also, and 
 especially throughout his earlier pieces. The histories, with 
 their bald and insipid material, helped especially to baUish the 
 jingle of rhyme from the stage. Before the troop of the 
 tragedians that circled round Marlowe at about 1586, Grascoigne, 
 in the translation of the ' Supposes ' of Ariosto, had given the 
 example of the use of blank verse, and John Lilly introduced it 
 in his comedies and pastorals. He had written a work in 157& 
 entitled ' Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit,' in which English taste, 
 it appears, was offended by the application of the extravagant 
 Italian conceits to a non-poetical subject, though it submitted 
 to them in the Italian style of poetry. This style, an acciunu- 
 lation of constrained witticisms and similes, became for a time 
 the fashionable strain of conversation ; we find it employed 
 in petitions to the queen and magistrates as well as in poetry ; 
 all ladies, it was said, had become Lilly's scholars in this mode 
 of speech, and at the court no one was esteemed who could not 
 converse in the fashion of Lilly's ' Euphuism.' Drayton cha- 
 racterises this style as if its main attribute were the images 
 derived from stars, stones, and plants ; that is, from a fabulous 
 natural philosophy ; a similar passage from the ' Euphues ' was 
 ridiculed by Shakespeare in the comparison of the camomile, 
 which he places in the lips of Falstaff in his royal speech. 
 Still the general character of Lilly's prose, in his dramas, consists 
 only in a superabundance of poetic and witty language, in far- 
 fetched similes and curious images on every occasion, however 
 unsuitable ; at the same time his prose, like that of all other 
 conceit-writers, acquires by continual antitheses and epigram- 
 matic allusions, somewhat of a sharpness, piquancy, and logical 
 perspicuity, the worth of which, as regards the development 
 
DRAMATIC POETRY BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 77 
 
 •of the language, was acknowledged with praise by such con- 
 temporaries as Webster, From no other of his predecessors 
 has Shakespeare, therefore, especially as regards the dexterous 
 play of words in the merry parts of his comedies and dramas, 
 learned and obtained so much as from Lilly. The witty 
 conversation, the comic demonstrations, the abundance of 
 similes and startling repartees, are here prefigured; his, quibs, 
 which Lilly himself defines as the short expressions of a sharp 
 wit, with a bitter sense lying in a sweet word, were a school to 
 Shakespeare. But he acted here, as with Marlowe's pathos ; 
 he-moderated the practice, and used the pattern in its perfect 
 resemblance only for characteristic aims, or for ridicule. In 
 the intercourse between Falstaflf and Henry, in the comic 
 tiffrays of these ' most comparative ' wits, Shakespeare has 
 given free course to this vein, as Lilly did without distinction 
 ■on every occasion. Thus Shakespeare knew how to obtain 
 everywhere a noble metal for his work ; the dross he left 
 behind. Similar is his connection with tjhe outward form of 
 the tragedies of the Marlowe school. Marlowe had introduced 
 blank iambics upon the stage with great pomp and energy in 
 his ' Tamburlaiae', so that at first a general uproar of envy and 
 ridicule was raised against these ' drumming decasyllabons', and 
 the importance attached to their introduction. Notwithstanding, 
 this metre triumphed so immediately and decidedly, that not 
 alone for the stage in England, but for that in Grermany, it 
 remained a law. At first it was adhered to with the utmost 
 pedantic severity and vigour, the verse concluded with the 
 sense, and the sentence with the verse, which had always an 
 iambic termination. Titus Andronicus is thus written. But 
 Shakespeare soon stepped forth from this constraint, in a manner 
 ■scarcely indicated by Marlowe ; he intertwined the sense more 
 ireely through the verses according to the degTee of passion 
 expressed ; and yielding to this inward impulse, he removed the 
 monotonousness of the older blank verse by constantly inter- 
 rupting its regular covurse, by abbreviation into verses of one, 
 two, or three feet, by repeated cesures and pauses, by concluding 
 these cesures with amphibrachs, by exchanging the iambic 
 metre with the trochaic, by alternately contracting or extending 
 many-syllabled words, and by combining words and syllables, 
 capable of different scanning. Especially schooled by Spenser's 
 melodious versification, he thus blended its manner with Mar- 
 Jowe's power, and with exquisite tact of sound and feeling he 
 
'18 SHAKESPEABE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 broke up the stiff severity of the old verse into a freedom which 
 was foreign to his predecessors, and yet in this freedom he 
 retained a moderation which, on the other hand, is partly lost 
 by his successors.' His poetic diction, with regard to metrical 
 matters, held the same medium between constraint and freedom 
 as that which he observed with regard to expression, metaphor, 
 and poetical language between the overloading of the Italian con- 
 ceits and the unimaginative style of the German dramas, which 
 is often, even with Goethe and Schiller, only versified prose. 
 
 It is singular that the most iniportant of the young poets 
 around Shakespeare all died early, and soon after Shakespeare 
 began his dramatic career — Peele before 1599, Marlowe 1593, 
 G-reene 1592 — as if to leave for him a broad and open path. 
 Yet had they lived, he would nevertheless be as unique as he is 
 now. Collier considers that Marlowe would in this case have 
 become a formidable rival to Shakespeare's genius. We are 
 thoroughly convinced that he would have been just as little so 
 as Klinger was to om- own Goethe. Indeed, I am even of 
 opinion that if Greene is the original composer of the two last 
 parts of Henry VI., and certainly if he is thp author of ' The 
 Pinner of Wakeiield,' Marlowe's austere mind and constrained 
 talent Would have not even reached to the more versatile, 
 imambiguous, and manysided nature of this man. Shakespeare 
 had not the advantage of Goethe in having a Lessing before 
 him, who with critical mind and well-studied models had broken , 
 up a path for dramatic poetry. Unless some lost pieces of 
 greater value, or even one only, kindled a light for him (as we 
 have indeed a hint at least that such was the case, and that he 
 had an excellent dramatic model for Eomeo and Juliet), all 
 the dramatic art we find in England previous to Shakespeare is 
 only like a mute way-mark to an unknown end, through a path 
 full of luxuriant underwood and romantic wildness, affording 
 presentiment of the beauty of nature, but never its enjoyment. 
 It was Shakespeare alone who laid open the way and led to a 
 final aim of perfect satisfaction. He surpassed beyond all com- 
 parison every single genius around him ; the single qualities 
 which one or- another fostered with partiality, he imited in 
 
 ' We refer anyoije who wishes to inform himself more accurately re- 
 specting this technical side of Shakespeare's poetry to the unfinished work 
 of Sidney Walker, ' Shakespeare's Versification,' London, 1854 ; and to the 
 acute treatise of Tycho Mommseri in his edition of ' Romeo and Juliet,' 
 Oldenburg, 1859, p. 109 et seq. 
 
DRAMATIC POETRY BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 79 
 
 inoderatioii and harmony ; in the chaotic mass of dramatic pro- 
 ductions he first struck the electric spark which was capable of 
 combining the elements. From all the poetic contemporaries 
 around him he could learn, not what to do, but what not to do. 
 And this he must have quickly felt and conceived after those 
 early attempts in which he followed the models round him ; 
 for in his first independent works he early adopted an untrodden 
 path, and forthwith gained a height hithertb unattained ; the 
 best achievement of his poetic rivals is not to be compared with 
 the least of his early attempts. A man like Chapman, who 
 amid all Shakespeare's poetic contemporaries indisputably , 
 approaches in some points nearest to Shakespeare, has some- 
 where said that fortv/ne seemed to govern the stage, and that 
 nobody knew the hidden causes of the strange effects that rise 
 from this hell, or descend from this heaven. Nothing is perhaps 
 more expressive than this sentence as characterizing the dra- 
 matic poetry of the day, and as distinguishing Shakespeare's 
 from it ; the poets all convey the impression that they are groping 
 in search of an unknown aim, by which they may secure popu- 
 larity. But Shakespeare began by despising the million 5 and 
 whilst he strove after the applause of the few, he raised himself 
 to a height which discovered to him at once a nobler law of 
 art and a higher moral aim. Thus it had been a general custom 
 among those poets for two, three, or even five, to work together 
 at one piece ; it is the most speaking testimony that all per- 
 ception of capacity for true works of art was wanting. Shake- 
 speare worked upon ideas, which originated from a thoughtful 
 mind and a deep experience of life ; and he could not, therefore, 
 use the hand of a mechanical assistant. In this'also he appears, 
 unique and perfectly distinct. But if any doubt should be 
 raised at an opinion which separates Shakespeare so widely from 
 his predecessors, and which exhibits him as towering so mightily 
 above them like a giant tree above the brushwood of the soil, 
 it is only necessary to glance at his successors as an evidence 
 that we have dealt- fairly with the matter. That his prede- 
 cessors were left behind him, when all had at first to level the 
 imtrodden path, would be in no degree remarkable ; but that 
 later contemporaries and successors, who had before them the 
 noble example of his works, and at the time of the highest' 
 prosperity of the stage, sustained by every encouragement, that 
 they produced among hundreds of works no single one that in 
 a higher sense even augured the existence of a model like 
 
80 8HAKESPEABE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 Shakespeare J this is a fact which proves indisputably how far 
 this man had surpassed the range of sight of those around him. 
 Menander's comedy is not so far removed from the genius of 
 Aristophanes, as the English drama after Shakespeare is from 
 his works. The ethical and sesthetic depth of both is in each 
 case lost, alinost without leaving a trace behind. We read 
 through the works of Munday, of Marston and Webster, of Ford 
 and Field, of Massinger and Hey wood, of Jonson and Middleto% 
 of Beaumont and Fletcher, and we find an uncommon richness 
 of power and matter prominent in their plays,, which often, 
 overladen with three-fold actions, present an inexhaustible mine 
 for the dramajiist well acquainted with psychological and thea^ 
 trical matters ; but throughout, the work of the artisan must be 
 refined into the work of the artist. We look upon a mighty 
 industry, rapidly organized upon a great demand, fuU of 
 ■clumsy, careless, hasty manufactures paid by the piece, and 
 formed according to the wishes of the multitude ; an industry 
 •occasionally guided by a publisher such as Munday, who him- 
 self indeed made a dozen plays in company with two. or three 
 poets. Here everything testifies of sap and vigour in the minds 
 engaged, of life and motion, of luxuriant creative genius, and 
 of ready ability to satisfy a glaring taste with glaring effects ; 
 but the forming hand of that master is nowhere tp be perceived, 
 who created his works according to the demands of the highest 
 ideal of art. Misused freedom and power, disfigured form, 
 distorted truth, stunted greatness — these are everywhere the 
 ■characteristics of the works of these poets. In the strictest 
 contrast to the French theatre, ridiculing all rules, void of all 
 ■criticism, and without any power of arrangement, they gene-, 
 rally confound a wild heap of ill-connected events of the most 
 opposite character in an exciting confusion of buffoonery and 
 liorror, allowing even an action full of abominable depravity to 
 issue in a comedy, and a plot of a conciliating character to 
 terminate in a tragedy ; they seek sublimity in extravagance, 
 power in excess, the tragic in the awful; they strain the hor- 
 rible to insipidity, they give events the loose character of 
 adventures, they pervert motives to whims, they turn characters 
 into caricatures. With Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's witty and 
 ■cheerful view of life becomes bitter satire, his idealism becomes 
 realism, his florid poetry is turned into prose soberness, his 
 world, charming with its manifold forms of fancy, is exchanged 
 -for a lumber-room full of strange requisites, his delineations of 
 
DSAMATIC POETRY BEFOSE SHAKESPEAEE. 81 
 
 the eternal nature and habits of men is transferred into a 
 representation of ephemeral extravagances, and his typical cha- 
 racters become whimsical humourists. On the other hand, 
 there are countless plays by the less original of the poets of 
 that day, full of direct reminiscences of Shakespeare in the 
 manner of speech and jest, in outward colouring, in designs, 
 situations, and forms of character ; but we have only to observe 
 how Massinger exaggerated the character of lago in his ' Duke 
 of Milan,' or how he christianized Shylock in his work ' A New 
 Way to Pay Old Debts,' or how Ford (' 'Tis a Pity she's a Whore') 
 transferred the glowing colouring of the love in Eomeo and 
 Juliet to an incestuous passion, between a brother and sister, 
 and to compare these with Shakespeare, in order at once to 
 perceive the extent of the aesthetic gap between these disciples 
 and their master. And still wider is the distance between them 
 in an ethical respect. In a number of dramas which originated 
 contemporaneously with Shakespeare or after him, we are 
 transported into an infected sphere, among the middle and 
 lower London classes, where morals were more heathenish, says 
 Massinger, than among the heathen, and crime, as Ben Jonson 
 represents, was more refined than in hell. ' The society in which 
 we here move ' — thus it is said in a serious Morality of this time 
 (' Lingua,' 1607) — ' is that ofpassionate lovers, miserable fathers, 
 extravagant sons, insatiable courtesans, shameless bawds, 
 stupid fools, impudent parasites, lying servants, and bold syco- 
 phants.' Yet even these figures and subjects were not hideous 
 enough for the poets; they had recourse at the same time 
 especially to Italian society, as it is depicted in the history 
 and romance of the age — a world of corruption, which, 
 with bare-faced shamelessness and obduracy, delights in an impu- 
 dent ostentation of strong andyviolent crimes. Not satisfied 
 with this characteristic choice of the most repulsive matter, 
 they could not even portray it faithfully enough in the coarsest 
 realistic truth without an ideal perspective. Nay, not even 
 satisfied with this photographic image, they chose rather to 
 hold the concave mirror before the age, that the deformity 
 might be yet more deformed. Lingering with darkened vision 
 upon these shadow-sides in their plays, which can often only 
 awake the interest of criminal procedures, concealing by silence 
 the light-side of that luxuriant English race and their political 
 and religious power, the greater part of these poets adhere 
 notwithstanding firmly to the ethical vocation of their art, but 
 
 a 
 
82 SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 like Ben Jonson they fall into a harsh and severe theory of 
 intimidation, which misses its aim in the poet's task still 
 more than in that of the judge. Wherever they more posi- 
 tively tend to a moral idea, as is the case -with Heywood 
 and Massinger, they fall into another devious path. Losing 
 that sense of moderation, which in Shakespeare measures 
 human actions according to the pure eternal moral law, these 
 Eomanticists of English literature point in idealistic extrar 
 vagance to conventionally extolled virtues, and bring for- 
 ward examples of exaggerated ideas of honour and fidelity, 
 in the style of the Spanish drama. And still more frequently 
 these poets, though conscious of their vocation as elevators of 
 morals, drawn down by the gravitating force of the corrupt 
 conditions of life, suffer their hand to sink in convulsive efforts, 
 and even inconsiderately resign themselves to the current of 
 depravity, and sketch with seductive pencil the vices of the 
 age, dead to the sensibility of moral feeling. This internal 
 ruin sufficiently explains why the dramatic poetry of England, 
 rapidly as it started forth, and luxuriantly as it grew up, just 
 as quickly withered; why its constant adversary, Puritanic 
 religious zeal, forced it so soon to relinqiush the task for which 
 it had proved itself too weak— the task of purifying society by a 
 moral revolution. We can imagine that this degeneration of 
 the stage would have been alone sufficient ground for Shake- 
 speare's prematmre withdrawal from the stage, from London, 
 and from his poetic vocation ; he could no longer recognize his 
 own work in the wild practices of those who believed themselves 
 his most devoted disciples. For the intellectual extent of his 
 historical survey of the world, the profound character of his 
 poetic creation, and his moral refinement of feeling, were to the 
 whole race a sealed letter. All this, however, makes Shake- 
 speare's appearance in no wise a marvel. The passionate 
 sympathy of the people for the art of the stage, the merry life 
 of the court, the activity of a great city, the prosperity of a 
 youthful state, the multitude of distinguished men, of famous 
 persons by sea and land, in the cabinet and in the field, who 
 were concentrated in London, the ecclesiastical and political 
 advance on all sides, the scientific discoveries, the progress of 
 the arts in other branches ; all this combined together in pro- 
 ducing the poet, whose fascinated eye rested upon this whole 
 movement. So, too, in the history of European civilization, 
 Shakespeare's great conte:|nporary, Francis Bacon, is no excep- 
 
DRAMATIC POETSY BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 83 
 
 tion, although at that time in England he stood as solitairy as 
 Shakespeare. All that belonged to the theatrical apparatus — 
 the means and the material — lay ready for the great poet's dra- 
 matic art. No great dramatist of any other nation has met 
 v?ith a foundation for his art of such enviable extent and 
 strength, -with such a completeness of -well-prepared materials 
 for its construction, such as ancient tradition and present 
 practice afforded to Shakespeare. From the Mysteries he drew 
 the necessity for epic fulness of matter, from the Moralities 
 he gained ideal and ethical thought, from the Comic Interludes 
 he derived the characteristic of realistic truth to nature, from 
 the Middle Ages he acquired the romantic matter of epic-poetic 
 and historical literature; from the present he obtained the 
 strong passions of a politically excited people, and of a private 
 society deeply stirred by the religious, scientific, and industrious 
 movements of the age. The higher ideal of art, and the more 
 refined conception of form, ■which in this branch of poetry was 
 not yet existing in England, he could gather from antiquity 
 when not drawing from the resources of his own mind, 
 and from the more cultivated branches of poetry, in which 
 Sidney and Spenser had laboured. But that which beyond all 
 had the most direct influence upon Shakespeare's dramatic 
 poetry, and affected it in a manner which unhappily we cannot 
 sufficiently estimate, was the flourishing state of the histrionic 
 art. It is certain that Shakespeare learned more from one 
 Eichard Burbage than he could have done from ten Marlowes ; 
 and he who is searching for proofs of any direct aid to our poet 
 in his young and yet uncertain art, need seek no other. 
 
 We must, therefore, turn our attention briefly to dlramatic 
 affairs in Shakespeare's time. 
 
 3 
 
THE STAGE. 
 
 The history of the stage in London kept pace with the progress 
 of dramatic poetry. Patronized by an amusement-loving queen^ 
 and even after her death promoted in every way by the learned 
 James, supported by an ostentatious nobility, and sought after m 
 increasing degTee by a sight-loving people, the stage rose extra- 
 ordinarily both in the capital and country during the last thirty ' 
 years of the sixteenth century. All that had before been for 
 the most part the rough inoffensive amusement of artisans for - 
 their own pleasure ; ail that the servants of the nobles had only 
 acted before their masters, or the members of the courts in 
 Gray's Inn and the Temple had only played before the queen 
 or before their fellows in a small circle ; all that the children of 
 the royal chapel or the choristers of St. Paul's, had attempted 
 in histrionic art before the court ; this now found its way among 
 the mass of the people, and throughout the whole extent of the 
 land. The sacred and moral tendency of the Mysteries and 
 Moralities gave way to an exuberance of jests and burlesques ; 
 the miserable attempts at poetry were exchanged for a serious 
 pursuit of art prosecuted vdth all the zeal of novelty ; actings 
 once a humble talent kept imder a bushel, stepped forward into 
 public life, and became a profession capable of supporting its 
 votary. A great excitement in favour of the new art, to an ex- 
 tent which has never agaiu been manifested but in. Spaia at the 
 time of Lope de. Vega, seized the people even to the lowest 
 orders, and at the very outset the young stage was not lack- 
 ing in overweening extravagance, while it felt itself doubly 
 secure in the favour of the court and of the whole nation. The 
 Lord Mayor and aldermen of London endeavoured with re- 
 markable perseverance to put an end to, not only the mischief, 
 but even the existence and duration of this art; the royal 
 Privy Council, on the other hand, was the refuge of the players, ■ 
 
THE STAGE 85 
 
 especially of the regular companies, who gave their representa- 
 tions in town or country under the protection of the crown or 
 under the name of some great noble. These noble companies 
 often, rightly or wrongly, annoimced themselves as royal players ; 
 and under the pretext of being obliged to prepare themselves 
 for their play before the queen, they set up their stage in taverns 
 (for at the time of which we speak there were no established 
 theatres), into which the lowest dregs of the people streamed. 
 Besides these there were vagabonds and adventurers, who 
 played without any official license, and therefore became the 
 object of repeated prohibitions. In Puritan England there was 
 difficulty in keeping the Sunday, even the time of divine service, 
 free from these profane representations. The playhouses were 
 overcrowded, the churches empty. At court, the plays on Sunday 
 were maintained for a long time, and it was a malicious-joy to 
 the Catholics to refer to this disorder of the newly-established 
 Protestantism, which the City authorities named, in opposition 
 to divine service, a devil's service. At the evening assemblies 
 of the lowest London company in the tavern-theatres, there was 
 quarrelling and noise, pick-pocketing and immoral scenes of all 
 sorts ; upon the stage, a danger of fire ; during the time of the 
 plague, an increase of infection. Besides these gross public 
 evils, the City authorities were apprehensive of the publication 
 of unchaste speeches and actions, of the corruption of youth, 
 and of the extravagance of the poor who brought their pennies 
 for the play. When, upon the- repeated decrees of the munici- 
 palities against the excesses of the stage, the royal players com- 
 plained to the Privy Council and alleged in their defence the 
 exercise of the art for the court and their need of support, 
 ■ the authorities replied that it was not necessary that they should 
 practise before the lowest company ; that they ought to play in 
 private houses ; and that with respect to their maintenance, it 
 had never been customary to make the drama a trade ! These 
 attacks only served to establish the infant stage more firmly. 
 The word 'trade' was accepted, as it were, as a challenge; a 
 regular art was now cultivated, which sought its own temple. 
 ' Art was tongue-tied by authority,' as Shakespeare says in his 
 sonnets, but the race to the goal only proceeded with greater 
 effort. In the year 1572 an Act appeared 'for the punishment 
 of vagabonds,' that is of those players who did not belong to one 
 of the nobles of the kingdom. In the following year the Mayor 
 ,and aldermen of London gave a refusal to a request of the Eail 
 
86 SHAKE8PEAEE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 of Sussex, in favoxir of a Dr. Holmes, for the establishment of 
 playhouses. "When, in the year 1574, the servants of the Lord 
 Chamberlain, the JEarl of Leicester, at whose head stood James 
 Burbage, gained a patent which licensed them to play in town 
 and kiiigdom for the solace and pleasure of the queen as well as 
 for ' the recreation of her loving subjects,' the City burdened the 
 license granted to the company by an obligation to contribute 
 half their income to the benefit of the poor. However, soon 
 after, and perhaps in consequence of this opposition, James Bur- 
 bage received, through the powerful influence of his master, 
 permission to erect a theatre outside the jurisdiction of the 
 town, but close by the City wall, in the dissolved monastery of 
 the Blackfriars, near the bridge of the same name ; at the same 
 time arose the ' Theatre ' and the ' Curtain ' at Shoreditch, not 
 far distant. About 1578 there were already eight different 
 theatres in and near the city of London, to the great sorrow of 
 the Puritans. About the year 1600 the number of theatrical 
 buildings, exclusively devoted to this object, had risen to eleven ; 
 under James I. they reckoned seventeen existing or restored 
 playhouses ; a number which London at the present day, im- 
 mensely increased as it is, falls short of possessing. Thus the 
 better actors passed from wandering to stationary companies, 
 which, as Hamlet says, 'both in reputation and profit, was 
 better both ways.' The art was by this means confirmed in its 
 development and intrinsic value. Its importance and signifi- 
 cance, the esteem of the actors, their position and influence, 
 rose imhindered. Who could venture to oppose the omnipotent 
 Lord Chamberlain, the chief patron of theatrical matters ? Who 
 pould dare to oppose the pleasure of the queen, who in 1583 for 
 the first time took twelve royal players into her service, among 
 them those two rare men Eobert Wilson and Eichard Tarlton, 
 comic actors of the most versatile extemporizing wit, the last 
 of whom was for the age a prodigy of comic skill ? The alder- 
 men of London were obliged to submit that this ' lord of mirth,' 
 to whom everything was permitted, and who at the royal table 
 attacked even Ealeighs and Leicesters, should ridicule in a jig 
 their ' long-earde familie,' who would see no fools but among 
 their 'brethren of assize.' Not even ruling princes, not the 
 state, nor politics, nor religion, were spared by the actors on 
 their stage. After the ruin of the Armada they ridiculed the King 
 of Spain and the Catholic religion ; and on the other side the 
 Puritans, the sworn enemies of the drama, had to fear the 
 
THE STAGE. 87 
 
 scourge of satire. Not alone the theatre in Shoreditch, but the 
 choristers of St. Paul's, ventured to deride the Puritans in their 
 plays, and about the year 1589 two companies were in conse- 
 quence forbidden to act. ■ Subsequently, in the reign of James I., 
 under whom theatrical affairs rose into still greater favour, ob- 
 jectionable pieces were produced in the Blackfriars Theatre, at 
 which the members of the council, the aldermen, and at last the 
 foreign ambassadors, complained. This custom of attacking 
 upon the stage public characters, the state, law, rule, and living 
 private individuals, originated, according to Thomas Hey- 
 wood's assertion, with the children of St. Paul's ; the poets 
 placed their sallies in their lips, using their youth as a shield 
 and privilege for their invectives. Soon the insolence of these 
 boys turned against the stage itself. About the time at which 
 Hamlet was written, these children, favoured by the public and 
 the writers, had risen over ' Hercules and his load,' that is to 
 say, over the Globe Theatre, the most famous of all; they 
 ridiculed the adult performers, the ' common stages.' It is for 
 this that Shakespeare casts a repirehensive glance, in Hamlet, 
 upon these unfledged nestlings and their pertness, who certainly 
 would themselves grow up into ' common players.' But it was 
 just this bold interference in the life of the great capital which 
 pleased the people. The other theatres imitated it, and carried 
 it further than had ever been the case in a modern state since 
 Aristophanes. 
 
 All these things collectively render it evident that the 
 vigorous inclination towards this new art, sustained and 
 nourished in all classes by the people itself, was sufficiently 
 powerful to boldly defy the opposition of the strongest pre- 
 judice, of the most powerful classes, of the clergy and the 
 magistrates, of the Church and police. All advanced in the 
 most flourishing condition ; the managers of the dramas made 
 increasing profits; the most distinguished artists, Edward 
 Alleyn, Eichard Burbage, and even oiu: Shakespeare, died as 
 large landholders and wealthy people. It was in vain that the 
 religious denounced the stage in the most forcible writings ; it 
 was in vain that dramatic poets themselves repented of their 
 profane toils, and recalled back their companions from this 
 school of abuse. From 1577-79, when Northbrooke's treatise 
 against ' Vain Plays or Interludes ' and Grosson's ' School of 
 Abuse ' began the strife against the stage upon Christian and 
 stoical principles, and supported by the authorities of the 
 
88 SHAKESPEAEE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. ' 
 
 Church Fathers and heathen writers, a continual controversy- 
 in poetry and prose, for and against theatrical matters,, 
 was prolonged through the whole period of the highest , pro- 
 sperity of the theatre, until the year 1633, when Prynne's 
 ' Histriomastix,' the labour of seven years, appeared, at a time 
 when the Puritans and their anti-theatrieal opinions had ac- 
 quired greater force and assurance. Before this time all op- 
 position was fruitless. The dramatic poets multiplied' like 
 their works. The diary is preserved of a certaia Philip 
 Henslowe, a pawnbroker, who advanced money to many 
 companies ; from his notices we gather that between 1591-97 
 110 different plays were performed, by those players alone with 
 whom he transacted business. Between 1597 and 1603 
 he recorded 160 plays, and after 1597 no less than thirty 
 dramatic authors were in his pay ; among them Thomas Hey- 
 wood, who alone wrote 220 plays, or had a share in them. 
 Of all this abundance much has been lost, as no value was 
 placed upon the publication of the plays. The ardour of the 
 spectator was the greater, the less he read. But even when, 
 from the printing of the works of Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, 
 reading gained ground and the value of the stage declined, the 
 ardent desire and taste for the art still long remained in vigour. 
 They now saw and read the works; in 1633 Prynne mentions, 
 in his before-named book, that in two years about 40,000 copies, 
 of dramas had been disposed of, as they were more in favour 
 than sermons. The period at the close of the sixteenth century, 
 when Shakespeare produced his Eomeo, his Merchant of Venice, 
 and his Henry IV., was the signal for the greater extension of 
 dramatic poetry. Numbers now of professional poets appeared, 
 who dedicated the labom- of their life to the art. From this 
 time forth the nation became aware of that inner worth of the 
 stage, and its fame extended far beyond the kingdom. "With 
 what self-satisfaction does Thomas Heywood, in his ' Apology for 
 Actors' (1612), glory that the English tongue, the most harsh^ 
 uneven, broken, and mixed language of the world, now fashioned 
 by the dramatic art, had grown to a most perfect language, 
 possessing excellent works and poems, so that now many 
 nations grow enamoured of this formerly despised tongue. 
 Strangers from all countries carried abroad the praise of the 
 English actors ; and soon we hear of English companies who 
 performed in Amsterdam, and even traversed the whole of 
 Geimany, while we possess in German translations pieces fromi 
 
The stage. 89 
 
 the English stage, now again re-translated into English from 
 the miserable rhymes of Ayrer. 
 
 The company which Shakespeare entered, when he came to 
 London, was at that time and afterwards the most distinguished. 
 They were the servants of the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of 
 Leicester, who about the year 1589 were called the Queen's 
 Players ; in their number were the fellow-citizens of Shakespeare, 
 who probably enticed him to join them. We have said before 
 that James Burbage, at the head of this company, founded 
 the theatre in the monastery of the Blackfriars, which had 
 formerly served as a depot for the machinery and wardrobe of 
 the pageants and masks of the court, and therefore naturally 
 had attracted Burbage's attention. The position of this stage, 
 in the centre of London, and the enticing attraction of its per- 
 formances, vied with each other in securing to this theatre the 
 first rank, and in giving it the highest importance as well as the 
 greatest success. The rapid good fortune of this company may 
 be perceived in the fact that about 1594 they built a second 
 and more spacious theatre, the Griobe, not far from the South- 
 wark foot of London Bridge ; it was an open space, where plays 
 were performed in the fine time of the year. During the 
 building of the Globe the Lord Chamberlain's players acted, 
 it seems, for a time, in connection with the Lord Admiral's 
 company at Newington, so that they appear everywhere to have 
 been sought after and engaged. The Lord Admiral's company 
 was the most powerftd rival of the Blackfriars. Both 
 companies escaped on every occasion that the authorities raged 
 against the theatres, because their stages were not regarded as 
 common playhouses, but as establishments for the practice . of 
 the plays which the queen desired. About 1597 the theatres 
 gave another offence ; the Privy Council itself this time 
 commanded that the ' Theatre ' ' and ' Curtain ' in Shoreditch 
 should be ' plucked down,' and ' any other common playhouses ' 
 in Middlesex and Surrey. But all these decrees appear to have 
 been issued by the Privy Council only for the sake of appearance ; 
 in order, as Collier says, ' to satisfy the importunity of particular 
 individuals, but there was no disposition on the part of persons 
 in authority to carry them into execution.' The players of the 
 Lord Admiral, who acted at the Curtain in winter, and at the Eose 
 in simimer, had been guilty of the offence in 1597 ; but not- 
 withstanding they subsequently continued to perform at the 
 Curtain, which according to decree was to have been demolished ; 
 
90 SHAKESPEASE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 and at the Eose, which Henslowe had converted into a theatre 
 in 1584 ; and they remained just as undisturbed as the company 
 of the Lord Chamberlain at the Globe. In 1598 both these 
 companies were newly licensed ; and about the year 1 600 
 Henslowe and AUeyn, the leaders of the Admiral's players, 
 removed from the dilapidated Eose to the Fortune in Grolden 
 Lane, probably to be further from the Grlobe ; and here Edward 
 Alleyn, the rival of Eichard Burbage, soon after purchased 
 land, to an amount which evidences that he was an unusually 
 wealthy man. 
 
 The stage at Blackfriars on which the two gifted friends, 
 Shakespeare and Eichard Burbage, performed, proudly boasted 
 of being the most refined and cultivated in London. With 
 this superiority we must not imagine that any outward 
 splendour and luxury was combined. A happy simplicity 
 prevailed throughout the exterior of the representation. The 
 buildings were bad, and built of wood ; those provided with a 
 roof were called private theatres ; the public ones were un- 
 covered ; gallery and boxes were divided as at present ; for the 
 best -box only a shilling was paid. The proper periods for 
 plays, before they became public spectacles, were in the winter — 
 at Christmas, N6w Year's Day, Twelth-day, and Lent. But 
 after the drama had become a profession, the public theatres 
 were opened throughout the year ; under Elizabeth, daily. 
 Trumpets and a flag announced the approaching commencement, 
 which took place in the afternoon at three o'clock. Music from 
 an upper balcony, above the now so-called stage-boxes, opened 
 the representation ; the spectators amused themselves before it 
 began with smoking and games, eating fruit and drinking 
 beer ; rude young men thundered and fought for bitten apples : 
 so we are told in Henry VIII. The distinguished patrons and 
 judges thronged the stage, or placed themselves behind the 
 side-scenes. The speaker of the prologue, who appeared after 
 the third flourish of trumpets, was generally attired in black 
 velvet. Between the acts buffoonery and singing were kept up, 
 and at the end of the piece a fool's jig, with trumpets and pipes, 
 was introduced. At the conclusion of the whole a prayer was 
 offered up by the kneeling actors for the reigning prince. The 
 greatest care was expended on costume and dress ; they appear 
 occasionally to have been magnificent. From the ' Alleyn 
 Papers ' we know that on some occasion more than 20l. was 
 given for a velvet cloak, and the adherents of good old customs 
 
THE STAGE. 91 
 
 considered it most flagrant that two hundred actors should be 
 seen splendid in silken garments, while eight hundred poor 
 hungered in the streets. On the other hand, the scenery was 
 extremely scanty. Trap-doors were of an early date. Movable 
 decorations appeared later ; when tragedies were acted, the 
 theatre was hung round with black tapestry. A raised board, 
 bore the name of the place at which the spectator was to 
 imagine himself; it was thus easy to represent ships, easy to 
 change the scene, and natural to disregard unity of place. An 
 elevation, a projection in the middle of the stage, served for 
 window, rampart, tower, and balcony, and for a smaller stage 
 in the theatre, as for example, in the interlude in Hamlet. In 
 the court representations, however, this poor makeshift was 
 early cast aside. In 1568 there were painted scenes, houses, 
 towns, and mountains, and even storms with thunder and 
 lightning. Movable decorations appeared first in 1605 at 
 Oxford, at a representation before King James, and in the 
 following years they were so universal that scene-shifting soon 
 became common. A few years before Shakespeare came to 
 London, Sir PhiUp Sydney described, in a deriding but expressive 
 manner, in his ' Apology of Poetry ' ( 1 583), the rough and simple 
 condition of the popular stage, according to his noble and 
 learned conceptions of the dramatic art. ' In most pieces,' he 
 says, ' you shall have Asia of the one side and Afric of the other, 
 and so many other under-kingdoms, that the player, when he 
 comes in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the 
 tale will not be conceived. Now you shall have three ladies walk 
 to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a 
 garden ; by and by we hear news of a shipwreck in the same 
 place ; then, we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. 
 Upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster with fire 
 and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take 
 it for a cave ; while, in the meantime, two armies fly in, repre- 
 sented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard 
 heart will not receive it for a pitched field ? ' Just in a similar 
 tone Shakespeare himself, in the prologue to Henry V., ridicules 
 the ' unworthy scaffold '. upon which the poet dares ' to bring 
 forth so great an object,' the cock-pit, which is to represent the 
 ' vasty fields of France,' the little number of mute figures and 
 expedients when ' with four or five most vile and ragged foils", 
 right ill disposed, they would disgrace, in brawl ridiculous, 
 the name of Agincourt.' 
 
9'2 SHAKESPEARE Hf LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 We should draw a conclusion contrary to nature and expe- 
 rience if we argued from this poverty of the outworks a rough 
 dramatic art. In Germany we have seen the theatre rise from 
 the barn to. the poor playhouse, and then to the magnificent 
 structure ; whilst the intellectual enjoynaent, interest, and taste 
 would be perhaps just in inverse proportion ever in the decline. 
 In a generation accustomed to art and soon corrupted by art, 
 the imagination quickly demands all the stimulants offered by 
 mag^ficent decorations and accessories ; the simple and fresh 
 feeling of society, when the least enjoyments are new and 
 overwhelming, requires none of these enhancements and incen- 
 tives. The imagination is here excited by the slightest touch. 
 Shakespeare, therefore, in that same prologue to Henry V., can 
 confidently rely upon the ' imaginary puissance ' of his auditors ; 
 he can deinand of them to ' piece out ' the imperfections of the 
 stage with their thoughts, to divide one man into a thousand 
 parts, and to create in imagination the forces which the stage 
 cannot provide. The less distraction offered to the senses, the 
 more the whole attention of the spectators was fixed upon the 
 intellectual perforpaances of the actors, and the more were these 
 directed to the essence of their art. We must not forget how 
 much temptation the players and spectators were spared in the 
 false gratification of the senses, and how much the fixing of the 
 mind upon the nature of the matter was facilitated by the one 
 fact that no women acted. The custom of the time was strong' 
 upon this point. When, in 1629, French actors appeared in 
 London, among whom women played, they were hissed off the 
 stage. Dramatic poetry was in later times seduced by this 
 custom to become still more bold and impudent, but for the 
 histrionic art it offered the most tangible advantages. How 
 many intrigues behind the scenes, how much that was dangerous 
 to the moral character of the actor, was removed by this one 
 habit, which at the same time promoted, with far greater 
 results, the most refined development of the histrionic art. The 
 female characters were to be played by boys ; this made the 
 boys' theatres a necessity; and these became a school for actors, 
 such as we do not possess at all in later times. And what 
 actors ! From these schools proceeded Field and Underwood, 
 who were famous even as boys ; and how must these boys have 
 been trained who could have played a Cordelia and an Imogen 
 well enough even to suit ruder natures ? And were they rude 
 natures who at that time' took an interest in the stage? 
 
THE STAGE, 93 
 
 a Francis Bacon, who himself once in his youth in Gray's Inn 
 took part in a representation ? and Ealeigh, Pembroke, South- 
 ampton, who, when they were in town, regularly visited the 
 stage ? We will not attach too much importance to the fact 
 that the court distinguished before all others the players of the 
 Blackfriars company ; that King James as well as Elizabeth, 
 according to Jonson's testimony, particularly delighted in 
 Shakespeare's pieces ; though the court was certainly the 
 choicest auditory before which a poet like Shakespeare could 
 wish to exhibit his works I What may we not suppose of the 
 queen's intellectual perception and versatility, if, accustomed 
 to the gross and open flatteries of Lilly and Peele, she could 
 admire the refined compliments of the Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, full as it is of enchanting poetry and allusions ? But 
 even outside the court Shakespeare's stage attracted the noblest 
 company. Even of the public spectators, who sat in the boxes 
 at Blackfriars, the Prologue to Henry VIII. could say that they 
 were known to be ' the first and happiest hearers of the town.' 
 The poet who had worked for this theatre had formed this 
 public ; how otherwise should he so steadily and so perseveringly 
 ihave created his profound works if only to lavish them upon 
 coarseness ? But he fashioned his actors also. Histrionic art 
 and dramatic poetry here met in the rarest reciprocity. The 
 plays of Marlowe and Ben Jonson would have failed to produce 
 the Buibage which Shakespeare's elicited; and never could the 
 poet have preserved the profound character of his dramas, nor 
 so often veiled with art the thoughts of his works, nor fashioned 
 his most wonderful characters-^— often as if designedly — into 
 mysterious problems, if he had not .had at his side men who 
 followed him into the depth to which he descended, who under- 
 stood how to lift his veil and to solve his enigmas. 
 
 To form an idea of the manner of the older actors, when 
 they indulged in Puritanical declamation, or practised their 
 tragic art in Marlowe's bombastic style, or sought comic effect 
 in low buffoonery, we need only remember the descriptions in 
 Shakespeare's own plays. Eeferring to the old Miracle-plays, 
 he mentions in Hamlet the parts of the Saracen Grod Termagant 
 and the tyrant Herod, which the actors overdid in tragic fury. 
 And his allusions to the character of Vice in the Moralities, 
 prove that this part was played with the most commonplace 
 buffoonery. With respect to tragic plays, he depicts in Troilus 
 and Cressida picturesquely and expressively the pitiful extra- 
 
94 8HAKM8FEABE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 vagance of the proud hero, whose ' wit lies in his sinews ; ' 
 
 who 
 
 Doth think it rich 
 To hear the wooden dialogue and sound 
 'Twixt his stretoh'd footing and the scaifoldage ; 
 
 who, 
 
 When he speaks, 
 'Tis like a chime a-mending ; with terms unsqnared, 
 Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp'd, 
 Would seem hyperboles. 
 
 These were those ' robustious and periwig-pated fellows ' of 
 whom Hamlet speaks, ' who outdid Termagant and out-heroded 
 Herod, who delighted in tearing ' a passion to tatters, to very 
 rags, to split the ears of the groundlings (those who stood on 
 the ground in old theatres) ; players, who ' so strutted and 
 bellowed,' that they had neither 'the accent of Christians 
 nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man.' This pleased; 
 it was 'praised, and that highly,' by hearers accustomed 
 to Titus Andronicus and the horrible tragedies of Marlowe, 
 Kyd, and Chettle ; but our poet and his sensitive Hamlet- were 
 grieved to the soul, and he would gladly have 'whipped' 
 these disqualified noise-makers who ' imitated humanity so 
 abominably.' With regard to the comic plays, the one cha- 
 racter of Tarlton, and what we know of himself and his 
 acting, is sufficient to denote the previous state of things. 
 Shakespeare may have seen him ; he died in 1588. Born in 
 the lowest station, according to one authority originally a 
 swineherd, and to another a water-carrier, his wonderM 
 humour brought him to the court and the stage at the same 
 time. The tricks and jests which are related of Mm are a 
 counterpart of those of our own Eulenspiegel and Glaus the fool. 
 There was scarcely a more popular man in England at his time ; 
 he was associated with that mythical representative of the 
 popular humour, Eobin Groodfellow, of whom English legends 
 recount the same tricks as our popular books do of Eulenspiegel ; 
 they called him his fellow, and wrote after his death a diar 
 logue between Eobin and Tarlton's ghost. He was at once the 
 people's fool, the court fool, and the stage fool. In life, on the 
 circuits of his troops, amongst the lowest company, he practised 
 knavish tricks and wit from the impulse of his nature. At the 
 court, as a servant of Elizabeth, he spoke more truths to the 
 queen than most of her chaplains, and cured her melancholy 
 better than all her physicians. Upon the stage he was no other- 
 
THE STAGE. 95 
 
 wise than in life. Small, ugly, rather squinting, flat-nosed, he en- 
 livened his hearers if he only showed his head on the stage, and 
 spoke not a word ; with the same words, which in the lips of another, 
 would have been indifferent, he made the most melancholy laugh. 
 But with this applause he committed an abuse, which was 
 inconsistent with true art. He and the fools of his time re- 
 garded the play in which they acted no otherwise than the court 
 and the streets, where they could continue their part, which 
 was unvarying. They remained on the stage not merely in 
 certain scenes, but during the whole piece ; they improvised 
 their jests as occasion offered ; they conversed, disputed, bantered 
 with their hearers and their hearers with them, and in these 
 contests Tarlton was pre-eminent. After his death William 
 Kempe, who was his pupil, became the inheritor of his fame 
 and tricks ; he played in Shakespeare's company, but twice 
 separated from it, once just about the time in which Hamlet 
 was written. Very possibly Shakespeare alluded to him in the 
 famous passage which is plainly condemnatory of this kind of 
 acting. ' Let those that play your clowns,' he says, ' speak no 
 more than is set down for them : for there be of them, that 
 will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spec- 
 tators to laugh too : though in the mean time some necessary 
 question of the play be then to be considered : that's villainous, 
 and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.' It is 
 certain that from the time of Shakespeare's appearance this 
 ingenious waste of art was renoim^ced. In a comedy of 1640 
 Brome looks back upon the time of Tarlton and Kempe, when the 
 fools lavished their wit, and the poets spared their own for better 
 use, as upon a remote period, in which the stage was not free 
 from barbarisms. 
 
 From these exaggerations of jest and earnestness Shakes- 
 peare recalled the players to truth and simplicity. The actor 
 who through diffidence failed in his part, or the actor who 
 through arrogance overdid his character, were to him both alike 
 unqualified. To raise the actor above reality, as far as the art 
 demands this elevation, must always be left to the poet ; if the 
 latter possesses the ideal vein, which raises his poetry above the 
 low level of common truth and reality, then the actor has to 
 devote all his powers to give' to this elevated and art-ennobled 
 language the whole simple truth a/nd fidelity of nature. This 
 is the meaning of those immortal words which Hamlet offered 
 as a positive rule in opposition to the method he had rejected — 
 
96 SHJjaSSFEASE IN' WNBON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 words which should be written in gold on the inside of every 
 stage-curtain. In our own day the actors are scarcely to be 
 found who even understand how to deliver these words accord- 
 ing to their sense ; and yet only he who knows how to follow 
 them throughout his art is on the sure path to become a great 
 actor. ' Speak the speech,' so the passage rfeads, ' trippingly on 
 the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, 
 I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw 
 the air too much with your hand, thus ; but use all gently : for 
 in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, whirlwind of 
 passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may 
 give it smoothness. Be not too tame neither, but let your own 
 discretion be your tutor : suit the action to the word, the word 
 to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not 
 the modesty pf nature : for anjrthing so overdone is from the 
 purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was 
 and is, "to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature ; to show 
 virtue her, own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age 
 and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this over- 
 done, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, 
 cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which 
 one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of 
 others.' Certainly, nothing could be more condemnatory than<* 
 if we should apply these words as a test to that which we now 
 caU histrionic art ; but, on the other hand nothing would be 
 grander, than if they could, in any case, be applied to this art 
 without condemning it. 
 
 These golden rtiles remained in Shakeispeare's time and 
 company no mere precepts. Eichard Burbage, in the histrionic 
 art, was the twin-genius to which Shakespeare's poetry could 
 x)ffer nothing too hard nor too difficult. Bom probably three 
 years later than our poet, Burbage died three years after 
 him. This took place at the same time as the death of Jamies' 
 queen, Anne ; his loss was more deeply deplored than hers, to 
 the great displeasure of the courtly world. ' He's gone,' is the 
 lament of an elegy upon his death, 
 
 And with him what a world are dead 1 
 Take him for all in all, he was a man, 
 Not to be matched, and no age ever can. 
 What a wide world was in that little space 1 
 Himself a world — the Globe his fittest place ! 
 
 His acting must have been the practice of Hamlet's theory 
 
THE STAGE. 97 
 
 the representation of Shakespeare's poetry ; and on the other 
 hand the poetry of Shakespeare rose higher by the influence of 
 his histrionic art. ' He made a poet,' is the proud language of 
 the elegy before quoted; for having Burbage 'to give forth 
 each line, it filled their brain with fury more divine.' In prose 
 and poetry his contemporaries speak with enthusiasm pf his 
 graceful appearance on the stage, which, although he was small 
 of stature, was ' beauty to the eye and music to the ear.' He 
 never went .off the stage but with applause ; he alone ' gave life 
 unto a play,' which was ' dead, as 'twas by the authors writ ; ' 
 so long as he was present he enchained eye and ear with such 
 magic force, that no one had power to speak or look another 
 way. In voice and gesture he possessed all that is enchanting ; 
 ' so did his speech,' says the elegy, 'become him, and his pace 
 suited with his speech ; ' and every action graced both alike, 
 whilst not a word fell without just weight to balancfe it. A 
 wonderful Proteus as he was, he transformed his whole acting 
 and appearance with facility from the old Lear to the youthful 
 Pericles ; every thought and every feeling could be read plainly 
 marked upon his countenance. In pantomime he was aided by 
 the art of mimicking, which, if we may credit the eulogies 
 upon him, he practised with equal skill, as his histrionic art. 
 This one trait, which we know of his intellectual history, inti- 
 mates that with him, no less than with Shakespeare, success 
 was achieved by labour ; that both added to unusual natural 
 talents unusual industry and study, and a desire not to fall 
 short of the gifts bestowed. In Shakespeare's plays he acted 
 every most difficult part ; in really comic characters alone he 
 never appeared. From positive testimony we know that he 
 played Hamlet,' Eichard III., Shylock, the Prince and King 
 Henry V., Eomeo, Brutus, Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Pericles, and 
 Coriolanus. Though, according to the insinuation in Hamlet, 
 there were at that day, as at the present, certain distinct parts, 
 such as the king, the hero, the lover, the villain, we see that 
 these were not for Burbage. His acting in the most diverse 
 parts must have been ever equally great : he seemed to seek the 
 rarest difficulties, and Shakespeare seemed to offer them to 
 him. Very possibly, Shakespeare only produced Pericles to 
 give his friend an opportunity of exhibiting to the spectator in 
 a few hours a shattered life in every degree of age. If so 
 much may be inferred from the allusions in the elegy on Bur- 
 bage's death, in which his principal parts are designated here 
 
98 SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 and there -with some characteristic token, he ventured in 
 Hamlet what no actor has ventured since nor ■will venture: 
 according to the direction of the poet he represented the hero in 
 that weak, fat corpulency so readily produced by want of move- 
 ment and activity, and, in moments of the greatest passion^ with 
 that ' scant of breath ' peculiar to such an' organisation. ' One 
 of his chief parts wherein, beyond the rest, he mov'd the heart, 
 was,' according to the elegy, 'the grieved Moor.' That one 
 epithet seems to say that he penetrated into the depth of 
 Shakespeare's character, and in his acting placed the main 
 importance upon the sorrow of disappointment which preceded 
 that 'return of chaos,' the unrestrained rage of jealousy; that 
 he fixed his attention upon the one point necessary for the 
 exhibition of Othello's character, if he is not to appear a weak 
 unrestrained barbarian, and the play itself a cruel outrage. 
 The depth of intellect and of feeling in this conception, if we 
 do not impute too much to that one word, were equally to be 
 admired. But the climax of his acting must have been 
 Eichard III. The^ poet has here combined everything which 
 can create unconquerable difiiculties for an actor. An insig- 
 nificant ugly being, who at the same time acts like a hero in 
 valour, and fascinates as a seducer of beauty ; the key-note in 
 these discordant touches being a masterly hypocrisy, which 
 necessitates the actor to represent the aetor in life upon the 
 stage — such a task surpasses everything which the art could at 
 any time have presented as a difSculty. The anecdote before 
 mentioned of the citizen's wife being: enchanted by Burbage's 
 acting in Eichard, whether true or invented,' shows that he 
 must have excellently represented the amiable side of the 
 smooth hypocrite ; the emphasis which he placed on the 
 powerful side of the character is attested by another better 
 authenticated anecdote, which proves the inextinguishable im- 
 pression he made by it upon the ruder children of nature. 
 There is extant a Bishop Corbet's poetical description of a 
 journey which the author made in England. He records, years 
 after Burbage's death, how he came to Bosworth. His host 
 relates to him the battle of Bosworth, where Eichard III. fell, 
 as if he had been there, or had examined all the historians ; the 
 bishop discovers that he had merely seen Shakespeare's play in 
 London ; and this is confirmed, when at the most animated 
 part he forgets himself, and mingles art and history : '" A king- 
 dom for a horse I " cries Eichard ; '' thus he meant to say ; but he ■ 
 said Burbage instead of Eichardw 
 
THE STAGE. 99 
 
 Buibage's rival was Edward Alleyn. Although he did not 
 belong to Shakespeare's company, it is just to mention him. 
 Collier has given his Memoirs in the publications of the Shake- 
 speare Society. He played probably as early as 1580, and was 
 already in 1592 in great repute. He was most attractive in the 
 more elevated characters ; but he must also have appeared in 
 comic parts, because it was boasted of him that he had surpassed 
 Tarlton and Kempe. He acted the heroes in Greene's and Mar- 
 lowe's plays, Orlando, Barabas, Faust, and Tamburlaine ; and the 
 public seem to have disputed as to the superiority of his acting 
 and Burbage's. Whetiier he ever acted in the Shakespeare 
 pieces, is doubtful; he played Lear, Henry VIII., Pericles, 
 Eomeo, and Othello ; but it is conjectured that the plays were 
 adopted with emendation upon another stage. As the two com- 
 panies of Burbage-Shakespeare and Alleyn played together at 
 Newington Butts, 1594-96, during the building of the Globe, 
 it is possible, however, that a compromise was made, which 
 granted to Alleyn the use of the Shakespeare pieces. That 
 Alleyn really equalled Burbage we are inclined to doubt. 
 Like Shakespeare, he did not long remain faithful to his pro- 
 fession and art ; he left the stage occasionally as early as 1597, 
 and for ever in 1606. We may remark that from that time,, 
 except in money transactions, he had nothing more to do with 
 the stage and actors. He had acquired great possessions, cer- 
 tainly not merely through his dramatic profits : he ultimately 
 owned the manors of Dulwich and Lewisham ; he was the single 
 proprietor of the Fortune, and the principal sharer in the 
 Blackfriars theatre ; besides this he possessed lands in York- 
 shire, and property in Bishopsgate and in the parish of Lambeth. 
 Simple, frugal, charitable, he was ever a kind and noble man. 
 As he had no family, he determined to employ his riches in 
 the establishment of Dulwich College — a, hospital for the aged 
 poor and a school for the young. The foundation of this great 
 institution was celebrated in 1619, seven years before Alleyn's 
 death. The actor put to shame the evil slanderers of the pro- 
 fession ; and it is a singular incident that the same clergyman, 
 Stephen Gosson, who long before had so violently denounced 
 plays and players, was a near spectator of this benevolent 
 establishment. 
 
 Such was the state of things when Shakespeare settled in 
 London, and entered that company of Burbage's where he 
 found his fellow-citizens. He himself trod the stage as an actor. 
 
 E 2 
 
100 SHAKSSPEABE IN LONDON AND ON THE STAGE. 
 
 At tbat period, when dramas were not written for the sake of 
 readers, when the separation between histrionic art and dramatic 
 poetry had not yet taken place, it was not unusual that dramatic 
 poets should be actors also ; G-reene, Marlowe, Peele, Ben Jon- 
 son, Heywood, Webster, Field, and others united both arts. 
 With regard to Shakespeare's perfection in the art, the expres- 
 sions of his contemporaries and the traditions of his biographers 
 appear to be at variance. Ohettle calls him excellent in his art ; 
 Aubrey says 'he did act exceedingly well;' Eowe, on the contrary, 
 states that he was a mediocre performer. Perhaps these accounts 
 are less contradictory than they appear. Collier's supposition 
 that Shakespeare only played short parts, in order to be less 
 disturbed in writing, appears natural and probable. We know 
 that he acted the Grhost of Hamlet's father, and this part, it is 
 said, was ' the top of his performance ; ' and one of his brothers, 
 probably Grilbert, at an advanced age, remembered having seen 
 him in the character of Adam, in ' As You Like It.' These are 
 subordinate but important parts; with justice did Thomas 
 Campbell say, that the Grhost in Hamlet demanded a good if not 
 a great actor. It was at that time a usual custom, and another 
 proof of the great perfection of the scenic art, that players of 
 rank acted several parts, some very insignificant ones as weU 
 as the chief characters : this gave a harmony to the whole ; it 
 preserved uniformity of the enjoyment and of the artistic effect, 
 and it enabled the poet to give distinction and life even to these 
 subordinate figures. If Shakespeare, therefore, in order to 
 pursue his poetic calling, played only shorter parts, this is no 
 argument against his histrionic qualifications ; if he played 
 many parts of the kind mentioned, it is rather in favour of them. 
 Yet this circumstance itself prevented his ever arriving at 
 extraordinary perfection or pre-eminence in this branch of art. 
 Besides, comparisons not only with Burbage, but of the actor 
 Shakespeare with the poet Shakespeare, were at hand, in both 
 of which the actor Shakespeare stood at a disadvantage. But 
 the circumstance which prevented him most truly from becoming 
 as great an actor as he was a poet was his moral antipathy to 
 this profession. This would have ever restrained him from the 
 attainment of the highest degree of the art, even if it had not 
 induced him early to quit the stage. But to these events we 
 shall return more at length. 
 
SHAKESPEAEE'S FIRST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 We have endeavoured to point out the condition of the stage 
 upon which Shakespeare entered on his settling in London, and 
 the state of dramatic poetry, in the nurture and progress of 
 which he now stood by the side of Marlowe and Grreene, Lodge 
 and Chettle. In the first short period of his dramatic writings 
 we see him more or less biassed by the peculiarities of this 
 poetry, but we observe at the same time how rapidly he sought 
 to disengage himself from the want of design, and from the 
 harshness and rudeness of their productions ; in the beginning a 
 subject scholar, he soon appears as a rising master. The relation 
 of Shakespeare to his contemporaries is illustrated by the fact 
 that his early plays were only elaborations of older existing 
 dramas, some of which we possess for comparison ; the elaborator, 
 however, soon raised himself above his prototypes, and after a 
 few years towered like a giant over them. Pericles and Titus — 
 the one from internal evidence, the other from a transmitted 
 record — are amongst these plays by another hand which were 
 only elaborated by Shakespeare. The First Part of Henry VI. 
 betrays at least the touches of three hands. The original of the 
 two last parts, which Shakespeare followed step by step with 
 his, is still preserved. In the Comedy of Errors, an English 
 play, founded on the ' Mensechmi ' of Plautus, probably lay before 
 the poet; the Taming of the Shrew is worked after a ruder 
 piece. These seven plays we consider, in accordance with most 
 English critics, to be the first dramatic attempts of our poet, 
 and we shall now glance over them in succession. , We shaU. 
 follow the course of the creative mind of the young poet in the 
 workshop iu which, indeed, he was yet to be himself formed. 
 
102 SHAKESPEARE'S FIEST JDBAMATJC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 TITUS ANDEONICUS AND PEEICLES. 
 
 It is indisputable that Titus Andronicus, if a work of Shake- 
 speare's at all, is one of his earliest writings. Ben Jonson (in 
 .the induction to 'Bartholomew Fair') said, in the year 1614, 
 that the Andronicus — by which he could hardly allude to any 
 other play — had been acted for twenty-five or thirty yearfe ; it 
 would, therefore, in any case have been produced during the 
 first years of Shakespeare's life in London. There are few, 
 however, among the readers who value Shakespeare who would 
 not wish to have it proved that this piece did not proceed from 
 the poet's pen. This wish is met by the remark of. a man named 
 Eavenscroft; who, in 1687, remodelled this tragedy, and who 
 had heard from an old judge of stage matters that the piece 
 came from another author, and that Shakespeare had only added. 
 ' some master-touches to one or two of the principal characters.' 
 Among the masters of English criticism the best opinions are 
 divided. Collier and Knight assign it unhesitatingly to Shake- 
 speare, and the former even thinks, in accordance with his 
 opinion upon Marlowe, that as a poetical production the piece 
 has. not had justice done to it. Nathan Drake, Coleridge (a 
 few passages excepted), and Ingleby, absolutely reject it, and 
 Alex. Dyce believes that the 'Yorkshire Tragedy' had more claims 
 than Titus to be numbered among the Shakespeare writings. 
 
 That which we' wish we willingly believe. But in this case 
 great and important reasons in evidence of Shakespeare's author- 
 ship stand opposed to the wish and the ready belief. The express 
 testimony of Meres, a learned contemporary, who in the year 
 1598 mentions a list of Shakespeare's plays, places Titus posi- 
 tively 'among them. The friends of Shakespeare received it in 
 the edition of his works. Neither of these facts certainly con- 
 tradicts the tradition of Eavenscroft, but at all events they 
 prevent the piece from being expunged as supposititious without 
 examination. 
 
 In accordance with these contradictory external testimonies, 
 internal evidence and the arguments deduced from it appear 
 also to lead rather to doubt than to certainty. It is true that 
 Titus Andronicus belongs in matter as weU as in style entirely 
 to the older school which was set aside by Shakespeare. Eead- 
 ing it in the midst of his works, we do not feel at home in it; 
 
TITUS ANDBOmCUa AND PERICLES. 103 
 
 ■ but if the piece is perused in turn with those of Kyd and 
 Marlowe, the reader finds himself upon the same ground. If, 
 agitated by Shakespeare's most terrible tragedies, we enter into 
 the accumulated horrors of this drama, we perceive without 
 effort the difference that exists between the liberal art which 
 sympathises with the terribleness of the evil it depicts and 
 quickly passes over it — and which, for that reason, suffers no evil 
 to overtake men that cannot be laid to their own guilt and 
 nature — and the rudeness of a style which unfeeliiigly takes 
 pleasure in suffering innocence, in paraded sorrow, in tongues 
 cut out and hands hewn off, and which depicts such scenes 
 with the m.ost complacent diflfuseness of description. He who 
 compares the most wicked of all the characters which Shakespeare 
 depicted with this Aaron, who cursed 'the day in which he did 
 not some notorious ill,' will feel that in the one some remnant 
 of humanity is ever preserved, while in the other a ' ravenous 
 tiger ' commits unnatural deeds and speaks unnatural language. 
 But if the whole impression which we receive from this barbarous 
 subject and its treatment speaks with almost overwhelming 
 cbnviction against the Shakesperian origin of the piece, it is 
 well also to remember all the circumstances of the poet and his 
 time which can counterbalance this conviction. The refine- 
 ment of feeling which the poet acquired in his maturity was 
 not of necessity equally the attribute of his youth. If the play, 
 such as it is, were the work of his youthful pen, we must conclude 
 that a mighty, indeed almost violentrevolution, early transformed 
 his moral and sesthetic nature, and as it were with one blow. 
 Such a change, however, took place even in the far less power- 
 ful poetic natures of our own Goethe ■ and Schiller ; it has in 
 some more or less conspicious degree at any rate taken place in 
 Shakespeare. The question ijiight be asked, whether, in the 
 first impetuosity of youth, which so readUy is driven to mis- 
 anthropical moods, this violent expression of hatred, of revenge, 
 and of bloodthJrstiness, conspicuous thrpughout the piece, denotes 
 more in such a man and at such a time, than Schiller's ' Eobbers ' 
 or Gerstenberg's ' Ugolino ' did, which were written in Germany, 
 iiT the eighteenth century, for a far more civilised- generation. 
 When a poet of such self-reliance as Sliakespeare ventured his 
 first essay, he might have been tempted to compete with the 
 most victorious of his contemporaries ; this was Marlowe. To 
 strike him with his own weapons would be the surest path to ready 
 conquest. And how should an embryo poet disdain this path ? 
 
104 SBAKESFEABE'S FIRST DBAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 At that period scenes of blood and horror were not so rare on 
 the great stage of real life as with us ; upon the stage of art 
 they commended a piece to hearers to whom the stronger the 
 stimulant the more it was agreeable. It is clear, from Ben 
 Jonson's before-mentioned testimony, that Titus was a wel- 
 come piece, which continued in favour on the stage, just as 
 much as Schiller's 'Eobbers.' Besides this approval of the 
 people, the author of Titus could claim yet higher approbation. 
 Whoever he might be, he was imbued just as much as the poet of 
 Venus and Lucrece with the fresh remembrance of the classical 
 school ; Latin quotations,, a predilection for Ovid and Virgil, for 
 the tales of Troy and the Trojan party, and constant references to 
 old mythology and history, prevail throughout the play. An 
 allusidn to Sophocles' ' Ajax/ and similarity to passages of Seneca, 
 have been discovered in it. All the tragic legends of Eome and 
 Grreece were certainly present to the poet, and we know how 
 full they are of terrible matter. The learned poet gathered 
 them together, in order to compose his drama and its action, 
 from the most approved poetical material of the ancients. 
 When Titus disguises his revenge before Tamora, he plays the 
 part of Brutus ; when he stabs his daughter, that of Virginias ; 
 the dreadful fate of Lavinia is the fable of Tereus and Progne ; 
 the revenge of Titus on the sons of Tamora, that of Atreus and 
 Thyestes ; other traits remind of ^neas and Dido, of Lucretia 
 and Coriolanus. Forming his one fable from these shreds of 
 many fables, and uniting the materials of many old tragedies 
 into one, the poet might believe himself most surely to have 
 surpassed Seneca. 
 
 The inference drawn from the subject and contents of the 
 play concerns its form also. With Coleridge the metre and 
 style alone decided against its authenticity. Shakegpeare has 
 nowhere else written in this regular blank verse. The diction, 
 for the most part devoid of imagery, and without the thoughtful 
 tendency to rare expressions, to unusual allusions, and to reflec- 
 tive sayings and sentences, is not like Shakespeare. The grand 
 typhon-like bombast in the mouth of the Moor, and the exagge- 
 rated mimic play of rage, is in truth, that out-heroding Herod 
 which we find the poet so abhorring in Hamlet. Yet even 'here 
 the objection may be raised, that it was natural for a beginner 
 like Shakespeare to allow himself to be carried away by the 
 false taste of the age, and that it was easy for a talent like Ms 
 to imitate this heterogeneous style. If we had no testimony as 
 
TITUS ANDEOmCUS AM) PERICLES. 105 
 
 to the genuineness of Shakespeare's narrative poems, scarcely 
 anyone would have considered even them as his writing. Just 
 as with a master's hand he could imitate the conceits of the 
 pastorals, the lyric of the Italians, and the tone of the popular 
 Saxon song, just as well and indeed with far more ease could 
 he affect the noisy style of a Kyd and a Marlowe. At the same 
 time we must confess that at least here and there the diction 
 is not quite alien to Shakespeare". The second act possesses 
 much of that Ovid luxuriance, of that descriptive power, and of 
 those conceits, which we find also in Venus and Lucrece, of 
 which indeed single passages and expressions remind us. It 
 was in these passages that even Coleridge perceived the hand 
 of Shakespeare, and lie had in these matters the keenest per- 
 ception. 
 
 Amid these conflicting doubts, these opposing considerations, 
 we more readily acquiesce in Ravenscroft's tradition, that 
 Shakespeare only elaborated in Titus an older play. The whole, 
 indeed, sounds less like the early work of a g^eat genius than 
 the production of a niediocre mind, which in a certain self- 
 satisfied security felt itself already at its apex. But that which, 
 in our opinion, decides against its Shakespeare authorship is 
 the coarseness of the characterisation, the lack of the most 
 ordinary probability in the actions, and the unnatural motives 
 assigned to them. The style of a young writer may be per- 
 verted, and his taste almost necessarily at first goes astray ; but 
 that which lies deeper than all this exterior and ornament of 
 art — ^namely, the estimate of man, the deduction of motives of 
 action, and the general contemplation of himian nature — this is 
 the power of an innate talent, which, under the guidance of 
 sound instinct, is usually developed at an early stage of life. 
 Whatever piece of Shakespeare's we regard as his first, every- 
 where, even in his narratives, the characters are delineated with 
 a firm hand ; the lines may be weak and faint, but nowhere 
 are they drawn, as here, with a harsh and distorted touch. And 
 besides, Shakespeare ever knew how to devise the most natm-al 
 motives for the strangest actions in the traditions which he under- 
 took to dramatisej and this even in his earliest plays ; but no- 
 where has he grounded, as in this piece, the story of his play upon 
 the most apparent improbability. We need only recall to mind 
 the leading features of the piece and its hero. Titus, by military 
 glory placed in a position to dispose of the Imperial throne of 
 Rome, in generous loyalty creates Saturninus emperor ; against 
 
106 SHAKESPEAEE'S FIRST DBAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 the will of his sons he gives him his daughter Lavinia, who is 
 already betrothed to Bassianus ; and in his faithful zeal he even 
 kills one of his refractory children. At the same time he gives 
 the new emperor the captive Grothic queen, Tamora, whose son 
 he had just slaughtered as a sacrifice for- his fallen children. 
 The emperor sees her, leaves Lavinia, and marries Tamora ; and 
 Titus, who thus experienced the base ingratitude of him whose 
 benefactor he had been, now expects thanks from Tamora for 
 her elevation, when he had just before murdered her son ! The 
 revengeful woman, on the contrary, commands her own sons to 
 slay Bassianus and to dishonour and mutilate Lavinia. The 
 father, Titus, does not guess the author of the revengeful act. 
 The daughter hears the authors of the deed guessed and talked 
 over ; she hears her brothers accused of having murdered her 
 husband, Bassianus ; her tongue cut out, she cannot speak, but 
 it seems also as if she could not hear ; they ask her not, she 
 can only shake her head at all their false conjectures. At 
 length hy accident the way is found to put a staff in her mouth, 
 by which she writes in the sand the names of the guilty per- 
 petrators. The ■ dull blusterer who hitherto has been Brutus 
 indeed and in the literal sense of the word, now acts the part 
 of Brutus, and the crafty Tamora suffers herself to be allured 
 into the snares of revenge by the same clumsy dissimulation as 
 that by which Titus himself had been deceived. Whoever 
 compares this rough psychological art with the fine touches ' 
 with which in the poet's first production, Venus and Adonisj 
 even arhid the perversion of an over-refined descriptive style, 
 those two figures are so agreeably and truly delineated that the 
 painter might without trouble copy them from the hand of the 
 poet, will consider it scarcely possible that the same poet, even 
 in his greatest errors, could have so completely deadened that 
 finer nature which he nowhere else discards. 
 
 If it be asked, how it were possible that Shakespeare with 
 this finer nature could ever have chosen such a play even for 
 the sake alone of appropriating it to his stage, we m.ust not 
 forget that the young poet must always in his taste do homage 
 to the multitude, and that in the beginning of his- career he 
 would be stimulated by speculation upon their applause, rather 
 than by the commands and laws of an art ideal. This must 
 fexplain likewise the choice of Pericles, even though it were 
 proved that Shakespeare did not undertake the elaboration of 
 this play until a riper period. How readily the gi-eat genius 
 
TITUS ANDEOmCVS AND PERICLES. 107 
 
 delights for a time in trifling with the puny subject of which 
 he sees the public susceptible ! Thus our own Goethe also did 
 not disdain to vary the text of the ' Magic Flute,' and occasion- 
 ally to imitate the comic characters of very subordinate come- 
 dies ! Such pieces as Titus and Pericles lay within the horizon 
 of common hearers ; we know from express testimony that 
 Pericles by good fortune obtained great applause — upon the 
 titles of different editions it is called a ' much admired play ; ' 
 in prologues of other dramas it is spoken of as a fortunate piece ; 
 the prologue of Pericles itself says that this song ' had been 
 sung at festivals,' and that ' lords and ladies in their lives have 
 read it for restoratives.' This popidarity proceeded from the 
 subject, which was originally taken from a Greek romance of 
 the fifth or sixth century. The story, the hero of which is 
 called Pericles only on the English stage, and everywhere else 
 ApOllonius of Tyre, passed from the ' Pantheon ' of Godfred of 
 Viterbo into all languages and countries, in the form of 
 romances, popular narratives, and poems. In England the 
 story had been .already translated into Anglo-Saxon ; and the 
 poet of our play may have had two English versions of it for 
 use, in Lawrence Twine's prose translation from the ' Gesta 
 Romanorimi ' (the 'Patterne of Painfull Adventures,' 1576), and 
 in the poetic narrative of the 'Confessio Amantis' (before 1393), 
 by John Gower, the contemporary of Chaucer. Both sources 
 are published in Collier's ' Shakespeare's Library.' The story 
 of ' ApoUonius' was among the number of those favourite 
 romances which in the period previous to Shakespeare were so 
 frequently manufactured into dramas. The multiplicity of 
 adventures and incidents attracted the sight-loving people, 
 just as with us the romantic plays of Kotzebue for a time 
 enjoyed great applause by the side of the works of Goethe and 
 Schiller. The foMness for the subject of Pericles was thus 
 transferred from the epic form to the dramatic, however rudely 
 it was here treated. The art of transforming a narrative into a 
 lively dramatic action — that art in which Shakespeare was from 
 an early period entirely a master — is in Pericles quite in its 
 infancy. The epos is only partly transposed into scenes ; what 
 could not be represented, as the prologue itself says, was made 
 ' plain with speech ' or pantomimic action ; the prologues are 
 very significantly placed in the lips of the old narrator Gower ; 
 he introduces the piece, as it were, and carries it on with narra- 
 tive when the scene ceases ; like a balladsinger with his puppets, 
 
108 SHAKESPEARE' 3 FIEST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 he expl9,ins the mute scene in iambics of four feet and in the 
 antique langiiage of the old sources, which sounded in Shake- 
 spieare's time just as the droll verses of Hans Sachs do to us. 
 Grood-humouredly the prologue himself smiles at the quickly 
 changing scene, in which the spectator rapidly passes over the 
 life of the hero from his youth to extreme age; he carries 
 ' winged time post on the lame feet of his rhyme,' and calls to 
 aid the imagination of his hearers that he may ' longest leagues 
 make short, and sail seas in cockles.' There is here no unity of 
 action, but only unity of person ; there is here no inner neces- 
 sity for the occurrences, but an outer force ; a blind chance 
 shapes the adventures of the hero. Nor does a unity of idea, 
 such as Shakespeare ever took as the soul of his pieces, unite 
 the parts of the play; at the most a moral tendency connects 
 the> beginning and the end of it. At the close of the piece 
 itself the dramatic poet placeiS in the lips of Grower, in whose 
 narrative he had already met with this same moral, a demonr- 
 stration of the glaring moral contrast between the daughter of 
 Antiochus, who, in the midst of prosperity, without temptation 
 and allurement, lived in ' monstrous lust,' and the daughter of 
 Pericles, who, ' assailed with fortune fierce and keen,' amid the 
 snares of power and seduction, preserves her virtue and makes 
 saints out of sinn.ers. As in Titus Andronicus, the idea of re- 
 presenting the passion of revenge, in its pure and impure 
 motives and forms, is adhered to in its repeated gratification, 
 so here the contrast of chastity and unchastity is the moral 
 lesson, which, after the manner of the Moralities, glances forth 
 plainly and glaringly at the beginning and end of the piece ; 
 far from that artistic refinement with which Shakespeare 
 usually conceals his moral lessons under the veil of actions. 
 Yet, however forcibly in Pericles the moral is brought forward,- 
 the middle scenes of the play have no connection with this idea, . 
 unless it be by explaining how the heroine of the second part of 
 the play was born, or by conducting the hero from his youth 
 through a series of poor and barren scenes to his old age. All 
 English critics are agreed in refusing Shakespeare the outline 
 of this fantastic, rude, a,nd badly versified play. We know that 
 there was an older drama of the same name ; to this, then^ 
 Shakespeare added a few passages, which can be more justly 
 termed ' master-touches ' than those which he may have placed 
 to Titus. 
 
 Whoever reads Pericles with attention readily finds that 
 
TITUS ANDE0NI0U8 AND FEEICLES. 109 
 
 all these scenes in which there is any naturalness in the matter, 
 or in which great passions are developed — especially the scenes 
 in which Pericles and Marina act — stand forth with striking 
 power from the poorness of the whoie. Shakespeare's hand is 
 here unmistakable ; thus, for instance, in the fine treatm.ent of 
 Antiochus' crime, at the commencement of the piece ; in the 
 scene of the storm at sea (ni. 1) ; and most especially in the last 
 act, where the meeting, of Pericles and his daughter — a scene 
 which already in Twine's narration possesses pecidiar attraction 
 — forms a description which can rank with the best perform- 
 ances of the poet. The profound character of the speeches, the 
 metaphors, the significant brevity and natural dignity, all the 
 peculiar characteristics of Shakespeare's diction, are here 
 exhibited. Yet these more perfect and richer scenes are only 
 sketches ; the delineation even of the two principal characters 
 is also a sketch ; but they are masterly sketches, standing in a 
 strange contrast of delicacy with the broad details of the bar- 
 barous characters in Titus. It is an unusual part which Marina 
 has to play in the house of crime. The poet found these scenes 
 in the old narrations; it was for him to verify them in the 
 character. As this Marina appears before us, arming envy with 
 her charms and gifts and disarming persecution ; as she comes 
 forward on the stage strewing flowers for the grave of her nurse ; 
 sweet tender creature, who ' never kill'd a mouse, nor hurt a fly,' 
 or trod upon a worm against her will and wept for it ; as her 
 father describes her as ' a palace for the crown'd truth to dwell 
 in ; as patience, smiling extremity out of act ; ' as we see her 
 throughout, she is indeed a nature which appears capable of 
 remaining unsullied amid the impurest, and, as her persecutor 
 says, of making ' a puritan of the devil.' This character is 
 sufficiently apparent; that of Pericles lies deeper. Nathan 
 Drake regarded him as buoyant with hope, ardent in enterprise, 
 a model of knighthood, the devoted servant of glory and of love. 
 So much may praise be misplaced. This romantic sufferer 
 exhibits far rather features of character entirely opposed to 
 chivalrous feeling. His depth of soul and intellect and a touch of 
 melancholy produce in him that painful sensitiveness, which 
 indeed, as long as he is unsuspicious, leaves him indifferent to 
 danger; but after he has once perceived the evU of men, 
 renders him more faint-hearted than bold, and more agitated 
 and uneasy than enterprising. The motives which induce him 
 to venture the dangerous wooing of Antiochus' daughter 
 
110 SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 have not been previously depicted by the poet, but are sub- 
 sequently intimated. The man who, when he perceivea the 
 dishonour of the house into which he has fallen, recognises so 
 quickly and acutely the danger that threatens him, who pene- 
 trates in a moment the wicked nature of the sinning father, 
 declaring that he blushes no more for his own shame, and upon 
 its discovery ' seem'd not to strike, but smooth ; ' who, modest 
 as he is prudent, ventures not to name openly, and scarcely 
 even to himself, the perceived connection, and who thoughtfully 
 considers his position ; the man who speaks riddles proves 
 that he is able also to solve them. And he, whose imagination, 
 after fear has been once excited in him, is filled with ideas of a 
 thousand dangers, whose mind is seized with the darkest melan- 
 choly, appears also in these touches to be a nature of such 
 prominent mental qualities that, trusting rather to these than 
 to chance, he ventured to undertake to guess the dangerous 
 riddle of the daughter of Antiochus. Agitation, fear, and 
 mistrust now drive him out into the wide world, and beset him 
 in his happiness at Pentapolis, as in his danger in Antiochia ; 
 yielding to adversity, and more noble and tender than daring, 
 he carefully conceals himself, and in a perfectly different 
 position fears the same snares as with Antiochus ; these are 
 without doubt intentional additions by the last elaborator, for in 
 the story and in the English narrations of it Pericles declares 
 at once his name and origin. The tender nature of his 
 character, which makes him anxious in moments of quiet action, 
 renders him excited in misfortune, and robs him of the power 
 of resistance in suffering. Th6 same violent emotion, the 
 same sinking into melancholy, the same change of his innermost 
 feelings, which he remarks in himself in the first act, after his 
 adventure in Antiochia, we see again rising in him after the 
 supposed death of his wife and child ; as at that time, he again 
 casts himself upon the wide world and yields to immoderate 
 grief, forgetful of men and of his duties, until the unknown 
 daughter restores him to himself, and he at the same time 
 recovers wife and child. The ecstatic transition from sorrow 
 to joy is here intimated in the same masterly manner as the 
 sudden decline from hope and happiness to melancholy and 
 mourning was before depicted. As we said above, this is only 
 sketched in outline ; but there is a large scope left to a great 
 actor to shape this outline into a complete form by the finishing 
 
TITUS ANDBONICVS AND FESICLE8. Ill 
 
 touches of his representation. We therefore before suggested 
 that Shakespeare may have chosen this play, in all other parts 
 highly insignificant and trifling, only to prepare a difficult 
 theme for his friend Bm-bage, who acted this character. 
 
 We should consider this almost a decided matter, if the 
 piece had been first elaborated by Shakespeare in the year 1609, 
 when it appeared for the first time in print, with the words 
 ■'lately presented' on the title-page. In! this case we should 
 have here discussed the play in the wrong place. Dryden, 
 however, in a prologue, wMch he wrote in 1675, to the ' Circe' 
 of Charles Davenant, calls it expressly Shakespeare's first 
 piece, and for this reason excuses its discrepancies. We must 
 confess it is difficult to believe that, even with such a purpose 
 as that which we have stated, Shakespeare should, at the period 
 of his greatest maturity, have appropriated such a piece as 
 Pericles for the first time. If we compare the revolting scenes 
 of the fourth act with similar ones in Measure for Measure, a 
 play which was written before 1609, we are reluctant to believe 
 that Shakespeare could have prepared this over-seasoned food 
 for the million, or even should have tolerated it from the hand 
 of another. We should therefore prefer (with Staunton) to 
 assume that Shakespeare appropriated the piece soon after its 
 origin (about 1590). At the time that the play was printed 
 with Shakespeare's name, in 1602, it may perhaps have been 
 re-prepared for Burbage's acting, and through this it may 
 have acquired its new fame. That at that time it excited fresh 
 sensation is evident from the fact that the performance of the 
 piece and Twine's version of the story gave rise to a novel, com- 
 posed in 1 608, by George Wilkens : ' ' The true history of the 
 play of Pericles, as it was lately presented by the worthy and 
 ancient poet John Grower.' In this publication we read the 
 iambic verses and passages of the piece transposed into prose, 
 but in a manner that allows us to infer that the play at that 
 time was reprinted in a more perfect form than that in which 
 we now read it. Shakespeare's pen — so easily is it to be dis- 
 tinguished — is recognised in this prose version in expressions 
 which are not to be found in the drama, but which must have 
 been used upbn the stage. When Pericles (Act ill. sc. 1) 
 
 ' Reprinted from a copy in the Zurich Library, by Tycho Mommsen. 
 Oldenb. 1857. 
 
112 SHAKESPEABE'S FISST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 receives the child born in thp tempest, he says to it : ' Thou'rt 
 the rudeliest welcome to this world that e'er was prince's^ child/ 
 To this, the novel (p. 44, ed. Mommsen) adds the epithet : 
 ' Poor inch of nature ! ' merely four words, in which everyone 
 must recognise our poet. We therefore probably read this 
 drama in a form which it neither bore when Shakespeare put 
 his hand to it for the first nor for the last time. 
 
HENEY VI. 
 
 OuE remarks upon the two plays which we have discussed were 
 essentially of a critical nature, for it was of less importance to 
 determine their trifling value than their origin and the share 
 which Shakespeare had in them. In the three parts also of the 
 History of Henry VI. the discussion for the most part will be 
 of a critical nature, especially that referring to the First Part, 
 the consideration of which must be perfectly separate from that 
 of the two last. The two last parts of Henry VI. are worked 
 up by Shakespeare from an existing original, which may have 
 early suggested to our poet the idea, not alone of appropriating 
 them with additions to his stage, but also of appending to them 
 the whole series of his histories, and this not only as regards 
 the facts, but even the leading idea. For the First Part, on the 
 contrary, we possess no sources; in its purport it is but very 
 slightly united with the two last parts, and this union did not 
 originally exist in the piece. The latter parts afford the 
 counterpart to Shakespeare's Eichard II. and Henry IV. ; as 
 the former treat of the elevation of the House of Lancaster, the 
 latter refer to the retribution of the house of York ; the First 
 Part, on the other hand, in its original form treated only of the 
 French wars under Henry VI. and the civil discord which 
 occasioned the losses in France. The satirist Thomas JC^ash, in 
 his 'Pierce Penniless' Supplication to the Devil,' 1592, alludes 
 to a piece in which the ' brave Talbot,' the dread of the French, 
 is raised from the tomb 'to triumph again on the stage.' 
 Whether this allusion refers to our drama or to another Henry 
 VI., which, as we know, was acted in 1592 by Henslowe's 
 company, it is evident that this is indeed the essential subject 
 of our play ; all that relates to the rising York and his political 
 plans was without doubt added by Shakespeare, in order to 
 unite the play with the two others. It may almost with 
 
 I 
 
114 SHAKESPEJME'S FZBST DSAMATIO ATTEMPTS. 
 
 certainty be denied that Shakespeare had any farther share in 
 the piece than this. From Malone's ample dissertation upon 
 the three parts of Henry VI. imtil Dyce, our poet has generally 
 been refused in England all share in the authorship of this first 
 part. The extraordinary ostentation of manifold learning in 
 the play is not like Shakespeare, nor is the style of composition, 
 Coleridge enjoins the comparison of Bedford's speech at the 
 beginning of the piece with the blank verse in Shakespeare's 
 first genuine plays, and ' if you do not then feel the impossibility 
 of its having been written by Shakespeare,' he says, ' you may 
 have ears — for so has another animal — but an ear you cannot 
 have.' If the subject induced the poet to appropriate the piece 
 as a supplement to the completion of the two following parts, 
 without question his share in it is a very small one. That he 
 himself, after the custom of the time, originally composed the 
 piece in company with other poets, is not credible, because a 
 man of Shakespeare's self-reliance must have early felt the nn- 
 naturalness of this habit. It is, on the other hand, probable that 
 the piece which he elaborated occupied various hands at the 
 same time, because the marks of them are plainly to be dis- 
 cerned. 
 
 No piece is more adapted to the explanation of the manner 
 in which Shakespeare, as soon as he was himself, did not write 
 his dramatic works. His historical plays follow for the most 
 part the 'historical facts of the well-known chronicle of Holin- 
 shed, and adhere rigorously to. succession and order, rejecting 
 all fable. The First Part of Henry VI., on the contrary, follows 
 another historical narrative (Hall), and adds single events from 
 Holinshed and other partly unknown sources ; great historical 
 errors, a medley of persons, a remarkable confusion in the 
 computation of time, and a series of non-historical additions, 
 characterise the treatment of this history — faults of which Shake- 
 speare has never been guilty. The , history of the Countess of 
 Auvergne, the threefold cowardice of Fastolfe, the recapture of 
 Orleans by Talbot, the surprise of Eouen, and the apprehension 
 of Margaret by Suffolk, are mere inventions, partly to be 
 referred to patriotic zeal. Such did not appear to be Shakes- 
 peare's general idea of a dramatic history, in which he always, as far 
 as possible, strictly adhered to genuine tradition. It is not our 
 intention to set forth these historical errors, as we do not con- 
 sider Shakespeare's historical plays from this point of view ; we 
 refer the reader to Courtenay's 'Commentaries' upon the historical 
 
HENRY VI. ^ 115 
 
 dramas of the poet, in which this method of consideration is 
 exclusively attended to. 
 
 If we take the piece purely in a dramatic point of view, and 
 consider it as a work for the stage, it affords, as we before said, 
 an excellent lesson, in its contrast to Shakespeare's general mode 
 of proceeding. There is here no unity of action, indeed not 
 even, as in Pericles, a unity of person. If we look strictly into 
 the single scenes, they are so loosely united, that whole series 
 may be expunged without injuring the piece, indeed perhaps 
 not without improving it — an attempt which even in Pericles 
 could not be carried far. "We need only superficially perceive 
 this, in order to feel how far removed the dramatic works of 
 art previous to Shakespeare were from that strong and syste- 
 matic inner structure, which admits of no dismemberment 
 without distortion. 
 
 In the First Part of Henry VI. the scene between Talbot and 
 the Countess of Auvergne may be omitted, and the play only 
 loses an unessential additi6n, in a dramatic as well as in an 
 historical aspect. 
 
 Suffolk's wooing of the captive Margaret may be expunged, 
 and we find that then the third and fourth scenes of the fifth 
 act more naturally blend into one scene ; the execution of the 
 Maid of Orleans, which is now uselessly postponed, is then 
 joined to the former scene, without the necessity of changing 
 a single line. If this scene were an addition, the last scene in 
 connection with it, in which the king chooses Margaret for his 
 queen, must likewise have been supplemented. We expunge 
 that also, and we find that Winchester's treaty (Act v. sc. 4) 
 affords a perfect conclusion to the play, and one in far better 
 accordance with its main substance. 
 
 The scenes of the death of Talbot and his son (Act iv. sc. 
 6, 7) stood without doubt in the original piece, as they relate to 
 the principal hero, but it is impossible to impute them to the 
 author who wrote the principal parts of the drama. They are 
 of a lyric elegiac colouring, in itself not without poetic beauty, 
 but wholly undramatic. In direct opposition to the opinion of 
 Coleridge and Collier, we cannot imagine the pen of Shakespeare 
 to have been employed in this sentimental vein. 
 
 The scene of Mortimer's death and his political ' admonish- 
 ments ' to York may be taken away, without being missed. 
 . The following first scene of the third act is then more closely 
 united with the previous dissensions. And further,: we may 
 
 I 2 
 
116 SHAKESPEAEE'S EISST DEAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 withdraw the scene in the Temple Garden, where the strife 
 between the white and the red rose begins, and all that, as a 
 sequel to this scene refers to York, to his pretensions to the 
 throne and his dispute with Lancaster ; and the result is a play 
 of greater unity, which treats of the French wars and of the 
 domestic factions which disheartened the champions in France 
 and occasioned the great fall of the English cause. 
 
 Even these effects of the spirit of faction in the course of 
 the French contests do not appear to have been all in the ori- 
 ginal piece. The strife between Somerset and York in the 
 course of the war, and its influence upon Talbot's death, appears 
 from the whole bearing of the respective scenes to be an addition 
 by the last elaborator. Talbot is in straits ; the two dukes of 
 Somerset and York are entreated for help by Lucy ia two 
 successive scenes (Act iv. sc. 3, 4), which, in a perfectly dif- 
 ferent style, are inserted between the elegiac Talbot scenes ; 
 natural enmity induces them to refuse ; and for this reason 
 Lucy anticipates that Talbot will perish, and laments his fall as 
 if it had already happened. Now follows the scene of Talbot's 
 death ; York's name is scarcely mentioned, even for the sake of 
 establishing a superficial union with these two scenes ; no 
 allusion is made to his quarrel, with Somerset ; and Lucy 
 appears over Talbot's body, mourning his death in a tone as if 
 he had known nothing of it, nor had even foreboded it ! 
 
 If we separate all the scenes between York and Somerset, 
 Mortimer and York, Margaret and Suffolk, and read them by 
 themselves, we feel that we are looking upon a series of scenes 
 which exhibit Shakespeare's style in his historical plays just in 
 the manner in which we should have expected him to have 
 written at the commencement of his career. We see the skilful 
 and witty turn of speech and the germ of his figurative language ; 
 we perceive already the fine clever repartees and the more 
 choice form of expression ; in Mortimer's death-scene and in the 
 lessons of his deeply-dissembled silent policy, which- while dying 
 he transmits to York, we see, with Hallam, all the genuine 
 feeling and knowledge of human nature which belongs to Shake- 
 speare in similar pathetic or political scenes in his other dramas; 
 all, not in that abundance and masterly power which he subse-' 
 quently manifested, but certainly in the germ which prefigures 
 futurp perfection. These scenes contrast decidedly with the 
 trivial, tedious war-scenes and the alternate bombastic and dull 
 disputes between Gloster and Winchester ; they adhere to the 
 
HENSY VI. 117 
 
 common highway of historical poetry, though they have suffi- 
 cient of the freshness of youthful art to furnish Schiller in his 
 ' Maid of Orleans ' with many beautiful traits, and indeed with 
 the principal idea of his drama. If we consider it as settled 
 that Shakespeare inserted all these scenes, we can fully explain 
 for what reason he did so. They unite this First Part most 
 closely with the Second and Third, while before it had been 
 totally unconnected with them. York, the principal hero of 
 the two last parts, here appears with his claims at the com- 
 mencement of his career; Majgaret, who next to him forms the 
 most prominent figure, is here rising into note ; the last scene 
 of the First Part is intentionally placed in the closest connection 
 with the first scene of the Second Part. The later work of 
 Eichard II., standing as it does in historical contrast to these parts 
 of Hem-y VI., is accordingly treated by Shakespearq in evident 
 dramatic relation to this same supplemented scene. AS in Eichard 
 II. the dangerous rise of the house of Lancaster issues from the 
 single combat of Norfolk and Henry, so in Henry VI. the strife 
 of the two roses arises from the challenge between Vernon and 
 Basset ; as in the one the weak Eichard at first disregards and 
 threatens HenVy Bolingbroke, and then spares and by sparing 
 promotes him, so in the other the weak young Henry VI. 
 emancipates the injured and diehonoured York to his own 
 destruction. Thus by the addition of these scenes Shakespeare 
 has made the First Part of Henry VI., regarded as a separate 
 piece, still more disconnected than it originally was ; but, on the 
 other hand, he has so united the three parts that they afiford a 
 perfect picture of the rule of Henry VI., and, at the same time, 
 in depicting the rise of York, a complete counterpart to that 
 of the house of Lancaster, the description of which he had 
 probably already planned during the elaboration of these three 
 parts of Henry VI. 
 
 We may consider the two last parts of Henry VI. as a 
 single play ; that is, as a dramatic chronicle in ten acts ; neither 
 in outer form nor in inner idea are the two pieces otherwise than 
 mechanically divided. The events in France, which formed the 
 principal subject in the First Part, are here removed to the 
 farthest background ; the reader scarcely observes the short 
 passages in which we learn that Somerset is sent to France, and 
 that this valuable possession is completely lost to England. 
 The subject of the two last parts is the contest of the houses of 
 York and Lancaster, the decline of England's power under the 
 
118 SHAKESPEARE'S FIBST DBAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 weak and saintly Henry VI., and the rise of York, the father 
 of the terrible Eichard III. Subsequently, as we before said, 
 Shakespeare furnished a counterpart tor this work in the preced- 
 ing elevation of the house of Lancaster, in the rise of the 
 similarly aspiring and crafty Bolingbroke above the equally 
 weak and worldly Eichard II. In the Second Part (Act. vi. 
 sc. 1) it is expressly indicated in a passage which is Shake- 
 speare's property, that the fall of Henry VI. was an expiation 
 of the imlawful murder of Eichard II. by the Lancastrians. 
 Other passages prove that Shakespeare had at hand the chro- 
 nicles of Holinshed when he remodelled the originals of the two 
 latter parts ; thus, he may have surveyed the i whole history of 
 the struggle between the two houses in this the first of his 
 historic-dramatic works ; and aware of its political and his- 
 torical value, he may have early conceived the plan of that series 
 of historical dramas which he soon afterwards carried into 
 execution. 
 
 We have already said that Shakespeare, in the two last parts 
 of Henry VI., only revised two plays,' the originals of which are 
 preserved, aind were recently published by Halliwell in the 
 writings of the Shakespeare Society.' To compare these works, 
 which by a plausible conjecture are attributed to Eobert Greene, 
 with Shakespeare's elaborations, is to take a glance into the 
 innermost workshop of his youthful poetic genius. If these 
 dramas did nothing more than direct Shakespeare's eye to the 
 higher world of history, for this alone they would be of the 
 most decided importance as regards the history of his mind. 
 
 Itappy was it for the English stage that in its early develop- 
 ment it lighted upon these subjects of national history. In -the 
 sources from which dramatists were usually accustomed to draw, 
 such as the chivalric romances of the Middle Ages, old fables 
 and legends, tales and popular books of a romantic tenour, the 
 want of nature was great, and the want of taste still greater. 
 The art of the dramatic poets was feeble. Where the subject 
 afforded a wide field for their free inventive powers the work 
 
 ' Their titles are : ' The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two 
 famous Houses of York and Lancafiter,' and ' The True Tragedy of Richard, 
 Duke of York.' The oldest impressions are dated 1694 and 1.695, and do not 
 bear Shakespeare's name. The tragedy of the ' Duke of York ' was acted by 
 the servants of the Earl of Pembroke, for whom Greene wrote, but Shake- 
 speare never. After Shakespeare's death, the two pieces (in 1619) were 
 published with his name by Pavier, who has also printed other doubtful 
 , iBiti spurious plays of Shakespeare. 
 
HENBY VI. 119 
 
 degenerated into distortion — a fact whicli we see exemplified in 
 such plays as Titus and Pericles. On the other hand, in the 
 simple and homely chronicles of their national history, the 
 dramatists found in the civil wars a great and mighty material, 
 a nature congenial to their own, a nation in action whom they 
 knew, and prominent characters which were comprehensible to 
 them ; they found psychologp.cal truth stored up and ready for 
 their use, while they had vainly groped after it in their 
 romantic attempts. At the very time that Shakespeare began 
 to write, this national historical drama, as we have seen above, 
 threw out its first shoots. Among these early Histories we 
 mentioned the two pieces by Grreene upon Henry VI., which 
 are superior to almost the whole series of pre-Shakespeare plays 
 of this kind. The chronicle itself is often merely transferred to 
 them and dryly arranged in scenes, but this very fact exhibits 
 all the more clearly the value which rests in an important 
 subject borrowed from simple nature. 
 
 The general reader is not acquainted with these two plays, 
 and cannot therefore compare them with Shakespeare's elabo- 
 ration of them ; but it is necessary to speak of them as they are 
 in their original form, in order to show what help they afforded 
 to Shakespeare, how far they were suggestive for his historical 
 dramas, and what he added in his own Henry VI. 
 
 When Tieck says that nothing of Shakespeare's — ^not even 
 his noblest and best works — can be compared in plan with the 
 historical tragedy of Henry VI., and that the mind of the poet 
 grows with his subject, and when Ulrici state's the composition 
 to be truly Shakespeare-like, both these critics betray that they 
 do not distiaguish between matter and form, and that they have 
 not compared the chronicles which these dramas follow with 
 the poetical version. There cannot be much question of plan 
 and composition in a piece which simply follows, with few ex- 
 ceptions and errors, the comrse of the chronicle ; which like the 
 chronicle unfolds in succession the various strata of matter, and 
 brings forward a series of scenes, such as the anecdote of the 
 armourer and the lame Simpcox, standing in but very slight 
 connection with the great course of the whole. Whoever reads 
 the narrations of Hall and Holinshed by the side of Henry VI., 
 whether Grreene's version or Shakespeare's,- will perceive the 
 most accurate transcript of the text of the narrative, even in 
 passages where he would have least supposed it. The whole 
 insurrection of Cade, in the Second Part, full as it is of popular 
 
1 20 SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 humour, proceeds so entirely from the historical sources, that 
 even the speeches of the rough rebels, which appeared more 
 than anything else to be the property of the poet, are found 
 partly verbatim in the chronicle of St. Albans, from which 
 Stowe quotes them in his account of the insurrection of Wat 
 Tyler and Jack Straw. Single highly-poetical passages, such 
 as the prophecy of Henry VI. concerning Richmond, the bold 
 answer of the captive Prince of Wales, the assassination of the 
 young Eutland, and others, are not only borrowed from the 
 chronicle, but the last scene makes in Holinshed also an affect- 
 ing and poetical impression. When, according to Tieck's ex- 
 pression, the poetical power in these plays increases with the 
 subject, it is because this is the case with the matter of the 
 chronicle also ; in reading the Second Part, we need only 
 follow the corresponding passages in Holinshed, and we find 
 after Grioster's assassination that the history becomes richer and 
 more attractive, just as the drama itself does. It is the subject 
 that forms the grandeur and attraction of these pieces, and this 
 even in the plainest historical structure. The drama of this 
 great avalanche of ruin which overwhelms all the powers in the 
 native state ; this dissolution of aU bonds, this chaos in which 
 misdeed succeeds misdeed, crime rises above crime, and an inex- 
 orable Nemesis follows close at the heels of the offending man ; 
 all this bears in itself a powerful interest, which rather carries 
 away the poet than that the poet himself creates it. The 
 picture of the gradual decay of all the powers of the state is an 
 image of pure historical truth and of great experience, far more 
 than a delineation of 'poetic beauties, which influence by 
 harmonious arrangement ; but that which invests it with the 
 deep impression upon the mind produced by art is the moral 
 or poetic justice which we cannot spare from the drama, and 
 which is nowhere lacking in the historical work of omr great 
 master, in which, as in all periods of revolution, the motives, 
 actions, and destinies of men lie exposed to our view. We see 
 foremost, in the Second Part, the Protector of the kingdom 
 perishing through his own weakness, and his queen through her 
 criminal pride. They fall by the cabals of the hostile nobility, 
 who are leagued together for evil ; of that nobility who had 
 produced nothing but mischief to the country ever since the 
 days of Eichard II. Again, the fall of Suffolk and the rebellion 
 of Cade are entirely represented as a retributive judgment upon 
 the aristocracy, as a rising of the suffering lower classes against 
 
HEXBY Vli 121 
 
 the oppression, unscrupulousness, and severity of the rule of the 
 nobles. This democracy -we see in its turn quickly perishing in 
 its own fury and • folly ; and on the ruins of the aristocracy and 
 the incited people, the tools of a crafty ambition, York raises 
 himself to the dignity of a new Protector, relying upon popular 
 favour and upon his warlike deeds and merits. Having attained 
 his object, he allows himself to be tempted to perjury, and ven- 
 geance follows his footsteps. Eutland, one of his sons, shares his 
 terrible fall. The king himself, who stands in inactive weakness 
 and contemplative devotion, scarcely accountable amidst the 
 ruin of all things, is now on his side tempted by the queen to 
 become a perjurer, and falls into the power and under the 
 sword of his enemies. From the blood of Eutland and of the 
 Prince of Wales springs a new harvest of avenging destinies. 
 Clifford, the murderer of the former, falls ; Edward, who was 
 present at the assassination of the. prince/ totters on his throne ; 
 the valiant Warwick, who at last from personal indignation 
 was unfaithful jbo his old party, perishes. Through all these 
 disasters and retributions Queen Margaret passes unscathed, 
 like some embodiment of fate, pursued by the most refined 
 vengeance of the Nemesis : raised as a captive to the English 
 throne, as ' a beggar mounted,' she had, according to the adage, 
 ' run the horse to death,' and, surviving to her own torment, 
 she sees all her glory buried ; the source as she is of aU these 
 sufferings, she is to drink them even to the dregs. Yet this 
 whole catastrophe, we see plainly, is only history, and no poetic 
 plan and composition ; this administration of justice, which 
 appears so systematic and poetic, is simply taken from the 
 chronicle. In the passage where the Prince of Wales (Act x. 
 sc, 5) is stabbed by Clarence, Gloster, G-rey, Dorset, and Hast- 
 ings, the chronicles of Hall and Holinshed both make the 
 emphatic and explicit remark : ' For the wicked deed most of 
 the perpetrators in their latter days drank the same cup, in 
 consequence of the deserved justice and the due punishment of 
 God.' In this spirit history was and is written in that as in 
 every primitive age. This idea was carried out afterwards by 
 Shakespeare, in Eichard III., in the fate of those same perpe- 
 trators in every single instance, and with an equal emphasis. 
 We are tempted to suppose that Shakespeare learned from this 
 play and f^'om this history of Henry VI. to satisfy in his art the 
 law of poetic justice ; in the continuation of Henry VI. and in 
 Eichard III. it is almost too glaringly exercised to be called 
 
1 22 SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST' DEAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 poetically beautiful ; in all the later works of Shakespeare this 
 law is obeyed with the greatest scrupulousness, and in many 
 plays with admirable refinement. In any case, this law in the 
 poet's dramatic art arose from no system of aesthetics nor from 
 the models of old masters, but purely from that observation of 
 himian nature and human destiny, between which even the 
 simple historiography of old recognises that close connection 
 which exhibits man everywhere as the forger of his own fate. 
 
 This important historical subject was intelligently appre- 
 hended by Eobert Greene, in his two plays (if they are rightly 
 his), though it was dramatised in a very different manner. 
 He directed his attention entirely to the importance of the 
 material, and to the details in the historical sources which lay 
 before him — a suiEcient proof that artistic form but little inter- 
 fered. And here lies the great difference between this and the 
 Shakespeare histories : that in the latter, when they even foUow 
 the chronicle with as much fidelity as Greene's ' Henry VI.,' 
 the poet generally appears greatest jiist where the chronicle 
 leaves him. In the Second Part of Greene's ' Henry VI.,' the 
 third act exhibits able and powerful arrangement ; the popular 
 scenes of Cade's insurrection are full of happy humorous Ufe. 
 In the first act of the Third Part, the fall of York, a high patho^ 
 is preserved, without the usual exaggerations of the older 
 dramatic school ; in the words of York and Margaret, Shake- 
 speare could learn the genuine language of great passion, and 
 he found here no inducement to add much of his own. In the 
 second actj where York's sons are aroused, an excellent warlike, 
 spirit prevails throughout ; and here also Shakespeare, with the 
 most correct feeling, has restrained his improving hand. But 
 from the third act, and especially in the fourth and fifth, where 
 the history of Henry VI. is almost reflected in miniature in the 
 weak voluptuous Edward and his beggar queen, there begins a 
 Series of political scenes with little pathetic emotion ; quickly 
 and mechanically these scenes follow each other without exciting 
 any attractive interest ; they are scanty even in Shakespeare's 
 Version, though he nevertheless took pains to make something 
 out of the still more scanty and skeleton-like scenes of Greene, 
 to lengthen their contents, and to subdue the strange hurry 
 with which Greene preissed on to the end. Even in Shakespeare's 
 version the reader may observe these naive deficiencies. In the 
 eighth scene of the fourth act Warwick goes to Coventry, and 
 at the same moment Edward is aware of it, as if they had just 
 
HENRY VI. 123 
 
 met on the stairs. In Act v. sc. 5 the Prince of Wales is mur- 
 dered; in the succeeding scene the father already knows it. 
 The hurry to the end is so great that it plainly betrays itself in 
 repeated phrases. The questions, ' What now remains ? ' ' And 
 now what rests ? ' ' What then ? ' are repeated several times in 
 the two last acts. The inequality observable in the dramatisa- 
 tion of the historical matter is also evident in the delineation 
 of the characters. Whatever in the history struck the poet's 
 mind as strongly delineated, he treated with intelligence and 
 generally with success. Warwick, the darling of the people, 
 'the setter-up and puller-down of kings,' the 'coal-black 
 haired,' the stuttering and noisy favourite and strengthener of 
 the Yorkists, was one of these characters which was written and 
 acted con amove — a most grateful part to those 'robustiouis 
 periwig-pated fellows ' whom Haml'et ridiculed. The Cardinal 
 of Winchester, full of ambition and priestly arts, with his ' red 
 sparkling eyes,' iDlabbing the malice of his heart, which breaks 
 at last in the pangs of conscience ; the defying insolent 
 aristocrat Suffolk, unworthy in prosperity, proudly defiant in 
 danger, and meeting death with the dignity and remembrance 
 of the great men of old, who in similar manner fell by vile 
 hands — these' were the forms of character to which poets like 
 Grreene or Marlowe were equal. York also, and the female 
 characters, to which we shall revert, are excellently maintained. 
 The more deeply designed nature of a Humphrey, on the 
 contrary, is only sketched for the most part ; and the tender 
 saintly figure of Henry VI. was left entirely in the silent back- 
 ground, and first acquired life and soiil from Shakespeare. 
 Unequal, therefore, are the characters, unequal is the organisa^ 
 tion of single parts, and unequal is the poetic diction. While 
 single passages are not without great and natural feeling, the 
 plays on the whole are poor and dry ; nowhere so clumsy that 
 Shakespeare could have found much that required to be rejected, 
 but in very few passages sufficiently full and elaborated for him 
 to have added nothing. As in the personal characteristics, so 
 in the diction there occurs many a strong and successful stroke, 
 but the colours are not blended or worked up. The poet is not 
 devoid of assonance, and he plays skUfuUy upon words and 
 rhymes. Many a proverbial passage of universal truth and 
 many an excellent poetic image glances forth from his versified 
 prose ; and it is a peculiarity of these images and similes that 
 they are taken from the chase, from animals and their properties, 
 
124 SHAKESPEABE'S FJSST DSAMATIO ATTEMPTS. 
 
 and that they abound, as it were, in physiological conceits, in 
 which (in the coarse taste of Titus Andronicus) the human 
 organs, lips, mouth and eyes, are endowed with life, and are 
 frequently exhibited in most revolting positions. 
 
 Such were the dramas to which Shakespeare turned to 
 appropriate them to his stage by manufacturing them afresh. 
 That he did so with the reverence of a scholar is betrayed in 
 his reluctance to erase ; that he did so with the skill of future 
 mastery is betrayed in the ardent desire for improvement, 
 which suffered him to leave scarcely a single line intact. Much 
 of the coarseness of the taste of the age was still left even in 
 his improved work ; nay, his own additions were sometimes of a 
 similar character. Delight in deeds of horror and blood is not 
 only seen in that lament of Margaret over Suffolk's head, and 
 in Warwick's description of the corpse of the murdered Hum- 
 phrey, which Shakespeare found in Greene's text, but in those 
 words alsiT which Edward addresses to Warwick (Act V. so. 1), 
 and which proceed from Shakespeare himself : 
 
 This hand, fast wound about thy coal-black hair, 
 Shall, whiles thy head is wai-m, and new cut-off, 
 Write in the dust this sentence with thy blood, &c. 
 
 Much of that hyperbolic poetry of the Italian style, to which 
 Shakespeare does homage in his narratives, is also to be found 
 here ; it displays itself chiefly in description, in the accumulation 
 01 artificial epithets, and in false affectation of the ancients 
 in mythological images and learned quotations. The bombast 
 in those passages where he speaks of tearful eyes adding water 
 to the sea, and of the lion's ' devouring paws,' has been often 
 censured ; the far-fetched exaggerated expressions of the passion 
 of Queen Margaret (Act ii. sc. 1) remind us perfectly of the 
 style of Lucrece. But in general the natural and simply histo- 
 rical material has extricated the poet from this unnatural and 
 artificial mode of diction. His inclination to unusual and choice 
 language, his abundance of metaphor, and the soaring of his 
 poetic fancy, have never on the whole led him to extravagance 
 of style, but have only served to give flesh and blood to the dry 
 skeleton of his predecessors. The natural train of thought, the 
 richness of feeling, the order in which passion is developed and 
 expressed — all that reveals the true power of the poet — places 
 him, if we compare the two texts, in the rank of a master at the 
 side of Greene. If we read the original at almost any exciting 
 
HENEY VL 125 
 
 passage, we shall find it, if not bad and faulty, almost through- 
 out poor and defective ; that which we vaguely miss and want 
 is brought by the true poet from the depths of the soul, and is 
 added with unique tact and natural feeling. The stem is firm 
 around which he clings, but only through the influence of his 
 warm poetical embrace does it shoot forth in leaves and blossoms. 
 He who can compare the originals of Grreene with Shakespeare's 
 revision should read, in the Second Part, the scene between 
 Grioster and his wife (Act ii. sc, 4), and see how desxiltorily in 
 the one the thoughts suddenly and' unnaturally change in the 
 words of the duchess, while in^the other Shakespeare has filled 
 up the gaps with the links required. He should read, in the 
 plot for the overthrow of Humphrey (Act ii, sc. 3, 1 ), how the 
 queen awkwardly and unexpectedly breaks in with the council, 
 while on the other hand Shakespeare smoothes and prepares 
 the way for her accusations. After Humphrey is murdered 
 (Act in. sc. 2), the queen only coldly deliberates : ' I stood badly 
 with Grioster, they will believe I killed him.' But Shakespeare 
 makes her unfold the arts of female dissimulation ; and while 
 she conceals the agitation of her breast by self-accusation, what 
 resources he bestows upon her of falsehood, deception, and 
 hypocrisy ! He should follow the poet from thence, especially 
 t6 the soliloquies of the crafty York. In his first monologue 
 (in the old play) he states his political plans with cold calcu- 
 lation ; he relates, as dryly as the chronicle, the actual state of 
 things ; there is no emotion of feeling, no lively picture of the 
 situation. All this is animated by Shakespeare with poetic 
 ornament, with traits of character, with richness of language, 
 and with descriptive detail ; we do not only learn that York has 
 seduced the popular leader Cade ' to make commotion,' but also 
 who Cade is, and why he is thought fit for this bold part. Just 
 so, in another soliloquy in Greene's original, York clings to the 
 simple account of facts and the consideration suggested by 
 them:, 'I require troops: you give me them, I shallj use them.' 
 Shakespeare's addition to this just gives the feeling and 
 passion required ; he portrays the promptings of a mind deeply 
 agitated by ambition and the restless activity of a brain through 
 which the aspiring thoughts chase each other with their dreams 
 of dignity ; it is the .picture of the man as he stands alone, 
 conversing with himself, and not the cold enumeration of deeds 
 which lie in the future, the motives to which alone belong to 
 this his solitary present. In the one we receive the impression 
 
126 SHAKESFEABE'S FIRST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 of the icy calculator sketching out his ambitious views as syste- 
 matically as he planned his deeds, whilst in the other we see at 
 work the innate powers within him, mastering his mind, brood- 
 ing over the hindrances and promotions of his projects, and 
 lightly sketching the actions to which it spurs and incites the 
 energy and will. 
 
 From what we have said it is evident that it is especially 
 in the development of character that Shakespeare's talent 
 strikes us in this comparison of the two works. Several of the 
 characters of the play afforded him little interest. It is worthy 
 of observation — and it points out Shakespeare's natural incli- 
 nation to shun all trivialities — that foremost among the per- 
 sonages indifferent to Mm stands the grateful, and heroic 
 character of Warwick. This character, the popular hero and 
 darling, the warrior stammering in his impetuosity and vain- 
 glorious in his self-reliance, was afterwards depicted by 
 Shakespeare in Percy ; and this illustrious counterpart ought to 
 be compared with Warwick by the panegyrists of the plays of 
 Henry VI., if they would accurately determine their relation to 
 the works of the matured poet. The Cardinal of Winchester 
 and the Duke of Suffolk were finished by Shakespeare according 
 to the outline designed, without any great sympathy with these 
 characters, though not without certain masterly touches which 
 would have betrayed his hand if we did not know him as the 
 ' elaborator. In that passage in the old piece, where Suffolk asks 
 the murderers of Himaphrey whether they have despatched him, 
 Shakespeare characterises the man by the cutting heartless 
 question : ' Now, sirs, have you despatch'd this thing f ' The 
 excellent contrast of the two masculine women, Eleanor and 
 Margaret, Shakespeare found already before him ; Greene had 
 worked at both these characters with the greatest success and 
 industry. The jealousy and hatred between the rich, proud,, 
 ambitious duchess, with, her unconquerable mind, and the up- 
 start portionless woman, with her fierce maKcious nature, are 
 excellently portrayed. The vindictive, furious, and unrestrained"; 
 character bf the queen, whose face, ' visor-Hke, unchanging,' ex- 
 presses the frigidity of her nature, is depicted, in glaring but 
 striking touches, in the scene of York's death, where in cruel 
 wantonness she trifles as the cat with the mouse. To atone in 
 some degree for this flinty heirt, Greene has imputed to her a 
 true, perhaps too tender' feeling for Suffolk, the origin of her 
 doubtful good fortune. Shakespeafe has here added but 
 
HENRY VI. 127 
 
 little! ; stiU that' little is perfectly in the spirit of the plot. Let 
 us only compare attentively in the scene of the farewell between 
 Eleanor and her husband the trait he has interwoven : how, 
 after her fall, the most fearful thing to the ambitious woman is 
 that the ' giddy multitude do point ' at her, and how her un- 
 bridled worldly ambition is suddenly changed into a longing for 
 death. Characters of finer mould, which demanded Shake- 
 speare's finer nature, are Grloster and the king. Duke Hum- 
 phrey of Grloster, who appears in the second part totally different 
 to the Grloster of the first, is invested with the great qualities of 
 consummate mildness and benevolence, with a Solomon-like 
 wisdom, with freedom from all ambition, and with severe Brutus- 
 like justice towards everyone, even towards his wife, in whose 
 last dishonour he notwithstanding shares as a private character. 
 The greatness of his self-command, which is contrasted with the 
 unbridled passion of his wife, has been rendered prominent by 
 Shakespeare! in one of his happy touches. In the passionate 
 scene (Part II. Act i. sc. 3), preparatory to Ms own fall and 
 that of his Duchess, he goes out and returns without reason ; 
 Shakespeare explains this as an intentional movement, with 
 which the loyal man endeavoured to suppress his excitement 
 and choler. There is too much noble and quiet grandeur in 
 Humphrey for us not to be gfrieved at his fall, which appears 
 merely an exemplificSition of the fable of the lamb that had 
 troubled the wolf's water. It is Shakespeare's addition that 
 he entwined in the garland of his virtues that foolish reliance 
 upon his innocence which leads him to destruction, and which 
 renders him careless ^mid the persecutions of his enemies, 
 although he knew that York's ' overweening arm. was reaching 
 at the moon.' At ,the moment of Ms fall, he too late becomes 
 keen-sighted, and predicts his own ruin and that of Ms king. 
 That weakness is a crime is indicated by Shakespeare in this 
 character, and is more closely worked out in Henry VI. This 
 character, indeed, is entirely due to him ; Grreene placed the 
 king as a cypher silently into the background, but Shakespeare 
 drew him forth and delineated Ms nothingness. A saint, 
 ' whose bookish rule had pulled fair England down,' formed 
 rather for a pope than a king, more fit for heaven than earth — a . 
 king, as Shakespeare adds, who longed and wished to be a 
 subject more than any subject longed to be a king — he is in his 
 inaction the source of all the misdeeds which disorder the 
 kingdom. ' Weakness makes robbers bold ; ' in these words the , 
 
128 SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 weakness of the king is condemned, and Shakespeare exhibits 
 this distinctly in his relations to individuals and to the country 
 generally. He defends (all this is Shakespeare's addition) the 
 persecuted Protector (Part II. Act iii. sc, 1) with eloquence, 
 and afterwards suffers him to fall : this distinctly places his 
 impotence in relief. When Humphrey is arrested, the older 
 play places in the king's mouth two meagre lines, while Shake- 
 speare in fuller language displays in a masterly manner the 
 picture of weakness, the powerless man comparing himself to 
 the dam who can do naught but low after her calf, which the 
 butcher bears to the slaughter-house. When afterwards (Act 
 III. sc. 2) they go to look after the murdered duke, the older 
 play has again only two bald lines for Henry, while Shakespeare 
 puts into his mouth an agitated prayer, and by so doing pre- 
 pares the way for that state of mind in which the kiog, 
 supported by the valiant Warwick, is afterwards induced to an 
 act of severity against Suffolk. Just as the pious king here 
 leaves unperformed the commonest acts of gratitude and 
 attachment towards his beloved protector, so the saiat forgets 
 the most sacred duties towards his kingdom ; from weakness he 
 becomes a perjurer, from weakness he disinherits his son, thus 
 acting as even ' um-easonable creatures ' do not with their 
 young. After he has persuaded himself that he is to expiate the 
 sins of the house of Lancaster, he exposes himself with fatal- 
 istic equanimity to blind destiny ; and whilst the civU war is 
 raging (in a soliloquy entirely inserted by Shakespeare, Part III. 
 Act II. sc. 5), he wishes himself a ' homely swain ' in the re- 
 pose of contemplation and in the simple discharge of duty. 
 Those abstract pictures of the civil war in which the son has 
 slain the father and the father the son, the scenes which so 
 powerfully touched our own Schiller, appear but in scanty out- 
 line in the older play ; Shakespeare's touch first gave expression 
 to them, and by connecting them with that idyllic soliloquy of 
 the king he first gave them their depth ; for, thus introduced, 
 they remind the king of the higher duties of his position, which 
 he had forgotten in his selfish desire for repose. 
 
 If we may call the character of Henry VI, Shakespeare's 
 own creation, that of Eichard of Grloster, on the contrary, was 
 wholly prepared for his use in the Third Part, The aspiring 
 spirit inherited from his father ; the glance of the eagle at the 
 sun ; the great ambition, the indifference to the means for an 
 object ; the valour, the superstition which represents in him the 
 
HENRY VI. 129 
 
 voice of conscience; the subtle art of dissimulation ; the histrionic 
 talent of a ' Eoscius,' the faithless policy of a Cataline ; these 
 had heen already assigned to him by Greene in this piece. But 
 how excellent even here have been Shakespeare's after-touches 
 is evinced in the soliloquy (Part III. Act iii. sc. 2), where the 
 ambitious projects of the duke hold counsel as it were with his 
 means of realizing them ; it is the counterpart to the similar 
 soliloquy of his father York (Part II. Act ill. sc. 1), and 
 permits us to anticipate how far the son will surpass the father. 
 The principal figure of the two plays, Eichard of York, is almost 
 throughout delineated as if the nature of his more fearful son 
 was prefigured in him. Far-fetched policy and the cunning and 
 dissimulation of a prudent and determined man are blended in 
 him — not in the same degree but in the same apparent contra- 
 diction as in Eichard — with firmness, with a hatred of flattery, 
 with inability to cringe, and with bitter and genuine discontent. 
 With the same assurance and superiority as Eichard the son, 
 he is at one time ready to decide at the point of the sword, and 
 at another to shuffle the cards silently and wait 'tiU time do serve; ' 
 both alike are animated by the same aspirations and ambitions. 
 Had he been endowed with the same favour of nature as his 
 father, Eichard would have developed the same good qualities 
 which the father possessed in addition to his dangerous gifts. 
 Ugly, misshapen, and despised, without a right' to , the throne 
 and without any near prospect of satisfying his royal projects, his 
 devouriag ambition was poisoned; in his father, called as he 
 was the flower of the chivalry of Europe, convinced of his rights 
 and proud of his merits, the aspiring disposition was moderated 
 into a more legitimate form. At the death of his son Eutland 
 his better nature bursts forth forcibly to light. He is honest 
 enough, upon the pretended disgrace of his enemy Somerset, to 
 dismiss his ' powers ' and to give his sons as pledges ; had he 
 not been led away by his sons he is moderate enough, and is 
 even ready to suspend his claims to the throne until Henry's 
 death, whom, in the course of nature, he was not likely to 
 survive ; he laboured for his hoiise, and not as his son, for him- 
 self. His claims and those of his house, which he asserts in 
 opposition to the helpless and inactive Henry, he grounds not 
 upon the malicious consciousness of personal superiority, as his 
 son Eichard does subsequently ; but upon a good right, upon his 
 favour with the people, upon his services in France and Ireland. 
 Contrasted with Henry, he feels himself more kingly in birth, 
 
 K 
 
130 SHAKESPEABE'S FIRST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 nature, and disposition. When he exercises his retaliation on 
 the Lancastrians, he utters those words which Bolinghroke had 
 before more cunningly applied to Eiohard II. : ' Let them obey, 
 that know not how to ride.' This contrast of York to Henry VI, 
 is the soul of both pieces, The claims of the hereditary right 
 of an incapable king who is ruining the country, in comparison 
 with those of the personal merit which saves the country from 
 destruction, is the thought that involuntarily arises from the 
 history of the reign of Henry VI. ; the poet of the older plays 
 has uncertainly seized it ; Shakespeare conceived it more fully, 
 and carried it out. In the elaboration of these two plays this 
 is not strikingly apparent. Shakespeare has too mechanicalLy 
 and timidly followed the arrangement of the whole history ; we 
 are obliged to confess that the drama, adhering to the history, 
 creates the idea far more than that the idea, as ought to be 
 the case, pervades the drama, and thus really animates and 
 creates it. This is the case, however, in the counterpart to 
 Henry VI., which Shakespeare subsequently produced in the 
 most masterly manner, when he portrayed the elevation of the 
 house of Lancaste;r, in Eichard II., Henry IV. and V. We shall 
 there find how SKakespeare made the matter subservient to the 
 idea ; in our present play the' material is entirely predominant 
 and controlling, and this contrast fully denotes the value of 
 Henry VI., compared to the later works of our poet. 
 
 It has been recogpiized by all that Shakespeare is more himself 
 in Henry IV. than in Henry VI. ; in comparing his elaboration of 
 the two last parts of this history we must, however, confess, that he 
 is superior to Marlowe and Greene. In Shakespeare's first attempts 
 at appropriating foreign works to his stage, this superiority was 
 at once perceived by his contemporaries, who cast jealous glances 
 upon the new rival. Two interesting notices with regard to 
 this, the one of a more uncertain character than the other, have 
 been handed down to us from the early years of his activity in 
 London. In a letter from Thomas Nash to the students of both 
 universities (prefixed to Greene's 'Menaphon,'1589) there is the 
 following passage : ' It is a common practice now a dales 
 amongst a sort of shifting companions, that runne through every 
 arte and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint' whereto 
 they were borne, and busie themselves witjh the indevours of art, 
 that could scarcelie latinize their necke-verse if they should have 
 
 ' The commencement of all contracts and legal documents: Noverint 
 univerd, &c. 
 
HENBY VI. 131 
 
 neede ; yet English Seneca read by candle-light yeeldes manie 
 good sentences, as Bloud is a begger, and so foorth : and if 
 you intreate him faire in a frostie morning, he wiU affoord you 
 whole Hamlets, I should say HandfuUs of tragical speaches.' 
 If it could be proved that an early elaboration of Hamlet by 
 Shakespeare existed at that time, there would be no doubt that 
 these sarcasms were intended specially to hit him, and that Nash 
 knew or believed him to have run through the attorney's ofifice. 
 It is probable that it referred to him, as Nash was one of those 
 intimate friends of Robert Greene, who was equally irritated 
 against those masterly improvements of Shakespeare, to which 
 the second more certain notice relates. Greene, whom from the 
 following communications we consider to be the first author of 
 the two last parts Of Henry VI., died in the year 1592, before 
 which time not only his arrangement of these plays, but Shake- 
 speare's revision of it, must have appeared. The poet left a 
 letter behind him, which his friend Chettle publishes in 1592 
 according to Greene's own wish, under the title ' A Groats- 
 worth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance,' and which 
 was addressed to their mutual dramatic friends, Marlowe, Lodge, 
 and Peele. The dying friend repentingly admonishes them to 
 break off all connection with the stage, and this in the following 
 words : ' Base-minded men aU three of you, if by my misery ye 
 be not w;arned ; for unto none of you, like me, sought those burs 
 to cleave ; those puppets, I mean, that speak from our mouths, 
 those anticks garnished in our colours. Is it not strange that I, 
 to whom they have all been beholding ; is it not like that you, 
 , to whom they have all been beholding^ shall (were ye in that 
 case that I am now) be both of them at once forsaken ? Yes, 
 trust them not! for there is an upstart crow, beautified with 
 our feathers, that with his " Tiger's heart wrapped in a player's 
 hide," supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse 
 as the best of you ; and, being an absolute Johannes FactotuTn, 
 is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in a country. Oh ! 
 that I might entreat your rare wits to be employed in more 
 profitable courses, and let these apes imitate your past excel- 
 lence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inven- 
 tions.' This passage alludes, with a significant play upon the 
 name, to Shakespeare; it speaks of him as an upstart, as a 
 Johannes Factotum, which he may have been to the Blackfriars 
 company, being their only poet. The passage says of him, that 
 he was beautified with ' our feathers,' a proof that these pieces 
 
 K 2 ' 
 
132 SHAKESPEABE'S FIRST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 are composed by all, or by some or one of these poets ; for that 
 an appropriation and revision of these pieces are meant, appears 
 from the parodied line, ' tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's 
 hide,' taken from the third part of Henry VI. Shakespeare, it 
 appears, complained of this attack. Chettle, the editor of 
 Greene's paper, made an apology it seems as far as Shakespeare 
 was concerned, in a tract entitled 'Kind-heart's Dream.' 
 Among other things it there says that one or two play-makers 
 had taken Greene's letter ' ofifensively.' It states that he was 
 acquainted with none of them ; that he cared not if he ever was 
 acquainted with one of them; and that he had not spared 
 another at the time as much as he had since wished that he had. 
 For he had himself seen that his demeanour was no less civil 
 than he was distinguished in his art. Besides, he adds, ' Divers 
 of worship have reported his uprighteness of dealing, which 
 argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that 
 approves his art.' Thus have we here the first testimony which 
 concedes to Shakespeare equal honour in his new career, as a 
 poet, an actor, and a man. 
 
THE COMEDY OF EEEOES AND THE 
 TAMING OF THE SHREW, 
 
 If we may venture to number the Comedy of Errors and the 
 Taming of the Shrew ahiong the works of Shakespeare's early 
 period, in which he appears dependent upon foreign originals, 
 we see how the young poet, without any one-sided preference, 
 equally tried his skill, in happy variety, upon all styles' and 
 subjects. He had worked at an heroic tragedy in Titus, at a 
 romantic drama in Pericles, at a history in Henry VI. ; in the 
 Comedy of Errors he adopted a comedy of intrigue ; and in the 
 Taming of the Shrew a comedy in which plot and character 
 equally engaged his attention. That the Taming of the Shrew 
 really belongs to this earliest period, has hitherto been shown 
 only by internal evidence; but the Comedy of Errors, as is 
 proved by an allusion in the piece, was written at the time 
 of the French civil wars against Henry IV. (1589— 9&), pro- 
 bably soon after 1591, when Essex was sent to the assistance 
 of Henry IV., and it thus indisputably belongs to this early 
 period. 
 
 The Comedy of Errors (a designation which, according to 
 Halliwell, subsequently became proverbial,) was, as is known, 
 taken from the ' Mensechmi ' of Plautus, which Shakespeare may 
 have read in an English translation, probably by Warner ; the 
 book, however, appears to have been written later than Shake- 
 speare's play, and was printed in 1595 ; and, except as regards 
 the groundwork of the subject, it had in language and execution 
 no sort of similarity with Shakespeare's play. We know that a 
 ' Historie of Errors ' had been acted at the English comrt about 
 the year 1577 and later; possibly this was a remodelling of the 
 ' Mensechmi ' of Plautus, which Shakespeare appropriated to him- 
 self and his stage. How far om* poet's path may have been pre- 
 
134 SHAKESPEABE'S FIRST DEAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 pared by this precursor, we cannot of course say. But compared 
 to Plautus, his play is superior both in form and matter ; with 
 him it is little more than a farce. Coleridge has even thus 
 called Shakespeare's play, but it appears to us with by no means 
 the same justice. We shall guard omrselves from imputing too 
 profound a philosophy to a comedy the subject of which rests 
 on a series of laughable accidents, lest we should build too 
 massive a structure of explanation upon too light a basis of 
 poetry. Nevertheless, in the Comedy of Errors, that great feature 
 of Shakespearian profoundness, that power of obtaining a deep 
 inner significance from the most superficial material, seems to 
 lie before us in this one early example, in which the fine spiritual 
 application which the poet has extracted from the material 
 strikes us as all the more remarkable, the more coarse and bold 
 the outwork of the plot. The errors and mistakes which arise 
 from the resemblance of the two pairs of twins are carried still 
 farther, and are less probably the work of accident in Shakes- 
 peare than in Plautus. In Plautus' play there is only one pair 
 of brothers, one of whom does not even know that they bear the 
 same name, and neither pair knows that they are similar ; thus 
 the errors are more simple and possible; In Shakespeare's plot, 
 on the contrary, the father must have told one child of the 
 similarity which he bore to his brother at his birth. From this 
 it certainly need not follow that this same similarity should 
 have been preserved in mature years ; but the sameness of name 
 must ever have been pwminently before the searching Syracusan ; 
 that the people at Ephesus know him and call him by name 
 must have startled and struck him all the more as his recognition 
 in Ephesus is (combined with peril of life. To avoid the im- 
 probabilities found in the sources from which he drew, is every- 
 where dse an .effort which characterises most strikingly Shake- 
 speare's knowledge of human natnre ; here, in the plot of the " 
 play, there is hardly a trace of this effort to be found. The 
 scene of action, Ephesus, is represented at the very beginning 
 as the corrupt sea;t of all jugglers and conjurors, mountebanks 
 and cheats; and the good Syracusan Antipholusis driven, by the 
 course of the intricacies which increase in a masterly manner 
 up to the catastrophe, to such straits that he is inclined rather 
 to consider himself bewitched than to arrive at the simple con- 
 jecture to which the very object of his journey must again and 
 again have led liim. 
 
 But whatever skilful management in respect to the plot 
 
COMEDY OF BSBOBS AND TAMING OF THE SHBEW. 135 
 
 may be wanting, this scarcely weighs in the balance when we 
 see how the poet has given the extravagant matter of these mis- 
 takes and intricacies an inner relation to the character of the 
 family in which he has placed them. These comic parts appear 
 upon a thoroughly tragic background, which does not interfere 
 at all with the extravagant scenes in the foreground, and perhaps 
 only makes them the more conspicuous, but which nevertheless 
 ever appears with sufficient importance to keep under the super- 
 ficial and weak impression of a mere farce, the whole substance 
 of which consisted in the mistakes of those similar twins. The 
 hostilities between Syracuse and Ephesus form the farthest 
 chiaroscuro background, upon which the whole picture is drawn, 
 the comic parts of which can scarcely be considered more fascinat- 
 ing and exciting than the tragic. The fate of the imprisoned 
 father who is seeking his lost sons, and who, engaged on a work 
 of love, is condemned to death ; whose mental sufferings at last 
 increase to such a degree, that he sees himself unknown by his 
 recovered son and believes himself disowned by him ; all this 
 raises the piece far above the character of a mere farce. This 
 tragic part is united with the comic by the most delicate links — 
 links which the poet has interwoven into the transmitted story, 
 according to his subsequent habit, with that totality of his 
 spiritual natmre, that we are absolutely left in doubt as to whether 
 he acted from blind instinc,t or with perfect consciousness. We 
 look upon a double family and its earlier and present destinies, 
 in which the strangest errors take place, not merely of an 
 external, but of an internal character. In this family the strange 
 contrasts of domestic love and a roving spirit are combined ; 
 these produce alternate happiness and misfortune ; troubles and 
 quarrels arise, in spite of inner congeniality of soul and family 
 attachment, and estrangement and perplexity are occasioned, in 
 spite of outward similarity. In the excellent exposition of the 
 piece, the old ^geon relates the history of the double birth of 
 the two twins. Before their birth he had left his wife on a visit 
 to Epidamnum ; his wife, expecting to become a mother, hastened 
 from Syracuse to join him. The inducement to this journey is 
 left by the poet as a matter of conjecture ; this only he has 
 indicated, that if a loving, it was also a wilful step, and it is 
 moreover evident in itself that the step combined at once those 
 contrasting qualities of family affection and love of wandering. 
 Was it the result of suspicion and jealousy — of that quality, 
 which in itself of so contrary a nature, which destroys love, and 
 
136 SHAKESPEASZ'S FIRST DSAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 yet has its source in love alone ? We imagine so ; for Emilia 
 subsequently warns her daughter-in-law so forcibly against this 
 passion. Her twins are born at Epidamnum, and ' not meanly 
 proud of two such boys,' she made, against the will of her husband, 
 ' daily motions for the home return ; ' during the journey that 
 shipwreck befalls them which separates husband and wife, mother 
 and father, and with each a pair of the twins, their own sons and 
 foster-brothers and future attendants. The Syracusan family, 
 the father and one son, feel again after the lapse of many years 
 the workings of the same family character ; the son travels for 
 seven years in quest of his lost mother and brother, although he 
 perceives the folly of seeking a drop in the ocean ; similar love, 
 sacrifice, and folly draw the father again after the son ; a lively 
 impulse works in them, as in . the mother before, to unite the 
 family, and this very impulse separates them more and more, 
 and threatens at length to separate them forcibly and for ever. 
 In the family at Ephesus, between the lost Antipholus with his 
 mother and his wife Adrianaj there is another error, the trace of 
 which is to be found already in Plautus' ' Mensechmi.' The wife 
 is a shrew from jealousy ; she torments her iimocent husband, 
 and robs herself wantonly of his love ; her passion leads her to 
 self-forgetfulness and a sacrifice of all that is feminine. And 
 this moral error justly occasions other errors between the two 
 brothers ; until at last, by means of the mother ^miUa, the 
 internal dissension is healed and the errors are cleared up, both 
 at once, and with equal satisfaction. The reader feels indeed 
 that these delicately veiled deeper relations invest the adventures 
 and comic parts of the play with too high a value for the piece 
 ever to bear the impression of a mere farce. 
 
 It is not impossible that not only an aesthetic emphasis was 
 laid by the poet on the point that the discord of the family 
 arose from jealousy and from the quarrelsome nature of the 
 women, but that a pathological stress was given alsp to this fact, 
 in consequence of personal sympathy. We advance this merely 
 as a conjecture, upon which we would not place much value ; it 
 is also very possible that what strikes us from its unusual con- 
 currence, is mere accident. We have before intimated that, in 
 Shakespeare's early youthful writings especially, the impressions 
 gathered from his own domfestic circumstances, which he brought 
 with him to London, seem to glance forth. In Henry VI. he 
 has drawn the characters of the two masculine women, Margaret 
 and Eleanor, more forcibly and with more expressive touches, 
 
COMEDY OF ERE0S8 AM) TAMING OF THE SHBEW. 137 
 
 than his predecessor ; and how eloquently he makes Suffolk, at 
 the close of the first part, in a scene which we conjectured to 
 be his writing, declaim. against imloving marriages: 
 
 For what is wedlock forced but a hell, 
 An age of discord and continual strife P 
 Whereas the contrary bringeth forth bliss, 
 And is a pattern of celestial peace. 
 
 Here, in the Comedy of Errors, he awakens the conscience 
 of the jealous shrew Adriana, when iEmilia lays upon her the 
 blame of the believed madness of her husband; attributing it to 
 her ' venom clamours ' and railing, with which she hindered his 
 sleeps and sauced his meat, and gave him over to ' moody and 
 dull melancholy.' In contrast to her he has placed her mild 
 sister, who 'ere she learns love, will practise to obey,' who 
 draws a lesson from examples in the kingdom of nature that 
 the woman is justly subject to the man, and who amid care and 
 trouble procures the maintenance of life. In the Taming of 
 the Shrew, a piece that stands in complete affinity, both in 
 outline and idea, to the Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare describes 
 how the shrew is to be educated on the threshold of marriage, 
 and how she is brought by just discipline to the temper of 
 mind which is natural to the mild Luciana. Her speech at 
 the close of the piece strongly expresses the relation of a wife 
 to her husband, as Shakespeare regarded 'it. This is quite 
 conformable to the sentiments of that day ; to our perverted 
 feelings, it is an exaggerated picture ; to the affected homage 
 of the present day to the female sex, it will appear barbarity or 
 irony. All that may seem in this speech of Katherine too 
 energetic and strong, is to be explained by her spirit of contra- 
 diction, and the poet, in writing it, may have been spurred by 
 his own bitter experience. It is certainly striking that Shakes- 
 peare has never again depicted this sort of unf eminine character 
 in its conjugal relations ; it seems as if he desired to disburden 
 himself of his impressions in these pieces, just as he next ex- 
 hausted his vein of love in a series of love plays. It is certainly 
 possible that these early productions were the result of phases 
 in the poet's personal existence, and that, like Goethe's ' Mit- 
 schuldige,' with its repulsive matter, they proceeded from the 
 inner experiences of his own life. 
 
 The Taming of the Shrew bears a striking resemblance to 
 the Comedy of Errors, especially in the parts which do not 
 refer to the relation between Petruchio and Katharine. The 
 
138 SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 Latin scliool, the mannerism which marked the Italians of the 
 sixteenth century, Ariosto and Machiavelli, in reviving the 
 comedies of Plautus, was justly perceived by Schlegel in this 
 part of the play. This is simply explained by the fact that 
 Shakespeare, in this very part, borrowed essential touches from 
 the 'Suppositi' of Ariosto, which in 1566 were translated into 
 English by Gascoigne. Like the figure of Pinch in the Errors, 
 those of the Pedant and the Pantalon Grremio are pure charac- 
 ters of Italian comedy, and the whole plot of the piece is per- 
 fectly carried out in the taste of this school. As in the Comedy 
 of Errors, the long doggrel verse and the language of the old 
 pre^Shakespeare comedy are here pre-eminent, as is the case 
 only a few times besides in his earliest original comedies, the 
 Two Grentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, and others, and 
 never happens again in the' plays of Shakespeare's riper period. 
 As in the Comedy of Errors, the diction is unequal, and "the dia- 
 logue often clumsy ; there are single passages, on the other Hand, 
 equal in good ^aste and in cleverness of verse and language to 
 the matured style of the poet. As in that comedy, there is 
 little regard paid to the probability of the story and its circum- 
 stances. As in the one the Ephesian Dromio, so in the other 
 the little Grrumio, is the coarser form of a clown, such as 
 Shakespeare, in his early comedies alone, loves to introduce and 
 to work out. As in the Errors, so here in the part which 
 turns upon Luc'entio's wooing of Bianca, the art of characteri- 
 sation is imperfectly exhibited : the rich old wooer Gremio, the 
 ' narrow prying father ' Minola, are superficial characters 
 belonging to all comedies of intrigue ; and so too in the 
 Errors there is only a common distinction of character drawn 
 between the violent Ephesian Antipholus, who usually beats 
 his stupid servant, and the milder Syracusan, with whom his 
 witty attendant stands more on the footing of a jester. In 
 both pieces it is striking to remark how the poet lingers 
 among his school reminiscences ; no other undisputed play of 
 Shakespeare's furnishes so much evidence of his learning and 
 study as the Taming of the Shrew. In the address of the 
 Syracusan Antipholus to Luciana (Act iii. sc. 2), in which he 
 calls her a mermaid, and asks her, ' Are you a god ?' there is a 
 purely Homeric tone; the same passage, bearing the same 
 stamp, is met with again in the Taming of the Shrew (Act 
 IV. sc. 5), where Katharine, when she addresses Vincentio, uses 
 a similar passage from Ovid, borrowed by him from Homer, 
 
COMEDY OF EBB0B8 AND TAMING- OF THE SHREW. 139 
 
 the antique sound of which lingers even under the touch of a 
 fourth hand. This pervading mannerism of his youthful 
 writings ought long ago to have determined the position of this 
 play as belonging to the earliest period of the poet. All critics 
 have felt this : Malone, Delius, and even Collier, who thought 
 that several hands had been engaged on the piece. Un- 
 doubtedly the poet's own hand was more than once employed 
 upon it. In the form in which we now read the piece, it must 
 have been subsequently embellished, as we assume with 
 certainty of other plays. Very significant allusions point to 
 later plays of contemporary poets, and the introduction refers 
 to Fletcher's ' Women Pleased,' a piece , not written before 
 1604. That the name Baptista in the Taming of the Shrew is 
 rightly used as that of a man, and in Hamlet on the contrary 
 as that of a woman, is a proof to Collier that the comedy was 
 written later than Hamlet, in 1601. But whoever considers the 
 refinement witii which Shakespeare at this very period, in 
 Much Ado about Nothing, repeated, as it were, in a higher 
 sphere, the two characters of Petruchio and Katherine, will 
 never believe that the same poet at the same time could have 
 originally written this piece. 
 
 The principal figure of our comedy (the Shrew) belonged to 
 the favourite subjects of a joyous and laughter-loving age ; 
 poems and jests told of shrewish women ; in one farce, ' Tom 
 Tiler and his Wife,' the sufferings of an oppressed husband were 
 acted by children, as early as 1569 ; in Chettle's ' Grriseldis,' the 
 episode of the "Welsh knight and the shrew whom he marries 
 forms the counterpart to the patient and mild heroine of the 
 piece. There is a 'Taming of a Shrew,' written by an un- 
 known hand, and this is the piece upon which Shakespeare 
 founded his own play. The older piece was printed in 1594, 
 when it had already been performed several times ; this does 
 not prevent its being older by some time. It was published in 
 a well-known collection by Steevens (' Six Old Plays '). The 
 plot of the piece is much coarser than Shakespeare's ; even 
 where the scene is preserved, it is far more clumsy in the 
 original. The scenes of a humorous kind, like those between 
 Katharine and Grumio, and those with the haberdasher and 
 . tailor, were for the most part arranged as they have since 
 remained. The contrast between the bombastic pathos of the 
 scenes between the lovers, and the low nature of the burlesque 
 parts, is so great, that here agaiij we may perceive how the poet, 
 
140 SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 even in Ms coarser productions,- refined everything. There are 
 here single expressions, for which Shakespeare's pen, however 
 indelicate it may appear to the present generation, was at all 
 times too chaste. The coaaparison of the two plays does not 
 exhibit a relation between them like that of Shakespeare's 
 Henry VI. to Greene's ; for the poet, by the pervading improve- 
 ment of material and form, made the work his own. 
 
 We have already intimated that the Taming of the Shrew 
 consists of two contrary parts. The story of the accomplished 
 Lucentio — ^who, full of students' tricks, comes to Padua at any 
 rate perhaps for the sake of learning, accompanied by a clever 
 servant who is able to change parts with his master^ and his shy 
 and skilful wooing of the well-bred Bianca, who is versed in. all 
 fine arts — forms a plot of refined design, after the Italian taste. 
 The counterpart to this, the wooing of the coarse Petmchio and 
 the quarrelsome Katherine,* is a piece of a genuine popular 
 character. With this latter part, the central point of the play, 
 we shall alone occupy ourselves, in order to see how the poet 
 passes from the shallow delineation of persons, to which we are 
 accustomed in plays of intrigue, to that more profound develop- 
 ment of character with which, at a later period, he has indulged 
 us throughout his works. 
 
 The scenes between Petruchio and Katherine might be 
 converted into a mere joke, and that of the commonest order. 
 It is sad to think that a man like Grarrick has done this. He 
 contracted the piece, under the title of Katherine and PetrucHo, 
 into a play of three acts ; he expunged the more refined part, 
 the plot for the wooing of Bianca, and he debased the coarse 
 remainder into a clumsy caricature. The acting of the pair wag 
 coarsely extravagant, according to the custom which has subse- 
 quently maintained its ground ; Woodward at the same period 
 acted Petruchio with such fury, that he ran the fork into the 
 finger of his fellow actress (Mrs. Clive), and when he . carried 
 her off the stage, threw her down. Thus is the piece still 
 performed in London as a concluding farce, with all dis- 
 gusting overloadings of vulgar buffoonery, even after the 
 genuine play was again acted at the Haymarket in 1844, and 
 was received with applause. 
 
 If all England were to support Grarrick, we should confi- 
 dently maintain that this comedy was not so intended by the poet. 
 The piece is, it is true, treated in a humorous style ; the sub- 
 ject, unless it were to fall into pedantic moralizing, could bear 
 
COMEDY OF EBSOSS AND TAMING OF THE 8BBEW. 141 
 
 fiio other handling. Even in common intercourse the question as 
 to the suhordination and rule of the wife is ever brought forward 
 in exaggerated jest ; coarse hiunour is required to give the 
 subject its colouring. There is none of the delicate texture of a 
 higher nature in the two leading characters ; it must be so, 
 for had they been differently constituted the circumstance 
 could not have taken place. The wooer, Petruchio, is fashioned 
 out of coarse clay ; he comes not to Padua as Lucentio does, 
 for the sake of study, but to marry for gold. The rich shrew 
 is offered to him in jest, and he enters upon his courtship in a 
 spirit of good-humoured bravado ; this even his Grrumio per- 
 ceives. He has never been of refined nature and habits ; he 
 goes about badly dressed; to strike his servants and wring 
 them by the ears on the smallest cause, is common with him ; 
 but at the same time he has travelled and is experienced, he 
 has learned to know men and how to handle them. To tame the 
 shrew cannot frighten a man who, with all his manly power, is 
 conscious of understanding the play of jest and flattering 
 gallantry, and who in extreme cases knows that the 
 
 Little fire grows great with little wind, 
 Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all. 
 
 — He is a soldier, huntsman, and sailor — enough of each to 
 develop a rugged character ; he is a rigid disciplinarian, un- 
 approachable and imposing. He is compared by Katherine to 
 a crab-apple, and I know not what could be more expressively 
 likened to the hard-skinned muscular faces of soldiers long in 
 service. 
 
 Katherine, whom he undertakes to woo, is like a wasp, like 
 a foal that kicks from its halter — pert, quick and determined, 
 but full of good heart ; Petruchio already takes pleasure in her 
 nature, because her honest heart overflows in the right place, 
 as in the last act with the widow. Spoilt by her father, she 
 is an ill-behaved child, who cannot crave nor thank ; who 
 mistreats her gentler sister, binds her, and beats her. She is 
 excited to the highest pitch of violence by her father's preference 
 for her sister, but principally from envy of the numerous 
 suitors who press round Bianca, whilst she has the prospect of 
 remaining unmarried. She is not one of those beautiful 
 feminine souls who remain unembittered with this prospect and 
 in this lot, and who do not lose the special harmony of the 
 female nature. The key rather to her character and to her 
 
142 SHAKESFEASE'S FIRST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 coadiict to the ill-mannered suitor, is that she is embittered 
 against her threatening lot, to ' lead apes in hell ' — a proverbial 
 humorous expression for the fate of the unmarried, which 
 Beatrice also uses of herself in Much Ado about Nothing. 
 She wishes for a husband, he wishes for gold ; thus the way 
 is smoothed to each of them. The old play, that Shakespeare 
 had before him, says plainly that she wished for a husband, 
 and that that is the source of her contention ; and Petruchio 
 knows it also, expresses it, and founds upon it his boldness. 
 But it was not Shakespeare's method to express such trivialities : 
 he did not .make it so easy for his actors ; he left it to their 
 ability to bring into their acting that which was understood of 
 itself. In the wooing scene, all Katherine's words are re- 
 pialsive and contemptuous ; she does not assent, and yet they 
 are aftei-wards betrothed. This passage has perplexed all 
 actors ; it has always been esteemed strange and imperfect ; its 
 performance in Garrick's version is quite detestable. But for 
 two clever actors all that the characters demand is given in 
 this scene. He inundates her with words and flatteries, which 
 she has never before heard ; when he compares her, with Diana, 
 she returns her first calm and quiet answer. The habitual 
 spirit of contradiction makes her coarse and repelling even 
 towards him and his roughness, bnt as soon as she sees that he 
 is serious the storm subsides within her. The actress who 
 •conceives this character in a naive manner, will at once have 
 gained her point ; it must be conceived in a naive manner, 
 not as a shrew by profession, but as a passionate child, who has 
 never laid aside the waywardness of her early years. She must 
 not once for all storm over her part ; she should rather stand 
 in droll confusion before the new phenomenon of a suitor ; she 
 ought not to make grimaces at the wooer, but to exhibit to him 
 an open countenance, agitated by curiosity and surprise ; to 
 look at him with a clear eye, that is not confiding and which 
 yet would willingly confide, that scorns and in the midst of 
 scorn, relaxes. For this naivete there is full scope given by 
 the poet. Whilst Petruchio overwhelms Katharine with his 
 flatteries, he interweaves all that the bad world says of her ; 
 he exaggerates it and affects that she limps ; involuntarily she 
 steps firmly forward, in order to convince him of the contrary; 
 upon this he is sarcastic, and immediately she pauses in the 
 spirit of contradiction and confusion. As soon as witnesses 
 come, he affects that she hung about his neck and gave ' kiss 
 
COMEDY OF EBR,OES AND TAMING OF THE SHBEW. 143 
 
 on kiss'; when the actress of Katherine, as is usually the 
 case, resents this, and shows herself unmannerly about it, it is 
 Indeed not to be understood how the betrothal can then pass 
 as settled. Whilst he says the decisive words, ' Kiss me, Kate, 
 we will be married o' Sunday,' he probably uses the refrain of 
 an old familiar song, which humorously softens the assurance 
 lying in this authoritative wooing. Her answer is that she 
 will see him hanged first, and this can only be said in perfect 
 calmness after the subsided storm ; it can only be spoken half 
 inquiringly, half sulkily, showing her at once conquered and 
 resisting. She goes off the stage at the same time with him, 
 without having assented ; but she has silently, although con- 
 tradictorily, agreed. This is the poet's design. She could not 
 indeed answer with a ' Yes,' for she had practised so long only the 
 ' No ' of contradiction. Beatrice, in Much Ado about Nothing — 
 a much more delicately designed character — can do so just as 
 little ; it belongs naturally to these characters, who are most 
 deeply averse even to the appearance of sentimentality. The 
 suitor facilitates the path in a delicate manner, witnessing to 
 his psychological superiority; he interweaves, adroitly that 
 ' 'tis bargained 'twixt them twain,' that she for a time might 
 continue to play her shrewish part. He seizes her then on 
 another weak side ; he goes to Venice ' to buy apparel 'gainst 
 the wedding-day ' ; she shall be fine at the marriage ; she 
 shows indeed, on other occasions, that she, is woman enough to 
 care for this. And what the short time of his absence effects 
 and changes in her, she betrays afterwards at his delay with 
 that one sigh, ' Would Katherine had never seen him ! '— 
 which is uttered only with lingering passion, tenderly and 
 amid tears, when the father himself expects an outbrust of her 
 ' impatient humour.' All this is very skilful, and must be 
 acted skilfully. The matter is coarse, but the structure is full 
 of delicacy, and the actor must of course distinguish the differ 
 rence ; for the task of representing coarseness has to be dis- 
 charged in a delicate manner. 
 
 For the actress of Katharine, the wooing scene is the diflScult 
 point; for the actor of Petruchio, the course of the taming. 
 The latter might appear wholly as an exaggerated caricature : 
 but he who is capable of; giving it th.e right humour will 
 impart to tHs extravagance something of the modesty of nature. 
 In Garrick's farce, when Petruchio comes in extravagant pomp, 
 pel^brates an extravagant wedding, and departs in extravagant 
 
144 SHAKESPEAEE'8 FIRST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 haste, all fellow-actors are amazed and frightened. But this 
 is not Shakespeare's design; Grumio finds the whole so droll 
 that he could ' die with laughing.' The manner in which he 
 tames her, however coarse it may appear, is characterized by 
 the same refined method as his wooing. By his departure for 
 Venice, his long absence and his strange appearance, he begins 
 with her a moral discipline, which works by expectation, 
 suspense, and disappointment. Then follows the physical dis- 
 cipline, in order to su^bdue her rebellious temper. As he had 
 obtained her by stratagem and silenced her by vehemence, so 
 he tames her first by overstraining, and then by restraining her 
 mental and physical nature. The latter part of the treatment 
 is the very method by which falcons are trained, through hunger 
 and watching. But all the privations which he demands from 
 her, he shares with her ; he deprives her of sleep and eating 
 under the pretext of love and care for her. If this is performed, 
 as is often the case, in a thoroughly brutal manner, the poet's 
 intention is defeated, for he designed to leave Katharine no 
 cause for resenting the behaviour she met with. In opposition 
 to this, the passage might be alleged, in which Petruchio 
 requires his betrothed to declare the sun to be the moon, but 
 in this passage we may recognize only a skilful test ; here the 
 severe discipline evidently passes ofif in a humorous jest, and a 
 good actor thus comprehends the passage. In England it is 
 perhaps an old tradition, that immediately after this passage 
 in which she has yielded, and at which she shows herself fuUy 
 cured, having subsequently to mention the sun in an indifiFerent 
 speech, the actress turns to Petruchio and proflfers the word in 
 a roguish tone, as if to ask whether he agrees that the sun is 
 shining. One trait of this kind, interwoven by an intellectual 
 actor, better illilminates whole scenes and characters of Shake- 
 speare's plays than long commentaries. This fine touch 
 smoothes the way to the subsequent pliability of the changed 
 woman, when she at length preaches that lesson of subjection, 
 still a little in the manner of the old defiance, but now directed 
 against the defying. 
 
 These, then, are the seven plays which lie at the outset of 
 our poet's career. Let us once more glance over them, that in 
 the survey we may discern the general character which distin- 
 guishes them from the later works of Shakespeare. More or 
 
COMEDY OF ERBOBS AND TAMING OF THE SHBEW. 145 
 
 less, all the seven pieces betray the uncultured popular taste of 
 the pre-Shakespeare age, both in matter and form. The bar- 
 barities in Titus, the coarseness of Pericles, the occasional 
 severity in Henry VI., the rude character of the two comedies, 
 the treatment of the iambic verse in Titus, and the doggrel 
 verse in the comedies ; all these characteristics mark these plays 
 as belonging to that period of English literature when Mar- 
 lowe and Greene had not been eclipsed by Shakespeare. 
 Previous to these plays, we had known Shakespeare only as the 
 author of descriptive poems. Passing from these to dramas so 
 diversified, we might be led to believe, by the dramatic form 
 and the different material, that we had to do with quite another 
 poet. But this is not the case on closer inspection. There are 
 not lacking, in all these plays, remembrances of the Italian, of 
 that more classical school of poetry which he followed in his 
 descriptive writings. Pericles is derived from those romantic, 
 half antique narrations, in which the poets of the Italian school 
 delighted ; from the 'Arcadia ' of Sidney, the main representativa 
 of this school, many expressions are faithfully copied. In 
 Titus, the Ovid-like voluptuousness of the narrative poems is 
 perceptible in the contents of the second act ; at the only 
 opportunity for it in Henry YI., namely in Margaret's farewell 
 to Suffolk, the same tone is for a moment apparent. In the 
 short dialogue between Luciana and Antipholus, in the Comedy 
 of Errors, the thoughtful, antithetical, epigrammatic dictionj 
 forcibly recalls to mind the conceits in Lucrece. Last of all^ 
 in the Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare has made use of the 
 comedy of a famed Italian master, just as in the Comedy of 
 Errors he has only revived a later comedy in imitation of the 
 Italian poets. All these plays exhibit the poet uot far removed 
 from school and its pursuits ; in none of his later dramas does 
 he plunge so deeply into the remembrances of antiquity, his 
 head overflowing with the images, legends, and characters of 
 ancient history. In Titus, as we have already shown, the whole 
 story is composed from mere pieces of ancient legends and 
 histories. Just as in Kyd's ' Spanish Tragedy ' there are long 
 passages from Latin poets, so here a stanza from an ode of 
 Horace has been admitted. In Pericles, as in one of Seneca's 
 plays, we have the apparition of Diana, and scenes which strik- 
 ingly remind us of Ulysses' visit to the Phceacians. In the 
 Comedy of Errors and the Taming of the Shrew we have 
 already pointed out the introductory address in Homer's style. 
 
146 SHAKESPEASE'S FIRST DBAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 Like Lucrece and Venus, these pieces are redundant with allu- 
 sions to Greek mythology and ancient history. In these 
 allusions the Trojan legend stands pre-eminent, and especially 
 Virgil's view of it, as we find it in Lucrece. In the passage 
 where, in Henry VL, he alludes to Diomede and Ulysses, when 
 they 'stole to Khesus' tents, and brought from thence the 
 Thracian fatal steeds,' we perceive at once how freshly the 
 young poet was imbued with Trojan history. The endeavour 
 to display his learning is not foreign to these pieces, and is not 
 uncharacteristic of a beginner. We will not adduce the first 
 part of Henry VI. in evidence, because the greater part of it is 
 attributed to another writer ; otherwise we perceive in it great 
 ostentation of study of the Old Testament, of Eoman history, 
 of the Eomances of the Paladin, and even of Froissart's 
 Chronicles. But in the second and third part also, in Shake- 
 speare's additions, the quotations from old myths and histories 
 are multiplied, and the manner in. which he at one time inserts 
 Machiavelli in the place of- Catiline, and at another time Bar- 
 gulus instead of the pirate Abradas, shows that he purposely 
 sought opportunity to display his own learning. But the 
 Taming of the Shrew, especially, may be compared with the 
 first part of Henry VL in the manifold ostentation of book- 
 learning. , The desire to betray a knowledge of language 
 appears in no subsequent play of Shakespeare's, with the 
 exception of Love's Labour's Lost, in the manner in which it is 
 exhibited in these seven ; the scraps of foreign languages which 
 he here uses in thorough earnestness are subsequently only 
 employed as characteristics or in jest. In Titus there are not 
 only isolated Latin passages, as is the case with almost all the 
 pre-Shakespeare poets, but French expressions also are intro- 
 duced in tragic pathos ; in Pericles the devices of the knights 
 are proclaimed in all languages, and among them there is a 
 Spanish one with the error pi'^ for mas. In Henry VI. also, 
 we meet with these scraps in passages which are Shakespeare's 
 property ; the old Clifford expires with a French sentence on 
 his lips, the young Rutland with a Latin. In both comedies, 
 moreover, Latin, French, Spanish and Italian words and sen- 
 tences are accvramlated. Thus we see that uncertain and 
 immature forms, coarser taste in the choice of subject and in 
 the manner of working it, the presence of school learning, the 
 leaning to. antiquity g,nd to the learned circle of the Italian 
 Eomanticists of England, and eagerness to appear well read and 
 
COMEDY OF ERBOBS AND TAMING OF THE SHBEW. 147 
 
 full of knowledge, were the familiar traits which distinguish 
 these early productions of Shakespeare. Even their difference 
 ' in matter, tone and diction, proceeds from the further familiar 
 characteristic that they are all imitations of older works. The 
 progress of the poet is clear and evident. In the three first 
 plays it is repressed by the weight of foreign influence, and 
 appears therefore in very different fashion ^ in the second, and 
 third part of Henry VI. he wrestles for . the palm with a 
 contemporary ; in the Comedy of Errors with Plautus ; in the 
 Taming of the Shrew he casts away the fonn of his previous 
 work, and stands upon his own ground. The importance which 
 this training upon other masters and writings exercised on 
 Shakespeare's cultivation is never sufficiently taken into 
 account : the happiest instinct led the proud genius upon this 
 modest path. No talent is more to be mistrusted than that 
 which, in early youth, aims at originality ; self-conoeit guides 
 it upon this mistaken way, and want of nature will be the end 
 at which it arrives. Every great artist has had such a period 
 of training, in which he has trusted in an earlier master, in 
 which he has chained himself to a foreign model, in. order to 
 learn from him. The scholar who in this devotedness loses 
 his independence, and surrenders himself to imitation, would 
 certainly never have found out a way of his own. But true 
 talent, during the apprenticeship of youth, only penetrates into 
 the foreign mind, that it may, from the deepest' knowledge of 
 it, learn more acutely the difference of its own and separate 
 itself with greater independence. Thus Eaphael and Titian, 
 thus Goethe and Schiller, first practised their skiU on foreign 
 masters ; the latter even on our Shakespeare himself. And 
 thus did he also. He looked up to Plautus and' Seneca, earty 
 and late, and free firom ev«y pretension; perhaps at first 
 even to Marlowe and Greene. With these he certainly must 
 soon have felt that he could onty Ifearn w3iat he should not do ; 
 he improved the plays of Greene, whUe he- elaborated them ; 
 he was reproached by Greene with' having-; beautified himself 
 with foreign feathers, but he was himself conscious that in his- 
 turn he had invested them with ornament. The eustomi of 
 that day that the poets of the different theatre* borrowed their 
 materials from each other, and worked them up afresh, was 
 extraordinarily advantageous to the drama.. From- the gains 
 and losses of other stages the favourite subjects of the publde 
 were known, and in this manner they were rarely mistaken in 
 
 1.2 
 
148 SHAKEaPEARE'S FIBST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. 
 
 the matter. Many hands were then engaged upon the same 
 work; their elaborations were subject to the verdict of the 
 public ; the subject and its signification, the characters and 
 their treatment, were thus refined. This was the case also with 
 the ancient drama. In that youth of the world there were few 
 dramatic subjects, mythical or historical, existing at all; on 
 each of these few every famous poet tried his skill; these 
 continued attempts ripened at last into the pure form, which 
 we admire in the Greek tragedies. Something of a similar but 
 superficial character happened on the English stage; though 
 here in the richer and more extensive works of modem taste, it 
 would have been all the more necessary that the same should 
 nave taken place, and that even more fundamentally. But 
 with Shakespeare we can remark plainly and progressively, 
 how in the earlier dramas which he undertook to elaborate, 
 he ever learned, in a masterly manner, to reject more of 
 the shell, and to penetrate into the kernel of the subject and 
 its irunost soul. This art he afterwards transferred even to his 
 epic narrative sources, and he learned to give to the most 
 superficial and frivolous story a .psychological and moral depth. 
 
SECOND PEEIOD OF 
 SHAKESPEAKE'S DEAMATIC POETKY. 
 
 We pass from the first period of the dramatic career of our poet, 
 in which he appears only as the elaborator . of foreign works, to 
 a second, which we confine to the years between 1592 and 1600. 
 In this short time the poet rises with almost inconceivable 
 activity from the scholar to the master, and passes through a 
 mental history of the most remarkable kind, although we 
 possess only hints and conjectures for determining its natiue 
 more closely. We cannot read the works of these years without 
 receiving an impression, for the most part, that the poet was 
 passing through a happy and buoyant period when he wrote 
 them. The untroubled gladness and the playful wantonness 
 which meet us in all the comedies of this period, and the ex- 
 uberance of mind which bursts forth in Henry IV., easily allow 
 us to infer as much inward self-reliance as outward ease on the 
 part of the poet. We shall also subsequently find, when we 
 return from the consideration of the works of this epoch to the 
 history of Shakespeare's life, that his rapid success as an actor 
 and poet, his importance in higher society, his honourable con- 
 nections and friendships, and a prosperous outward condition 
 which enabled him to relieve his parents effectually in their 
 necessity ; that all these manifest a series of favourable circum- 
 stances adapted to place the young poet in the happy mood, in 
 which his talent could so quickly and so immeasurably advance. 
 At the end of this period a shadow seems cast over this happi- 
 ness, which gave Shakespeare an impetus towards more serious 
 contemplation and a still deeper penetration into human life. 
 It is striking, that while between 1590 and 1600 comedy 
 prevailed over tragedy, in the series of his writings after that 
 
150 SECOND PERIOD OF ^HAKESPEABE' S DEAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 period tragedy aaid the serious drama appear, on the contrary, 
 just as decidedly in the ascendant ; and this very contrast obKges 
 us to date from it a third period of Shakesperian poetry. 
 
 The -works of this period are each in themselves significant 
 and great ; the group, considered as a whole, presents a specially 
 remarkable appearance from the vast many-sidedness which 
 appears in the subjects treated of. They are divided into three 
 parts, distinguished by their innermost nature. In the com- 
 mencement of this period we meet with a series of plays of 
 essentially erotic purport, the central point of which is formed 
 by the passions and the deeds of love : namely the Two Gentle- 
 men of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, All's Well that Ends 
 Well, Midsummer-Night's Dream, and Borneo and Juliet. Side 
 by side with these lie all the historical plays but one which 
 Shakespeare produced after Henry VI. ; dramas of dry, realistic 
 matter, the worid of outer life and action placed as if in inten-' 
 tional contrast to that of feeling and opposed to it in equal 
 extent and with equal emphasis : namely, Eichard II. and III., 
 King John, Henry IV. and V. At the dose of this period Hes 
 a third group of comedies closely clustered together; comedies 
 in which Shakespeare, in the gladdest freedom and joyfulness of 
 mind, raised this branch of art to the highest degree of perfec- 
 tion, maintaining its cheerful character pure and untroubled ; 
 thus making the sudden transition to the tragedies, in the third 
 period of his poetry, all the more interesting. It is not possible 
 with perfect certainty to assign to each of these works the year 
 of its origin ; but, according to the concurring judgment of all 
 critical lauthorities, they fall collectively within the period 
 mentioned, or very little beyond it. Historical plays and love 
 plays were ailtemately elaborated by the poet ; the historical in 
 no chronological series, but just as the liking for the subject 
 suggested them. In the discussion of these works, therefore,' 
 we shall not bind ourselves too scrupulously to the order of time, 
 but at once carry on the three series in their great divisions, and 
 then examine and consider each single work separately, adhering 
 as far as possible to the probable chronology, if any thread may 
 be perceived which indicates to us, in addition to its date, 
 another order of thoughts and feelings. 
 
LOVE PLAYS. 151 
 
 LOVE-PLAYS. 
 
 We will first speak of the series of love-plays, in which Shake- 
 spe_are has more or less exclusively represented the essence and 
 nature of love. All the above-named pieces are of this kind, 
 whilst in Shakespeare's later dramas it is only in true comedies 
 that love adventures form the central point, and this indeed 
 only of the plot, and no longer as here, at the same time, the 
 very substance of the piece; whilst in. his tragedies, they are 
 only introduced so far as they represent, in the great varieties 
 of life itself, but one side of our existence. With our own 
 Grerman poets, even the greatest, this side of our being occupies 
 far too wide a space, and must detract much from the wealth of 
 their poetry, as compared with Shakespeare's works. They felt 
 nothing of that natural impulse of the English poet to establish 
 themselves in the great sphere of active life, that is in history, 
 in order to counterbalance the life of sentiment. Where they 
 have interwoven a love affair as an episode in an historical 
 play, the preference for the sentimental part prevailed, and the 
 poetic brilliancy and energy centred in it. Shakespeare's words 
 in Love's Labour's Lost may be almost universally applied to this 
 sentimental poetry : 
 
 Never durst poet touch a pen to write, 
 Until Ms ink were tempered with, love's sighs. 
 
 But this was not the case with our poet. We may conclude, 
 from the circumstances of Shakespeare's life, that in his 
 youth he may have been for a while that which in Love's 
 Labour's Lost, and the Two Gentlemen of Verona, he calls the 
 ' votary to love ; ' and this was indeed the very period in which 
 he created the love-pieces which we shall next consider. But 
 it was at all events only a period, a passing time, in which he 
 was personally swayed by this passion, and poetically engaged 
 with it ; and to this poetic occupation he in no wise surrendered 
 himself entirely ; but he took care, as we have said^ in the hap- 
 piest instinct of a many-sided nature, to maintain the just 
 balance in his descriptions of the powerful life of feeling, by the 
 contemplation of the great historical world of action. 
 
 If we loose sight of this grand double-sidedness, if we become 
 
152 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DBAMATIG POETRY. 
 
 entirely and solely absorbed in the love-pieces of this period, 
 we find even in this exclusive view of the matter that he treated 
 his theme quite otherwise to our German poets. The ideal love 
 heroes of our own Schiller, and the weak sensual characters of 
 our GrOethe, are, from that sentimental element which is infused 
 throughout the love-poetry of a modern date, of one uniform 
 colouring ; on our stage therefore, there is one fixed character of a 
 lover, which the player to whom it is committed acts nearly always 
 in the game manner. It was not thus in Shakespeare's time, and 
 his works are not so designed. The vast theme, the passion 
 of love, is treated by Shakespeare in a far grander manner. He 
 depicted it not alone in reference to itself, but in the most 
 manifold combination with other passions, and in the most wide- 
 spread relations to other human circumstances ; it is to him a 
 necessity in those first five plays which we find devoted to this 
 theme, to represent it in the greatest fulness and variety 
 possible, in its entire existence, in all its operations, in its 
 good and its bad qualities. He shows us, in the Two Grentle- 
 men of Verona, how it fares with a man who abandons himself 
 Wholly to this passion, and also its effect upon the energetic 
 character still a stranger to it. He shows, in Love's Labour 
 Lost, how a set of youthful companions unnaturally endeavour 
 to crush it by ascetic vows, and how the effort avenges itself. 
 He shows, in All's Well that Ends Well, how love is despised by 
 manly haughtiness and pride of rank, and how it overcomes 
 this by fidelity and devotion. He shows, in the Midsummer- 
 Night's Dream, in a marvellous aUegory, the errors of blind un- 
 reasonable love, which transports man into a dream-life, devoid 
 of reflection. . He shows lastly, in that great song of love, in 
 Eomeo and Juilet, how this most powerful of aU passions seizes 
 human beings in its niost fearful power, and how, enhanced by 
 natures favourable to its reception and by circumstances 
 inimical to it, it is carried to an extent in which it overstrains 
 and annihilates itself. And when the poet, having advanced to 
 this extreme point, has measured this side of human nature, in 
 its breadth and depth, he, returns back to himself, as it were, 
 personally unconcerned, and in his later works he does not 
 readily again permit it such a wide and exclusive space. 
 
 This many-sidedness of love and its manifold bearings and 
 effects upon hmnan nature, Shakespeare alone, of all poets and 
 of all ages, has depicted in its full extent. If we glance at the 
 whole epic and dramatic poetry of France, Italy and Spain, we 
 
LOVE-PLATS. 153 
 
 shall find all the relations of love treated to tediousness after 
 the same model and idea. This mannerism was a transmission 
 from the Middle Ages, when knightly customs and gallantry 
 first gave a spiritual beauty to sensual desire, and an extrava- 
 gant adoration of women, unknown to the ancients, penetrated 
 life and poetry. In this period love was regarded as a source 
 of civilisation, as a source even of power and action ; and the 
 poetic generations of succeeding times conceived it only from 
 this its ennobling side, and this with a preference and ex- 
 clusiveness which such a judge of life as Shakespeare could not 
 share. He had moreover experienced its shadow-side : how it is 
 just as capable of paralysing the power of action, of endangering 
 morals, and of plunging a man in destruction and crime, as of 
 tending to purity of life, and of ennobling mind and spirit. 
 Shakespeare had penetrated in his early youth this double 
 nature and two-fold worth of love and its effects. In Venus and 
 Adonis, his first poem, the goddess after the death of her 
 favourite utters a curse upon love, which contains in the germ, 
 as it were, the whole development of the suljject, as Shakes- 
 peare has unfolded it in the series of his dramas. It is worth 
 while to hear the passage in its whole extent. 
 
 Since thou art dead, lo ! here I prophesy, 
 
 Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend : 
 
 It shall be waited on with jealousy, 
 
 Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end ; 
 
 Ne'er settled equally, but high or low, 
 
 That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe. 
 
 It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud ; 
 Bud, and be blasted in a breathing-while ; 
 The bottom poison, and the top o'erstrawed 
 With sweets, that shall the truest sight beguile : 
 The strongest body shall it make most weak, 
 Strike the wise dumb, and teach the fool to speak. 
 
 It shall be sparing, and too full of riot, 
 Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures 
 The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet, 
 Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasure : 
 It shall be raging mad, and silly mild. 
 Make the young old, the old become a child. 
 
 It shall suspect, where is no cause of fear ; 
 
 It shall not fear, where it should most distrust ; 
 
 It shall be merciful, and too severe, 
 
 And most deceiving, when it seems most just ; 
 
 Perverse it shall be, \^here it shows most toward 
 
 Put fear to valour, couitige to the coward. 
 
154 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 It shall be cause of war, and dire events, 
 And set dissension 'twist the sou and sire ; 
 Subject and servile to all discontents, 
 As dry combustions matter is to fire. 
 
 We must remember that this was written at an age, which 
 in the first strength of feeling generally' regards love only in 
 the brightest light, and that it is placed in a poem which ap- 
 peared to deify sensual desire in the usual manner of young 
 poets ; we must, I say, remember the period and the position 
 of this passage, in order rightly to appreciate its value and im- 
 portance. In the love-pieces of the period, which we shall 
 consider, these thoughts are variously repeated on more forcible 
 occasions, and appear in choice sentences and passages; and 
 far more than this, throughout Shakespeare's works, they are 
 also exhibited and embodied in characters, circumstances, and 
 living images, with a fulness and depth such as never has 
 been the case with any other poet. And not alone, in opposition 
 to all usual poetry, • is the curse of love portrayed in these 
 pictures ; but its richest blessing is unfolded in an equal num- 
 ber of counter-pieces, with just as much ardour and with the 
 same life. That in this passion the rich covetous man is 
 ' plucked down ' and deceived, the poor man elevated and 
 enriched, appears in the Merchant of Venice. That it makes a 
 simpleton of the spendthrift, a ruffian of the weak, is repre- 
 sented in Eodrigo. That it affects the wise, and that it is 
 hardly united with reason and reflection, is brought before us in 
 Measure for Measure. That it teaches fools to speak and 
 makes the old young, in how many excellent caricatures has 
 this been displayed by the burlesque parts of Shakespeare's 
 comedies ! That it selects the ' finest wits,' and often makes 
 them its prey, is expressed in that graceful, oft-repeated image, 
 that ' in the sweetest bud the eating canker dwells ; ' and 
 again in other pictures, as in the Tempest, the most charming 
 innocence is seized by this spirit, without being even slightly 
 injured in its stainless purity. That it is ' fickle, false, and full 
 of fraud,' that it forswears itself, that the strongest of love's 
 ' oaths are straw to the fire of the blood,' is exhibited in the 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona ; at the same time, however, we are 
 shown that true love, fiill of inner beauty, shames the fickle- 
 ness of the imfaithful by deeds of sacrifice. The basest and 
 the most exalted phases of this fierce passion are to be found in 
 
LOVE-PLAYS. T55 
 
 Troilus and Cressida, in the highly ironical picture of the 
 Trojan contest, in the parody of the immortal song on that 
 love -which was the cause of so long a war and of such frightful 
 deeds. Then again, in contrast to this excited drama, we have! 
 a thoroughly spiritual picture: how love quickens the senses 
 and the spirits, how it is the creator and the created of fancy, 
 and the perpetual subject and the source of poetry ; in what 
 charming touches and symbols is this interwoven with the 
 magic pictures of the Midsummer-Night's Dream ! How love 
 surprises the man in idleness, when the character is relaxed in 
 inactivity, how it fills his whole being and alters his very 
 nature, is represented in Eomeo, in Proteus, and in Antony ; in 
 Othello, however, the heroic, nature does not permit love to 
 enchain him by idle pleasures, and ' with wanton dulness ' to 
 foil ' his speculative and active instruments.' That jealousy is 
 the attendant of love, exciting suspicion where there is no 
 cause for it, and fearing nothing where there is ground for mis- 
 trust, is the subject of this same tragedy of Othello, and of the 
 Winter's Tale ; that on the other hand, this ' green-eyed 
 monster ' may be overcome by a harmonious natur^ and confid- 
 ing trust, is developed in Strong contrast in the story of Pos- 
 thumus and Imogen. That love is shared by high and low, 
 that it may begin with bitterness and end with sweetness, is 
 well depicted in All's Well that Ends Well ; but the main 
 theme of the curse of the goddess of love, that 'all love's 
 pleasure shall not match his woe,' that it ' finds sweet beginning, 
 but unsavoury end,' that it has ' the bottom poison, and the 
 top o'erstrawed with sweets,' that it ' buds, and is blasted in a 
 breathing-while,' that violent in kind it leads to desperate 
 resolutions, and spends itself like a lightning flash — this is 
 immortally sketched in the poem of Eomeo and Juliet. The 
 whole theme, which other poems and poets have broken into 
 such manifold parts, is here comprised in one exuberant pro- 
 duction. That love in all its power is in constant fatal struggle 
 with class-prejudice and propriety, has been the central point 
 at all times of all tragic portrayals of love, in life and poetry. 
 ' Love's not love when 'tis mingled with respects : ' this is the 
 mark by which nature and the poet denote the passion in its 
 greatest power; in this its strength, the conflict of nature 
 against custom, of aU-powerful boundless feeling against the 
 necessary restraints of social Ufe, is ima voidable ; and in this 
 
156 SECOND PESIOJD OF SHAKESFEAJtE' S DBAMATIC rOETBJ. 
 
 collision the tragical nature of this passion is grounded— a 
 passion which no poet has ever depicted, as Shakespeare has 
 done in Eomeo and Juliet, with such surpassing repose and yet 
 lively emotion, with such excitement and yet moral ingenuous* 
 ness, and with such fervour of personal experience and yet 
 mental impartiality. ' It is the only play,' the cold Lessing 
 declared, ' which love itself, as it were, helped to write*' 
 
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OP VERONA. 
 
 In accordance with most English critics, we place the Two 
 Grentlemen of Verona first in the series of the love-plays of this 
 period. It is generally assigned to 1591, a date previous to the 
 Comedy of Errors. The single long doggrel verses in the burlesque 
 parts, the repeated alliteration, and the numerous lyric passages 
 in the sonnet-style of tender but undramatio poetry, place the 
 piece in the poet's earliest period. The two styles of comedy 
 are not separately introduced here as in the Taming of the 
 Shrew, but they are blended. The action calls to mind in its 
 main part the history of Felix and Felismena (in the ' Diana ' of 
 Montemayor), which may have been known to Shakespeare 
 from an earlier dramatic handling of the subject (the ' History of 
 Felix and Philomena ' 1 584), or from the MS. of the translation 
 of the ' Diana ' by Bartholomew Yonge, not printed before 1 598 ; 
 the plot is somewhat poor and slight : but the traits of delicate 
 characterisation, on the other hand, begin here, almost for the 
 first time, to stand forth in that fulness which is not apparent 
 in the characters of the seven merely elaborated plays, with the 
 exception perhaps of Petruchio and Katharine in the Taming of 
 the Shrew. 
 
 The piece treats of the essence and the power of love, and 
 especially of its influence upon judgment and habit generally, 
 and it is not well to impute to it a more defined idea. The 
 twofold nature of love is here at the outset exhibited with that 
 equal emphasis and that perfect impartiality which struck 
 Groethe so powerfully in Shakespeare's writings. The poet 
 facilitated the solving of this double problem by an assthetic 
 artifice peculiar to himself,' which we find especially evident in 
 this youthful work, and which we see repeated in almost all his 
 dramas. The structure and design of the play are carried out 
 in a strict parallelism ; the characters and events are so exactly 
 placed in relation and contrast to each other that not only 
 
158 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 those of a similar nature, but even those of a contrary one, 
 serve mutually to explain each other. Upon this point we shall 
 lay the phief stress in our discussions. 
 
 Two friends, Valentine and Proteus, are separating in the 
 first scene. The names have already a significance, which hints 
 at their opposite characters. Valentine, a good honest nature, 
 ' is a man of action ; urged by honour to go out into the world 
 and into military and courtly service, he is travelling to Milan ; he 
 belongs to the simple and plain kind of country-gentlemen, with 
 no fi!nely-sifted speech ; with him heart and lips are one ; his 
 generosity knows no doubt ; himself good, he deems the bad 
 good also ; his nature is not soon affected by any emotion, his 
 acts are not disturbed by reflections. A' golden friend, ready 
 for every great sacrifice, he has yet never known affection for 
 the other sex ; on the contrary, his derision is provoked by the 
 absorbing passion of his more 'excitable friend. Proteus, on 
 the other hand, is a man of reflection, full of attractive virtues 
 and faults, and of great mental capability. It is said of him 
 that ' of many good he is the best ; ' this goodness is exhibited 
 throughout the piece (and this is a decided error) not in deeds, 
 but only in the superiority of his talents. Entirely given up to 
 love, completely filled with its desires and aspirations, he 
 accuses hiinself of spending his days in ' shapeless idleness;;',; 
 thirsting for love as he is, he is in danger through selfishness 
 and self-pleasing of renouncing his manly character ; he appears 
 as a youth of that young and tender wit, which like ' the most 
 forward bud is eaten by the canker ere it blow,' The one-sided- 
 ness of each character is now to find its complement, as it were, 
 as a corrective. Proteus in the midst of Iris successful suit, is, 
 to his. despair, sent by his father to Valentine in. Milan, in 
 order like him to be ' tutored in the world ; ' on the other hand 
 Valentine's original bent for 'active deeds' meets with 
 penance, as he himself calls it in Act ii., sc. 4, from the fact 
 that in Milan, Silvia, the duke's daughter, falls in love with 
 him. In the case of Valentine this new condition brings an 
 increase of experience and refinement, wl^ich he appropriates 
 after his own fashion ; in that of Proteus the change causes a 
 restraint, against which his self-loving nature struggles. The 
 way in which both behave ' in this change of situation is de- 
 veloped in the finest manner from the original disposition of 
 their characters. The honest, unsuspecting Valentine, occupied 
 with manly dealings, must be sought after by love, if love is to 
 
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. 159 
 
 touch him ; the daughter of the duke, above all others, is able 
 to fascinate him as an object which at the same time excites 
 his aspiring ambition. But, as we should expect from him, he 
 acts like a novice in the work of love ; he betrays his in- 
 creasing inclination by open ' gazing ' noticeable by all, and by 
 imperious offensive treatment of his rival Thurio. When she 
 meets his modesty half-way and wooes him in her letter, he 
 understands her not, and his servant Speed is obliged to 
 explain her intention. His wont when he laughed to crow Hke 
 a cock, when he walked to walk like one of the lions, is now 
 passed away ; his friend , Proteus might now find matter for 
 ridicule in the metamorphosis which love has effected. Since 
 difference of position places obstacles to a union, with his 
 peculiar want of consideration and readiness for action he 
 enters on a plan for eloping with Silvia ; instead of guarding 
 himself from the snares of the duke, unsuspicious and confi- 
 dent he proceeds to entangle himself still further. When his 
 plan of elopement hag been punished with banishment, he 
 surrenders himself passively and unhesitatingly to a band of 
 outlaws ; desperation urges him, the active life suits him, and 
 the man who invites his company touches his heart by, the 
 similar fate which he too has suffered. Such is the extremity 
 to which the treachery of his friend has driven him. For 
 Proteus, as soon as he had arrived at Milan, had at once for- 
 gotten his Julia. His love is, first and foremost, self-love. 
 Completely absorbed in this one affection, arrived at Milan, 
 and separated from Julia, his weak, love-seeking nature cannot 
 endure for a moment the unusual void and desolation. Just 
 as Eomeo, rejected by his beloved, falls all the more violently 
 in love with a new object, so does Proteus, when separated 
 from Julia ; he casts his eye on the beloved of his friend, 
 and giving way to this one error, he falls from sin to sin, and 
 runs the gaunlet of crime. OnciB befooled by the intoxication 
 of the senses, he uses the finest sophistry to justify and to ex- 
 cuse his misdeeds. . False and wavering, he forgets his oath 
 to Julia, he ensnares the duke, he betrays his friend, he goes 
 so far in baseness that he proposes slander as a means for 
 making Silvia forget Valentine, and he himself undertakes the 
 office of slanderer. His behaviour towards his riVal Thurio 
 shows what a judge he is of Ipve, with what power he practices 
 the arts of love, and how secure and victorious he; knows him- 
 self compared to such an adversary. He teaches him the 
 
160 SECOM) PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 secrets of love, well knovdng that he understands them not; 
 he, a poet himself, enjoins him to woo Silvia hy 'wailful 
 sonnets,' when he knows that he can only fashion miserable 
 rhymes. In the amorous style of the three lovers, the poet has 
 given us an excellent insight into their capacity for love. In 
 the verses of Thurio we see a few paltry insipid rhymes, which 
 German translators have too confidently received as a specimen 
 of the genuine Shakespearian lyric. The poet possesses true 
 poetry enough not to fear putting silly verses in the lips of the( 
 silly wooer, and thus, whilst he intentionally inserts a poem of 
 no merit, he acquires, the further merit of characterization. 
 The poem which Valentine addresses to Silvia (Act iii. sc. 1) 
 is of the same characteristic kind ; composed in the usual 
 conceit-style of love, it evidences tolerable awkwardness of 
 rhyming talent, and is rather the work of the brain than the 
 outpouring of excited feeling. Of Proteus' poem, we have 
 only fragments and scattered words, which Julia imparts to us 
 from his torn letter : ' kind Julia — love-wounded Proteus — ■ 
 poor, forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus, to the sweet JuHa' — 
 words sufficient to tell us that among the three this is the 
 man who understands the true rhetoric of love. With this 
 letter he had taken by storm the free heart of the unguarded, 
 unsuspecting Julia ; but so well does he understand the 
 strategy of love, that towards Silvia, whose heart was given 
 to Valentine, he needed more studied tactics; and for this 
 reason he seizes every opening, procures himself helpers 
 and allies in the father and the rival, and endeavours to in- 
 sinuate himself by the teunning of slander. He has reckoned 
 every point but that of a woman's character, which has as 
 much masculine power about it as his own has feminine weak- 
 ness. 
 
 The two loved ones stand in reversed contrast to the two 
 lovers. The fair Julia, the friend of Proteus, is just as much a 
 pure womanly nature as Valentine is a pure manly one. Chaste, 
 reserved, observing the strictest modesty, she must be sought by 
 Proteus, and will hardly allow him to seek her ; she will not believe 
 her Lucettaj that ' fire that is closest kept burns most of aU,' for 
 she has not yet gained the experience, which she subsequently 
 expresses in almost the same words. When Proteus' love first finds 
 a hearing, she remains in her quiet thoughtful life the same 
 sweet being ; at the moment of farewell her full heart finds not a 
 word. But separated from Proteus, she experiences Hke Valen- 
 
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. 161 
 
 tine the change in her whole being ; the energy and vehemence 
 of his passion are kindled in herself, just as Silvia's giddy desire 
 for flight is in Valentine. She undertakes a journey after the 
 man of her heart, she dreams of Elysium at the end of it, at 
 that point at which she is to be awakened from her dream by the 
 faithlessness of Proteus. She is not to be restrained by the con- 
 sideration that the step may 'make her scandalized.' She feels 
 in herself that the purest and most guiltless love endures most 
 heavily the hindrances in its path. The beloved of Valentine is 
 exhibited in as great a contrast to this gentle creature, as Proteus 
 is to Valentine. The auburn-haired Silvia, rash and reckless, 
 steps somewhat beyond the sphere of a woman's nature ; she is 
 less tender than Valentine and Julia, and more intellectual and 
 clever, like the scheming Proteus; teazingly she delights in 
 putting off Thurio and in deriding him ; she possesses that ready 
 wit, with which Shakespeare has invested all his bolder promi- 
 nent female characters. She herself makes advances to Valen- 
 tine, she perceives the hopelessness of their love, and contrives a 
 plan for flight; she sees through Proteus and his tissue of 
 faithlessness ; she abandons at last her position and her father 
 to follow Valentine, and, observant of human nature and certain 
 of success, she chooses in Eglamour a companion in whose faith 
 and honour she can repose, who himself has loved and has lost 
 his beloved. 
 
 The plot is unravelled at length by a romantic meeting of 
 all, in a conclusion which appears to all critics sudden, abrupt, 
 and inartistic. It is undeniable that here the form of the 
 plot is carelessly treated. We must, however, be cautious not 
 to criticise rashly. For, in a pathological point of view, the 
 catastrophe has been most attacked just where it is most to be 
 defended. It is, namely, essentially brought about by the offer 
 of Valentine to sacrifice his beloved one to his faithless friend. 
 This Charles Lamb and many others considered an imjustifiable 
 act of heroic friendship. But this trait essentially belongs to 
 Valentine's character.' That it was not unintentionally introduced ' 
 may also be traced from the mere parallelism observed through- 
 out the composition. For Julia also is exhibited to us in the 
 same aspect of resignation and self-renunciation springing from 
 pure good-nature, which in her as in Valentine stands out in 
 contrast to the self-love of Proteus. She enters Proteus' service 
 as a page, she delivers his messages to Silvia with the intention 
 of playing the fox as ' shepherd of his lambs,' but Silvia so attracts ' 
 
 M 
 
162 SECOND ■ PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE S DRAMATIC POETRY 
 
 her, that her hostile intention is at once disarmed. Valentine, 
 subjected to the most violent alternation of feeling, with a 
 nature quick to perceive and quicker to act, is in this scene of 
 the catastrophe wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement. 
 Longer and more united to his friend than to Silvia, and accord- 
 ing to his nature not comprehending the base in one whom he 
 had believed to be. noble, this same man, who inamediately after- 
 wards in the presence of the duke threatens the hated Thurio 
 with death, has no wrath, no revengeful feeling against his friend, 
 even when he learns his treachery and sees him place ' rude 
 uncivil touch' upon Silvia. Nothing but the bitter sigh of 
 disappointment escapes him : ' I am sorry, I must never trust 
 thee more, but count the world a - stranger for thy sake.' Of 
 the possession of Silvia, the outlaw may not think ; to win back 
 his repentant friend, the noble-minded man ofifers his greatest 
 sacrifice. His feelings, according to his nature, overcome him 
 at the outset ; Proteus, on the contrary, sees a way out of his 
 errors from a remark of Julia's, which speaks rather to his head 
 than to his heart, and goads with cutting reproof his sense of 
 honour far more than his feeling. 
 
 All this indeed is finely designed, full of striking traits of 
 character, and all from one fount. Compared to Shakespeare's 
 later works, it is nevertheless of a lighter kind ; it is, however, 
 important enough to outweigh whole opera omnia of our 
 Romanticists, who ventured to blame their hero-poet in this 
 play, imagining that the love-phrases were intended to represent 
 love, and the heroic-phrases heroism. This was .Franz Horn's 
 criticism ; Tieck made another observation, which proves to us 
 on examination no less superficial. He considered that the low 
 comic scenes, the heroes of which are the servants Speed and 
 Launce, are not connected with the subject, but are intended 
 only to excite laughter. In this manner, as we have before seen, 
 the poets previous to Shakespeare worked at the burlesque parts 
 of their dramas, in order to meet the taste of the vulgar. The 
 case is similar also in Shakespeare's early attempts, such as the 
 Comedy of Errors and the Taming of the Shrew, where the 
 iDromios and Grrumios, with their coarse jests, form an outwork 
 of no importance, in so far as they have no influence as active 
 characters upon the intricacies of the plot. This, however, is 
 altered in the Two Gentlemen of Verona ; and ever after Shake- 
 speare, obeying the necessity in which he saw himself placed of 
 satisfying in some measure the rough taste of a laughter-loving 
 
7 HE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VEEONA. 163 
 
 public, seized that skilful expedient to which we have also before 
 alluded : he gave henceforth to his lower comic parts a close 
 reference to the main actions of the piece. Not alone are the 
 servants Speed and Launce placed in characteristic opposition to 
 their masters, the witty Speed to the simple Valentine, the 
 awkward Launce to the clever Proteus; not alone are they 
 stationed by the side of their masters as disinterested observers, 
 to whose extreme simplicity that is apparent which in. the 
 infatuation of passion escapes the understanding of the wise ; so 
 that Speed perceives the love of Silvia before his master, and 
 even the simple Launce sees through the knavish tricks of his 
 lord ; but they are also by actions of their own placed as a parody 
 by the side of the main action, in a manner whieh invests even 
 the commonest incidents with a high moral value. Launce's 
 account of his farewell may be regarded as a parody of Julia's 
 silent parting from Proteus j the scene in which Speed 'thrusts 
 himself into Launce's love affairs and ' will be swinged for it,' 
 caricatures the false intrusion of Proteus into Valentine's love ; 
 but a deeper sense still lies in the stories of the rough Launce 
 and his dog Crab, the very scenes which undoubtedly occur to 
 the gentler reader as the most offensive. To the siUy semi-brute 
 follow, who sympathizes with his beast almost more than with 
 men, his dog is his best friend. He has suffered stripes for him, he 
 has taken his faults upon himself, and has been willing to 
 sacrifice everything to him. At last, self-sacrificing like Valen- 
 tine and Julia, he is willing to resign even this friend ; he is 
 ready to abandon his best possession to do a service to.his master. 
 With this capacity for sacrifice, this simple child of nature is 
 placed by the side of Proteus — that splendid model of manly 
 Endowments, who, self-seeking, betrayed friend and lover. This 
 fine relation of the lower to the higher parts of the piece is 
 moreover so skilfully concealed by the removal of all moralizing 
 from the action, that the cultivated spectator of the play finds 
 the objective effect of the action in no wise disturbed, while 
 the groundling of the pit tastes unimpeded his pure delight in 
 common nature. 
 
 M 2 
 
LOVE'S LABOUE'S LOST AND ALL'S WELL 
 THAT ENDS WELL. 
 
 The comedy of Love's Labour's Lost belongs indisputably to the 
 earliest dramas of the poet, and, will be almost of the same 
 date as the. Two Grentlemen of Verona. The peculiarities of 
 Shakespeare's youthful pieces are perhaps most accumulated in 
 this plav. ' The reiterated mention of mythological an'' his- 
 torical personages ; the air of learning, the Italian and Latin 
 expressions, which here, it must be admitted, oerve a comic 
 end ; the older England versification, the numerous doggrel 
 verses, and the rhymes more frequent than anywhere else and 
 extending over almost the half of the play; all this places 
 this work among the earlier efiforts of the poet. Alliteration, a 
 silent legacy from Anglo-Saxon literature, and much more in 
 use in the popular and more refined poems of England than in 
 any other language, is to be met with here still more than in 
 the narrative poems, the sonnets, and the Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona; it is expressly employed by the pedant Holofemes, 
 who calls the art ' to affect the letter.' The style is frequently 
 like that of the Shakespeare sonnets ; indeed the 127th and 
 l37th of Shakespeare's sonnets bear express similarities to those 
 inserted here as well as to other passages of the play (Act iv. 
 sc' 3). The tone of the Italian school prevails more than in 
 any other play. The redundancy of wit is only to be compared 
 with the similar redundancy of conceit in Shakespeare's narra- 
 tive poems, and with the Italian style' in general, which he at 
 first adopted. 
 
 This over-abundance of droll and laughter-loving person- 
 ages, of wits and caricatures, gives the idea of an excessively 
 jocular play ; nevertheless everyone, on reading the comedy, 
 feels a certain want of ease, and, on account of this very excess, 
 cannot enjoy the comic efifect. In structure and management 
 of subject it is indisputably one of the weakest of the poet's 
 
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST ANB ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 165 
 
 pieces ; nevertheless we divine a deeper meaning in it, not 
 readily to he perceived, and which it is difficult to explain. 
 No source is known for the purport of the piece, which, how- 
 ever (as Hunter has proved from Monstrelet's ' Chronicles '), in 
 the one point of the payment of France to Navarre (Act ii. sc. 2), 
 rests on an historical fact, namely an exchange of territory be- 
 tween the two crowns ; the poet, who scarcely ever aspired after 
 the equivocal merit of inventing his stories himself, seems 
 according to this to have himself devised the matter, which 
 suffers from a striking lack of action and characterisation. 
 The whole turns upon a clever interchange of wit and 
 asceticism, jest and earnest; the shallow characters are forms 
 of mind, rather proceeding from the cultivation of the head 
 than the will; throughout there are affected jests, high- 
 sounding and often empty words, but no action ; nevertheless 
 we feel that this deficiency is no unintentional error, but that 
 there is an object in view. There is a motley mixture of 
 fantastic and strange characters, which for the most part betray 
 no healthy groundwork of nature ; and yet the poet himself is 
 so sensible of this, that we might trust him to have had his 
 reason for placing them together — a reason worth our while to 
 seek. And indeed we find, on closer inspection, that this 
 piece has a more profound character, in which Shakespeare's 
 capable mind already unfolds its power. We recognise this as 
 the first of his plays in which, as in all his subsequeiit works, 
 he has had one single moral aim in view — an aim that 
 here lies even far less concealed than in others of his work. 
 
 We will start with the observation with which we concluded 
 the Two Gentlemen of Verona : namely, that Shakespeare did 
 not disdain to retain the favourite subjects, characters, and 
 jests of the older low comedy, but that he knew how to dignify 
 these by the profound signification which he gave them. This 
 is attested in this play by a much more brilliant example than 
 in the Two Gentlemen of Verona. In the burlesque parts of 
 Love's Labour's Lost we meet with two favourite characters or 
 caricatures of the Italian comedy : the Pedcmt, that is the' 
 schoolmaster and grammarian, and the military Braggart, the 
 Thraso of the Latin, the ' Captain Spavento ' of the Italian 
 stage. These stereotyped characters are depicted by Shake- 
 speare with such life, that it has been supposed, and it has been 
 endeavoured to be proved, that the poet portrayed in them 
 persons living at the time, in Armado, ' a vain fantastical man ' 
 
166 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DEAMATIO POETSY.. 
 
 of the , name of Monarcho (thus he once calls him), and in 
 Holofernes, the Italian teacher Florio in London. The cha- 
 racteristics of both are exaggerated, as they could only be in 
 the rudest popular comedy. Armado, the military braggart in 
 the state of peace, as ParoUes is in war, appears in the 
 ridiculous exaggeration and affectation of a child of hot Spanish 
 imagination, assuming a contempt towards everything common ; 
 boastful but poor, a coiner of words but most ignorant, 
 solemnly grave and laughably awkward, a hector and a coward, 
 of gait majestical and of the lowest propensities. • The school- 
 master Holofernes appears among the many enamoured cha- 
 racters -of the comedy a.s a dry inanimate pedant, an imaginary 
 word-sifter, a poor poet of the school of the Carmelite Mantuan, 
 fantastically vain of Ms empty' knowledge. Both caricatures 
 become still more distorted "when they are seen by the light of 
 the contrast which the poet has placed beside them: to the 
 stiff, weak, melancholy Armado is opposed the little Moth, who, 
 light as his name, is all jest and playfulness, versatility and 
 cunning; the pedant Holofernes is placed in opposition to 
 Costard the child of nature, whose common sense ridicules the 
 sehoiar who lives ' on the alms-basket of words.' The two 
 characters, we see, are caricatures, taken from simple nature, 
 exhibited in their effort to attract attention, in their ostenta- 
 tion, vanity,, and empty thirst for fame, based upon an appear- 
 ance of knowledge and a show of valour. 
 
 Cut these two originals, and their gross desire for glory, 
 have been associated by Shakespeare with a society of finer 
 mould, suffering from the same infirmity, only that, from their 
 mind and culture, the poison lies deeper, concealed. The 
 court of Navarre had for three years devoted itself to study and 
 retirement ,; the young king, seized with an ascetic turn, in the 
 spirit of the courts of love and the vow-loving chivalry of those 
 regions, desires that Ms young courtiers should join him in 
 changing the court and its revels into an academy of contem- 
 plation, in mortifying their passions and worldly desires, and in 
 renouncing for the time all intercourse with women. He is in 
 the same danger of erring from a vain desire for glory ; he 
 wishes to make Navarre a wonder of the world. The piece 
 begins somewhat in Armado's style with the king's majestic 
 words : 
 
 Let feme, that all hunt after in their lives, 
 Live regieteiied upon our brazen tombs. 
 And then grace us in the disgrace of death. 
 
LOVE'S LASOUB'8 LOST AND ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 167 
 
 In his company is Dumain, ' a well-accomplished youth, of all 
 that virtue love, for virtue loved,' endowed with the power but 
 not with the will to ' do harm,' and stoical enough to choose 
 subsequently the disfigured Katharine among the French 
 ladies ; this Duiaain is placed near the king, as most ready and 
 able to enter into his abstemious resolve. But Biron and the 
 tall versatile Longaville, of kindred mind and equal wit, 
 seriously oppose the romantic plan. Biron, who had ever been 
 ' love's whip,' believes that on this point he is able to obey the 
 proposed laws as well as any ; so much the more he feels him- 
 self justified in warning against playing with oaths that may 
 be broken, as ' young blood will not obey an old decree.' An 
 Epicurean, accustomed to good food and sleep, he turns indig- 
 nantly from the desolate task of mortification; he calls all 
 delight vain. 
 
 But that most vain, 
 Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain. 
 
 His more frivolous nature disdains most of all the dull vanity 
 of study, which overshoots itself; he compares this thirst for 
 fame with the vain desires for honour exhibited by the scholar 
 and the word-monger. 
 
 The king has chosen Armado to amuse them by his 
 minstrelsy during their hermit-life ; and similar to the con- 
 tempt with which the king regards his boasting vein is the 
 scorn with which Biron views the learned and ascetic vanity 
 of the king: but he has himself fallen into a still lighter 
 vanity, for which he incurs Rosaline's censm-e. Endowed with 
 a keen eye and an acute mind, gifted with captivating and 
 touching eloquence, he has habituated himself to see every 
 object in a ridiculous light, and to consider nothing sacred. 
 The ardent black-eyed Eosaline, who is in no wise insensible 
 to such mental gifts, but holds her part victorious in the war 
 of words, considers him at first within the limits of becoming 
 wit ; she would not otherwise have loved him. But at last' she 
 agrees with the verdict of the world, which condemns him as a 
 man replete with wounding and unsparing satire. And she 
 sees the origin of this evil habit entirely in the vanity which 
 delights in ' that loose grace which shallow laughing hearers 
 give to fools.' She looks upon him as abandoned to the same 
 empty desire for unsubstantial applause, as he does upon those 
 who are placed at his side. 
 
168 8EC0ND PEBJOJ) OF SHAKESPEABE'S DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 In passages which are unessential to the course of the real 
 action, the poet has still more plainly exhibited the object 
 which he had in view, however evidently it had been developed 
 in this combination of characters. At the beginning of the 
 fourth Act, the French princess, in the course of a conversation 
 with the forester, makes this remark : 
 
 Glory grows guilty of detested crimes ; 
 
 When for fame's sake, for praise, an outward part, 
 
 We bend to that the working of the heart. 
 
 Thus it is with these men of ascetic vows, at least in the 
 sight of the French princess. Eightly had Biron warned them, 
 that 
 
 Study evermore is overshot; 
 While it doth study to have what it would, 
 , It doth forget to do the thing it should. 
 
 They had forgotten, at the very moment of their oath, that 
 their vows in respect to intercourse with women could not be 
 kept, as the daughter of the sick kiag of France had arrived 
 on urgent business. Intercourse with her is not to be avoided ; 
 she is lodged with her suite in the Park. These French ladies 
 and their attendant Boyet are now placed in contrast with the 
 romantic band of men ; they appear happy, graceful, and 
 practical, fully bent upon the Serious object of their journey, 
 which is no less a one than to obtain from Navarre the province 
 of Aquitain. Moreover, in the cheerfulness of a good conscience, 
 in jest and wit, they are superior to the lords of Navarre; 
 Biron at first looks down jealously and maliciously upon the 
 accomplished courtier, the ' old mocker ' Boyet, and his wit, as 
 Tjpon a ' wit's pedler,' but he finds subsequently when his anger 
 has cooled that he ' must needs be friends ' with him. The 
 truth of Biron's predictions is now proved by the ascetics. The 
 French ladies delight in their folly, sure of obtaining their 
 object the more easily, and the young lords to boot. The vota- 
 ries of abstinence, Biron as much as Armado and Costard, all 
 fall in love; and all, even Biron, the ridiculer of poetry, woo in 
 heart-breaking sonnets ; and when they mutually discover their 
 weakness, they use all their sophistry to set aside their oath as 
 inadmissible * treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth.' But 
 the French ladies do not take it so lightly. When the nobles 
 first appear in their Eussian habits, the ladies mislead them 
 
I 
 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST JJfl) ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 169 
 
 in a spirit of piquant raillery, and each, deceived by their dis- 
 guise, wooes contrary to his intention ; thus they now become 
 perjured through ignorance, as before in perfect consciousness. 
 The ladies cut them with their mocking tongues as keenly as 
 with ' the razor's edge ; ' and when the king declares the breach 
 of his vow, and invites them to his court, the princess shames 
 him by refusing to be ' a breaking-cause of heavenly oaths.' 
 Shakespeare nevertheless is careful to guard against the French 
 ladies being deemed over-severe moralists, whose verdict would 
 perhaps too widely differ from that of the poet himself, and he 
 therefore gives us an insight into their tone of conversation 
 among themselves and with Boyet — a conversation which strikes 
 even the peasant Costard by its sweet vulgarity and smooth 
 obscenity. Possibly a thrust at French manners, an oppor^ 
 tunity that no English poet at that time would readily miss, 
 was intended by the scene, but it is also certain that the design 
 of the poet was at the same time to avoid the meaning of his 
 play being as little as possible left in the dark. 
 
 But if all that we have adduced fails to evidence clearly 
 the poet's intention in Love's Labour's Lost, he hae given the 
 catastrophe, which concludes the merry comedy, a striking 
 turn, in order to make it most glaringly apparent. The nobles 
 order a play to be represented before the ladies by their 
 musicians and attendants, and by this means they revenge 
 themselves on the director Holofernes for their own spoilt 
 masquerade, by spoiling his pageant also, which was one of 
 those simple popular plays such as Shakespeare ridicules in. the 
 Midsummer-Night's Dream, but which he ridicules in a kindly 
 spirit, honouring the good will — one of those innocent sports 
 which best please because ' they least know how.' In the 
 midst of extravagant jest and folly, however, a discord rings 
 through the piece : the king of France is dead, and sorrow and 
 parting interrupt the mirth. The embarrassed king attempts 
 an unintelligible wooing, the emlaarrassed Biron endeavours to 
 explain it, and becomes confused and perplexed himself ; but 
 the princess banishes the perjured guilt-bmdened king for a 
 year to a hermitage, if he wishes to have his request granted ; 
 Eosaline sends the mocker Biron to a hospital, where for a 
 twelvemonth he is to j'est with the gick, and if possible to be 
 cured of his fault. Love's Labour is lost ; ' Jack hath not Jill ' 
 contrary to the custom of cojnedy ; it is a comedy that ends in 
 tears. Certainly this conclusion is in opposition to all sesthetic 
 
170 SECOND PEEIOD OF 8HAKESPEABE' 8 DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 antecedence, but the catastrophe is genuinely Shakespearian ; 
 for moral rectitude was ever the poet's aim rather than a strict 
 adherence to the rules of art. 
 
 We have made it perhaps almost too prominent that Shake- 
 speare in this play attacks a vain desire of fame in all its forms ; 
 but we cannot in Grermany be too distinct, if we would repudiate 
 certain perversities of criticism, which have repeatedly placed 
 Shakespeare in an entirely false light. Komanticists felt the 
 conclusion of the piece too grave, too severe for their lax 
 morality ; unequal to the poet's austerity, they perceived irony 
 everywhere, even where he wrote in the most sober earnestness. 
 Biron — thus Tieck interprets the conclusion of the piece in 
 reference to which men of simple understanding have nothing 
 to explain — Biron, whilst he promises to 'jest a twelvemonth in 
 an hospital,' casts a side-glance upon his companions : ' These 
 for a year would dispute with learning and wit, write verses on 
 their love, carry on their jests, and even Armado is not wanting 
 to them, even Costard is not to be withdrawn from them and 
 the new acquaintance with Holofernes will not even be given 
 up. This com/pany is the Hospital ! ' But we feel, indeed, 
 that a kind of moral stupidity is requisite to believe that after 
 this agitating conclusion, sophistry, playfulness, and jesting can 
 begin afresh, and comedy resume its place. 
 
 This strange notion accords with the predilection which our 
 Eomanticists feel for the humorous characters of the poet. 
 The Birons, the Benedicks, the Mercutios, were above all other 
 characters their declared favourities. And indeed they are all 
 excellently formed characters, both as the poet and nature de- 
 signed them : straightforward and free from all sentimentality; ad- 
 versaries to love trifling, and despisers of it ; sound realists ; clever 
 fellows with a witty tongue and a ready sword behind, at once wits 
 and bullies. That Shakespeare personally partook of this kind of 
 nature may be proved ; that this nature was only one side of him, 
 of necessity confirmed by the whole fashion of his versatile 
 mind. It is thus a natural consequence that he did not con- 
 ceive nor idealize these characters with the exclusive preference 
 of our Eomanticists, and this may be proved in ■ the most in- 
 disputable manner to the imbiassed mind. Whoever attentively 
 reads and compares the comic scenes, ' the civil war of wits,' 
 between Boyet and his ladies, between Biron and Eosaline, 
 between Mercutio and Eomeo, Benedick and Beatrice, ■ and 
 others — scenes which in Love's Labour's Lost for the first time 
 
LOVE:s LABOUB'S lost 4ND ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 171 
 
 occur in more decided form and in far greater abundance than 
 elsewhere — will readily see that they rest upon a common human 
 basis, and at the same time upon a conventional one as to time 
 and place. They hinge especially upon the play and perversion 
 of words; and this is the foundation for wit common in ,every 
 age. Even in the present day we have but to analyze the wit 
 amongst jovial men to find that it always proceeds from punning 
 and quibbling. The conventional peculiarity, therefore, in 
 Shakespe&,re,is the definite form in which this word-wit appears. 
 This form was cultivated among the English people according 
 to an established custom, which invested jocose conversation 
 with the character of a regular battle. A word or a sentence is 
 snatched from the mouth of an adversary whom it is wished to 
 provoke, and turned and perverted into a weapon against him ; 
 he parries the thrust and strikes back, espying a similar weak- 
 ness in his enemy's ward ; the longer the battle is sustained, 
 the better; he who can do no more is vapquished. In this 
 play of Shakespeare's, Armado names this war of words an 
 argument ; it is describdd as like a game at tennis, where the 
 words are hurled, caught, and thrown back again, and where 
 the loser is he who allows the word, like the ball, to drop ; 
 this war of wit is compared to a battle ; that between Boyet and 
 Biron, for example, to a seafight. The manner in which wit 
 and satire here thus wage war is by no means Shakespeare's 
 property ; it is universally found on the English stage, and is 
 transferred to it directly from life. What we know of Shake- 
 speare's social li^e reveals to us this same kind of jesting in 
 bis personal intercourse. Tradition speaks of Shakespeare as 
 'a handsome, well-shaped man, very good company, and of 
 a very ready and pleasant and smooth wit.' At the Mermaid in 
 Friday Street he associated with Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, 
 Ben Jonson, and other intellectual contemporaries ; and there, 
 according to Beaumont, in his address to Ben Jonson, were 
 
 heard words that have been 
 So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, 
 As if that everyone from whom tbley came , 
 
 Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest. 
 
 Especially famous were the meetings between Shakespeare 
 and Ben Jonson. According to Fuller, they were accustomed 
 to meet 'like a Spanish great galleon, and an English man-of-war: 
 Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning ; 
 
172 SECOND FEBIOB OF SHAKE8FEABE' S DRAMATIC POETEY. 
 
 solid but slow in his performances ; Shakespeare, like the English 
 man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with 
 all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the 
 quickness of his wit and invention.' Thus these ' wit-combats' 
 in Shakespeare's life are compared to the same image as those 
 between Boyet and Biron in Love's Labour's Lost. If in addi- 
 tion to these intimations we look for more distinct proof of the 
 diffusion among the people of this kind of 'wit-combat,' we 
 must recall to mind Tarlton's jests. We find the merry man 
 engaging in a conflict of wit sometimes with a roguish boy, 
 sometimes with a housekeeper, sometimes with a constable ; and 
 just as in a comedy, the task, the pride, and the victory is to 
 drive the adversary to a nonplus ; that is, to exhaust his wit 
 and bring him to silence. From all this we see that these 
 humorous combats and combatants were a custom of the age, 
 which Shakespeare could not avoid, but which he had as little 
 cause to spare as any other custom which had grown into an 
 abuse. We can easily understand how a practice so widely 
 spread among men of versatile mind and manners would 
 become a fashion, and in such case would have been as weari- 
 some as any other habit to Shakespeare's active mind. We 
 can further understand how, with these professional wits, the 
 habit could be easily carried so far as to make the cheerful 
 humour degenerate into scorn, to pervert the 'pleasant smooth 
 wit ' into motiveless and insipid jeering, to lead to quarrels, 
 and to turn the wit into a bully. Such natures has Shakesi- 
 speare depicted in Biron and Mercutio, and this with that per- 
 fect impartiality with which he does justice to every quahty. 
 An equal sense of jest and earnest, according to the demands of 
 life and opportunity, was the ideal of human intercourse to 
 which Shakespeare would have rendered homage. For, how- 
 ever penetrated he was with this idea that moderate cheerful 
 jest confirmed and promoted the truth and freedom of the 
 mind, he knew also that laughers by profession never pierce 
 through the surface of things — where, as Bacon says, is the seat 
 of jest. Throughout, therefore, he has given his healthiest 
 humourists the healthiest pai,-t of the seriousness of life as their 
 dowry. Thus, in Much Ado about Nothing, he has made his 
 Benedick a much more perfecjt character than Biron and Mer- 
 cutio. In the intercourse of Beatrice with Benedick there is 
 the same f)layful tone of raillery as in that between. Biron and^ 
 Eosaline ; a similarly tragic discord interrupts the mirth ; the 
 
■ LOVE'S LABOUB'S LOST AM) ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 173 
 
 poet's aim is the same in this far more delicately constructed 
 play ; the stern reality of life bursts suddenly upon the laugh- 
 ing bantering couple, and they win each other from the fact 
 that they know how to meet seriously these serious demands, 
 which Biron only learns after Eosaline's censure. With a pre- 
 dilection however, of an almost entirely pathological character, 
 Shakespeare delineated his Prince Henry as a being of two 
 natures, a hero like none other and a laugher, like none other, 
 who amid work and pastime, amid noble exertion and playful 
 recreation, ever with the happiest equality stood ready for the 
 demands of the moment. Elsewhere, moreover, for the intel- 
 ligent reader, the poet has expressed as distinctly as possible 
 his own serious views upon these humorous habits of the time. 
 In All's "Well that Ends Well the king depicts the old Count of 
 Eoussillon as an ideal of chivalry and education. He possessed, 
 said the panegyrist. 
 
 The wit, which I can well obaerye 
 To-day in our young lords ; but they may jest, 
 Till their own scorn returns to them unnoted, 
 Ere they can hide their levity in honour. 
 So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness 
 Were in his pride or sharpness ; if they were, 
 His equal had awaked them ; and his honour, 
 Clock to itself, knew the true minute, when 
 Exception bid him speak, and, at this time, 
 His tongue obeyed his hand : . . . . 
 Thus his good melancholy oft began, 
 On the catastrophe and heel of pastime, 
 When it was out. 
 
 We easily perceive that this is a picture drawn with true 
 delight of a man of honour, who possessed, in enviable pro- 
 portion, the two qualities of jest and earnest, but whose 
 characteristics were directly opposed to those of the fashionable 
 youths who had learned nothing but ridicule, and ' whose short- 
 lived wits,' as our play says, 'do wither as they grow.' 
 
 In Meres' often mentioned list of the plays of Shakespeare, 
 which were written previous to the year 1598, we know there 
 was a comedy entitled 'Love's Labour's Won.' Hunter has 
 long ago made the vain attempt to recognise this play in the 
 Tempest ; recently an anonymous writer (the author of the 
 pamphlet, ' Collier, Coleridge, and Shakespeare,' 1860, p. 130) 
 
174 SECOND Fi!BIOD OF SRdXESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETSY 
 
 has advanced the more plaiiBible conjecture of Much Add about 
 Nothing, which we also feel inclined to refuse ; for why should 
 the poet have exchanged so significant a title for one so in- 
 significant. We shall, therefore, do well to rest upon a farmer 
 supposition of Farmer and others, that All's Well that Ends 
 Well is the play which in an earlier and older treatment bore 
 that title. In a passage in the Epilogue (' all is well ended, if 
 this suit is won ') both titles are, as it were, blended. The sup- 
 position is all the more probable, since all agree that the piece 
 has evidently been remodelled, and that not only as concerns 
 the title. Coleridge, in his lectures on Shakespeare, pointed 
 out two distinct styles in the piece ; the rhymed passages, the 
 alternate rhymes, and the sonnet-letter of Helena, point to the 
 form which the piece probably more uniformly bore, when with 
 its first title it was placed by the side of Love's Labour's Lost, 
 to the style of which those passages nearly correspond. By far 
 the greater part of the play, however, must have undergone a 
 complete remodelling; for the prose-scenes, the soliloquies, 
 which in profound thought and force often call to mind Hamlet 
 and Timon, and challenge all the interpreter's art of arrange- 
 ment, punctuation, and transposition ; and the comic passages, 
 which in substance and form recall the scenes of FalstafF, all 
 evidently belong to the later period of the poet's writing, pro- 
 bably to the years 1605 or 1606. Nevertheless we discuss the 
 piece in this place on account of the time of its probable origin, 
 and on account also of the contrast which it affords to Love's 
 Labour's Lost, not only in form but in spirit. 
 
 In passing from the last discussed play to All's Well that 
 Ends Well, we feelat once an outward difference and we divine 
 an inward one ; we pass from the florid and exaggerated Italian 
 style of Shakespeare's fearlier period to the popular English 
 tone which distinguishes his later writings, and this transition 
 of style exactly suits the subject of this counterpart as well as 
 its psychological treatment. In Love's Laboui"'s Lost, Biron is 
 one of those humorous characters, devoid of all sentimentality, 
 little suited to the peculiar service of love among the circle of 
 the courtiers of Navarre ; a man with whom love is rather a kind 
 of subtile speculation, the offspring of idleness, carried on like 
 a play of the fancy, with sonnets and poems which are rather the 
 work of the head than the emotions of the heart, with concealed 
 avowals which betrayed more wit than feeling ; a man whose 
 love-service has method but little natural truth, which has many 
 
LOVE'S LASOrrR'S LOST AM) ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 175 
 
 words but little action or tested feeling. When this actor-like 
 wooing suffers shipwreck, Biron's truer nature returns, and he 
 rejects that Romanic service of love and poetry with all the 
 candour of a Saxon ; he renounces 
 
 The taffata phrases, silken terms precise, \ 
 
 Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, 
 Piguies pedantical ; 
 
 and he protests that henceforth his 
 
 Wooing mind shall be expressed 
 In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes. 
 
 In this manner Shakespeare has made- his Prince Henry woo, 
 his model of unaffected nature. But in All's Well that Ends 
 Well he has delineated in Bertram g, youth who like Biron is a 
 despiser of love, but who acts the part to such an extreme that 
 he does not eve^j join in the coarsest wooing, but on the contrary 
 must himself be wooed. The part of the wooer in the love- 
 affairs of this play belongs strangely enough to the woman. 
 But as if this play was intended to form a contrast as great and 
 as glaring as possible to Love's Labour's Lost, all sentimentality, 
 affectation, and unnaturalness is avoided even in her wooing. 
 She woos with tears, her love speaks by deeds of merit, the 
 poetry of her relation to Bertram rests in the ^capability for 
 action and sacrifice of a character free from all mental sickli- 
 ness. In Love's Labour's Lost, the lords of Navarre had a 
 political ground for not abjuring the society of women ; in mere 
 caprice they indulged the utterly groundless whim of suppres- 
 sing nature unnaturally. In contrast to this affected renunciation 
 of these praisp-seeking nobles, we have here a modest womanly 
 being who loves her foster-brother, far removed as he is from 
 her in rank, who has all possible reasons within and without 
 her for repressing and renouncing her passion, but in whom a 
 full healthy nature and divine power in a feeble vessel pierce 
 through all the barriers which appear so insurmountable, instead 
 of creating natural obstacles. In harmony with this, through- 
 out this play, both in its story and in its leading characters, 
 all is simple nature, hearty endeavom-, and action without many 
 words, while in the Other all is affectation, poetic play, and 
 shallow intercourse without much action. And as in the one, 
 the idea of the piece is again and again decidedly expressed and 
 repeated by the loquacious characters; in the other, on the 
 
176 SECOND PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DBAMATIC POETBl. 
 
 oontrary, it is silently placed in the characters themselves, and 
 in the facts of the play. 
 
 In the story of the play only the comic parts, such as the 
 characters of ParoUes, Lafeu, the clown, and the countess, are 
 the property and invention of the poet ; the main pith and 
 subject of the play is borrowed from Boccaccio's novel of ' Gi- 
 glietta' di Nerbona,' which Shakespeare may have read in 
 Painter's ' Palace of Pleasure.' The play is all the more re- 
 markable, because we learn' from it the relation of Shakespeatte' 
 and his drama to his narrative models of Eomanio origin, and 
 perceive what a different power predominates in the Saxon 
 poet, and what increased care dramatic poetry claims, falling as 
 it does under the severe criticism of the eye, compared to the 
 narrative tales which are subjected to the more sparing judg- 
 ment of the credulous ear. 
 
 The famous Italian novelist relates how the foster-daughter 
 of the' Count of Eoussillon, the daughter of his physician, fell 
 in love with his son Bertram ; how the latter travelled to Paris, 
 how the girl devises a plan to follow him ; how the sickness of 
 the king affords her a pretext for this ; how she cures him, and 
 asks as a reward count Bertram for a husband, and receives him 
 against his will ; how he disdains to acknowledge her as a wife, 
 except on two impossible conditions which he places before her. 
 In Boccaccio's novel there is no mention of a motive for all 
 these strange actions. Griglietta is not only beautiful but rich, 
 and as far as this goes there is therefore less ground for 
 scorning her ; contempt would rather be excited by her undue 
 forwardness. She reflects how she may hasten after the de- 
 parted lover ; she has prepared a plan for obtaining him through 
 the recovery of the king ; when he places before her the con- 
 ditions, she broods forthwith over the scheme of making possible 
 the impossible. To this we listen in the narrative with dull 
 ear, but we never could see it represented. A husband-seeking- 
 woman, who, devoid of all delicacy, made and accomplished 
 such schemes, would only become subsequently still more 
 despised by the man who had despised her from the first ; upon 
 the stage no one could take an interest in it ; it would be felt 
 as disgusting. 
 
 But Shakespeare has not made his work so easy. The 
 manner in which he has designed the relation of the two cha- 
 racters in question, committing the most romantic undertakings 
 to a girl,, who is at last, however, to appear in her womanliness 
 
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST AND ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 177 
 
 and morality ■Well, worthy of love, the boldness with which he 
 meets the greatest improbabilities, accumulating difficulties in 
 full consciousness of success, all this appears to us of extreme 
 importance in this play. The poet receives the story just as it 
 was given him. He takes it with all its romantic extravagance, 
 to which he is as keenly alive as any one among ourselves. 
 He has often subsequently done just the same with stories still 
 more strange. There is a kind of poetic orthodoxy about him, 
 by which he gets the very pith of the transmitted piece, holds 
 it inviolable, and leaves it intact. But with just as much dis- 
 regard and freedom he remodels the surrounding circumstances 
 and characters according to his necessities ; he gives motives 
 to them and to their actions, so that in truth and reality they 
 
 , might have done something similar, something analogous to 
 that which the legend assigned to them, and this in a manner 
 credible and possible to all fellow mortals. To the cold 
 temperament the story may still appear merely as an artistic 
 embodiment, as an arbitrary fiction, for which in prosaic inter- 
 pretation any other more natural relation may be devised. To 
 him, on the contrary, whose easily excited imagfination rises above 
 the commonplaces of reality, these dry reflections will not be 
 needed. He will see that the wonderful quality of this genius 
 is that he throws such a spell of nature over the most 
 unwonted circumstances, that he makes us forget in the midst 
 of the most romantic matter that we are in the region of dreams 
 and poetry. 
 
 The poet does not depict the maiden as rich, nor as over- 
 flowing with schemes and sensibility ; but as poor, modest, 
 humble, gentle, entirely resting upon her womanly nature. 
 Seized with love for her foster-brother, entirely filled with this 
 one longing, she is nevertheless devoted even to resignation, 
 ' like the hind that would be mated by the lion,' and must die 
 for love. In her soliloquies she does not even express a desire ; 
 ' it hurts not him, that he is loved of her,' this is her plea ; 
 Indian-like, she adores the sun, ' that looks upon his worship-' 
 per, but knows of him no more.' This self-denial is all the 
 more conspicuous when she is agitated by the violence of a 
 genuinely strong passion, which her active imagination betrays 
 to the listener in audible soliloquy. ' 'Twas pretty, though a 
 plague,' she says, ' to see him every hour.' But with this 
 self-mastering, self-renouncing, modest nature, she is prudent, 
 clever, and apt— qualities which in reality are so often united 
 
 N 
 
178 SECOND PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DSAMATIO FOETHY. 
 
 in superior women. She knows, so it is said of her, how to put 
 ' sharp stings in her mildest words,' She possesses the twofold 
 gift, not incompatible with the genuine womanliness of her 
 character, of being at once modest and courageous, ready to 
 endure, and prompt for action. She exhibits the quality of 
 increasing in active decision when circumstances favour it, 
 without forfeiting her woman's nature, even when taking steps 
 that appear masculine. She contrives not for herself (it is 
 just this which in Boccaccio's tales appears so masculine and 
 indelicate), but she starts not back discouraged at the execution 
 of a bold thought when suggested to her ; she knows not how 
 to create plans and projects for herself, but when fate has 
 presented them to her she is capable of grasping them with 
 ability. And this not from masculine boldness, but from 
 pious trust and a persevering, steadfast nature, which from her 
 youth up, on account of her poor position, rendered her self- 
 dependent. She has read in the Bible that ' He that of greatest , 
 works is finisher, oft does them by the weakest minister,' and 
 upon this she has established the principle that we must 
 meet the proffered good and must use the powers we have 
 received. 
 
 Let us attentively follow this character through the en- 
 tanglements of the knot which her own love has made, careful 
 not to substitute anything which is alien to the poet and his 
 Helena, but equally careful not to lose even the slighest touch 
 which he has made in her delineation. Even before she 
 advances to action, we perceive the depth of her feeling and 
 the innocent dissimulation, which circumstances compel her to 
 adopt. The lover bids adieu to his home, the tears are in her 
 eyes, she dare not show them. They burst forth when the 
 countess praises her, when they are speaking of her deceased 
 father. The mother, imputes them to a remembrance of her 
 father ; Helena does not contradict her, but gives an equivocal 
 reply ; she permits herself this small sophistry, not without 
 excusing it to herself: her tears flow from so noble a source, 
 that, even thus shed, they grace the remembrance of her father. 
 Bertram departs ; she is fully resigned ; she has no anticipation 
 of being able to obtain him ; she lives alone on the recollection 
 of intercourse with him. Only when the contemptible ParoUes, 
 his follower, whose way it is to be intolerably saucy even with 
 honourable personages, annoys her with unseemly wit, when 
 ■ thus she is reminded of the bad society in which Bertram is 
 
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST AND ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 179 
 
 now entering the world, when slie pictures the temptations to 
 which he will be exposed in Paris, is jealousy excited in her ; 
 and a pardonable weakness, not a masculihe power, is the first 
 source of the plan to follow him, in order to guard him from 
 falling into strange hands, whilst her love at home is decaying 
 and growing old. And vaguely with these ideas does the 
 thought intrude itself as to whether this struggling desire may 
 not also give her the power of attaining her object. She 
 thinks to be able to deserve him, yet never knows how ' that 
 desert should be.' Her father's prescription for the king's 
 malady occurs to her only as a ground for the journey ; but 
 she has no idea of employing the cure of the king for the 
 acquisition of the count. This thought is suggested by the 
 countess, Bertram's own mother, whoj discovering, her love 
 from an over-healrd soliloquy,, favours it, and looking back to 
 her own youth, recognises in herself a similar nature ; and who, 
 now grown into a practical matron, points out and contrives, the 
 way which leads straight to the object. Helena goes forthwith 
 to Paris to cure the king ; every sacrifice, even life, staked on 
 this hazardous cure, is nothing to her. If we keep in view all 
 that at this time, before and subsequently, she stakes upon the 
 man of her heart, her womanliness is exhibited in stronger 
 light by what follows. Her manner of choice ever manifests the 
 same amiability : 
 
 I dare not say, I take, you ; but I give- 
 Me, and my service, ever whilst I live, 
 Into your guiding power. 
 
 Sought after by all others, even by ' hearts that scorned" to 
 serve, humbly called mistress,' she is disdained by Bertram, and 
 she retires at once with her wonted resignation. But the 
 king, in virtue of his power as liege lord and guardian of 
 Bertram, irritated at his refusal, and bent upon making him 
 feel his distance from him as deeply as he had. caused Helena 
 to feel his own from her, compels him to the marriage, upon 
 which she receives from Bertram' the conditions on which he 
 will acknowledge her as his wife. She is very different to the 
 G-iglietta of Boccaccio, who at once broods over a plan for 
 fulfilling these conditions. She has lost him, and resignedly 
 she returns home. He has written to her, that until he has no 
 wife he has nothing to do in France. She now hears that he 
 has repaired to the Florentine war ;; she can only believe he 
 
 » 2.' 
 
180 SECOND PESIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 has done it on her account ; but she will .not be guilty of his 
 plunging himself into danger and for her sake avoiding home 
 and mother. She wishes not to destroy his happiness ; like a 
 ' poor thief ' she steals away from the castle of her love to 
 make a pilgrimage to Saint Jaques ; then she causes them to 
 write home that she has died there. Too great heroism for 
 such a womanly creature, as we have considered Helena to be ! 
 The poet, therefore, tempers it with the same affectionate 
 weakness which prompted her first journey to Paris. She 
 takes the way through Florence, that she may once more see 
 him, and there fortune rewards her toil and fidelity by the 
 accomplishment of the strangest scheme. This plan, daring 
 but not imlawful for Bertram's lawful wife, she devises not for 
 fherself, but she seizes it with the same quick determination, as 
 she has before done that of the countess. There is here 
 also nothing amazon-Uke ; the most womanly impulse is at 
 work, whether it be jealousy or the design of guarding her 
 husband, like his protecting angel, from a sinful step. TKe 
 picture is drawn of an innocent and strong love perpetually 
 meeting with fresh hindrances, and only excited by these to 
 fresh and greater efforts. 
 
 Thus far this strange plot is made not only outwardly, 
 possible, but also — and this is the main point — morally so, for a 
 noble female character, in whom we may take warm interest. 
 There remains a new difficulty. How is it conceivable that 
 her beloved one, her husband, can be won, not alone to a 
 compelled union, "but to actual love, after he had once dis- 
 dained her ? 
 
 Bertram's character is placed in perfect contrast to Helena's. 
 Throughout she appears humble, meek, modest, but perfectly 
 mature, wise, and prudent, endowed with high aspirations and 
 instinctively impelled to follow them. He, on the other hand, 
 is haughty, rash, and unbridled, assuming although ill-advised, 
 influenced by the most wretched socifety, and entirely devoid 
 of judgment and reflection. The ground upon which he dis- 
 dains the much-desired Helena is, first of all, that the emotion 
 •of female love is as yet altogether foreign to him. His 
 flattering attendant Parolies, who -can be of no use to the 
 married Bertram, prejudices hiim systematically against these 
 emotions ; he had aJlso once thus regarded a daughter of Lafeu's 
 throtigh the ' scornful perspective ' of contempt. Before the 
 king he alleges ihis .ancestry and the difference of rank as the 
 
LOVE'S LABOUE'8 LOST AND ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 181 
 
 ground of his disdain. Here lies the moral centre of the piece,, 
 and the main difference , between the two characters. As the 
 heroes in 'Love's Labour's Lost' suffer from the conceit of 
 seeming virtue, so does this one from the vanity of seeming 
 merit. This difference of blood and rank has no importance 
 for Helena ; her strong nature is never master over custom, 
 but is everywhere struggling against mere custom and con- 
 ventionality. Her desire is only to know how she could 
 possibly deserve Bertram; that she cam, deserve him,, she 
 doubts not. Her noble mind suggests that. 
 
 The mightiest space in fortune, nature brings-- 
 To join like likes, and kiss like native things. 
 
 Full of this self-reliance, she gives free course to her love, and 
 fears not the difficulties of the path. In this the countess, 
 Bertram's mother, meets her. She has perfect congeniality 
 of soul with Helena ; she looks back upon similar experiences in 
 her own youth, when she too ' did wish chastely and love dearly,' 
 and as Helena says, ' Dian was both herself and love.' She 
 regards this strong passion, which seems to her to bear ' the 
 show and seal of nature's truth,' with the interest of personal 
 sympathy, and she gives her maternal favour to the poor foster- 
 child against the haughty son whose name she washes out of 
 her blood. But we first feel the full significamce of this affec^ 
 tion when we have seen the thoroughly aristocratic bearing of 
 the lady in that scene (Act m. sc. 2) in which she receives the 
 intelligence that her son has rejected Helena. Amid all the 
 disquietude which the wretched intelligence causes her, amid 
 the grief of the parent, the sympathy of the foster-mother and 
 of the woman, she yet in the proud restraining of her emotion 
 preserves the dignity of the housewife and hostess ; she has 
 ' felt so many quirks of joy, and grief, that the first face of 
 neither, on the start, can woman her unto't.' And as the 
 heroine of the play in consequence of her position, and the 
 countess in consequence of her experience and! prisnciptes, sO' 
 the valiant old lord Lafeu is also raised above the prejudice of 
 distinction of rank, and places virtue and merit above nobility 
 and blood; once indeed he had himself raised a claim for 
 Bertram in behalf of his daughter. Nay, even the highest repre- 
 sentative of all dignity of rank, the king himself, takes the 
 same exalted view, and this may be traced with him to the 
 
182 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEJBE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 threatening nearness of the grave, upon the brink of which he 
 had stood. 'Strange is it,' he says, 
 
 that our bloods, 
 Of colour, weight, and heat, pour'd all together. 
 Would quite confound distinction, yet stand off 
 In differences so mighty : 
 
 From lowest place when virtuous things proceed, 
 The place is dignified by the doer's deed : 
 Where great additions swell, and virtue none, 
 It is a dropsied honour : good alone 
 Is good, without a name ; vileness is so. 
 
 . . ■ . Honours best thrive, 
 When rather from our acts we them derive, 
 Than our foregoers. 
 
 Thus, then, all the characters of the piece are, on this point, 
 opposed to Bertram; even the comic character, the clown 
 Lavatch, is presented in caricature under the same aspect, since 
 he is at first encumbered with a foolish passion which must 
 end in beggary. Ulrici's statement, therefore, that some cha- 
 racters had no reference to the main idea of the piece, appears 
 unfounded. .For this ruling principle may even be traced in the 
 character of Diana, in whom the sensitive pride of poverty and 
 womanliness is set at naught, compared with the one thing 
 which she possesses, namely, her stainless honour, and for a 
 virtuous object she engages in a project that must be painful 
 to her. 
 
 The idea that merit goes before rank has, as we shall 
 presently see, expressly occupied Shakespeare's mind in the 
 period before us. It is the soul of this play, and of the relar 
 tion between Bertram and Helena. If, then, haughtiness of 
 spirit and youthful pride in liberty, added to arrogance of rank, 
 were the grounds for Helena's rejection by Bertram, the ques- 
 tion arises as to how the poet removed these inner hindrances 
 to the union, after circumstances had set aside outward impedi- 
 ments, and had joined the pair in the external form of marriage. 
 The masterly manner in which this is done rivals that with 
 which he has solved the other half of this moral knot. ' 
 
 The nobility of a fine nature is innate in Bertram; his 
 degeneracy into pride is only youthful error. His mother calls 
 him 'an unseasoned courtier,' ' a well-derived nature,' corrupted 
 by jseducement. The good qualities of his nature even fecilitate 
 this temptation. His outward appearance, a youth with curled 
 
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST MD ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 183 
 
 hair, arched brows, and hawking eye, who, as the clown depicts 
 him, ' will look upon his boot, and sing ; mend the ruff, and 
 sing ; pick his teeth, and sing,' proclaims a smart nature, which 
 at the same time is much occupied with itself and has little 
 feeling left for others. No inner mental life has yet penetrated 
 his years of churlishness. He is far from the wit of a Biron, far 
 from the culture of that King of Navarre, far from the sensi"- 
 bility of a Dumain ; he is entirely a man of Biron's honest 
 kersey yeas and noes, but without Biron's refinement and wit ; 
 laconic, as Shakespeare never again exhibited any principal 
 character ; even in his letters he is just as characteristically 
 short and compact. This rough, abrupt, uncourtly vein, bursts 
 forth into ebullitions of defiance when he is excited. FuU of 
 youthful zeal, his whole soul is given to action and fame ; at 
 the court of the king he is angry because he is detained from 
 the Florentine war ; twice he cannot ask, he will steal away. 
 Now follows Helena's choice, and crosses the one thought that 
 filled his soul. He had in his youthful moods never yet dreamt 
 of love ; at this moment he feels love for no one in the world ; 
 that he is commanded to take this wife, above all provokes his 
 resentment.. In this passion, we must observe, and not in cold 
 sophistry, he not only prescribes to Helena those conditions 
 which stipulate, as it were, for his freest choice after the com- 
 pulsory marriage just concluded, but he even purposes to defy 
 the king by letter. If anything is wanting to retain in him 
 this hardened feeling of resentment, there is the base flatterer 
 ParoUes who holds him ensnared, who wishes to keep him free 
 and open to his own parasitical arts, who hates Helena and is 
 active in placing her in a hateful aspect. The curse of the 
 king, who threatens to ' throw ' his refractory subject ' into the 
 careless lapse of youth and ignorance,' is fulfilled ; the connec- 
 tion of the unwary Bertram with this same ParoUes, this 
 Armado in arms, exhibits his entire destitution of counsel and 
 advice. As a braggart, a liar, a fop, a wretched man, ' who 
 hath outvillained villany so far, that the rarity redeems bim,' as 
 a seducer of youth, as a meagre Falstaff who entangles Bertram 
 in Florence into his immoral intercourse with Diana, this brag- 
 gart is known to all except to Bertram; Lafeu, who warns 
 Bertram plainly and decidedly of him, though in . vain, calls 
 him ' a window of lattice ' easily to be seen through ; the clown 
 calls him 'a very little of nothing ; ' but to Bertram he was 
 everything ; Helena appears to him too low for a wife, but this 
 
184 SECOND PESIOP OF SHAKE8FEASE' B DSAMATIC POETSY. 
 
 man seems equal for a friend ; the straightforward open youth, 
 ' could enduje anything before but a cEtt,' and yet under the 
 yoke of this parasite he lies ensnared, and his unsuspicious soul 
 divines not what he is. At Florence he appears most glaringly 
 in his cloven nature, good and bad, brave and glorious, but at 
 the same time dissolute and corrupt, sunk into the habits of a 
 debauchee. At the turning-point of the play we see him in a 
 whirlpool of activity, in utter confusion both of mind and man- 
 ner. In the act of leaving Florence, he despatches ' sixteen 
 businesses, by an abstract of success ; ' in his familiar fashion, 
 he takes leave of the duke in the street ; he prepares for the 
 journey; he writes to his mother ; he has agreed upon a meet- 
 ing with Diana ; he has given to her, a.frivolous woman (as he 
 must deem her), the ring, the same ring, to obtain which he 
 had imposed upon Helena an impossible task ; the family-ring 
 upon which, as it were, the honour of his house rested. Over- 
 whelmed with passion, he has in so doing lost the right to urge 
 his family and rank further against Helena. He now receives 
 the tidings of Helena's death. When he reads the letter, he is 
 ' changed almost into another man ; ' he begins to love her 
 when he learns her death ; how should that heart, which had 
 broken for his sake, leave his unmoved ? He buries her not 
 only in his thoughts, but deplores her. And to make his 
 sudden change the more emphatic, he had sworn to Diana to 
 marry her when his wife was dead ; it must torment him to 
 think how much more free his conscience would be if the re- 
 jection of Helena had never brought him into this position. 
 Nevertheless he does not relinquish the meeting with Diana ; 
 and more than this, not only from sorrow does he plunge into 
 the intoxication of his senses, but from this he passes to the 
 ludicrous scene which is to unmask to him his friend ParoUes. 
 In a state of inward confusion, he thus seeks to drown the 
 voice of conscience; for the discovery concerning ParoUes 
 must have opened to him before everything his own helpless 
 immaturity, and must have made him look repentantly within. 
 This humiliation of soul is to follow his outward abasement 
 stroke by stroke ; he is to learn thoroughly to mortify his ar- 
 rogance and to suspect his pride. The death of Helena, the 
 peace at Florence, and the duke's letter to the king, explain 
 his return to court. There he is convicted of having given his 
 ring to a worthless woman, his guilt is exposed, and he is 
 scorned by Lafeu, whose daughter he should have married ; he 
 
LOVE'S LABOUR' 8 LOST AMD ALL' 8 WELL THAT END 8 WELL. 185 
 
 incurs the disregard of all, and is even suspected of having 
 murdered Helena. His riddles, his ring, and the torments 
 which he had created by it, recoil avengiugly upon himself. Thus 
 humbled and depressed, he is freed not only from a burdensome 
 marriage, but what is stiU more, from a fearful burden of con- 
 science; must he not regard the woman who brought him this 
 sacrifice as the beneficent guardian spirit who should best coimsel 
 him through life ? He stands before her, the proud man of rank 
 whose noble birth has gained him no virtue, who had wantonly 
 hazarded at once nobility and virtue ; he stands before her who 
 was ennobled by virtue, and had saved him the symbol of his 
 nobility. Like those aspiring innovators of whom Bacon says, 
 that in comparison to their activity 'nobles appear like statues,' 
 she, wooing by actions, has conquered the man of her love ; yet 
 even after conditions executed and rights won, she is steadfast 
 in her womanly nature, in her old humble ways and in her 
 calm resignation. • This wholly softens in him all that was yet 
 unmelted in his inflexible nature. Wheh still in fear and 
 suspense she utters the painful words, ' 'Tis but the name and 
 not the thing ' — not his wife — ^he, in his laconic way, compresses 
 all repentance, all contrition, aU gratitude and love into the 
 words: 'Both, both; pardon! 'and it needs but an actor 
 who knows how to prepare for these words, how to utter them 
 and to accompany them with suitable action, to leave the 
 spectator no room for anxiety as to the future of the pair. 
 , In few plays do we feel, so much as in All's Well that Ends 
 Well, what excessive scope the poet leaves open to the actor's 
 art. Few readers, and still fewer female readers, will believe in 
 Helena's womanly nature, even after they have read our ex- 
 planations and have found them indisputable. The subject has 
 at once repelled them ; and so far would we gladly make allow- 
 ance for this feeling, that we grant that Shakespeare might 
 better have bestowed his psychological art upon more agreeable 
 matter, and that he has often done so. But even he who, by 
 the aid of our remarks, may have overcome his repugnance 
 to the subject, will seldom find himself able by reflection to 
 imagine it possible that such bold and mascuUne steps could be 
 taken in a thoroughly feminine manner. Only by seeing this 
 work of art and by trusting the eye, can we be sensible of its 
 full and harmonious effect. But that even the eye may be con- 
 vinced, a great actress is required. Bertram also demands a 
 good actor, if the spectator is to perceive that this is a man 
 
186 SECOND PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 capable of rewarding efforts so great on the part of a woman, a 
 man whose painful wooing promises a grateful possession. That 
 this unsentimental youth has a heart, this corrupted libertine 
 a good heart, that this scorner can ever love the scorned, th^s 
 is indeed read in his scanty words, but few readers of the present 
 day are free enough from sentimentality to believe such things 
 on the credit of a few words. The case is entirely different 
 when, in the acted Bertram, they see the noble nature, the ruin- 
 of his character at Florence, and the contrition which his sins 
 and his simplicity call forth ; when, from the whole bearing of 
 the brusque man, they perceive what the one word 'pardon' 
 signified in his mouth, when they see his breast heave at the 
 last appearance of Helena bringing ease to his conscience. 
 Credence is then given to his last words ; for the great change 
 in his nature^of which now only a forlorn word or two is read 
 and overlooked — would then have been witnessed. Seldom has 
 a task so independent as the character of Bertram been left to 
 the art of the actor ; but still more seldom is the actor to be 
 found, who knows how to execute it. To Eichard Burbage 
 this part must have been a dainty feast. About the time when 
 it received its present form (1605-8), Shakespeare had prepared 
 for him also Pericles and Petruchio, as equally attractive tasks. 
 Thus arrived at the height of their respective arts, both the 
 actor and the poet seem to have delighted in mutually craving 
 and affording these faint sketches of character, as if for the sake 
 of practising their common work, of drawing outlines and 
 finishing them, or of supplying riddles and solving them. 
 
MIDSUMMEErNIGHT'S DEEAM. 
 
 If All's Well that Ends Well be read immediately betweeii 
 Love's Labour's Lost and the Midsummer-Night's Dream, we feel 
 that in the former the matured hand of the poet was at work, 
 while the two other pieces stand in closer connection. The 
 performance of the comic parts by the clowns affords a re- 
 semblance between the two pieces, but this resemblance appears 
 still more plainly in the mode of diction. Apart from the fairy 
 songs, in which Shakespeare, in a masterly manner, preserves 
 the popular tone of the style which existed before him, the play 
 bears prominently the stamp -of the Italian school. The 
 language — ^picturesque, descriptive, and florid with conceits — 
 the too apparent alliterations, the doggrel passages which extend 
 over the passionate and impressive scenes, and the old mythology 
 so suited to the subject ; all this places the piece in a close, or 
 at least not remote relation, to Love's Labour's Lost. As in 
 this ■ play, the story and the original combination of the cha- 
 racters of ancient, religious, and historical legends with those 
 of the popular Saxon myths,' are the property and invention of 
 the poet. As in Love's Labour's Lost, utterly unlike the cha- 
 racterisation which we have just seen in All's Well that Ends 
 Well, the acting characters are distinguished only by a very 
 general outline ; the strongest distinction is that between the 
 little pert Hermia, shrewish and irritable even at school, and 
 the slender yielding Helena, distrustful and reproachful of her- 
 self ; the distinction is less apparent between the upright open 
 Lysander and the somewhat malicious and inconstant Demetrius. 
 The period of the origin of the play — which like Henry VIII. 
 and the Tempest may have been written in honour of the 
 nuptials of some noble couple — is placed at about 1594 or 1596. 
 The marriage of Theseus is the turning-point of the action of 
 the piece, which comprises the clowns, fairies, and the common 
 race of men. The piece is a masque, one of those dramas for 
 
188 SECOND PJEEIOD OF SSAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 special occasions appointed for private representation, which 
 Ben Jonson especially brought to perfection. In England 
 this species of drama has as little a law of its own as the his- 
 torical drama ; compared to the ordinary drama it exhibits, ac- 
 cording to Halpin, an insensible transition, midistinguishable 
 by definition. As in the historical drama, its distinction from 
 the free drama almost entirely arises from the nature and the 
 mass of the matter ; so in the masque, it proceeds from the 
 occasion of its origin, from its necessary reference to it, and 
 from the allegorical elements which are introduced. These 
 lattei-, it tnust be admitted, have given a peculiar stamp to the 
 Midsummer-Night's Dream among the rest of Shakespeare's 
 works. 
 
 Upon the most superficial reading we perceive that the 
 actions in the Midsummer-Night's Dream, still more than the 
 characters themselves, are treated quite differently to those in 
 other plays of Shakespeare. The presence of an underlying 
 motive — the great art and true magic wand of the poet — ^has here 
 been completely disregarded. Instead of reasonable induc&- 
 ments, instead of natural impulses arising from character and 
 circumstance, caprice is master here. We meet with a double 
 pair, who are entangled in strange mistakes, the motives to 
 which we, however, seek for in vain in the nature of the actors 
 themselves. Demetrius, like Proteus in the Two Grentlemen 
 of Verona, has left a bride, and, like Proteus, wooes the bride 
 of his friend Lysander. This Lysander has fled with Hermia to 
 seek a spot where the law of Athens cannot pursue them. 
 Secretly, we are told, they both steal away into the wood ; 
 Demetrius in fury follows them, and, impelled by love, Helena 
 fastens herself like a burr upon the heels of the latter. Alike 
 devoid of conscience, Hermia errs at first through want of due 
 obedience to her father, and Demetrius through faithlessness to 
 his betrothed Helena, Helena through treachery to her frieiid 
 Hermia, and Lysander through mockery of his father-in-law. 
 The strife in the first act, in which we cannot trace any distinct 
 moral motives, is in the third act changed into a perfect con- 
 fusion owing to influences of an entirely external character. In 
 the fairy world a similar disorder exists between Oberon and 
 Titania. The play of Pyramus and Thisbe, enacted by the honest 
 citizens, forms a comic-tragic counterpart to the tragic-comic 
 point of the plot, depicting two lovers, who behind their 
 
MmSUMMEB-NIQHT'B DSEAM. 189 
 
 parents' backs ' think no scorn to woo by moonlight,' and through 
 a mere accident come to a tragic end. 
 
 The human beings in the main plot of the piece are 
 apparently impelled by mere amorous caprice ; Demetrius 
 is betrothed, then Helena pleases him no longer, he trifles 
 with Hermia, and at the close he remembers this breach of faith 
 only as the trifling of youth. External powers and not inward 
 impulses and feelings appear as the cause of these amorous ca- 
 prices. In the first place, the brain is heated by the warm season, 
 the first night in May, the ghost-hour of the mystic powers ; 
 for even elsewhere Shakespeare occasionally calls a piece of 
 folly the madness of a midsummer-day, or a dog-day's fever ; 
 and in the 98th sonnet he speaks of April as the time which 
 puts 'the spirit of youth in everything,' making even the 
 ' heavy Saturn laugh and leap with him.' Then Cupid, who 
 appears in the background of the piece as a real characteij 
 misleading the judgment and blinding the eyes, .takes delight 
 in causing a frivolous breach of tiaith. And last of all we see 
 the lovers cdmpletely in the hand of the fairies, who ensnare 
 their senses and bring them into that tumult of confusion, the 
 unravelling of which, like the entanglement itself, is to come 
 from without. These delusions of blind passion, this jugglery 
 of the senses during the sleep of reason, these changes of mind 
 and errors of 'seething brains,' these actions without any 
 higher centre of a mental and moral bearing, are compared, as 
 it were, to a dream which unrolls before us with its fearful 
 complications, and from which there is no deliverance but in 
 awaking and in the recovery of consciousness. 
 
 The piece is called a Midsummer-Mght's Dream; the 
 Epilogue expresses satisfaction, if the spectator will regard the- 
 piece as a dream ; for in a dream time and locality are oblite- 
 rated ; a certain twilight and dusk is spread over the whole ; 
 Oberon desires that all shall regard the matter as a dream, and 
 so it is. Titania speaks of her adventure as a vision. Bottom 
 of his metamorphosis as a dream ; all the rest awake at last out 
 of a sleep of weariness, and the events leave upon them the 
 impression of a dream. The sober Theseus esteems their 
 stories as nothing else than dreams and fantasies. Indeed 
 these allusions in the play must have suggested to . Coleridge 
 and others the idea that the poet had intentionally aimed at 
 letting the piece glide by as a dream. We only wonder that, 
 with this opinion, they have not reached the inner kernel in 
 
190 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 which this intention of the poet really lies enshrined— an inten- 
 tion which has not only given a name to the piece, but has 
 called forth as by magic a free poetic creation of the greatest 
 value. For it is indeed to be expected from our poet, that 
 such an intention on his side were not to be sought for in the 
 mere shell. If this intention were only shown in those 
 poetical externals, in that fragrant charm of rhythm and verse, 
 in that harassing suspense, and in that dusky twilight, then 
 this were but a shallow work of superficial grace, by the sole 
 use of which a poet like Shakespeare would never have dreamt 
 of accomplishing anything worth the while. 
 
 We will now return to an examination of the play and its 
 contents ; and taking a higher- and more commanding view, we 
 wiU endeavour to reach the aim which Coleridge in truth only 
 divined. We have already said that the play of amorous 
 caprice proceeded from no inner impulse of the soul, but from 
 external powers, from the influence of gods and fairies, among 
 whom Cupid, the demon of the old mythology, only appears 
 behind the scenes ; while, on the other hand, the fairies, the 
 spirits of later superstition, occupy the main place upon the 
 stage. If we look at the functions which the poet has com- 
 mitted to both, namely to the god of love and to the fairies, 
 we find to our surprise that they are perfectly similar. The 
 workings of each upon the passions of men are the same. The 
 infidelity of Theseus towards his many forsaken ones — Ariadne, 
 ^gle, Antiopa, and Perigenia — which according to the ancient 
 myth, we should asci-ibe to Cupid and to the intoxication of 
 sensuous love, are imputed in the Midsummer-Night's Dream 
 to the elfin king. Even before the fairies appear in the play, 
 Demetrius is prompted by the infatuation of blind love, and 
 Puck expressly says that it is not he but Cupid who originated 
 this madness of mortals ; the same may be inferred also with 
 Titania and the boy. The fairies pursue these errors still 
 further, in the same manner as Cupid had begun them : they 
 increase and heal them ; the juice of a flower, Dian's bud, is 
 employed to cure the perplexities of love in both Lysander and 
 Titania ; the juice of another flower (Cupid's) had caused them. 
 This latter flower had received its wondrous power from a wound 
 by Cupid's shaft. The power conveyed by the shaft was per- 
 ceived by the elfin king, who knew how to use it j Oberon is 
 closely initiated into the deepest secrets of the love-god, but 
 not so his servant Puck, 
 
MIDSVMMEB-mGHT'8 DBEAM. 191 
 
 The famous passage, in which Oberon orders Puck to fetch 
 him this herb with its ensnaring charm, is as follows : 
 
 My gentle Puck, come Uther ; Thoii remember'st 
 Since once I sat upon a promontory, 
 And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, 
 tittering such dulcet and harmonious breath, 
 That the rude sea grew civil at her song ; 
 And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, 
 To hear the sea^'maid's musick. 
 That very time I saw (hat thou cmdePd noC) 
 Plying between the cold moon and the earth, 
 ■ Cupid all arm'd : a certain aim he took 
 At a fair vestal, throned by the west ; 
 And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, 
 As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts : 
 But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft 
 Quenched in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon ; 
 And the imperial vot'ress passed on. 
 In maiden meditation, fancy-free. 
 Yet ruarked I where the bolt of Cupid fell : 
 It fell upon a little western flower, — 
 Before milk-white ; now purple with Love's wound,-r- 
 And maidens call it love-in-idleness. 
 Fetch me that flower. 
 
 This passage has recently, in the writings of the Shakespeare 
 Society, received a spirited interpretation by Halpin ( ' Oberon's 
 Vision '), which shows us that we can scarcely seek for too much 
 in our poet ; that even in the highest flight of his imagination, 
 he never leaves the ground of reality ; and that in every touch, 
 however episodical it may appear, he ever inserts the profoundest 
 allusions to his main subject. We know well that in the eyes 
 of the dry critic this interpretation, though it has one firm 
 basis of fact, has found little favour ; to us this is not very 
 conceivable: for every investigation has long proved how 
 gladly this realistic poet maintained, in the smallest allusions 
 as well as in the greatest designs, lively relations to the times 
 and places round him»; how in his freest tragic creations he 
 loved to refer to historical circumstances, founding even the 
 most foolish speeches and actions of his clowns, of his grave- 
 diggers in Hamlet, or his patrols in Much Ado about Nothing, 
 upon actual circumstances ; and thus giving them by this very 
 circumstance that value of indisputable truth to nature which 
 distinguishes them so palpably beyond all other caricatures. 
 Is it not natural that he should have been impelled to give to 
 
192 SECOND PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE' 8 DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 just such a sweet allegory as this the firmest possible basis of 
 fact ? To us, therefore, Halpin's interpretation of this passage 
 is all the more unquestionable, as it gives a most definite 
 purpose to the innermost spirit of the whole play. We must 
 therefore, before we proceed further, first consider more 
 narrowly this episodical narrative and its bearing upon the 
 fundamental idea of the Midsummer-Night's Dream. 
 
 It has always been agreed that by the vestal, throned by 
 the west, from whom Cupid's shaft glided off. Queen Elizabeth 
 was intended; and the whole passage was in consequence 
 esteemed as a delicate flattery of the maiden queen. But we 
 see at once by this instance, that Shakespeare — extraordinary in 
 this respect as in every other — knew how to make his courtly 
 flatteries, of which he was on all occasions most sparing, sub^ 
 servient to the sesthetio or moral aims of his poetry, by the 
 introduction of deeper poetic or moral bearings. It was thus 
 with this passage, which has now received a much more 
 extended interpretation. Cupid ' aU armed ' is referred to the 
 Earl of Leicester's wooing of Elizabeth and to his great 
 preparations at Kenilworth for this purpose (1575). From 
 descriptions of these festivities (Grascoyne's 'Princely Pleasures,' 
 1576, and Laneham's 'Letter,' 1575), we know, that at the 
 spectacles and fireworks which enlivened the rejoicings, a 
 singing mermaid was introduced, swimming on smooth water 
 upon a dolphin's back, amid shooting stars ; these characte- 
 ristics agree w;ith those which Oberon specifies to Puck. The 
 arrow aimed at the priestess of Diana, whose bud possesses the 
 power of quenching love, and which had such force over 
 Cupid's fiower, rebounded. By the flower upon which it fell 
 wounding, Halpin understands the CoUntess Lettice of Essex, 
 with whom Leicester carried on a clandestine intercourse while 
 her husband was absent in Ireland, who, apprised of the matter, 
 returned in 1576,. and was poisoned on the journey. The 
 flower was milk-white, innocent, but purple with love's wound, 
 which denoted her fall or the deeper blush of her husband's 
 itiurder. The name is ' love in idleness,' which Halpin refers 
 to the listlessness of her heart during the absence of her 
 husband ; for on other occasions also Shakespeare uses this 
 popular denomination of the pansy, to denote a love which 
 surprised and affects those who are indolent, unarmed, and 
 devoid of all other feeling and aspiration. While Oberon 
 declares to Puck that he marked the adventure, though the 
 
MimUMMER-NIGHTia SSEAM. 193 
 
 servant could not, the poet appears to denote the strict mystery 
 which concealed this affair, and which might be known to him, 
 because, as we may remember, the execution of his maternal 
 relative, Edward Arden (1583),. was closely connected with it ; 
 and because a son of that Lettice, the famous Eobert Devereux^ 
 Earl of Essex, the favourite of Elizabeth, and' subsequently the 
 victim of her displeasure, was early a patron and protector of 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 How significant then does this little allegorical episode 
 become, which, even when regarded only as a poetic ornament, 
 is full of grace and beauty ! Whilst Spenser at that very time 
 had extolled Elizabeth as the ' Faerie Queen,' Shakespeare, on the 
 contrary, represents her rather as a being unapproachable by 
 this world of fancy. His courtesy to the queen becomes trans- 
 formed into a very serious meaning : for, contrasting with this 
 insanity of love, emphasis is placed upon the other extreme, 
 the victory of Diana over Cupid, of the mind over the body, of 
 maiden contemplativeness over the jugglery of love; and even 
 in other passages of the piece those are extolled as ' thrice 
 blessed, that master so their blood, to undergo such maiden 
 pilgrimage.' But with regard to the bearing of the passage 
 upon the actual purport of the Midsummer-Night's Dream, the 
 poet carries back the mind to a circumstance in real life, which, 
 like an integral part, lies in close parallel with the story of the 
 piece. More criminal and more dissolute acts, prompted by 
 the blind passion of love, were at that time committed in reality 
 than were ever represented in the^drama. The ensnaring charm, 
 embodied in a flower, has an effect upon the entanglements 
 of the lovers in the play. And whatever this representation 
 might lack in probability and psychological completeness 
 (for the sweet allegory of the poet was not to be over- 
 burdened with too much of the prose of characterisation), the 
 spectator with poetic faith may explain by the magic sap of 
 ■the flower, or with pragmatic soberness may interpret by 
 analogy with the actual circumstance which the poet has con- 
 verted into this exquisite allegory. 
 
 But it is time that we should return from this digression. 
 We have before said that the piece appears designed to be 
 treated as a dream ; not merely in outer form and colouring, 
 but also in inner signification. The errors of that blind in- 
 toxication of the senses, which form the main point of the 
 play, appear to us to be an allegorical picture of the errors of 
 
 
 
194 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 a life of dreams. Eeason and consciousness are cast aside in 
 that intoxicating passion as in a dream ; Cupid's delight in 
 breach of faith and Jove's merriment at the perjury of the 
 lovers cause the actions of those who are in the power of the G-od 
 of Love to appear almost as unaccountable as the sins which we 
 commit in a dream. We find moreover that the actions and 
 occupations of Cupid and of the fairies throughout the piece 
 are interwoven or alternate. And this appears to us to confirm 
 most forcibly the intention of the poet to compare allegorically 
 the sensuous life of love with a dream-life ; the exchange of 
 functions between Cupid and the fairies is therefore the true 
 poetic embodiment of this comparison. For the realm of 
 dreams is assigned to Shakespeare's fairies ; they are essen- 
 tially nothing else than personified dream-gods, children of the 
 fantasy, which, as Mercutio says, is not only the idle producer 
 of dreams, but also of the caprices of superficial love. 
 
 Vaguely, as in a dream, this significance of the fairies rests 
 in the ancient popular belief of the Teutonic races, and Shake- 
 speare, with the instinctive touch of genius, has fashioned this 
 idea into exquisite form. In German 'Alp^ and' ^ Mfe' are 
 the same ; ' Alp ' is universally applied in Germany to a dream- 
 goblin (night-'mare). The name of the fairy king Oberon is 
 only Frenchified from Alberon or Alberich, a dwarfish elf, a 
 figure early appealing in old G-eraaan poems. The character of 
 Puck, or, as he is properly called, Eobin Goodfellow, is literally 
 no other than our own 'guter Kneeht Muprecht;' and it is 
 cvuious that from this name in G-erman the word ' Eiipel ' is 
 derived, the only one by which we can give the idea of the 
 English clown, the very part which, in Shakespeare, Puck plays 
 in the kingdom of the fairies. This belief in fairies was far 
 more diffused through Scandinavia than through England ; and 
 agia,in in Scotland and England it was far more actively 
 developed than in G-ermany. Eobin Goodfellow especially, of 
 whom we hear in England as early as the thirteenth century, 
 was a favourite in popular traditions, and to his name all the 
 cunning tricks were imputed which we relate of Eulenspiegel 
 and other nations of others. His 'Mad Pranks and Merry 
 Jests' were printed in 1628 in a popular book, which Thoms 
 has recently prepared, for his little blue library. Collier places 
 the origin of the book at least forty years earlier, so that 
 Shakespeare might have been acquainted with it. Unquestion- 
 ably this is the main source of his fairy kingdom ; the lyric 
 
MIDSUMMEE-mGHT'a DEEAM. 195 
 
 parts of the Midsummer-Night's Dream are in tone and colour 
 a perfect imitation of the songs contained in it. In this 
 popular book Eobin appears, although only in a passing 
 manner, as the sender of the dreams ; the fairies and Oberon, 
 who is here his father, speak to him by dreams before he is 
 received into their community. But that which Shakespeare 
 thus received in the rough form of fragmentary popular belief 
 he developed in his playful creation into a beautifal and regu- 
 lated world. He here in a measure deserves the merit which 
 Herodotus ascribes to Homer ; as the Greek poet has created 
 the great abode of the gods and its Olympic inhabitants, so 
 Shakespeare has given form and place to the fe,iry kingdom, 
 and with the natural creative power of genius he has breathed 
 a soul into his merry little citizens, thus imparting a living 
 centre to their nature and their oflSce, their behaviour and 
 their doings. ■ He has given embodied form to the invisible 
 and Kfe to the dead, and has thus striven for the poet's greatest 
 glory ; and it seems as if it was not without consciousness of 
 this his work that he wrote in a strain of self-reliance that 
 passage in this very play : — 
 
 The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy Tolling, . 
 
 Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; 
 
 And as imagination bodies forth 
 
 The forms of things milmown, the poet's pen 
 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
 
 A local habitation and a name. 
 
 Such tricks hath strong imagination ; 
 
 That, if it would but apprehend some joy, 
 
 It comprehends some bringer of that joy. 
 
 This he has here effected ; he has clothed in bodily form 
 those intangible phantoms, the bringers of dreams of provoking 
 jugglery, of sweet soothing, and of tormenting raillery ; and 
 the task he has thus accomplished we shall only rightly estimate, 
 when we have taken into account the severe design and inner 
 congruity of this little world. 
 
 If it were Shakespeare's object expressly to remove from the 
 fairies that dark ghost-like character (Act in. sc. 2), in which 
 they appeared in Scandinavian and Scottish fable ; if it were his 
 desire to portray them as kindly beings in a merry and harm- 
 less relation to mortals ; if he wished, in their essential oflSce as 
 bringers of dreams, to fashion them in their nature as personi- 
 fied dreams, he carried out this object in wonderful harmony 
 both as regards their actions and their condition. The kingdom 
 
 o 2 
 
196 SECOND PERIOD OF SBAKESPEASES DRAMATIC FOETSY. 
 
 of the fairy beings is placed in the aromatic flower-scented 
 Indies, in the land where mortals live in a half-dreamy state. 
 From hence they come, ' following darkness,' as Puck says, ' like 
 a dream.' Airy and swift, like the moon, they circle the earth ; 
 they avoid the sunlight without fearing it, and seek the dark- 
 ness; they love the moon and dance in her beams ; and above all 
 they delight in the dusk and twilight, the very season for dreams, 
 whether waking or asleep. They send and bring dreams to 
 mortals; and we need only recall to mind the description of 
 the fairies' midwife, Queen Mab, in Eomeo and Juliet, a piece 
 nearly of the same date with the Midsummer-Night's Dream, 
 to discover that this is the charge essentially assigned to them, 
 and the very means by which they influence mortals. The 
 manner in .which Shakespeare has fashioned their inner cha- 
 racter in harmony with this outer function is full of profound 
 thought. He depicts them as beings without delicate feeling 
 and without morality, just as in dreams we meet with no check 
 to our tender sensations and are without moral impulse and 
 responsibility. Careless and unscrupulous, they tempt mortals 
 to infidelity ; the effects of the mistakes which they have con- 
 trived make no impression on their minds ; they feel no 
 sympathy for the deep affliction of the lovers, but only delight 
 and marvel over their mistakes and their foolish demeanom". 
 The poet farther depicts his fairies as beings of no high 
 intellectual development. Whoever attentively reads their 
 parts will find that nowhere is reflection imparted to them. 
 Only in one exception does Puck make a sententious remark 
 upon the infidelity of man, and whoever has penetrated into 
 the nature of these beingffe will immediately feel that it is out 
 of harmony. They can make no direct inward impression 
 upon mortals ; their influence over the mind is not spiritual, 
 but throughout material; it is effected by means of vision, 
 metamorphosis, and imitation. Titania has no spiritual asso- 
 ciation with her friend, but mere delight in her beauty, her 
 ' swimming gait,' and her powers of imitation. When she 
 awakes from her vision there is no reflection : ' Methought I 
 was enamoured of an ass,' she says. ' Oh how mine eyes do hate 
 this visage now ! ' She is only affected by the idea of the actual 
 and the visible. There is no scene of reconciliation with her 
 husband ; her resentment consists in separation, her reconcilia- 
 tion in a dance ; there is no trace of reflection, no indication 
 of feeling. Thus, to remind Puck of a past event no abstract 
 
MIBSUMMER-NIGHl'S VEEAM. 197 
 
 date sufficed, but an accompanying indication, perceptible to 
 the senses, was required. They are represented, these little 
 gods, as natural souls, without the higher human capacities of 
 mind, lords of a kingdom, not of reason and morality, but of 
 imagination and ideas conveyed by the senses ; and thus they 
 are uniformly the vehicle of the fancy which produces the de- 
 lusions of love and dreams. Their will, therefore, only extends 
 to the corporeal. They lead a luxurious, merry life,' given up 
 to the pledsiire of the senses ; the secrets of nature and the 
 powers of flowers and herbs are confided to them. To sleep 
 in flowers, lulled with dances and songs, with the wings of 
 painted butterflies to fan the moonbeams from their eyes, this 
 is their pleasure ; the gorgeous apparel of flowers and dewdrops 
 is their joy. When Titania wishes to allure her beloved, she 
 offers him honey, apricots, purple grapes, and dancing. This 
 life of sense and nature is seasoned by the power of fancy and 
 by desire after all that is most choice, most beautiful, . and 
 agreeable. They harmonise with nightingales and butterflies ; 
 they wage war with all ugly creatures, with hedgehogs, spiders, 
 and bats ; dancing, play, and song are their greatest pleasures ; 
 they steal lovely children, and substitute changelings ; they 
 torment decrepit old age, toothless gossips, aunts, and the 
 awkward company of the players of Pyramus and Thisbe, but 
 they love and recompense all that is pure and pretty. Thus 
 was it of old in the popular traditions ; their characteristic 
 trait of favouring honesty among mortals and persecuting crime 
 was certainly borrowed by Shakespeare from these traditions in 
 the Merry Wives of Windsor^ though not in this play. The 
 sense of the beautiful is the one thing which elevates the fairies 
 not only above the beasts but also above the ordinary mortal, 
 when he is devoid of all fancy and uninfluenced by beauty. 
 Thus, in the spirit of the fairies, in which this sense of the 
 beautiful is so refined, it is intensely ludicrous that the elegant 
 Titabia should fall in love with an ass's head. The only pain 
 which agitates these beings is jealousy, the desire of possessing 
 the beautiful sooner than others ; they shun the distorting 
 quarrel ; their steadfast aim and longing is for undisturbed 
 enjoyment. But in this sweet jugglery they neither appear 
 constant to mortals nor do they caiTy on intercourse among 
 themselves in monotonous harmony. They are full also of 
 wanton tricks and railleries, playing upon themselves and upon 
 mortals, pranks which never hurt, but which often torment. 
 
198 SECOND PEJRIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 This is especially the property of Puck, who 'jests to Oberon,' 
 who is the 'lob' at this court, a coarser goblin, represented 
 with broom or threshing-flail, in a leathern dress, and with a 
 dark countenance, a roguish but awkward fellow, skilful at all 
 transformations, practised in wilful tricks, but also clmnsy 
 enough to make mistakes and blunders contrary to his in- 
 tention. 
 
 We mortals are unable to form anything out of <;he richest 
 treasure of the imagination without the aid of actual human 
 circumstances and qualities. Thus, even in this case, it is not 
 difficult to discover in society the types of human nature which 
 Shakespeare deemed especially suitable as the original of his 
 fairies. There are, particularly among women of the middle 
 and upper ranks, natures which are not accessible to higher 
 spiritual necessities, which take their way through life with no 
 serious and profound reference to the principles of morality or 
 to intellectual objects, yet with a decided inclination and 
 qualification for all that is beautiful, agreeable, and graceful, 
 though without being able to reach even here the higher 
 attainments of art. They grasp readily as occasion offers all 
 that is tangible ; they are ready, dexterous, disposed for tricks 
 and raillery, ever skilful at acting parts, at assuming appear- 
 ances, at disguises and deceptions, seeking to give a stimulant 
 to life only by festivities, pleasures, sport and jest. These light, 
 agreeable, rallying, and sylph-like natures, who live from day to 
 day and have no spiritual consciousness of a common object in 
 life, whose existence is a plajrful dream, full of grace and 
 embellishment, but never a life of higher aim, have been 
 chosen by Shakespeare with singular tact as the originals from 
 whose fix;ed characteristics he gave form and life to his airy 
 fairies. 
 
 We can now readily perceive why, in this work, the ' rude 
 mechanicals ' and clowns, and the company of actors with their 
 burlesque comedy, are placed in such rude contrast to the 
 tender and delicate play of the fairies. Prominence is given 
 to both by the contrast afforded between the material and the 
 aerial, between the awkward and the beautiful, between the 
 utterly unimaginative and that which, itself fancy, is entirely 
 woven out of fancy. The play acted by the clowns is, as it 
 were, the reverse of the poet's own work, which demands all the 
 spectator's reflective and imitative fancy to open to him this 
 aerial world, whilst in the other nothing at all is left to the 
 
MWaUMMEB-NIGHT'S DBEAM. 199 
 
 ■ imagination of the spectator. The homely mechanics, who 
 compose and act merely for gain, and for the sake of so many 
 pence a-day, the ignorant players, with hard hands and thick 
 heads, whose miskilful art consists in learning their parts by 
 heart, these men believe themselves obliged to represent Moon 
 and Moonshine by name in order to render them evident ; they 
 supply the lack of side-scenes by persons, and all that should 
 take place behind the scenes they explain by digressions. 
 These rude doings are disturbed by the fairy chiefs with their 
 utmost raillery, and the fantastical company of lovers mock at 
 the performance. Theseus, however, draws quiet and thought- 
 ful contemplation from these contrasts. He shrinks incredu- 
 lously from the too-strange fables of love and its witchcraft ; 
 he enjoins that imagination should amend the play of the 
 clowns, devoid as it is of all fancy. The real, that in this 
 work of art has become ' nothing,' and the ' airy nothing,' 
 which in the poet's hand has assumed this graceful form, are 
 contrasted in the two extremes; in the centre is the intel- 
 lectual man, who participates in both, who regards the one, 
 , namely, the stories of the lovers, the poets by nature, as art 
 and poetry, and who receives the other, presented as art, 
 only as a thanksworthy readiness to . serve and as a simple 
 offering. 
 
 It is the combination of these skilfully obtained contrasts 
 into a whole which we especially admire in this work. The age 
 subsequent to Shakespeare coidd not tolerate it, and divided it 
 in twain. Thus sundered, this sesthetic fairy poetry and the 
 burlesque caricatioie of the poet have made their own way. 
 Yet in 1631 the Midsummer-Night's Dream appears to have 
 been represented in its perfect forna. We know that in this 
 year it was acted at the Bishop of Lincoln's house on a Sunday, 
 and that a puritanical tribunal in consequence sentenced 
 Bottom to sit for twelve hours in the porter's room belonging 
 to the bishop's palace, wearing his ass's head. But even in 
 the seventeenth century 'the merry conceited humours of 
 Bottom the weaver ' were acted as a separate burlesque. The 
 work was attributed to the actor Eobert Cox, who, in the times 
 of the civil wars, when the theatres were suppressed, wandered 
 over the country, and, under cover of rope-dancing, provided 
 the people thus depressed by religious hypocrisy with the en- 
 joyment of small exhibitions, which he himself composed under 
 the significant name of ' drolls,' and in which the stage returned 
 
200 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAXE8FEAEE' 3 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 as it were tb tlie merry interludes of old. In the form in 
 which Cox at this time produced the farce of Bottom, it was 
 subsequently transplanted to Germany by our own Andreas 
 Gryphius, the schoolmaster and pedant Squenz being the chief 
 character. How expressive these burlesque parts of the piece 
 must have been in Shakespeare's time to the public, who were 
 acquainted with original drolleries of this kind, we now can 
 scarcely imagine. Nor do we any longer understand how to 
 perform them ',■ the 'public at that time, on the contrary, had 
 the types of the caricatured pageants in this play and in Love's 
 Labour's Lost still existing among them. 
 
 On the other hand, Shakespeare's fairy world became the 
 source of a complete fairy literature. The kingdom of the 
 fairies had indeed appeared, in the chivabic epics, many 
 centuries before Shakespeare. The oldest Welsh tales and 
 romances relate of the contact of mortals with this invisible 
 world. The English of Shakespeare's time possessed a romance 
 of this style written by Launfall, in a translation from the 
 French* The romance of ' Huon of Bordeaux ' had been 
 earlier (in 1570) translated by Lord Bemers into English. 
 From it, or from the popular book of ' Eobin Goodfellow/ 
 Shakespeare may have borrowed the name of Oberon. From 
 the reading of Ovid he probably gave to the fairy queen the 
 name of Titania, while among his contemporaries, and even by 
 Shakespeare, in the Midsummer-Night's Dream, she is called 
 ' Queen Mab.' In those old chivalric romances, in Chaucer, 
 in Spenser's allegorical Faerie Queeni, the fairies are utterly 
 different beingSj without distinct character or office ; they 
 concur with the whole world of chivalry in the- same monotonous 
 description and want of character. But the Saxon fairy legends 
 afforded Shakespeare a hold for renouncing the romantic 'art 
 of the pastoral poets and for passing over to the rude popular 
 taste of his fellow-countrymen. He could learn melodious 
 language, descriptive art, the brilliancy of romantic pictures, 
 and the sweetness of visionary images from Spenser's Faerie 
 Queen ; but he rejected] his portrayal of this fairy world and 
 grasped at the Httle pranks of Eobin Goodfellow, where the 
 simple faith of the people was preserved in pure and imassum- 
 ing form. In a similar way in Germany, at the restoration of 
 popular life at the time of the Eeformation, the chivalric and 
 romantic notions of the world of spirits were cast aside ; men 
 returned to popular belief, and we read nothing which reminds 
 
MJDSUMMES-NIGHl'S BEEAM, 201 
 
 US so inuch of Shakespeare's fairy world as the theory of 
 elementary spirits by our own Paracelsus. From the time 
 that Shakespeare adopted the mysterious ideas of this mytho- 
 logy, and the homely expression of them in prose and verse, we 
 may assert that the popular Saxon taste became more and more 
 predominant in him. In Eomeo and Juliet and in the Mer- 
 chant of Venice there is an evident leaning towards both sides, 
 and necessarily so, as the poet is here still occupied upon sub- 
 jects completely Italian. Working, moreover, at the same time 
 upon historical subjects, settled the poet, as it were, fully in his 
 native soil, and the delineation of the lower orders of the people 
 in Henry IV. and V. shows that he felt at home there. From 
 the period of these pieces we find no longer the conceit-style, 
 the love of rhyme, the insertion of sonnets, and similar forms 
 -of the artificial lyric ; and that characteristic delight in simple 
 popular songs, which shows itself even here in the fairy 
 choruses, takes the place of the discarded taste. The example 
 given in Shakespeare's formation of the fairy world had, how- 
 ever, little effect. Lilly, Drayton, Ben Jonson, and other 
 contemporaries and successors took full possession of the fairy 
 world for their poems, in part evidently influenced by Shake- 
 speare, but none of them has understood how to follow him 
 even upon the path already cleared. Among the many produc- 
 tions of this kind Drayton's ' Nymphidia ' is the most distin- 
 guished. The poem turns upon Oberon's jealousy of the fairy 
 knight Pigwiggen ; it paints the fury of the king with quixotic 
 colouring, and treats of the combat between the two in the 
 style of the chivalric romances, seeking, like them, its main 
 charm in the descriptions of the little dwellings, implements, 
 and weapons of the fairies. If we compare this with Shake- 
 speare's magic creation, which derives its charm entirely from 
 the reverent thoughtfulness with which the poet clings with his 
 natural earnestness to popular legends^ leaving intact this 
 childlike belief and preserving its object undesecrated ; if we 
 compare the two together, we shall perceiye most clearly the 
 immense distance at which our poet stood even from the best 
 of his contemporaries. 
 
 We have frequently referred to the necessity of seeing 
 Shakespeare's plays performed, in order to be able ' to estimate 
 them fully, based as they ard upon the joint effect of poetic and 
 dramatic art. It will, therefore, be just to mention the re- 
 presentation which this most difficult of all theatrical tasks of 
 
202 SECOND FEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 a modem age has met with in all the great stages of Grermany. 
 And, that we may not be misunderstood, we wiU premise that, 
 however strongly we insist upon this principle, we yet, in the 
 present state of things, warn most decidedly against all over- 
 bold attempts at Shakespearian representation. If we would 
 perform dramas in which such an independent position is 
 assigned to the dramatic art as it is in these, we must before 
 everything possess a histrionic art independent and complete 
 in itself. But this art has with us declined with poetic art, 
 and amid the widely distracting concerns of the present time 
 it is scarcely likely soon to revive. A rich, art-loving prince, 
 .endowed with feeling for the highest dramatic delights, and 
 ready to make sacrifices on their behalf, could possibly effect 
 much, were he to invite together to one place, during an 
 annual holiday, the best artists from all theatres, and thus to 
 re-cast the parts of a few of the Shakespearian pieces^ Even 
 then a profound judge of the poet must take the general 
 management of the whole. If all this were done, a play like 
 the, Midsunimer-Night's Dream' might be at last attempted. 
 This fairy play was produced upon the English stage when 
 . they had boys early trained for the characters ; without this 
 proviso it is ridiculous to desire the representation of the most 
 difficult parts, with powers utterly inappropriate. When a 
 .girl's higji treble utters the part of Oberon, a character justly 
 represented by painters with abundant beard, and possessing all 
 , the dignity of the calm ruler of this hovering world ; when the 
 ,rude goblin Puck is performed by an affected actress, when 
 Titania and her suite appear in ball-costume, without beauty or 
 dignity, for ever moving about in the hopping motion of the 
 dancing chorus, in the most offensive ballet-fashion that 
 modern unnaturalness has created^ — ^what then becomes of the 
 sweet charm of these scenes and figures which should appear in 
 pure aerial drapery, which in their sport should retain a certain 
 elevated simplicity, and which in the affair between Titania and 
 Bottom, far from unnecessarily pushing the awkward fellow 
 forward as the principal figure, should understand how to place 
 the ludicrous character at a modest distance, and to give the 
 whole scene the quiet charm of a picture ? If it be impossible 
 to act these fairy forms at the present day, it is equally so with 
 the clowns. The common nature of the mechanics when they 
 are themselves is perhaps intelligible to our actors ; but when 
 they perform their work of art few actors of the present day 
 
MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DBEAM. 203 
 
 possess the self-denial that would lead them to represent this 
 most foolish of all follies with solemn importance, as if in 
 thorough earnestness, instead of overdoing its exaggeration, 
 self-complacently working by laughter and smiling at them- 
 selves. Unless this self-denial be observed, the first and 
 greatest object of these scenes, that of exciting laughter, is 
 inevitably lost. Lastly, the middle class of mortals introduced 
 between the fairies and the clowns, the lovers driven about by 
 bewildering delusions, what sensation do they excite, when we 
 see them in the frenzy of passion wandering through the wood 
 in kid-gloves, in knightly dress, conversing after the manner of 
 the refined world, devoid of all warmth, and without a breath 
 of this charming poetry? How can knightly accoutrements 
 suit Theseus, the kinsman of Hercules, and the Amazonian 
 Hippolyta? Certain, it is that in the fantastic play of an un- 
 limited dream, from which time and place are effaced, these 
 characters ought not to appear in the strict costume of Greek 
 antiquity ; but still less, while one fixed attire is avoided, should 
 we pass over to the other extreme, and transport to Athens a 
 knightly dress, and a guard of Swiss halberdiers. We caii only 
 compare with this mistake one equally great, that of adding a 
 disturbing musical accompaniment, inopportunely impeding 
 the rapid course of the action, and interrupting this work of 
 fancy, this delicate and refined action, this ethereal dream, 
 with a march of kettledrums aM trumpets, jiist at the point 
 where Theseus is expressing his thoughts as to the unsub- 
 stantial nature of these visions. And amid all these modern 
 accompaniments, the simple balcony of the Shakespearian stage 
 was retained, as if in respect to stage apparatus we were to 
 return to those days ! This simplicity moreover was combined 
 with aU the magnificence customary at the present day. 
 Elements thus contradictory and thus injudiciously united, 
 tasks thus beautiful and thus imperfectly discharged, must 
 always make the friend of Shakespearian performances desire 
 that, under existing circumstances, they were rather utterly 
 renounced. 
 
EOMEO AND JULIET. 
 
 We have pointed out our idea that Shakespeare designed the 
 two comedies of Love's Labour's Lost and Won in an inten- 
 tional contrast to each other. We shall subsequently perceive 
 that his thoughtful Muse delighted, still more repeatedly, in 
 placing even other dramas in a similar inner relation to each 
 other; and it is possible that even the Midsummer-Night's 
 Dream was designed as a counterpart to Eomeo and Juliet, in 
 which the same theme is treated in the strongest and most 
 glaring contrast possible. The comedy, as we stated, seems to 
 us to have originated about the year 1595, the same year in 
 which the poet may have put the finishing touch to this 
 tragedy, which almost all editors consider to have occupied 
 him for a series of years since 1591. There is an early un- 
 authenticated print of the play dated 1597, which some regard 
 as a mutilated pirated edition of the tragedy as we read it 
 (essentially according to the improved and enlarged quarto 
 edition of 1599), but the latest editors consider it to be the text 
 (spoiled, indeed) of an older work of the poet while yet young.' 
 In comparing it with the present play we observe the improving 
 hand of the poet, just as in Henry VL, in various instructive 
 touches of emendation, a series of masterly strokes show 
 the advancing mind in all important additions, which allnost 
 always affect the finest points of poetical and psychological 
 completion ; in those passages, for instance, where he purposes 
 to give more rhetorical force to the reproving speeches of Prince 
 Escalus, to delineate more intelligibly the depth of affection in 
 the lovers and the fatally concealed fervour of Eomeo's passionate 
 mind, to impress more sharply the explanatory lessons of the 
 monk, and to work out connectedly and completely the natural 
 succession of the emotions of the soul in the violent catastrophe 
 
 ' Both copies are to be found in Mommseu's critical edition of Borneo 
 and Juliet. Oldenburg, 1859. 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET. 205 
 
 of the lovers. Even, in the older defective plot the manner of 
 characterisation exhibits such power and certainty, that if 
 excellent existing sources and perhaps still moi'e excellent 
 conjectured ones had not been before the poet, the work 
 would be all the greater marvel, the more unripe his age when 
 he first undertook it. For the outward form of the work bears 
 in every way the marks of a youthful hand. The abundant 
 rhymes, often used alternately, the sonnet-form, the thoughts 
 and the expressions taken even from Shakespeare's sonnet- 
 poetry and from that of his contemporaries, indicate distinctly 
 the period of its origin. It is striking that in this admired 
 piiece there are more highly pathetic and pompously profound 
 expressions and unnatural images than in any other of Shake- 
 speare's works; the diction too in many passages, and in the 
 most beautiful ones, is scarcely that of the dramatic style. The 
 mere youth of the poet sufficiently accounts for both these 
 peculiarities; the one proceeds partly from the immediate 
 source which Shakespeare had before him, namely, an English 
 poem by Brooke, abounding with conceits and antitheses ; the 
 other — that is, the non-dramatic and rather lyric diction of single 
 passages — is intimately connected with the subject itself, and 
 bears evidence to that genius which we admire beyond every- 
 thing in Shakespeare's psychological art, even as regards his 
 employment and treatment of the mere outward form of 
 poetry. 
 
 In our interpretations of Shakespeare's works we shall 
 rarely tarry upon their merely formal beauties ; to analyse them 
 is to destroy them ; and he who is not naturally struck by 
 them will never feel them through explanation. Nevertheless 
 this poet is in every point so extraordinary and uncommon, 
 that in the play before us an aesthetic analysis allows us in some 
 passages to exhibit this poetic charm and to fathom depths of 
 poetry in comparison with which every other work must ap^ 
 pear shallow. We will briefly adduce these considerations, in 
 order that we may subsequently advance unimpeded in our ex- 
 planation" of the dramatic action. 
 
 Every reader must feel that in Eomeo and Juliet, in spite 
 of the severe dramatic bearing of the whole, an essentially 
 lyric character prevails in some parts. This lies in the nature 
 of the subject. When the poet exhibits to us the lotve of 
 Eomeo and Juliet in collision with outward circumstances, he 
 is throughout on dramatic ground; when he depicts the lovers 
 
206 SECOND PERIOD £)F SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 in theix happiness, in the idyllic peace of blissful union, he 
 necessarily passes to lyric ground, where thoughts and feelings 
 speak alone, and not actions, such as the drama demands. 
 There are in our present play three such passages of an 
 essentially lyric nature : Eomeo's declaration of love at the ball, 
 Juliet's soliloquy at the beginning of the bridal-night, and the 
 parting of the two on the succeeding morning. If in parts 
 such as these, where the poet's great art for displaying cha- 
 racter and motive found far less scope than in the dramatic and 
 animated parts of the piece, he would maintain an equally 
 high position, he must endeavour to give the greatest possible 
 charm and value to his lyric expressions. This he did ; it is 
 to these very passages that every reader will always revert 
 most readily. But while in these very passages he sought after 
 the truest and fullest expression and the purest and most 
 genuinely poetic form, we might point out an artifice {Kwns^ 
 grif), or we might better say, a trick of nature {Natwrgriff), 
 which he employed in order to give these passages the deepest 
 and most comprehensive background. In all three passages 
 he has adhered to fixed lyric forms of poetry, each in harmony 
 with the circumstances of the case, and well filled with the 
 usual images and ideas of the respective styles. The three 
 species we allude to are : the sonnet, the epithalamiimi or nuptial 
 poem, and the dawn-song (TageUed). 
 
 Eomeo's declaration of love to Juliet at the ball is cer- 
 tainly not confined within th0 usual limits of a sonnet, yet in 
 structure, tone and treatment it agi'ees with this form, or 
 is derived from it. This style of lyric is devoted to love by 
 Petrarca, of whom this play on love reminds us. Following 
 his example, spiritual love alone in all its brightness and sacred- 
 ness has been almost always celebrated in this style of poetry ; 
 never, with few exceptions, has the sensual aspect of love 
 been sung in it. Yet every genuine heart-affection, when not 
 arising from a mere intoxication of the senses, but taking hold 
 of the spiritual and moral nature of the man, is in its begin- 
 ning and origin ever of an entirely inward nature. A beautiful 
 form may for the moment affect our senses, but it is only the 
 whole being of a man that can enchain us lastingly, and the 
 first conception of this being is ever purely spiritual. It is 
 thus as judicious as it is true that in this iirst meeting, when 
 the suitor approaches his beloved, like a holy shrine, with all 
 the reverence of innocence, and avows his love with purely 
 
EOMEO AND JULIET. 207 
 
 spiritual feeling, the poet has adhered to the canonical style 
 of the lyric, as expressing the first pure emotions of love. 
 
 Juliet's soliloquy hefore the bridal-night (Act iii. sc. 2), 
 (and this Halpin has pointed out in the writings of the Shake- 
 speare Society in his usual intellectual manner), calls to mind 
 the epithalamium, or nuptial poems of the age. The reader 
 should read this wonderful pS,ssage, and the actress act it, with 
 that exquisite feeling which moderates the audible words into 
 silent thoughts. In the allegorical myth of the hymeneal or 
 nuptial poems Halpin points out that Hymen plays the principal 
 part, Cupid remaining concealed, imtil at the door of the bridal- 
 chamber the elder brother surrenders his office to the younger. 
 We must suppose that Juliet knew these songs and these ideas, 
 and that in her soliloquy she uses images familiar to her. Juliet, 
 according to the ideas of those poems, supposes the presence of 
 Love as understood ; she designates him with the nickname of 
 ' the run-away ' ' (the SpaifsriSas of Moschus), which had be- 
 longed to him originally, because he was in the habit of running 
 away from his mother. She longs for the night, when Eomeo 
 may leap to her arms unseen ; ' even the run-away's eyes may 
 wink,' she says ; he may not, she means, fulfil his office of illu- 
 minating the bridal chamber, where in this case secrecy and.~ 
 darkness are enjoined. Halpin thinks that the blind Cupid 
 may have been an emblem of this kind of mysterious marriage 
 union, for in the bedchamber of Imogen, who had Contracted 
 a similar secret marriage, two blind Cupids are introduced. 
 The absence of the wedding feast, usual under happier auspices, 
 leads Juliet naturally to these thoughts. No other voice sang 
 to her the bridal song ; she sings it, as it were, herself ; and this 
 casts a farther melancholy charm over this passage, for the 
 absence of the hymeneal feast was considered in olden times as 
 an evil omen, and thus it proves to be here. 
 
 The scene of Eomeo's interview by night with Juliet af- 
 forded the Italian novelists, after their rhetorical fashion, oppor- 
 tunity for lengthy speeches ; Shakespeare draws oVer it the veil 
 of chastity which never with him is wanting when required, 
 and he permits us only to hear the echo of the happiness and 
 the danger of the lovers. In this farewell scene there is na 
 play of mind and ingenuity, as in the sonnet, but feelings and 
 
 ' This interpretation Staunton rightly dedarea aa indisputable, and 
 Halpin's explanation seems to us wholly unshaken by Grant WHte's attack 
 (in ' Shakespeare's Scholar,' 1856). 
 
208 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 forebodings are at work ; the sad gleams of the predicting heart 
 shine through the gloom of a happy past, which the painfiil 
 farew;ell of the present terminates. The poet's model in this 
 , scene (Act in. sc. 2) is a kind of dialogue poem, which took its 
 rise at the time of the Minnesingers, and was designated the dawn- 
 song. In England these dawn-songs were also in vogue. The 
 song to which allusion is made in Eomeo and Juliet itself, and 
 which is printed in the first yolume of the papers of the Shake- 
 speare Society, is expressive of this fact. The uniform purport 
 of these songs is that two lovers, who visit each other by night 
 for secret intercourse, appoint a watcher, who wakes them at 
 dawn of day, when, unwilling to separate, they dispute between 
 themselves or with the watchman as to whether the light pro- 
 ceeds from the sun or moon, and the waking song from the 
 nightingale or the lark* The purport of this dialogue is of a 
 similar character, though it indeed far surpasses every other 
 dawn-song in poetic charm and merit. 
 
 Thus this tragedy, which in its mode of treatment has 
 always been considered as the representative of all love-poetry, 
 has in these passages formally admitted three principal styles, 
 which may represent the erotic lyric. While it has profoundly 
 made use of all that is most true and deep in the innermost 
 nature of love, the poet has imbued himself also with those 
 external forms which the human mind had long before created 
 in this domain of poetry. He preferred rather not to be original 
 than to misconceive the forfli suitable ; he preferred to borrow 
 the expression and the style which centuries long had fashioned 
 and developed, for. in this the very test of their genuineness and 
 durability lay ; and thus the lyric love-poetry of aU ages is, as 
 it were, recognised in the forms, images, and expressions em- 
 ployed in this, tragedy of love. 
 
 The story of our drama has been traced back as far as 
 Xenophon's ' Ephesiaca.' The essential elements of it appear 
 in the , thirty-second novel of Massuccio (1470), from which 
 they were borrowed by Luigi da Porto, who is generally spoken 
 ■of as the original narrator of the history of Eomeo and Juliet 
 (*La Griulietta,' 1535). But Shakespeare's play does not even 
 indirectly proceed from these sources, but from a novel of Ban- 
 dello'g, which afforded a drafliatist capable of the task a material 
 very different to that presented by Boccaccio in his ' Giletta of 
 Narbonne>' This narrative, ' la sfortunata morte di due infeH- 
 cissimi amanti' (Bandello, II. 9),, afforded Arthur Brooke, a 
 
SOMEO AND JULIET. 20& 
 
 "Well-known poet belonging to the pre-Shakespeare time, material 
 for a narrative poem entitled Eomeus and Juliet, which first 
 appeared in 1562, and was reprinted in 1587. A poetic Italian 
 narrative of the subject in octavo (L'infelice amore dei due 
 fedelissimi amanti Griulia e Eomeo, scritto in ottava rima da 
 Clitia, nobile Veronese. Venezia. 1553.) had appeared even 
 before Bandello's ; whether Brooke employed it as well as Ban- 
 dello's we cannot decide, as we have not seen it. On the other 
 hand, in his preface of 1562, Brooke praises a dramatic piece, 
 which had set forth the same argument on the stage with more 
 commendation than he could look for in his work. This piece," 
 if Brooke had used it, and if we might judge of it from his own 
 work, must have been one of the important dramas previous, 
 to Shakespeare. Whether Shakespeare knew it and made use 
 of it, we know not. We know that he had Brooke's poem before 
 him, the colouring and story of which, as well as the characters 
 of the nurse, of Mercutio, and of the two principal figures, were 
 so prepared for his use that the poet had far lighter work in, 
 tliis disproportionably difficult material than in All's Well that 
 Ends Well. The story itself, which is moreover conspicuous 
 among Italian novels for the motivp that artistically pervades 
 it, appears in Brooke's poem with the superficial oratory of the 
 South exchanged for the profound feeling of the North, and the 
 character of Eomanic elegance transformed into the Teutonic 
 soul full of violent passion. In power and exuberance the Italian 
 novels are left far behind, indeed a certain overloading testifies 
 to the poet's richness of feeling. Many fine touches in the 
 Shakespearian play are more distinctly apparent after reading 
 this narrative, and we are thus afforded a palpable proof, other 
 instances of which also exist, of how much Shakespeare has 
 often hidden under few words and allusions. If indeed we pass 
 from Brooke's poem to Shakespeare's tragedy, we find the subject 
 again infinitely raised in the drama, and once more the many 
 appendages of Eomanic conventionality and rhetorical tinsel 
 are thrust out in the sieve of a genuine Grermanic nature. In 
 Brooke's poem, sensual gratification alternates with the counter- 
 balance of a cold morality, voluptuousness with wisdom, and 
 Ovid-like luxuriance with a pedantic dogmatical tone ; above 
 contrasts such as these,, Shakespeare rose with the pure inge- 
 nuousness of a poet who identifies himself with his subject. 
 With Brooke, all is the play 6i fortune, chance, destiny — a 
 touching story of two lovers subjected to an alternation of 
 
 p 
 
210 SECOND FEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S SBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 prosperity and misfortune. But with Shakespeare, the piece is 
 the necessary history of all strong love, which in itself deep, 
 true, and living, is not guided and affected by any external 
 influence, hut which rises superior to every other passion and 
 emotion, beating proudly against the barriers of conventionality, 
 occupied to excess alone with itself and its satisfaction ; deriding 
 the representations of cold discretion ; aye, over-bold, defying 
 fate itself, and neglecting its warnings to its own ruin. 
 
 If we would now proceed to investigate the central point of 
 this work, the poet, it seems to us, has afforded a twofold clue 
 to it, with greater distinctness than is his wont. If we simply 
 conceive the two principal figures in their disposition and 
 circumstances, the idea of the whole becomes apparent of 
 itself from the dispassionate consideration of the simple facts ; 
 the action alone and its motives do not suffer it to be mistaken. 
 But besides this the poet has also by direct teaching given the 
 clue which the reader or, spectator might not have perhaps dis- 
 covered from the motives and issue of the action. This two- 
 fold assistance, therefore, must guide us in our considerations ; 
 and we will first take the latter, which by a shorter path, 
 though certainly with a more limited manner, accomplishes our 
 purpose. 
 
 The oldest biblical story exhibits work and toil as a curse 
 which is laid on the human race ; if it be so, God has mixed 
 with the bitter lot that which can sweeten it : true activity is 
 just that which most ennobles the vocation of man, and which 
 transforms the curse into the richest blessing. On the other 
 hand, there are affections and passions given us to heighten 
 our enjoyment of life ; but pursued in an unfair degree, they 
 transform their pleasure and blessing into . curse and ruin. Of 
 no truth is the world of actual experience so full, and to none 
 does the poetry of Shakespeare more frequently and more ex- 
 pressively point. 
 
 Arthur Brooke, Shakespeare's immediate soiu:ce for his 
 drama, interspersed his narrative with the reflection that all 
 that is most noble in man is produced by great passions ; but 
 that these incur the -danger of carrying the man beyond him- 
 self and his natural limits, and thus of ruining him. In our 
 dra,ma the passion of love is depicted in this highest degree of 
 attraction and might, affording at once the fullest testimony 
 to its ennobling and to its destroying power. The poet has 
 exhibited the good and bad attributes of this demon in that 
 
BOMEO AND JULIET. 211 
 
 superior manner with which we are familiar in him, and 
 with that noble ingenuousness and impartiality that render it 
 impossible to say whether he may have thov^ht more of the 
 exalting power of love, or less of its debasing influence. He 
 has depicted its pure and its dangerous effects, its natural 
 nobleness and its inherent wiles, with such evenness of mind 
 that we are struck with admiration at this mighty power, just 
 as much as we are with wonder at the weakness into which it 
 degenerates. There are but few persons who are capable of 
 receiving the poet's view and of allowing his representation to 
 influence them on both sides with equal power and with equal 
 impartiality. Most men incline predominantly to one side 
 only ; readers of more sensual ardour regard the might of love 
 in this couple as an ideal power, as a lawful and desirable 
 authority ; others of more moral severity look upon it as an 
 excessive tyranny which has violently stifled all other incli- 
 nations and attractions. 
 
 Shakespeare has exhibited in this play the opposite ex- 
 tremes of all human passion, love and hate; and as in the 
 Midsummer-Night's Dream the picture of maidenly discretion 
 afforded a pleasing contrast to the intoxication of fickle sensual 
 love, so here in the midst of the world agitated by love and 
 hate he has placed Friar Laurence, whom experience, retire- 
 ment, and age have deprived of inclination to either. He 
 represents, as it were, the part of the chorus in this tragedy, and 
 expresses the leading idea of the piece in all its fulness, 
 namely, that excess in any enjoyment, however pure in itself, 
 transforms its sweet into bitterness ; that devotion to any single 
 feeling, however noble, bespeaks its ascendancy ; that this 
 ascendancy moves the man and woman out of their natural 
 spheres ; that love can only be an accompaniment to life, and 
 that it cannot completely fill out the life and business of the 
 man especially ; that in the full power of its first feeling it is 
 a paroxysm of happiness, the very natui-e of which.forbids its 
 continuance in equal strength ; that, as the poet says in an 
 image, it is a flower that 
 
 Being smelt, with that part cheers each part ^ 
 Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. 
 
 These ideas are placed by the poet in the lips of the wise 
 Laurence in almost a moralising manner with gradually in- 
 creasing emphasis, as if with the careful intention that no doubt 
 
212 SECOND PERIOD. OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 sliould remain of his meaning. He utters them in his first 
 soliloquy, under the simile of the vegetable world, which is 
 occupying his attention; but he introduces them merely 
 instructively, and as if without application ; he expresses them 
 wammgly when he unites the lovers, and assists their union ; 
 and finally he repeats them reprovingly to Eomeo in his cell, 
 when he sees the latter ' dismembering ' himself and his own 
 work, and he predicts what the end will be. 
 
 ' Nought,' says the holy man in the first of these passages 
 (Act II. sc. 3), 
 
 Nought so vile that on the earth doth live, 
 
 But to the earth sdme special good doth give ; 
 
 Nor aught so good, hut, strain'd from that fair use, 
 
 Eevolts from true birth, stumhling on abuse : 
 
 Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied ; 
 
 And vice sometime's .by action dignified. 
 
 Within the infant rind of this small flower 
 
 Prison hath residence, and med'cine power : 
 
 For this being smelt, with that part cheers each part ; 
 
 Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. 
 
 Two such opposed foes encamp them still 
 
 In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will ; 
 
 And, when the worser is predominant, 
 
 Full soon the canker death eats up that plant. 
 
 We see plainly that these are the two qualities which make 
 Eomeo a hero and a slave of love ; in happiness with his Juliet, 
 he displays his ' grace ' in so rich a measure that he quickly 
 triumphs over a being so gifted ; in misfortune he destroys all 
 the charm of these gifts by the ' rude will ' with which Laurence 
 reproaches him. In the second of the passages pointed out, 
 Eomeo, on the threshold of his happiness, challenges love- 
 devouring death to do what he dare, so that he may^only call 
 Juliet his ; and in a passage which the poet first inserted in 
 his revision of the play, showing how the good may be strained 
 beyond its just use. Friar Laurence tells him in warning reproof 
 
 that 
 
 These violent delights have violent ends, 
 
 And in their triumph die ; like fire and powder, 
 
 Which aa they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey 
 
 Is loathsome in his own deliciousness, 
 
 And in the taste confounds the appetite : 
 
 Therefore, love moderately j long love doth so. 
 
 In the same manner when Laurence sees the ' fond man ' in 
 his cell in womanly tears, degenerated from his manly nature,, 
 
BOMEO AND JULIET. 213 
 
 and despairingly cast down, his reproving words again refer to 
 his first instructive remarks upon the abuse of all noble gifts. 
 ' Thou sham'st,' he says to him (and this too has been first 
 added in the revised edition) : 
 
 Thou sham'st thy shape, thy love, thy wit ; 
 
 Which, like an usurer, abound'st in all, 
 
 And usest none in that true use indeed 
 
 Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit : 
 
 Thy noble shape is but a form of wax, 
 
 Digressing from the valour of a man ; 
 
 Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury. 
 
 Killing that love which thou hast vowed to cherish ; 
 
 Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love. 
 
 Misshapen in the conduct of them both. 
 
 Like powder in a skilless soldier's flask. 
 
 Is set a-fire by thine own ignorance. 
 
 And thou dismember'd with thine own defence. 
 
 This significant image recurs to mind when we see Romeo 
 subsequently rushing to death, and procuring from the apothe- 
 cary the poison by which the trunk is 
 
 discharged of breath 
 As violently as hasty powder fired 
 Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb. 
 
 Thrice has the poet with this same simile designated the 
 burning flame of this love, which too quickly causes the 
 paroxysm of happiness to consume itself and to vanish, and he 
 could choose no moral aphorism which could with the simple 
 expressiveness of this image have demonstrated the aim of his 
 representation. 
 
 But as Tieck criticised the conclusion of Love's Labour's 
 Lost, Scblegel and many others have opposed the moral which 
 Friar Laxirence draws from the story. Eomeo's words of rebuff 
 to the holy aged man, who with cold blood preaches morals 
 and philosophy to the lover, those words: 'thou canst not 
 speak of what thou dost not feel,' have been the guide of the 
 , Eomanticists in their estimate of Laurence and his wisdom. 
 That the words are spoken in the deepest distraction of a 
 despairing man, whom defiance renders insusceptible of conso- 
 lation, and passion incapable of all reflection, was never taken 
 into consideration by them. And yet his Laurence is in this 
 very scene neither delineated as a mechanical and pedantic 
 moraHser, nor as a dry stoic. He has only too much sympa- 
 thising regard for the lovers, he enters upon a dangerous plan 
 
214 SECOND FEBIOD .OF 8HAKESPEAEE' S DBAMATIC POETSY. 
 
 in order to secure their union, and the plan almost ruins him- 
 self. He attempts, indeed, to comfort this desponding man 
 of love with the cordial of philosophy, but he devises also real 
 means of consolation as good as any that the lover hvmself 
 could have devised, and such indeed as he in his despairing 
 defiance could not Have devised for himself, and which not 
 only comfort him, but for tlie moment cure him. Nor is 
 it only the task of Laurence to reproach the foolish man, but 
 even the nurse can do so, even his Juliet might do so. We err — 
 this has Schlegel himself said— in taking this pair as an ideal 
 of virtue, but we err perhaps still more from the poet's aim 
 in passionately siding with their passion. We have no choice 
 left in that case but to blame the tragedist for unfair and 
 unjust cruelty. For in their death following upon their life, 
 we do not mean to say that Shakespeare made use of a narrow 
 morality, that he allowed divinity and destiny to punish these 
 mortals for the sake of this fault, just because an arbitrary law 
 of custom or religion condemned it. Shakespeare's- wise 
 morality, if we may judge from those very sayings which he 
 placed in the lips of Friar Laurence in that first soliloquy, knew 
 of no such virtue and no such crime, warranting once for all 
 reward or punishment. We have heard him afiBrm that, from 
 circumstance 'virtue itself turns vice,' and 'vice sometime's 
 by action dignified ; ' and as he here depicts a love which 
 sprang from the purest and most innocent grounds, in its 
 ascendancy, in its over-sensibility, and in its self-avenging de- 
 generacy, he has elsewhere , elevated that which we regard 
 simply as sin into pardonable, aye, into great actions ; for who 
 Would hesitate to break, like Jessica, her filial piety ; who would 
 not wish to lie as Desdemona lies ? Shakespeare recognises 
 only human gifts and. dispositions, and a human vfreedom, 
 reason, and volition to use them well or ill, madly or with 
 moderaitioh. He recognises only a fate which the man forges 
 for himself from this good or bad use, although he may accuse 
 the powers without him as its author, as Jlomeo does the 
 ' inauspiciovis stars.' With him, as throughout actual life, 
 outward circumstances and inward character work one into the 
 other with alternating effect ; in this tragedy of love they 
 mutually fashion each other, the one furthers the other, until 
 at last the wheels of destiny and passion are driven into more 
 violent collision, and the end is an overthrow. 
 ' Lingering thus on the moral idea of the play, and on th& 
 
BOMEO AND JULIET. 215. 
 
 tragic conclusion to ■which this idea urges, it may appear as if 
 the poet in delineating this rare love clung with greater stress 
 to the severe judgment of the reflective mind than to the 
 sympathy of the heart, and that he was too much inclined to do 
 this for us to invest him with that strict impartiality which we 
 have before extoUed in him. But this reproach vanishes of 
 itself if we carry our eye from the abstract contemplation to 
 the action, from the bare isolated idea to the whole represen- 
 tation, to the living warmth and richness of the circumstances, 
 the intricacies, the motives, and the characters. The idea 
 which we have gathered from the didactic passages of the 
 piece becomes more fully enlightened and enlivened in the 
 consideration of the facts ; not only does the moral of the 
 action call forth the abstract idea, but the complete view of all 
 co-operating circiunstances, both within and without, chal- 
 lenges tiie heart and soul : the whole being of the spectator is 
 called into judgment, not alone his head and mind. It is for 
 this reason that the view of the action in all its completeness is 
 ever the only accurate way of arriving at an understanding of 
 one of our poet's plays. 
 
 We will now, following out our desigjn, survey our drama 
 also in this second manner, and study it in the broader and 
 more varied aspect of its facts and acting characters. At the 
 conclusion we shaU arrive indeed at the same aim, but with 
 our views much more enlarged and informed. 
 
 We see two youthful beings of the highest nobility of 
 character and position, endowed with tender hearts and with all 
 the sensual fire of a southern race, standing isolated in two 
 families, who are excited to hatred and murder against each 
 other, and repeatedly fiU the town of Verona with blood and 
 uproar. Upon the dark ground of the family hatred the two 
 figures come out the more clearly. In poetry and history cases 
 such as these are not rare ; in the gloom of immoral ages and, 
 circumstances the brightest visions frequently emerge like 
 lilies from the marsh, and Iphigenias and Cordelias, appearing in 
 the midst, of a race of titantic passions, have illustrated this in 
 ancient and niodem poetry. Eomeo and Juliet share not the 
 deadly hatred which divides their families ; the harmlessness of 
 their nature is alien to their wild spirit; much rather upon this 
 same desolate soil a thirsting for love has grown in them to 
 excess; this is more evidently displayed in Eomeo, and less 
 consciously so in Juliet, in the one excited rather in opposition 
 
216 SECOND FEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 to the contention raging in the streets, in the other arising 
 from a secret repulse of those nearest to her in her home. The 
 head of his enemies, the old Capnlet himself, bears testimony 
 of Eomeo that ' Verona brjigs of him, to be a virtuous and 
 well-governed youth.' However much, amid the increasing 
 hindrances to the course of their love, a disproportion and 
 excess of the powers of feeling and affection were developed 
 rapidly and prematurely in both, the two characters were yet 
 originally formed for a harmony of the life of mind and feeling, 
 and rather for fervent and deep, than for excited and extrava- 
 gant affliction. It is no impulse of the senses, it is not even 
 merely self-willed obstinacy which hurries them at last to ruin 
 upon a hazardous and fatal path, but it is the impulse of a 
 touching fidelity and constancy stretching beyond the limits of 
 the grave. The quality of stubborn wilfulness which the friar 
 blames in Romeo — a quality also apparent with womanly 
 moderation in Juliet, when she opposes her parents' plan for 
 her marriage — is certainly in both an heirloom of the hostile 
 family spirit, but it is kept concealed by the peaceful influence 
 of innate tenderness of feeling. It is excited in them only in 
 unhappiness and under the pressure of insufferable circumstances ; 
 but even then in these harmless beings it is not pernicious to 
 others, but its ruinous effects turn only against themselves. 
 That which the friar calls ' grace ' in the human being, by which 
 outward and inward nobility in appearance and habits is 
 intended, forms the essential nature of both ; and if Eomeo, 
 according to the words of the friar, in misfortune and despair 
 and under the influence of a; defiant spirit, shames his shape, 
 his love, and his wit — that is, all his endowments of person, 
 mind, and heart — ^these endowments, these even usuriously 
 measured gifts, still belong to his original nature, which 
 appears in him, as in Julietj in all its lustre when no outer 
 circumstances cross and destroy the peace of their souls. Let 
 us compare the emotions of this love with that of another kind 
 in the Midsummer Night's Dream, which ' formed by the eye, 
 is therefore like the eye full of strange shapes,' habits and 
 varied objects, in order that we may in a new aspefct measm-e 
 the full contrast of this passion and of these characters to those 
 represented in the other play. In the' scenes in which the love 
 between Romeo and Juliet is developed, and the family foes 
 become a betrothed and married couple, we see in its full force 
 the elevation of these natures above the universal discord 
 
EOMEO AND JULIET. 217 
 
 around them, and above the personal prejudices which generally 
 marked this dissension. The disregard of danger, the readi- 
 ness for every sacrifice of life, of propriety, of piety, prove the 
 purity and strength of their love beyond eveiy shadow of a 
 doubt. In the more idyllic scenes— those in which the lovers 
 appear in all the happiness of contentment — the poet has poeti- 
 cally heightened the expression of love in such a manner, and 
 has invested it with such a power of feeling, that the truth and 
 the charm of the poetry convince us more and more deeply of 
 the truth and nobility of these natures. And he has done this 
 to such an extent that the poetic spirit and charm which he 
 diffuses over the lovers cause most readers even wholly to 
 overlook and to miss the moral severity of the poet : a fact 
 which certainly fully obviates the above-mentioned reproach of 
 lingering too much upon the shadow-side of the passion, the 
 circumstances, and the characters. 
 
 Setting aside the later unravellings of the plot, the mixture 
 of these beautiful and noble qualities of Eomeo's nature with 
 elements of evil is early apparent,, even when he appears 
 before us previous to his meeting with Juliet. This Eomeo 
 might be that servant of love, and our poem might be the 
 volume spoken of in the Two Grentlemen of Verona, in which 
 the writer says that ' love inhabits in the finest wits of all,' but 
 also that ' by love the young and tender wit is turned to folly,' 
 and as the worm in the bud, is blasted ; that it loses ' his 
 verdure even in the prime, and all the fair effects of future 
 hopes.' The wise Friar Laurence perceived that ' afiliction was 
 enamoured ' of the susceptible qualities of this deeply agitated 
 and violent nature, and that he was ' wedded to calamity.' 
 Averse to the family feuds, he is early isolated and alienated 
 from his own house. Oppressed ' by society repugnant to him, 
 the overflowing feeling is compressed within a bosom which 
 finds no one in whom it may confide. Of refined mind, and of 
 still more refined feelings, he repels relatives and friends who 
 seek him, and is liimself repulsed by a beloved one, for whom 
 he entertains rather an ideal and imaginary affection. Ee- 
 served, disdainful of advice, melancholy, laconic, vague and 
 subtle in his scanty words, he shuns the light, he is an inter- 
 preter of dreams, his disposition is foreboding, and his nature 
 pregnant with fate. His parents stand aloof from him in a 
 certain background of insignificance ; he has no heartfelt asso- 
 ciation with his nearest relatives and friends. The peaceful, 
 
218 SECOND PEBIOD OF SSAKESPEASE'S DBAMJ.TIC POETEY. 
 
 self-sufficient Benvolio, presuming upon a fancied influence 
 over Eomeo, is too far beneath him ; Mercutio's is a nature too 
 remote from his own. He and Tybalt on the opposite side are 
 the two real promoters and irreconcilable nurturers of the 
 hostile spirit between the two houses. Tybalt appears as a 
 brawler by profession, distinguished by bitter animosity and 
 outward elegance from the merry and cynical Mercutio, who 
 calls, him a 'fashion-monger.' Mercutio (whose Italian name 
 in Clitia's poem is Marcuccio de' Verti) affords a perfect contrast 
 to Eomeo. He is a man without culture ; coarse, rude, and 
 ugly ; a scornful ridiculer of all sensibility and love, of all 
 dreams and presentiments ; a man who loves to hear himself 
 talk, and in the opinion of his noble friend ' will speak more in 
 a minute than he will stand to in a month ;' a man gifted with 
 such a habit of wit, and such a humourous perception of all 
 things, that even in the consciousness of his death-wound, and 
 in the bitterness of anger against the author and manner of the 
 blow, he loses not the expression of his humour. According to 
 the description of himself which he draws in an ironical attack 
 against the good Benvolio, he is a quarrel-seeking brawler, 
 possessing a spirit of innate contradiction, arid over-confident 
 in his powers of strength, aiid as such he proves himself in his 
 meeting with Tybalt. Our Komanticists, according to their 
 fashion, blindly in love with the merry fellow, have started 
 the opinion that Shakespeare despatched Mercutio in Act iii. 
 because he blocked up the way for his principal character. 
 This opinion rivals in absurdity Groethe's treatment of this 
 character in his incomprehensible travesty. In the scene with 
 Benvolio, Mercutio, in his humorous manner, casts his own 
 tragic horoscope ; two men meeting, so full of quarrel as he, 
 he says to Benvolio, would not live an hour. And this predic- 
 tion is immediately fulfilled in himself arid Tybalt, on this 
 hot day, in the exciting warmth of action : they fall a sacrifice 
 to their hating natures, just as Eomeo does to his loving dispo- 
 sition, and for no other purpose but this are they placed in 
 contrast to him. To this insignificant Benvolio and this coarse 
 Mercutio, who degrades the object of his idolatrous love with 
 foul derision, Eomeo feels himself little disposed to impart the 
 silent joys and sorrows of his heart, and this constrained reserve 
 works fatally upon his natiu-e and upon his destiny. He enter- 
 tains an affection, at the time we become acquainted with him, 
 for one Eosaline, a being contrasted to his subsequent love, of 
 
liOMEO AND JULIEl'. 2ia 
 
 Juno-like figure, fair, witli "black eyes, stronger physically and 
 mentally than Juliet, a character not formed for ardent love, a. 
 niece of Capulet's, and a rejector of his suit. The vague neces- 
 sity of his heart thus remains unsatisfied ; he suffers, according 
 to Brooke's expressive image, the vexing torments of a Tantalus, 
 and the void experienced dries up his soul like a sponge. No 
 wonder that he is subsequently overcome with the sudden in- 
 toxication of a nameless happiness, which too powerfully attacks 
 this unfortified soul, sick as it is with longing and privation, 
 and undermined by sorrow. 
 
 The Juliet, the heii-ess of the hostile house, who is to replace 
 Eosaline, lives, unknown to him, in like sorrowful circumstances, 
 though in womanly manner more careless of them. A tender 
 being,' small, of delicate frame — a bark not formed for severe 
 shocks and storms — she lives in a domestic intercourse which 
 unconsciously must be inwardly more repulsive to her than the 
 casual intercourse with his friends can be to Eomeo. Just as 
 Eomeo, when elevated by happiness and not depressed by 
 morbid feelings, appears clever and acute enough, even showing 
 himself in ready repartee equal or superior to Mercutio, so 
 Juliet also possesses similar intellectual ability : an Italian girl, 
 full of cunning self-command and quiet, steady behaviour, she 
 is equally clever at evasion and dissimulation. She has in- 
 herited something of determination from her father ; by her 
 quick and witty replies she evades Count Paris ; not without 
 reason she is called by her father in his anger ' a chop-logick.' 
 How can she — with a mind so full of emotion, and a heart so 
 tender, and with a nature evidencihg an originally cheerful 
 disposition — how can she find pleasure in her paternal home, a 
 home at once dull, joyless, and quarrelsome. The old Capulet, 
 her father (a masterly design of the poet's), is, like all passionate 
 natures, a man of unequal temper, and fully calculated to 
 explain the alternate outbursts and pauses in the discord 
 between the houses. At one time, in his zeal, he forgets 
 his crutch, that he may wield the old sword in his aged hands j 
 and again, in merrier mood, he takes part against his quarrel- 
 some nephew with the enemy of his house, who trustfully attends 
 his ball.. On one occasion he thinks his daughter too young to 
 marry, and two days afterwards she appears to him ' r;pe to be 
 a bride.' Like a good father he leaves the fate of his daughter 
 entirely to her own free' choice, in the case of the suitor Paris, 
 and then, in the outburst of his passion, he compels her to a 
 
220 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKE8PEABE' S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 hated marriage, and threatens her in a brutal manner with 
 blows and expidsion. From sorrow at 'Tybalt's death he re- 
 lapses into rage, and from rage, after the apparent yielding of 
 his daughter, he passes into the extreme of mirth. Outward 
 refinement of manner was not to be learned from the man who 
 speaks to the ladies of his ball like a sailor, any more than 
 inward morality was to be expected from the man who had once 
 been a ' mouse-hunter ' and had to tjomplain of the jealousy of 
 his wife. The lady Capidet is at once a heartless and unimpor- 
 tant woman, who asks advice of her nurse, who in her daughter's 
 extremest suffering coldly leaves her, and entertains the thought 
 of poisoning Eomeo, the murderer of Tybalt. The nm-se 
 Angelica, whose whole character is designed in Brooke's narra- 
 tive, is therefore the real mistress of the house ; she manages 
 the mother, she assists the daughter, and fears not to cross the 
 old man in his most violent anger. She is a talker with little 
 modesty, a woman whose society was not likely to make a Diana 
 of Juliet, an instructress without propriety, a confidant with 
 no enduring fidelity, and Juliet at length suddenly rejects her. 
 To these home surroundings may be added a conventional 
 wooing of Count Paris, which for the first time obliges ^ the 
 innocent child to read her heart. Hitherto she had, at the 
 most, experienced a sisterly inclination for her cousin Tybalt, 
 as the least intolerable of the many unamiable beings who 
 formed her society. But how little filial feeling united the 
 datighter to the family is glaringly exhibited in that passage 
 in which, even before she has experienced the worst treatment 
 from her parents, the striking expression escapes her upon the 
 death of this same Tybalt, that if it had been her parents' 
 death, she would have mourned them only with ' modern 
 lamentation.' 
 
 Such is the inward condition of both, when' for the first 
 time they meet at the ball: she, urged by the suit of the 
 count and by her mother's instigations, to regard the guests 
 for the first time with inquiring heart, in all the freshness of 
 youth ; he, out of humour in his hopeless love for Eosaline, not 
 without reason full of misgiving at crossing the threshold of an 
 enemy's h6use, his very entrance to which excites Tybalt's fatal 
 hatred, but regardless of life and goaded on by daring friends 
 to compare his disdainful beauty against others. Outward 
 beauty is presupposed in both ; at her first appearance he ex- 
 claims : ' Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear ! ' To 
 
BOMEO AXS JULIET. 221 
 
 these outward endowments, inward charms are added. On 
 their first greeting they find occasion to test their versatile 
 intelligence ; so that this rare union of physical and mental 
 gifts works at the first moment with a fascinating and attractive 
 charm. His first address to Juliet at the ball is a fine web of 
 witty thought ; a play of conceits veils the declaration and the 
 acceptance, which by mutual agreement begun in riddles is 
 ingeniously understood and is cleverly carried on. For it is 
 just this which constitutes the charm of this scene, that as 
 Eomeo seems to listen to the sweet devices of Juliet in this 
 strife of thought, so Juliet, in quiet happy appreciation, seems 
 to listen to his similes, equally pleased with his mind and wit 
 as with his feelings ; that she delights not .only in his kiss, biit 
 also that he kisses ' by the book,' that is, with witty allusion 
 and form, cleverly carrying en a given course of thought, after 
 the fashion of the humorous play of wit common to the age. 
 If the reader is conscious of an impression of perfect soundness 
 and purity, here combined with physical beauty and mental 
 superiority — ^the moral impression, which with true instinct we 
 generally feel most surely and fully at first sight — it will not 
 astonish him afterwards that they both, in the next hour of 
 meeting, follow instinctively and freely the same track. 
 
 How the garden scene, which follows this first -meeting, is 
 to be regarded, has been pointed out to us by the poet in a few 
 words in the chorus at the conclusion of the first act. Borneo 
 can hope for an interview only at the peril of his life, and Juliet 
 not at all ; nature and inclination urge the two enemies to. 
 mutual love, and circumstances concur to render this new bond 
 indissoluble. They are impelled to seize the first opportunity, 
 and fate comes to the assistance of Juliet and her modesty : she 
 betrays her feelings in a soliloquy by night to the listening- 
 Eomeo, and has, therefore, nothing more to keep back. Th& 
 one repelled by the suitor Paris, the other by the disdainful 
 Rosaline, they rush the more readily into each other's extended 
 arms. In the midst of the burning contests of their families, 
 in the subversion of all social barriers around them, how should 
 they think of propriety, and, as Juliet says, ' dwell on form ' ? 
 In the hurry of the recall, in the terrible choice between never 
 meeting again and for ever belonging to each other, she pro- 
 poses marriage to Eomeo, unscrupulously determined -to carry 
 out the bold step. How apparently modesty and maidenlj 
 shame strive in her open soul with love and devotion, how 
 
222 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 innocence struggles with passion, and the wish to dare to be- 
 lieve alternates with the fear of Borneo's trifling with her weak- 
 ness ; how — and this is a further token of her versatile mind — 
 in the hurry of the moment and in the pressure of passion, 
 she hints with one word at important circumstances and at 
 ■opposing feelings, since time forbids her to linger with riper 
 xeflection on the subject ; how she gives and withdraws, speaks 
 und retracts, wishes to manifest her love and yet not to appear 
 frivolous ; how she declines his oaths and yet bears in mind the 
 falseness of men ; how she delights in her happiness and ' sweet 
 repose,' and nevertheless in this night contract has no joy but 
 rather a foreboding care ; — all this alternates in wonderful pro- 
 fusion during the .brief hour, and displays a soul of endless 
 depth and richness. We need not deny that in this conduct 
 ■she steps out of her womanly nature, but such an act is justified 
 before (rod and the world, by the nature of the beings and the 
 ■circumstances, by the prompting motives and the impelling 
 necessity, by the innocence of the guileless child, and by their 
 ■good intentions. The wise recluse hiniself, in his approval of 
 the object, and in the prospect of the restoration of family 
 peace, gives his blessing to the secret union. The hurried 
 perturbation of his yoUng friend alone makes him apprehensive; 
 the passionate impatience of his confessant Juliet leads him not 
 to doubt as to the pure innocence of her conduct. The reader 
 must be cautious in attaching any stain to the heroine of the 
 piece in this aspect of her character. The German at once 
 perhaps feels a scruple at that speedy kiss on their first meeting : 
 but these kisses of courtesy in public society, in and before 
 Shakespeare's time, were an English custom, concerning which 
 there were scruples in France, but not in the country itself.^ 
 In England again, with a very customary mock modesty, there 
 has been some hesitation as to Juliet's soliloquy on the wedding- 
 day ; but nowhere is the shame and charm of innocence so be- 
 witchingly expressed as it is here. We know from the nurse 
 that at any news ' the wanton blood ' comes scarlet in her 
 cheeks ; and she says herself, in an image taken from the wild 
 falcon who tolerates no society, that when waiting for her lover, 
 ' the unmanned blood ' bates in her cheeks. All that she says 
 and thinks, as we before mentioned, she clothes unconsciously, 
 
 ' In Cavendish's Life of Wolsey there is an anecdote which illustrates 
 this difference of custom. In Henry V. also Katherine urges the French 
 custom to her wooer. 
 
EOMEO AND JULIET. 223 
 
 as if she had no thoughts of her own for it, in the language of 
 those nuptial songs, which would be used hy the noblest and 
 would be heard by the most virtuous. The poet, remarks 
 Halpin, who was once 'considered a barbarian, does in this way 
 all that he can to prevent an unbecoming word appearing on 
 the lips of his innocent heroine, even at the moment when she 
 is at the highest point of her ardent passion. 
 
 And now, after having become thus acquainted with these 
 characters, we shall find, in sad succession, the fates of the lovers 
 and of their houses intelligibly developed out of their own 
 nature, and not out of the chance' decrees of the goddess 
 Fortune. Eomeo certainly has nothing in his nature which 
 would have actively kept up the strife of the families, but with 
 his reserved temper he also certainly did nothing to relax it. 
 This reserved nature now works in him afresh. Animated by 
 his youthful happiness, he turns indeed suddenly as ' to a new 
 life, and Mercutio is astonished at the ready wit of his 
 melancholy friend ; still his cheerful humour does not go so far 
 as to dispose him to free communication. He hides his suc- 
 cessful affection from his friends more carefully than his 
 sorrow for Eosaline ; this reserved enjoyment of requited love 
 belongs in general but rarely to the man's nature and temper. 
 His friends were unquestionably more worthy of his confidence 
 than" the nurse was of Juliet's ; had he, communicated his 
 feelings to them, Mercutio would have avoided the wantonly 
 sought combat with Tybalt; Eomeo would not have killed Tybalt, 
 aind the first seed of the rapidly rising mischief would 
 not have been sown. With considerate moderation Eomeo 
 has the prudence to avoid Tybalt, but not to forbear whispering 
 a word in the ear of his friend ; much less we may believe can 
 he restrain the flaming fire of vengeance, when the triumphant 
 murderer of his friend returns. When he has killed him, in his 
 stubborn taciturn manner he compresses his complete expec- 
 tation of a dreaded fate into the words ' I am fortune's fool ! ' 
 just as subsequently, after Juliet's death, he throws into one 
 sentence his despair and defiance ; a more open nature would 
 have at both times avoided the extremity by communication. 
 In him a hidden fire burns with a dangerous flame ; his slight 
 forebodings are fulfilled, not because a blind chance causes 
 them to be realised, but because his fatal propensity urges him 
 to rash deeds ; he calls that fortune which is the work of his 
 own nature. He is banished by the Duke ; and now the poet 
 
224: SECOND FEEIOD OF SBAKESPEABE'S DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 shows us in a remarkable parallel the difference between the 
 two characters in the same condition of misery ; the nature of 
 the sexes is delineated in these opposite scenes in a wonderful 
 manner. The more tender being, in despair at the first 
 moment, is soon comforted by her own reflection ; she is soon 
 even capable of comforting, and is bent upoa means of remedy.^ 
 The stronger man, on the contrary, is wholly crushed ; he is quite 
 incapable of self-command, quite inaccessible to consolation. 
 The nature of the woman is not so much changed by this 
 omnipotence of love, but the iqan's power and self-possession, 
 are destroyed by the excess of this one feeling. Juliet has lost 
 her cousin ; she had at first feared the death of Eomeo, she has 
 next to deplore his banishment ; in her helpless condition she 
 has more cause for lamentation and grief than he ; her agitation 
 is increased for a moment by violent dissatisfaction if not 
 hatred against Eomeo : all her hope rested on the restoration 
 of family unity, and this Eomeo has again prevented by 
 Tybalt's death. She declaims against him with imjust vehe- 
 mence, but she soon repents of this, and reproaches herself 
 when she thinks of his own danger. Seized with this thought, 
 with that happy harmony which belongs to the female nature, 
 she speedily finds courage and consolation, power to endure and 
 to act. Tybalt might indeed have killed him ; she bids her 
 tears -return to their native spring; she AerseZ/ enumerates the 
 grounds of consolation, grounds to which the imhappy Eomeo 
 will not even listen when Friar Laurence enumerates them to 
 him. For a moment the idea of banishment agitates her into 
 complete hopelessness, but she quickly seizes the natural means 
 suggested to her by the nurse for lulling her sorrow, healing 
 separation by the chance of reunion, and the sorrow of love by 
 its joys. Quite otherwise is it with the violent iijipetuous man 
 in Friar Lam-ence's cell, in whom, at the word banishment, the 
 long repressed inward emotion breaks forth in fearful lamen- 
 tation, rendering him incapable of reflection and of action at 
 the time that he stood most in need of both. He had himself 
 passed in excitement through that scene which had caused his 
 banishment, he had reason to feel himself entirely free from 
 reproach in the fatal duel, he hears his mild verdict from the 
 forbearing lips of a friend. All comes to him in infinitely 
 milder form than to Juliet, whom her distracted nurse tor- 
 mented with mistaken apprehensions. Yet in himself he finds 
 none of the power of consolation which his Juliet does in a 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET. 225 
 
 similar position, aye, even in one outwardly worse, though 
 inwardly better. He rejects the burden of the blessing which 
 descends upon him ; like an obstinate child, yielding to uncon- 
 trolled grief, he refuses the comfort and the encouragement of 
 his wise friend. The aged recluse is obliged to admonish him 
 that ' such die miserable ; ' nay, what is more in Eomeo's con- 
 dition, he is obliged to remind him to think of his friend, to 
 live for her who lives for him, who thinks for him, and acts for 
 him. ' Not the sage alone, but even the UUfse, is obliged to 
 scold him and bis stubbornness,'deaf as he is even to threatening 
 danger. When he draws his sword, when he throws himself 
 down senseless, we see him 'taking the measure of an unmade 
 grave,' solicitous about the ihan, whord no image of manly 
 duty and dignity, whom the prospect alone of meeting with 
 Juliet, the acme of his loving delight, can cause to be himself 
 a,gain. 
 
 The poet has twice made theih both in agitating alternation 
 taste the joy and sorrow of love ; twice by turns does the 
 deligh't' df Idve tinge their cheeks with red, and the sorrow of 
 love, drinking up their bldod, niake them pale. This old song 
 of love, laboured after by a thousand poets^ has never been siing 
 in such fuU- strains. The first catastrophe, namely, Tybalt's 
 death, followed upon the meeting in the garden, and touched 
 and tried Eomeo the more severely ; the second, the betrothal 
 to Paris, followed close upon the bridal-night, and touched and 
 tried Juliet with inore cruel force. If in the one Eomeo less 
 deserved our approbation, this second stroke placed Jidiet in 
 the same pdsitioii ; if the man in the one lost his manly nature, 
 Juliet in the other was carried out of her womanly spherfe. 
 Lately elevated by the happiness of Eomeo's society, she had 
 lost the delicate line of propriety within which her being 
 moved. Even when her mother speaks of her design of causing 
 Eomeo to be poisoned, she plays too wantonly with her words, 
 when she ought rather to have been full of care ; and when her 
 mother then announces to her the unasked-for husband, she 
 has lost her former craftiness in delaying the marriage with a 
 mild request or with a clever pretext ; she is, scornful towards 
 her niother, straightforward and open to her father whose 
 caprice and passion she provokes, and subsequently she trifles 
 with confession and sacred things in a manner not altogether 
 womanly. But in order that, even here, we should not lose our 
 
 Q 
 
226 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 sympathy, witli this being, the catastrophe, at the same time 
 calls forth all the moral elevation of her nature. When she is 
 abandoned by father and mother, and is at length heartlessly 
 advised by her nurse to separate from Eomeo, she throws off 
 even this last support ; she rises grandly above the ' ancient 
 damnation,' faithlessness, and perjury, and prefers to strike a 
 death-blow to hand and heart than to turn with perfidious 
 desertion to another. When obstacles cross love, it rises to its 
 utmost height ; when compulsion and force would annihilate it, 
 faithfulness and constancy become th,e sole duty. And this it 
 is which, in the njidst of the iragic defeat of this love, glorifies 
 its victory. If the lovers, full of sensual ardour, had once 
 innocently aspired after happiness and enjoyment, they now, 
 without hesitation, and with moral steadfastness, hastened to- 
 wards the death which would inseparably unite them. Over- 
 excited by the alternations of joy and sorrow, agitated by 
 sleepless nights, rendered undutiful on the threshold of a forced 
 marriage, no sooner is Juliet alone, than those sluices of her 
 hopelessness are opened wide which previously womanly dis- 
 simulation had closed : she longs to die. But still not even 
 now does she lose her womanly self-command. Her first course 
 is to ask counsel of Friar Laurence; her ultimate design is 
 suicide.; her firm will calls the friar into; its desperate counsels. 
 It is a (fearful adventure upon which Juliet unscrupulously 
 resolves, although shortly before its execution womanly nature 
 and,;fciipidity, after all the excitement endured, demand a natural 
 tribute. But at the same time it is an ingeniously hazardous 
 game, practicable to the circumspect Jiiliet, but not so to a 
 man of such vast passions as Eomeo, He had arranged with 
 Laurence to receive intelligence by means of his man, but he 
 had also promised Juliet to omit no opportunity of conveyijig 
 his greetings to her; he had sent his. servant also to Jijiliet. 
 To such an extent does the impatience of love cross the un- 
 impassioned hand of the trusted watpher over its fate. Bal- 
 thazar comes with the sad tidings of Juliet's death; it falls 
 upon the man, who in his solitary and fatal mood had, waking 
 or asleep, dreamed and brooded only over death and poison. 
 In the Italian tales, Eonaeo raves in a long speech ; in Shake- 
 speare, one sentence — ' Is it even so ? then I defy you, stars ! ' 
 decides the rash, obstinate resolve, with the dumb despair of a 
 nature inwardly tumultuous, sucb as we know Borneo's to have 
 been. He defies the fate that yrould have helped him had he 
 
EOMEO AND JULIET. 227 
 
 consented to its rule ; he crosses it with the self-will of hardened 
 defiance, which, once on the path of evil, only too readily 
 rushes towards the utmost limit, as if delighting in self-annihi- 
 lation. In this agitation of mind, Eomeo, in a moral point of 
 view, will scarcely appear to us any longer accountable. The 
 strength of thp impulse of love, which with overwhelniing force, 
 made him seek for that final union with his Juliet, and the 
 hearty fidelity with which, imdoubtedly, he felt himself invio- 
 lably bound to follow his dead beloved one in her dread 
 journey, excite in us only the one feeling of painful admira- 
 tion. Letters from Friar Laurence had been promised him ; he 
 asked twice for them, he can no longer wait for them. He 
 travels to Verona in spite of the fact that death rests upon his 
 presence. He purchases the poison; the strongest he can 
 procure, one that shall destroy his life as violently ' as hasty 
 powder fired ; ' the closed shop is obliged to open on the 
 holiday; it perplexes him not that he brings the apothecary 
 under punishment of death ; there is no question as to the 
 cause of the most unnatural tidings. On his way he has heard 
 but with deafened ear the story of Paris' suit, or rather he has 
 heard it not. He goes not to Friar Laurence, the first course 
 of Juliet in a similar position. Death is his only, his first 
 thought, and not, as with Juliet, his last ! It came indeed never 
 too late, and could never be missed ! He arrives at the church- 
 yard. In his fierce wild mood he falls in with Paris, who • 
 endeavours to apprehend Mm ; he knows that he is murdering 
 a guiltless, unrecognised man, but this consideration in his 
 bloody haste restrains him not. Shakespeare has himself added 
 this touch of the murder of Paris to the narrative of the novel. 
 He now sees Juliet undisfigured, in aU her brightness and beauty, 
 lying as if alive ; it startles him not. He rushes after death ; 
 one thought alone urges on this self-willed, imcontroUed spirit, 
 — ^that of running his ' sea-sick weary bark ' upon the ' dashing 
 rocks.' ' A greater Power than we can contradict,' says the 
 noble friar, ' hath thwarted our plans for safety.' It was 
 essentially the fearful power of passion in Eomeo ; to him 
 may be applied what Shakespeare says of love in Hamlet, that 
 its 
 
 Violent property foredoes itaelf, 
 And l^ads the will to desperate undertakings, 
 As oft as any passion under Ileaven 
 That does afflict our natures. ' 
 a 2 
 
228 SECOND FERIOJ) OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 We cannot accuse any blind accident of fate, nor can we 
 blame any arbitrary exercise of punishment on the part of the 
 poet; it is this tumultuous nature alone, in the violence of one 
 happy and yet fatal passion, which shatters the helm of its own 
 preservation, and exercises justice upon itself. The poet could 
 not let those live who destroyed themselves. And it is the 
 result of a lamentable tender-heartedness, when here and there, 
 in subsequent alterations of the play, the pair have been suf- 
 fered to live, to the great joy of the public, who were not equal 
 to the profound thought of the poet. On the other hand, in 
 the old tales, and afterwards in Garrick's version of the play, it 
 is equally repugnant to us that Juliet awakes while Eomeo yet 
 lives, Schlegel's remarks on this are excellent. The grief and 
 agitation produced were indeed already sufficient; the more 
 innocent bride, linked in iappiness or misery to the destiny of 
 her husband, well deserved to reach the end more speedily, 
 and, as it were, unconsciously and rightly was she spared from 
 learning how near and how possible safety had been. The 
 Italian novelists liked this prolongation of the torture, in order 
 to gain an opportunity for a fine pathetic speech. Our poet 
 avoided these extremes of agitation ; he has wisely only made 
 use of them when Juliet learns Tybalt's death, and when Bomeo 
 yields to despair in Friar Laurence's cell, scenes which do not 
 appear in the Italian novels, but which in the drama excellently 
 serve the purpose of making us acquainted with these sensitive 
 natures and of preparing us for the catastrophe of their fate. 
 In the end, when the utmost had happened, it was more human 
 to be sparing of torture, and rather to restore composure to the 
 soul. Over the grave of this unbounded single love, general 
 irreconcilable hate is extinguished, and peace is again restored 
 to the families and to the, town. Just as this vehemence of 
 love could arise only amid the narrowing hate of the families, 
 and amid the continual fear of disturbance, so the hate of the 
 families seemed only able to be extinguished by the sacrifice of 
 their noblest members. The exuberance of the love which 
 killed them overflowed after their death, and the blood shed 
 prepared the soil for reconciliation, which could not take root 
 before. The happiness of their love was, as it says in the 
 Midsummer-Night's Dream, 
 
 momentaiy as a sound, 
 Swift as a shadow, short as any dream : 
 
BOMEO AND JULIET. 229 
 
 Brief as the lightning in the collied night, 
 That in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, 
 And ere a man hath power to say, — ^Behold 1 
 The jftwa of darkness do devour it up ; 
 
 but in this lightning, the storm-laden air hanging over the 
 state of Verona disburdened itself, and the last transient 
 storm-cloud gave place to the first gleams of enduring bright- 
 ness. 
 
THE MEECHANT OF VENICE. 
 
 Wb have placed together the love-plays of Shakespeare in an 
 unbroken series, the end of which, both as regards purport 
 and significance, is formed by Eomeo and Juliet. The Mer- 
 chant of Venice, which does not either in intention or matter 
 belong to this series, the love-affairs it contains having only 
 a subordinate signification, dates the time of its origin previous 
 to that of Eomeo and Juliet and the Midsuminer-Night's 
 Dream. According to ' Henslowe's Journal,' a Venetian comedy 
 was produced in 1594, and it is possible that this may have 
 been our present play, as at that time the Blackfriars company 
 acted in combination with the company, under Henslowe at 
 Newington Butts. The form, the versification, the few doggerel 
 verses, and the alternate rhymes which appear in the play, are 
 less to be regarded as evidences of its age than certain internal 
 tokens which place it somewhat among the earlier plays. The 
 allusions to ancient myths are much more frequent here than 
 in Eomeo and Juliet ; the greater want of delicacy in the con- 
 versation of noble ladies, which we never subsequently find in 
 Shakespeare, may be compared with that which meets us in 
 Love's Laboiur's Lost and in the Two Gentlemen of Verona. 
 Launcelot appears even in name to be only an offshoot of the 
 Launce in the Two Grentlemen of Verona ; the counterpart of 
 Jessica's relation with her father, in the scene of Launcelot's 
 interview with his own, is kept up entirely in the style of the 
 similar scene in the Two Grentlemen of Verona ; when he shows 
 the old man the way, we are entirely reminded of the jests in 
 the Latin comedy. All these possess a kindred likeness with 
 the older plays, which is scarcely perceptible in Eomeo and 
 Juliet. 
 
 The story of the Merchant of Venice is a blending together 
 of the two originally separate narratives of the three caskets and 
 of the dispute regarding the pound of flesh. Both are in the well- 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 23l 
 
 known collection of the Gesta Eomanorum; the " aliecdote of 
 the three caskets is very short and simple, but the inscriptions 
 are almost word for word as we find them in our own play. 
 The narrative most allied to the principal story is to be found 
 in a very rough and fantastic form in the Peeorone of GKovanni 
 Fiorentino, a work of the fourteenth century, printed in 1554. 
 The circumstance, which, according to Shakespeare, took place 
 between the two friends, Bassanio and Antonio, is there im- 
 puted to a foster-father and son. The latter wooes a lady of 
 Belmont, who, with Circeian cunning, ensnares her' suitors, 
 this one among the rest, and twice takes his vessel from him. 
 The third time he equips his ship with foreign gold, pledging 
 the pound of. flesh from his foster-father ; this time, wisely 
 warned, he obtains the lady, who also subsequently becomes the 
 judge in the lawsuit. Even the play with the ring, which forms 
 the main substance of the fifth act of our drama, is not lacking 
 here ; nothing is altered, but that instead of the magic arts of 
 the lady of Belmont the anecdote of the three caskets is intro- 
 duced, and the thrice repeated undertaking is resolved into one. 
 It has justly been remarked that there was much skill in this 
 blending together of two equally strange adventures, in order 
 to produce the hdrmony which is ihdispensable to artistic 
 illusion. The touch of improbability in both transports the 
 reader more effectively into the world of romance than a single 
 adventure of this kind could have done ; the metaphorical 
 character of the will suits that of the lawsuit ; the skil&l com- 
 bination of both produces that probability which we draw from 
 the repetition of similar circumstances, even when in the 
 abstract they are utterly strange to us. As far as we know, 
 there were no English translations in Shakespeare's time of the 
 harrative sources of the story. But possibly the subject of the 
 J)lay, with the same blending of two originally separate naratives, 
 may have been prepared in an older play previous to Shake- 
 speare. Grosson, in his 'School of Abuse' (1579), speaks of a 
 J)iece entitled ' The Jew,' the subject of which exhibited ' the 
 greedinesse of worldly chusers, and the bloody mindes of usurers.' 
 We see, indeed, that this so strikingly agrees with the two com- 
 bined parts of our play, namely, Shylock and the suitors of 
 Portia, that it is hardly to be doubted that this piece had 
 already handled the same material ; so that, in the Merchant of 
 Venice, Shakespeare had another play before him for his use. 
 What assistance this supposed forerunner of the Merchant of 
 
232 SECOND PEBIOp OF 8HAKE8FEASE' 8 DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Venice may have afforded we cannot of course know ; scarcely 
 t]ti,e framework in those old tales was available to Shakespeare. 
 From these idle stories, replete as they are with improbabilities^; 
 he has formed a play fuU of the deepest worldly wis^ppa, w;hichj 
 if we strip off the garb of romance and the colouring )of passion, 
 may be regarded more th^rn any other of his works as a mirror 
 reflecting the very reality of common life. , , j . i ; , > n j h i 
 
 For the understanding of Shakespeare, inothing,j,s p^rh;aps 
 more instructive than occasionally, when, pircumrtances, admit 
 of it, to add the explanation of, ojth^' cominenljators to our 
 own reflections upon his works, in order that by comparing a. 
 seiries of double expositions we may penetrate more nearly to 
 the meaning of Shakespearian poetry. We shall by this means, 
 perceive how very different are the points of view from which 
 these poems may be apprehended, and how various are the 
 opinions which may be advanced upon the same piece, with a 
 certain degree and appearance of justice : thus affording a 
 proof of the richness and many-sidedness of these works. At the 
 same time this will give us occasion to examine ourselves, and, 
 to discover whether we retain the pure susceptibility and un- 
 biassed mind required for the comprehension of the writings of 
 our master, so that we may as far as possible perceive the oob, 
 idea which moved the, poet himself in each of his creations, and 
 that we may distinguish this one idea from the many which 
 e0,ch of the more important of those creations is capable of 
 suggesting to the versatile minds of our own day. In this, 
 comparison of interpretation, we shall, besides, have repeatedly 
 occasion to show where the key to Shakespeare's works is really 
 to be found, and what are the kind of leading ideas on which 
 he has formed his plays. 
 
 tJlrici has justly remarked that the connecting threads in 
 this play lie very much hidden, owing to the different circum- 
 stances contained in it. The poet has here not given himself 
 the trouble, as in Eomeo and Juliet, to insinuate his design by 
 express explanation. Ulrici (and Eoscher also) perceived the 
 fundamental idea of the Merchant of Venice in the sentence, 
 ' summum jus summa injuria.' With ability and ingenuity he 
 has referred the separate parts to this one central point. The 
 lawsuit in which Shylock enforces the letter of justice, and is 
 himself avengingly struck by the letter of justice, is thus 
 placed in the true centre of the piece. The arbitrariness of the 
 will, in which Portia's father appears to assert the utmost 
 
THE MEBCHANT OF VENICE. 23a 
 
 severity of his paternal right, and which, as Portia herself 
 laments, .' puts bars between the owners and their rights,' con- 
 nects the second element of the piece in one idea; with the 
 principal part. Jessica's escape from her father forms the 
 contrast to this ; in the one, right is wrong, in the other, wrong' 
 is right. The intricacy of right and wrong appears at its 
 height in the quarrel of the lovers in the last actw.iEven 
 Launcelot's reflections on the right and wrong of his running 
 away, and his blame of Jessica in the ' fourth act, concur with' 
 this point of view. We are thus led to understand the stress 
 which Portia, in her speech to Shylock, lays upon mercy : not, 
 severe right, but tempered equity alone can hold society together* 
 But when we glance at the external structure of the piece, 
 the essential characters do not all stand in relation to this idea — 
 a requirement which we find fulfilled in all the maturer works 
 of our poet. Eassanio, who is really the link uniting Antonio, 
 and Portia, the principal actors in the two separate incidents, 
 has nothing to do with this idea. Just as little are the friends: 
 and parasites of Antonio, and the suitors of Portia, connected 
 with it. Moreover, Portia's father is called ' a virtuous and holy 
 man,' who has left behind him the order concerning the caskets 
 out of kindness, in a sort of ' inspiration,' but in no wise in a 
 severe employment of paternal power. But even setting aside 
 these reasons, which we derive from the attempt to connect the 
 acting characters with the fundamental idea of the piece, we 
 feel that such a maxim as the above can only be the result of a 
 forced interpretation of any of the Shakespearian plays. We 
 only arrive at such maxims and explanations when we consider 
 the story and the plot in this or other plays as the central point 
 for consideration. Ulrici does this : he calls this piece a comedy 
 of intrigue, as he has also even more unsuitably designated 
 Cymbeline, a play that must be classed with those most magni- 
 ficent works of the poet, which like Lear confine within the 
 narrow scope of a drama almost the richness of an epos. In 
 Ulrici's opinion the story is the all-important point ; in ours 
 the story grows out of the peculiar nature of the characters. 
 We do not, like him, distinguish the dramatic styles, and we 
 believe that Shakespeare himself did not thus distinguish them, 
 for to him the form arose naturally ,out of the material in 
 obedience to internal laws. Shylock is connected in the intri- 
 cacies of the action with Antonio by, means of Bassanio ; these 
 men, and their characters and motives, exist in the poet's mind 
 
234 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 before the plot is designed which xesidts from their co-opera- 
 tion. Granted that the subject was transmitted to the poet, 
 and that here, as in All's Well that Ends Well, he held himself 
 conscientiously bound to the strapgest of all materials ; still that 
 which most distinguishes him and his poetry, that in which he 
 maintains his freest action, that from which he designs^ the 
 structure of his pieces, and even creates the given subject anew, 
 is ever the characters themselves and the motives of their 
 actions. In these the poet is ever himself, ever great, ever 
 ingenious and original ; the story of his plays is for the most 
 part borrowed ; it is often strange, without probability, and in 
 itself of no value. Unconcerned, he allows it to remain as a 
 poetic symbol for every analogous circumstance which might be 
 possible in reality ; he investigates human nature, he discovers 
 the qualities and passions which probably would be capable of 
 committing siich an action, and he then presents to view, in a 
 simple picture, the springs of these passions and of these dispo- 
 sitions of mind and character, though he never deduces them 
 from an abstract maxim like Ulrici's. What we may call the 
 leading idea, the pervading soul, in Shakespeare's plays is ever 
 expressed plainly and siniply in a single relation, in a single 
 passion or form of character. The nature and property of love 
 and jealousy, the soap-bubbles produced by the thirst for glory, 
 and irresolution avoiding its task, these are the images and the 
 ideas which Eomeo and Othello, Love's Labour's Lost, and 
 Hamlet present to us ; and 'in each of these plays we perceive 
 the poet's purpose without aphorism and reflection, rarely from 
 the action and story considered by itself, but ever from a closer 
 investigation of the motives of the actors themselvesi It is just 
 this which Shakespeare himself in Hamlet demanded from the 
 art : that it should hold the mirror up to nature, that it should 
 give a representation of life, of men, and of their powers of 
 action, thus obtaining a moral influence, but with the purest 
 poetic means, namely, by image, by lively representation, and 
 by imaginative skill. To perceive and to know the virtues and 
 crimes of men, to reflect them as in a mirror, and to exhibit 
 them in their sources, their nature, their workings, and their 
 results, and this in such a way as to exclude chance and to 
 banish arbitrary fate,- which can have no place in a well-ordered 
 World, such is the task which Shakespeare has imposed upon 
 the poet and upon himself. 
 
 We will now say what reflections, the Merchant of Venice 
 
THE MEECHANT OF VENICE. 235 
 
 has excited in our own mind. We have already mentioriedi how 
 Gosson designated the moral of a piece, the purport of which 
 we have supposed the same as that of the Merchant of Venice: 
 it represented, he says, 'the greedinesse of worldly chusers and the 
 bloody mindes of usurers.' In Shakespeare's time the idea and 
 purpose of , a stage piece were always conceived in this kind of 
 simple and practically moral manner. In order, therefore, to 
 adhere to the spirit of the time, we. crtight also always similarly 
 to, designate the fundamental idea of the plays of that age, and 
 in doing this we ought not even to avoid the risk of appearing 
 trivial. "We may say after our own fashion, in a more abstract 
 and pretentious form, that the intention of the poet in the 
 Merchant of Venice was to depict the relation of man to pro- 
 perty. .However commonplace this may appear, the more 
 worthy of admiration is that which Shakespeare, with extra- 
 ordinary, profound, and poetic power, has accomplished in his 
 embodiment of the subject. , ' 
 
 If we look back to the plays which we have previously 
 perused, and stiU more when, we shall have gone through the 
 rest of the works belonging to this period, and at its close shall 
 revert to Shakespeare's life, we shall see our poet, throughout 
 the whole space of time and in almost all the works which 
 proceeded from him, struggling as it were with one great idea, 
 which at length exhibits a similar conflict within himself, and 
 in which his nobler spiritual nature battles with and overcomes 
 the lower world without : one indeed of the most remarkable 
 dramas in the inner Ufe of a man, however fragmentary may 
 be the touches with which we must delineate it. We have 
 before intimated that in the historical plays, which almost 
 wholly belong to this period, we should point out the poet as 
 occupied with this one fundamental idea :— 7in the wide sphere 
 of public life, in the history of states and princes, no less than 
 in private life, all his reflections lead to this, that merit, deeds, 
 character, education, inner worth, and greatness, surpass aur 
 cestral right, rank, and outward pretentions. In the plays which 
 we have last gone through the poet has throughout shown him- 
 self opposed to all unreality ; to false, fickle friendship and love ; 
 to vain parade of learning or of mental heroism or wit ; to all 
 seeming merit, and assumption of ancestry and nobility ; to a 
 show of valour and bullying, and even to the feig-ned behaviour 
 of the man who is sinking under the weight of a noble passion. 
 We must here draw attention to a characteristic, which, as much 
 
2S6: SECOND PEBIOD OF 8HAKESPEAEE' 8 SEAMATIC POETRY.- 
 
 as any in Shakespeare's works, assists ^ls in perceiving the per- 
 sonal nature of the poet. To no subject does Shakespeare so 
 often revert in aphorisms and in satirical invectives with such 
 violent bitterness as to the custom, at that time gaining ground, 
 of wearing false hair and rouge, and in this manner of affecting 
 youthfid ornament and beauty upon head and face. Nothing 
 expresses more simply than this touch the profound abhorrence 
 which Shakespeare, with his. true and imfeigned nature, bore 
 towards all physical and moral tinsel and varnish in man. From 
 aU this we see that the poet's mind and thoughts early aspired 
 from the outward to the inward being, that they penetrated the 
 marrow and kernel of a true and worthy existence, and in this 
 highest sense, as his mental vision widened, he conceived his 
 poetic writings, matured them, and brought them forth. 
 
 In the present play the idea so dominant in the poet's mind 
 has been grasped in its very centf e. The god of the world, 
 the image of show, the symbol of all external things, is money, 
 and it is so called by Shakespeare, and in all proverbs. To 
 examine the relation of man to property or to money is to 
 place his intrinsic value on the finest scale, and to separate that 
 which belongs to the unessential, to ' outward shows,' from that 
 which in its inward nature relates to a higher destiny. As 
 attributes of show, gold and silver, misleading and testing the 
 chooser, are taken as the material of Portia's caskets, and 
 Eassanio's comments on the caskets mark the true meaning of 
 the piece : — 
 
 So may the outward shows he least themselves ; 
 
 The world is still deceived with ornament. 
 
 In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt 
 
 But, being season'd with a gracious voice, 
 
 Ohscures the show of evil ? In religion, 
 
 What damned error, hut some sober brow 
 
 Will bless it and approve it with a text. 
 
 Hiding the grossness with fair ornament ? 
 
 There is no vice so simple but assumes 
 
 Some mark of virtue on its outward parts : 
 
 How many cowards assume but valour's excrement, 
 
 To render them redoubted ! Look on beauty, 
 
 And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight ; 
 
 So are those crisped snaky golden locks, 
 
 Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, 
 
 Upon supposed fairness, often known 
 
 To be the dowry of a second head, 
 
 The scull that bred them, in the sepulchre. 
 
 Thus ornament is but the guiled shore 
 
TSE MEBCHAJUT OF VENICE. 237 
 
 To a most dangerous sea ; the beauteous scarf 
 Veiling an Indian beauty ; in a word, 
 The seeming truth which ciinmng times put on 
 To entrap the wisest. 
 
 The chooser therefore turns away from the gold and silver, 
 as from the current and received image of that precarious show, 
 and turns to the lead, ' which rather threatenest, than doth 
 promise aught.' And so, not his relation alone, but the rela- 
 tion of a number of beings to gold, this perishable and false 
 good, is depicted in our play. A number of characters and 
 circumstances show how the possession produces in men bar^ 
 barity and cruelty, hatred and obduracy, anxiety and , indiffer-r 
 ence, spleen and fickleness ;. and again how it calls forth the 
 highest virtues and qualities, and,: by testing, confirms them. 
 But essential promiilence is given to the relation of the outward 
 possession, to an inclina,tion, of an entirely inward character, 
 namely, to friendship. This is indeed inserted by the poet in 
 the original story; it is, however, not arbitrarily interwoven 
 with it, but is developed according to its inmost nature from 
 the materials given. For the question of man's relation , to 
 property is ever at the same time a question of his> relation to 
 man,, as it cannot be imagined apart from man. The miser, 
 who seeks to deprive others of possession and to seize upon it 
 himself j will hate and will be hated. The spendthrift, who 
 gives and bestows, Ipves- and will be loved. The relation of 
 both to possession, their riches or their poverty, will, as it 
 changes, also change their relation to their fellow-men. For 
 this reason the old story of Timon, handled. by our poet in its 
 profoundest sense, is at > once a history of prodigality and a 
 history of false friendship. And thus Shakespeare, in the poem 
 before us, has shoivn a genuine aflSnity between the pictures he 
 exhibits of avarice and prodigality, of hard usury and incon- 
 siderate extravagance, so that the play may just as weU be called 
 a song of true friendship. The most imselfish spiritual affection 
 is placed in contrast to the most selfish worldly one, the most 
 essential truth to unessential show. For even sexual love, in 
 its purest and deepest form, through the addition of sensual 
 enjoyment, is not in the same measure free from selfishness as 
 friendship is, which, as an inclination of the soul, is wholly 
 based upon the absence of all egotism and self-love ; its 
 purity and elevation is tested by nothing so truly as by the 
 
238 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 exact opposite, namely, by possession, which excites most power- 
 fully the selfishness and self-interest of men. 
 
 We shall now see how the apparently disparate circum- 
 stances of our play work wonderfully one into the other, and 
 with what wisdom the principal characters are arranged with 
 respect to each other. 
 
 In the centre of the actors in the play, in a rather passive 
 position, stands Antonio, the princely merchant, of enviable 
 and immense possessions, a Timon and Shylock in riches, but 
 with a noble nature elevated far above the effects which wealth 
 produced in these men. Placed between the generous giver 
 and the miser, between the spendthrift and the usurer, between 
 Bassanio and Shylock, between friend and foe, he is not even 
 remotely tempted by the vices into which these have fallen ; 
 there is not the slightest trace to be discovered in him of that 
 care for his wealth imputed to him by Salanio and Salarino, 
 who in its possession would be its slaves. But his great riches 
 have inflicted upon him another evil, the malady of the rich, 
 who have never been agitated and tried by anything, and have 
 never experienced the pressure of the world. He has the spleen^ 
 he is melancholy ; a sadness has seized him, the source of which 
 no one knows; he has a presentiment of some danger, such as 
 Shakespeare always imparts to all sensitive, susceptible natures. 
 In this spleen, like all hypochondriacs, he takes delight in 
 cheerfal society ; he is surrounded by a number of parasites and 
 flatterers, among whom there is one nobler character, Bassanio, 
 with whom alone a deeper impulse of friendship connects him. 
 He is affable, mild, and generous to all, without knowing their 
 tricks and without sharing their mirth ; the loquacious versa- 
 tility and humour of a Grratiano is indifferent to him ; his 
 pleasure in their intercourse is passive, according to his universal 
 apathy. His nature is quiet and is with difficulty affected ; 
 when ' his property and its management leave him without 
 anxiety, he utters a ' fie, fie,' over the supposition that he is in 
 love; touched by no fault, but moved also by no virtue, he 
 appears passionless, and almost an automaton. The position 
 which the poet has given him in the midst of the more active 
 characters of the piece is an especially happy one ; for were he 
 of less negative greatness he would throw all others into deep 
 shadow ; we should feel too painful and exciting a sympathy in 
 his subsequent danger. Yet he is not allowed, for this reason, 
 to appear quite feelingless. For in one point he stows that he 
 
THE MEBCHANT OF VENICE. 239 
 
 shared the choler and natural feelings of others. When brought 
 into contact with the usurer, the Jew Shylock, we see him in a 
 state of agitation, partly arising from moral and business 
 principles, partly from intolerance and from national religious 
 aversion. This sense of honour in the merchant against the 
 money-changer and usurer urges him to those glaring out- 
 bursts of hatred, when he rates Shylock in the Eialto about his 
 * usances,' calls him a dog, ' foots '' him, and spits upon his 
 beard. For this he receives a lesson for life in his lawsuit with 
 the Jew, whom, with his apathetic negligence, he allows to get 
 the advantage over him. His life is placed in danger, and the 
 apparently insensible man is suddenly drawn closer to us ; he is 
 suffering, so that high and low intercede for him ; he himself 
 petitions Shylock ; his situation weakens him ; the experience 
 is not lost upon him ; it is a crisis, it is the creation of a new life 
 for him; finally, when he is lord and master over Shylock, he 
 no longer calls up his old hatred against him, and, aroused from 
 his apathy, he finds henceforth in Bassanio's happiness and 
 tried friendship the source of a renovated and ennobled exist- 
 ence. 
 
 Unacquainted with this friend of Bassanio's, there lives at 
 Belmont his beloved Portia, the contrast to Antonio, a character 
 upon whom Shakespeare has not hesitated to heap aU the active 
 qualities of which he has deprived Antonio ; for in the womanly 
 being kept modestly in the background, these qualities are not 
 likely to: appear so overwhelmingly prominent as we felt that 
 they would have been if united in the man, whom they would 
 have raised too far above the other characters of the piece- 
 Nevertheless, Portia is the most important figure in our drama, 
 and she forms even its true central point ; as for her sake, with- 
 put her fault or knowledge, tlie knot is entangled, and through 
 her and by means of her conscious efibrt it is also loosened. 
 She is just as royally rich as Antonio, and as he is encompassed 
 with parasites, so is she by suitors from all lands. She too, like 
 Antonio, and still more than he, is wholly free from every 
 disturbing influence of her possessions upon her inner being. 
 She carries out her father's will in order to secure herself from 
 a husband who might purchase her beauty by the weight. 
 Without this will she would of herself .have acted similarly; 
 wooed by princely suitors she loves Bassanio, whom she inew 
 to be utterly poor. She too, like, Antonio, is melancholy, but 
 not from spleen, not from apfithy, not without cause, not from. 
 
240 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 the ennui of riches, but from passion alone, from her love for 
 Bassanio, from care for thejdoubtful issue of that choice which 
 threatens to surrender her love to chance. A thoroughly- 
 superior nature, she stands above Antonio and Bassanio as 
 Helena does above Bertram, higher than Eosaline is raised above 
 Biron and Juliet above Eomeo ; it seems that Shakespeare' at 
 that time created and endowed his female characters in the 
 conviction that the woman was fashioned out of better material 
 than the man. On account of the purity of her nature she is 
 compared to the image of a saint, on account of the strength of 
 her will to Brutus' Portia ; Jessica speaks of her as without ' her 
 fellow' in the world, giving to her husband 'the joys of heaven 
 here on earth.' The most beautiful and the most contradictory 
 qualities, mainly determination' and womanly tenderness, are 
 blended together in her. She is musical and energetic, playful 
 and serious ; she is at once cheerM and devout, not devout 
 before but after action ; her companion, Nerissa, -is of the same 
 stamp ; she possesses a similar nature, full of raillery and play- 
 fulness, but of vigorous power, and she is so much attached to 
 Portia that she only promises her hand to Grratiano in- case 
 Bassanio's choice has a successful issue. To this man of her 
 heart Portia represents herself as a rough jewel, although she is 
 far superior to him; she gives herself to him with the most 
 womanly modesty, although she is capable rather of guiding 
 himi She is superior to all circumstances, that is her highest 
 praise ; she would have accommodated herself to any husband, 
 and for this reason her father may have felt himself justified in 
 prescribing the ■ lottery ; he could do so with the most implicit 
 confidence; she knows the contents of the caskets, but she 
 betrays it not. She has already sent from her eyes ' speechless 
 messages ' to Bassanio, and now she would gladly entertain him 
 some months before he chooses, that she may at least secure a 
 short possession; but no hint from her facilitates his choice. 
 And yet she has to struggle with the warm feeling which longs 
 to transgress the will : it is a temptation to her, but she resists 
 it with honour and resolution. Yet, quick in judgment, skilled 
 in the knowledge of men, and firm in her demeanour, she knows 
 how to frighten away, by her behaviour, the utterly worthless 
 lovers ; i so superior is she in all this, that her subsequent 
 
 ' Portia's humorous review of them must haYe rested on an inclination 
 common at the time to ridicule in this manner the characters of foreign 
 nations, since Sully puts a similar review in the mouth of his Henry IV. 
 
rSE MIESCHANT OF VENICE. 241 
 
 appearance as judge is perfectly conceivable^ Famous actresses^ 
 such as Mrs. Clive in G^rrick's time, have used this judgment- 
 scene as a burlesque to laugh at — a part in which the highest 
 pathos is at work, and an exalted character is pursuing the most 
 pure and sacred object. 
 
 Between Portia and Antonio stands Bassanio, the friend of 
 the one, the lover of the other ; he appears between the two 
 boundlessly rich persons as a man utterly poor, ruined in his 
 circumstances, inconsiderate, and extravagant at the expense 
 of his friend. He seems to belong thoroughly to the parasitical 
 class of Antonio's friends. In disposition he is more inclined to 
 the merry Gratiano than to Antonio's severe gravity ; he appears 
 on the stage with the question ' When shaU we langh ? ' and 
 he joins with his frivolous companions in all cheerful and careless 
 folly. On this occasion he is borrowing once more three thousand 
 ducats, in order to make a strange Argonaiitic expedition to the , 
 ' Grolden Fleece,' staking them on a blind adventure, the doubtful 
 wooing of a rich heiress. His friend breaks his habit of never 
 borrowing on credit, he enters into an agreement with the Jew 
 upon the bloody condition, and the adventurer accepts the loan 
 with the sacrifice. Before he sets forth, on the very same day 
 and evening, he purchases fine livery for his servants with this 
 inohey, and gives a merry feast as a farewell, during which the 
 daughter of the invited Jew is to be carried off by one of the 
 free-thinkiiig fellows. Does not the whole conduct appear as 
 if he were finly the seeming friend of this rich man for the sake 
 of borrowing his money, and only the seeming lover of this rich 
 lady for the sake of paying his debts with her fortune ? 
 
 But this quiet Antonio seemed to know the man thus ap- 
 parently bad to be of better nature. He knew him indeed as 
 somewhat too extravagant, but not incurably so, as one who was 
 ready and able also to, restrict himself. He knew him as one 
 who stood ' within the eye of honour,' and he lent to him with- 
 out a doubt of his integrity. His confidence was unlimited, and 
 he blames him rather that he should 'make question of his 
 uttermost,' than ' if he had made waste of all he has.' In his 
 mfelancholy, it is this man alone who chains him to the world ; 
 their friendship needs no brilliant words, it is unfeignedly 
 genuine. His eyes, full of tears at parting, tell Bassanio what 
 he is worth to Antonio ; it is the very acceptance of the loan 
 which satisfies Antonio's confidence. The downright and re- 
 gardless Griratiano, whose jests, faultless to his friend, are an 
 
242 SECOND PEEIOJ) OF SHAKESPEARE'S DBAMATIC POETSY. 
 
 offence to the world, is seriously enjoined by him as to behaviour 
 and habits in his courting expedition to the noble Portia, and 
 the parting supper is made use of for the committal of a virtuous 
 sin, in withdrawing the loveliest of daughters from the most 
 unnatural father. When he comes to Portia, he does not accede 
 to her tender womanly proposal that he should safely enjoy two 
 jnonths' intercourse with her ; he will not ' live upon the rack,* 
 and he insists with manly resolution upon the decision. His 
 choice, and the very motives of his choice, exhibit him as the 
 man not of show, but of genuine nature ; his significant speech 
 upon this fundamental theme of the piece stands as the true 
 centre of the play. The scene of his choice, accompanied by 
 music and followed by Portia's anxious - glances and torturing 
 agony, must be seen to be enjoyed ; the amiability and sincerity 
 of both are here portrayed in their greatest beauty. When he 
 perceiives the portrait, he divines indeed his happiness, but he 
 ventures not yet to hope it, and in spite of his agitation he 
 seems absorbed only with the work of art ; when the scroll 
 announces to him his triumph (a flourish of instruments will 
 set forth his words in their true light), he nevertheless pauses 
 to obtain confirmation from the original ; and she, who had before 
 followed tremblingly every movement, recovers her composure 
 at the happy decision, and in language full of womanly devotion 
 jecalls the man to himself, dazzled as he is by his good fortune, 
 Bassanio's choice is crowned by success, or, we may more 
 justly say, his wise consideration of the father's object and of 
 the mysterious problem meets with its deserved reward. But 
 his fair doctrine of show is to be tested immediately, whether 
 it be jeally deed and truth. His adventurous expedition has 
 succeeded through his friend's assistance and loan. But at the 
 same moment in which he is at the climax of his happiness, 
 his friend is at the climax of misfortune and in the utmost 
 •danger of his life, and this from the very assistance, and loan 
 which have helped Bassanio to his success. The horror of 
 the intelligence concerning Antonio occurs at the very prime 
 of his betrothal happiness. The genuine character of the friend 
 now shows itself. The intelligence disturbs his whole nature. 
 On his wedding-day^— Portia herself permits not that they should 
 be married first— he leaves her in order to save his friend, to 
 pay thrice the money borrowed, in the hope of being able to 
 avert the course of the law in this case of necessity. But Portia 
 proves even here her superior nature. She sees more keenly 
 
THE MERCHANT. OF VENICE. 243 
 
 Tfhat an inevitable mare the inhuman Jew has dug for Antonio ; 
 she adopts the • surest course of saving him by right and law 
 itself; she devises at the same time a plan for testing the man 
 of her love. Even with all this, the idea of the design of the 
 Tvhole piece concurs most closely. Her own choice had been 
 denied her by her father's arrangement ; her delight in Bassanio 
 rested not on a long acquaintance ; the alliance made by chance 
 appears to her to acquire its true consecration and security by 
 one solemn trial ; she will test him and his friend, she will test 
 Mm by his friendship. She conceives the friendship of her 
 husband, as the betrothed so readily do, in the most ideal 
 manner ; Lorenzo praises her noble ' conceit of amity ' even 
 before he knows what she has done ; she wishes to convince 
 herself of the nature of this friendship, in order that she may 
 ■conclude from it the nature of Bassanio's love. She saves her 
 husband from despair, and his friend from death, at the same 
 moment that amid their torments she is observing their value. 
 In this catastrophe Antonio has to atone for all the sin he has 
 committed against Shylock through sternness, and Bassanio for 
 all that of which he was guilty through frivolity, extravagance, 
 and participation in the offences against the Jew : the best part 
 of both is exhibited through their sufferings in their love for 
 each other, and Antonio's words, the seal of this friendship, 
 must have penetrated deeply into Portia's heart. But with 
 equally great agitation she hears the words of Bassanio, that he 
 "would sacrifice his wife, his latest happiness, to avert the mis- 
 fortune which he had caused. Such an avowal must enchant 
 her : this was indeed standing the fiery test. Whilst she turns 
 the words into a jest, she has to overcome the deepest emotion ; 
 with those words the sin is forgiven of which Bassanio was 
 guilty. By his readiness for such a sacrifice he deserves the 
 friend, whom he had exposed to death lihrough the wooing of 
 his wife, and the means which Antonio had given him of pressing 
 his suit ; and by it also he shows that he deserves his wife, who 
 <50uld not be called happily won by a fortunate chance which had 
 proved at the same time the evil destiny of his friend. This 
 trial of Bassanio is carried on by Portia in the last act of the 
 play. It has always been said of this act that it was added for 
 the satisfaction of an aesthetic necessity, in order to efface the 
 painful impression of the judgment scene ; but it is equally re- 
 quired to satisfy the moral interest of the play by a last proof 
 of the genuineness of this friendship. The helpful judge de- 
 
 S2 
 
244 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 mands from Bassanioj as a reward, tlie ring wliich his wife had 
 forbidden him to give away. Antonio himself begs him to give 
 the ring, and places his love in the scale to ' be valued 'gainst 
 his wife's commandment ; ' love and friendship come into a final 
 collision, amusing to the spectator, but most serious to those 
 tested by it : friendship must carry the day, if love is to be 
 genuine. He makes his wife secondary to his friend, because 
 he had obtained his wife only by means of his friend. And 
 he thus proves in an emergency, which placed a painful choice 
 before him, that he was in earnest in those words, that he would 
 sacrifice his wife to his friend in order that his friend might 
 not fall a sacrifice to his wife. He proves in this severe Brutus- 
 like sentence against that which was his dearest treasure that 
 he is worthy of his Portia. 
 
 Such are the various characteristics of the noblest circum- 
 stances, relations, and intricacies between man and man, be- 
 tween worth and possession. Shylock. is tie contrast, which 
 we hardly need explain ; although, indeed, in this degenerated 
 age of art and morals, lowness and madness have gone so far as 
 to make a martyr on the stage out of this outcast of humanity. 
 The poet has, it is true, given to this character, in order that he 
 may not sink quite below our interest^ a perception of his^pariah- 
 condition, and has imputed his outbursts of hatred against 
 Christians and aristocrats partly to genuine grounds of annoy- 
 ance. Moreover, in his delineation of the usurer he has not 
 been biassed by the hatred of the Christians of. that time 
 against all that was Jewish^ otherwise he would not have im- 
 parted to Jessica her lovely character. But of the emancipa- 
 tion of the Jew he knew indeed nothing, and least of all of the 
 emancipation of this Jew, whom Burbage in Shakespeare's 
 time acted in a character of frightful exterior, with long nose 
 and ted hair, and whose inward deformity and hardened nature 
 were far less the result of religious bigotry than of the most 
 terrible of all fanaticism, that of avarice and usury. He hates 
 indeed the Christians as Christians, aiid therefore Antonio who 
 has mistreated him; but he hates him far more because by 
 disinterestedness, by what he calls ' low simplicity,' he destroys 
 his business, because he lends out money gratis, brings down 
 the rate of usance, and has lost him half a million. Eiches 
 have made him the greatest contrast to that which they have 
 rendered Antonio, who throughout appears indifferent, in- 
 cautious, careless, and generous. Shylook on the other hand 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 245 
 
 is meanly careful, cautiously circumspect, and systematically 
 quiet, ever shufflingly occupied as a genuine son of his race, 
 not disdaining the most contemptible means nor the most 
 contemptible object, speculating in the gaining of a penny, and 
 looking so far intothe future and into small results that he 
 sends the greedy Launcelot into Bassanio's service, and against 
 his principle eats at night at Bassanio's house, only for the 
 sake of feeding upon the prodig;al Christian. This trait is 
 given to him by the poet in a tnily masterly manner, in order 
 subsequently to explain the barbarous condition on which he 
 lends Antonio that fatal sum. Shakespeare after his habit 
 has done the utmost to give probability to this most improb- 
 able degree of cruelty, which, according to Bacon, appears in 
 itself a fabulous tragic fiction to every honest mind. Antonio 
 has mistreated him ; at the moment of the loan he was as like 
 to mistreat him again ; he challenges him to lend it as to an 
 enemy ; he almost suggests to him the idea, which the - Jew 
 places, as if jestingly, as a condition of the loan ; and he, the 
 man railed at for usury, is ready generously to grant it with- 
 out interest to the man who never borrowed upon advantage. 
 The same crafty speculation and reckoning, attended at all 
 events with one advantage, underlie this proposal ; in one case 
 it has the show of disinterestedness, in the other it promises 
 opportunity for a fearful revenge. If the Jew really had only 
 partially trifled with the idea of such a revenge, the poet does 
 everything to make the jest fearfully earnest. Money had 
 effaced everything human from the heart of this man, he knows 
 nothing of religion and moral law but when he quotes the Bible 
 in justification of his usury ; he knows of no mercy but that to 
 which he may be compelled,; there is no justice and mercy in 
 his heart nor any of the love of kindred. His daughter is 
 carried away from him ; he is furious, not because he is 
 robbed of her, but because she has robbed him in her flight ; 
 he would see his daughter dead at his feet, provided that the 
 jewels and gems were in her ears ; he would see her ' hearsed ' 
 before him, provided the ducats were in her coffin. He regrets 
 the money employed in her pursuit ; when he hears of her 
 extravagance, the irretrievable loss of his ducats occasions - 
 fresh rage. In this condition he pants for revenge against 
 Antonio even before there is any prospect of it, against the 
 man who by long mortifications had stirred up rage and hatred 
 in the bosom of the Jew, and with whose removal his usury 
 
2.46 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETBY^ 
 
 would be without, an adversary. Obduracy and callousness con-- 
 tinue to progress in Mm, until at the pitch of his wickedness 
 he falls into the pit he had dug ; and then, according to the 
 notions of the age, he learns from the conduct of Antonio and 
 of the Duke that mercy exercised in a Christian spirit produces 
 olher actions than those suggested by the unmerciful god of 
 the world, who had imposed upon him its laws alone. This 
 awful picture of .the eifects of a thirst for possession, however 
 strongly it is exhibited j will not appear as a caricature to him 
 who has met with similar instances in the actual world, in the 
 histories of gamblers and misers. 
 
 The interpretation which we have thus given to the Mer- 
 chant of Venice perfectly coincides with all the characters of 
 the play, and even with the subordinate ones. The self-interested 
 suitors of Portia, corrupted by glitter and show, choose amiss. 
 The parasitical companions of Antonio forsake him with his 
 fortune ; those loquacious^acquaintances, though foreboding his 
 danger before he does, do not even write to Bassanio. Again, 
 Lorenzo and Jessica — an extravagant, giddy couple, free from 
 restraint — squander their pilfered gold in Genoa, and give it 
 away for monkeys, and reach Belmont like famished people. 
 The little Jessica is placed no higher by the poet than she 
 could be ; brought up, as she was, without a mother, in the 
 society of Shylock and Laimcelot, with a mind entirely child- 
 like, naive, true, and spotless ; and if we may trust Lorenzo's 
 words and her sure perception of the greatness of Portia, with 
 a capacity for true wisdom. Thus as she is, she is a thoroughly 
 modest child, whom on the threshold of moral consciousness 
 unnatural circumstances have driven to feel ashamed of her 
 father, and to fly from him concealed in, boy's clothes — a dress 
 painful to her easily excited modesty. Thus delicately, femi- 
 nine, she has no scruples of conscience in stealing the ducats and 
 the jewels of her father. A new. relation to : possession is ex- 
 hibited in this nature : it is that of the inexperienced chUd, 
 totally unacquainted with the value of money, who innocently 
 throws it away in trifles, having learnt in her paternal home 
 neither domestic habits nor economy. In this Lorenzo is only 
 too congenial with her, although be would have her believe 
 that he was as a man what Portia is as a woman ; Antonio, 
 who knows them better, takes both under his guardianship, and 
 manages their inheritance for them. Laxincelot also bears a 
 relation to the common idea of the piece. Greedy and rough 
 
THE NEECHANT OF VENICE. 247 
 
 as he is, he also is inclined to lack economy ; thus knowing 
 Bassanio, and aware that he would live better in the house of 
 the Jew, out of a sense of honour he prefers to go to the 
 generous poor man than remain with the rich miser. Other- 
 wise the scene with bis father, as we have aliready pointed out, 
 is exhibited in parodic contrast to Jessica's relation to hers. 
 The emphasis of the scene lies in the words that the son of 
 a father must ever come to light, that childlike feeling can 
 never be renounced, not even by so coarse and blunt a fellow 
 as this. How much more should this be the case with a being 
 so ethereal as Jessica ! But that it is not so is the strongest 
 shadow thrown by the poet upon Shylock ; he has not designed 
 by it to cast any upon Jessica. 'She is damn'd,' says Shylock. 
 'That's certain, if the devil may be her judge,' answers 
 Salarino.' 
 
II. HISTORICAL PLAYS. 
 
 We have gone through the group of lovfe-plays belonging 
 to the second period of Shakespeare's dramatic poetry, and 
 we turn now to the group of historical plays, which are arranged 
 according to time in the following manner: — Kichard III., 
 which is closely linked by its subject with the three parts of 
 Henry VI., already discussed, stands also as regards time as 
 the first of Shakespeare's independent histories. The composi- 
 tion of the latter parts of Henry VI. may be assigned a date' 
 not long, prior to 1592; Collier places Richard III. in 1593, 
 and subsequent editors assume that it was written somewhat 
 later, not long before the first publication of the piece in 1597. 
 In opposition to the tetralogy thus completed of the rise and fall 
 of the house of York, Shakespeare next prepar,ed the tetralogy 
 of the rise of the House of Lancaster ; Eichard II., printed 
 likewise in 1597, must have been written between Eichard III. 
 and Henry IV., certainly not long after the first of these plays; 
 the two parts of Henry IV. were written between 1597-98, and 
 Henry V. in 1597. King John is distinct from this series, both 
 in subject and purport; as regards the time of its -origin, it 
 belongs to this second period of the poet's writings (before 1598). 
 Henry VIII. alone belongs to the third period, and for this 
 and other reasons it will be discussed in another place. 
 
 The poet here passes into a distinctly opposite sphere. 
 Hitherto we have seen him in the range of private life and of 
 personal existence, insinuating himself into the internal history 
 of single individuals, or occupied with the productions of their 
 brain. Here, in this series of historical plays, he enters the 
 wide outward sphere of public life ; he is occupied with states 
 and histories, and is stirred by, thoughts political and national, 
 and not merely by moral ideas and psychological truths. And 
 in this field of action and noble ambition the poet shows him- 
 self no less at ease than in the regions of man's internal life of 
 
mSTOBICAL. INLAYS. 249 
 
 thought and feeling. Fettered by historical tradition, and by 
 the sober reality of the subject, he is as a poet no less great than 
 in the fantastic creations of the comedies which are his own 
 invention. We feel the boundless scope which this twofold 
 diffusion of the mind of Shakespeare gave to his poetry ; we 
 shall only endeavour to illustrate by a single comparison, easily 
 understood by us Germans, the superiority of human gifts 
 which this two-sided nature manifests. It was Goethe's re- 
 peated complaint that h<e lacked the great historical and 
 political life in which Shakespeare moved, and that great 
 market of popular intercourse, which might have accustomed 
 him early to a comprehensive historical survey ; and we cannot 
 but acknowledge that from this want his poetic genius, ^owever 
 great in our esteem, becanie contracted and stunted, and re- 
 mained below the measure of that which, under other circum- 
 stances, it would have accomplished and effected. That which 
 Shakespeare united in himself was divided between our two 
 dramatists ; the great historical life of outward action appears 
 in the historical dramas of Schiller, to whom the inner nature 
 of man was not revealed with such rich and pure exp^ehcfes as 
 to Goethe ; and on the other hand the inner life of the indi- 
 vidual soul is portrayed in Goethe, to whom, on the contrary, 
 history was strange and unfamiliar. By this division the life 
 of thought and feeling, and the world of sentiments and ideas, 
 contained in the poems of the one, is generally deprived of the 
 great background of national or political life upon which 
 Shakespeare almost always placed his pictures of private and 
 individual life ; and in the historical plays of the other we miss 
 the psychological many-sidedness and the fulness of individual 
 characterisation which is never wanting in Shakespeare's 
 histories. We possess a whole in two halves, which is far from 
 being the same as possessing the whole as a whole. For on 
 this very account we have split into parties under two writers, 
 while England belongs entirely and undividedly to one ; in the 
 passion of this party feeling we become infatuated in favour of 
 the one, whilst the nature and being of both combined alone 
 .constitutes the image of a perfect humanity, worthy of our 
 devoted admiration. 
 
 If we consider the series of the historical dramas in them- 
 selves, and investigate their merits as belonging to a different 
 style of dramatic writing, the first thing which strikes us is 
 their national and' political ' importance. The English possess 
 
250 SECOND FEBIOB OF SHAKESPEARE'S DEAMATW FOETEY. 
 
 in this group of plays, as Schlegel said, a great dramatic epopefe 
 with which no other nation has aught to compare. Ahnost all 
 historical plays — even the non-Shakespeare ones included, the 
 material for which is taken from English history^-were created 
 by the English stage in not much more than a single decade, 
 in the happiest period of the happy age of Elizabeth, when 
 the whole English people were in a state of rare national 
 elevation. Previous to her reign the national feeling of Eng- 
 land had increased for the first time, and its knightly fame, in 
 an age when nations were still unacquainted with each other, 
 had penetrated throughout all Europe in the time of Edward 
 III. and Henry T., when the small island people had vic- 
 toriously stood in the midst of France. Subsequently its 
 power and its self-reliance had utterly declined through internal 
 party strife and the loss of former conqtiests, and had only 
 slowly revived since Henry VII. It was not until Elizabeth's 
 time that English history again assumed an aspect, which 
 reminded the masses of the people of their fatherland, and 
 again offered food for national feeling. The honoured queen 
 was mistress over the arms and the intrigues of her enemies — 
 France, the Pope, and Spain — and fortune wonderfully favoured 
 her efforts ; the English people learned to feel themselves on 
 the superior ground of Protestantism compared to the dark 
 religion of Spain ; the English maritime power was at that 
 time first really established, and it exulted at the outset in the 
 most promising victories. If we trace the effects of these 
 public political circumstances upon the literature of England, 
 its historical dramas are the first thing that occur to us. In 
 Shakespeare's King John, and in the older drama upon which 
 it rests, how completely Protestant self-reliance is exhibited, 
 and how firmly and securely in Henry VIII. are those in- 
 fluences extolled which procured the first entrance of the true 
 worship of God in England. How eloquently in Eichard II., 
 and in Henry V. and VI., not only does the patriotic spirit of 
 the poet speak, but also the self-appreciation of a people who 
 have again learned to know themselves in the happy sequence 
 of events. How the political heart throbs throughout them, 
 how repeatedly in Shakespeare is that Themist^ocles' counsel 
 -advanced, which enjoins on England to place all her power and 
 confidence on her coast and her vessels, a ooimsel which has 
 been repeated numberless times by orators in Parliament, with 
 Shakespearian quotations. The whole age influenced the crea- 
 
HISTOSICAL FLAYS. 251 
 
 tion and the spirit of these historical plays^ and these again had. 
 a corresponding influence upon the patriotic spirit of the people. 
 It is still the chief design of these works to remind the English 
 people of the earlier period of their political greatness, and to, 
 bring again before them their Edwards, their Henrys, their 
 Talbots, and the terrors of the French. It is, however, obvious 
 in itself of what consequence this must have been in an ag& 
 when the self-forgetfulness of nations was general, and when 
 history was but little read. A national history, not to be read 
 but to be looked at — now galling by the representation of shame- 
 ful discords and defeats, now raising and animating by the. 
 description of great deeds of old^must have been indeed a 
 possession at that time for an imaginative rising people, when 
 even at the present day these plays have preserved the same 
 signification, and when statesmen like Marlborough and Chatham, 
 acknowledge of themselves that Shakespeare was the first source 
 of their knowledge of English history. ' What EngUsh blood,' 
 exclaims Thomas Heywood in his ' Apology for Actors ' (1612), 
 ' seeing the person of any bold Englishman presented in our 
 national histories, and doth not hug his fame and cherish his 
 valour, pursuing him in his enterprise with his best wishes, as 
 if the personator were the man personated ? What coward, to- 
 see his countryman valiant, would not be ashamed of his own 
 cowardice ? What English prince, should he behold Henry V.,. 
 or the portraiture of that famous Edward III., foraging France, 
 taking so great a king captive in his own coimtry, would not be. 
 suddenly inflamed with so royal a spectacle ? ' ' Where is the 
 man,' he writes in another passage, ' where is the man of that, 
 weak capacity that cannot discourse of any notable thing re- 
 corded even from William the Conqueror, nay, from the landing 
 of Brutus until this day? For the historical plays teach 
 history to those who cannot read it in the Chronicles ; these 
 plays are written with this aim, to teach subjects obedience^ 
 to represent the untimely ends of such as have moved insur- 
 rections, and the flourishing estate of such as prove themselves 
 faithful and keep clear of traitorous stratagems.' 
 
 This common political and patriotic significance of these 
 plays is far greater than their historical value in itself. W. 
 Schlegel went so far as to say that ' in Shakespeare's histories 
 the leading features of events were so faithfully conceived, their 
 causes and even their secret motives so clearly penetrated, that 
 the truth of history might be learned from them.' This is in 
 
252 SECOND PESIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DB AM ATW POETRY. 
 
 no wise the case, and this indeed for one reason. The exact 
 features of history, and the true motives of actions, are to be 
 learned thoroughly only from the most conscientious comparison ' 
 and examination of all possible contemporaneous sources. But 
 Shakespeare was far from taking upon himMf this business of 
 the historian, and he has acted wisely. He has essentially fol- 
 lowed only one single authority, namely, Holinshed's ' Chronicle,' 
 which appeared in 1577 in two folio volumes, and in an enlarged, 
 edition in 15&6-87. How far he made use of this authority, 
 and of few other historical sources, how far he adhered to it or 
 departed from it, has been pointed out by Courtenay in his 
 ' Commentaries on the Historical Plays of Shakespeare' (1840) ; 
 and he comes to the conclusion that the historical value of these 
 plays must not be too highly estimated, a conclusion which is 
 not derogatory to the poet, but much rather invests him with 
 greater honour. Shakespeare has had but one law in using 
 each and all his sources, a law which he applied equally to the 
 driest historical chronicle as to the most fantastic novel— -he 
 sought after nature and inner truth ; of this he took possession 
 as his property wherever he found it, and the opposite he re- 
 jected, whatever the authority that proffered it to him. He 
 found in Plutarch historical traits and motives portrayed in 
 the simple nature of antiquity, traits unconditionally agreeable 
 to his human mode of reflection, and he transcribed them intact- 
 with remarkable self-denial in his Eoman plays ; on the other 
 hand, he met with a crude circiunstance, apart from all motive, 
 in a fragmentary chronicle of Prince Hamlet, and from it, with 
 self-inventive power, he formed that profound poem of actions 
 and motives which must entirely be regarded as his property. 
 Occupying a middle position between these two extremes of 
 availability, he found historical annals in Holinshed intermixed 
 with uncertain legends and myths, and he observed towards this 
 chronicle throughout the same conduct, modifying, according 
 to the nature of the sources put before him, the freedom and 
 constraint with which he used them. He brought together a 
 series of facts which displayed a unity of action, he respected the 
 law of inward truth, and iiot that of chronology, nor of that 
 which -may be called outward truth ; he referred different actions 
 to the same cause and to the same author, in order that he 
 might avail himself of the riches of history without renouncing 
 unity of action, and he rejected other facts unsuited to this unity. 
 The historian has to beware of trying to guess at the motives 
 
mSTORICAL FLAYS. 253 
 
 of men from sources like Holinshed's' Chronicle;' to invent them 
 wotild be on his side a perfect mistaking of his science and its 
 object ; but it is in these secret precincts of history that Shake- 
 speare penetrates boldly with the pragmatic treatment of the 
 poet. "Where the historian, bound by an oath to the severest 
 truth in every single statement, can, ,at the most, only permit 
 us to divine the causes of events and the motives of actions 
 from the bare narration of facts, the poet, who seeks to draw 
 from these facts only a general moral truth, and not one of fact, 
 unites by poetic fiction the actions and the actors in a distinct 
 Kving relation of cause and effect. The more freely 9.nd boldly 
 he does this, as Shakespeare has done in Eichard III., the more 
 poetically interesting will his treatment of the history become, 
 but the more wiH it lose its historicar value; the more truly and 
 closely he adheres to reality, as in Eichard II., the more will his 
 poetry gain in historical meaning and forfeit in poetic splendour. 
 Shakespeare has even here prescribed no rigid rule once for 
 ever ; he allowed himself to be influenced by the nature of the 
 subject, sometimes to the more free, sometimes to the more 
 fettered mode of treatment. Only to one law does he appear 
 to iadhere throughout this class : that when desig^ning a poetical 
 organisation of an .historical subject, he does not, like Schiller, 
 interweave with it imaginary actions which interfere with the 
 historical connection of events without in any way belonging to 
 the history. In Henry IV., where he went furthest in this 
 respect, he did so in portraying one specially individualised 
 character, such as Henry V., when the ethical aim surpassed the 
 political and historical purpose ; but even then these additions 
 do not really interfere with the historical events. It is a com- 
 mon pride on the part of the poets of these historical plays, and 
 a natural peculiarity belonging to this branch of the art, that 
 truth and poetry should go hand in hand. It is more than 
 |)robable that Henry VIII. bore at first the title so characteristic 
 in this respect — All is True. But this truth is throughout, as 
 we have seen, not to be taken in the prosaic sense of thie his- 
 torian, who seeks it in the historical material in every most 
 minute particular and in its most different aspects ; it is only a 
 higher and universal truth, which is gathered by the poet from 
 a series of historical facts, yet which, from the very circumstance 
 that it springs from historical, true, and actual facts, and is supr 
 ported and upheld by them, acquires, it must be admitted, a 
 doublecauthority, that of poetry and of history combined, c The 
 
254 SECOND FEEJOD OF SHAKE8PEASE' S DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 historical drama, foraied of these two component parts, is there- 
 fore especially agreeable to the imaginative friend of history and 
 to the realistic friend of poetry. 
 
 Considered in this point of view, it has been a strange 
 fancy on the part of om* Eomanticists, little inclined as they 
 are to realistic poetry, to make a show of wishing to raise 
 these historical plays of Shakespeare above all his other works. 
 A series of these plays is certainly read with as much pleasure 
 as the more independent tragedies of Shakespeare, but per- 
 haps only because a psychologically interesting character, as 
 in Eichard III., or non-historical elements, as in Henry IV., 
 form the attraction. Shakespeare has not drawn any severe line 
 of division between history and the independent drama. Many 
 of these plays, owing to the favourable nature of the material or 
 the greatness of the poet, have become tragedies to which every 
 aesthetic rule may be applied, and from which, therefore, a 
 purely artistic enjoyment may be derived. But just where the 
 history is purest, as in Eichard HI., we have to work our way 
 through heavy matter, which appears to check the flight of the 
 poet as well as our own, and which must be mastered almost by 
 historical study ; but when it is mastered, it affords, it must be 
 admitted, a new and increasing enjoyment, such as we seek for 
 in vain in dramas not historical. Before considering Shake- 
 speare's historical plays separately, we will endeavour to premise 
 wherein lies this double quality supplied by the historical matter, 
 which on the one hand adds an intellectual value to the play, 
 and on the other detracts from its aesthetic merit. 
 
 With regard first to the latter point, historical truth inspires 
 the poet with such great awe, and he feels himself so constrained 
 by it, that he forfeits at any rate freedom of choice, and, to a 
 certain extent, freedom of treatment. When he sought material 
 among the tales and myths of the Middle Ages, his choice was 
 incomparably more extensive, and he could ever grasp the boldest 
 poetical subject; the motives, moreover, entirely rested with 
 himself. But in the history of his country, a subject like Henry V. 
 had often great weight historically, while poetically it was very 
 «mpty ; causes and motives were here frequently dictated by 
 the events. To invest the historical story with a charm like 
 that of the myth and legend which is poetic in its origin, and 
 with the vigour that marks the exciting catastrophe of a freely 
 invented story, and with the interest that lies in a fascinating 
 plot, is only possible to the poet, when, as in Macbeth, he hai 
 
HISTORICAL PLAYS. 255 
 
 heiore him an historical myth, that is to say, not a strictly 
 historical matter ; it is at best possible only in rare cases, when 
 history strikingly harmonises with poetry. The common course 
 of history presents only the daily detail of actual life, and is 
 destitute of the poetic stimulant. For the perfect drama, the 
 plot of which, according to Aristotle, ought to comprise a fasci- 
 nating entanglement and its solution, a misunderstanding and 
 its explanation, and in which, in consequence of this entangle- 
 ment, a sudden change from happiness to misfortune, or from 
 misfortune to happiness, occurs — for such a poetic dramatic 
 creation as this, history very rarely presents a favourable subject. 
 It is not the happy and exciting arrangement of facts, artistically 
 calculated to arouse our sympathy and fear, which in Henry V., 
 in Henry VI., and in Eichard II., is the prevailing charm that 
 meets us in poetic form ; the course of the action is, on the 
 contrary, even and smooth, its elevating character lies in the 
 greatness of the facts, in the subject more than in the form, and 
 that which is especially attractive is the historical value of the 
 matter. As with the story, so it is with the characters. A series 
 of historical facts might present to the poet a truth worthy of 
 handling, but it might not be linked with characters invested 
 with the alluring splendour of poetry, romance, and heroism. 
 This consideration did not withhold him from writing a poem 
 of the history of Henry V., who is not a character of imposing 
 pathos, nor of tragic effect, but whose life runs rather in the 
 quiet flow of the epos, and displays an ethical nature, the unpre- 
 -tending greatness of which is, however, just as attractive to the 
 thoughtful reader as the highly-excited passion of a Macbeth or 
 an Othello. And as it is with the story and the characters, so is 
 it with the representation. History is frequently only a combi- 
 nation of given facts and their given causes, a dramatised 
 chronicle. The scenes which carry on the political action are 
 destitute of the attraction of poetic diction, and often even of 
 individual and exact characterisation of the actors. If indeed we 
 examinemore closely, we shallfind that even here the psychological 
 deficiencies of the chronicle have been acutely and wisely sup- 
 plied, and that the apparently slight work of versifying historical 
 scenes is rich in internal difficulty, Thus the diction of these 
 historical plays is less poetically elevated, and the sober matter 
 of reality fetters the wings of poetic language ; but even on this 
 point we can perceiye a great advantage conferred on English 
 dramatic poetry by the substantial nature of these plays. It led 
 
256 SECOND FEBIOD OF SBAKESPEABE'S DEAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 the dramatist from rhyme, from the style of conceits and anti- 
 theses, and from all the false tinsel of poetry ; and it is evident 
 that it was not till Shakespeare was passing and had passed 
 through this school that he acquired his perfect manner of 
 dramatic representation. G-athering all together, it follows 
 from what we have said, and it is felt by aU without this analysis, 
 that the poetical charm of these historical plays is inferior to 
 that of Shakespeare's independent dramas, owing to natural 
 causes belonging to the historical material ; but that this his- 
 torical material indicates in the poet another peculiar merit, to 
 which non-historical dramas can lay less claim. It now remains 
 to exhibit this merit more distinctly. 
 
 In contrast to the historical play, the free poetic drama may 
 be looked upon, as regards material, as the private domestic 
 play, pervaded by one common moral idea, which in the other 
 is expanded- into a political one. The persons of the non-his- 
 torical drama are morally responsible, as it were, only towards 
 themselves and the small circle near them whom their deeds 
 affect ; the historical characters, on the other hand, bear a wider 
 political, responsibility, and their actions influence an incom^ 
 parably wider circle. The conduct of men to whom the 
 management of. the state is entrusted concerns whole countries 
 and peoples, and extends its influence far beyond the time which 
 their own life comprehends. If by happy selection or invention, 
 the story of a non-historical drama acquires a boundless depth 
 and imitrinsic value from dts delineation of gigantic passions, 
 on the other hand, a happily chosen historical story possesses by 
 nature a boundless comprehensiveness and a ivider value, de- 
 pendent upon the e;xtent of the background both as regards 
 time and space ; that is* to say, upon the historical ground itself, 
 which therefore no non-historical drama can present. It is 
 this wide-spread responsibility, this extensive agency of the 
 political actor, which has compelled the acceptance of another 
 moral law and another moral standard for history than that 
 relating to private life. In public life faults are amplified into 
 vices, and crimes again are softened into pardonable faults by 
 the mere measure of greater circumstances. In the historical 
 world we look with less sympathy upon individuals who fall as 
 a sacrifice, when their fall profits the whole community; we 
 look on those who sacrifice them with moderated blame, when 
 they appear as the vehicle for higher aims. On the other hand, 
 weakness of character in private life often appears only a laugh- 
 
HmTOEICAL '■ PLAYS. 257 
 
 able, inoffensive, and even a beneficial fault ; but in Henry VI. 
 we have seen that upon the throne it is equal in the scale to 
 the fearful weight of the most frightful crimes, because it dis- 
 turbs and destroys a whole State.. To BrackenlDurg, in Egmont, 
 Groethe probably wished to give with the name the same dispo- 
 sition of character which Brackenbury bears in Eichard III.; 
 this one comparison between the pitiable weak prey to love and 
 the detestable passive instrument of Eichard's bloody schemes 
 teaches at a glance what a far more extensive interest is im- 
 parted to the same nature by a mere public and political posi- 
 tion, and in what a different light it appears in domestic life. 
 This enlarged , sphere and this greater ethical standard are 
 obtained by the poet when he enters the historical world, and 
 comprises all the breadth of history within the narrow limits of 
 the drama. Beyond this Shakespeare knew no positive law 
 which suited all cases. His comprehensive eye, therefore, was 
 naturally attracted by these materials, which showed hinl the 
 work and conduct of man in an entirely new view. He found 
 ideas in these materials which were capable of a poetic mode of 
 contemplation, and were of quite another nature to that pre- 
 sented by the common tragedies and comedies ; the thoughts 
 which strike us in these plays are not merely generally of a 
 moral, but at the same time of a political nature. As such, 
 they are not capable of severe formal concentration ; their 
 representation required and necessitated a succession of circum- 
 stances and changes which can alone render perceptible to the 
 senses the results of political actions ; if it were conceivable for 
 a poet to catch a political idea without being incited by the 
 history, he would be obliged to give it a wide historical basis, 
 in order to render apparent the nature of the political actions 
 and their wide-spreading effects. Nothing is, therefore, more 
 natural than that Shakespeare should find the scope of one 
 drama too narrow for his dramatic treatment of history, and 
 that his .histories should twice group themselves into tetralogies, 
 both of which work out the same idea, which a less lengthened 
 material would only have rendered imperfectly perceptible. 
 The representation of ideas that step beyond the domestic circle, 
 of characters whose moral development requires just as much 
 breadth as the passionate nature of tragic ch9,rac;ters deniands 
 depth, of actions incapable of compression into one catastrophe, ' 
 and requiring rather epic fulness, all this has been accomplished 
 by Shakespeare in his histories, and he has thus enriched 
 
258 SECOND PERIOD. OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 dramatic poetry with a new species, which offers to the serious 
 reader less poetic enjoyment but more ample matter for re- 
 flection. 
 
 We have before observed, 'when we discussed Henry VL, 
 that Shakiespeare, even when he elaborated these pieces after 
 Grreene's original, had surveyed already, as a whole, the history 
 of the strife of the red and white Eoses ; that he had penetrated 
 the poetic value of these events, and probably even at the early 
 commencement had conceived the double plan, in the first place 
 ■of completing the tragic decline of the House of York, adding 
 JRichard III. to the last part of Henry VL, and then of placing 
 in opposition to this tetralogy the corresponding one of the 
 rise of the House of Lancaster. We also remarked there that 
 the idea which pervades the whole cycle of these eight pieces 
 is the question as to what relation the claims of the hereditary 
 right of the incapable, however good, who endanger throne and 
 country, bear to the claims of the merit of the capable, however 
 bad, if they save and maintain the State. We will give our 
 attention to this subject, considering first of all the close of the 
 York tragedy, Eichard IIL 
 
EICHAED ni. 
 
 It has before been incidentally mentioned that a Latin drama 
 upon Eiohard III. was performed at Cambridge by Dr. Legge 
 preirious to 1583, and that an English tragedy, 'the true 
 tragedy of Eichard III.,' appeared in print in 1594, though it 
 may have been written about the year 1588. Both are pub- 
 lished in the writings of the Shakespeare Society. The first is 
 an exercise of style and verse extended into three parts, and 
 reminding us here and there of ShiEikespeare's work, only because 
 the author uses the same historical source ; the insignificant 
 English piece,, on the contrary, must have been known to 
 Shakespeare, although his work scarcely shows any reminiscence 
 of it. Eichard III. is Shakespeare's first tragedy of undoubted 
 personal authorship; it is written in coimectionwith Henry VI., 
 and appears as its direct continuation. The opening scene, in' 
 which Eichard reflects upon the path before him, is the sequel 
 to the similar soliloquy in Henry VI. (Part III. Act iii. sc. 2). 
 In many touches of character, the poet refers to that play; 
 Eichard's plan of casting suspicion upon Clarence is there pre- 
 pared for ; the whole position of the aged Margaret is traced to 
 the curse which York pronounced against her in Henry VI. 
 (Part III. Act I. sc. 4). Yet here, as in Henry VI., the pure 
 dramatic form is not so universally adhered to as in Eichard II., 
 -which immediately follows. In the scenes where the trilogy of 
 the common lamentation of the women (Act ii. sc. 2, and 
 Act IT. sc. 1) alternates like a chorus, dramatic truth is sacri- 
 ficed to the lyric or epic form, and to conceits in the style of 
 the pastoral Italian poetry; these scenes call to mind the 
 passages in Henry VI., where the murderers of father and son 
 lament over the slain. The form of these scenes {(rrv)(pfU)6iaC) 
 is borrowed from the ancient drama, of which the older plays of 
 Shakespeare repeatedly remind us. Thus the introduction of 
 Dira, of the uttered curse and its fulfilment, is quite- in the 
 
 e2 
 
260 SECOND FEEIOD OF SHAKESPEAEE' 8 DSAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 spirit of antiquity ; and here again the clumsy accumulation of 
 the curses of that fearful Margaret betrays the incipient tragic 
 poet. In all this, Eichard III. shows extraordinary progress 
 when compared to Henry VI, Even in his knowledge of the 
 historical facts, Shakespeare is here more exact and certain 
 than his predecessor in Henry VI,, in which play he had himself 
 shown -no improvement on this point; the conformity to the 
 Chronicle in all the actions taken from it, comprising a period 
 of fourteen years, is extraordinarily true. The poetic diction, 
 however much it reminds us of Henry VI,, has gained sur- 
 prisingly in finish, richness, and truth ; we need only compare 
 the words of Anne at the beginning (Act i, sc. 2) with the best 
 parts of Henry VI,, to find how thoroughly they are animated 
 •with the breath of passion, how pure and natural is their flow,, 
 and how entirely the expression is but the echo of the feeling.. 
 In the design of his characters he has greatly advanced in variety 
 and individual acuteness ; Shakespeare himself has not often 
 again succeeded in depicting with such scanty means, and in 
 colours so life-like and agreeable, such complete types 6f cha- 
 racter as the two princes. But even this characterisation 
 has the peculiarity of Shakespeare's earlier works, and is plain,, 
 open, and over-evident; whilst immediately afterwards, in 
 Eichard II., we see the inclination to conceal the key to the 
 characters as deeply as possible. Lastly, the plainest internal 
 evidence as to the comparatively early origjh of Eichard III. is 
 the abundance of tragic motives and moments 'in this tragedy,, 
 the accumulation of bloody crimes which the poet has imputed 
 to the hero, to some extent without the warrant of historical 
 I'testimony, and the bitter severity with which he displays the 
 historical icircmnstances- : showing the dreadfol results of civil 
 war on a base and riiined house, and how.pn its ruin the most 
 depraved among the depraved elevates himself, tiU he too is 
 buried in the common fall. 
 
 If we would in the first place more accurately understand 
 the basis on which Shakespeare constructs his tragedy, it will 
 assist us much to remember the various plays on the Wars of 
 the Eoses, in their due succession. In Eichard II. the spoiled 
 scion of the Black Prince stands young and feeble amid the 
 great ambitious, men of a proud alid warlike nobility. In 
 Henry IV, this nobility appears in powerful contest with the • 
 new ruler.- In Henry V.'b time, patriotic heroism has become 
 a kind of cpmnjon property. In the time of Henry VL' those 
 
EIOHAMD m. 261 
 
 heroic forms, Talbot, Bedford, and Salisbury, are still conspicuous; 
 they are then lost in the struggles with France and in domestic 
 •civil wars. In Edward IV.'s time appears that Earl of Warwick, 
 the last representative of the nobles of the old race, whose fall 
 "marks the ruin of the armed aristocracy and the commencement 
 of a new civil order. The peace which succeeded to the great 
 bloody drama of internal strife under Edward PV. is strikingly 
 characterised by Shakespeare in the last acts of Henry VI. and 
 in the first of Edward III. The civil war had ceased ; but a 
 domestic war in the ruling family forms a fearful sequel, and 
 at last turns the royal palace into a slaughter-house. On account 
 of a foolish prophecy the king prosecutes his faithful helper, his 
 brother Clarence. The poor upstart family of his wife beset 
 the throne greedily and with offensive arrogance, and foster the 
 hatred which without them was already growing up among the 
 brothers of the house of York. Even in Henry VI. the two 
 young brothers had disdained the low inclination of the king in 
 his union with an inferior family ; in Richard III. he continues 
 his voluptuous life with Mistress Shore, and his Hastings shares 
 it with him. This sincere friend of the king, who even after 
 his sovereign's death is opposed to (rloster's scheme for the young 
 princes, is thrown into prison by the queen's relatives, and is 
 released only through the favour of that amorous enchantress 
 who holds the king enchained. A deadly hatred is thus sown 
 against the friends of the queen, and this hatred is stirred up 
 by Gloster both in him and in Buckingham. In this state of 
 things the king's sickness happens ; on his death-bed a pretended 
 peace, as the Chronicle says, behind which secret plots lurk, is 
 made between Ghrey and Rivers, the relatives of the queen, and 
 Hastings and Buckingham, their enemies. The public voice 
 (Act II. sc. 3.) compares the bad state of things, when Henry 
 VI. stood surrounded by So many grave counsellors and relatives 
 solely on his father's side, with the present state, when the re- 
 latives on both sides full of emulation and envy are opposed to 
 each other ; ' by a divine instinct '—these words Shakespeare 
 indeed found in the Chronicle — ' men's minds mistrust ensuing 
 danger.' 'The position of things,' says Holinshed, 'and the 
 temper of men was such, that no one could say whom he ought 
 to trust, and whom he ought to fear.' There was a universal 
 birth of hostility and hypocrisy, of inversion and dissimulation, 
 and Shakespeare is historically fully justified in representing 
 the age as a bare desert in men and characters, extirpated as 
 
262 SECOND PEBIOO OF SHAKEaPEABE' 8 DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 they had been in the immeBise ravages of the civil wars, and as 
 a field ripe with intrigues and sneaking wickedness, which had 
 grown up luxuriantly in the sudden change to peace and to Circean 
 luxury at court. Perhaps there is nothing which can initiate 
 the mind so instantaneously into the historical feeling of our 
 poet, and at the same time reveal to it so deeply the great 
 moral earnestness with which he laboured at his work, as com- 
 paring, his delineation of the times of Edward IV. with the first 
 part of the play of that name by Thomas Heywood, in which the 
 intercourse of the king with the tanner of Tamworth and Jane 
 Shore is represented as harmless, just as if we had to do with, a 
 merry age and an innocent condition of society. 
 
 At this period, and in such company, the fearful Gloster 
 appears with the dangerous consciousness of the superiority of 
 his endowments, and at the same time with acute penetration 
 into the baseness and inability of the men around him. In this 
 world, where each holds that for good which brings gain, he 
 has learned to construct his system out of the principle of evil> 
 his blind ignoble self-reliance raises him above inferior minds, 
 the pride of his intelligence elevates him above the moral law. 
 That the world belongs to the wise and strong was the principle 
 of Machiavelli, whom the poet even in Henry VI. gave him as 
 an example and master ; he saw before him, though in the dis- 
 tance, the throne, which he took as the aim of his ambition ; he 
 threw, down the dull beings around him. to serve as steps thither- 
 ward. Everything hinges upon the right understanding of this 
 character in the understanding of the whole piece. The English 
 stage has at all times felt the highest degree of interest in this 
 work for the sake of this one character. The greatest actors of 
 England — Burbage, Garrick, and Kean — have treated thisEiehard 
 as a favourite part, which even seemed especially suited to the 
 small stature of the first two of these men. Kemble has written a 
 treatise upon the conception of this character. Even in Shake-' 
 speare's time (in 1614) a poet, perhaps Christopher Brooke, wrote 
 a poem in stanzas entitled : ' the Ghost of Eichard III.,' which is 
 published in the works of the Shakespeare Society ; he alludes in 
 it with commendation to Shakespeare's tragedy. The ghost of 
 Eichard is represented, while he depicts his character, life, and 
 end ; the poem is interesting as showing how human nature 
 was understood at that period, as an evidence that even at that 
 time the effort was made to penetrate intelligently and keenly 
 into the soul of such a character* In a theme so magnificehli 
 
rnCHAED III. • 263 
 
 for dramatic art, we must not therefore neglect carefully td 
 gather together all the traits which the poet has noted down for 
 the just comprehension of this character. 
 
 The Chronicles of Holinshed and HaU contain the life of 
 Kichard for the most part in a translation of the Latin biography 
 of the king by Thomas Moore^ who had his information probably 
 from Archbishop Morton, a contemporary, the same person who. 
 appears in our play as Bishop of Ely. From this source Shake- 
 speare found the following scanty but acute touches for the 
 characterisation of his hero : ' Richard was bom with teeth, he 
 was ugly, his left shoulder higher than his right. Wickedness, 
 anger, envy, belonged to his nature, a quick sharp wit to his 
 mind. He was a good captain ; with large gifts he got him un-- 
 steadfast friendship, for which he was fain to pill and , spoil in 
 other places, and got him steadfast hatred. Close and secret, 
 a deep dissembler, lowly of countenance, he was lat the same 
 time imperious and arrogant of heart, disdainful even in death, 
 outwardly companionable where he inwardly hated, nbt letting 
 to kiss whom he thought to kill : despitious and cruel, not for 
 evil will alway, but oftener for ambition and policy.. If his 
 safety or his ambition interfered, he spared neither friend nor; 
 foe.' ■ Not one of these traits, which appear not unfrequently to. 
 contradict each other, has been omitted by Shakespeare j and we 
 might also say that he has not added one to them ; but he haS 
 given life to the lifeless touches, harmony to the contradictory, 
 and this in a manner certainly demanding the study of the 
 most profound actor, and his rarest gifts. 
 
 As the reproach of bastardy which oppresses Edmimd in 
 Lear first leads him. on the path of criminal designs, so is 
 Eichard oppressed by the unsuitableness of his ambitious mind 
 with the deformity of his body, which has deprived him from 
 the very first of even his mother's love and has subjected hint 
 to the derision of his enemies-^a deformity which his .shadow in 
 the sun showed him every hour, and to descant on which was 
 his delight. The thought gnaws him of revenging himself on 
 the injustice of nature by proving a villain, in order to mock her 
 work on his body by the deformity which he-thinks to bestow 
 on his souli In the clatter of arms, and in the time of war, his 
 military glory outshone these defects of nature, and he had no 
 leisure for descanting on thfem; but now, in the luxurious days 
 of peace, when Edward and his favourites courted the Shores, 
 military arts were no longer, esteemed, and he now: feels for the 
 
264 SECOND PEBIOD' OF SHAKESPEABE'8 SSAMATIO POETRY. 
 
 first time how unformed he is for the deeds of love ; his ill- 
 humour against the age whets his ill-humour at Ms appearance, 
 and the one acts upon the o.ther. . His political schemes urge 
 him however to attempt the work of love at the end of his ill- 
 hmnoured reflections, and he stands the test, wooing as an 
 agpreeable bridegroom, and winning where it seems most in- 
 credible; the poet robs him forthwith' of the pretence of 
 justifying his baseness by his ugliness. But whilst he now finds 
 cause to rejoice in his shadow, whilst he loses that ground for 
 self-contempt upon which he desired to base his villainous 
 designs, he acquires all the greater contempt of men, from the 
 knowledge that the young and beautiful widow of the brilliant 
 and genuinely royal Edward of Wales yields herself in a moment 
 to him who not long before had murdered her lord. 
 
 If a portion of the bitterness and soured rage that lies in 
 Eichard's nature was rooted in this self-contempt of his outward 
 appearance, his contempt of men on the other hand is grounded on 
 the liberal gifts which nature has bestowed on his mind, and on 
 the self-reliance which a comparison with the men around him 
 inspired. Of consummate powers of speech, of animated mind 
 and piercing wit, Shakespeare depicts him throughout in ac- 
 cordance with the Chronicle 5 in his hypocritical wooing of Anne, 
 in his sarcasm, and in his equivocal language, this gift of a 
 biting and malicious wit is called into play. He exhibits similar 
 adroitness in his dealings with men ; and here his contempt of 
 all, scarcely to be dissembled even by this master of dissimula- 
 tion, is clearly- manifested. He entraps the stupidly faithful 
 Clarence with tears ; he makes the sincere Hastings believe 
 even to the last that he may take every liberty with him ; he 
 leads the exasperated enemies at court to hatred and murder, 
 whilst he remains in the background ; he appears tractably to 
 follow the ambitious Buckingham, whilst he is using him as a 
 pioneer for all his secret ways ; he preys -upon his enemies by 
 means of friends and tools whom he .uses and subsequently 
 rejects. When the sails of his ambition are yet well iilled, 
 he regards the Greys, the Buckinghams, and the Stanleys as 
 inoffensive, good-natured 'simpletons, all in equal manner, 
 when indeed the first alone proves himself to be so ; the 
 second is subseq^uently called by himself ' deep, revolving, and 
 witty,' he finds him subsequently to be penetrating and cunning, 
 and the third at last catches him in the snares of .his own 
 artifices. With cruel scorn and the killing taunt of irony he 
 
BICHAED III. 365 
 
 allows the true-hearted Hastings to pride himself on his favour 
 with him, while he is casting him into the jaws of death ; 
 with sarcastic contempt he calls Buckingham his oracle, ' his 
 prophet,' when most accommodatingly he dances on his own rope ; 
 with a clumsy farce he has the crown tendered to himself by the 
 Mayor and Aldermen, in a scene which we can only represent 
 when we regard the bulk of mankind as simple spectators of the 
 tricks which few actors have skill enough to play on the world's 
 stage. To play the first part on this stage, that of the hero and 
 the king, has become in this despised society the goal of his 
 ambition, and it attracts himi all the more, the further it is re- 
 moved from him by circumstances and by a numerous kindred 
 with pre-legitimate claims. 
 
 The feeling of his mental superiority, of his political and 
 military gifts, which makes him consciously step upon the path 
 of crime and renders him the ridiculer and despiser of men, 
 makes him also a despiser of every moral law, and stamps upon 
 him that unshackled nature which disregards every tie of 
 blood, every barrier of right, and every moral scruple. To 
 regard morality and feeling, he calls in Elizabeth to be ' peevish 
 found in great designs.' He calls conscience a word that 
 cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe, and this 
 awe he has overcome. It is indifferent to him, when he at last 
 is on the way to despair, what the other side of this life may 
 bring. With this stifled conscience he appears more heartless 
 than the murderers whom he hired for Clarence and the Princes ; 
 with frightful coolness he meditates upon the death of the 
 'simple plain Clarence,' and jests over his certain prey; he 
 loves the obdurate mates, whom, with those words of Suffolk in 
 Henry VI,, he enjoins to despatch ' this thing ; ' he speaks with 
 the expression of coarse insensib^ity of the ' fellow,' the corpse 
 of the murdered king Henry VI. Thus he spreads terror 
 around him and practises the art of tyrants, that of making 
 themselves feared. He makes use of the feeling of suspense 
 succeeding the first execiitions, and proceeds with giant steps, 
 until he wades so deep in blood that sin hurries him on to sin, 
 Margaret, hungering for revenge, sees him with delight preying 
 rapaciously, like a greedy hound, upon ' the issue of his mother's 
 body.' / 
 
 This barbarity, this wild nature, the soldier spirit of the 
 man bred in war and blood, and the aristocratic pride of high birth, 
 seem at variance with the gift of consummate dissimulation, 
 
266 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 with which he is at the same time endowed, appearing now in 
 affected humility, now in decoying amiability, and now in the 
 saintly character of the pious penitent. The Chronicle indeed 
 invests him in one breath with the qualities of a pleasing 
 nature and of an arrogant heart ; and the poet also has repre- 
 sented him in rapid alternations of ungovemed outbursts of 
 rage and scorn, and then again in the gloss of the sweetest 
 language ; now he is depicted in the nature and appearance of 
 the easily sifted or of the impenetrable dissembler, and then 
 again in the character of a man of coarse manners, utterly 
 incapable of the arts qf flattery and dissimulation. It has been 
 doubted whether these different qualities could be compatible. 
 Could a man to whom hypocrisy was so natural indulge so far 
 in barbarity and coarseness of morals as to reach such a pitch 
 of habitual bloodthirstiness ? Or if this cruelty was his more 
 true nature, could such a furious man be at the same time- 
 master of the most consummate art of dissimulation ? Or is it 
 conceivable that the man who resolved so self-consciously and 
 considerately and with' such calm calculation to tread the path 
 of the villain, should spread fear and terror around him only 
 with subtle intention, and accomplish his bloody deeds, as the 
 Chronicle insinuates, without any real natural propensity and' 
 from policy alone ? The poet, like his historical source, has 
 taken Eichard's proud aspiring ambition, the result of his 
 superiority of mind, as the spring of his actions, and hypocrisy 
 as the principle means and instrument of his schemes. Dis- 
 covering this means in his nature, Eichard matures in that 
 soliloquy in Henry VI. (Part III. Act iii. sc. 2) the far- 
 reaching designs of his ambition. The poet has placed this 
 quality as the central point of his character ; the relation and 
 the position into which he brought it with regard to the rest of 
 the nature of this wonderful monster, as he found it indicated 
 in the Chronicle, is one of those psychological master-touches 
 with which this man has so often set up Columbus' egg. 
 
 The form of character which we commonly think qualified 
 for hypocrisy is that of sneaking and cunning weakness, such 
 as Elizabeth presents in our play, and Stanley also, who is 
 called a fox in the Chronicle. But this form of character would 
 never have obtained a great tragic interest. Unless the 
 exercise of this art of dissiniulation exhibited a power which 
 invested it with merit, even though of an eqvuvocal character, 
 it would be impossible to gain sympathy for the hypocritical heroa 
 
BICHASD III. 267 
 
 Shakespeare adhered, therefore, closely to the characteristics of 
 history and of his own historical source. His Eichard is a 
 warrior of unequivocal valour. His nature possesses that which , 
 seems precisely most at variance with aU, hypocrisy. He is 
 innately impetuous and has a passionate and irritable disposi- 
 tion; he has inherited from his mother the nervous sensitiveness 
 of not being able to bear censure ; he was tetchy and wayward in 
 his infancy ; he was frightful, desperate, wild, and furious in his 
 school-days, and daring, bold, and venturous in the prime of 
 manhood; it is a necessity to him to give free vent to his^ 
 malicious tongue ; in the midst of the hypocrisy and flattery of 
 love his scorn breaks out; and even when he is thoroughly 
 playing the hypocrite, he likes to place himself in a position 
 which offers no constraint to his nature. His unjust batred 
 and secret snares against the relatives of the queen are con- 
 cealed by him under the mask of open and just anger at the 
 hatred professed by th&m. In this brusque nature, which sets a 
 bold face against bbjectionsj diflSculties, and dangers, there lies, 
 as we see, even an aversion to cringe and to stoop, and only 
 in his strivings after the position in which each is to stoop be- 
 fore him does he consent to the sacrifice of employing every 
 convenient semblance. The hypocrisy of his character has thus 
 only become matured with years, and he appears at once proud 
 and cunning, crafty and bloody, more bland but more destruc- 
 tive. His resolve and scheme have led him not only to become 
 a villain, but to conceal his villany and its ends as much as 
 possible. A character thus designed requires great self-mastery 
 and imusual power of mind and sold, to render those talents of 
 dissimulation, however innately they may exist, capable of 
 governing the inherent ferocity. And therefore it is that at 
 the issue of his fate, when misfortune overtakes him, when his 
 inner strength fails, and "when the elastic power of his self-* 
 command gives way, the mantle of hypocrisy falls suddenly from 
 his shoulder ; his old and earlier nature returns; the violent 
 obstinacy of his disposition emerges anew ; he loses his headj 
 which he had had so much under his control during the long 
 career of his ambitious strivings, and the torment of his soul 
 betrays itself at every moment, as in thought and purpose he 
 alternates, leaves his cause, and becomes a prey to confusion. 
 Before this, so long as he is master of himself, he carries the 
 art of dissimulation to such a height that by an art in wooing 
 which reminds us of Eomeo's in its fervour, by flattery, and by 
 
268 SECOND FEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 the magic power of language, he gains over the beautiful 
 widow, whose relatives and husband he had killed; he bears 
 the spittings of the wooed, and, already sure of his success, 
 offers her his sword to stab him ; he carries hypocrisy to such a 
 height that he appears as the one persecuted and threaitened, 
 while he is undermining and destroying everything ; he plays 
 the awkward blusterer where his hatred steals most covertly and 
 most maliciously ; he makes his brutal manners to be feared 
 where his most refined intrigues are to be still more so ; and 
 thus the actor has carefully to discern when his violence is an 
 •outburst of nature and when it is a part assumed. He carries 
 the art of dissimulation to such a height that he, the terror of 
 men, surrounded with religious works and exercises, can be 
 •called gentle and tender, too childishly foolish for the world ; 
 that in body and soul a devil he can appear like an angel of 
 light ; that an enemy like Eivers believes in his devotion, an 
 honest man like Hastings in his perfect inability for oonceal^ 
 ment, an Anne in his repentance for his bloody pursuit of war, 
 and the falling Clarence in his brotherly love. On the final 
 step to the throne he vies with Buckingham in hypocrisy, 
 acting those clumsy scenes which were to appear as com- 
 pelling him to accept the crown from world-despising 
 and pious considerations ; at the extreme point, in his im- 
 patience, he lets fall the mask of cunning with which he had 
 hitherto concealed the hypocritical part he was acting. As 
 soon as he is at the goal he approaches Buckingham with bare- 
 faced demand for murder, and inquires of the first page for a 
 hireling's daggei;; he finds it no longer necessary to maintain 
 secrecy, he does not force himself in the least to conceal his ill- 
 humour and displeasure from Buckingham. Only when danger 
 threatens him from Eichmond's preparations, when he tries 
 to prevent Eichmond's union with the daughter of the widowed 
 queen by his own imion with her, then, compelled to it in his 
 interview with the crafty Elizabeth, he has once more recourse 
 to those same magic arts, with the same masterly power as be-, 
 fore in his wooing of Anne, and with the same success. But 
 immediately after, when the curses of Margaret are fulfilled 
 upon him, and he loses his safety, his self-confidence, and his 
 power over himself, his heart perishes with his fortime. 
 
 The threads are feeble which ally Eichard's character to the 
 good side of human nature. Had he not found such a being in 
 authenticated books of history, Shakespeare would perhaps not 
 
RICHABD 111. 269 
 
 have ventured to depict Mm, or subsequently Edmund and 
 lago. The poet has endeavoured to obtain an interest for him 
 by making still stronger the threads which link him to the bad. 
 The strength of his will is not alone turned against others, but 
 against his own nature also, and. this self-command challenges 
 human admiration at all times. Even that benumbing of the 
 conscience does not proceed from innate hardening- and obdu- 
 racy, but from a victory over its most serious emotions. This 
 one thread which links this monster with the bright side of 
 human nature has been most ingeniously inserted by the poet. 
 Unbelieving as he appears, this hero of 'wickedness is neverthe- 
 less not free from superstition; this betrays the not wholly 
 vanquished conscience, and the slight trace of the germ of good 
 within him. When Margaret (Act i. sc. 3) pours out her 
 curses upon him, he interrupts her before the decisive word, 
 and endeavours to lead her curse back upon herself. He freely 
 denies the operation of curses, but only because in truth he fears 
 their effect. The greatness of Eichmond, prophesied alrea,dy 
 by Henry VI., is a remembrance which strikes him with para- 
 lysing power when he hears of his undertakings. A fortune- 
 teller has prophesied his death soon after he had seen Eichmond ; 
 this he recalls anxiously to mind (the trait is borrowed from the 
 Chronicle) when he hears the name of Eougemont. When he 
 thinks on the death of the innocent princes, he remembers 'the 
 popular saying, ' So wise so young do ne'er live long,' as if he 
 sought a consolation in this, sheltering himself behind such a 
 decree of fate ; even in the case of the women whom he deludes, 
 he endeavours to trace back his misdeeds to inevitable destiny. 
 The gentle voice, which consciousness and Will repress in him' 
 by day, makes its way through all hindrances by night, when 
 his intellectual powers are at rest; he is ever harassed by' 
 frightful dreams, and before the day of the battle with Eich- 
 mond there rise before him (and this too in accordance with 
 the historical legend) the tormenting spirits of those murdered 
 by him, filling him with despondency ; the repressed conscience 
 avenges itself by night, and in that decisive night overwhelms 
 him. He who in his realistic freemindedness would fain havfe 
 denied all higher powers, and by his hypocrisy would fain have' 
 deceived even Heaven itself, at last yields to their open might. 
 The fearful warnings cause cold drops to stand on his brow, he 
 is betrayed by the short anxious questions which he utters with 
 difficulty, he sinks in a final effort to flatter himself and to feign 
 
270 SECOND PERIOD OF . SHAKESPEARE' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 ■self-love, and in a last attempt of his exhausted power to master 
 the inner voice: the thousand tongues of conscience prevail 
 over the thousand tongues of self-concealment. Still he has 
 vigour enough to struggle in desperate combat with the powers 
 within, still ' a thousand hearts are great within his bosom,' and 
 with shattered energies he rouses himself to do wonders in the 
 fight, and, as the Chronicle intimates, perishes in his defiance. 
 He fell, says the author of the ' Ghost of Eichard,' ' when great- 
 ness would be greater than itself; ' and this overweening power 
 of the will fashions the fearful man into that genuinely tragic 
 being who compels our sympathy in spite of the depravity 
 which repels us from him. 
 
 No greater task has ever been presented to the actor. The 
 charm and the greatness of this task do not lie, as Steevens 
 says, in the fact that the actor has by turns to exhibit the hero, 
 the lover, the statesman, the buffoon, the hypocrite, the hardened 
 and the repentant sinner ; nor in the fact that he has to alter- 
 nate between the extreme of passion and the most familiar tone 
 of conversation, between the expression of confidence at one 
 time in the power of the warrior, at another in the cimning of 
 the diplomatist, and at another in the rhetoric of the flattering 
 lover ; and that he has to produce sharp transitions and the 
 finest shading, and to master every pantomimic and rhetorical 
 art ; but it lies in this, that out of all these tones he has to find 
 the leading fundamental note which unites them all. The poet 
 has taken the characteristics from the Chronicle, but in the 
 chief point he has made a thorough alteration. The Chronicle 
 seems to make Richard hypocritical by nature, and to exhibit 
 cruelty in him rather as a cold work of policy ; but the poet 
 has made the inclination to brutality innate in him, and hypo- 
 crisy on the contrary appears only as a means chosen for his 
 ambition. The soliloquies in Henry VI., and that at the com- 
 mencement of our play, make this indubitable. The poet has 
 perhaps intentionally placed the whole character in a contrast, 
 of rare interest to the lover of art, with that . of Henry V. In 
 his early years Prince Henry leads a wild dissolute life without 
 reflection, following half involuntarily the mere impulses of 
 nature, not quenching his nobler nature, but concealing and 
 veiling it, yielding to his social propensity for low pleasmres, 
 though at the same time consciously resolving to lay aside thi^ 
 character at a future period in his kingly position. Eichard, on 
 the other hand, whom circumstances had led to a career of war- 
 
mCHAED III. 271 
 
 ■fare— in which, working for his family rather than for himself, 
 he might have become an estimable if not an amiable man — 
 Eichard deliberates, at the first interruption of this life of out- 
 ward action, upon setting aside his military bias, and devises a 
 wide scheme of diplomacy and intrigue which is to bring him 
 to the throne. The most remarkable and opposite parts a^e 
 . presented to the actor in the two characters : that of Henry, 
 which is to be acted with an utter absence of all idea of comedy, 
 is a type of plain human nature ; and Eichard, who is a Proteus 
 in the arts of metamorphosis, whet calls himself Boscius, and 
 who with the arts of an actor obtains the crown. 
 
 Once this character is established, and its central point per- 
 ceived, the central point and the idea of the piece is also p,ppre- 
 hended ; for Eichard fills this centre entirely. This exclusively 
 prominent position of Eichard and his highly tragic nature have 
 §iven this history the character rather of a pure tragedy ; just 
 as in Shakespeare's freest tragedies all the persons of the play 
 are arranged with an inner relation to this principal figure and 
 to the principal idea of the piece, whilst the peculiarity of his- 
 torical plays is usually that' the events and facts are distributed 
 among more extensive groups of acting characters, who are not 
 maintained throughout in the close connection exhibited by the 
 characters of plays freely designed and unfettered by historical 
 material. By considering the other characters of the piece 
 separately and in relation to Eichard, we shall easily perceive 
 the chain of ideas which links them together. 
 
 The overstrained masculine strength of Eichard appears in 
 the first place contrasted with the feminine weakness of the 
 female characters. Anne, whom he wooes at the beginning of 
 tihe play, excites less contempt than pity in her frail woman- 
 liness, which is without all moral support. She hates and 
 marries ; she curses her who shall be the wife of the man who 
 killed her first husband, and she subjects herself to this curse ; 
 afterwards as a wife she is leagued with his enemies against 
 him. Thus, says the poet, of the ' Grhost of Eichard,' 
 
 Women's griefs, nor loves, are dyed in grain, 
 For cither's colour time or men can stain. 
 
 Not often has a task been ventured upon like that of the 
 poet in this instance. He produces a scene full of improbability^ 
 the principal part in which is played by this Anne, whose cha- 
 racter is prepared or delineated in no other scene, in the most 
 
'272 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DBAMATIC FOETEY. 
 
 unnatural situation. Vanity, self-complacency, and weakness 
 have all to be displayed at once ; it is the part of the matron 
 of Ephesus in the tragedy, though it is neither incredible nor 
 forced. We must at the same time bear in view that the 
 murder of her relatives admits of excuse as among the unavoid- 
 able evils of war and defence. We must take into accoimt the 
 extraordinary degree of dissimulation, which deceives even ex- 
 perienced men ; and for this reason the artist who is td play 
 Eichard must woo rather as an actor than as a lover, but must 
 yet go to the very limits of deception even as regards the 
 initiated spectator. We have further to consider how the part 
 of repentance and atonement becomes a valiant soldier, and 
 how pardonable is the womanly weakness which delights in the 
 idea of endeavouring to support and save such a penitent. We 
 must remember that the unwonted mildness of the tyrant is far 
 more effective than the gentleness of the weak ; and in the hisr 
 torical examples of our own day we have seen how tender femi- 
 nine characters have been united to the most brutal, in thd 
 conciousness of at any rate restraining tlie human barbarity at 
 home. How little the poet scrupled at this scene he seemed to 
 desire to prove by again repeating it towards the end of the 
 play in Eichard's suit with the mother herself — his sworn enemy 
 ^for her own daughter. Once more does Eichard assert that 
 he committed his misdeeds only out of love for the wooed one, 
 once more he plays the penitent and points to better times, 
 once more he allures the mother by the prospect of the thi-one 
 for her daughter ; he obtains her assent by the false show of the 
 good that she will thus procmre to the country ; and fear — so says 
 the Chronicle — fear of the man whom no one can refuse with 
 impunity, in part co-operates. This last ■ circumstance, indeed, 
 places Elizabeth in a more favourable light than Anne, as he 
 wooed the latter at a period when he had not become the aU- 
 powerful one he subsequently became. But there is another 
 more important point which prevents this second scene from 
 appearing as a 'mere copy of the first. Elizabeth promises her 
 daughter at the same time to the Pretender Eichmond, the 
 descendant of Lancaster, .who subsequently by this union recon- 
 ciles and joins the red and white Eoses. Elizabeth thus deceives 
 the deceiver of all ; and, in the chance of the unsuccessful issue 
 of Eichmond's undertaking, she has thus saved the throne for 
 her daughter. This is certMnly to be traced to the woinanly 
 weakness of her personal and maternal ambition, but it is also 
 
BICHABD m. 273 
 
 the result of that deep dissimulation which so often belongs by 
 nature to the woman, and is even coupled with a kind of inno- 
 cence. This contrast of Elizabeth to Eichard is laid hold of in 
 the happiest manner. She is weak and she is goaded by her 
 relatives to animosity and family antipathy, but she is also 
 good, and in the extreme of grief she is gentle and incapable of 
 cursing, though she would fain learn it from Margaret. With 
 this goodness and weakness she deceives the strong and cunning 
 man who has destroyed her house, for she is prudent and far- 
 sighted, she is the mother of her son York of kindred mind, she 
 sees through Gloster from the first, and she anticipates at once 
 in Elvers' fall the ruin of her whole family ; she subsequently 
 conceives the plan, and this is taken from history, of reconciling 
 in Eichmond the houses of York and Lancaster, and she is the 
 soul of the whole conspiracy which determines Eichard's faU. 
 
 The counterpart of her weakness is afforded by the king; 
 he is a contrast to her acuteness. He and his brother Clarence 
 form a contrast of unsuspicious security compared to the mali- 
 cious brother, who strikes them both together, arid by means of 
 each other. The relatives also of the queen are trusting and 
 unsuspicious ; a greedy, newly-created nobility, haughty and 
 scornful, humble only towards the rough Gloster into whose 
 open snares they fall. Still more distinctly is the contrast with 
 unsuspiciousness delineated in Hastings. He is open-hearted, 
 true, talkative, sincere, imsuspicious in his happiness, loose in 
 morals, but a stranger to all mistrust. He trusts in Catesby as 
 in Eichard, he sufiers neither warnings nor dreams to disturb 
 him, he triumphs with imprudent joy over the fall of his 
 enemies, though the same lot is threatening him ; confident in 
 Eichard's friendship, he is ready to ' give his voice ' for him in 
 the council when Eichard had already devoted him to death, 
 because with the same unvaried candour, and with a nature 
 incapable of dissimulation, he had declared that the crown 
 would be ' foully misplaced ' on Eichard's head. The whole 
 ■scene (Act iii. sc. 4) in which this takes place is borrowed from 
 the Chronicle, even in the characteristic peculiarities of the 
 language used. The relation in which Shakespeare has placed 
 Brackenbury is, on the contrary, his own property ; historically, 
 he plays a totally different part to that in the tragedy. In a 
 passive manner, as Catesby and Tyrrel in an active, he furthers 
 the plans and deeds of Eichard, which without these ready tools 
 would not have had the same easy course. These are the hired 
 
 T 
 
274 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Hypocrites who at every sign accept the part required, who turn 
 round at every wind ; who do not, like Brackenbury, ask them- 
 selves nor honourably consider what is the feeling of their heart ; 
 who will be ' guiltless of the meaning,' and unscrupulously and 
 obtusely let happen what will. A more cunning tool of Grloster's 
 is Buckingham. He stands by his side as a faint . imitation of 
 his ambition and of his hypocritical heart. He has smaller 
 objects in his desire for aggrandisement, as Eichard has his 
 larger ones; and for the furtherance of these he tries to use 
 Eichard as a tool, just as Eichard uses him. Gloster helps him 
 to remove the relatives of the queen who stand in his way, and 
 Buckingham affects reconciliation with them, under cover of 
 which he works their death. In return for this he helps 
 Gloster to make his way to the throne, and that with the same 
 arts. He fancies himself a genuine actor, who has at his service 
 ' ghastly looks ' and ' enforced smiles ; ' he helps to influence the 
 citizens, he takes part in the farces at Baynard's castle. He 
 appears only by degrees drawn into Grloster's snares ; Margaret 
 even regards him at first as innocent; her curses touch him 
 not ; he believes not in curses, as Gloster also affects not to do, 
 but he is taught to do so ; in everything falling short of Eichard, 
 in bad as in good, he shudders at the murder which the other 
 demands from him ; when he is out of humour at the with- 
 holding of the reward which Eichard had promised him for his 
 assistance, he can no longer dissemble ; whilst Grloster, at the 
 moment of his ill-humour against Hastings, appears particularly 
 pleased and cheerful. In contrast to him again stands Stanley, 
 the true sneaking hypocrite, who conquers Eichard with his 
 own weapons, as Elizabeth does in her feminine manner. Ec- 
 lated to Eichmond, he has cause, from the first, to act cautiously. 
 From being a foe to the Queen Elizabeth, he has become a friend 
 to the common object ; he has his eye everywhere ; he warns 
 Hastings, although in vain; he carries on a lasting'connectionwith 
 Eichmond, which, in the simplest manner, he carries on through 
 a priest. History itself considers it incomprehensible that 
 Eichard, blinded as by God, did not arrest the suspicious man ; 
 Shakespeare endeavours to explain this conduct by bestowing' 
 ofl Stanley exactly the same arts as those which Grloster possesses. 
 As the latter sought to conceal his secret intrigues from the 
 Greys by open displeasure, so Stanley throughout boldly de-- 
 clares himself a watchful observer of Eichmond's plans ; he is 
 the first to bring Eichard the intelligence of Dorset's flight to 
 
SICHABD m. 275' 
 
 Eicliinond ; he brings him the intelligence of Eichmond's land- 
 ing ; he leaves his son as a hostage, and in this case of need 
 stakes the life dearest to him that he may play out his decep- 
 tive part, which costs Eichard his kingdom and life and brings 
 a crown to Eichmond. This latter is the only pure character, 
 predicting better times. The poet thought it necessary to do 
 but little in honour of the founder of the house of Tudor, the 
 grandfather of Queen Elizabeth, after having blackened his 
 enemy Eichard as much as possible. The pious general of God 
 had been like the princes, Edward's sons, early removed from 
 this dreadful society of the Court; the blessing of Henry VI. 
 rested on him. The princes, on the contrary, fall a sacrifice to 
 the fearful age. Upon this we shall remark further in King 
 John. The delineation of the two boys is a masterpiece of the 
 poet, which would have been impossible to such men as Greene 
 and Marlowe. With what scanty means does he develop a 
 disposition in the Prince of Wales which promises a perfect 
 manhood ! In his words on his father's death and title, how 
 much there is of tender feeling and modesty I In the censuring 
 question to his brother (' a beggar ' ?) what a delicate reminder 
 of propriety ! In his reply to Gloster : 'I fear no uncles dead, 
 an if they live, I hope I need not fear ; ' what caution, and at 
 the same time what acuteness of mind is exhibited in the 
 equivocal words ! And in what beautiful contrast to this stands 
 again the quick wit of the bold, precocious, pert, and clever 
 York, which he so delicately weakens by a kindly blunting of 
 its sting ! In both, we should think, the opposite qualities of 
 hypocrisy and regardless candour are moderated into qualities 
 natural and human, in Edward into delicate respect and caution, 
 in York into impulsive expression, scarcely restraining a saucy 
 thought, but yet knowing how to temper it forbearingly, so that 
 even these two characters are placed in a fine relation to the 
 ihain idea of the play. 
 
 After having considered a;ll these counterparts and opposites 
 to Eichard, it may appear as if, when combined, they were not 
 powerful enough to form a corresponding counterbalance to the 
 overwhelming nature of the hero. The poet also has sought for' 
 a still more forcible contrast, in order that he may exhibit an^ 
 eye capable of watching over the malicious course of the raging 
 boar, and a power capable of crossing him ; to his advancing 
 success he has opposed a fallen fortune, to his deep hypocrisy a 
 regardlessness which every moment tears asunder the veil,, to 
 
 T 2 
 
276 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEABE' 8 DRAMATIC FOETEY, 
 
 his bloodthirstiness a carelessness which mocks at death. It is 
 that Margaret, the widow of king Henry VI., who once came 
 over to England as a beggar^ who planted there the seeds of 
 evil, who turned upon her own head every calamity and the 
 hatred of aU, who is now outlawed, and who at the close goes 
 ■ back again to France as a beggar. Before she accomplishes this 
 — and this is a poetic arrangement on the part of our poet — 
 the hated one tarries in the midst of the hated society, in order 
 that she may witness the end of the fearful tragedy, though she 
 herself had already withdrawn from the scene. Poor, insensible 
 to ambition, she scorns the danger and death to which her 
 remaining exposes her; she presses into the circle of her ene- 
 mies, and wholly incapable of commanding herself, and utterly 
 unwilling to conceal herself or her feelings, with impotent 
 passion, with incautious openness^ and with prophetic rage, she 
 casts forth the most unsparing reproaches, the most regardless ' 
 truths, and the most fearful curses — ^like the loud trumpet of 
 Grod's judgment — ^upon the degraded humanity around her. 
 And these words have more weight and power than all the 
 bloody deeds of Eichard and his cunning intrigues, and her 
 hunger for revenge is more appeased than Eichard's thirst for 
 greatness. The old York (in Henry VI.) had once cursed her, 
 when she committed the womanly outrage of giving him a 
 napkin bathed in the blood of his son Eutland ; his curse was 
 fulfilled on her when she lost throne, husband, and the son 
 -whom Eichard stabbed, and at whose fall Elvers, Grrey, Hastings, 
 and Vaughan were present as accessories. But on this day the 
 power of York's curse was transferred to her, and her vengeance- 
 loving soul panted with desire to requite it upon all her enemies. 
 The manifold misery which she lives to see befall her enemies 
 sweetens her own misery, and she would fain ' slip her weary 
 bead' out of the yoke of her sorrow, to leave the burden of it 
 upon the hated Elizabeth. We have said before (in Henry VI.) 
 that the Chronicle also remarks at the death of Margaret's son 
 that all those present drank subsequently of the same cup, ' in 
 •consequence of the merited justice and the due punishment of 
 ■Crod.' This judgment is embodied in the fearful Margaret and. 
 her curses, in which the avenging spirit utters its terrible 
 ■decree. With striking glaringness, distinctness, and intensity, 
 Shakespeare has pronounced, repeated, and accomplished these 
 imprecations. ■ Margaret hurled the curse over all the accom- 
 plices in the murder of her son, and in all it comes to maturity ; 
 
siCHASD lir. 277 
 
 it is fulfilled in the dying Edward ; it is fulfilled in Clarence, 
 who perjured himself when he had promised to fight for Lan- 
 caster ; it is fulfilled in Hastings, who had sworn false recon- 
 ciliation in presence of the dying Edward ; it is fulfilled in 
 Elizabeth, who, only the vain semblance of herself, was left 
 without brother, without husband, and almost without children ; 
 upon Buckingham her mere warning, directed by her to one 
 still guiltless, falls like a curse when he becomes guilty. It is 
 not enough that- Margaret pronoimces these curses upon all; 
 most of them, Buckingham, Hastings, and Anne, call down the 
 iinprecation by sinful promises upon themselves, and when it 
 is fulfilled the poet recalls once more to mind the exact pre- 
 diction. Finally upon Eichard himself these revengeful curses 
 are heaped, and they are realised most decidedly. And he, too, 
 in the moment of his unbridled scorn (Act iv. sc. 4), calls down 
 the curse upon himself. Nay, more than this : his own mother, 
 the Duchess of York, who, placed between Elizabeth and Mar- 
 garet, by turns, according to time and circumstance, possesses 
 the violent flashes of the one and the mild composure of the 
 other, she, Eichard's own mother, says to him (Act iv. sc. 4) 
 that her prayers would ' fight for the adverse party ; ' and she 
 desires that her curse on the day of battle may ' tire him more 
 than all the complete armour that he wears.' Wonderful use is 
 made of this curse in the scene before the battle of Bosworth, a 
 use worth more than all the other occasions on which the poet 
 has employed these imprecations. Without looking back to 
 that maternal sentence, without himself remembering it, 
 Eichard's ' beaver ' burdens him in the battle, so that he orders 
 it to be made easier, and his arm is weary with the lance, which 
 he exchanges for a lighter one. This is better than the accu- 
 mulated impression of the severe curses, and their literal and 
 ever-repeated fulfilment ; and better, too, is the imprecation of 
 the mother, temporarily irritated when occasion demanded it, 
 than the steady excess of the revengeful curses of Margaret. 
 But the excess and the repetition alone are to be blamed, not 
 the thing itself. We must be careful of appearing on the side 
 of those interpreters who consider the introduction of Margaret 
 and her reproaches at Court absurd, as well as Eichard's woping 
 in the street. For it is a wise contrast which necessitates the 
 part assigned to Margaret, and even 'the glaring prominence 
 given to her curses and their fulfilment has its wise intention. 
 The more secretly the sins of this br9od of hypocrites were 
 
,278 SECOND PEBJOD OF SHAKESFEAEE' 8 DRAMATIC POETEY. 
 
 practised, the more visibly and notoriously was punishment to 
 . overtake them ; the manifest retribution of God . ought to be 
 , made all the more evident when employed against the secrecy 
 and the deceit of men ; and the interference of eternal justice 
 .ought plainly and tangibly to appear against the evil-doers, 
 who think to ensnare Heaven itself, who believe not in an 
 avenging power, nor in the curse which rests on evil deeds 
 themselves. On the way to death Buckingham says : — 
 
 That high All-Seer which I dallied with 
 Hath turn'd my feigned prayer on my head, 
 And given in earnest what I begg'd in jest. 
 
 And just so his own curse discharges itself on Eichard's head, a 
 curse which he wantonly called down upon himself. 
 
EICHAED n. 
 
 Thk date of Richard II. has been akeady pointed out; we 
 conjectured that it was written soon after Eichard III. Pas- 
 sionate high-strained passages, one even (Act t. sc. 3) which 
 treats a tragic subject almost humorously, are written in 
 rhyming couplets ; alternate rhymes and alliteration also occur. 
 In its profound design, and in its characters, as well as in the 
 treatment of it in conformity with the historical story, the play 
 shows certain progress when compared with Eichard III. 
 Setting aside stage effect, Coleridge justly calls it the first and 
 most admirable of Shakespeare's purely historical plays, in 
 which the history forms the story, and not, as in Henry IV., 
 merely leads it. The historical events which Eichard II. comprises 
 extend from September 1398 to Februaiy 1400. Everything 
 essential in the events is strictly taken from Holinshed's 
 Chronicle ; the only liberty Shakespeare allowed himself is in 
 those externals which he never regarded when he could make 
 them serve poetic objects. 
 
 Shakespeare had in this play also a previous dramatic work, 
 which, however, is unknown to us. We know, only from the 
 statement of a Dr. Forman that in 1611 a play of Eichard II. 
 was performed on Shakespeare's stage ; and from the indication 
 of its contents it must have handled the earlier years of 
 Eichard's reign, and must have been more rich in facts and 
 more bloody than Shakespeare's work. An interesting historical 
 incident is connected with this piece. When the Earl of Essex, 
 in 1601, wished to excite the London citizens to an insurrection, 
 in order that he might remove his enemies from the person of 
 the queen, he ordered his confidential friends. Sir Grilly Merrick 
 and others, to act the tragedy of Eichard II. in public streets 
 and houses, previous to the outbreak of the conspiracy, in order 
 to inflame the minds of the people ; Elizabeth hearing of this 
 performance, alluded to it in conversation, calling herself 
 
280 SECOND FEBIOD OF SSAKESPEASE'S BRAMATia POETBY. 
 
 Eichard II. There is no doubt that the play thus employed by 
 these conspirators was this older Eichard 11. For Shake- 
 speare's drama, though certainly a revolutionary picture, is of 
 so mild a character, and it demands such hearty sympathy for 
 the dethroned king, and most especially in the very scene of 
 the deposition, that it would appear unsuitable for such an 
 object; besides, in the editions before 1601 the whole scene of 
 the deposition of Eichard in the fourt.h act, although it must 
 have been written by' the poet at the outset, was not even 
 printed, and certainly therefore was not acted in Elizabeth's 
 reign. Nothing, however, is more natural than that from the 
 extraordinarily practical character of these historical plays, 
 even those of Shakespeare should be applied to such a purpose. 
 In the last century, . Shakespeare's Eichard II. was performed ' 
 at the time that the mercantile class in Epgland were pressing 
 for a war with Spain, and Eobert "Walpole opposed this popular 
 policy ; all the passages which concerned the restraint of the 
 king among his flatterers were referred to Walpole, and were 
 received with loud vociferations ; others, upon the bankruptcy of 
 the broken-hearted king, were heard with death-like and re- 
 verential silence. 
 
 Eichard II. must be read in a series with Henry PV. and V. 
 in order thoroughly to uMerstand it. The finest touches for 
 the explanation of characters and actions in the first play of the 
 series are to be met with in passages of the third and fourth 
 plays of the series, and we might almost say are intentionally 
 concealed in them. The principal character of the fourth piece, 
 Henry V., is already mentioned in the first, that is in Eichard 
 II., and his wild youth is pointed out at a period when he was 
 only twelve years old. The character of the Duke of Aumerle, 
 who plays no brilliant part in Eichard II. after his mother has 
 saved hiin from the punishment of high treason, and has prayed 
 to God to make ' her old son new,' is again silently brought 
 forward by the poet in Henry V,, a new man indeed, who has 
 become great with the heroic age, and dies the death of a hero 
 at Agincourt. Thus the most delicate threads entwine around 
 the four plays, imiting them together ; other allusions equally 
 delicate place this Lancastrian tetralogy in an opposite relation 
 to that of York. The similarity of the historical events in the 
 . rise and fall of the two houses did not escape the poet; had he 
 handled the history of the House of York, later in point of time, 
 after instead of before the history of that of Lancaster, he woiild 
 
BICHABD II. 281 
 
 have had the opportunity of marking these similarities and 
 relations even more sharply in both cases. Eichard II. appears 
 in this tetralogy, as Henry VI. did in the York. A young 
 prince, not without fine human talents, surrounded by uncles 
 and arrogant protectors, by favourites and proteges, in both 
 cases brings the kingdom to ruin ; both lose their hereditary 
 throne through usurpers, and die by violence in prison. 
 Bolingbroke undermines Richard's throne in a similar maimer 
 to that in which York attacks that of Henry VI. ; the one falls 
 perjured before he has obtained the last object of his ambitious 
 path ; the other reaches his aim through fortime and merit, and 
 maintains it by estimable administration and repentant com- 
 pensation. But retribution threatens the one usurping house 
 as well as the other ; domestic discord reigns in the family of 
 Henry IV. as among the sons of York under Edward IV. From 
 this moment, however, the destinies of the two houses are 
 sundered by a rigorous contrast, which we have pointed out 
 before; from the iU-starred family circumstances under the 
 Lancastrians rose Henry V., who in the midst of his wild 
 youthful excesses took the grand resolution to restore to the 
 English throne the splendour of the Edwards, whilst from the 
 York house rose Eichard III., who, in the midst of a career of 
 warlike fame, forms the project of clearing for himself a way to 
 the throne by a series of base actions. A great ruler in the 
 one makes us forget by his virtues for a brief glorious period 
 the misdeeds of the Lancastrians, in the other a bloody tyrant 
 brings by his wickedness the utmost dishonour upon the house 
 of York, and hurries it to ruin. As in these outer circum- 
 stances there is ummistakably a certain parallel between the two 
 histories, we have also already frequently mentioned the similar 
 idea which guided Shakespeare in the two tetralogies. The 
 strife between merit and right for an unsettled crown might , 
 surely in Henry VI. be called the leading, and at any rate the 
 prominent thought ; in Eichard III. it is replaced by a more 
 ethical idea, which in this play somewhat interferes with its 
 purely historical character ; in Eichard II., on the contrary, 
 this thought is drawn from the historical matter, and is em- 
 braced by the poet with that perfect independence which 
 enables him to form the historical material into a free work of 
 art of a higher and more complete character than the history 
 in itself affords. 
 
 Eichard II. was the son of the Black Prince, Edward III.'s 
 
.282 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 brave eldest son. According to historical .tradition he was 
 most beautiful ; and Shakespeare also, in contrasting him with 
 Eichard III., who is urged by his deformity to avenge himself 
 on nature, has not unintentionally invested him with a beau- 
 tifud form, which, according to Bacon, renders ' him generally 
 light-minded whom it adorns, and whom it moves;', he calls 
 .him in the lips of Percy ' a sweet lovely rose.' He gives him 
 the outward features of his father, and allows us occasionally to 
 perceive a mental likeness also : the mild nature of the lamb 
 and the violence of the lion, which the poet speaks of as com- 
 bined in the Black Prince, are both exhibited in him. The 
 .first is scarcely to be mistaken ; it becomes visibly even at the 
 last moment in the many tokens of attachment which he rer 
 ceives at a time when it is dangerous to manifest it, and it is 
 apparent after his death in the longing for him which is aroused 
 in the adversaries who had conspired against him. The other 
 quality is more hidden in single scattered traits. He appears 
 throughout like a ' young hot colt,' easily provoked, like a violent 
 flame consuming itself quickly ; he compares himself to the bril- 
 liant Phaeton, who, incapable and daring, tries to manage his 
 refractory steeds ; in the moment of misfortune the defiance of 
 ani innate nobility is aroused in the midst of his sorrow, and in 
 his death he appears as ' ftdl of valour as of royal blood." But 
 this fine disposition is wholly obliterated ; in the early season 
 of his life and reign he has lost his reputation; he is sur- 
 rounded by a troop of creatures and favourites, parasites and 
 men who preyed on the kingdom, who stop his ear with flatteries, 
 and poison it with wanton imaginations ; who make him tyranT 
 nical and imperious, incapable of hearing a word of blame and 
 admonition even from the lips of his dying uncle ; men who made 
 him shallow with I]balian fashions, who surrounded him with every 
 low vanity, and enticed him into ostentation and extravagance. 
 In Henry IV. his life and actions are described in a passage 
 of greater length than our own play affords. 'The skipping 
 king,' it says, 
 
 ambled up and down 
 , W\th shallow jesters, and rash bavin wits, 
 Soon kindled and soon burn'd : carded his state ; 
 Mingled his royalty with capering fools ; 
 Had his great name profaned with their scorns : 
 And gave his countenance, against his name, 
 To laugh at gibing boys, and stand the push 
 Of every beardless vain comparative : 
 
RICHARD II, 283 
 
 Grow a companion to the common streets, 
 
 EnfeofFd himself to popularity : 
 
 That being daily swallowed by men's eyes, 
 
 They surfeited with honey ; and began 
 
 To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little 
 
 More than a little is by much too much. 
 
 Shakespeare has given us little or nothing in Eichard II. of 
 scenes of this kind ; only remotely can we perceive the intimate 
 tone of the intercourse in which Aumerle and Bushy stood with 
 the king and queen. The poet has left this merry frivolous 
 society in the back ground, which perhaps, considering the play 
 of Eichard II. by itself, would be a defect ; but he had matter 
 of too similar a character to depict in Henry IV,, and he was 
 obliged to avoid repetition; he gave the jovial picture to the 
 cheerful play, and left it out of the tragic one. In its stead, 
 most wisely, that he might not make the tragedy of the 
 national history laughable, he placed the serious and tragic side 
 of this conduct. Incited by those around him, Eichard had 
 caused his faithful, well-meaning .uncle Gloster, who, according 
 to historical tradition, had assumed the protectorship of the 
 young king, to be murdered, and this nlade his remaining 
 uncles, Lancaster and York, apprehensive for their safety, 
 although, as the Chronicle says, they concealed the sting of 
 their discontent. Impoverished by his companions, Eichard 
 sees his ,coffers empty, he has recourse to forced loans, to ex- 
 tortion of taxes, and to fines ; and at last he lets the English 
 kingdom as a tenure to his parasites, no longer a king, only a 
 landlord of England. A traitor to this unsubdued land, he has 
 by his contracts .resigned the conquests of his father. At 
 .length he lays hand on private property, and seizes the posses- 
 sions of the late old Lancaster and of his banished son, thus 
 depriving himself of the hearts of the people aud the nobles. 
 The ruin of the impoverished land, the subversion of right, the 
 danger of property, a revolt in Ireland, the arming of the 
 nobles in self-defence ; alL these indications allow us to observe 
 in the first two acts 'the growing seed of revolution which the 
 misled king had scattered. The prognostication of the faU of 
 Eichard II. is read by the voice of the people in the common 
 signs of all revolutionary periods (Act ii. sc. 4) : — 
 
 Bich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap,— r 
 
 The one, in fear to lose what they enjoy, 
 
 The other, to enjoy by rage and war, i 
 
284 SECOND PESIOD OF ■ 8SAKESPEABE' S DSAMATIC POETSY. 
 
 Beyond the scattered touches and the insinuations which 
 denote the inability of the king, and his wavering between un- 
 seasonable power and weakness, the poet has chosen only one 
 event for greater dramatic prominence, and with this the catas- 
 trophe of Kichard's fate is united, namely, the knightly quarrel 
 between Bolingbroke and Norfolk with which the play begins. 
 Coleridge said of this scene that it seems introduced in order 
 beforehand to depict the characters of Eichard and Bolingbroke, 
 and Courtenay was even bold enough to think it was only intro- 
 duced, because Shakespeare found it in the chronicle. But this 
 was not the method of Shakespeare's writing. Subsequently in 
 Henry IV, (Part II. Act iv. se. 1) he has abundantly expressed 
 in the plainest language that he began with this scene bcQause 
 it was the beginning of all the sufferings which feU upon King 
 Eichard and afterwards upon his dethroners. Norfolk's son 
 there says : 
 
 O, when the king did throw his warder down, 
 
 His own life hung upon the staff he threw ; 
 
 Then threw he down himself; and all their lives, 
 
 That by indictment, or by dint of sword. 
 
 Have since miscarried under Bolingbroke. 
 
 ' At all events, the scene, however necessary in itself, certainly 
 serves essentially to place in opposition to each other, in their 
 first decisive collision, the two main characters, Eichard and 
 Bolingbroke, the declining king yet in his power and glory, and 
 the rising one in his misforturie and banishment. In his accu- 
 sation of Norfolk, Bolingbroke besets the king remotely with 
 hostile designs. The guilt of Grloster's death rests in the public 
 opinion upon the king and his associates; subsequently Aumerle 
 emerges as the immediate instrument ; the guilt of having 
 known it and concealed it falls upon Norfolk alone, a guilt of 
 which he accuses himself; but the popular hatred turns upon 
 him as upon the king. Bolingbroke, as we learn expressly in 
 the second part of Henry IV. (Act iv. sc. 1), uses this circum- 
 stance to nourish the hatred and to draw upon himself the favour 
 of the people, whilst he exhibits the Lancastrians honourably 
 solicitous about a sacred family matter. He knows that Norfolk 
 is not guilty of the death of Gloster ; but, brave as he is politic, 
 he freely ventures to propose the judgment of God, for he re-^ 
 moves in him the single powerful support of the king, and at 
 the same time the enemy of his own family. The survivors of 
 the murdered Gloster spur on the Lancastrians to revenge, their 
 
RICHABD II. 285 
 
 own security being concerned ; the old Graunt indeed commits 
 vengeance to God, but his son Bolingbroke holds it far more 
 certain if it is in his own human hand. The venerable old 
 man, whom Shakespeare invests with riper years than history 
 does, has transmitted to his son the elements which are blended 
 together in his deeply reserved character. The hoary hero has 
 borne in his heart the welfare of his fatherland, and his patriotic 
 feelings obtain so much in his dying hour over his fidelity as a 
 subject, that in words of the greatest enthusiasm for his glorious 
 country he cuttingly reproaches the sinful Eichard with what 
 he has done with this ' demi-Paradise.' Sorrow for the country, 
 and • sorrow for his banished son, hurried him to the grave. 
 Mingled with his patriotic feeling we see family feeling and 
 self-love; both are also strong in the son. The son's far-stretch- 
 ing domestic policy accompanies and determines his whole life ; 
 his patriotic feeling breaks forth in the touching lament on his 
 banishment, which justly has been called not only very beautiful, 
 but very English. To both these traits is joined that diplomatic 
 cunning which lies in the very recesses of his nature, and is 
 therefore concealed without difficulty. This, too, the son 
 appears to have inherited from his father ; for shrewdness of 
 purpose cannot be more delicately coupled with magnanimity 
 than in the old Gaunt, who, in the council of state, gives his 
 vote for the banishment of his son, which subsequently breaks 
 his heart, in the idea of moving the rest to a milder judgment 
 by his own too severe sentence. Similar in the deep reserve of his 
 character is the delineation which Shakespeare has given of the 
 son, who in one touch alone, in Eichard II., appears without a 
 mask, and who in all others, throughout the three plays, remains 
 a riddle even to the attentive reader, until at length the last 
 hour of life elicits a confession to his son. The same mysterious 
 obscurity marks even the commencement scene between Boling- 
 broke and Norfolk. We have just intimated the designs and 
 motives which actuate the former, but we have gathered them 
 from subsequent disclosures ; in the moment of action it is not 
 clear at what he is aiming, and Norfolk's bearing increases the 
 obscurity. The voice of innocence and honour speaks in him 
 mostly in his voluntary confessions, and no less so in his strong 
 appeal to his fidelity towards the king. It goes so far that he 
 does not attempt to raise the veU from the misdeed of which he 
 is accused, not even after the king's sentence of a dateless 
 banishment has fallen on him ' all unlooked for,' when he hoped 
 
286 SECOND PESIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DSAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 for other reward than this disgrace. The king, too, condemns 
 him, we likewise learn at the end of Henry IV. (Part II. Act iv. 
 se. 1), against his will, because of the general feeling against 
 him, i)ut the enthusiasm of popular favour was already directed 
 to Bolingbroke, who at his departure behaves to the mtdtitude 
 as a condescending prince. The weal? Eichard, who Norfolk 
 predicts will rue this deed, ignobly banishes for a lifetime the 
 mart wholn' he loves, and who would have been his most faithful 
 support, and for a few years the other whom he hates, whose 
 ambitious ■thoughts he fears, and whose .banishment he has in 
 his heart faithlessly resolved as limitless. He disturbs the 
 combat between the two, whose peace he fears still more : he 
 strikes his enemy and provokes him without making him 
 harmless, and displays the helplessness of a man of a troubled 
 conscience, who knows not the right occasion for mildness or 
 severity. The chronicle sums up the faults of his government 
 in these words : he showed too great kindness to his friends, too 
 great favour to his enemies. Both are just. But in this case 
 he shows in his severity towards his friend that he is inconsistent' 
 moreover, and he allows himself to be influenced by the power 
 of opinion in an unessential point, when he neglected to attend 
 to it in an essential one. 
 
 PuUy in the sense of the sentence quoted from the chronicle 
 Shakespeare draws the political moral from Eichard's rule in the 
 garden scene (Act. iii. sc. 4) with its simple allegory. The wise 
 gardener cares to give ' supportance to the bending twigs, which 
 like unruly children inake their sire stoop with oppression of 
 their prodigal weight ; ' he cuts off the heads of too fast-growing- 
 sprays, that look too lofty on the commonwealth ; he roots up' 
 the noisome weed. Eichard, who had not observed the first of 
 these rules in his jealousy of Grloster, who had neglected the 
 second in his too great favour to Bolingbroke, and the third in 
 his too great kindness to his parasites, Bagot and Bushy, now 
 sees the fall of the leaves ; another roots up the weeds ' that his 
 broad-spreading leaves did shelter, that seemed in eating him 
 to hold him up.' Had he cherished and nurtured his kingdom 
 as the gardeners did their garden, he would have treated the 
 great as they did their trees, wounding the bark at times to 
 prevent the too luxuriant growth ; he woiild have lopped away 
 the superfluous braiiches, and thus he might have tasted and 
 enjoyed their fruits and retained his crown. 
 
 Instead of this he did everything which could forfeit his 
 
BICHAED m 287 
 
 crown. We have seen the king's unadvised conduct in the 
 quarrel between Bolingbroke and Norfolk. Hardly is this dis- 
 pute settled than the old Gaunt dies : the Irish revolt demands 
 a renaedy ; the extravagant prince has no money ; he now seizes 
 the Lancastrian property, which kindles even the good-natured 
 York, indolent and rest-loving as he is. Eichard goes in person 
 to Ireland, and leaves behind him the irritated York, the 
 weakest whom he could choose, as governor of England. 
 Instantly the banished Bolingbroke seizes the occasion to return 
 to the kingdom thus vacated, under the pretext of taking pos- 
 session of his lawful inheritance. The apprehensive nobles, the 
 Percys, join themselves to him ; the miserable friends of the 
 king give up their cause at once as lost ; the helpless York goes 
 over. When Eichard returns from Ireland he possesses no more 
 of the kingdom than his right to it. He persuades himself, 
 though he is far from convinced of it, that with this right he 
 has everything. He comes back from Ireland conscience- 
 stricken, foreboding, paralysed, and inactive. With his wonted 
 enthusiasm, when he again sets foot on English groimd, he hopes 
 that the 'earth shall have a feeling, and the stones prove armed 
 soldiers, ere her native king shall falter under foul rebellious 
 arms.' He buries himself in poetical and religious consolation, 
 and intrenches himself behind his divine right and authority : 
 , ' not all the water in the rough rude sea can wash the balm from 
 an anointed king ; ' the breath of worldly men cannot depose 
 the deputy elected by the Lord. He builds upon this, that Grod 
 and Heaven who guard the right have for every man of Boling- 
 broke's ' in heavenly pay a glorious angel ' for him. He com- 
 pares his kingly dignity to the sun, in whose absence robbers 
 range abroad, but before his fiery rise in the east they tremblingly 
 escape. Soon, however, the poet, referring silently to this image, 
 exhibits him in opposition to the robber Bolingbroke, and this 
 latter himself compares him in a similar manner to the sun 
 emerging from the east, Act. iii. sc. 3 (in many editions the 
 passage is placed in the lips of York) ; but ' the envious clouds ' 
 dim the kingly aspect, and ' stain his track,' and are not so 
 quickly dispersed as Eichard imagined. Just while' he is boast- 
 ing so warmly of the assistance of Heaven, the tidings come that 
 not alone no angels stand in readiness for him, but that even 
 men are deserting him. Then suddenly his confidence in his 
 good right forsakes him. He calls upon his name aiid his 
 majesty, but on a new message of misfortime his courage breaks 
 
288 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY, 
 
 down even to abdication. Once more subsequently he assferts 
 to Northumberland his divine right, and declares that no human 
 hand can seize his sacred sceptre without robbery and violence. 
 But the blessing of Heaven is now visibly on the side of power ; 
 he whom the people/uphold stands more surely than the anointed 
 of God. 
 
 Shakespeare writes here an immortal lesson upon the royalty 
 of God's grace and the law of inviolability. His groimd is here 
 also that two-sided one of entire impartiality and candour to 
 which we unweariedly point, as to, the greatest characteristic of 
 his extraordinary mental superiority. He places, his opinion 
 chiefly in the mouth of the Bishop of Carlisle, the grand type of 
 genuine loyalty, who stands faithfully by the side of the lawful 
 king, without concealing from him the stem voice of truth ; 
 who defies the unlawful usiurper in the public assembly, but still 
 elicits, even from the latter, true honour, favour, and esteem. 
 Absorbed in his meditations upon show and reality, upon which 
 •we see Shakespe9,re brooding throughout this period of his life, 
 he cannot regard the halo of divine right as the characteristic 
 of royalty. No inviolability can protect the anointed head if 
 it render itself unworthy of the divine possession; no legitimacy 
 and no balm can absolve the ruler from his duties to the land of 
 his care ! Every vocation would appear to our poet of God, and 
 with the vocation every duty. The fulfilment of duty is even 
 the king's first condition of stability ; by his neglect of it he 
 forfeits possession and right ; by this he loses himself, his inner 
 dignity, his consecration, and his power. Thus Henry IV. dis- 
 tinctly tells his son that, unbridled and self-forgetful as he then 
 ■was, he was only ' the shadow of succession ; ' that the honour- 
 able Percy, though a rebel, deserved rather to be the heir. 
 Dutiful illegality is compared with duty-forgetting legitimacy, 
 and is placed above it by the man who had once elevated himself 
 by it, and who would now secure his legality by the fulfilment 
 of duty. By accurately comparing this play with his King John, 
 Tve gain fresh light as to Shakespeare's true intention. The 
 usurper John maintains the crown by good and bad means, so 
 long as he retains his power and confidence, and so long as he 
 abstains from wicked deeds and useless cruelty, and is thoroughly 
 English-minded; as soon as he descends from his royal duty and 
 sells England he loses himself and his crown. He, the usurper, 
 differs not from the lawful Eichard, who in the same way let the 
 land by lease, and, giving up his ^tity, gave up himself also. It 
 
BICSABD n. 289 
 
 ■belongs essentially to this kingly duty that the prince, if he will 
 secure his own right, must defend and protect the right of 
 others. The peculiar right of the king is not esteemed by 
 Shakespeare more sacred than any other; these views took 
 deeper root in England from the period of Shakespeare and the 
 Dutch Eepublic, till Milton, in his 'Defensio pro Populo,' 
 enforced them with marked emphasis. As soon as Kichard had 
 touched the inheritance of Lancaster, he had placed in his 
 hands, as it were, the right of retaliation. The indolent York 
 thus speaks to him immediately : — 
 
 Take from time Ws rights ; 
 Let not to-morrow then enaue to-day ; 
 Be not thyself, for how art thou a king, 
 But by fair sequence and succession ? 
 
 He tells him that he ' plucks a thousand dangers on his head,' 
 that he loses 'a thousand well-disposed hearts,' and that he 
 'pricks his tender patience to those thoughts, which honour 
 and allegiance cannot think.' To this kingly duty there be- 
 longs, moreover, not only the absence of aU those vices resxdting 
 from a weak love of pleasure by which Eichard is ruined, but 
 in their place must appear the virtue of energy, which is the 
 first honour even of the common man. Heaven alone helps us, 
 says Carlisle to Eichard, whfen we embrace his means. And 
 Salisbury enforces upon Eichard the great lesson to be taken 
 from the precipitation of revolutionary times : — 
 
 One day too late, I fear, my nohle lord, 
 Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth ; 
 To-day, to-day, unhappy day, too late, 
 O'erthrows thy joys, fiiends, fortune, and thy state. 
 
 At this warning he rouses himself, though the arousing is 
 now too late. Befoi^e, every claim upon his manliness from 
 Aumerle and Carlisle, and every reproach of his tardiness, had 
 been in vain ; he was absorbed in himself, and had revelled in 
 his misfortune as before in his prosperity. Thus even his wif& 
 shames him when she finds him also deposed in intellect : she; 
 would like to see him like the ' lion, dying ' that with rage 
 * thrusteth forth his paw, and wounds the earth,' but he, * pupil-, 
 like, takes his correction mildly,' and teaches resignation to his 
 wife, whose lips this lesson would have better suited. The 
 weakness and guilt which cause revolutions unexpectedly to 
 
 V 
 
290 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DBAMATIG POETRY. 
 
 prosper are depicted by tlie ppet in a masterly maimer ; and in 
 this play he unrolls before us in succession the spectacle of the 
 powers at work during such a period of revolution — a picture 
 scarcely to be fathomed in its grandeur and depth. For no play 
 requires to be read so often as this, and in such close connec- 
 tion with the succeeding ones, in order that it may be thoroughly 
 understood. Unadorned, and without brilliancy of matter, it 
 yet all the more richly rewards patient industry. To analyse 
 the contents of the whole four plays in a narrative which should 
 exhibit the imderlying motive entirely in Shakespeare's sense 
 would be a comprehensive work, and one of extraordinary ful- 
 ness. Whoever has read them ftom the beginning of this 
 Eichard to the close of Henry V., with conscientious reflection 
 upon every single point, feels truly as if he had passed through 
 an entire world. 
 
 The poet, who has not allowed us fully to know the young 
 king in his prosperity, unfolds his character the more fasci- 
 natingly and minutely in his misfortune. As soon as with 
 Bolingbroke's landing the turning point in his fortune has 
 arrived, at the very conjuncture at which we should have 
 wished to see the powerful ruler, there stands conspicuously 
 before us the kindly human nature, which was before obscured 
 in prosperity and mirth, but which even now is accompanied 
 by weakness and want of stability, the distinguishing featm-e 
 of his character. He has always needed props, and strong props 
 he has not endured ; he had sought them in climbing plants, 
 which had pulled himself to' the ground ; Gaunt and Norfolk he 
 had alienated. For this reason at the first moment of mis- 
 fortune he falls past recovery. As soon as the first intelligence 
 of the defection of his people arrives he is pale and disheartened ; ■ 
 at the second message, which threatens him with a new evil, 
 he is submissive, and ready for abdication and death. When 
 Aumerle reminds him of his father York he rouses himself 
 once more, but as soon as he hears that even this last prop is 
 broken, he curses his cousin for having led him forth ' of that sweet 
 way he was in to despair ; ' he renounces every comfort, every 
 act ; he orders his troops ' to be discharged ; capable of no 
 further effort he will be reminded of none, and himself removes 
 every temptation to it. A highly poetic brilliancy is cast 
 upon the scenes of the humiliation and ruin of the romantic 
 youth, whose fancy rises in sorrow and misfortune to a height 
 which allows us to infer the strength of the intoxication with 
 
BICHAMD II. 291 
 
 wHch he had before plunged into pleasure. The power which 
 at that time had carried him beyond himself, turns now with 
 fearful force within, and the pleasure-loving man now finds 
 enjoyment in suffering and sorrow, and a sweetness in despair. 
 He calls himself at first the slave of a ' kingly woe ; ' subse- 
 quently on the contrary, deprived of his throne, he will remain 
 king of his griefs. The words and predictions of the basely 
 injured Gaunt are now to be fulfilled upon the insulter of the 
 dying man. That sentence finds its truth in Eichard : — 
 
 Woe doth the heavier sit 
 Where it perceives it is but faintly borne. 
 
 True in him is the word, 
 
 Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, 
 Consuming means, soon preys upon itselt 
 
 Eichard marvelled in Graunt's dying scene (Act ir. sc. 1) how 
 the lips of the sick can play with words, but in the deathly 
 sickness of his own misery he learns how to fall still deeper 
 into this play of words and speculative thought. At the very 
 first, in the beginning of his sufferings, he broods upon thoughts 
 of graves and death ; he wishes to let the fate of all fallen kings 
 pass before his mind, and then (as if the words of the dying 
 Gaunt were in his thoughts, when he said to him that a 
 ' thousand flatterers' sit within the small compass of his crown, 
 wasting the land) he pictures to himself the image of the crown 
 in sad contrast to his present position, as if within its hollow 
 temples the antic Death kept his court, allowing the weaver 
 of the crown ' a breath, a little scene to monarchise.' When 
 he afterwards appears before his enemies (Act iii. sc. 3), a 
 paroxysm of his kingly fancy exhibits him to the sneaking 
 Northumberland with a show of power ; indeed, this was now 
 the moment for arresting with dignity and courage the yet 
 undefined plot. But before Bolingbroke had declared his 
 intentions — at a time when, even in the presence of the weak 
 York, no one might omit the royal title before Eichard's name 
 without apology— suddenly and without any cause his wings 
 hang wearied, and he himself speaks of the subjection of the 
 king ; and, as he sees Aumerle weep, his lively fancy at once 
 runs away with him to the borders of insanity : his words 
 remind us in these scenes of the passionate melancholy of Lear 
 which is the prelude to his madness. He asks whether they 
 
 u 2 
 
292 SECOND FEBIOD OF SSAKESPEAEE'S DBAMATIC FOETEY. 
 
 shall ' play the wantons with their woes, and make some pretty- 
 match with shedding tears ? as thus ; — to drop them still upon 
 one place, till they have fretted a pair of graves.' Even here, 
 it, seems, we cannot help looking back shudderingly from aU 
 this wretchedness and misery to that vain intercourse and waste 
 of time in which Eichard formerly lived with his companions. 
 The play on words and the conceits in these scenes have been 
 censured as inappropriate, but nowhere are they inserted with 
 so deep and true a purpose ; those whose whole intercoui-se 
 consisted formerly in raillery and quibbling, naturally specu- 
 late immoderately in such a positionj and delight in exhausting 
 an idea aroused by the force of circumstaiices. Eichard 
 remembers that he is talking but idly, and remarks that they 
 mock at him ; the worst is that Northumberland has heard his 
 foolish words, and designates him to Bolingbroke as a frantic 
 man. That which the rebels would not have ventiu-ed to demand, 
 the' childish man, whom the feeling of being forsaken has 
 quite cast down, offers of himself to them; he himself first 
 designates the danger which surrounds him, when in his half- 
 insane words he calls Northumberland prince and Bolingbroke 
 king ; in the ears of all he gives himself and his inheritance 
 into Bolingbroke's hands, even before any one had asked it. 
 In the scene also of the deposition, which accords excellently 
 with the nature of the king and is the crowning point of the 
 characterisation, we hear -him giving vent to beautiful poetic 
 images upon his misfortune, and we see him burying himself 
 in his sorrow with a kind of pleasure.^ He pictures to himself, 
 as in a drama, the scene over which another would have passed 
 quickly. Only when he is subjected to the indignity of reading 
 his own indictment does his proud nature once again break out, 
 and he perceives too late how ihiserably he had become a traitor 
 to himself. Later too, when we see Eichard on the way to 
 prison and in prison, even in his resignation he is ever employed 
 in picturing his painful condition to himself as still more pain- 
 ful ; revelling, as it were, in his sorrow, and emptying the cup 
 to the very dregs. He peoples the little space of his plison 
 with his wild fancy, he studies how he may compare it to the 
 world. An air of music drives him to reflect how he has here 
 ' the daintiness of ear to check time broke in a disordered string,' 
 whilst ' for the concord of his state and time he had no ear to 
 hear his true time broke.' He wasted time, which now wastes 
 him ; and thus again in another melancholy simile he pictures 
 
SICBABS II. ' 293 
 
 himself as a clock, wHch time had made out of himself.; It is 
 wise of the poet that out of the different stories of Eichard's 
 death he chose that which exhibits him to us at the end in honour-^ 
 able strength, after having allowed us also to perceive the attrac- 
 tive power of his amiability ; it is therefore not without esteeilj 
 that we take our leave of the commiserated man. 
 
 Eichard himself awarded the crown to Bolingbroke when he 
 said to him: 'They well deserve to have, that know the 
 strongest and surest way to get.' But this can in no wise 
 justify the usurper's attack on the throne. An historical, a 
 political, as well as a divine curse, rests upon the deed, which, if 
 not revenged upon the perpetrator himself, reacts upon his 
 house. If God does not protect the sinful king, He protects 
 not therefore the sinful deeds of his adversaries. Eichard and 
 Cadisle utter rather the prediction of punishment : God shall 
 muster ' armies of pestilence ' which shall strike the children 
 of rebels, yet unborn ; for this assault by the imholy hand of 
 the subject against the king, the land was to be called ' the field 
 of Golgotha and dead men's skulls,', and ' the woefullest division ' 
 was to visit it. This curse was fulfilled first in those who had 
 carried out Bolingbroke's schemes : 'The love of wicked friends,' 
 Eichard warns Northumberland, 
 
 converts to fear ; 
 That fear, to hate ; and hate turns one or both ' 
 
 To worthy danger and deserved death. 
 
 And so it was ; Northumberland himself, like the characters 
 in Eichard III., draws down the fulfilment of the curse upon 
 himself with the words : ' Thy guilt be on my head.' The new 
 king meets the vengeance of Heaven subsequently in the rebellion 
 of the Percys, his supporters, and in the civil war, which does 
 not allow him to succeed in the longed-for expiation of his crime,: 
 a crusade to the Holy Land. Still more closely does retribution 
 meet him in his torment of heart, fearing from his own son 
 the same fate which he had brought upon Eichard, and fearing 
 for him the same end that had 'befallen Eichard, because as 
 Prince of Wales he was leading the same unrestrained life. The 
 good kingly use which Henry makes of his usurped crown does 
 not reconcile Heaven so much as that it checks its vengeance • 
 just as on the contrary in Eichard the bad, use had destroyed 
 the good right. He sanctifies the dignity attained, he confirms 
 it as a more sure possession, and he transmits it to his son, who 
 
294 SECOND FEBIOD OF SHAKESFEASE'8 BSAMATIO POETBY. 
 
 adorns it with new glory. But let one unworthy or even weak 
 ruler come into the line, like Henry VL, and quickly will that 
 curse discharge itself upon him ; and this more terribly than upon 
 Eichard, as the same reproaches must press more heavily upon 
 the usurper than upon the lawful ruler. 
 
 But in what does the poet exhibit that good use of the crown 
 which we extol in Bolingbroke? The whole of Henry IV. 
 must give an answer to this question ; but even in Eichard IL 
 the reply is found. His whole path to the kingdom is a royal 
 path, and scarcely has he reached it than he shows by the most 
 striking contrast the difference between the king by nature and 
 the king by mere inheritance. Before, when banished by Eichard 
 he had left the country, he left it like a king. After the death 
 of his father, and the plunder of his house, he returns unhesita- 
 tingly from banishment, in defiance of his sentence, and lands 
 poor and helpless on the forbidden shore. The discontented 
 Percys, in league with him. before his landing, hasten to him ; 
 the steward of Worcester does so, not out of love for him, but 
 for his outlawed brother. On the journey which Bolingbroke has 
 to make with his friends, he flatters them with fair wordsy and 
 entertains them with sweet discourse, but not so as to sell him- 
 self to these helpers, upon whom at the time he wholly depends, 
 as Eichard did to his favourites, who even wholly depended "upon 
 him. The possessionless man, who at the time has only thanks 
 and promises for the future to give, is in earnest in his gratitude, 
 without intending subsequently when he is king to concede to the 
 helpers to the throne a position above the throne. The arro- 
 gance with which Northumberland — ' the ladder wherewithal the 
 mounting Bolingbroke ascended the throne ' — is on a future day 
 to appear against him, is fully foretold in that display of it with 
 which he prepared the way for him to the throne. He and his 
 followers, in their active eagerness, alertness, and officiousness, 
 form a contrast to Eichard's, for the most part, inactive faint- 
 hearted flatterers : they are the willing myrmidons of the re- 
 bellion who urge Bolingbroke as quickly forward as the followers 
 of Eichard check his better nature. It is Northumberland, now 
 smooth and flexible, and now rough and unfeeling, who first 
 speaks of Eichard with the omission of his title ; he it is who 
 Repeats more solemnly and forcibly the oath of Bolingbroke that 
 ' his coming is but for his own ; ' he it is who, in the scene of 
 deposition, maliciously torments King Eichard with the reading 
 of his accusation ; and he it is who would arbitrarily arrest the 
 
SICHASS II. 295 
 
 noble Carlisle for high treason after the outbreak of his feelings 
 of right and his civic fidelity. But how noble throughout does 
 Bolingbroke appear, compared to this base instrument of his 
 plans: he still humbly kneels to the poor Eichard, and at least 
 preserves the show of decorum, while Northumberland must be 
 reminded of his bending knee by his excited king ; he forbids 
 the malicious tormentor, in the deposition scene, any further 
 urging ; he pardons the arrested Carlisle, whose invectives had 
 been hurled in his very presence. He came before Eichard 
 prepared foi' a stormy scene, ready for a part of feigned humility; 
 but when Eichard himself gives him the crown, it is perhaps 
 only another kingly trait in his nature ; it is certainly the act 
 of a statesman, contrasting him far more advantageously than 
 detrimentally with the tardy, self-forgetful king, that he grasps 
 the occasion so readily. No less skilfully had he, it must be 
 admitted, prepared for it. Even before it becomes a personal 
 question between him and Eichard, he had beg^n, according to 
 Percy's account, in the feeUng of Ms greatriess, to step some- 
 what higher than his original vow. He began to reform edicts 
 and decrees, to abolish abuses, to win men by good measures and 
 actions ; he eradicated those 'hated favourites, he assumed to 
 himself a protectorate, and accustomed the people to see kingly 
 acts emanating from him before he was a king. ,In this 
 manner, when wish and capacity, the desire and the gift for 
 ruling, were evidenced in him, the insurrection was already at 
 work before it showed itself in its true aspect. Cold and con- 
 siderate compared to his fanciful predecessor, a profound states- 
 man compared to the romantic and poetic king, a quick horseman, 
 spurring the heavy, over-burdened Eichard, bearing the mis- 
 fortune of banishment with manly composure, and easing his 
 nature by immediate search for redress, while Eichard gives 
 way at the mere approach of misfortune, this man appears 
 throughout as too unequal an adversary to Eichard for the 
 good right on the one side to stand its ground against the 
 superior gifts on the other. If, intoxicated by his first success, 
 he had not so far lost himself as to tread the path of John 
 and Eichard III., and to hint at the murder of the king 
 (though only remotely and indirectly to his subseqtxent sorrow 
 and repentance), we should consider Bolingbroke's path to the 
 throne not only guiltless but justified. His first appearance on 
 the throne, in any case, casts Eichard's knightly endowments 
 thoroughly into the shade. The poet has here ipade excellent 
 
296 SECOND PESIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DBAMATIG FOETBY. 
 
 use of the corresponding history. The commencement scene, 
 which essentially exhibits to us Eichard's conduct as a sovereign, 
 has its counterpart in the fourth act, where Shakespeare exem- 
 plifies Bolingbroke's dissimilar conduct in a similar position. 
 Aumerle is accused by four nobles of the murder of Gloster, as 
 once Bolingbroke himself had accused Norfolk, whom he now 
 wishes honourably to recall and to reinstate in his possessions. 
 Only one takes the side of Aumerie, and this is the half brother 
 of King Eicha,rd — a suspicious security. Bolingbroke could have 
 suffered Aumerle, the most avowed favourite of Eichard, to fall 
 by the sword of the four accusers, and could have thus removed 
 an enemy, but he does it not. Yet more : a newly projected 
 plot of Aumerle's is discovered to the king ; the father himself is 
 the accuser of the son ; the father himself protests earnestly against 
 his pardon; but the yet unconfirmed, illegitimate sovereign 
 scorns to ^ed the' blood of relatives — a deed which cost Eichard 
 nothing. He pardons him ; not out of weakness, for he punishes 
 the other conspirators with death ; he pardons him from humane 
 and kindly motives, and schools him into a hero and a patriot, 
 He does as that gardener would have had the lawful king do ; 
 with wise discretion he govei'ns with mercy and justice, mildness 
 and severity. And, at the same time, he behaves with that sure 
 power and superiority which permits him to jest in this very 
 scene, and to act with that easy humour towards the zealous 
 mother of York, when he has just discovered a conspiracy against 
 his life. 
 
 The group of characters in Eichard II. is arranged very 
 simply in harmony with the suggestions we have offered. In 
 contrast to the incapable legitimate king and his helpless in- 
 active followers stands the rising star of the thorough statesman- 
 like and royal usurper and his over-active adherents. In the 
 midst of the struggle between right and merit stands Carlisle, as 
 a man of genuine loyalty, knowing no motive but fidelity and 
 duty, not concealing the truth from the lawful king, and ruining 
 himself in opposing unsparingly the shield of right against the 
 usurper who raises himself to power. Contrasted with him is 
 the old York, whom Coleridge, in consequence of an incorrect 
 apprehension of the character, has placed in a false opposition 
 to Eichard. The true picture of such an agitated age would 
 be wanting if this character were absent. He is the type of 
 political faintheartedness and neutrality, at a time when partisan- 
 ship is a duty, and of that cowardly loyalty which tm-ns to the 
 
BICHAED II. 297 
 
 strong and powerful. When Eichard is still in his full power, he 
 considers he has gone too far in extolling to the young king the 
 virtues of his father. When Eichard seizes the Lancastrian 
 lands, his natural sense of right, and his anxiety respecting his 
 own property, urge him to utter impressive warnings, but when 
 the king makes him as a ' just ' man his governor in England, 
 he allows himself to be appeased. Bolingbroke lands, and York 
 sees through his project, and warns him not to take what he 
 should not ; his integrity even here shows him the path which 
 his weakness suffers him not to follow. He would like to serve 
 the king and to discharge his duty to his lord, but he thinks he 
 has also a duty of kinship and conscience respecting Bolingbroke's 
 lawful claims to his inheritance. That he stood for the moment 
 in the place of the king he heeds not. Helpless as to action, 
 he loses his head in unutterable perplexity, but not his cha- 
 racter. He resolves to remain neutral. He sees the finger of 
 Grod in the desertion of the people, and lets it be ; for Eichard 
 he has tears, few words, and no deeds. With loyalty such as 
 this countries go to ruin, while they prosper at usurpations such 
 as Bolingbroke's. But that this weakness of the weak can amount 
 to a degree in which it becomes the most unnatural obdutacy, 
 and in which the cruelty of the usurper is guiltless when com- 
 pared with it, has been displayed by Shakespeare in a truly 
 masterly manner when he suffers York to accuse his own sop. 
 of high treason and to urge his death with pertinacity. He 
 goes so far as to wish that the king may ' ill thrive, if he grant 
 any grace.' In this trait conscientiousness and fidelity are 
 mingled indistinguishably with the fear of exposure and sus- 
 picion. Such is servile loyalty ; under the rule of the weak it 
 is weak, and affords but a frail support ; under that of the strong 
 it is strong, and is an efficient and trustworthy power. 
 
HENEY IV. 
 
 - PAET I, 
 
 The two parts of Henry IV., the latter of which was completed 
 before, the 25th February, 1598, are a direct continuation of 
 Eichard 11. ; the first embraces a period of only ten months 
 (between the battles of Holmedon, 14th September, 1402, and 
 of Shrewsbury, 21st July, 1403), the second comprises the 
 interval from, that time till Henry's death, nine years after. In 
 both these plays Shakespeare follows Holinshed's Chronicle, 
 even in its errors. Thus he has allowed himself to be misled by 
 it into, blending in his Edmitnd Mortimer two persons of that 
 name, uncle and nephew. In the history of the revolt of the 
 Percys, Shakespeare with wonderful skill faithfully uses the 
 historical material, even in the most minute touches ; the comic 
 and serious parts of Prince Henry's youthful extravagances, and 
 his quarrel with his faither, are worked out with poetic freedom 
 from a few vague indications in the Chronicle ; nor would the 
 poet have suffered these indications to excite his suspicion or 
 disgust had 1 he known the critical writings of Luders and 
 Tyler, who in our own day have sought to set aside the reproach 
 of the youthful sins of Henry V. The hints in the Chronicle, 
 which appear unquestionable even to the eye of the historian, 
 had been already dramatically used before Shakespeare in an 
 older play, written between 1580 and 1588, entitled 'The 
 Famous Viqtories of Henry V. ;' it is a rough piece, one of the 
 most worthless historical plays of the pre-Shakespeare period ; 
 and Shakespeare could have borrowed nothing from it but a 
 few isolated externals. Of Henry's youthful tricks the Chronicle 
 affords no particulars beyond the story that the prince once 
 gave the Lord Chief Justice a box on the ear and was arrested 
 for it, and that at another time he went to court in a dress 
 stuck over with pins, to signify that he went on thorns as long 
 
HENRY ir. 299 
 
 as the crown was not his. Both these st6ries the old piece has 
 admitted, hoth has Shakespeare rejected ; the one he has 
 delicately shifted hehind the scene, the other absurd story he 
 has changed into an action fall of pathos and characteristic 
 truth. Beyond this, the older play "has not afiforded our 
 poet anything respecting the wild scenes of Henry's youthful 
 companions but a hint not to neglect these historical stories, 
 capable as they are of popular treatment, and also a few names, 
 such as the tavern at Eastcheap, Gradshill, Ned, and Sir John 
 Oldcastle. The latter was, as Halliwell has minutely proved,* 
 originally the name of the fat knight in Shakespeare. We in- 
 fer this indeed from occasional intimations in the play itself; 
 the prince's address to Falstaff, ' my old lad of the castle,' can 
 only thus he explained, and in the quarto edition of the second 
 part the prefix Old (Oldcastle) is still left before a speech of 
 FalstafFs. The matter becomes a certainty from a quotation 
 of the actor Nathaniel Field, who must have been best informed 
 on this point.'^ 
 
 We mention this thus fully, because with this mere name 
 circumstances are linked which furnish evidence of the great 
 sensation which Henry IV. caused at its appearance. In the 
 series of historical plays, Shakespeare takes the same leap in 
 this piece as in the series of love plays he does in Eomeo and 
 Juliet. But the effect must have been incomparably greater. 
 For Eomeo is a work the enjoyment of which was limited to 
 those of Shakespeare's select public who possessed the greatest 
 refinement of feeling ; but in Henry TV. the richest entertain- 
 ment was afforded for spectators of every class. Shakespeare 
 has indeed scarcely written another play of such fulness and 
 diversity in fascinating and sharply delineated characters, 
 bearing at the same time such a native stamp, and interwoven 
 with a subject so national, and so universally interesting — a 
 play, in fact, of such manifold and powerful force of attraction. 
 When Henry IV. first appeared, an immoderate delight must 
 have seized the spectators of every nature and of every position ; 
 a tumultuous joy must have been its effect ; for the genius of a 
 nation has never appeared on any stage in such bright cheer- 
 
 1 Halliwell on the ' Character of Falstaff,' 1841. 
 
 ' In his play, ' Amends for Ladies,' printed 1618, he silys : ' Did you 
 not see the piece in which the fat knight, named Oldcastle, told you truly 
 what was honour ? ' with evident allusion to the famous soliloquy in Henry 
 IV. (I. Act v. ac. 3). 
 
300 SECOND PERIOD OF 8HAKESFEAEE' 8 DBAMATIO FOETRY; 
 
 fulness, and, at the same time, in such quiet modesty, as in these 
 plays. From the moment of their appearance the form of 
 stage productions and the act and manners of the poet were at 
 once changed in England ; not till the pioneering genius works 
 with such dexterity and ease that the labour of maturity is no 
 longer remarked in his productions, and his art no longer ap- 
 pears art, does he attract by the appearance of facility a crowd 
 of imitators — and this is first to be said of this play of Shake- 
 speare's. From this time appears that train of prolific poets by 
 profession, Ben Jonson, Marston, Thomas Heywood, Middle- 
 ton, Chapman, and others, while previously all had been frag- 
 mentary effort, timid essay, and dilettantism. Now there ap- 
 peared in the plays a fresh free touch of life, while before, even 
 in the works of the unshackled Greene and Marlowe, the labour 
 of art and learning had been too evident. Dramatic poetry now 
 seemed to have loosened its tongue or to have grown its wings. 
 The scenes from low life attracted spectators as well as poets ; 
 vulgar reality, and unfortunately also real vulgarity, became 
 the character of stage poetry; nor was oiar poet accountable 
 for this unhappy turn, for it was just on this point that he 
 laboured with the highest moral severity. In the first place, aU 
 the comic characters of the play were imitated and repeated. 
 Shallow occurs in his own name as a constant bharacter in later 
 dramas ; the swaggerer Pistol is imitated times out of number ; 
 and Chapman says, in 15i98, that the word 'swaggerer' itself 
 was a new term that had been so quickly received because it 
 was created by a natural prosopopcsia without etymology or 
 derivation. The character of the stage marvel Falstaff or 
 Oldcastle was copied by Ben Jonson in that of Tucca in his 
 ' Poetaster,' and by Fletcher in his ' Cacafogo.' But not on the 
 stage alone did this character cause such a deep agitation and 
 effect ; the phenomenon was so extraordinary that it gained 
 , ground and called forth a vast tumult in families and parties! 
 Shakespeare found the name of John Oldcastle in the before- 
 mentioned older play of Henry V. ; in the Chronicle he found a 
 John Oldcastle, who was page to the Duke of Norfolk who 
 plays a part in Eichard 11. ; and this, according to Shakespeare, 
 his Falstaff (Oldcastle) had been in his youth. When the 
 poet wrote his Henry IV. he knew not who this Oldcastle was, 
 whom he had rendered so distinct with the designation as 
 Norfolk's page; he was a Lord Cobham, who had perished 
 as a Lollard and Wicklif&te in the persecution of the chur.ch 
 
HENRY IV. 301 
 
 Tinder Henry V. The Protestants regarded Mm as a holy- 
 martyr, the Catholics as a heretic ; the latter seized with eager- 
 ness this description of the fat poltroon, and gave it out as a 
 portrait of Lord Cobham, who was indeed physically and 
 mentally his contrast. The , family complained of this miswse 
 of a name dear to them, and Shakespeare declared in the 
 epilogue to Henry IV. that Cobham was in his sight also a 
 martyr, and that ' this was not the man.' At the same time, 
 he changed the name to Falstaff, but this was of little use ; in 
 spite of the express retraction, subsequent Catholic writers on 
 church history still declared Falstaff to be a portrait of the 
 heretic Cobham. But it is a strange circumstance that even 
 now under the name of Falstaff another historical character 
 is again sought for, just as if it were impossible for such a 
 vigorous form not to be a being of reality. It was referred to 
 John Fastolfe, whose cowardice is more st,igmatised in Henry 
 VI. than history justifies ; and this too met with public blame,, 
 although Shakespeare could have again asserted that he in- 
 tended Fastolfe as little as Cobham. Still more indications 
 may be enumerated of the general sensation excited by this 
 stage monster. The name of the poet and his creation became 
 a matter of speculation. Some poets in association with Mun- 
 day' had dramatised the life of Oldcastle (Cobham), and the 
 play was printed in 1600 under Shakespeare's name ; the poet 
 probably complained of this, for we possess impressions of the 
 sam.e year, 1600, in which the name is omitted. 
 
 In the two parts of Henry IV., the political theme which 
 the poet had begun in Eichard II. is continued. Richard's 
 right, he has there shown us, could not exempt him from the 
 fulfilment of his duty ; when he neglected this he lost his title 
 and his divine consecration. Legitimacy, as such, joined even 
 to a fine natural character, could not protect the crown for the 
 king. From Henry IV.'s rule we shall learn, on the other hand, 
 that royal zeal for duty may indeed maintain the usurped posi- 
 tion, but cannot atone for the injustice thus committed ; and 
 that a kingdom illegally gained is not secured from the greatest 
 commotions by mere merit, combined even with the most able 
 and crafty character. Shakespeare may have read the idea of 
 this historical retribution even in Holinshed's Chronicle; it speaks 
 of the cup of civil war as well deserved by the people who had 
 assisted Henry IV. against Richard, and it shows the justice of 
 that punishment of disorder which visited Henry IV. and his 
 
302 SECOm) PEBIOO OF SHAKESPEABE'S SSAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 successors for the deposition of Eichard 11. The curse of the 
 raurdered king now reaches its fulfilment. Shakespeare does 
 not mechanically represent this, as the Chronicle does, as an 
 arbitrary punitive decree of Grod,, but he exhibits it as the 
 necessary fruit of a natural seed in the characters and actions of 
 men. The Earl of Warwick, when (Part II. Act iii. sc. 1) he 
 interprets that curse to King Henry, says to him : — 
 
 There is a history in all men's lives, 
 PigurLag the nature of the times deoeas'd : 
 The which observed, a man may prophesy, 
 With a near aim, of the main chance of things 
 
 As yet not come to life 
 
 King Bichard might create a perfect guess 
 That great Northumberland, then false to him, 
 Would, of that seed, grow to a greater falseness ; 
 Which should not find a ground to root upon. 
 Unless on you. 
 
 Just as this was the case with Northumberland, so is it also 
 with Henry IV. In him also his former disposition only 
 developes itself afresh when it fills him with distrust of the 
 Percys, his friends and helpers, who possessed a similar feeling 
 with regard to him. 
 
 The character of the king is worked out by Shakespeare 
 with that perfect penetration which is peculiar to him, as a 
 prototype of diplomatic cunning and of complete mastery over 
 fair appearance and all the arts of concealment. The difference 
 between that which a man is and that which he appears occu- 
 pies the poet in this character as it does in Eichard III. But 
 Henry IV. is rather a niaster in concealment than in dissimula- 
 tion ; he cannot, like the other, play any part required with 
 dramatic skill ; he can only exhibit the good side of his nature ; 
 he can steal kindness and condescension from Heaven ; he is a 
 Prometheus in diplomatic subtlety, and, as Percy calls him, ' a 
 king of smiles.' That which separates him and his deep political 
 hypocrisy from Eichard II., as far as day from night, is that he 
 possesses this good side, and has oidy to exhibit it and not to 
 feign> it. Far removed from authorising murder like the other, 
 and delighting in the iron-hearted assassin, wading ever deeper 
 from blood to blood and deadening conscience, he has rather 
 wished than ordered Eichard's death, a,nd has cursed and exiled 
 the murderer ; conscience is roused in him immediately after 
 the deed, and he wishes to expiate largely for the once suggested 
 
HENEY IK 303 
 
 bloodshed. At the close of Eichard II., and at the beginning of 
 this play, we find him occupied with the idea of making a 
 crusade to the Holy Land in expiation of Richard's death. 
 Strangely in this reserved mind, which fears to look into itself, 
 does the domination of a worldly nature interweave itself with 
 the stimulus of remorse ; devout and serious thoughts of repen- 
 tance are joined in this design with the most subtle political 
 motives ; earnestness of purpose and inclination to allow the 
 purpose to be frustrated jar in a manner which the poet has 
 made perfectly evident in the facts, though not more evident in 
 the king's reflections than is natural to such a nature. We are 
 in doubt whether the worldly man hesitates at the serious 
 realisation of his religious design, or whether by the decree of 
 Heaven the expiation of that murder was to be denied him as 
 the natural consequence of his earlier deeds. He is in earnest 
 about the crusade, but mostly when he is ill ; then his fleet and 
 army are in readiness. It has been foretold to him that he shall 
 die at Jerusalem (and he. dies at last in a chamber which bears 
 this name) ; when death is near, his haste and earnestness for 
 the consecrated place of expiation become greater ; but that he 
 thinks on the pilgrimage also in days of health is a proof of the 
 seriousness of his intention generally. This seriousness would 
 not at such times have been so great in him if the political 
 principles of wise circumspection did not prompt him to the 
 same resolution as that to which he was urged by prophecy, 
 superstition, and conscience. He would gladly divert the evil 
 sap from the land, and lead the agitated spirits to the Holy 
 Land, that ' rest and lying still, might not make them look too 
 near into his state ; ' in dying he bequeathed to his son the 
 lesson of his domestic policy : that he should ' busy giddy, minds 
 with foreign quarrels ; that action, hence borne out, may waste 
 the memory of the former days,' the remembrance of his acqui- 
 sition of the throne. He teaches the same policy which in our 
 own day a pretender to the throne, an equally cunning aspirant, 
 the heir like him of a revolution and of a crown, partly given 
 and partly surreptitiously obtained, sought to practise in Algiers, 
 and to which he trained his sons ; he, too, escaping not the dis- 
 quietude which hung like a Nemesis over his head as over 
 Henry's. One such comparison of a general political truth and 
 doctrine such as our poet drew from the features of the history 
 is sufficient to characterise the historic-political wisdom which 
 marked his mind, combined with so many other intellectual 
 
304 SECOND FEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DSAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 qualities, and whicK may even allure the historian by profession 
 to study his writings for his own art. 
 
 Just as in the beginning of our play the king had designed 
 his plan for a crusade, the rumours of war in the north and west 
 cross him ; the Percys in the north had discomfited the Scottish 
 Douglas; and in Wales, Griendower, with whom Henry had 
 before fought in Kichard's tirne, had taken Mortimer prisoner. 
 In these tidings there lies a double blessing for Henry. A 
 valiant enemy in the north is repulsed, and the' defeat in the 
 west is felicitous, for Mortimer is a descendant of Lionel of 
 Clarence, the elder brother of Henry's father (Graunt-Lancaster), 
 who thus had a nearer claim to the throne than Henry IV. The 
 opportunity is favourable for humbling the powerful northern 
 noble ; the Percys — his old friends — they too on their side have 
 become more powerful by the victory over Douglas ; they had 
 been long dangerous from the union of the young Percy with 
 the sister (or aunt) of the pretender Mortimer ; and owing to 
 Worcester's hostile position towards the king, and his insolent 
 presumption on the merits of the Percys, they had become 
 troublesome and threatening to his crown. The old seed, the 
 mutual mistrust which the false bear to the false, springs up 
 according to Eichard's prophecy. The nobles beKeve they can 
 never be sufficiently rewarded for their service to the crown, the 
 king fears that they can never be satisfied with the greatest 
 recompense. Those who, skilled in the arts of revolution, had 
 once placed the king in competition with Eichard as an illegi- 
 timate rival, could at any moment oppose to him a legitimate 
 pretender. The king, versed in the secret arts of conspiracy, 
 gives his former friends credit for them also ; those who had 
 seen him reject the instrument of Eichard's murder, might fear 
 that he would rid himself of them as readily. They urge to the 
 last that they had recourse to revolt for the sake of their own 
 safety ; the king equally avows at length that their power made 
 him apprehend his own deposition. The point at which grati- 
 tude, friendship, and love culminate in envy, and then degene- 
 rate into rigour, hatred, and strife, is excellently exhibited in 
 the first and third scenes of the first of the two plays. It is 
 just when the Percys had rendered the King a service in the 
 overthrow of the Douglas, and had proved themselves faithful, 
 that his mistrust seeks occasion for a breach ; it is just when he 
 most admires the yoxmg hero Percy, and prefers him to his own 
 son, that his suspicion, or his policy, or his jealousy, or all 
 
HENRY IV. 305 
 
 together, seek occasion against him; it is just when the impartial 
 Blunt makes Percy's innocence truly evident that the king 
 allows his uncompromising severity to prevail ; and it is just 
 when Mortimer was overcome and captured that he calls him a 
 rebel, and thus makes him one. His suspicious and base policy 
 preys into the actions of others as if all were alike masters of 
 Machiavellian arts ; he goes so far as to impute to Mortinier an 
 intentional defeat and a wilful betrayal of his people to Glen- 
 dower. The open enmity with which the king had before dis- 
 missed the malicious Worcester' from the council-table, and the 
 severity with which he now rejects him and upbraids him with 
 ' the moody frontier of a servant brow ' towards his majesty, 
 urge the former friends of the king to defection, and the loudly 
 expressed mistrust shows them the very path to union with their 
 former enemies. 
 
 Odious as the king shows himself in these circumstances, 
 he yet proves himself, in the management of the conflict excited, 
 to be the man born for power, as the poet has at first depicted 
 him. Wasted as he is by painful anxiety, consumed by suspi- 
 cion, not alone of the pretender to the throne, who is weak, not 
 alone of Percy, who is simple-hearted and honest, but also of 
 his own son, who in his youthful pleasures is far enough from 
 all political plots ; agitated by scruples of conscience, which 
 represent all these misfortunes to him as a punishment from 
 Grod, he is nevertheless the same unbent man as ever, trusting 
 in his human power, and prompt for action. In his undertakings 
 against the rebels his readiness, consistency, and firmness are 
 equally great ; no delay is allowed to increase the enemy's 
 number and advantage. In the moment of decision previous to 
 the battle there is no lack of moderation and forbearance ; after 
 the fight there is no want of generosity. The king meets, as he 
 says, that which has become necessary as a necessity, and he 
 proves himself in all this, though menaced by a more dangerous 
 civil war, to be a perfect contrast to the helpless Richard, who 
 knew not how to defend a legitimate cause against a rising 
 enemy. The Percys suffer in the first part a glorious defeat in 
 arms, in the second part they fall diplomatically deceived. 
 When thus the last adversaries of Henry are crushed, and his 
 good fortune might have reached its prime, he is just then 
 broken down by pain, afiSiction, and inward distress. The 
 grandeur of his kingly purpose, and the nature of his merit, 
 
 X 
 
306 SECOND FEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DBAMATIC FOETSY. 
 
 shows itself throughout in the one point that, while he swears 
 by sceptre and soul, he sees his dignity and right to the throne 
 resting alone in qualification and in a right care of the state, 
 and not in hereditary possession. The idea, therefore, that his 
 usurpation will be useless to his family torments him doubly 
 when he sees his son lost in the dissoluteness of youth and un- 
 worthy of his throne. The reserved, prudent, circumspect man, 
 possessed no standard for the indiscretion, the open nature, the 
 veiled wisdom of his son. He sees him ruined like Eichard by 
 bad company ; he sees Percy forming the same contrast to him 
 that he himself afforded to Eichard, although Percy was the 
 greatest contrast to himself, and Prince Henry was the greatest 
 contrast to Eichard. The pragmatic man knows only his own 
 ratio ; he knows not how to estimate natures which lie beyond 
 his range of vision. He imputes to his son the guilt of serving 
 with Percy against him, as he had himself fought against his 
 cousin Eichard ; he fears that he may seek the- crown from him, 
 and may be on the watch for his death, even after he has saved 
 his life at Shrewsbury. In all he sees the punishment of Grod, 
 and it is so. His afflicted mind is most afflicted when at the 
 height of his good fortune and in the haven of outward security; 
 he finds neither peace nor rest ; and from the depths of his soul 
 that lainent arises (Part II. Act iii. sc. 1 ) that ' with all ap- 
 pliances and means to boot ' he finds not that sleep which ' upon 
 the high and giddy mast seals up the shipboy's eyes.' His hair 
 is become white, the presentiment overtakes him that genera- 
 tion after generation shall raise and continue the internal 
 strife and war ; with immoderate satiety of life he says that 
 
 The happiest youth, — Viewing his progress through, 
 What perils past, what crosses yet to enaue,^ 
 Would shut the hook, and sit him down and die. 
 
 When he wished to go to the east, the civil war disturbed him ; 
 when twice the revolt becomes tremendous, he fears everything 
 frona his own blood ; when it begins to be overthrown, he be- 
 comes sickly ; when it is subdued, he is ill unto death ; and at 
 last, when he is apparently dead, he must yet live to see that 
 his son takes from him the crown. He believes that he has 
 proof of the prince's heartlessness and scheming. ' Thou hid'st,' 
 he says to his son (and into this poetic image Shakespeare has 
 transformed the chronicled legend of the prince's pin-adorned 
 dress), 
 
HENSY IV. 307 
 
 Thou hid'st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts ; 
 Which thou hast ■whetted on thy stony heart,. 
 To stab at half an hour of my life. 
 
 In his son's life, he sees the proof that he loved Mm not, 
 and in the hour of death he perceives the endeavour to assure 
 him of it. When the son's explanation quiets and convinces 
 him, and lightens his dying hour, the deep dissembler at length 
 unveils himself, and acknowledges by what by-paths and in- 
 direct, crooked ways he had attained the crown. Shortly be- 
 fore, with equal appeal to Grod, he had sworn (Part II. Act in. 
 sc. 1) that necessity alone had ' compelled him and greatness 
 to kiss.' In conversation with Warwick he had then protested 
 that at the time when Richard predicted the division between 
 the Percys and himself he had no design upon the crown. 
 Interpreters poiat out this as a forgetfiilness on the part of the 
 poet, who allowed Eichard to utter this prophecy when Henry 
 was already king ; although with the unusual depth which marked 
 Shakespeare's delineation of this whole character, his intention 
 might have been to show rather how, in the moment of his 
 sickness, the' liar and dissembler loses his true remembrance, 
 and plaiiily and by proof betrays his very guilt in the protesta- 
 tions of his innocence. 
 
 From this analysis of Bolingbroke's character we perceive 
 the political relation and bearing of Henry IV. to Richard' II. ; 
 but from the profound treatment of the principal characters 
 these pieces are raised from the sphere of political historical plays 
 into that of the true ethical dramas, the freer creations of Shake- 
 speare ; beyond the political theme of the pieces there appears 
 also a moral centre of thought, as we perceived above in 
 Eichard III. We arrive at this motal centre of the play by 
 attentively considering the principal figures, Henry Percy and 
 Prince Henry of Wales. 
 
 Shakespeare makes Henry Percy, in order that he may 
 obtain a more complete contrast to the prince, of the same age 
 as the latter, although historically he is far rather contemporary 
 with King Henry, and twenty years older than the prince. He 
 is the soul of the undertaking against the king, and the brilliant 
 figure in the centre of the rebels, extorting love and admiration 
 even from his enemies. Never was a mare living character 
 delineated in poetry ; ballads designed to. sing his glory might 
 have borrowed their boldest traits and images from, this drama. 
 There is, too, scarcely any part more grateful to the actor ; -» 
 
 X 2 
 
308 SECOND PEEIOD OF SSAKESPEAEE' S SEAMATIO POETEY. 
 
 Betfcerton, the cleverest actor 'of the old English, school, hesi- 
 tated whether he should himself choose Percy, or the favourite 
 of all parts, Falstaff. This doubt would hardly be conceivable 
 to an actor in Germany who knew himself as well qualified for 
 Falstaff as Betterton was, because it is only a people accustomed 
 to action who can estimate this character as it deserves. For 
 Henry Percy is the ideal of all genuine and perfect manliness, 
 and of that active nature which makes the man a man. In 
 jesting exaggeration the prince well characterises him with the 
 one touch, that he kills six or seven dozen of Scots at a break- 
 fast, and says to his wife, ' Fye upon this quiet life ! I want 
 work I ' As a model of genuine chivalry, Shakespeare has de- 
 lineated the lion-hearted youth with characteristics as refined 
 as they are great. He gives him the name of the war-god; 
 report compares his victories to Caesar's : Achilles' motto is his : 
 ' the time of life is too short to spend that shortness basely ; ' 
 and when he has fallen, Henry says over his grave what so often 
 .has been said of Alexander : — 
 
 When that this body did contain a spirit, 
 A kingdom for it was too small a bound ; 
 But now, two paces of the vilest earth 
 Is room fenough. 
 
 Still young, as the poet makes him, he has thrice beaten 
 the Scottish Douglas, and heaped upoii his own head all the 
 enemy's glory; he has at length gained immortal honour at 
 Holmedon, and by this has excited the envy of the king. A 
 keen ambition spurs him on, like a proud horse, to suffer none 
 to pass before him on his course of warlike and honourable 
 action. At the bare mention of this subject his language at 
 once assumes the ardent, exaggerated expression of a courage 
 amounting to passion, and of an even ostentatious heroism. When 
 he only forbodes a rival, as in the Prince, a grudging jealousy 
 provokes him to the unknightly expression of a resolve, the 
 execution of which wotijd be impossible to him, and he declares 
 that he would ' have him poisoned with a pot of ale ! ' When 
 he hears of Henry's proud bearing before the battle of Shrews- 
 bury, this jealousy urges him imprudently into the most dan- 
 gerous actions. Danger has ever an alluring charm for him ; 
 when the goad of emulation is added to it, it decides him 
 completely to venture on the unequal fight, and with the most 
 painful impatience he leaves explanatory letters unread, and 
 
EENET IV. 309 
 
 every earnest appeal to his military talent, to Ms foresight, and 
 to his honour unheeded. His courage makes him a sophist, just 
 as his quick passion occasionally makes him a statesman — two 
 capacities which lie in direct opposition to his soldierly nature. 
 For his blood boils up easily and violently ; a ' Hotspur,' ardent 
 by nature, he is full of caprices, always occupied in mind, and 
 thirsting after action ; in this activity of life he is forgetful 
 and absent, robbed of appetite by day and of sleep by night ; 
 his imagination is excitable and easily provoked, and in his 
 irritation he. is capable of passion, contradiction, and scorn 
 towards all the world. In such moments his speech falters, and 
 vents itself with stuttering rapidity, but the defect becomes 
 him so that the young imitate it in him as an excellence. In 
 repose, and left to himself, he is pliable and yielding like* a 
 lamb in his true, unsuspicious nature. In private with Grlen- 
 dower he allows him for nine hours to entertain him with the 
 devil's names, although it disgusts him ; in the presence of 
 others he crosses him with derision and reproach. Opposed, 
 he covets a little piece of land, which he would gladly yield to 
 a yielding claimant. Accused by the king of having refused 
 the prisoners made at Holmedon, he excuses his refusal of the 
 demand; but when the king gives him the lie, and threatens 
 him, he is at once no longer master of his pride and anger. 
 With his heated imagination, which the mere idea of a great 
 exploit carries beyond the bounds of patience and reflection, he 
 utters presagingly bold schemes of revolt ; and when his spirit 
 is excited into violent passion, the political Worcester suggests 
 his long-matured plans against Henry to the ' quick conceiving 
 discontents' of the hot-blooded youth. This blind passion 
 throws the spotless hero into traitorous connections, it leads the 
 resolute man into league with the undecided and the weak, the 
 warrior and soldier into schemes with artful dipflomatists, the 
 man of valour and fidelity into alliance with traitors and 
 cowards, and the man imprudent himself into undertakings 
 imprudently designed. And when candid advisers suspeat these 
 plans and his friends, the honest man bears ill-will against the 
 honest counsellor, because he himself does not believe in dis- 
 honesty. This passionateness, this want of penetration and 
 knowledge of human nature, prove the ruin of the trustful 
 man ; for the want of self-command, which leads him to im- 
 moderate ebullitions and arrogant blame, forms, in Worcester's 
 opinion, the principal blemish in the extreme beauty of his 
 
310 SECOND PEEIOD OF SMAKESFEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 character. Beyond this, there is no ignoble vein in the man. 
 Perfectly true and of a golden heart, far removed from aU 
 malice, inaccessible to cunning and deceit, his nature is utterly 
 at variance with the vile and corrupt policy and diplomacy of 
 the king. He is nettled and scourged with rods if he only 
 hears of it ; and when the king imputes to Mortimer the crime 
 of having intentionally given himself up as a prisoner to Grlen- 
 dower, his indignation bursts forth in his presence : ' never did 
 base and rotten policy colour her -working with such deadly 
 wounds.' His utter aversion to all untruth renders him 
 heartily angry at Glendower's whimsical bragging. He cannot 
 listen to praise and flattery, and blame he cannot suppress, 
 even if he should offend new and insecure friends by it. On 
 such occasions he suffers his vehemence and roughness to be 
 reproved, and scornfully blesses manners more refined and 
 commended. An enemy to all affectation, to all show and 
 vanity, he is an enemy also to all false, unmanly refinement. 
 He would rather hear ' a dry wheel grate on an axle-tree ' than 
 mincing poetry ; he would rather be ' a kitten, and cry — ^mew,' 
 than be a ballad-monger; and music and singing he thinks 
 ' the next way to turn tailor, or be red-breast teacher.' Averse 
 to these tender arts, he is so also to all false sentimentality. 
 The charming scene. between, him and his wife shows that he 
 loves because he banters ; no other expression for its love could 
 this' unaffected nature find. How could Ulrici imitate the 
 absurd Horn in declaring that Percy's wife was only his chief 
 servant ? How can we reconcile it with Henry Percy's character 
 to swear on horseback to his wife that he loves her infinitely, 
 if these were only, empty words to a servant ? Such love rests 
 closely and firmly on the certain superiority of the husband and 
 on the golden i«onfidence of the wife, who possesses the rare 
 quality of understanding the fervour of her husband's love in 
 his jests and banterings, and from whose remembrance this 
 ' miracle of men ' can never pass away. In short, to trace back 
 this character, and indeed our two plays, to the point at which 
 we started, we can only say that honour lives and moves in this 
 man as in its own abode; it is the virtue of the soldier in 
 contrast to the equivocal and diplomatic honom- of the cabinet 
 which distinguishes the king. The honourable Douglas renders 
 homage to the Hotspur Percy as to ' the king of honour.' He 
 is ' the theme, of honour's tongue,' it is said, whilst dishonour 
 stains the brow of Prince Henry. He will go through any 
 
HENSr IV. 311 
 
 danger ' from the east unto the -west, so honour cross it from the 
 north to south.' It seems to him 
 
 an easy leap, 
 To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon ; 
 Or dive into the bottom of the deep, 
 And pluck up drowned honour by the locks ; 
 So he, that doth redeem her thence, might wear, 
 Without corriyal, all her dignities 1 
 
 The impatience of his ambition, and his jealousy of honour, 
 is expressed in this, that he is on fire when he only hears Prince 
 Henry praised. - The Percys reflect with repentance on the 
 mortification of Eichard, the world's tongue rebukes them for 
 the old misdeed, and the young hero especially wishes to wash 
 away this stain from the honour of bis house. The time serves, 
 he thinks, to redeem banished honour; it seems to him in- 
 tolerable to bear the outrage, and to be discarded and shaken 
 off by him for whom the shame was undergone. In his 
 ardour it is not possible for him to reflect that the means for 
 this effacing of dishbnour must heap new dishonour upon thiem, 
 and that the motives are selfish. The revolt in league with 
 enemies of the land for the purpose of dividing the kingdom, 
 the ' ill-weaved ambition ' which set it going, remains a blemish 
 on his shield of honour, but the only one ; and even this 
 ignominy, says Prince Henry, shall sleep with him in the 
 grave, and not be remembered in his epitaph. This conquest 
 over his victor is made even in death by the honourable hero. 
 He makes it also over the reader. This has been expressed by 
 no one more significantly than by Hazlitt, who would not have 
 been sorry if Northumberland had come in time, and had 
 decided the battle at Shrewsbury in Percy's favour. 
 
 Grreat and admirable when considered by himself, Percy 
 increases in greatness when we see him in the company of his 
 fellow-conspirators. ' Could the world,' says Falstaff, ' pick 
 out three such enemies again, as that 'fiend Douglas, that spirit 
 Percy, and that devil Grlendower ? ' But when we see Percy 
 associated with the others, we perceive how high he stands 
 above those whom Falstaff placed beside him. The Scottish 
 Douglas is nearest to him ; he has the bravest .place in his 
 heart's love, and Douglas on the other hand tells him that no 
 man but him breathes so potent upon the earth whom he 
 would not ' beard.' True like Percy, brave like him without 
 consideration and caution, inaccessible like him to fear, he has 
 
312 SECOND PESIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DBAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 also somewhat of the national ostentation which is not foreign 
 to Percy ; their blustering mode of speaking is also altogether 
 similar, the idea often being misty in its expression. But the 
 intellectual height, the poetic enamel, that moral essence of 
 chivalry, which ennoble Hotspur's character, are wanting to 
 the dry Scot; and therefore the old enemy, after their first 
 personal contact, submits readily to this sovereignty of mind, 
 and implicitly acknowledges Percy to be the king of honour. • 
 His valour is rather of an instinctive character compared to 
 that of Percy, which is excited by all the brilliant ideas of 
 ambition ; he is the Sickingen in the schopl of a Hutten. — Still 
 further removed from Percy is the Welshman, Owen Glendower ; 
 without this counterpart, Percy would perhaps with his roman- 
 tic valour and ostentation have appeared as a refined caricature ; 
 when this caricature is placed beside him in Owen, he modestly 
 moves back to the level of human nature. Vanity excites the 
 Welshman to all that Percy is impelled to do by honour and 
 the noblest self-reliance ; it produces even his bragging, while 
 this flows with Percy from exaggerated ardour. A false show 
 of honour urges Griendower indeed to adventurous deeds of war, 
 but the reputati&n of natural strength is not sufficient for him; 
 he aspires after the renown of miraculous abilities and faculties, 
 he longs to see the superstitious world tremble before his great- 
 ness, and he boasts of commanding the powers of heU. In 
 opposition to the deluding magician, Percy places his pride in 
 modest truth ; in contrast to the marvel-loving theories of the 
 one, stands his plain rational theology ; he calls his vain glory 
 the ' unprofitable chat of a Welshman ; ' and how should his 
 self-praise please the man who could not suffer even the com- 
 mendation of another ! Out of vanity Griendower unites to his 
 valour learning and study, music and poetry — those arts of the 
 muses which Percy considers unsuitable to the soldier ; out of 
 vanity, ajid a desire to have weight in everything, he is skilled 
 in all the social and courtly arts which Percy despises. Percy 
 is stung with impatience and pain in the scene in which Owen's 
 daughter sings to Mortimer; such weakness and extravagant 
 sentimentality are contrary to his nature, and the whole con- 
 duct is so far removed from the healthful relations between him 
 and his wife. The unnaturalness of his union with dissimilar 
 beings is felt indeed by his instinctive sensitiveness, yet he is not 
 capable of bringing reflection to bear on this aversion, which 
 might have warned him and inspired him with mistrust. ' Tell 
 
HENBY IV. 313 
 
 truth,' he had said to Grlendower, ' and shame the d,evil ; ' but 
 Grlendower feared the devil, and was untrue and unfaithful. 
 Like Mortimer — who stands among all as an irresolute tool, as a 
 pretender, who, on account of the loftiness of his aim, ought to 
 feel the sharpest stimulus of honour, and who possesses not its 
 smallest impulse — like Mortimer he is slowly induced to join 
 the rebels at the place of meeting, and on the decisive day he 
 comes not, being superstitiously ' o'erruled by prophecies.' — 
 Still worse is it with Percy's own relations. His father 
 Northumberland, smooth as ever, calm and coldly restrained, 
 formed at most only to win a new member to the conspiracy, 
 and not created to help in the work of arms, is in the decisive 
 moment ' crafty sick ; ' he breaks his word, he remains cause- 
 lessly and dishonourably behind, and thus infects the very life- 
 blood of the enterprise. Thus the battle against the king 
 could not be won, for on his side fought the noble Blunt and a 
 host of others like him-, who in royal disguise sacrificed them- 
 selves for their king ! Yet, in spite of this, the bloody ruin of 
 the conspirators would have been avoided, if Percy's rmcle 
 Worcester had not been still less true and honourable than his 
 father Northumberland. He who had entangled the knot dis- 
 plays similar malice in its bloody solution. It is an historical 
 fact that he forged the king's offer of mercy ; in our play he 
 fails to deliver the prince's challenge to Percy, which might 
 have atoned for the quarrel with less blood, and in accordance 
 with the prince's mind. Thus he draws his nephew at once 
 into destruction and ignominy, while Percy's youth and ardour 
 would have excused him in Henry's sight, and his childlike 
 piety prevented his having even a remote presentiment as to 
 the nature of his father and his uncle. 
 
 It would be difficult to any poet to produce a hero superior 
 to this. But least of aU should it appear that Shakespeare 
 wished or ventured to place his Prince Henry before him. 
 Thus at any rate it ,could not have appeared to those inter- 
 preters who discovered a kind of injustice and an inconsistency 
 in Percy's fall through Henry, after the early relations between 
 the two. His own father indeed calls the prince in contrast to 
 that king of honour, almost a king of ignominy, and declares 
 Percy more worthy of the throne than his own son! The 
 prince, he asserts, in league with the low mob, is more dis- 
 honourably in war against the state than Percy ! Eidiculing 
 all knightly custonis, he fights at tournaments with the glove 
 
314 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 of base prostitutes on his spear ! He has even laid hands on 
 the Lord Chief Justice-, and has been for this placed in confine- 
 ment and expelled from the Privy Council ! Where in such 
 a man could lie the right and the talents to be lord over a hero 
 so splendidly endowed as Percy, unless some accident of history 
 or some inconceivable caprice on the part of the poet dictated 
 such a conclusion, which seems ill to accord with the just laws 
 of a well organised world, such as that into which we wish 
 poetry to transport us. 
 
 The prince indeed in his first soliloquy announces to us 
 that he is perfectly aware of the wild actions of his youth, and 
 that he intends some day to throw off this loose behaviom:', and 
 to redeem time lost. , Frivolity seems accompanied with pru- 
 dence and reflection, and behind the mask of folly we seem to 
 hear a wise man spea,king. Let us attentively follow out this 
 double part, in order that we may discover the true nature of 
 this chameleon. For how easily might that soliloquy be imagined 
 less strong and solemn than it is intended ! Has not Franz 
 Horn, after his fashion of seeing humour like Corporal ^ym 
 everywhere in Shakespeare, regarded even this soliloquy as 
 mere irony on the part of the poet ? 
 
 When we meet with the prince upon his first appearance, he 
 is in friendly association with thieves and rogues ; he is their 
 protector and advocate, he screens their misdeeds with his dignity; 
 he conceals and denies their persons, and himself assists at their 
 robberies. But, on the other side, he compensates for the base 
 trick by .paying back the money taken with advantage, and he 
 joins the base trick only when a mad trick accbmpanies it ; he 
 undertakes it for once, when a good joke is gained by it for ever. 
 
 For, indeed, to avoid a good joke is difficult to him. Of an 
 excitable nature, laughter-loving, merry, unbridled, he gives way 
 to a wild youthful love of liberty which Percy despises in him. 
 The smallest occasion can stir up this merry mood in him, and 
 once excited he is ready for the maddest pranks possible. He 
 is considered by his father like King Eichard, in whose company 
 were ' shallow jesters and rash bavin wits ; ' and in the same way 
 it is difficult for Henry, master as he is of quibbles and puns, to 
 check a witty word on a good occasion. He has with refined 
 cleverness selected a society in which all elements meet, and by 
 mixture and contact with which a boundless material for mirth, 
 raillery, and bantering is created. But if this unbridled conduct 
 damps the hopes centred upon the prince, if his wildness may 
 
HENRY IV. 315 
 
 be misconstrued, yet there are glimpsed at times which show us 
 that to him it is only a recreation and not a habit. The 
 Chronicle also ti^resents him as indulging in this propensity 
 only in the intervals between warlike and serious action. Falstaif 
 continues to trifle even in the battle, but not he ; in the presence 
 of his father he is grave and full of childlike devotion. It 
 appears as if he only wanted, so long as there was time, to create 
 an antidote to that conventional life and its poison, which is 
 strongest on the throne ; he vents himself in a youthful paroxysm 
 over the commonplaceness of the vocation of hi-s life. He may 
 appear like the young Eichard, but he does not perseveringly 
 carry his mirthful frivolity into serious business, and he stands 
 forth as a master in self-command, no trace of which is to be 
 discovered in Eiohard's character. There might even be some - 
 prudent calculation mingled with the joviality of the Prince, 
 to whom sedateness was not altogether foreign ; ' for it is a thing,' 
 says Bacon, ' political beyond imagination, to be able to pass 
 readily from jest to earnest, from earnest to jest.' He seems to 
 behave like a man who wishes to follow the wise maxim which 
 the same Bacon has clothed in these words ; ' whilst philosophers 
 dispute whether all is to be referred to virtue or pleasure, gather 
 thou the means for both.' 
 
 Eichard II.'s intercourse "was one wi,th relatives and nobles, 
 at least outwardly equal in birth. Prince Henry, on the contrary, 
 roves about with men of the lowest class. It is not even the 
 intellectual excellence of the wit which exclusively charms and 
 attracts him. His game with the young drawer shows us his 
 harmless delight even in the most innocent jokes ; he roams 
 ' about with- vintners, with whom he assumes the greatest air of 
 courtesy, so that Falstaff, compared to him, appears an insolent 
 and proud fellow. This condescension is blamed by the king, 
 whose art it was to ' show himself like a feast, seldom but 
 siunptuous,' sparing of the courtesy which his son lavishes 
 extravagantly. According to that soliloquy, however, the prince 
 too seemed to act from a policy in no wise dissimilar. He 
 wished to imitate the sun, which conceals itself behind the clouds 
 that it may be more wanted and more wondered at ; he indulges 
 in his 'loose behaviom-' upon the same principle of 'rare 
 accidents,' only he seemed, if he did not presume too far, to 
 wish to apply this principle as a great man. It was not his 
 person, his robe of majesty, that was to form the ' rare accident,' 
 the surprise, the sun-gleam, and the holiday, but his deeds. 
 
316 SECOND FEBIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S DSAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 As long as he was not directly called to these, he shunned not 
 to turn from the artificial nature round the throne to the original 
 characters and the natural creations of the lower classes. He 
 takes pleasure in human nature in its bare condition and 
 unvarnished form ; poverty of mind and of the necessaries of 
 life is a study for him; his plain homely nature, contrasted 
 with Percy's knightly aristocratic bearing, is most at ease among 
 the true-hearted fellows of Eastcheap, who call him a good boy, 
 and tender him their service when he shall be King of England. 
 Perhaps there is policy even in this, that he seeks to win the 
 hearts of the people when so little reliance can be placed on the 
 nobles, before whose assaults his father's throne is continually 
 tottering. 
 
 With these propensities the prince wastes much time ; idle 
 and careless, whenever no positive business binds him, he is 
 away from the court, like a son who is ill at ease in the narrow 
 home circle. To his wild tricks, his madness, and his condes- 
 cension, is added the idleness of this carousing life, on which 
 account the king is ever holding before him the active life of 
 Harry Percy. To the prince a drinking-bout with drawers is 
 counted as a battle, and he pities Poins that he has lost much 
 honour, because he was not with him in the action. Yet he 
 appears before Vernon with self-accusation, chiding the idleness 
 of youth, which in Percy's eyes too was a blemish in the prince ; 
 and even before this, in a casual expression, he appeared to 
 wish to insinuate that Percy's example was not to be lost upon 
 him, when he tells Poins that he is not yet of Hotspur's mind, 
 with whom a breakfast of slain Scots proclaims an idle day's 
 work. But that at some future time he might attain to this 
 humour seems to lie in his very nature ; for even his father says 
 of him that in early youth he was indeed wanton and effeminate, 
 but desperate also. 
 
 The prince at last turns his attention to that which his 
 father and Percy regard as most sacred and most solemn, 
 namely, chivalry and honourable activity in war and state ; but 
 he does this with a careless levity, and instead of fame and 
 honour he heaps only ignominy on his head. While the highest, 
 justiciary of the kingdom is not considered by him as sacred, 
 and the knightly tournament does not seem to him too serious 
 to allow of his making sport with it ; when his father's throne 
 is shaken by the most valiant hero on British soil ; he is capable 
 of acting a ludicrous comedy, and he comes playing on his 
 
HENRY ir. 317 
 
 general's staff to call his mer-ry companions to the field. But 
 if this may be called levity, it may also be indicative of calmness 
 of mind. He trembles not in the least before the frightful 
 alliance of Percy, Douglas, and Griendower. Does there not lie, 
 at the bottom of his composure at this revolt, a firm consciouness 
 and self-reliance ? Does not a good conscience appear through 
 all this carelessness, wantonness, and unrestraint ; whilst his 
 father, oppressed with suspicion and anguish, is suffering in his 
 prosperity ? ' In the silent manner in which he hears his father's 
 suspicion, what humility and good childlike nature is exhibited ! 
 And when it is necessary, when the severe fight at Shrewsbury 
 is threatened, does it not surprise us all, after this unrestrained 
 life and conduct, as it surprises Percy, to read Vernon's splendid 
 picture of the prince and his companions, lite that of ostriches 
 and eagles that wing the wind ? Does it not appear as if neces- 
 sity alone could call him to show himself as valiant and eager 
 for war as Percy is always from a strong natural impulse ? 
 
 The young son of the king stands depreciated among his 
 companions, by his relatives, and by his foes. A notorious 
 offence disgraces him in the eyes of the world, even Poins 
 interprets his character badly, his brothers give him up, his 
 father considers him capable of every misdeed, the honour 
 which Percy heaps upon his own head eclipses him all the 
 more. On which shall we rely in this character — on the 
 evil appearance, which we have exhibited, or on the sparks 
 of honour and of a better nature which throughout we see 
 glancing forth, and which might indicate a kernel of the rarest 
 quality ? 
 
 The idea which we have seen Shakespeare pursue through- 
 out this whole period of his life, and which we saw at its height 
 in the Merchant of Venice among the series of the non-his- 
 torical plays of this date before discussed, this idea is exhibited 
 in this character in its most perfect development. Appearance 
 is against this wonderful man. Indifferently, indeed even 
 wilfully, he fosters this show of evil, because in himself he is 
 sure of the perfect essence of a genuine humanity. He sports 
 with public opinion, because any hour he can give it the lie. 
 On the accusation of- sins worthy of death, he has in his proud 
 self-reliance no answer but deeds. A many-sided, versatile 
 being, he suffers life to influence him from all sides ; he wishes 
 to enjoy it as long as it offers him room for enjoyment, but in 
 this leisure for recreation and jesting, he wishes, like the 
 
318 SECOND PERIOD OF SBAKESPEABE' S DEAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Macedonian Philip and like the Egyptian Amasis, only to 
 steel and strengthen himself for the time of action and serious- 
 ness. In Poins there is no connection between the exchange 
 of absurd tricks for valiant work and the return from this to 
 frivolous talk, but this two-sidedness of nature appears in the 
 prince in the most wonderfully vivid colours. Buffoon and 
 hero, condescending and proud,, a king in transactions with 
 princes, and a beggar with beggars, he knows how to touch by 
 turns every key-note of society and of office, of business and of 
 festivity, of exertion and of rela^sation — a master in each. The 
 king is obliged almost against his will to bear witness of him, 
 that although being incensed he's flint, and tho' 'humorous 
 as winter, and as sudden as flaws congealed in the spring of 
 day,' he yet is gracious and has a tear for pity, and a ' hand 
 open as day for melting charity.' The transition from self- 
 forgetfulness in his wild fancies to an act of perfect self- 
 command costs him only a reflection ; in his ardour he struck 
 the Lord Chief Justice, and immediately he obeys the arrest ; 
 the king himself acknowledges the victory over self in thus 
 yielding to the laws he had just violated. He is of opinion 
 that it is the task of human life to do justice to every circum- 
 stance and occasion, to give dufe time to everything, to assign 
 to each its place and position, to disdain nothing which brings 
 us into contact with the varieties of existence. To conform 
 himself hourly to the monotony of royal dignity was in oppo- 
 sition to his free soul ; to pursue glory and honour with intense 
 effort as the compulsory service of a business imposed upon 
 him seemed to him in contradiction to the ordinances of 
 nature, who is moderate in her demands ; he had not patience 
 nor strength of habit sufficient for the stoical earnestness of 
 scrupulous conscientiousness ; it was not given to him to impose' 
 on himself on all occasions the restraint of habit, even though 
 that habit should have been directed to the highest aim. That 
 which with Hamlet is a principle only of words is with him one 
 carried into effect : — 
 
 Rightly to be great, 
 
 Is, not to stir vnthmit,'greai<irgument ; 
 
 But greatly to find quarrel in a straw, 
 
 When honour 's at the stake. 
 
 And essentially in this principle is he a contrast to the fiery 
 Percy, who in his passion certainly grows angry over 'the 
 ninth part of a hair,' even where no honoiir is at stake. 
 
HENRY IV. 319 
 
 Following out this principle, the thin, versatile, frivolous 
 prince makes use of his time for jesting and mirth as long as 
 it is given him. As soon as he has heard from his father that 
 he is thought capable of watching fpr his father's death, and of 
 treachery against his father's throne, he is struck with dismay, 
 unsuspicious of having stood so low in the opinion of others. 
 Hereafter he determines to be more himself, arid he proves in 
 his combat how truly and helpfully he stands by his father's 
 side. When he hears that Percy is so immeasurably preferred 
 before him, his jealousy is awakened against this favourite of 
 fame. For that fire of honour is deeply seated in him also, 
 but it must be struck out of him by the steel of greater deipands. 
 He acknowledges of himself that if ambition is a sin he is 
 the most sinful being in the world. He now seeks to meet this 
 envied ideal of all chivalry in single combat and in the battle, 
 and he proclaims to him that he shall not any more share the 
 glory with him ; that two stars such as they cannot keep ' their 
 motion in one sphere.' He predicted, when he stood blushing, 
 with disgrace in the presence of his father, that in the day they 
 met he would ' scour his shame ' away with all the honoiir 
 ' sitting on the helm ' of this ' child of renown ; ' ^that he would 
 exchange his indignities for Percy's glorious deeds, or cancel 
 his vow by death. Percy had gathered on his own head the 
 honour of the Scottish Douglas, and these heaped-up honours 
 Henry again will take from him ; he shall be but ' the factor ' 
 of his honour. And thus urged by this smouldering fire of 
 ambition, he encounters Percy's flaming passion for glory ; the 
 modest man meets his despiser, the idler in knightly, deeds 
 meets the master of chivalry, and he overcomes him, in no 
 wise because the arbitrary fancy of the poet so willed it, but 
 because the good cause thus required it, and the good power- 
 ful nature of the prince thus permitted it — a nature in which 
 qualities were inherent which far outshone even the great gifts 
 of Harry Percy. 
 
 For now, when the victory over Percy has given him a 
 higher position, there appear qualities which make him greater 
 than this great one. He stands over the conquered with ad- 
 miration, with forgiveness, with emotion and pity. It had 
 been his burning ambition to kill Percy ; and now it is done 
 the flame is at once extinguished, and gives place to the 
 beautiful human emotions of the heart. And yet more; he 
 gives to the foolish Falstaff the honour of haying killed Percy, 
 
320 SECOND FEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DBAMATIC POETSY. 
 
 with the intention of re-establishing his old friend's sullied 
 honour by yielding hini this renown ; he silently suppresses his 
 self-confidence and renounces a fame only just obtained ; with 
 ready modesty he strips the glory from himself, the first time 
 that it falls upon his misjudged life, with a feeling withia of 
 that highest honour and dignity, which is content with the 
 self-consciousness and needs not the outward honour. The 
 consideration of human frailty which the fall of the noble 
 Percy forces, upon him, and the foreboding words which the 
 dying man addresses to him, have effaced in him all worldly 
 vanity,- and in this moment of exaltation the epicurean youth, 
 in whose soul is a full-toned chord in harmony with every 
 occasion, is capable of the most stoical self-denial. In this 
 moment of solemn elevation the supposed death of Falstaff 
 goes not to his heart, and in the following moment he suffers 
 his own merit, without priding himself upon it, to pass silently 
 to the unworthy one. This trait is as little unpremeditated by 
 the poet as that of the prince's vailour and military science. 
 For in this character the qualities of self-denial and self- 
 mastery, the disdain of show, the resting upon that inmost 
 hidden worth, the kernel of human existence, lie indeed ex- 
 pressed, in his very faults. For he was unrestrained only be- 
 cause he was conscious of having the reins in his hand, he was 
 condescending and generous ■ of his presence only because he 
 knew himself to be kingly, he was lazy and idle only because he 
 had learned more easily than others, and he gave himself up to 
 the indulgence of mirth only because he knew what serious days 
 awaited him. And in all his self-indulgence the one principle 
 is found predominant — namely, to be true and faithful to nature, 
 to put no constraint upon her, and not to overstrain her ; and 
 in this natural condition she preserved for him fresh and healthful 
 powers, which achieved with trifling ease that wMch others 
 failed to obtain with all their efforts. For contrasting his 
 character, free as it is from show, with that of the glorious 
 . Percy, he stands in comparison to the latter as the secure 
 possessor of honour does to the striving competitor for it ; of that 
 honour which Bacon calls ' the abode of virtue,' towards which 
 the motion of virtue is impetuous, and within which it is calm. 
 Hence it is that Henry has nothing of the intensity or ex- 
 aggeration and of the pathos and vehemence of Percy's nature ; 
 and he therefore ridicules the restless straining of the other's 
 powers, when he notwithstanding overtakes him at the goal as 
 
• RENEY IV. 321 
 
 soon as the summons and the demand upon him. are evident. 
 When the occasion and the object call forth his powders, he 
 appears famous without effort, valiant without ostentation, 
 transformed to a new life without the necessity of any sacrifice. 
 The most opposite qualities of refinement and amiability, of 
 vigour and energy, form in him a rare combination of which 
 Percy could not be capable. Compared with the latter's 
 passionate temperament, he is quite composed; his proud 
 opinion of himself is self-reliance combined with the calmest 
 modesty. Percy ever bore a jealous ill-will against Henry; 
 but the milder Henry only jests over him, and after his death 
 he weeps for him, which Percy would never have done for 
 Henry. He acknowledges Douglas' merit as well as Percy's, in 
 life and in death, and even when he jests over him, as upon his 
 relation to his wife, he jests not out of a desire for mxDckery, but 
 out of a love of laughter ; for in this very point he would most 
 closely have resembled Percy, and the manner in which he 
 wooes his French Katherine is not very -..different to that in 
 which ^ercy might also have wooed his. His self-mastery is 
 opposed throughout as a contrast to, Percy's ebullitions of passion, 
 his aSability and kind amiability are contrasted with Percy's 
 coarse manners, his moderation and dignity with Percy's over- 
 flowing feelings, and his quiet disregard of self with Percy's 
 boastful vein ; so that in this respect Percy readily appears, when 
 compared with Henry, as Grlendower does compared with Percy. 
 But all this appears the more distiiictly when Henry, as soon as 
 a just cause demands it, shows himself possessed of all Percy's 
 splendid qualities, of his bold daring, of his proud self-reliance, 
 and of all the indications of a* noble passion. In shorty 
 altogether, a striking foil is presented to the glorious deeds 
 and qualities of the one by the dark contrast afforded by his 
 youthful life, and he hides the light of his virtues behind the 
 shadows of his faults. And yet more : when his actions first 
 disclose these his true qualities, he ejBfaces them again with 
 careless indifference as they rise brilliantly from the dark 
 background; confident as he is of something within him 
 elevated above all show, in comparison with which all outward 
 honour appears as empty vanity — confident, of a core of genuine 
 humanity, of a power of will, and of preparation for the life, 
 which like a sun indeed is to break throjiigh all around him, 
 even self-created clouds. 
 
 We are struck at once with the relation in which Falstaif, 
 
 T 
 
322 .SECOND PEBIOB OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 the fourth principal figure in the first part of Henry IV., 
 stands to the rest. Henry has it at heart to preserve the royal 
 honour he has acquired to himself and to his house ; an ardent 
 love of honour urges him to maintain himself in this position in 
 ■spotless esteem ; it grieves him, therefore, that his son should 
 threaten to forfeit this honour by his unbridled conduct. AU 
 that in his own reputation and life might darken its splendour, 
 he seeks with a thousand arts to hide deep within his secret 
 heart. He looks upon honour externally, and refers it only to 
 the rank and the position which he fills ; morality has nothing 
 to do with his love of honour ; appearance only is to be saved, 
 and his honour is to be maintained in the esteem of the world. 
 With Percy it is otherwise. The honour after which he aspires 
 he wishes to deserve by action and by moral worth ; his ambi- 
 tion springs from the honourable feelings of the TDravest heart, 
 it is upborne by a noble pride till it swells into a thirst for 
 •glory which danger only provokes the more, and even the injus' 
 ,tice of the aaaeans is overlooked in its aim. Different again is 
 'Prince Henry's relation to honour. He is animated by the same 
 ambition, by the same desije for glory as Percy, but it could 
 never rise to that morbid thirst as in Percy, because it is of a 
 more profound nature. It is not pride, but noble self-reliance 
 •which urges him forward ; to satisfy himself is of more impor- 
 tance to him than to stand well in others' esteem ; he spiritual- 
 ises and refiLnes the idea of honour into the true dignity of man, 
 and the .consciousness of this possession in himself is his conso- 
 lation even through the appearance of baseness, and through the 
 bad opinion of the world. To all these Falstaff stands as a 
 contrast. By the side of these heroes of honour he seems 
 utterly deprived of all sense of honour and of shame, and it is not 
 possible to him to imitate dignity even in play. A respect for 
 the opinion of others and a need of self-esteem are foreign to 
 him; it is selfishness alone which places this machine in motion. 
 In this contrast especially we will look at this remarkable 
 character, who, like a living acquaintance, is on the lips and in 
 the knowledge of all.. To analyse it in all its fulness would be, ' 
 moreover, as diflSoult as it would be unacceptable, because the 
 critical analysis of a comic character cannot but destroy it, 
 without yielding the compensation which in a noble character 
 arises from the grand conception presented more distinctly to 
 view through the analysis itself. 
 
 We have before said that Shakespeare makes his John 
 
HENEY ir. 323 
 
 Falstaff a page of the Duke of Norfolk. At this period of his 
 youth we learn that he had intercourse and a quarrel with one 
 Scogan ; this name, which is that of a well-known jester under 
 Edward IV., whose frolics were published in 1565, is used by the 
 poet to denote Falstaff s early society and circumstances. Since 
 then he had been thirty-two years with Bardolph and twenty-two 
 years with Poins, in the course of life in which we find him ; he 
 has grown old and is the head of the jovial company ; he is a born 
 king of drink and a constant frequenter of the houses where 
 eating and drinking are the best. It may be, therefore, that, 
 although he assures the Lord Chief Justice that he was born 
 with his round belly, he rather speaks the truth to the prince, 
 when he says that in his youth he was thin as an eagle's talon, 
 and that drunkenness and idle living had in course of time 
 blown hijn up like a bladder, so that he could no longer see his 
 own knee. The picture of a mass of indolence and incapability 
 for action, he is the, personification of the inferior side of man, 
 of his animal and sensual nature. All the spiritual part of man, 
 honour and morality, refinement and dignity, has been early 
 spoiled and lost in him. The material part has smothered in 
 him every passion, for good or for evil ; he was perhaps naturally 
 good-natured, and only from trouble and bad company became 
 ill-natured, but even this ill-nature is as short as his breath, and 
 is never sufiBciently lasting to become real malice. His form 
 and his mere bulk condemn him to repose and love of pleasure'; 
 laziness, epicurean comfort, cynicism, and idleness, which are 
 only a recreation for his prince, are for him the essence, nature, 
 and business of life itself ; and whilst Percy loses appetite and 
 sleep from the excitement of his aspiring spirit, Falstaff, on the 
 contrary is all care about his subsistence. In virtue, therefore, of 
 this animal excess and demand, and the moral stupefaction which 
 is its result, he holds to the natural right of animals : if the young 
 dace be a bait for the old pike, he sees no reason in the law of 
 nature why he may not snap at the simple, the insipid, the dull, 
 and th^ brisk among mankind. He therefore not only carries 
 on Ms game for the oppression of all over whom he can secretly 
 gain command, without feeling for the property, welfare, and 
 right of another, but he also employs his more versatile com- 
 panions for open robbery and stealing ; he surrounds himself 
 with the Gadshills, who stand in such bad repute that the 
 carriers on the highway like not to trust them with a lantern, 
 and he even tries to use the prince as a means for robbing the 
 
 T 2 
 
324 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEAEE'S DEAMATIC FOETEY. 
 
 exchequer ; and his fancy mounts so far, that after the prince's 
 accession to the throne he would like to banish law and gallows, 
 and to ennoble the nightly trade of the robber. 
 
 Opposed to every political and judicial regulation, and to 
 every moral precept, the preponderance of the material nature 
 has made him obtuse, and thus opposed to all intellectual 
 nourishment. His wit, the only mental gift which he possesses, 
 must itself serve to his subsistence : at any rate, in the Merry 
 Wives of Windsor, he prepares it expressly With this business- 
 like object — to escape want. ■ Want and necessity, it is said in 
 Tarlton's ' Jests,' is the whetstone of wit, and it is even so with 
 Falstaff. This may relate especially to his ingenuity in fraudu- 
 lent tricks, but the merely intellectual side of his wit may also 
 be referred to his physical heaviness. His mere appearance 
 attracts attention to him, and provokes men to mock him ; he 
 affords a picture of the owl bantered by the birds. This posi- 
 tion alone calls forth, in self-defence, those powers of wit which 
 for the most part do not spring from direct natural capacity. 
 In all witty and satirical power in men, the innate gift, gene- 
 rally speaking, lies in a negative, realistic nature little adapted 
 for action; the more essential element in this power is its train- 
 ing and cultivation, lying as it does entirely in a keen, well- 
 exercised sense of comparison, and consequently in the most 
 versatile and manifold observation and practice. This habit 
 ^ beeomes another nature; it must have been so in Falstaff all the 
 more early and completely, the earlier his mere appearance pro- 
 voked the attacks of wit. Falstaff says of himself, in a complete 
 characterisation, ' that no man was more able to invent any- 
 thing that tends to laughter than he invented, or was invented 
 on him ; that he was not only witty in ' himself, but the cause 
 that wit was in other men.' But the passive part of this two- 
 sidedness is necessarily the more original; and however quickly 
 his natural gifts might have led Falstaff from the defensive to 
 the offensive, it yet appears as if his unwieldiness ever drove 
 him back to the former, as if he needed his repose disturbed, 
 and his wit required continual and sharp provocation. For this 
 the persons around him were well calculated. The witty versa- 
 tility of the prince keeps him for ever out of breath ; the red- 
 nosed Bardolph, the butt of his superior quiet humour, is for 
 recreation ; but he cannot dispense even with the sharp Poins, 
 who understands teasing and tormenting better than being 
 teased. With such cold people on the other h9,nd as the Lord 
 
HENRY IV. 325 
 
 Chief Justice and Lancaster his wit is cold, and when his 
 company sinks lower his wit sinks also. Men of a phlegmatic 
 nature are remarkable for gifts of quiet penetration and of keen 
 observation and knowledge of human nature, and the contrast 
 afforded between their mental versatility and their physical 
 awkwardness produces the comic power of their appearance; this, 
 which we have a thousand times observed in phlegmatic men, rises 
 to its height in Falstaff. The comic effect is all the greater the 
 more dry and involuntary is the wit; thus is it with Falstaff; 
 and it is always an utter mistaking of the part when the actors 
 themselves, even older English ones like Quin, display an inten- 
 tion of wit ; Hazlitt, however, on the contrary, has utterly 
 distorted this character, by maintaining that Falstaff is a liar, 
 acoward, and a wit, only for the sake of amusing others and to 
 show the humorous side of these qualities ; an actor himself just 
 as much as on the stage. Falstaff is indeed so far conscious of 
 his jesting powers that he knows what makes the prince laugh ; 
 but in their exercise in every single instance the perfect instinct 
 of habit and nature alone is expressed, and a calculated play of 
 words is never manifested. His whole comic power lies in his 
 unintentional wit and in his dry humour ; natural mother-wit 
 ever appears in this way ; comic genius, like genius of every 
 kind, moves in the undistingmshable line between conscious- 
 ness and instinct. It is just this happy medium which Shake- 
 speare assigned to his Falstaff; and this medium, and his 
 position as bantering and bantered, as a mark for wit just as 
 much as a dealer in it himself, assigns to him the social place 
 which he always occupied. The life and literature of that period 
 distinguished between the popular and the court fool, between 
 the unschooled mother-wit in the one, and the mask of wisdom 
 in the other, between the clown and the fool, between the man 
 who by nature and exterior provoked the love of laughter and 
 raillery, among the people and the man schooled to ridicule 
 honest folly, between the man to whom a well-practised roguery 
 was wit and the man who performed his pranks only with his 
 tongue. Falstaff, not' indeed holding any ofiBcial function, 
 unites both species of jesters in his person, with a natural though 
 not easily distinguishable preponderance of the former, re- 
 sembling in this the famous Tarlton, about whom contemporaries 
 were continually disputing as to whether his wit was natural or 
 artificial. If we would wish to learn what lj.fe and reality 
 afforded the poet for this picture of Falstaff's and his friends' 
 
326 SECOND FEBIOD OF SHAKESFEASE' 8 DBAMATIC POETSY. 
 
 tricks, for their roving over the country, their raillery of each 
 other, their deceptions towards hosts, maidens, simpletons, &c., 
 we have only to open Tarlton's ' Jests ; ' we shall then at once 
 perceive how the poet has given an ideal form even to this 
 vulgar realist. But if we would investigate the essence of 
 Falstafif's nature and being, we can only apply to him what 
 Erasmus in his ' Praise of Folly' states as the characteristic, of 
 popular and court fools. They take, he says, nature for their 
 guide ; they strip off the gloss of refinement and follow animal 
 instinct ; they have no conscience, they feat no ghosts, they 
 have no hopes nor cares, they laugh and make others laugh, we 
 forgive all that they say and do, they have no passion, no ambi- 
 tion, no envy and no love, no shyness and no shame. 
 
 In truth, if we pass on to Falstaff's moral being, the words 
 no conscience and no shame express all that we require for 
 acquaintance with him. At times indeed he has attacks of 
 remorse, and these render evident that man's better nature even 
 under such a great material burden is never quite lost. His 
 companions call him Mr. Eemorse. When he is in fear, in 
 sipkness, or in idleness, he bemoans his vile behaviour with 
 involuntary ejaculations ; he is not willingly reminded of his 
 end. But these are only passing paroxysms which do not last. 
 The poet has permitted disgrace, want, and honour, debasement 
 ■and encouragement, to aim at his moral elevation, but, to use 
 Pistol's words, he remains semper idem. Dead to the law of 
 morality, he would fain also remove the law of right. Even 
 that most superficial feeling of honour, the wish to save at least 
 a good appearance — this, the lowest degree of a sense of shame — 
 is wholly extinguished in him. He needs a store of good names, 
 but he has no earnestness in procuring them. Dull and devoid 
 of feeling, he plunders even the poor ; he is scornful towards 
 inferiors, cringing towards those whom he fears, and possessing 
 so little sense of gratitude and fellowship that he plays the 
 calumniator behind the back of his friends and benefactors. To 
 what extent all shame is deadened within him is most glaringly 
 depicted when he hacked his sword as an evidence of his heroic 
 deeds, and by this baseness and by his shameless swearing makes 
 even a Bardolph blush. The basis of this character is exhibited 
 in his soliloquy concerning honour, as every reader has felt 
 without any analysis ; Falstaff says his catechism there m thesi ; 
 and the noble Blunt, who has fallen a sacrifice for his king, is 
 his actual proof as to the vanity of this thing which is called 
 
HENEY IV. 327 
 
 honour. It is this very core or rather nullity of his nature, his 
 lack of honour, which places him as a great and striking contrast 
 to the other principal characters of the play. As in Percy 
 honour and manliness blend into one idea according to the 
 notions of the age, so on the contrary in Falstaff do lack of 
 honour and cowardice. The chivalric age saw the keyrnote of 
 this character in its thrasonic boasting ; and even to us Falstaff 
 appears in all the breadth and height of his nature when he. 
 utters his imprecations against a coward, and reveals at the 
 same time his own cowardice and bragging insolence. His 
 gifts are here displayed with the most varied brilliancy ; his 
 cowardice exposes him to derision as before his size had done ; 
 his lies must extri(^ate him ; in this art he is short in memory 
 but long in practice ; he is inventive in his bragging, shameless 
 in his inventions, undismayed in his shamelessness, ready for 
 evasion, shuffling, misrepresentation, and tricks. All these quali- 
 ties intertwine each other in such a manner that it is difficult 
 to say which are the original sources of others, which the de- 
 rived ; at length, when his disgrace has become notorious, and 
 his vexation instantly vanishes in his delight that the booty is 
 safe, we come back again to the superiority of matter, to 
 sensual pleasure, and human brntishness, as to the starting-point 
 and aim of his whole being. 
 
 It is not to be denied that the poet has bestowed all these 
 traits upon Falstaff (astonished as we may be in thus gathering 
 them together), which certainly make a compound of baseness. 
 How comes it, nevertheless, that we do not abhor the cpwardly 
 Jack as such ; that, on the contrary, we find ourselves even feeling 
 undisturbed delight in him ? There are many complex causes 
 which tend to moderate and even entirely to bribe over our 
 moral judgment upon this character. Eeadily and involuntarily 
 we mingle pleasure in the delineation of the poet with pleasure 
 in the subject delineated; The liveliness of the picture ; the 
 abundance of the choicest wit ; the unusually skilful touch in the 
 choice of the ridiculous and the comic in the mere exterior of 
 this phenomenon ; and finally the blending of the ideal with the 
 individual, which allows us to recognise in Falstaff now a typical 
 character, and now an actual weU-known personage ; all this is 
 done with such masterly power, that it is excusable if any transfer 
 their admiration from the work of art to the subject of it. But 
 even the subject itself has that within it which exercises a cor- 
 rupting influence upon the estimate of its moral value. Shake- 
 
328 SECOND PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 speare says of ParoUes, in All's Well that Ends Well, that he is 
 so consummate in baseness that we take pleasure in it ; that ' he 
 hath outvillained villainy so far that the rarity redeems him.' 
 In this delight in anything complete of its kind we look upon 
 Falstaff ; if we seriously reflect on the matter, the pleasure which 
 we take in him is indeed scarcely other than that which we 
 take in Eeineke Fuchs ; the contrast of bare naturalness 
 which in both cases the heroes of such different poems present, 
 compared to all that order, custom, habit, and higher principles 
 have sanctioned, is so complete, that the comic impression made 
 by every striking contrast allows no moral consideration to assert 
 itself. To this one contrast which influences our judgment is 
 added yet another. This is the contrast between the great 
 sensual inclinations and desires of this cynical epicurean and 
 his small capability for enjoyment, between his paralytic old 
 age and his affectation of youth, between the easy existence 
 after which his ponderous body longs and to which this burden 
 in itself never suffers him to attain. The preponderance of this 
 material burden over the intellectual powers might have been 
 brought upon Falstaff by his own fault ; but we regard it as a 
 burden which, once bestowed, renders him, like the first error 
 of the drunkard, almost unaccountable for succeeding sins. The 
 picture of human frailty, weakness, and dependence upon outward 
 things which Falstaff presents, softens our moral vigour. 
 
 But this must not indeed be to such a degree as to make us 
 prove the blimtness of Falstaff's own feelings in our estimate of 
 his worth. Hazlitt went so far as to say we could as little 
 blame Falstaff's character as that of the actor who plays him ; 
 we should only consider the agreeable light in which he. placed 
 certain weaknesses, careless of the consequences, and from which, 
 moreover, no pernicious consequences arose I He will not forgive 
 the prince his treatment of Falstaff, for to the readers of poetry 
 in the present day, he says that Falstaff appears as the better 
 man of the iivo ! This is indeed the acme of moral bluntness 
 into which the aesthetic criticism of a man who has, however, 
 made many striking remarks upon Shakespeare, has unwarily 
 erred. But the contrary view — the judgment for instance which 
 Nathan Drake pronounced, who drew from this character an 
 awful and impressive lesson of morality, as great as human 
 weakness can ever present — has been very rarely followed by 
 other expositors and readers. Still fewer are the actors com- 
 prehending this character like Hackett, who, from the report of 
 
HENEY IV. 329 
 
 those who saw him, and according to a record from his own pen, 
 did not recognise in this detestable compound of vice and sen- 
 suality any amiable or tolerable quality given him by the poet 
 to cover his moral deformity, except a surpassingly brilliant 
 wit and irresistible humour. And yet it is necessary to save 
 the poet — on whose infallibility in moral things we may rely 
 more than on his aesthetic faultlessness — from the reproach of 
 having been guilty of the strange contradiction of letting his 
 fat Jack become endeared to us, only to tear him mercilessly 
 from us without reason and right. Our romanticists have 
 pitieci FalstafPs end, and have condemned the judgment which 
 proffers the choice of a competence in life to the reformed, and 
 disgrace to the incorrigible ; they have indeed even supposed 
 that Shakespeare might have written another conclusion. Even 
 so severe a rdoralist as Johnson has considered Falstaff's vices 
 contemptible rather than detestable ; it seemed as if cowardice, 
 lying, sensual gratification, baseness, robbery, ingratitude, and 
 all the crimes in the world were to be tnade absolvable just 
 because they are thus accumulated in Falstaff. The pernicious 
 consequences which just before the act of disgrace led to murder 
 in Hostess Quickly's house were whoUy disregarded by the 
 jealous interpreters, FalstafPs intercourse (and this was indeed 
 a masterpiece of effect) appeared not only ensnaring and allur- 
 ing to the prince, but also to the reader ; the delight of seeing 
 us well entertained prevented the blame of immorality from 
 - gaining ground. Thus far had the poet reached his object 
 with ourselves, thus far did we all feel with the prince. But 
 on his sentence of judgment we would no longer comprehend 
 him. In this we fell far short of the prince in moral severity 
 and nobility, and in the true dignity of man ; far short of the 
 prince and of the poet, who knew very weU. what he was doing, 
 and what he made his Henry do. This lies plainly expressed to 
 every attentive reader in the whole course of the second part 
 of Henry IV., only that this play in its representation is usually 
 blended with the first part, and much of it is omitted, as was 
 the case even in King James' time, according to a manuscript 
 discovered in 1844 ; it is moreover rarely read with the same 
 attention as the first part ; perhaps for the very reason that 
 Falstaff here plays no longer the brilliant role which he does 
 in the first part. But it almost appears as if the age had not 
 at once found the true solution of the characters of the prince 
 and Falstaff, and their relation to each other ; and as if the poet 
 
330 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEAEE' S DEAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 therefore, in Henry V. and in the Merry Wives of Windsor, had 
 intentionally sought opportunity to make himself thoroughly 
 intelligible. These two plays, as well as the second part of 
 Henry IV., possess perhaps the smallest assthetic value among 
 all the later works of our poet, but they possess an ethical value 
 all the greater. They continue the history of the first part of 
 Henry TV. almost entirely with g. moral aim, and they alone 
 are suflBcient to show us that in Shakespeare's time the law 
 arising from the impure sestheticism of , the romanticists and 
 their followers did not exist, the law namely which emancipates 
 poetry from morality. 
 
HENEY IV. 
 
 PAKT II. 
 
 Upon the second part of Henry IV. we have but few words to 
 say, since the political and ethical idea of the first part is here 
 only continued, and is not replaced by a new one in a new group 
 of characters and actions. The great characters in the first part — 
 Grlendower, Douglas,'Percy — have disappeared, the king's physical 
 constitution is broken, and a mental change appears to have begun 
 in the prince ; the space which Falstaff and his companions 
 occupy -is wider than formerly, but it loses in attraction. The 
 threatening of the state in the little war of these freebooters 
 stands out all the more glaringly as the great revolt of the 
 Percys recedes. The exertion of the great powers in the first 
 part is followed by a universal exhaustion in the second ; and 
 only secretly is a new energy preparing itself in Prince Henry, 
 which is subsequently developed in the following play of Henry V. 
 As soon as we consider the tetralogy in connection, the lower 
 range of this third piece appears as necessary in an sesthetic as in 
 an ethical sense. 
 
 • The flagging appears first in political life — in the weak con- 
 tinuation and in the dishonourable end of the revolt. Its soul 
 had fled with Percy, whose courage had animated every peasant 
 and whose death had now dispirited all. His father Northum-. 
 berland, a cipher when left to himself, feels a paroxysm of courage 
 at the moment of rage and sorrow, but soon allows himself to 
 be brought back by a woman's arguments to his usual nature ; 
 instead of marching hife troops he sends a letter to the Arch- 
 bishop of York, as he had before done to his son ; and as he had 
 left the one so he leaves the other to destruction, and flees to 
 Scotland. The revolt is now placed in the hands of York. It 
 is now to be sanctioned by the varnish of religion instead of 
 being fought out with valour. Such a great undertaking as 
 the subversion of a kingdom is to be accomplished with caution, 
 
332 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 and no longer with the wild fancies with which Percy attemptjed 
 it. The insurgent nobles build upon the French assistance 
 which Mortimer is to bring ; they hope not so much from their 
 own courage as from the king's empty coffers, and from the 
 people's weariness of his rule. Alre£(,dy under Percy the hearts 
 of the people were wanting to the cause of the revolt, but here 
 even the hearts of the conspirators themselves are deficient. 
 The valour of Mpwbray, the son of Norfolk, in whom the old 
 enmity of his house against Bolingbroke yet works, is here as 
 little followed as was Vernon's caution in Percy's councils. And 
 among the over-wise who had examined everything and had 
 considered everything, not even is the caution to be found, at 
 the mutual treaty for the discharge of the troops, of delaying the 
 measure until the enemy should have accomplished it also. The 
 shallow beginning ends foolishly with an awkward and disgrace- 
 ful act pf deception on the side of the Prince of Lancaster, who 
 is led by the crafty Westmoreland. Among the honourable 
 adversaries at Shrewsbury, the presence of the king and of 
 Prince Henry on the one side, and of Percy on the other, would 
 have made such perfidy impossible. Lancaster has inherited 
 all the qualities of Henry IV. which the Prince of Wales has 
 discarded, who indeed has little love for this brother, though he 
 acknowledges his valour at Shrewsbury. Lancaster is brave 
 and honourable from a sense of duty, grave from propriety, 
 prudent from precocity ; the place which his brother lost in the 
 council, he, in his extr;eme youth, has obtained. If we credit 
 Falstaff, his wit, however, does not reach far ; he drinks no wine, 
 eats only fish, and can scarcely be made to laugh. The trick 
 which he plays the rebels savours of his father's school ; in 
 honour, indeed, this son, with all his docility, falls short of his 
 father's policy, in the same degree as Prince Henry with his 
 in docility exceeds it. 
 
 As thus compared with the first part of Henry IV. the 
 actions and characters here take a lower position, so is it also if 
 we turn to Falstaflt' and his company. The contrast of his inner 
 development compared with that of the prince is the thread 
 carried through the whole piece, the catastrophe of which is the 
 catastrophe of their mutual relation ; this lies at the close of the 
 play, and necessitates a continuation, which is immediately 
 announced in the epilogue; We have thus to trace the growth 
 of this catastrophe, a task after the termination of^ which we 
 shall require not a word further in vindication of the much 
 
HENEY IV. 333 
 
 attacked conclusion or of the poet himself. From an ethical 
 point of view this business is like the washing of gold-sand when 
 once the muddy surface has been penetrated. 
 
 We have seen that FalstaiF, at the close of the first part, 
 in the battle of Shrewsbury, obtained the honour of the victory 
 over Percy transferred to him by prince Henry. From this 
 renunciation of the prince a great rumour of FalstafF's valour 
 spreads among all people, and he becomes a kind of mythical 
 character; the Chief Justice, the sheriff's officers, and the 
 women, friends, and enemies are filled with his heroic courage. 
 The prince has eifaced his old sins, the day of the battle has 
 annulled the accusation of his robberies ; a store of good names, of 
 which he stood in need, has been accumulated upon him without 
 merit, the seriousness of the time summons of itself to serious 
 concentration, and the prince is touched to the heart by this 
 admonition. The worthy Chief Justice encourages Falstaff ex- 
 pressly to make use of the good state of his reputation that it 
 may be lasting. The poet and the truly careful friends of 
 Falstaff have omitted nothing to keep him on the road to honour, 
 upon which, undeservedly, chance and the sacrifice of the prince 
 haye placed him. The king has intentionally separated him 
 and the prince, in order to guard against mutual misleading. 
 They have withdrawn from him the coarse Bardolph, and have 
 associated with him an innocent page of a nature yet sound, and 
 not merely as he supposes to set him off by his diminutive 
 stature, but to accustom him to more refined society. And 
 this choice has been made with true wisdom and discretion ; for 
 the little man is in no wise of Lancaster's feminine turn of mind, 
 he soon learns to empty his pint ; he understands wit and jests 
 and similes like one practised in them ; but they are of a more 
 refined kind than Bardolph or Peto would understand ; they are 
 even occasionally so deeply learned that, although they do not 
 stand the philological examination of the commentators, they 
 imposed upon the prince himself. To all this is added that 
 Falstaff was associated with the severe and serious Prince of 
 Lancaster ; he is to accompany him to the north, while the king 
 goes with Prince Henry to Wales. 
 
 But all this makes no impression upon Falstaff's insensible 
 nature ; all that the prince contrives for him dissatisfies him. 
 He has already half dismissed him from his favour. He is 
 furious at the service he is to discharge ; he is still tarrying in 
 London when the prince has already finished his expedition to 
 
334 SECOND FESIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Wales. Instead of being raised by the fame of Shrewsbury, 
 he is only more shameless and vulgar. We find him again, the 
 vanquisher of Percy, with his credit fallen so low that he uses 
 Bardolph as his bail ; we see him fighting and quarrelling in 
 the streets with a low woman whom he means to cheat and to 
 dupe ; we find him, in spite of his constant inclination to boast 
 of his chivalry, for a second time promising to wed this woman, 
 only that he may again rob the simple credulous creature of her 
 |)oor property ; we hear him with secret backbiting slandering 
 his lord; and when' for all this he is rebuked with a thrice 
 repeated 'fie' by the dignified Chief Justice, to whom the 
 prince had once respectfully yielded, he perseveres in his shame- 
 lessness, bursts forth in derision, and in secret swears destruc- 
 tion to the Chief Justice, which he purposes to effect on the 
 day of Henry IV.'s death. Thus, instead of restoring his 
 honour, he damages it yet further. The little page, instead of 
 being able to work upon him, is soon so far influenced, that 
 although ' there is a good angel about him the devil outbids 
 him too.' The prince himself looks after Falstaff in disguise ; 
 he sees him ever degraded to still lower company ; in .the pre- 
 sence of the outcasts of the people he hears how he speaks evil i 
 of him, his benefactorj so much so that even Poins demands 
 speedy vengeance from the prince. In his ofi&ce he plays the 
 old swindler ; with cold derision he has seen his former re- 
 cruits, a hundred and fifty in number, ' pickled ' at the battle 
 of Shrewsbury, and three only left alive ; he now again selects 
 all the good-for-nothing rabble, the able he discharges for pay- 
 ment ; defrauded in this business by Bardolph, he again de- 
 frauds the state ! Once again, on the apprehension of Coleville, 
 an undeserved honour forces itself upon him. Lancaster wishes 
 to extol this deed, as his brother had the deeds of Shrewsbury. 
 All in vain. He now goes to Grloucestershire and plunders the 
 Shallows, who think to use him and his influence at court. 
 When the intelligence of the king's death comes, he expects the 
 old dream of the authority of rogues to be realised. The laws 
 of England, he boasts, are now at his commandment ; every post 
 of honour he may now dispose of at will to every simpleton and 
 robber. In the hostess' house the new aspect of the period 
 leads directly to a murder ; and when the officers of justice 
 speedily interfere, hostess Quickly raises a lamentation that 
 » right should thus overcome might,' and wishes Falstaff back , 
 to help her with his power ; and engages also to deliver the 
 
HENRY IF. 335 
 
 arrested Doll. ' Then he meets with his glaring and well- 
 deserved fall ; justice and order regain their rights. 
 
 The scenes in which Falstaff appears in this piece are of so 
 low a character that the aesthetic and ethical deformity can 
 only be justified by this serious conclusion. Every reader will 
 feel that in this part he loses much of his pleasure and interest 
 in Falstaff, whose picture is generally drawn only from the first 
 part. Indeed, it is doubtful whether sympathy with him 
 would not sink too low, if Shakespeare had not used an artifice 
 for raising him in the same degree in which he had fallen on 
 the one side, by presenting fresh contrasts on the other. . The 
 poet has placed by his- side new characters, whom in general 
 value we yet find far below him, and who cast upon him a 
 more favourable light, just when this in our estimation becomes 
 most necessary. There is the swaggerer Pistol, whose picture 
 we need only see (Hogarth has drawn the actor Gibber, to 
 whom the nickname Pistol was given, in this part) in order at 
 once to perceive how human Falstaff appears by the side of 
 this caricature. He is a biilly and swaggerer by profession, 
 while Falstaff is so only when misled by circumstance ; he is a 
 man as from another world, while Falstaff in all his weaknesses 
 is of our own flesh and blood ; he is of a false spirit and a dis- 
 torted nature, while Falstaff appears sound in sense ; he is a 
 hero compared to Nym, but Falstaff is a hero compared to him ; 
 he is is too shabby and abject even for a Doll, whilst Falstaff is 
 esteemed by hostess Quickly as an honest true-hearted man. 
 And while the one is a mine of the most genuine wit. Pistol 
 speaks with bombast and affectation in pompous phrases 
 gathered from miserable tragedies, or as Nym will have it in 
 the unintelligible style of a conjuror. In contrast to this over- 
 fantastic fellow stands the insipid Shallow, a braggart, a liar, 
 and a rogue, again of another kind. How briUiaht Falstaff's 
 ever out-gushing wit appears by the side, of this blockhead, who 
 has not crammed himself like Pistol with fragments of plays 
 learned by heart, but who rather betrays his poverty of thought 
 in the chattering repetition of indifferent words ! How on the 
 stage must Falstaff's calm yet quick eye, observing much in a 
 short flash, have contrasted with the unmeaning empty glance 
 of Shallow, the cynical security of the one with the half-witted 
 manner of the other; how prominent must have been that 
 physical power which drew spirit and wit from the sack, and 
 which on the other hand silenced the weak squire ! Does not 
 
336 SECOND PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DEAMATIC POETSY. 
 
 the false bragging of Falstaff over his latest deeds of valour, 
 and his dangerous allusion to present circumstances, inspire a 
 kind of esteem compared to that stereotyped justice of the 
 peace, who hoasts of past sins which he has never committed ? 
 Is not this the case with Falstaff's rodomontades, which are 
 ever young and fresh, whilst the other tells certain uniform 
 lies from habit ? Is not the tattered spendthrift dearer to us 
 than the pedant and niggard ? And/ is not even the oificial 
 fraud of the fat knight more pardonable than the venality of 
 the judge? And who can grieve at last that the loquacious, 
 vain, blockhead should fall as a sure prey into the jaws of the 
 quick-witted Falstaff, when he had intended to abuse the 
 knight at court for his own advantage ? Thus placed in this 
 low society, Falstaff again approaches somewhat closer to our 
 sympathy. In this society the good Shallow is not even the 
 lowest on the scale. In his cousin Silence, the man of ud- 
 tameable mirth when he is tipsy, and of asinine dulness when 
 he is abstinent, this great fool yet possesses an admirer. 
 
 In exact contrast to Falstaff's ruin the poet at the same 
 time leads Prince Henry back from the path of error. "We 
 meet him on his return from Wales in company with Poins, 
 Tvhom he likes the best of his Ephesian friends, and who has 
 most regard for himself. In his general humour little appears 
 changed; he is familiar as before with his dissolute companions, 
 and interchanges with them his coarse and indelicate wit- 
 ticisms ; he has still longings for small beer, such as he was 
 accustomed to drink in this company. But here for the first 
 time he is ashamed of this low taste, and reproaches himself 
 for associating with Poins and his friends, and for becoming 
 initiated into all their meanest secrets. The thought of his 
 father's sickness and possible death has softened him ; he is sad 
 even to weeping. His heart bleeds inwardly, but intercourse 
 with his frivolous companions has imaccustomed him to the 
 demeanour of sorrow and sadness. Poins construes this change 
 into hypocrisy, and looks upon his former hilarity at the 
 prospect of the crown as his natural mood. The princely blood 
 in Henry is roused. ' Thou think'st me,' he says to Poins, ' as 
 far in the devil's book as thou and Falstaff for obduracy and 
 persistency ; let the end try the man.' He receives letters 
 from Falstaff in the old familiar tone, but in the manner in 
 which he receives them, and in the manner in which he con- 
 verses with Poins, a separation of feeling is perceptible. The 
 
HENRY IV. 337 
 
 seriousness of circumstances, the illness of his father, the 
 approach of the period of his high vocation, have roused him, 
 and the resolution? of that first soliloquy which we heard from 
 him begin to ripen into action. He can no longer with his 
 irresistible humour resign himself as before to the frivolities 
 of his old friends ; he remembers his dignity at every moment 
 between the promptings of the old vein. ' We play the fools 
 with the time,' he says, 'and the spirits of the wise sit in the 
 clouds and mock us.' He inquires after Falstaff, he wishes to 
 go in disguise to spy after him, that he may see him in his 
 true colours ; but he goes not in his former unsuspiciousness to 
 find pleasure in him ; there is an object in his errand; 'the 
 purpose must weigh with the folly ! ' He finds Falstaff, as we 
 have before intimated, entirely lost. We cannot say of the 
 prince that he formerly authorised Falstaff in everything, or 
 that he licensed him in everything. When he once compared 
 his father to a singing man of Windsor, the prince broke his 
 head ; even in the midst of the most jovial condescension he 
 had never renounced his princely position. He now finds him 
 heartlessly mocking at him in the hearing of an utterly reprobate 
 being, and how shall he longer waste his heart on him ? This 
 barefaced backbiting had before appeared to the prince to go 
 beyond the jest which can be permitted face to face. The 
 inner estrangement is felt throughout ; there is now no 
 comedy played, when the tidings come from the court, the 
 freely indulged mirth of the former connection is gone. The 
 prince comes to the court at his father's end. The last sus- 
 picion rouses fully his veiled nature. This one scene, which 
 needs no explanation, is worth all the rest of the play. The 
 king's apparent death cuts him to the heart, Warwick finds 
 him sitting over the crown like a picture of mourning sorrow. 
 The hearts even of the most unconcerned tremble with doubt 
 as to what the kingdom may expect from him. The far-seeing 
 Warwick had flattered the sick king that the prince had but 
 studied his wild companions like a strange tongue, the most 
 immodest word of which is learned ; that in the perfectness of 
 time he would cast off his followers. But when the perfectness 
 of time came, he seemed to be of another opinion, and he 
 wishes the heir to the throne had the temper of the worst of 
 his brothers. His brothers see with astonishment Henry's deep 
 emotion, when he appears as king ; the worthy Lord Chief 
 Justice he keeps in suspense to the very last ; at length with 
 
338 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEAEE' S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 calm majesty lie draws back the clouds from his bright and 
 pure nature, and with one word sets all at rest, by promising 
 that this very man shall be a father to him, that his voice shall 
 sound before all others in his ear, and that he will follow his 
 wise directions. Wildness and passion have died and been 
 buried with his father ; the tide of blood, hitherto flowing in 
 vanity, turns and ebbs back to the sea, where it shall mingle 
 ' with the state of floods, and flow henceforth in formal majesty.' 
 The change of feeling which had commenced with his call 
 against the rebels is completed at his higher vocation to 
 occupy the English throne, and it is soon confirmed by his 
 kingly life and his heroic deeds. Here also on the largest 
 scale does the poet sketch the amendment of the noblest of his 
 humourists. Upon each, upon Biron, and upon Benedick, he 
 imposes the task of showing in their domestic relations their 
 ability for meeting the seriousness of life as well as its jests. 
 This demand the royal Henry has to satisfy in ihe highest 
 business of political and military life. And here in a splendid 
 manner he mocks the expectation of the world, frustrates 
 prophecies, and ' razes out rotten opinion, who had writ him 
 down after his seemim.gJ' The character and the plays which 
 turn upon the development of this character are on this point 
 magnificent counterparts to the Merchant of Venice, and make 
 us perceive in an extraordinary manner how deep was the im- 
 pulse with which Shakespeare at this time reflected upon the 
 value of human existence, and upon its true and its apparent 
 worth. In the one was represented the apparent worth of man 
 endowed with outward possession, in the other the apparent 
 worth of . outward authority and esteem ; gold and outward 
 honour, the vehicles of all seeming, the gods of those who 
 cling to appearance, are the poles round which these plays 
 revolve. As Bassanio deals lightly with money, so does Herury 
 deal carelessly with this outward honour ; to show the different 
 relation of different beings to possession and to honour has been 
 the task in each. From the unusual emphasis, extent, and 
 depth with which this is done, it has often been concluded that 
 Shakespeare may have been connected with these plays in a 
 persona] manner. But to this point we will return later. 
 
HEI^TEY V. 
 
 The history of Henry V., as we read it in the text of the folio 
 edition of 1623, existed previously in a defective sketch, which 
 has been preserved in three older quarto editions (1600, 1602, 
 1608), but unfortunately in such a disfigured form that it 
 seems hardly possible to conceive a correct idea of the poet's 
 first design ; it is, therefore, venturesome and inadmissible to 
 draw any conclusion whatever from their comparison, respecting 
 their accurate relation to the improved play which will alone 
 occupy our attention. In this last form the play appears to be 
 written in immediate connection with the preceding- histories.. 
 The epilogue to Henry IV. already announces the play; the 
 chorus at the close of Henry V. looks back, at the conclli- 
 sion of the great work of this tetralogy, to the earlier histories 
 of Henry VI., ' which oft our stage hath shown.' The date of 
 this piece is certified by the allusion of the chorus in the fifth 
 act to the Earl of Essex's military expedition to Ireland. This 
 passage must have been written between the April and October 
 of 1599. In outward bearing, the piece resembles the second 
 part of Henry IV. The choruses seem to announce that here 
 the ' brighest heaven of invention ' is to be ascended ; yet this 
 is reached father in a patriotic and ethical sense than in an 
 aesthetic one. The lacik of all plot and the prose of the low 
 scenes check the poetic flight ; some of these -scenes, such as that 
 between Katharine and Alice, and that between Pistol and Le 
 Fer, might even be well omitted. Here and there the poetry in this 
 piece rises, it must be admitted, to the most lofty expression, 
 and this especially in the choruses. This unequal form seems 
 to reflect the deep nature of the subject displayed.. Interpreters 
 regarded these choruses as a means for investing; the piece with 
 an epic character, for which the simple baitle material seemed 
 to them more adapted. But these ehoruses are maintained in. 
 a bold, ardent, figurative diction, utterly opposed to the epic ; 
 Shakespeare rather employs this more elevated poetry to place 
 
 z 2 
 
340 SECOND PERIOD OS SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 the hero of his poem in the splendid heroic light in which 
 from his unassmning nature he cannot place himself, and in 
 which, when arrived at the height of his fame, he expressly 
 wishes not to he seen by those around him. G-arrick felt very 
 justly that in representation these choruses ought not only not to 
 be omitted, but that they ought to be placed most prominently 
 forward : he spoke them himself. 
 
 The whole interest of our play lies in the development ot 
 the ethical character of the hero. After the poet has delineated 
 his careless youthful life in the first- part of Henry IV., and in 
 the second part has shown the sting of reflection and considered 
 tion , piercing his soxil as the period of self-dependence ap- 
 proaches, he now displays Henry as arrived at the post of his 
 vocation, and exhibits the king acting up to his resolutions for the 
 future. At the very beginning of the play we are at once in- 
 formed of the utter change which has passed over him. The 
 sinful nature is driven out of him by reflection, the current of 
 reformation has suddenly scoured away the old faults ; as the 
 wholesome strawberry ripens best 'neighboured by fruit of 
 baser quality,' so his active practice, his intercourse with lower 
 life and simple nature, has matured in him all those gifts 
 which etiquette and court ceremony would never have produced 
 in him, and which those now around him perceive in him with 
 admiration. The poet expressly teUs us, through the prelates who 
 discuss the king in the first scene, that there are no miracles, 
 either in his poetry or the world, and that the natural grounds 
 for this wonderful change are to be sought for reaUy in the un- 
 proncdsing school of this apparently untutored man. There 
 this many-sidedness was developed, which now astonishes them 
 in him, and on account of which he now appears equally ac- 
 quainted with all things, ecclesiastical and secular, in the 
 cabinet as in the field. He no longer squanders his now 
 valuable time, but weighs it to the last grain; the curb of 
 mildness and mercy is now placed on his passions, and even 
 foreign lands conjecture that 
 
 his vanities fore-spent 
 Were but the outside of the Bomau Brutus, 
 Covering discretion with a coat of folly. 
 
 And how justly his systematic wickedness was calculated, 
 how entirely according to his design the unexpected sunshine 
 broke through the veil of clouds, is excellently expressed in the • 
 
HENEY V. , 341 
 
 scene in which the king first meets us again, discussing with 
 his counsellors the important business of the wars with France. 
 The force and courage of men, the success and the favour of 
 Providence, is manifest in every word of this discussion. ' When 
 once the mind,' says Bacon, ' has placed before it noble aims, it 
 is immediately surrounded not only by the virtues, but by the 
 gods ! ' Every one, in the suddenness of his gladly disappointed 
 expectation, appears as if electrified. The thought of honour 
 prevails in every breast. All classes are equally devoted to. 
 him in heroic unity ; his family, his uncle and brothers, no less 
 than the nobles, urge him to the war ; the clergy give him the 
 mightiest sum that they had ever granted to an English king ; 
 they depict to him the heroic age of the Edwards, and call him 
 to renew their feats ; everything breathes courage and good 
 will. As if seized with a better spirit, even Bardolph, Nym, 
 and Pistol seem to settle their quarrels among themselves, that 
 as sworn brothers they may march against France. The Eu- 
 menides of the insurrection, who had disturbed and crossed the 
 rule of Henry IV., are heard retreating in the distance. The Irish, 
 who had rebelled against Eichard II., and the Welsh and Scotch, 
 with whom Henry IV. had to fight, appear together as country- 
 men in the king's army. The treachery of a few bribed nobles 
 is easily frustrated. The words of the dying Henry IV. are 
 fulfilled, that the crown seemed in him merely as ' an honour 
 snatched with boisterous hand,' and the quarrel which arose in 
 consequence was the argument of which his reign had been the 
 scene. His death ' changed the mode.' The young king 
 follows the home policy which his father had in dying com- 
 mended to him ; he leads those ' overproud with sap and blood ' 
 into foreign war, and tujns their thoughts to new and greater 
 things. 
 
 This policy urges Henry to the French war ; he is urged to 
 it by right and the well-groimded claim of which with religious 
 conscientiousness he is convinced ; he is urged to it by his 
 ambition, which bids him compensate for his youth and its 
 idleness' by great deeds. His history, he desires, shall speak 
 with full raouth freely of his acts, or else his grave ' shall have 
 a tongueless mouth, not worship'd .with a waxen epitaph,' The 
 scorn of the enemy and the mocking taunt at his madly-spent 
 youth excite his passion for the righteous war, which he has 
 undertaken with steadfast resolve, and to this passion he gives 
 yent in an ambitioii equally scornful : — ^he never valued ' this 
 
342 SECOND PERIOD OF BHAKE8PEAEE' S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 poor seat of England,' but when he rouses himself in his throne 
 of France, for which he has laid by his majesty, he will ' rise 
 there with so full a glory, that he will dazzle all the eyes of 
 France.' It is in this war that he acknowledges hjmself- the 
 most offending soul alive if it be a sin to covet honour ; for 
 now he has the great object before him, as we have said before, 
 in behalf of which it must seem to him noble to be roused. In 
 his fight at Agincourt he has before him even to surpass the 
 warlike Edwards, when, with a little, weak, famished band, he 
 has to withstand the brillant force of the French, at least five- 
 fold more in number. And in this position he aspires truly after 
 the wholly undiminished glory of a position so desperate ; he 
 prefers not to lose so much ' honour as one man more would 
 share from him,' who should come to his assistance from 
 England. 
 
 In these expressions somewhat of that strained nature may 
 seem to lie, which we pointed out in Percy as opposed to 
 Henry ; and truly we see the king in this over-strained condi- 
 tion throughout the whole war. This would be a contradiction 
 in his character, if anything were a contradiction in it ; but we 
 showed throughout that it belongs to his nature and essence 
 to be everything when occasion calls him and necessity claims 
 him. We foUnd him indolent and idle amid the degeneracy of 
 a corrupt period of peace ; now that he is in the war he is a 
 soldier, showing himself collected and eager, mighty and 
 violent in word and deed, acquainted with the terrible ravages 
 of war, and with unrestrained passions ready even at the right 
 moment to unbridle them himself. In peace, he says himself, 
 nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility ; 
 but in war he must ' imitate the action of the tiger, stiffen the 
 sinews, summon up the blood, and disg^se fair nature with 
 hard-favoured rage.' Just so, influenced less by principle than 
 after his fashion by time and place, the king's behaviour at 
 first towards the French ambassador is marked by resolute 
 decision ; he sends back defiance and contempt to the scornful 
 Dauphin ; he is announced by the French embassy as coming 
 ' in thunder, and in earthquake, like a Jove ; ' and thus we see 
 him before Harfleur, threatening the citizens with all the terrors 
 of a besieged town. Once had Prince rienry said that he was 
 ' not yet of Percy's mind,' but the King is so now. Just in 
 the same way would Percy's impatient spirit have chafed 
 before a besieged city ; just in the same way as Henry does 
 
HENRY r. 343 
 
 would Percy have broken out with boasting before the scorn- 
 ful French ambassadors, infected by the soil of the boastful 
 nation; just in the same way did Vernon's words provoke Percy 
 at Shrewsbury as the Dauphin's message now does the prince ; 
 and yet, at his subsequent wooing of Katherine, he is as entirely 
 the soldier, as far from quibbling rhetoric and as free from all 
 arts of verse and mincing as Percy ever could have appeared. 
 The world now compares him, as the poet once had done Percy, 
 to Csesar and to Alexander. He appears now wrathful and 
 terrible as the war-god, when, in the battle of Agincourt, furious 
 at the plunder and slaughter committed by the flying French, 
 he commands the death of the prisoners. His ambition now also, 
 like Percy's, imperceptibly passes into a thirst for honour, which, 
 when in hasty impatience it desires to obtain an object, weighs 
 not jneans and ways. 
 
 But that which at once obliterates all these similarities to 
 Percy is the contrast of circumstances, which at once draw out in 
 him those opposite qualities which Percy could not have possessed. 
 Left to himself, and unprovoked, the braggart is all humility ; 
 in the pauses of rest the warlike tiger is peaceful and tame. 
 He calls himself a man like every other, whose affections are 
 indeed higher mounted, yet when they stoop they stoop with 
 the like wing. Percy's affections did not do this. Never 
 would he have been seen, least of all as king, iu that condes- 
 cension which marks Henry in his present position ; never, in 
 the moment of serious preparation for hot strife, would he have 
 exhibited the tranqujl repose which Henry manifested. In his 
 courtship and on the day of battle Henry is just as plain a king 
 as if he had ' sold his farm to buy his crown.' He has shaken 
 off his old dissolute companions, but the remembrances of that 
 simple intercourse are recalled to our mind at every moment. 
 The same inclination to rove about with the common man in 
 his army, the old mildness and familiarity, and the same love 
 for an innocent jest, exist in him now as then, without de- 
 rogating in the least from his kingly dignity. He leaves his 
 nobles waiting in his tent, while he visits the posts of his 
 soldiers ; the old habit of night-watching is of use to him now ; 
 he sounds the disposition of individuals ; he encourages them 
 without high-sounding words ; he fortifies them without osten- 
 tation ; he can preach to them and solve moral scruples, and 
 can make himself intelligible to them ; he contrives a trick quite 
 of the old kind in the moment of most gloomy suspense ; like a 
 
344 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S BBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 brother, he borrows the cloak of the old Erpingham ; he familiarly 
 allows his countryman Fluellen to join freely in his conversa- 
 tion with the herald, and in^his short appeal before the battle he 
 declares aU to be his brothers who on this Crispin's day shed their 
 blood with him. 
 
 This contrast between his repose and calmness and his 
 martial excitement, between his plain homely nature and the 
 kingly heroic spirit which in the moment of action exercises 
 dominiori, over him, is, however, not the only one in which the 
 poet has exhibited him. The night before and the day during 
 the battle, which form the centre of our play, is a period so 
 prominent, and one in which such manifold moods, emotions, 
 and passions are roused and crossed, that the best opportunity 
 was here afforded to the poet for exhibiting to our view this 
 many-sided man in all the richness and the diversity of his 
 nature. When the mind is quickened, he himself says, ' the 
 organs break up their drowsy grave, and newly move with 
 casted slough and fresh legerity ; ' and thus is it with him in 
 this great and decisive moment. "We see him in a short time 
 alternate between the most different emotions and positions, - 
 ever the same master over himself, or we may rather say, over 
 the opportunity and the matter which liie for the moment 
 before him. The French herald comes and challenges him to 
 ransom himself from his unavoidable detention ; he returns a 
 proud bragging declaration ; he repents it while he is 
 speaking. He is seized with a moment of passion, as in that 
 collision with the Chief Justice, but at once he is again master 
 of himself ; nor was he so forgetful, even in the moment of 
 excitement, as in any way to neglect the truthfulness of his 
 nature; imprudently he conceals not from the enemy the 
 critical condition of his little army. At night, weU knowing 
 the danger of his position, we find bim in the most serious 
 mood : he desires no other company, he and his bosom will 
 debate awhile. This debating is disturbed by contact with all 
 sorts of people belonging to his camp. He hears the scorn of 
 the boaster, he listens to the voice of the pedantic lover of 
 discipline, and he talks with the apprehensive who are better 
 and braver than their words. That truth so incapable of 
 dissimulation speaks in him even here. What would it have 
 cost him to boast of the king in the name of a third person, 
 and to declare that he was cheerful and full of trust ? But 
 he does it not ; he desires as little £n the soldiers as in 
 
HENSY V. 345 
 
 himself to extinguish the consciousness of danger, in order that 
 he may spur them by the necessity to their utmost exertion. 
 When he remarks this anxious expectation, he assures them 
 truly that the king himself would not wish to be anywhere but 
 where he is. The serious natures are occupied with the 
 question as to whether they must answer with their souls for 
 the possible injustice of the royal cause they fight for, or 
 whether the king, if they die for him unprepared, will have 
 to answer for their sins ? He turns field preacher and ex- 
 plains to them ; he falls into a quarrel on the matter with 
 the coarse Williams; he takes up the jest as well as the' edi- 
 fying conversation, though the acting out of the matter is to be 
 disturbed by the bloody seriousness of the battle. After the 
 unexpected interruption and its half-constrained humorous turn 
 the king sinks all the more completely into solemn deliberation 
 with himself; meditation and seriousness overtake and over- 
 burden_his soul. After the soldiers had just been laying their 
 cares and burdens to the king's charge, how natural is the 
 sequence of this same king's train of thought, that having 
 known the happiness of private life he should recall it to his 
 mind at this hour, when ceremony, the prerogative of kings 
 from which he was ever escaping, must appear so empty to him. 
 He, he says in the deepest self-consciousness of his real sterling 
 value, he is a king who has found out this ceremony and its 
 importance I How enviously (standing before the last pinnacle 
 of his fame, as his father had done before in the moment of 
 sickness and distress), how enviously he looks upon the health- 
 ful occupation of the peasant, who rises with the sun, ' sweats 
 in the eye of Phoebus, and all night sleeps in Elysium ' — and 
 how affecting and striking is it, and how completely in the 
 spirit of this king by merit, that in sight of this happy toil of 
 the, poor, returning to his former idea, he sees the vocation of the 
 king in this, that he, conscious and vigilant, with hia own 
 labour and exertions, establishes that security of the state and 
 that peace which the poor man enjoys in unconscious happiness. 
 His meditation upon the ideas thus aroused is followed by the 
 perfect coUectedness of mind exhibited in that fervent prayer, 
 in which he prays God ' not to-day ' to think upon his father's 
 fault. Then he rides forth to see the order of the battle. And 
 as he meets his nobles, and hears Westmoreland's wish to have 
 here ' one ten thousand of those men in England that do no 
 work,' he shows how seriously he means to gain for himself, out 
 
346 SECOND PERIOD OF SffAKESPJEASE'S DEAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 of this very necessity, the hig^hest prize of honour without 
 further help. How popular after his old fashion, and at the 
 same time how sublime, is his encouragement to the battle ! 
 How calm his last words to the French herald I How far is he 
 from being over-hasty in giving credit to the victory ! When 
 he hears of the touching death of the noble York, how near is 
 he to tears I and at the same moment, alarmed by a new 
 tumult, how steeled to a bloody command ! how impatiently 
 furious at the last resistance I and at the moment when victory 
 decides for him, how pious and how humble ! And again, a 
 short time after this solemn elevation of mind, he concludes his 
 joke with Williams, carefiil even then that no harm should 
 result from it. The poet has continued in the fifth act to show 
 us to the very last the many-sided nature of the king. The 
 terrible warrior is transformed into the merry bridegroom, the 
 humorous vein again rises within him ; yet he is not so much in 
 love with his happiness, or so happy in his love, that in the 
 midst of his wooing, and with all his jest and repartee, he would 
 relax the smallest article of the peace which his policy had 
 designed. , 
 
 But how is it ? Has not the poet forgotten that grand 
 feature in Henry's character, that profound modesty, which for- 
 merly, as if wilfully, veiled all his brilliant qualities ? Is it 
 only expressed in the serious mood before the battle, which is 
 however natural, even in the coarse, quarrelsome Williams, 
 wlven in a similar position ? Or was there no occasion to 
 display this former characteristic of the prince, which appeared 
 to us the very marrow of his virtue ? Or did he cast it off for 
 this once at this noble provocation for the exertion of all his 
 powers. We saw him at the battle of Shrewsbury voluntarily 
 yield one glorious deed to his inglorious friend ; but here he 
 has fought a battle, the whoile glory of which falls on him 
 alone, and which the poet with evident design has cast upon 
 him alone, since he keeps the heroic forms of Bedford, Salisbury, 
 and York so completely in the back-ground. What turn does 
 his modesty take, if it retains its old character of avoiding 
 after its fashion this glaring light of fame ? Th& answer is 
 this : it deepens in the same degree as his fame becomes more 
 exalted ; it becomes humility, and gives the honour to Grod. 
 This sentence will shock many of Shakespeare's worshippers, 
 who discover in him nothing but aesthetic and moral free- 
 thinking, and who regard him as a man of disorderly and wild 
 
HENSY r. 347 
 
 genius. But to our mind the truth of the sentence and the 
 truth of the delineation of the character can be little disputed. 
 Throughout the whole play, throughout the whole bearing of 
 the king, sounds the key-note of a religious composure, of a 
 severe conscientiousness, and of an humble modesty. The 
 Chronicle itself which extols Henry so highly that it placed 
 him, before the poet as an historical favourite, praises the king's 
 piety at home and at every page in his campaign ; Shakespeare 
 accepted this historical hint in no mechanical manner, but 
 wrought it appropriately into the characteristics of his hero. 
 The clergy, at the very beginning of the play, call him a true 
 friend of the Church, and have reason to rejoice over his respect 
 for it, as well as over his knowledge of sacred things. When 
 he is occupied with the plan of war, he charges the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury with a solemn oath to take heed in his counsel ; 
 he ' will believe in heart,' that what he speaks as to his 
 right to this war is in his ' conscience washed as pure as sin 
 with baptism.' When he has no thought but France, those to 
 Grod alone ' rim before ' his business. He receives it as a pro- 
 mising ordinance from God that the treason lurking in his 
 way is ' brought to light.' He delivers his ' puissance into the 
 hand of GrOd, putting it straight in expedition ; ' ' God before,' 
 he says several tim.es, he will come to take his right. He 
 orders his old friend Bardolph to be pitilessly executed for 
 robbing a church ; he wishes all such offenders to. be cut off ; 
 for he well knows that when ' lenity and cruelty play for a 
 kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.' We 
 have seen him previous to the battle in solemn preparation, 
 and engaged in edifying conversation with Jiis soldiers. His 
 tirst word on the certainty of the victory is — ' Praised be God, 
 and not our strength, for iti ' When he reviews the greatness 
 of the victory, he says again : ' Take it, God, for it is only 
 thine 1 ' And that this is in earnest, he orders even death to 
 be proclaimed to any who may boast of it or take the honour 
 from God. At his triumphial entry into London he forbids 
 the sword and helm, the trophies of his Warlike deeds, to be 
 borne before him ; and the poet says expressly of him, in the pro- 
 logue, what once the prince had said of himself on that day at 
 Shrewsbury over Percy's body — t];iat he was ' free from vainness 
 and self-glorious pride, giving full trophy, signal, and ostent, 
 quite from himself to God.' ' The atonement which his father 
 could not attain to, for want of energetic, persevering, inward 
 
348 SECOND PERIOD OF 8EAKESPEAEE' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 stimulus, is accomplished by him. In his prayer to God hefore 
 the battle, when he wishes that ' the sense of reckoning ' may 
 be taken from his soldiers and that his father's fault may not be 
 thought upon, he declares that he has ' interred anew ' Eichard's 
 body, has wept over it and has ordered masses to be said ; that 
 he has five hundred poor in yearly pay, ' who twice a day their 
 withered hands hold up toward Heaven ' for him. The poet, we 
 see plainly, adheres to the character of the age, and invests 
 Henry with all that outward work of repentance which in that 
 day was considered necessary for the expiation of a crime. To 
 many he will appear to have gone too far in this, both as re- 
 gards his hero, who is otherwise of so unshackled a mind, and 
 himself, rising as he does generally so far above the narrow 
 views of his own, to say nothing of older times. But above 
 this objection, also, the poet soars victoriously in those excellent 
 words which he puts into the mouth of the king at the close 
 of that penitential prayer : — 
 
 More will I do ; j 
 
 Though all that I can do is nothing worth, 
 Since that my penitence comes after all, 
 Imploring pardon. 
 
 Shakespeare has in no wise attributed to the king this pious 
 humility and fear of Grod as an occasional quality, upon which 
 he places no more value than upon any other ; we see from the 
 repeated reference to it, we see from the nature of the character 
 and its consequent bearing in various circumstances, we see from 
 the plan of the whole play, that this trait is intended to form 
 the central point of the whole. The poet works with the same 
 idea in which ^schylus wrote his warlike pieces, the Persians 
 and the Seven before Thebes : namely, that terrible is the warrior 
 who fears God, and that on the other hand the blossom of pride 
 ripens into the fruit of evil and the harvest of tears. For 
 entirely in this sense has Shakespeare depicted the camp of the 
 French and their princes, in Xerxe^like arrogance and crime, 
 in opposition to the little troop of Britons and their intrepid 
 pious hero. He shows this arrogance in their dividing the lion's 
 skin before the hunt ; in the French king wishing to bring the 
 English prince in a chariot captive to Eouen ; in the Dauphin, 
 in derision of his youthful tricks, sending a tun of tennis-balls 
 to the man who is pondering with such anxious conscientious- 
 ness his articles of war ; in their playing at dice beforehand for 
 
HENRY V. 349 
 
 ' the low-rated English ; ' in their bribing the English nobles 
 ■with money to murder their king. Shakespeare's age designated 
 that impious reliance on human power by the 'name oi security, 
 and this bold confidence in their number and this proud con- 
 tempt of the enemy is imputed by the poet to the French camp. 
 With arrogant desire they long for the day which the English 
 are awaiting in suspense and doubt ; they spend the night in 
 noise and din which the English pass waking in uneasy calmness, 
 and in edifying preparation ; they sparkle with shining weapons, 
 and they boast of splendid steeds, while ' the beggared host ' of 
 the Britons go in war-worn coats and ride famished horses ; they 
 look down with haughty boasting on the heads so heavily armed 
 yet devoid of ' intellectual armour,' and compare their fool-hardy 
 courage to that of their mastiffs ; while the English, as if the 
 king had imparted his soul to them, calm in their anxiety, 
 gather rather fresh courage from necessity, self-respect, and 
 fidelity. Among the French leaders there is hardly one who 
 does not vie with another in empty boasting and bragging; 
 not one who does not share the childish delight in dress and 
 faiilitary decoration, not one whom the seriousness of things can 
 draw away from insipid witicisms and vain debates, not one who 
 showed even a tinge of the seriousness and of the calm courage 
 and devotion of the English. But the Dauphin surpasses them 
 all in shallow self-complacency, in frivolous arrogance, and in 
 this merry bragging from natural narrowness of capacity. These 
 scenes, if only from the broken French introduced, border on 
 carioatm-e ; Shakespeare here, if anywhere, has fallen too easily 
 into a weakness of the age. It seems to me more than probable 
 that a jealous patriotic feeling actuated our poet in the entire 
 representation of his Prince Henry : the intention, namely, of 
 exhibiting by the side of his brilliant contemporary, Henry IV. 
 of France, a Henry upon the English throne equal to him in 
 greatness and originality. The greatness of his hero, however, 
 would appear still more estimable if his enemies were depicted 
 as less inestimable. It alone belonged to the ancients to honour 
 even their enemies. Homer exhibits no depreciation of the 
 Trojans, and ^schylus no trace of contempt of the Persians, 
 even when he delineates their impiety and rebukes it. In this 
 there lies a large-hearted equality of estimation, and a nobleness 
 of mind, far surpassing in practical morality many subtle 
 Christian theories of brotherly love. That Shakespeare distorts 
 the French antagonists, and could not even get rid of his Virgil- 
 
350 SECOND FEBIOB OF SHAKESpEAEE'S DEAMATIC POETEY. 
 
 taught hatred against the Greeks, is one of the few traits which 
 we would rather not see in his works ; it is a national narrow- 
 mindedness, with which the Briton gained ground over the man. 
 The nations of antiquity, who bore a far stronger stamp of 
 nationality than any modem people, were strangers to this 
 intolerant national pride ; even the Romans were so ; on their 
 triumphal arches they fashioned the statues of captive barbarian 
 monarchs, noble in outward form, and showing in their whole 
 bearing all the hostile defiance of independence. 
 
 Shakespeare has in this play also brought the popular king 
 Henry into close contact with the people ; his society is, however, 
 now wholly different to that of his youth. At that time ex- 
 travagance and idleness, thieving and loitering, were placed by 
 his side, in order to make the contrast more sensible of his owu 
 occasional participation in the wantonness of the others ; now 
 the poet has found it necessary to present a wholly different, 
 contrast, designed to show us that his new moral severity and 
 religious character rest not on the mechanism of an ecclesiastical 
 habit, and that thefree-spirited youth has in no wise become an old 
 devotee. Shakespeare could not dare to exhibit the plain contrast 
 of a religious bigot ; the religious spirit and puritanical strictness 
 of the age did not permit it ; the whole English stage of the 
 period never ventured, to my knowledge, to portray a character 
 even slightly tinged with religious bigotry. Shakespeare there- 
 fore has rather exhibited by the side of the king the worldly 
 aspect of an austerity and conscientiousness of this kind ; he 
 displays it as grown into a habit, respectable but not too 
 accountable, so that we at once feel the contrast to the un- 
 shackled mind of his hero, in whom religious fervour, like each 
 of his qualities, was developed according to the nature of 
 circumstances; in whom it became apparent before, over the 
 body of Percy, at the tidings of his father's ilhiess, and as early 
 as at that first soliloquy upon the crown ; in whom it now blazes 
 forth more brightly on the great occasion of a war between two 
 mighty states, at an undertaking in which the boldest is re- 
 minded of his dependence on external powers. Among the more 
 serious popular characters — the steady, worthy Grower, the rough 
 Williams, and the dry Bates — ^the Welshman Fluellen, the king's 
 countryman, is the central point. He is, as the king himself 
 says, a nian of ' much care and valour,' but ' out of fashion.' 
 Compared with the former companions of the Prince, he is like 
 -discipline opposed to licence, like pedantry opposed to dis- 
 
HENEY V. 351 
 
 soluteness, conscientiousness to impiety, learning to rudeness, 
 temperance to intoxication, and veiled bravery to concealed 
 cowardice. Contrasted with those boasters, he appears at first a 
 ' collier ' who pockets every affront. In common with his royal 
 countryman, he is not what he seems. Behind little caprices 
 and awkward peculiarities is hidden an honest, brave nature, 
 ^hich should be exhibited by the actor, as it was by Hippisley 
 in Grarrick's time, without playfulness or caricature. Open and 
 true, he suffers himself to be deceived for a time by Pistol's 
 bragging, then he seems coldly to submit to insult from him, 
 but he makes him smart for it thoroughly after the battle, and 
 then gives him ' a groat to heal his broken pate.' He settles 
 the business on which Henry sets him against Williams and 
 which brings him a blow, and when the king rewards Williams 
 with a glove full of crowns, he will not be behind in generosity, 
 and gives him a shilling. He speaks good and bad of his 
 superiors, ever according to truth, deeply convinced of the im- 
 portance of his praise and blame, but he would do his duty 
 under each. He is talkative in the wrong place, takes the word 
 from the lips of others, and is indignant when it is taken from 
 him ; but in the night before the battle he knows how to keep 
 himself quiet and calm, for nothing surpasses to him the disci- 
 pline of the Eoman wars, in which this is enjoined. The cold 
 man flashes forth warmly like the king when the French commit 
 the act, so contrary to the law of arms, of killing the soldiers' 
 boys. At the time of his respect for Pistol, the latter begs him 
 to intercede for the chm-ch-robber Bardolph, but he made his 
 appeal to^the wrong, man. It is a matter of discipline, in which 
 Fluellen is inexorable. Indeed he especially esteems his country- 
 man king for having freed himself of these old companions. 
 This is the essential point to him in his learned comparison 
 between Henry V. and Alexander the Great, that the latter 
 killed his friends in his intoxication, while the former turned 
 away his when he was jn ' his right wits.' Since then his 
 countryman is inscribed in his honest scrupulous heart, though 
 before he had certainly made little of the dissolute fellow ; now 
 he cares not who knows that he is the king's countryman, he 
 needs not to be ashamed of him ' so long as his majesty is an 
 honest man.' Happy it is that the noble Henry can utter a 
 cordial amen to this remark, ' Grod keep me so ; ' his captain 
 Fluellen would at once renounce his friendship if he learned 
 from him his first dishonourable trick. The self-contentedness 
 
352 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 of an integrity, unshaken indeed, but also never exposed to any 
 temptation, is excellently designed in all the features of this 
 character. 
 
 The pedantic-like discipline and love of order, the valour by 
 line and level of the brave Fluellen, though it may appear in 
 an old-fashioned light compared with the well-based and free 
 virtue of the king, stands out on the other hand by its unas- 
 suming nature in advantageous contrast to the worthlessness of 
 his boasting companions, Pistol, Nym, andBardolph. The poet 
 allows us through them to have another glimpse of the early, 
 intercourse of the prince. At the commencement of the im- 
 portant period they appear a little elevated, but circumstances 
 again ruin them. Their seducer Falstaff is no longer with them ; 
 a better spirit accompanies them in the boy, whom we venture 
 to take for the page in the second part of Henry IV., and who 
 honourably falls in battle with the boys. He characterises his 
 three companions, whom he thought of leaving, so distinctly 
 that we require no other analysis. They are soon again ' sworn 
 brothers in filching,' and Bardolph and Nym bring themselves 
 to the gallows. As a proof that Shakespeare has not made the 
 king act inconsiderately to Falstaff (who in the Chronicle also 
 appears as a strict lover of justice), he makes him say expressly, 
 at Bardolph's fall, that he ' would have all such offenders so cut 
 off.' Pistol is not so bold a thief as they, and he is, therefore, 
 dismissed with the more lenient lesson from Fluellen, who makes 
 him eat his Welsh leek, and ' cudgels his honour ' from his limbs. 
 The poet did not again introduce the fat Falstaff ; we hear only 
 of his death. From the epilogue to Henry IV. it was un- 
 daubtedly Shakespeare's intention to let him appear in this piece 
 also. During the work itself he must have discovered that this 
 was no longer practicable. He could only have exhibited him 
 in ever greater debasement, and this would have destroyed the 
 symmetry and the great design of the play. The poei, hx)wever, 
 by this omission, remained in debt, as it were, to the public ; 
 and he seized therefore an opportunity, not long afterwards, of 
 liquidating it in another manner by writing the Merry Wives 
 of Windsor, in which he once again, in strict ethical development 
 of the character, makes ' plump Jack ' appear as the principal 
 figure. 
 
KING JOHN. 
 
 King John is mentioned in Meres' well-known list of Shake- 
 speare's plays in 1598, and thus appeared previous to that year, 
 as Delius supposes, between the completion of the York and the 
 beginning of the Lancaster tetralogy, not long before 1596. 
 As in Kichard II., there is little place given to the prose, and 
 in one passage rhyme has maintained its ground. Plays upon 
 words and conceits in unsuitable places are even more frequent 
 here than in Eichard II., a piece with- which King John 
 appears to be almost contemporary, if it were only on account 
 of the great family resemblance between the character of 
 Constance and that of Kichard II. 
 
 There is an old piece, ' Kynge John,^ by Bishop Bale, which 
 at the latest ^as written at the commencement of the reign of 
 Elizabeth ; but it was not only unknown to Shakespeare, but 
 also to the author of the older two-sectioned dramatic history 
 of King John, out of which Shakespeare produced his work. 
 This older play exists. in many impressions, the first of which is 
 dated 1591, and the third (of 1611) erroneously bears the name 
 of Shakespeare on the title-page. Shakespeare entirely 
 followed this older work in the historical matter, and there is 
 scarcely more than one passage to be pointed out with certainty 
 in which it may be concluded that he consulted the Chronicles 
 besides. Artistically considered, he took in the outward design 
 of the piece, blended both parts into one, adhered to the lead- 
 ing features of the characters, and finished them with finer 
 touches ; more freely, and now indeed more completely as him- 
 self, he treated this preparatory work in the same way he had 
 before done more timidly the last two parts of Henry VI. To 
 compare the older King John with Shakespeare's is a task 
 which far more rewards the trouble than the comparison of 
 Henry VI. with its original, because in King John the maturer 
 
 A A 
 
354 SECOND FEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DSAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 poet revised a work at any rate as good in itself. The older 
 King John is a rough but not a bad piece, from which the poet 
 could have borrowed many happy poetical and historical 
 features. It possesses the old stiffness and is intermingled with 
 Latin passages according to the earlier custom, yet it is freer 
 from the , extravagances of the old school, from which these 
 historical subjects in a great measure rescued us. The diffuse- 
 ness in the second part is heavy, and here Shakespeare with 
 excellent tact has remedied the evil by abridgment. The 
 characters are designed in a manner suitable for our poet's use, 
 but they are far less sustained than his. For the mere sake 
 of speaking, speeches are put in the lips of Faulconbridge 
 which are inconsistent with his nature. Arthur, who once 
 speaks in the childlike tone of his age, loses it again, and in 
 the pathetic scene with Hubert is a precocious disputant. How 
 far Shakespeare excelled his best contemporary poets in fine 
 feeling is evinced by this older play if it be compared with his 
 revised work; Shakespeare delineates his Faulconbridge (and 
 himself in him) rigidly and bitterly enough as a good Protes- 
 tant in the base treatment of Popish arrogance. In suitable 
 passages he gives full vent to the indignation of the English at 
 Popish rule and intrigue, encroachment and oppression, which 
 at that time was readily listened to in London. But he did 
 not go so far as to make a farce of Faulconbridge's extortions 
 from the clergy ; the old piece offered him here a scene in 
 which merry nuns and brothers burst forth from the opened 
 coffers of the ' hoarding abbots,' a scene certainly very amusing 
 to the fresh Protestant feelings of: the time, but to our poet's 
 impartial mind the dignity of the clergy, nay even the contem- 
 plativeness of cloister-life, was a matter too sacred for him to 
 introduce it in a ridiculous form into the seriousness of history. 
 There are many similar crudenesses in the old piece, which 
 Shakespeare has likewise effaced. At the marriage treaty 
 between Lewis and Blanche, the poor Constance is present ; at 
 the indelicate discussion (Act i. sc. 1) between the brothers 
 Faulconbridge, their mother is introduced ; the illegitimate son 
 subsequently threatens his own mother with death if she does 
 not confess the truth to him ; this lack of tenderness does not 
 occur in Shakespeare. In another respect also the accurate 
 comparison of the two works is of the greatest interest, if we 
 would watch Shakespeare's depth in the treatment of his poetry, 
 as it were, in the work and in the creation itself. In many 
 
KING JOHN. 355 
 
 passages of the old play, where motives, delineation of character 
 and actions, lay before him in ample prolixity, he has gathered 
 the contents of whole scenes compactly into a single sentence 
 or a single insinuation ; he disdains superabundant perspicuity, 
 and leaves to the actor, the spectator, and the reader some- 
 what for his own mind to find out and to add. If we interpret 
 as much out of such scanty hints as all penetrating commenta- 
 tors of Shakespeare feel themselves obliged to do, we prepare 
 the way for an impression of unwarranted imputations of 
 greater wisdom and fulness than the poet intended. But these 
 comparisons prove to us only too plainly that we can never go 
 too far in truly fathoming this poet ; that far rather we have to 
 labour to find out what lies concealed in him ; and that we 
 have only to guard ourselves from interpolating his sentiments 
 with philosophical maxims and reflections which were foreign 
 and remote to him as well as to his age. 
 
 King John has outwardly no reference to the two historical 
 tetralogies which we have previously discussed ; but, with re- 
 gard to the idea it contains, we shall see the poet in this play 
 also working with the same political views which distinguish 
 the cycle of ideas in the histories from that of the exact dramas. 
 If we turn away from the historical subject, we might pronounce 
 this piece to be a tragedy of the pm-est water, simply represent- 
 ing the idea of so many of the ancient tragedies : that ' there is 
 no sure foundation set in blood ; no certain life achieved by 
 others' death.' But to this general idea the purport of the 
 whole play does not pervadingly refer. A rich web of political 
 actions, aiming at one central point, circles round Arthur's 
 doEtth, which forms indeed the main turning-point of John's 
 fortune, though it is in no wise the sole cause of this reverse of 
 fortune, any more than the guilt of the king alone is so ; but 
 from these political actions is developed, as in Eichard II., an 
 idea at once political and ethical, as special in character as the 
 leading thoughts of all Shakespeare's real and strict historical 
 plays. 
 
 The political actions to which we refer relate to the dis- 
 puted throne of England. After the death of Eichard Ceeurr 
 de-Lion, in virtue of a testament of this king, and at the 
 instigation of the queen-mother Elinor, the rightful heir of 
 England, the young Arthur of Bretagne, is excluded from the 
 throne, and Eichard's brother John becomes his successor. 
 The old Elinor — an offence to morality, as Constance upbraids 
 
 & A 2 
 
356 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 her in our present play and as history exhibits her — an Ate, as 
 the play names her, who in the reign of her husbandj Heiiry II., 
 stirred up the sons against their father, as she now did the 
 dying Eichard against the lawful heir — this Elinor is the 
 political genius and guide of her son John. His succession 
 serves her ambition and gratifies her hatred of Arthur's mother, 
 Constance, who, according to Elinor's declaration, sought on 
 her side the throne for her son only with the ambitious design 
 of ruling herself and ' kindling all the world.' Constance and 
 her adherents call John a base usurper ; John at first, in 
 opposition to his mother, seems to trust his right as much as 
 ' his strong possession ; ' but his mother whispers in his ear as a 
 secret that his throne rests more on strong possession than on 
 right. The testament of the former king, which she has pro- 
 cured, and its judicial validity, rest as the dubious point be- 
 tween the indubitable right of Arthur ' and the usurpation of 
 John. On his side is the actual possession, on Arthur's and 
 his mother's the armed assistance of an apparently generous 
 friend, the King of France. We shall see how fate inclines in 
 this ■^ell- balanced strife, how fortune ebbs and flows, how com- 
 binations and political intrigues intersect each other, and how 
 the poet steers his way amid all these vicissitudes and intri- 
 cacies. First of all we must become acquainted with the 
 principal characters, which stand opposed to each other on both 
 
 Throughout this play Shakespeare has softened for the 
 better the traits of the principal political characters, and has 
 much obliterated the bad. His John, his Constance, his Arthur, 
 his Philip Augustus, even his Elinor, are better people than 
 they are found in history. The ground of this treatment, 
 which is not usual to him, is not merely that in this instance 
 he did not draw directly from the sources, of the Chronicle; his 
 design in it was also, as will appear in the course of our 
 considerations, that the vehicles of the political story should be 
 merely men of ordinary stamp, deriving the motives for their 
 
 ^ The following genealogical table makes the relation plain : Henry 11, 
 (Elinoi:, separated from Lewis VII. of France). 
 
 I ■ " 1 
 
 Henry Richard Cceur- Geoffrey, of Bre- King John Eleanor (Al- 
 tll83, de-Lion. 1 1199. tagne (Constance). . fonso of Castile). 
 
 , « ^ , -^ I >. Henry lU, ,— « . 
 
 Bastard Philip Arthur. Blanche. 
 
 Faulconbridge. 
 
KING JOHN. 357 
 
 actions from no deep-lying passions; men neither of a very 
 noble nor of a very ignoble sort, but, as is generally the case 
 in the political world, men acting from selfishness and common 
 interest. The base previous history of Elinor and Constance is 
 touched upon only in cursory insinuations, or is entirely over- 
 looked ; the older, active Arthur of history is transformed into 
 an inactive, innocent boy ; King John himself is kept greatly 
 in the background, and even his historical character is softened 
 and refined by Shakespeare. As he appears at the commence- 
 ment, he is like a vigorous man prepared for everything, re- 
 solved -with a strong hand to defend his possession of the throne 
 against every assault. He is ' great in thought,' as Faulcon- 
 bridge subsequently reminds him, referring to this early period ; 
 in the thought, he means, of maintaining with all his power 
 against every pretension that English land which actually is on. 
 his. side and has sworn allegiance to him, and of identifying the 
 kingdom with his country as the straightforward Bastard ever 
 does. He is not the image of a brutal tyrant, but only the 
 type of the hard manly nature, without any of the enamel of 
 finer feelings, and without. any other motives for- action than 
 those arising from the instinct of this same inflexible nature 
 and of personal interest. Severe and earnest, an enemy to 
 cheerfulness and merry laughter, conversant with dark thoughts, 
 of a restless, excited temperament^ he quickly rises to daring 
 resolves; he is uncommunicative to his best advisers, laconic 
 and reserved; he does not agree to the good design of his evil 
 mother that he should satisfy Constance and her claims by an 
 accommodation; it better pleases his warlike manly pride to 
 bear arms against the threatened arms ; in his campaigns 
 against Constance and her allies the enemy himself feels that: 
 the ' hot haste,' managed with so much foresight, and the wise 
 order in so wild a cause, are unexampled. Thus ' lord of his 
 presence,' and allied to the great interest of the country, he^ 
 appears feared, but not loved and desired, and he presents in 
 truth no amiable side. No childUke reverence draws him to 
 his mother, but her political wisdom attracts him ; no vein of 
 kindred links him with Faulconbridge, but his usefulness is the 
 bond with him ; to Hubert he speaks of love when he requires 
 him, and of abhorrence after his services have proved injurious ; 
 the property of the church loses its sanctity for him in 
 necessity ; but this manner of consulting only his immediate 
 advantage in all circumstances leads him by degrees even to 
 
358 SECOM) PESIOD OF 8SAKE8FEASE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 betray the great possession of the state in another time of need 
 to this same despised and crushed church, whose arrogant 
 interference he had before withstood with scornful defiance. 
 No higher principle sustains the man and his energetic designs 
 in time of danger ; the great idea at the outset of his career 
 leaves him during its progress and at its end. After his power, 
 thus displayed against France, has risen even to the defiance of 
 the Pope and the' church, and to the inconsiderate design 
 upon the life of a child whose temper was not to be feared and 
 had not been even tried by him, it sinks down, struck by 
 conscience, by curses, and by prophecies, by dangers without 
 and within; he becomes anxious, mistrustful, superstitious, 
 fearful to absolute weakness and to a degree of faint-heartedness, 
 in which he sells his country as cheaply as once in his self- 
 confidence he had held it dearly and had defended it boldly. 
 
 In contrast to the entirely political relation between the 
 usurper and his mother is the entirely maternal relation of 
 Constance to her son Arthur, on whose side is the legitimate 
 claim. The suspicious Elinor sees in him 'a bloom that 
 promiseth a- mighty fruit ; ' Shakespeare too has given a 
 profound mental capacity to the pure and spotless mind of the 
 tender boy; in that scene with Hubert, which affects the soul 
 of the spectator with such agitating emotions of fear and pity, 
 it is not alone his loving nature which disarms cruelty, it is 
 also a persuasive spirit full of wise and even cunning precaution, 
 which terror at once ripens into an efficient power. Yet at the 
 time no pretender would have been less to be feared than he. 
 He ' would that he were low laid in his grave,' when he hears 
 the contention over his right. He would gladly be a shepherd, 
 so that he might be merry and free from the unmerited fault 
 of being his father's son and heir. But all the more firmly 
 does his ambitious mother cling to the legitimate claim of the 
 child who knows of no ambition. She has called France to 
 arms for her fait son, whom she loves with all the intensity of 
 maternal pride; she would be less ambitious for herself and 
 him, if nature had not made him so worthy of command. She 
 herself is yet beautiful as a matron, and she takes, it seems, no 
 little delight in the beauty of her child, and, to argue from the 
 impression which she makes on the bystanders, her charms 
 must even in her extreme and utterly tmfeigned sorrow enhance 
 the spectacle of her grief. Ambition spurred by maternal love, 
 maternal love goaded by ambition and womanly vanity, these 
 
KINO- JOSN. 359 
 
 form the distinguishing features of her character, features out 
 of which, from the adversity of fate, that raging passion is deve- 
 loped which at last shatters the soul and body of the frail 
 woman. She is a woman whose weakness amounts to grandeur, 
 ^nd whose virtues sink into weakness ; like John in his 
 masculine sphere, she is without those mental and moral 
 resources which could make her moderate in prosperity or 
 calm in adversity. To the daring man misfortune is the stone 
 against which he stumbles, to the passionate woman this 
 stumbling-stone is prosperity. From the transporting violence 
 of her love and of her grief we may conclude how violent she 
 could have been in hatred and arrogance. Her coarse out- 
 bursts against Elinor, her contemptuous and sarcastic outbreaks 
 against the Duke of Austria when she stands on the doubtful 
 ground between success and misfortune, testify to the sanguine, 
 womanly, and even womanish want of self-command, which 
 makes her irritable from fear, and would have made her irritable 
 in prosperity. Her biting speech is even too bitter for her 
 child and too immoderate for her friends. Shakespeare has 
 depicted in her the female counterpart to Eichard II., who, 
 imperious in prosperity, was speedily lost in adviersity. 
 Powerless to forward their own cause, the one from early self- 
 abandonment, the other from the circumstances of her position 
 and sex, both alike powerless in active defence and revenge, 
 they both exhibit the exaggeration of a passion which rages 
 within the man in smouldering heat, and within the woman in 
 a brightly blazing fire ; they both present an exaggeration of 
 the mind and the fancy manifesting itself in the most brilliant 
 outpourings of eloquence and reflection, in the invectives of 
 rage as well as in the outbursts of sorrow. Just as in Eichard 
 there gushes forth in Constance a deeply poetic vein in all her 
 misery, and like him her imagination revels in her grief, which 
 she calls so great that ' no supporter but the huge firm earth 
 can hold it up.' Like Eichard, she delights in picturing to 
 herself dark images of death and its desired horrors ; like him 
 she plays with her sorrow in witty words and similes ; Kke 
 him her pride and majesty rise with misfortune. On the 
 throne and state of her grief she feels herself more exalted 
 than her false royal friends, and in the extreme of hopelessness 
 she is seized with the frenzy which only threatened Eichard. As 
 the end, the ruin, and the agony of King John have ever been 
 regarded as one of the most satisfactory themes for English 
 
360 SECOND PEBIOD OF 8HAKESPEAME' S DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 actors such as Garrick, so from Mrs. Gibber to Mrs. Siddons 
 and later actresses the part of Constance has been esteemed as 
 one of the most acceptable tasks. The change of mood, and the 
 oscillations from the highest pitch of excited bitterness to the 
 softest depth of maternal tenderness, offer infinite scope to the. 
 artist. In the third act we must compare the Shakespearian 
 play with the similar scenes in the older King John, in order to 
 estimate thoroughly what he has here accomplished. How the 
 whole frail and trembling frame of the woman is agitated at 
 the first tidings of her forlorn condition! What variety of 
 feeling is expressed and felt in those twenty lines in which she 
 inquires anxiously after the truth of that which shocks her to 
 hear ! How her grief, as long as sh^ is alone, restrains itself in 
 calmer anguish, in the vestibule of despair ! How her sorrow 
 first bursts forth in the presence of others into powerless 
 revenge, rising even to a curse which brings no blessing to 
 herself, and how atoningly behind all this unwomanly rage lies 
 the foil of maternal love ! How justly measured throughout is 
 the light and shade ! We should be moved with too violent a 
 pity for this love, leaning as it does on the one dear object 
 which is snatched away from it, if it did not weaken our 
 interest by its want of moderation ; we should turn away with 
 disgust from the violence of the woman, if the strength of her 
 maternal affection did not irresistibly enchain us. 
 
 These two opponents, unstable and imprincipled as they 
 appear — the one without judgment, dependent on doubtful alUes, 
 and the other resting on the wisdom of his relatives — become in 
 conformity with their nature, and in consequence of the alter- 
 nations of fortune, entangled in a series of unnatural alliances, 
 by which weakness and mistrust in a cause not wholly pure 
 endeavours to find support, and interest strives to counteract 
 interest. John alone appears at the outset master over him- 
 self and his country, and hence, firm, quick, and successful. 
 Constance, on the contrary, has formed an unpatriotic league 
 with France, the natural enemy of England, and a yet more 
 equivocal friendship with the Duke of Austria,' who, according 
 to the story of the older King John, was the cause of the death 
 of Eichard Coeur-de-Lion, the brother-in-law of Constance. 
 
 ' In this character Shakespeare has blended into one person, as in the 
 older King John, Duke Leopold of Austria, who kept Eldiard in prison in 
 1193, and Count Vidomar of Limoges, before whose castle, at Chaluz, 
 Eichard fell in 1199. 
 
KING- JOHN. 361 
 
 The poet has not expressly pointed out the unnaturalness of this 
 union in a national and domestic point of view, because the 
 passionate woman, a stranger to all political considerations, falls 
 into these errors with the same inconsiderateness as Eichard II. 
 does ; but the insincerity and weakness of this alliance betrays 
 itself aU. the more strongly in the manner in which the violent- 
 natured woman bursts forth with scornful hatred against Austria, 
 after he has become faithless. The poet's opinion, moreover, as 
 regards any English league with France, is expressed in King Lear 
 with such severe consistency, and is in this play subsequently 
 shown so forcibly in a second instance, that he could spare 
 himself the lesson on this first occasion. And he did so here 
 all the better because this alliance j seen from the position of 
 France and Austria, has a second side Which stands out all 
 the more distinctly. Both fought, as it appears in the begin- 
 ning, for the good right of an innocent orphan, as the knightly 
 defenders of a feeble woman; Austria, moreover, fought in ex- 
 piation of the death of Eichard, a war at once 'just and cha- 
 ritable ; ' they derive their authority from the highest Judge, 
 and with better right than John could call themselves the 
 servants of Grod. The double-sided nature of this alliance is 
 exactly counterbalanced by John's equivocal right ; this the 
 poet has shown at its climax in the equal, indecisive battle, 
 and in the position of the town of Anglers between both pre- 
 tenders. The neutral inhabitants of Anglers, however, pro- 
 pose that France should give his son and John his niece in 
 marriage, and that peace should thus be concluded. With no 
 other motive than the consciousness of his weak right, John~ 
 adopts these conditions upon the counsel of his mother ; had he 
 at first consented to treat with Constance, he could easily have 
 satisfied her with the investiture of the English possessions on 
 the French territory, which he now surrenders to France ! To 
 stop Arthur's title to the whole, he gives away part of England's 
 territory to England's worst enemy ! And the King of France, 
 moreover, whom Christian love and zeal had at first tuged to a 
 war which even Faulconbridge declares ' resolved and honour- 
 able,' forsakes the right of the widow and orphan, and turns it 
 ' to his own vantage.' But this fair-seeming peace, which John 
 enters into with the perjured, is not to last a single day. That 
 great power, which ever with masterly hand has sought worldly 
 and political advantage in the name of God, interferes between 
 the new-allied. The Pope calls the king to account for spui:ning. 
 
362 SECOlfD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEASE' S DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 the church, and, upon his defiant reply, pronounces excommuniT 
 cation against him and the dissolution of the league. The 
 Dauphin draws away the French king from England, in spite 
 of his scruples at 'playing fast and loose with faith' and 'jesting 
 with Heaven,' while he impresses upon him the inequality of 
 the gain and loss — on the one side the curse of Eome, on the 
 other the light loss of England's friendship. The poor Blanche 
 falls a sacrifice to political considerations, and to their pre- 
 ponderance over those of home and heart. John, imprudent at 
 first in resting on false supports, is so now in the wicked re- 
 moval of weak enemies and in the dangerous provocation of 
 opposition. He contrives the murder of the harmless Arthur, 
 and irritates the already disturbed church by fresh extortions. 
 The legate Pandulph, a master of Machiavellian policy, watches 
 these errors, and builds upon them the new unhallowed league 
 between France and Eome ; with cold blood he speculates how 
 Arthur's death may be occasioned by a French invasion, and 
 how this again may be advanced by the sensation produced 
 by the murder. ' A sceptre,' he tells the inexperienced 
 Dauphin, 
 
 snatched with an unruly band, 
 Must be as boisterously maintained as gained : 
 And be that stands upon a slippery place, 
 Makes nice of no vile bold to stay bim up. 
 
 The anticipated murder of Arthur and the plunder of the 
 church would breed discontent in England ; from this ' hurly ' 
 the old student of this 'old world' teaches France to draw 
 advantage. This practical prophecy is fulfilled: the country 
 becomes unruly ; the king's evil conscience is roused ; suspieir 
 ously he has himself crowned a second time, and this makes his 
 nobles suspicious also. The murder of Arthur comes to their 
 hearing, and they revolt from the king. A new anti-national 
 league is formed between the English vassals on the one side, 
 and France and the Pope on the other, and the French Dauphin 
 prepares on his part the death of the traitor for all the traitors 
 to England. Meanwhile the fearful and perplexed John loses 
 his old courage and confidence so far that he takes his land as 
 a fief from the Pope, and enters into a shameful treaty of sub- 
 jection to the most virulent of his enemies. The older play 
 regards this treaty only as a cunning act of dissimulation, but 
 Shakespeare has no longer imputed such a characteristic to the 
 ruined king, but only to the strong, inflexible Faulconbridge. 
 
KING JOHN. 363 
 
 The king has forgotten his former vigour, which the enemy has 
 now learned from him ; he turns his hardened zefil against poor 
 prophets only to benumb his superstitious fear ; his energy is 
 gone. The unnaturalness of all these complicated alliances is 
 now speedily manifested; the league between England and 
 the Papacy, that between the Papacy and France, that between 
 France and the English vassals, all are suddenly broken up, 
 without the attainment of the object of one of them ; they 
 change throughout into the natural enmity which severed 
 interests necessitate. 
 
 Amid these errors and intricacies, these inclinations and 
 aversions, these alliances and quarrels, self-interest and advant- 
 age (the rulers of all political affairs) bear sway. Faulconbridge 
 solemnly rebukes this, in the first league between John and 
 France, and in Philip's breach of faith to Constance, as the author 
 of this double godless course of action, as ' that broker that 
 still breaks the pate of faith ; ' as ' that daily break-vow ; he 
 that wins of all ; ' that cheats all ; as 
 
 the bias of the world, 
 The world, who of itself is peised well, 
 Made to run even upon even ground ; 
 Till this advantage, this vile drawing bias, 
 Makes it take head from, all indifferency, 
 From all direction, purpose, course, intent. 
 
 To this power, to this lever in every commotion, high and 
 low abandon themselves more or less readily. King John and 
 Constance are urged by the force of direct nature, by want of 
 principle, and by lack of moral and patriotic sense, to grasp at 
 its offers ; the French princes follow its dictates with a deliberar- 
 tion which overcomes the counterbalance of honour ; the Duke , 
 of Austria stands ever cowardly near the strong and marches 
 with them ; the Papal legate is the master, who thinks to take 
 this moving-power in his hand and to guide after his own in- 
 tention. In what relation to the sedijctions of this power, and 
 to its confused world of policy, do those men stand, in whom 
 the fire of morality and of genuine patriotism is not wholly 
 extinguished ? Shakespeare has placed this contrast of a better 
 humanity in opposition tp those slaves of interest in four 
 gradations. 
 
 The young Arthur, in his unspotted innocence, is a stranger 
 to this world of guilt^and selfishness. In this strife of hostile 
 powerSj only the discord of quarrel meets his ear, and even that 
 
364 SECOND PEBIOD OF SSAKESPSASE'S DEAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 is intolerable to the saintly creature. The superiority of a 
 nature angelic, untried and \minjured, drives the tender being 
 early from the noisy world, for which he has neither under- 
 standing nor heart ; he spares his keeper Hubert the temptation 
 to an evil deed, while in full consciousness he incurs the danger 
 of the suicide which proves fatal. It happens repeatedly in 
 Shakespeare's plays that childlike innocence meets in this 
 manner with a tragic fate : it is so with the sons of Edward in 
 Eichard III., with Macduff's bold and heroic boy, with Mamil- 
 lius in the Winter's Tale, and here with Arthur. Shakespeare 
 has always painted this innocence in the most charming 
 colours ; he has not cast the slightest mote across the moral 
 spotlessness of these characters j but on each occasion he has 
 added the interest of intellectual endowments to them ; all 
 these youthful beings are premature in their development and 
 precocious in their minds. How is the pitiable destruction of 
 these creatures consistent with the demands of that poetic 
 justice which lay so near the poet's' heart ? They could not 
 perish in moral justice ; how could we impute guilt to childlike 
 innocence, and demand retribution when no deeds are com- 
 mifeted ? Nevertheless, in the historical play of Eichard III., 
 for example, the death of Edward's sons was imposed upon the 
 poet by his subject ; he could not evade it. What measure 
 did he take in order to reconcile feeling and fancy with the 
 cruel destiny? He yielded to the pious popular belief which 
 says that God takes to himself most early the sweetest children, 
 and to that other, so often expressly repeated in^ Eichard, that 
 children ' so wise, so young, do ne'er live long.' He delineated 
 these guiltless souls in such angelic perfection that they 
 appear too good for this lower world ; and thus, mingled with 
 sorrow and pity for their end, a feeling of happiness is ex- 
 cited at seeing them withdrawn from the rough contingencies 
 of life. And this poet appeared to Voltaire an intoxicated 
 savage ! 
 
 It is best for the pure innocent nature to be withdrawn 
 from the confusion of the political world — this is a doctrine 
 taught even by Machiavelli, the master of policy. But it is 
 not every one who is in the position to be withdrawn from it by 
 the force of destiny, or who is able voluntarily to avoid it. A 
 moral nature and national and political duty are at variance 
 in the noble Salisbury, producing in him a struggle of soul 
 which leads to false steps, if such' they can be considered; 
 
KING JOHN. 365 
 
 the right Une of action in these political perplexities is expressly 
 represented as one so delicate as not even to be always accu- 
 rately discovered by the most just sense of morality. When 
 the treachery of France towards Constance and Arthur is com- 
 mitted, Salisbury appears as a man of sensitive feeling, whom 
 this misdeed pierces to the heart ; he looks with pity on the 
 wronged prince, and restrains not his tears. When the death 
 of Arthur reaches his ears, he separates himself quickly with 
 other vassals from the king's cause ; he will not line the ' thin 
 bestained cloak ' of the king with his own pure honour. When 
 they stand altogether before Arthur's corpse, the outburst of 
 his moral abhorrence of this murderous deed makes even the 
 Bastard dumb. He forbids his soul obedience to this bloody 
 man, the smell of sin stifles him, he vows vengeance of the 
 murdered, and enters into league with France, the enemy of 
 England. The sensitiveness of his moral feelings seduces him 
 to a deed which, in a , national and political sense, is a crime ; 
 but the noble man does it not without a heavy struggle between 
 necessity and honourable motives ; the tempest of soul, the 
 great affections wrestling in his bosom, break forth 'in an 
 earthquake of nobility,' and he withdraws to weep the shame 
 of his enforced choice of stepping on the soil of his country in 
 the ranks of her enemies. Scarcely is he subsequently informed 
 that the unnatural league with the national enemy threatens 
 him with death at the hands of this same French Dauphin, who 
 had bestowed on him such high-sounding words of admiration, 
 than he ' imtreads the steps of damned flight,' and now leaves 
 his irregular course to return to obedience to the king and his 
 country's cause. 
 
 The great vassal is obliged from his mere social position to 
 act from political considerations ; the lower servant of the king, 
 Hubert, appears only in a personal relation to the king. 
 Salisbury endmres a bitter struggle between duty to his country 
 and the impulse of a deeply excited abhorrence resting on 
 moral principles ; Hubert's struggle only lies between habitual 
 service and a half-wakened sense of conscience which never 
 before had been called forth. The unthinking man, true to his 
 feudal oath, instigated to the murder by a spoken hint from 
 his king, and to the blinding of Arthur by a written command, 
 follows the course of habit in blind obedience, tiU the sight of 
 Arthur and his supplications awaken in him his slumbering 
 better, nature. He seeks to approach the dull but not wholly 
 
366 SECOND PEBIOO OF 8HAKESFEAME' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 inaccessiblfe conscience of the king, that he may effect the 
 reseinding of the command or find excuse for his disobedience. 
 He feels not the sharp goad of moral consciousness which at 
 once separated Salisbury, on account of this murder, from his 
 fidelity to the king. He revolts not from the king, as the 
 other did, from the higher impulse of obedience to the divine 
 law ; he preserves himself from a breach with his country, but 
 the stain of the suspicion, for which the revolted vassals threaten 
 him with death, cleaves to him. It is very skilful how after- 
 wards the Count Melun betrays the treacherous designs of the 
 Dauphin against these English vassals, partly on account of his 
 English descent, partly, and this touch Shakespeare added to- 
 the older play, /or love of Hubert. This reflects a respect for 
 the man whom they had too readily condemned, who now be- 
 comes their preserver owing to his nobler nature, in the same 
 measure as before, in the plot against Arthur, which the king, 
 building upon his rough exterior, committed to him, he had 
 become an accessory to his death. 
 
 The gentle Arthur perished in the political struggles in 
 which he was placed ; the manly Salisbury was misled in his 
 political path by the delicacy of his moral feeling ; the rougher 
 , Hubert erred in his higher moral duty from his faithful zeal ; 
 the Bastard Faulconbridge is carried through all these disturb- 
 ances by his upright patriotic spirit, his sound understanding, 
 and an acute moral instinct of not too tender a texture. The 
 poet makes him not only look steadily at the pole-star, which 
 can alone lead in these intricacies of political life, but he has 
 also designed in his character that kind of nature which is best 
 qualified for this unerring steering through a stormy and 
 dangerous sea. Among Shakespeare's humorous characters, the 
 Bastard Faulconbridge is one in which the poet does not 
 separate the spirit of seriousness and mirth as in most of the 
 others, giving to the latter usually the preponderance, but he 
 exhibits them both in a close and well-balanced combination. 
 His.mode of expression throughout, even in the most elevated and 
 most solemn passages, is that of a sceptic, habituated to wit and 
 bitter sarcasm. But placed as he is by fate at the very outset 
 in the busy political world, occupation and work leave him no 
 time to indulge this merry vein, and his deep seriousness in 
 action counterbalances his idle inclination to trifle and to jest. 
 His course through the tragic events, offering so little food to 
 comic humour, is the very reverse to that of King John. The 
 
KING JOHK. 367 
 
 latter begins with power and kingly thoughts and ends in weak- 
 ness, the Bastard bounds light of heart into the wider sphere 
 that opens before him, and advances steadily in seriousness and 
 strength even to a tragic greatness. In his first soliloquy he 
 looks jestingly upon his new dignity; his merriment is changed 
 to bitter irony in the second soliloquy (Act ii. sc. 2) after the 
 sad experience of the French breach of faith with Constance ; 
 in the third soliloquy the gloomy course of events leads him to 
 serious reflection ; and at last, ever increasing in power and 
 personal importance, he wholly assumes the direction of the 
 great concerns of the State, and concludes with the tragic 
 resolve, which Shakespeare, in an antique grandeur of sentiment 
 has imputed to all his faithful servants, to Horatio and to Kent, 
 and here also to Philip, to foUow his deceased king. The 
 metal out of which this character is moulded is of a similar 
 masculine character as in John. The older play furnished the 
 die for the character, Shakespeare fashioned it into a true work 
 of art. Even there he is depicted as a bold madcap, rude and 
 daring ; he is a wild intrepid warrior, whose defiance amounts 
 to proud boasting ; he has a straightforward and hearty sense 
 for nature ; he is coarse-grained in understanding and in morals ; 
 a contrast to crafty, considerate diplomatists, and faithless 
 wranglers, to all custom, and cenventionality ; ' a bastard to the 
 time ' which is regulated by such arts, just as he is a bastard by 
 birth. Shakespeare, in this character also, is occupied with the 
 idea of show and reality, of genuine nature, conventionality, 
 and prejudice. Faulconbridge is in the rare position of being 
 permitted, as it were, to choose between a legitimate birth from 
 an indifferent father, or an illegitimate one from the famous 
 Coeur-de-Lion. This first introduction at once developes his 
 character, which clings rather to substantial honour than to 
 conventional form. He is more proud of a descent, shameful in 
 the eyes of the world, from a great and famous father, than of 
 an honourable legitimate descent from an insignificant father ; 
 he prefers a full-face from the mighty hero, than a ' half-face ' 
 like his brother from lawftd birth. His domestic position bears 
 a resemblance to the historical circumstances of King John. 
 He is the eldest son and heir of his alleged father, but the 
 younger brother charges him with illegitimacy, and thus 
 threatens his inheritance. The Bastard would fain preserve his 
 property and the honour of his mother; he would also fain have 
 so glorious a king for his father. His sound feeUng decides 
 
368 SECOND PEBIOD OF .SHAKESPEABE'S DBAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 in favour of devotion towards so noble a father and an heredi- 
 tary honour which promises to call him to still higher honour ; 
 and he rejects legitimacy of birth, his mother's honour, in- 
 heritance, possession, and interest. He flatters himself that he 
 is, what John also calls himself, ' lord of his presence,' and that 
 he may thank his merits for his success, as John might have 
 done had he continued as noble-minded in his kingly calling as 
 at the outset. The coarse moral of the Bastard, which he 
 utters like a catechism, suits both alike equally : ' What 
 though ? ' he says, 
 
 Something about, a. little from the right, 
 
 In at the window, or else o'er the hateh : 
 Who dares not stir by day must walk by night, ' 
 
 And have is have, however men do catch : 
 Near or far off, well won is still well shot, 
 And I am I, howe'er I was begot. 
 
 It is suitable to this worldly, unamiable, but respect-compelling 
 man, so far removed from ' a subtle morality, but still- more 
 inaccessible to all dishonour, that the poet only makes him 
 occasionally think of being religious, that he imputes an ex- 
 cessive reverence for the church to him as little as to John, 
 that he twice gladly and successfully executes the king's com- 
 mand to lay the clergy under contribution, and to shake their 
 bags ; that he upholds the defiance of his prince towards the 
 Pope, only that his opposition is more contemptuous and is 
 exhibited in a time of misfortune and danger, while John only , 
 venttires upon it in prosperity. If we would personify the 
 English national character, if we would sketch the idea of John 
 Bull according to the then existing condition of the popular 
 civilisation and life, we should say that in the plain, blunt un- 
 pretending Faulconbridge,' in this simple straightforwardness 
 of sound common sense, of hearty ability and natural cheerful- 
 ness and wit, the traits of the national English character are 
 gathered together just as we should expect in a tragedy of this 
 purport, in which this representative of the people is assigned 
 the task of deciding for the popular welfare in those critical 
 political transactions in which the bad are ruined and the good 
 confounded. 
 
 Let us follow in conclusion this genuine son of England on , 
 his way through the rugged intricacies of that policy, into the 
 midst of which he finds himself drawn by his original union 
 with, the king. We meet with him first considering himself in 
 
KING JOHN. 369 
 
 his knightly dignity, in his 'new-made honour' which will 
 never ' fit ' him ; the genuine sons of the age and their manners, 
 which he must now adopt, are as repugnant to him as his 
 feeble brother ; but he means to familiarise himself with this 
 poison, not for the sake of practising to deceive, but to avoid 
 deceit. He then follows the course of the war until John's 
 league witli France, which deprives England of a part of her 
 possessions, and Constance of the help of France. Neutral 
 himself, he utters here the judgment of imerring uprightness 
 against this ' mad composition,' in which John divides his 
 property and France defiles her honour. His soliloquy at the 
 close of the second act (Shakespeare's addition entirely) 
 severely points out the god of this world, that selfish desire of 
 gain which is the cause of all these intricacies ; he himself will 
 ' worship ' him, for he sees that all bow before the idol. But 
 at the time that he gave his land to his brother for unsub- 
 stantial honour, he too well proved that he was not made for 
 this, idol-worship. The old play makes Faulconbridge in this 
 scene in love with Blanche; Shakespeare judiciously omitted 
 this trait, that the Bastard's judgment, which should guide us 
 in all these matters, might not in any way be injured by 
 personal interest ; his derce attack upon Austria, in the spirit 
 of the enemy Constance, is thus the whoUy pure expression of 
 honourable disgust at imnatural alliances, aye, of joy at their 
 interruption, and of design in their dissolution. The time 
 comes when the vassals of John revolt on account of Arthur's 
 death. He stands agitated over the bloody and condemned 
 deed, but he is cautious of conceding the point to the Barons 
 before he receives full explanation. He will not provoke them 
 still more to defection from, their country — a step which he 
 would not even justify if the murder were proved. For this 
 reason he turns upon Hubert all the condemnation of his judg- 
 ment, if he has done the deed ; ' he believes the voice of honour, 
 when Hubert denies it. His fidelity to the king goes too far for 
 him to break it, like Salisbury, for the sake of an unproved 
 accusation ; but never would it have gone to such a point as 
 Hubert's, silently and obediently to receive a command or a hint 
 like that of the murder of Arthur. But the intricacies of the 
 matter are felt by this man, formerly so sure of his path, no 
 less than by the others; he fears to lose his way among the 
 thorns and dangers of this world ; he calls him happy, ' whose 
 cloak and cincture can hold out this tempest;' he sees that. on 
 
 BB 
 
370 SECOND PERIOD OF SSAKESPEABE'S DBAMATIC POETSY. 
 
 no side is honour and blessing to be gained. He shows at once, 
 ,on the next occurrence, how little he, the king's most faithful 
 servant, is the king's flatterer. He does not conceal from him 
 his political blame upon his disgraceful alliance with Eome ; it 
 seems insufferable to the patriot that weapons of offence should 
 be met with good words and compromises, that a , ' cockered 
 silken wanton ' like the Dauphin shoiild ' flesh his spirit in a 
 warlike soil ' ! He recalls the king's old intrepidity and con- 
 fidence, and vicariously assumes these qualities, when he sees 
 them lost in the king. It is not the king but hej who now 
 watchful, ' towers like an eagle over his aiery, to souse annoy- 
 ance that comes near his nest.' He hastens, as much as lies in 
 his power, to destroy the league between his king and the Pope, 
 as he had before interrupted the peace between him and France ; 
 at the same time he calls the rebel nobles to duty and to shame, 
 ' the Neroes, ripping up the womb of their dear mother 
 England.' In the same way his exhortation to them, when 
 they have returned in repentance, is that they should ' push ' 
 destrucljion and perpetual shame out of the weak door of the 
 fainting land. So long as the king's command is not at variance 
 with the divine cominand, he identifies throughout the king 
 with the country. The king's evil star begins to shine when 
 he sins against his country in the French contract of marriage ; 
 he meets with his tragic fall at the instigation of the church, 
 when he was betraying his country to this very church ; and ia 
 the same manner no blessing can rest on Constance's claim to the 
 throne, when she is in league with the enemy of the land. The 
 king's crime against his country thus falls upon his own head ; 
 but the king's crime, such is Faulconbridge's opinion, is not to 
 be expiated by his country. He, therefore, holds to him 
 through-thick and thin ; ' something about, a little from the right, 
 are the same to him ; the preservation and strength of the land 
 is more to him than the lawful right to the crown, which he 
 sees in Arthur ; many thousand cares he sees at hand in the 
 vast confusion, but the greatest to him is that heaven itself 
 frowns upon the land. In this position he acts according to 
 that maxim of Bacon : ' Grod takes care of the world, take thou 
 care of thy country.' For its safety he stretches every nerve, 
 and most of all when he sees the king most fallen. The feeling 
 for his country binds him to the king, when the sense of law 
 and morality loosens Salisbury from him ; each of them knows 
 that he is only halfway on the right path ; the Bastard exe- 
 
KING JOHN. 371 
 
 crates the murder and curses the subjection to Eome, Salisbury 
 weeps manly tears over the necessity for a state crime, by which 
 he would save his country. The moral finer-feeling man 
 commits the greater political error, the greater politician takes 
 the side less mdrally pure, but in perfect firmness of conviction 
 that in such conflicts the country and its independence and 
 preservation is the only way-mark to foUow, and that for 
 patriots the foundation of aU virtue is persistent steadfastness, 
 which in the service of the fatherland can invest even moral 
 transgression with nobility. He perceived selfishness, interest, 
 and advantage to be the star which governs the political 
 world ; if it be so, then as a last resort the advantage of the 
 country should be that before which aU others are to be silent. 
 In the opinion of the poet, therefore, as well as of Faulconbridge, 
 no foreign policy and no hostile sword should heal domestic 
 wounds. Hearty unity with a natural enemy is of no value to 
 him, and the national discontent at the league with foreign 
 propaganda, though it may be formed even against tyranny and 
 arbitrariness at home, is to him a sight full of ignominy and 
 dishonour. A lesson grandly inculcated upon us Grermansj who 
 will have no state, nor politics, nor common nationality, nor 
 public welfare, until we understand how to apply to ourselves, 
 the conclusion of this play, which is at the same time the soul 
 ofit:- 
 
 This England never did, nor never shall, 
 
 Lie at tlie proud foot of a conqueror, 
 
 But when it first did help to wound itself. ^ 
 
 Now these her princes are come home again, 
 
 Come the three comers of the world in arms. 
 
 And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue, , 
 
 If England to itself do rest but true. 
 
 B B 2 
 
TIL COMEDIES. 
 
 The four comedies in which Shakespeare rises to a higher 
 degree of refinement and elegance than in his earlier ones — ^in 
 which his wit and mirth sparkle most brightly, and in which 
 the fewest serious scenes occur to disturb the comic key-note — 
 lie between the second and third periods of his poetry. The 
 Merry Wives of Windsor was written, according to the epilogue 
 to Henry IV., after that piece (1598), and before 1602, when it 
 first appeared in print. As You Like It is not mentioned in 
 the Meres' list of Shakespeare's plays in 1598 ; it must there- 
 fore fall between this year and 1600, when it is named in a 
 notice of the Booksellers' Eegister of August 4. Much Ado 
 About Nothing is noticed at the same time in the records of the 
 Booksellers' Company, and What You Will, according to the 
 concurrent opinion of almost all editors, likewise bekngs to the 
 year 1600 or 1601. Following closely upon this merry group. 
 Measure for Measure — written somewhat later, about 1603 — 
 has indeed the' air of a more serious drama, and thus may 
 afford us an easy transition to the tragedies of the third period. 
 In the four comedies prose decidedly predominates, more so 
 than in other plays of our poet, which, from the date of their 
 origin, lie remote from this group. This prose diction, so masterly 
 in Shakespeare's pen, adds extraordinarily to the freedom of 
 the dialogue and to the versatility of the wit. 
 
 At the termination of this series of the Shakesperian 
 comedies with the last-named drama. Measure for Measure 
 (which more than any other play of the poet combines the 
 nature of comedy and tragedy), we feel ourselves involuntarily 
 called upon to cast a glance of inquiry upon the various dra- 
 matic styles ; to see how they were formed, under Shakespeare's 
 hands, and whether, with respect to their distinction, a law may 
 be deduced from his own practice, and if so, what this law 
 may be. The result of this consideration is an aesthetic theory 
 
COMEDIES. 373 
 
 as full of simplicity as of profound thought ; and this at the 
 same time introduces us to the ethical theory, that is, to the poet's 
 view as to the moral nature of man. Both theories are so extra- 
 ordinarily plain — the practical part of art and life is so much at 
 the root of both — that we must confess they rest, if not exclusively, 
 yet far more on pure intention and healthful instinct than on 
 abstract reflection. Man's sense of his value and vocation was 
 considered by Shakespeare as the true ground and soil in which 
 all human virtues and crimes have their root. Wherever it 
 exhibits itself in pure, noble self-reliance, as in Henry Mon- 
 mouth, Portia, or in Leonatus Posthumus in Cymbeline — who 
 through trials and waverings attain that beautiful medium 
 between over-strained and enervated feeling, between freedom 
 and coercion, between natural imrestraint and weakness of will, 
 and between jest and earnest — there Shakespeare sees the cha- 
 racter and nature of man at its height ; characters of this 
 kind he represents in an even serious tone, in those dramas 
 which we call Schauspiele, dramas which have the serious turn 
 of the tragedy and the cheerful conclusion of the comedy. 
 When this self-reliance rises into egotism, ambition, and love 
 of fame — into those powerful passions which exceed all bounds 
 and come to an unhappy end, for its poetic representation — 
 tragedy appears, in which the poet, with wisely balanced 
 admiration and caution, points out to us the greatness and 
 the danger of this overweening nature. When, on the other 
 hand, man's self-reliance sinks into self-love, vanity, and conceit 
 — when the passions shrink into littleness, and the trivialness of 
 the aims are at variance^with the importance of the effort — then 
 comedy makes its appearance, as the style that nature herself 
 indicates ; a style in which the poet strikes with unimpeachable 
 justice at the littlenesses and ridiculousnesses of this contracted 
 humanity, at its caprices, faults, and weaknesses; and this 
 he does with a good-nature, gentleness, and forbearance, which 
 testify to his sparing consideration of the frailty of human 
 nature, and which do the more honour to the poet the more 
 severe throughout is his view of the moral duty of man. 
 
 It is not difficult to trace back Shakespeare's truly tragic 
 characters and their motives for action almost everywhere to 
 the one fondamental principle of egotism, and the comic" ones 
 to that of self-love ; the varieties and shades of these qualities 
 form the diversity in this general harmony. With regard to 
 comedy, with which we shall next concern ourselves, we have 
 
374 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 already had occasion to see, and we shall find it throughout 
 occupied with exposing self-love, its self-deceptions and its 
 attempts to deceive others, with unveiling the discrepancy 
 between real and feigned character, with unmasking vanity in 
 fancied gifts, and conceit of vain ones. Setting aside the plays 
 of the first period, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the promi- 
 nent self-love of Proteus is the central point of action. In 
 Love's Labour's Lost, self-love is manifested in the seK-pleasing 
 vain desire of fame shown by the Navarrese lords and their 
 caricatured associates. In All's Well that End's Well, the 
 deeper trait of proud self-sufficiency in Bertram at once in- 
 terferes with the comic character. In the Merry Wives of 
 Windsor, we shall see that the harmless side of Falstaffs 
 egotism, his conceit of his person, is the ground of the laughable 
 occurrences. Finer and more complicated is the nature of the 
 three purer comedies which next lie before us for consideration. 
 In As You Like It, the comedy only glances reprovingly upon 
 the maidenly pride of Phoebe and the self-love which suffers 
 shipwreck in the surfeited Jaques ; the character of the prin- 
 cipal persons is exactly opposed to all self-love ; the little merry 
 plot, therefore, is unfolded only with a pleasant humour, which 
 claims for the play rather the name of a pastoral than of a 
 comedy. In Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio's sensitiveness 
 upon honour is based upon self-love, and by this his changeable 
 humour is nurtured ; it produces in Benedick and Beatrice 
 that contempt of the other sex, and that fickle abandonment 
 of their own principle, which is the fruit of this exaggerated 
 pride. In Twelfth Night above all, we shall perceive most 
 clearly how in the most difierent degrees, in its coarsest and 
 finest features, self-love forms the soul of the prominent cha- 
 racters, and how deeply it is interwoven with the main idea of 
 the piece. For throughout (this is apparent from the hints 
 we have already given respecting the last-mentioned plays, as 
 it was to us from former analyses) this distinguishing feature 
 of the real comic characters in Shakespeare's comedies is 
 interwoven with a special ethical situation, varied and fashioned 
 according to the idea which, in spite of the most intentional 
 removal of all didactic reflections, penetrates and connects the 
 comedies of the poet just as much as the tragedies. 
 
 It might be considered unnatural that in the free action of 
 his comedies Shakespeare should throughout have worked in 
 accordance with such a leading idea fixed beforehand. But 
 
COMEDIES. 375 
 
 whenever we speak of the leading ideas of Shakespeare's plays, 
 we never mean that the poet in any of his works has embodied 
 an abstract idea, over which with systematic calculation and 
 deliberation he has thrown a poetic form. The poet had gone 
 through great inward experiences, concerning which he had 
 taken counsel with himself; he had read narratives in poems, 
 plays, and romances, or he had observed, in the history of the 
 past and present, events and circumstances which spoke to him 
 and were full of life for him, because he possessed in himself, in 
 his nature, or in his life, some corresponding circumstance 
 which explained them to him ; impressions of this kind either 
 received or experienced, and rendered the more active by both 
 these modes of conception, were seized by him for his dramas, 
 and were rounded into an artistic form. And in this task, it 
 must be admitted, he possessed in a wonderfully happy 
 combination the gift of making every part of his poem bear 
 reference to one principal aspect of the given subject, and of 
 forming every character into a distinct relation to it, without 
 however allowing the regTdating hand in the machinery of his 
 works to be more seen than was consistent with the poe<;ic 
 illusion. This principal aspect is never of an abstract 
 philosophical nature, but always rather of a moral, psychological 
 one. No narrative or fiction, adapted for dramatic handling, 
 could be brought before the luminous mind of the poet without 
 his discovering in the circumstances and beings out of which 
 the action arose certain conditions, the supposition of which 
 could alone render such an action possible or probable. To 
 comprehend these conditions, to trace them if possible to one 
 main condition, to a given disposition or formation of character 
 in the actors, and at the same time to remove as much as 
 possible all accident, is essential to our perception of that 
 spiritual unity of Shakespeare's plays, which we endeavour to 
 point out, and which, however, nowhere in the least detracts 
 from their lively diversity or their plastic and artistic repre- 
 sentation. We shall show that Shakespeare, in some of the 
 sources for his comedies, met with such glaring moralisation, 
 that, as his own Touchstone said, he must have ' broken his 
 shins ' against it ; in these cases he omitted the moral lecture, 
 but he adhered closely to the moral idea, and more closely than 
 his sources he formed his characters according to the one 
 fundamental feature of the nature which could alone produce 
 these or those actions in these or those beings. He who in 
 
376 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 this way, with a sense of truth and with a knowledge of human 
 
 nature, understands how to search for the substance of any 
 
 given action or story, will necessarily always perceive a moral, 
 
 psychological kernel, such as we find in all the Shakespearian 
 
 works. His contemporaries- comprehended this well with the 
 
 mind, but not with the h^art ; they did not understand how to 
 
 make a right use of a right rule. Nevertheless, the aesthetic 
 
 nature of the time knew no otherwise than that the aim of 
 
 every drama, and even of every comedy, was to join some 
 
 moral contemplation to the pastime and amusement by which 
 
 the weary minds of the spectators were to be refreshed, and the 
 
 anxious and heavy-hearted would be relieved. Thomas Hey- 
 
 wood was even of opinion that the introduction of lovers and 
 
 fools into comedies was intended to ridicule foolish love and to 
 
 cure the simplicity and perversity of men. In this dry manner 
 
 Shakespeare's plays never and nowhere moralise. They evolve 
 
 a given action, around this they group beings of such a nature 
 
 as may be necessary to this action, they give to these acting 
 
 characters motives which are the qualifications for such an 
 
 action ; and only by the estimation and appreciation of these 
 
 motives is the moral spirit of the poet himself to be perceived. 
 
 A closer consideration of our comedies will explain these 
 
 statements to us by the most delicate exemplifications. 
 
THE MEEEY WIVES OF WINDSOE. 
 
 "We place foremost in our group the Merry Wives of Windsor, 
 although it is scarcely the earliest in the series, because the 
 play is connected -with the Lancastrian tetralogy. Halliwell, 
 indeed, when he had the oldest edition of the Merry Wives (the 
 4to. of 1602) printed in the writings of the Shakespeare Society, 
 endeavoured to place the origin of Henry IV., and therefore 
 also that of this comedy, in the years 1592 or 1593, because in 
 the first of these years a German Duke was in Windsor, to 
 whom free post-horses were promised through a pass of Lord 
 Howard's — an event to which allusion might appear to be made 
 in Act IV. sc. 3 of our play, Nevertheless, this incident may 
 have passed before Shakespeare's mind from some earlier 
 i^emembrance ; it may even have been utterly unknown to him, 
 and the apparent allusion may be mere chance.. All internal 
 reasons are against the supposition that the Merry Wives 
 originated earlier than the close of the Lancastrian histories 
 (1599). The form in which we read the piece at the present 
 day, according to the text of the folio edition of 1623, was ap- 
 parently not borne by it in its first and more imperfect design, 
 which seems preserved in the first quarto edition. Many in- 
 accuracies in the text of this sketch indisputably fall to the 
 charge of the illegal edition, but the carelessness of its com- 
 position seems rather occasioned by a hasty preparation of the 
 play, with regard to the origin of which we only possess infor- 
 mation of a later date. 
 
 In the year 1702 the Merry Wives of Windsor, which was 
 much liked in Charles II.'s time, was remodelled by John 
 Dennis into a piece entitled 'the Comical Gallant.' In his 
 dedication he says that Shakespeare's play was written at the 
 desire of Queen Elizabeth, and in the short time indeed of 
 fourteen days. Eowe added to this tradition the circumstance 
 that her desire had been to see Falstafif in love. This tradition 
 
378 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 has in it sometaing so credible that even the severest of the 
 English critics do not venture to disregard it. It may be 
 alleged in favour of its correctness that among all the plays of 
 Shakespeare's riper period this is by far the least important. 
 It is designed without any deeper background, without any 
 merit of idea, without pathetic elevation, and without serious 
 passages ; it is almost entirely written in prose ; it ' is the only 
 piece of the poet's in which the plot decidedly outweighs the 
 characterisation, the only one which moves in the stratum of 
 plain, common, and homely society. It may be alleged against 
 the tradition that the piece appears to be written with the 
 stated object of being a counterpart to Henry V., and in evident 
 continuation of the contrast in the moral development of 
 Falstaff and Henry, which the poet had already begun in the 
 second part of Henry IV. This is the view in which we would 
 exclusively discuss this comedy which, in other respects, however 
 well suited to the stage and full of comic power it may be, offers 
 but little matter for our mode of examination. If the task were 
 really imposed by the queen upon Shakespeare, the play only 
 evidences anew how fruitful he was in expedients, how little 
 satisfied he was with such a superficial theme, and how capable 
 he was of giving it a deeper moral bearing and of linking it most 
 closely with his independent works and with the ethical idea 
 which had actuated him in them. 
 
 If the Merry Wives of Windsor stands in close relation to 
 the plays in which Falstaff appeared, it is necessary first of 
 all to establish the position occupied by this comedy, not 
 exactly in the series of the other pieces, but in the order of their 
 contents. Halliwell thinks it probable that the incidents it 
 contains took place after Falstaff's banishment from Court. To 
 this a passage in the older edition is opposed, in which Falstaff 
 exclaims, under Heme's, oak, 'I wager, the wild Prince of 
 Wales steals his father's deer.' But even in the last revised 
 edition Master Brook speaks most plainly to Falstaff of his 
 great connections and of his consideration both as to rank 
 and person ; and Falstaff himself says, that if his transformation 
 into the fat witch Grillian of Brentford (a well-known cha- 
 racter in the literature of the sixteenth century) should ' come 
 to the ear of the Court, they would melt him out of his fat and 
 liquor fishermen's boots with him,' that they ' would whip him 
 with their fine wits, till he were as crestfallen as a dried pear.' 
 The connection with the prince must, therefore, be considered 
 
^ IIIEjMERBY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 379 
 
 as still existing ; though Falstaff is separated from him as in the 
 second part of Henry IV. If we assume that 'the period of 
 our comedy is placed immediately before the death of Henry IV., 
 and carries on the scenes between FalstalBf and Shallow only in 
 another place and under new circumstances, the difficulties are 
 all solved as soon as we shall have removed the doubts respecting 
 certain characters. Whether Falstaffs page is the same as the 
 one who in Henry IV. is about him, and who in Henry V. 
 belongs to Pistol and Nym, is uncertain ; it is best left so ; the 
 poet would naturally not imnecessarily multiply the express 
 relations of this comedy to the utterly different historical plays, 
 nor presuppose an acquaintance with the characters. That 
 Shakespeare gave the name Quickly to Dr. Cains' servant, as 
 well as to the Hostess in Henry IV., is strange ; that he intended 
 another character in her is clear. Not only are her outward 
 circumstances quite different, not only is she at first quite 
 unknown to Falstaff, but her character also is essentially 
 diverse; similar in natural simplicity, it is true, but at the 
 same time docile and skilful, as the silly deceived wife and 
 widow in Eastcheap never appears. All relating to Falstaff 
 himself is evident. The campaign in the north is over ; 
 Falstaff drags on his existence with difficulty at ten pounds a 
 week ; Pistol and Nym are off duty and are coniplete thieves ; 
 Falstaff discards them and hands over the ' withered serving man ' 
 Bardolph, with whom he had lived so long, to be tapster to the 
 Host of the Garter. The outward dissolution of the merry 
 company round Prince Henry took place in the second part of 
 Henry IV. ; here we meet with a further and very significant 
 symptom that it is dissolved also inwardly, and that not merely 
 with the prince. In the young Fenton we become acquainted 
 vdth a new though former companion of both the prince and 
 Poins ; he wooes the rich Anne Page for money, but he soon 
 discovers ianer treasures in her which quite transform him ; he 
 is the, counterpart in private life to the metamorphosis of the 
 prince himself. 
 
 From this observation we proceed at once to the central 
 point and main character of our piece. We have seen in the 
 second part of Henry IV. how strictly and decidedly Shake- 
 speare separated the prince and Falstaff outwardly, and led 
 them inwardly by difierent paths. He intended again to bring 
 forward Falstaff in Henry V., but, as we heard before, he 
 changed his mind. He made the prince in Henry V. accom- 
 
380 SECOND PESIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 plish for himself his royal campaign and his noble conquest of 
 love, and then to this heroic play he placed in opposition one of 
 a simple homely character, in which Falstaff follows out his old 
 purse-stealing habits in a new form of wooing. He saw him- 
 self, however, obliged to place this adventure of Falstaffs 
 previous to Henry's accession to the throne and FalstafFs 
 disgrace, because he must have felt that after this glaring fall, 
 in all the incorrigibleness and decrepitude of his paralytic age, 
 Falstaff must necessarily have been ruined mentally and physi- 
 cally. But he exhibited him as separated from the "prince, re- 
 moved from the ennobling presence of that witty society, wholly 
 abandoned to himself, and sinking to a greater degree than 
 Henry rose ; at last even, hardly conceivable as it may appear, 
 utterly fallen in his own estimation. If it is possible to poiat 
 out this ever increasing decline in Falstaff just as plainly as the 
 growing greatness of Henry, there can be no doubt that this 
 piece was written as a counterpart to Henry V., whether any 
 inducement on the part of the queen may have been furnished 
 or not. 
 
 Henry as prince and king, with the most splendid objects 
 for his ambition before Hm, performed the highest actions df 
 renunciation and self-privation which human power can win 
 from the soul, and his finest deeds and the glory of them he 
 cast from himself upon others, upon visible mortals or invisible 
 powers. Falstaff we have seen throughout • turning to the 
 lowest objects of covetousness and concupiscence. His mental 
 power was subordinate to his physical impulses and necessities, 
 every passion was in their service ; in our present play even 
 that of love, which in all instances is enlivened by some 
 spiritual spark, but by him is only feigned and pretended for a 
 material purpose. His perfect selfishness referred the whole 
 world and all creatures in it to himself alone, and to the 
 advantage he could draw from them ; it appropriated every- 
 thing to itself, according to his theory of the natural right of 
 animals, without a sense of the rights and possessions of others ; 
 it endeavoured to place the basest qualities in a good light, and 
 to stamp cow9,rdice as heroic courage. This egotism had its 
 serious ahd harmful side, which exhibited Falstaff as the enemy 
 and destroyer of society ; it had also its laughable side, which 
 placed him in the first rank of what they call good companions. 
 Both sides of this self-love, the harmful and the ridiculous, we 
 find united in om- present play in those wooings and in that 
 
THE MEBSY WIVES OF WINDSOB. 381 
 
 kind of love of which alone he was susceptible. He falls in 
 with two homely simple citizens' wives in Windsor, They 
 afford him a free kind of conversation and a merry humour ; 
 this is sufficient for him to look upon them as of the same 
 metal as the women of his former intercourse. He wooes them 
 in disbelief of their morality, and, when he appears to succeed, 
 he believes in his own attractiveness. He aims not at love ; he 
 thinks only on artifices for improving his condition. Both the 
 wives keep the keys of the rich gold-coffers of their husbands ; 
 only for this reason does he admire women thus far from 
 young, one of whom has already a marriageable daughter ; he 
 intends to make them his ' East and "West Indies, and to trade 
 to them both.' He believes not in honesty ; he looks down 
 contemptuously with his knightly pride on the burgher 
 husbands ; they are dace of another kind, which the pike en- 
 deavours to snap at in a new manner. It is even too dishonour- 
 able for Pistol and Nym to play the pander for so ridiculous a 
 wooer ; they had before been always subject to Falstaff's honour 
 and conscience, but now he is more coarse in feeling than they, 
 and only when these ' baboons ' and rogues venture to rebuke 
 him with their oiWTi. reputation are his feelings roused. It is 
 ' as much as he can do,' he says to Pistol, ' to keep the terms of 
 his honour precise.' He himself sometimes, ' hiding his honour 
 in his necessity, is fain to shuffle and to lurch,' and yet Pistol 
 wiU ' ensconce his rags ' and coarseness under the shelter of his 
 honour against him. We must now observe how he keeps the 
 terms of his honour precise in the transaction which he is con- 
 triving. He so far cleverly begins it, that he comes forward to 
 the honest burghers' wives at least in an honest tone ; he is not 
 inclined for fulsome flattery ; he conceals this behind a masculine 
 nature which does not admit of it. But at the same time he is 
 so careless in his gentlemanliness, that he sends the same letter 
 to both the women. The success which it meets with trans- 
 ports him, but it also deprives him of his senses ; his sudden 
 self-complacency makes him quite blind. After his vanity has 
 led him to the monstrous idea of considering himself an object 
 of love, nothing is impossible to him. He accepts all the gross 
 flatteries of Master Brook as pure coin ; he does not suffer him- 
 self to become suspicious by the strangest commission; he 
 thinks the woman in love with him, though he hears that she is 
 inflexibly honourable towards an ordinary well-grown man. 
 Vanity and pride make him imprudently candid to this stranger^ 
 
382 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 who, it is true, pays him. He has retained his well-known 
 shamelessness which belongs to this candour, but at the same 
 time his judgment forsakes him. Twice he allows himself in 
 the grossest manner to be cheated, bathed, and beaten, without 
 being in the least more heedful of a third trap laid for him ; 
 although he said, after the first trick, that if they served him 
 such another, he would have his 'brains taken out and buttered 
 and given to a dog.' The wanton women have conspired against 
 him, his despised servants also, and his page is bribed ; though 
 many unequal powers are in arms against him, he surrenders 
 himself to the very weakest, when he has once stumbled over 
 his self-love. Confusion, blows, vapour-baths, and cold baths, 
 loss of money, pinches and bxirnings, the horns which he had 
 designed for others — all return upon his own head ; the con- 
 sciousness of his guilt, the sudden fascination of his judgment, 
 drive him at the last adventure to believe in and to fear even 
 fairies ; he mistakes even the voice of the parson Evans, and 
 thinks him a Welsh fairy ! When all is at length unriddled to 
 him, the man who never could attain to a knowledge of himself 
 is ashamed even to self-contempts When he is thus degraded 
 before himself tod in his own judgment, Shakespeare might 
 have hoped to direct the judgment of his spectators with res- 
 pect to this character more in accordance with his own view. 
 But morally this would have been impossible. On this point 
 he had long ago so sunk that he would not have been perplexed 
 even by the perception that it was just honesty and integrity 
 which had outwitted him. That they all at length assail him, 
 and with the most shocking expressions call him intolerable, 
 old, cold, slanderous, wicked, and given to fornication, aU this 
 might not have made him think worse of himself. But on the 
 side of his wit, an impression could still be made upon him. 
 This was the gift by which he felt himself superior to block- 
 heads and equal with the clever. On this very point, which 
 corrupted our own judgment, our judgment was to be rectified ; 
 and while the poet lowered him in our estimation in this last 
 recommendatory point, he gave us the surest token that he 
 wished to remove him entirely from our esteem. And thus is it 
 with Falstaff in this play. All become thoroughly weary of 
 him, and when he has lost his last attraction they cast him 
 away. He had thought neither caution, nor wit necessary to 
 meet the burghers' honesty and ignorance, and he is bam- 
 boozled by both. He is obliged to acknowledge himself that 
 
THE MESSY WIVES OF WUWSOS. 383 
 
 ' wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when 'tis upon ill employ- 
 ment; ' the crafty wit is made ' an ox and an ass,' the robher is 
 fleeced. It grieves him that ignorance itself is ' a plummet ' 
 over him. It grieves him still more that such a simple school- 
 master as the Welshman Evans, who is as ignorant as his 
 childish scholars, should make a fool of him. He finds that his 
 star has forsaken him ; ' this is enough to be the decay of lust 
 and late-U}alJdng through the realm ! ' Thus degraded before 
 himself, he seems so now not only to his companions, but to the 
 reader and the spectator also. The poet has thus gained his 
 end. HazUtt, the great admirer of this character, now per- 
 ceives in Falstaff nothing more than a shameless and moreover 
 unsuccessful intriguer, whom wit and words have forsaken ; he 
 is, he says, no longer the same man. But we have pointed out 
 the same motives in this as in the former Falstaff ; the former 
 was rather never the man which Hazlitt took him to be. 
 
 ' It was unquestionably Shakespeare's , intention to repeat 
 here the moral lesson which he had placed in the second part of 
 Henry IV. and in Henry V. He had probably observed effects 
 , of his Henry IV. on the stage which did not please him ; he 
 therefore set forth in Henry V. the glaring example of punish- 
 ment in Bardolph and Nym, and here he degrades the fat Falstaflf 
 in the highest point of his distinction, that is, in his wit. 
 Possibly enough, Shakespeare himself saw, in actual life, effects 
 produced by this play which startled him and made him speak 
 thus forcibly. For we are well aware that the scenes which he 
 depicted in Henry IV. were in his time not foreign to reality ; 
 and that undet Elizabeth's rule brawlers were the order of the 
 • day, who staked their honour in fighting and quarrelling ; lads 
 who styled themselves, like Poins, proper fellows of their hands, 
 when, in Bardolph's technical expression, they ' cozened ' on the 
 highway vagabonds who lived on the industry of others, who 
 turned night into day, sought good company in drinking and 
 playing, and bravery in daring and swearing. There appeared 
 in consequence on the stage numbers of those plays of the later 
 school, which entirely consisted of intrigues, bantering, cheating, 
 and jokes of a rude and repulsive nature, the subjects for which 
 moved in the stratiun of English burgher life, and represented 
 a very loose morality. It was probably in opposition to these 
 that Shakespeare emphasized so strongly the moral tendency of 
 this play, as far as was practicable with retaining the merry 
 pleasantry of the comedy. The honest citizens' wives in 
 
384 SECOND FEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Windsor are quite beside themselves at the impudent and 
 shameless wooing of the bulky courtier ; they are incensed at 
 the bad opinion which he has of honourable matrons; they 
 almost begin to doubt whether in their honesty they may not 
 have made a mistake. Their mutual thought is to revenge 
 themselves on him ; they would teach him to know ' turtles 
 from jays ; ' yet they have also a scruple as to playing any 
 trick which comes too near their honour. Great emphasis is 
 laid throughout on honest knavery, in contrast to Falstaff's 
 knavery. A wife, say the two women, may be merry and . yet 
 honest too ; even at the _ end of the seventeenth century there 
 was a song which Halliwell quotes, in which, alluding to the 
 moral of this play, the verse ' wives may be merry and yet 
 honest too,' returns as a refrain. That the tricks played upon 
 Falstafif were not only ' admirable pleasures ' but ' honest 
 . knaveries ' can alone move the plain, true, timid, and pious 
 pastor to take pleasure in them. This simple but honest 
 knavery celebrates its victory throughout over cunning and 
 presumption. The crafty self-loving dig the pit and fall into it 
 themselves ; it is dug too strangely wide even for the simple, 
 because self-conceited cunning estimates too lightly its opponent 
 honesty. These words may be regarded as the soul of the play. 
 It is a reflection to be drawn from no other of Shakespeare's 
 dramas, but only from this play of intrigue. AU the underplot 
 of the piece relates to this point and to this lesson. The 
 cunning host — a boaster full of mockery and tricks, who con- 
 siders himself a great politician and Machiavellian — teases the 
 wavering, fencing Dr. Caius and the pedantic Welshman Evans ; 
 the same vexation befalls him as Falstaff, that the simple men, 
 who cannot even speak English, combine against him, and 
 cheat the crafty man about his horses. The jealous Ford gives 
 away money and name, and places the honour, of his house at 
 stake, only to learn more certainly the supposed treachery of 
 his wife ; the eavesdropper hears not of his innocent better 
 half, but of his own shame,' and suffers torments himself in. 
 return for those which he would have prepared for the envied 
 unsuspecting Page and his innocent wife. In Page's house 
 again other tricks are devised. Husband and wife conspire 
 a.gainst each other and against the happiness of their innocent 
 
 ' The sources for the farce hetween Falstaff and Brook are to be found 
 in Giovanni Fiorentino's ' Art of Loving,' and in Straparola's * Ring.' 
 
THE MEEBY WIVES OF WINDSOB. 385 
 
 daughter, to whom the one wishes to give an awkward simpleton 
 for a husband, and the other an odd fellow ; mutually they fall 
 into the snares laid for them, and Fenton brings home the bride 
 who has committed a ' holy offence,' since marriages are settled 
 in Heaven, and wives are not, like land, to be purchased by 
 money. Alike in all these corresponding affairs does business 
 seek to ensnare honesty— cunning, simplicity — jealousy, inno- 
 cence — and avarice, the inoffensive nature; and their evil 
 design reverts upon themselves. Unclouded honest sense is 
 always superior to base passion. And this moral, which links 
 ' together these four intrigues, will be found, if we consider the 
 piece from an ethical point of view (for the sake of its principal 
 character and its development), to have a special reference to 
 Falstaff's position and character. The selfishness which we ex- 
 hibited as the soul of Falstaff's nature appears at its highest 
 climax when, opposed to the virtue and simplicity which are its 
 usual prey, in its vain security it considers the more subtle 
 means of ensnaring as no longer necessary, and is thus en- 
 snared in a gross trap. An egotist like Falstaff can suffer no 
 severer defeat than from the honesty in which he does not 
 believe, and from the ignorance which he does not esteem. 
 The more ridiculous side of self-love is, therefore, in this play 
 subjected to a ridiculous tragic-comic fall, which, as regards 
 time and the development of the plot, precedes the serious 
 comic-tragic fall which meets Falstaff on the accession of the 
 king, when the serious and . mischievous side of his self-love 
 was just on the point of a dangerous triumph. 
 
 c c 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 The pastoral comedy, As You Like It, has always extraordi- 
 narily pleased all G-erman interpreters ; it is only a pity that 
 their interpretations have not had a similar fate. Tieck, who 
 called it Shakespeare's most playful comedy, maintained that 
 the poet had in this play trifled most capriciously with time 
 and place ; that in the catastrophe and comhination of the 
 whole he had ridiculed and frivolously avoided rules which he 
 had usually observed ; and that he had even , sacrificed, as if 
 in parody of himself, aU truth of motive and the fundamental 
 basis of composition, in order that he might write a truly free 
 and merry comedy. According to this view, it would seem 
 that Tieck considered the qualification of a ' true ' comedy to 
 lie in playfulness, in irregularity, and in capriciousness as to 
 composition and ground of action. Ulrici took up the same 
 idea, and carried it out with respect to the impulses both of 
 characters and actions ! In the whole play, he says, each acts 
 or not as he pleases ; every character, according to its humour, 
 indulges its inclinations to good and evil, as the idea suggests 
 itself. The incidents are not so much outward and objective 
 as inward and subjective, the humour and caprice of persons in 
 their influence one upon another is the basis of the whole 
 action, and the cause, at the same time, of the fantastical 
 character of the piece. But, in truth, this capriciousness and 
 neglect of rules on the part of the poet or his characters is not 
 to be found in the play at all. From the characters of 
 Frederick, Oliver, and the rest, the dethronement of the 
 banished Duke cannot be called whimsically capricious, as is 
 here maintained ; nor can the pursuit of Orlando be considered 
 groundless, nor his design to wrestle with Charles accidental ; 
 nor can the intricacies and solution of the whole plot be 
 regarded as fantastical. What further rules have been frivo- 
 lously avoided or disregarded by the poet is a question that 
 
A8 YOU LIKE IT. 387 
 
 has teen already asked with wonder and surprise by Delius, 
 without "the possibility of a reply. And that time and place 
 are here more capriciously shifted than in other plays, in which 
 Shakespeare allowed access to the marvellous, is so little the 
 case, that, on the contrary, among all dramas of this kind, this 
 play evidently makes the most timid use of the fanciful. 
 
 The probable cause of these views and observations with 
 regard to the comedy under consideration is limited to the 
 following circumstances. We may consider this piece as 
 probably intended for a masque, a style of drama in which 
 the poet, whether by the introduction of wonderful machinery 
 or by the display of all kinds of pageantry, permitted himself 
 somewhat more license than elsewhere, but in no wise a license 
 which interfered with the truth of his grounds for action or the 
 just unravelling of his plot. Thus we are here transported to 
 a romantic Arcadia, into which the forest of Arden is meta- 
 morphosed. Shakespeare met with this in the tale which 
 furnished him with the material for his play; lions were 
 brought irom thence to France, and our poet added serpents 
 and palm-trees. If with respect to the locality a slightly 
 fanciful feature is thus introduced, this- is also the case with 
 respect to the characters of the play in Eosalind's pretence 
 (and this Shakespeare likewise found in the som'ce from which 
 he drew) of having learned witchcraft from an uncle. But 
 this feature, also, borders so closely on the limits of ordinary 
 reality that it might be completely effaced by clever manage- 
 ment in the performance. There is nothing to prevent the play 
 from being thus understood ; that Orlando, at the suggestion of 
 Oliver, recognised the beautiful Ganymede after his swoon, and 
 only let him carry on his play that he might not mar his 
 •mirth; the subtleness of the play wiU be extraordinarily 
 increased if this is really exhibited in the performance. In 
 this manner, the comedy only borders on the limits of the 
 fantastical. And the justification of this lies in the style 
 itself, whether it be that the poet composed the work as a 
 masque, or as a pastoral drama, or as a play uniting the two 
 styles. Shakespeare borrowed the whole plan of the piece from 
 a pastoral romance by Thomas Lodge ('Kosalynde; Euphues 
 Grolden Legacy,' 1590, and later), and he evidently wished to 
 form from it a pastoral play. In this- species of poem the 
 fanciful and ideal lay rather in the general colouring than in 
 single lines. The operatic style was peculiar to plays of this 
 
 c c 2 
 
388 SECOND PEBWD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DEAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 kind ; many songs are therefore introduced, which in the 
 performance very essentially contribute to produce the frame 
 of mind in which this comedy should be received. A play like 
 that which Eosalind makes Hymen perform belongs to the 
 characteristic style either of the pastoral or the masque. The 
 truly pastoral scene between Silvius and Phoebe is called a 
 pageant. Eightly performed, it would stand out in the general 
 description of rural and forest life in our drama as a play 
 within the play, composed in a still more idealistic style than 
 the real pastoral piece ; acted by the best players, in all 
 unadorned simplicity of representation, it ought to be invested 
 with such an pdour of refinement as to show these children of 
 nature withdrawn from the rude and agitated world and raised 
 above, it. All these peculiarities belonging to this species of 
 poem place this play certainly somewhat out of the sphere of 
 ordinary dramas ; but we shall find the composition in its own 
 way so profound that here again we shall perceive a confirma- 
 tion of the fact that Shakespeare involuntarily improved and 
 elevated every new material and style which he touched with 
 his hand. It is true that in other more realistic plays of 
 Shakespeare it does not occur that scenes, as here is twice the 
 case (Act IV. sc. 2, and Act v. sc. 3), are inserted merely as 
 stop-gaps without affecting the action ; but this is characteristic 
 of idle rural life, where nothing of more importance happens 
 than a slaughtered deer and a song about it. It is true that 
 here, more than in Shakespeare's other plays, there are small 
 subordinate parts which signify little or nothing ; but even in 
 this respect more license is necessarily allowed to comedy than 
 to tragedy. It is true that the characters are only here and 
 there sketched in general outline, and even in those more 
 worked out this is done rather by words than action. But 
 this also is justified by the kind of poem. The subject for 
 representation settled the characters, whose general social 
 position and qualities were here more in question than their 
 moral characteristics ; and even in the principal figures, as in 
 Love's Labour's Lost, the mental character and intellectuality 
 required almost more to be displayed than the power of the 
 will and the motive for important actions. For this reason 
 the actor will have some trouble in finding out these characters; 
 but this done, he will be just as delighted and surprised at 
 their inner congruity and truth as in any other of our poet's 
 themes. He will then perceive that Shakespeare has not acted 
 
AS you LIKE IT. 389 
 
 here otherwise than elsewhere ; that he has in no wise parodied 
 himself; that it may rather be considered a parody of all criti- 
 cism, when our Eomanticists, as in this case, endeavour to 
 prove to us the poet's virtues by his faults, 
 
 Shakespeare met with the design of the story of this comedy 
 in Lodge's pastoral romance ; he only added the characters of 
 the clown and of the melancholy Jaques, of William and 
 Audrey ; the other, persons, under other names, catry on the 
 action as in Shakespeare. The style of the romance is prolix, 
 affected, and bombastic,\like all works of the kind ; an exag- 
 gerated loquaciousness is the most striking characteristic of 
 the extravagant mannerism of the narrator, as it is of all con- 
 ceited writers ; Adam in the forest on the point of starvation, 
 and Orlando seeiag the lion watching for its prey, hold long 
 conversations. Many of the Ovid-like reminiscences, and much 
 of the mythological learning with which the romance abounds, 
 still adhere to Shakespeare's play ; but, on the whole, he has 
 completely eradicated the pastoral mannerism, and, according 
 to his wont, he simplifies the motives of the actions and 
 ennobles the actions themselves. The rude enmity between 
 Oliver and Orlando, which results in acts of violence in the 
 romance, is properly moderated by our poet. He has removed 
 the unnaturalness of Celia's banishment by her father on her 
 protest against the banishment of Eosalind. The war, by 
 which the exiled prince regains his throjie, and the rescue of 
 the ladies from robbers, with which in the romance Celia's love 
 for Oliver is introduced, have been omitted by the dramatist 
 in order that he might not disturb the peace and merry sports 
 of his rural life by any discords. The play between Orlando 
 and Rosalind is in the romance only a pastoral song, but 
 Shakespeare has made it a link for the continuation of the 
 action in the last act. In all the rest the poet adheres faith- 
 fully to the course of the story in the novel, without much 
 addition and omission. He even kept closely before him the 
 moral of the narrative, which in the romance is declared by 
 perpetual repetitions, and is well adapted to the nature and 
 position of the characters. The ' sweetest salve for misery,' 
 this is the drift of the « golden legacy ' of the tale, ' is patience, 
 and the only medicine for want that pretious implaister of 
 content.' We must brave misfortime with equanimity and 
 meet our destiny with resignation. Thus the two ladies and 
 Orlando laugh at Fortune and disregard her power. All the 
 
390 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S. DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 three, or, counting Oliver, the four principal figures have one 
 point in common in their lot-, namely, that love is added as 
 a new evil (it is thus viewed) to their outward misfortunes, to 
 banishment and poverty. This also they strive to meet with 
 the same weapon, with control and moderation, not too much 
 evading it, nor too much desiring it, paying more regard to 
 virtue and nature than to riches and rank, as Kosalind when 
 she chooses the posthumous Orlando, and Oliver the shep- 
 herdess Celia. The loving pastoral couple form a contrast in 
 this respect, that Sylvius loves too ardently, whilst Phoebe 
 despises love too coldly. If we concentrate this moral reflec- 
 tion into one idea, we shall find that the intention of the 
 narrative is to extol self-mastery, equanimity, and self-com- 
 mand in outward suffering and inward passion. We should 
 scarcely imagine, at the first glance, that this idea lies also at 
 the root of Shakespeare's comedy, so completely is every re- 
 flection avoided, and so entirely in the lightest and freest 
 play of action and conversation is a mere picture sketched for 
 our contemplation. 
 
 The author of the romance of Kosalind contrasts town and 
 court life with rural and pastoral life, the one as a natural 
 source of evil and misery, which finds its natural remedy in 
 the other. ' The greatest seas,' he says, ' have the sorest 
 storms, small currents are ever calm. Cares wait upon a 
 crown. Joyfulness dwells in cottages. The highest birth has 
 more honour, but is subject to the most bale. Griefs are in- 
 cident to dignity, and sorrows haunt royal palaces.' On the 
 contrary, contentment lives in the country, and we ' drink there 
 without suspicion and sleep without care, unstirred by envy. 
 Desires mount not there above our degrees, nor our thoughts 
 above our fortunes.' In the same manner Shakespeare makes 
 his Corydon sensible of the dignity of his pastoral condition, in 
 which he lives upon his honest gains, envying no man's happi- 
 ness, glad of other men's good, and content with his toil. In 
 the same manner he appears to let the sorrows which arise at 
 the court in the first and second acts find their cure in the 
 pastoral life of the last three acts. In the same manner he im- 
 putes the cause of the disasters created there to the vices which 
 belong to courts and to worldly life, to the envy and hatred 
 arising from covetousness and ambition, and in the same man- 
 ner he, seeks the remedy for the wounds inflicted there in that 
 moderation and simple contentment to which a life of solitude 
 
AS 70U LIKE IT. 391 
 
 invites or even compels. The first acts begin therefore like a 
 tragedy ; they exhibit the actors in a state of war, from which 
 they subsequently escape or are driven away to the merry 
 sports of .pleasure and peace which await them in the forest of 
 Arden, with its hunting-life, and in the shepherds' cottages on 
 its border. Duke Frederick is called even by his daughter a 
 man of harsh and envious mind ; he appears to be perpetually 
 actuated by gloomy fancies, by suspicion and mistrust, and to 
 be urged on by covetousness. He has banished his brother and 
 usurped the throne, he has robbed all the lords of their property 
 who have gone with his brother, he has regarded with hostile 
 suspicion all honourable men, the old Rowland de Bois as well 
 as his brave Orlando, and he has surjounded himself with the 
 dishonourable, who nevertheless, like Le Beau, are not devoted 
 to him. Orlando's victory over the wrestler is enough to kindle 
 his suspicion against him ; once awakened it lights upon the 
 hitherto spared Eosalind, for no other reason than that she 
 throws his daughter into the shade, and thus excites the father's 
 envy, a passion which he wishes the inoffensive Celia to share 
 also. When both the friends upon this disappear at the same 
 tiine with Orlando, Frederick's suspicion and covetousness fall 
 uponOliver, whom he had hitherto favoured. In this eldest son of 
 the brave Eowland de Bois there flows the same vein of avarice 
 and envy as in the Duke. He strives to plunder his brother of 
 his poor inheritance, he undermines his education and gentility, 
 he first endeavours to stifle his mind, and then he lays snares 
 for his life ; all this he does from an imdefined hatred of the 
 youth, whom he is obliged to confess is ' full of noble device,' 
 but who for this very reason draws away the love of all his 
 people from Oliver to himself; and on this account excites his 
 envious jealousyi Both the Duke and Oliver equally forfeit 
 the happiness which they seek, the one the heritage of his 
 usurped dukedom, the other his lawful and unlawful possessions. 
 And in this lies the primary impulse and the material motive 
 for their' subsequent renunciation of the world ; a more moral 
 incentive to this change of miad is given to Oliver in the pre- 
 servation of his life by Orlando, and to the Duke in the warning 
 voice of a religious man who speaks to his conscience and his 
 fear. These are only sketches of characters, not intended to 
 play conspicuous parts ; but we see that they are drawn by the 
 same sure hand which we have seen at work throughout Shake- 
 speare's works. 
 
392 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S DSAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 The misery which proceeds from these two covetous and 
 ambitious meu, who were not even contented in and with their 
 prosperity, affects in the first place the deposed Duke. He 
 took flight with ' a many merry men ' to the forest of Arden, 
 where they live « like the old Kobin Hood of England, and fleet 
 the time 'carelessly, as they did in the golden world.' They 
 spend their days in hunting, singing, and meditation. Their 
 songs call their thoughts from ambition to nature and simple 
 life, where no ingratitude of man, no forgotten kindness and 
 friendship torments ; but at the most the rough air and storms 
 of winter, which they praise in smiUng consideration that they 
 are no flatterers, but ' counsellors that feelingly persuade them 
 what they are.' Thus withdrawn from the dangers of the 
 ' envious court,' they have learned to Iqve exile beyond the , 
 painted pomp of the palace ; endowed with patience and con- 
 tentment, they have translated ' the stubbornness of fortune into 
 so quiet and so sweet a style,' and sweet appear to them 
 
 the uses of adversity, 
 Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
 "Wears yet a precious jewel in his head. 
 
 In this life, they find 
 
 Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in everything. 
 
 The fragranceof the. country, the scent of the wood, the tone of 
 solitude in this part of the piece, have been always justly 
 admired; colouring and scenery gently and tenderly attune 
 the imagination of the reader, they make us understand how 
 hermits in such a region feel impelled to fill up the leisure and 
 void with meditation and reflection, and to open the heart to 
 every soft emotion ; the noise of the world falls only from afar 
 on the ear of the happy escaped ones, and the poet has care- 
 fully avoidedjin any way inharmoniously to disturb this profound 
 peace. When the starved Orlando introduces the only discord, 
 by frightening the Duke and his companions at their meal, 
 how wonderfully is this discord resolved at once by the loving 
 gentleness with which they meet and help the needy one ! 
 
 Only the one danger does this life possess, that by its 
 monotony it awakes, in one and another, ennui, melancholy, 
 and ill-humour. In the hunting circle round the Duke, 
 Jaques is in this condition. He shares with. the Duke and 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 393 
 
 his companions the propensity for drawing wisdom and philo- 
 sophy from the smallest observation and consideration; he 
 has to excess the gift of linking reflections to the smallest 
 event, and in this seclusion from the world these reflections 
 have assumed a touch of despondency. The melancholy which 
 this man imbibes from every occasion has always^ appeared to 
 most readers, and especially to most actors, as mild, hxunan, 
 and attractive, and they represent it as such ; but it is 
 rooted, on the contrary, in a bitterness and ill-humour which 
 render the witty and sententious worldling far rather a rude 
 fault-finder than a contented sufferer like the rest. He is 
 of that class of men to whom Bacon addresses this sentence :— 
 'He who is prudent may seek to have desire; for he who does 
 not strive after something with eagerness, finds everything 
 burdensome and tedious.' In his hypochondriacal mood and 
 in his spirit of contradiction — the remembrance of his travels 
 and his former worldly life having left a sting behind — Jaques 
 finds this forest life equally foolish as that of the court which 
 they have quitted ; he carries the state of nature and peace too 
 far ; he considers the chases of the animals of the forest to be 
 greater usurpation than that of the unlawful Duke ; he flees 
 from the solitary company into still greater solitude, and likes 
 to hide his thoughts, the fruit of his former experience and of 
 his present leisure ; then again with eagerness he goes in 
 quest of society and cheerful company. Wholly ' compact of 
 jars,' he is blunted to all friendly habits, he is discontented with 
 all, and even with the efforts of others to satisfy him ; angry at 
 his own birth and at his fortune, he rails against ' all the first- 
 born of Egypt ; ' he blames the whole world, finds matter for 
 censure in the great system of the world, and stumbles over 
 every grain of dust in his path. Long experienced in sin, he 
 has learned to find out the shadow side of every age of man ; 
 he has satiated himself with the world, and has not entered upon 
 this life of retirement furnished with the patience and content- 
 ment of the others, but from a natural passion for the contrary. 
 If his satire is directed more against things in general, and is 
 free froin bitterness towards stated individuals, this is only a 
 result of his inactive naturoy which is rather calculated for 
 observation and reflection than for work and action, and of 
 his isolated position in this idyllic and peaceful life, in which 
 moreover the poet will suffer no discord to arise. This character 
 is entirely Shakespeare's property and addition. It furnishes a 
 
394 SECOKD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEAEE' S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 ■ fresh instance to us of the two-sidedness of the poet's mind, 
 with which so many proofs have made us familiar. Shakespeare 
 does not imitate the trivial tradition of the pastoral poets, who 
 praise the quiet life of nature in itself as a sch^ool-fof wisdom 
 and contentment. He shows, in the contrast between Jaques 
 and the Duke, that those who would desire enjoyment and 
 advantage from this life must in themselves have a natural dis- 
 position for moderation and self-mastery ; they must be able to 
 disarm misfortune and to do without happiness. But this 
 Jaques, according to the Duke, has been himself a libertine, 
 leading a sensual and dissolute life, and he has now leaped from 
 one extreme to another — a blase man, an exhausted epicurean, 
 an outcast from life. The sensible Orlando with ttue instinct 
 perceives his censoriousness, regarding him as a fool or a cipher; 
 Eosalind discovers it, and in the poet's own meaning with 
 regard to those who are in extremity of either joy or sorrow, 
 she calls the fools who are ever laughingj and those who 
 carry melancholy to eixcess, 'abominable fellows who betray 
 themselves to every modern censure, worse than drunkards.' 
 Thus carrying to excess his gloomy love of calumny, Jaques 
 rebounds in the opposite extreme when he wishes to be invested 
 in the fool's motley, to have ' as large a charter as the wind, to 
 blow on whom he pleases,' and to cleanse ' the foul body of the 
 infected world.' Completely mistaking the inofifensive vocation 
 of the fool, he wishes to ' disgorge ' into the general world the 
 poison he has caught from his evil experience. As no oppor- 
 tunity for this is offered, he turns at last, retaining his former 
 part, to the hermit Frederick, because, 'out of these convertites 
 there is much matter to be heard and learned.' 
 
 • We have seen how the banished Duke has converted his 
 misery into smiling happiness. He is joined subsequently by 
 the two ladies, Eosalind and Celia, and by Orlando. In them 
 the poet has shown us what qualities caused them to spend the 
 time in the ' golden world ' of Arden more pleasurably than 
 the melancholy Jaques. A more than sisterly bond inseparably 
 chains the two cousins ; in the romance they are compared 
 with Orestes and Pylades ; v,and in their fervent friendship 
 akng^^^wesee the gift of self-/enunBt!lttOH; wWuh "I'Kii^aS^ 
 ^an^e^jE o^^I C^a flSS 
 
 promises at a future time to restore to Eosalind her with- 
 drawn inheritance ; she demands of her in return to be as 
 merry as she is herself; she would, she says to her, had 'their 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 395 
 
 positions been different, have "been happier; and she proves 
 this subsequently, when, a better friend than daughter, she 
 follows the banished cousin into exile. Rosalind for a long 
 time disarms her uncle's envy and suspicion by her innocent 
 nature, Vhich even in thought wishes no evil to an enemy; he 
 was overcome by the universal impression of her character, 
 which won for her the praise and pity of the people. She bore 
 her sorrow in ' smoothness, silence, and patience ;' her friend- 
 ship for Celia lightened it ; out of love to her she constrained 
 herself to be more cheerful than became her position. We 
 recognise plainly the nature with which Lodge also invested 
 Eosalind — the disp^iti_on^lp_c^ominand,i(££se]£,^^^^ 
 misfortuneST^Tsting. But for this we must not consider her 
 coI3~and heartless. She feels deeply that fortune has punished 
 her with disfavour ; and when in the person of Orlando she 
 meets one equally struck by fate, her heart, taken unawares, 
 betrays how accessible she is to the most lively feelings. The 
 similarly hapless circumstances which Orlando announces to 
 her, his combat with the wrestler, his descent from an old 
 friend of her father's, all this, added to his attractive manner, 
 helps to conquer her, who has already vanquished him. ' Her 
 pride fell with her fortunes;' she gives the victor a chain 
 which seals at once her fate and her almost hereditary love ; 
 she rashly and involuntarily reveals her feelings, having only 
 moments in which to see him ; she turns back to him, and once 
 again she even says to him that he has ' overthrown more than 
 his epemies ;' and immediately afterwards we find her fallen 
 ' fathom-deep in love.' We see indeed that a violent passion 
 has to be mastered; how she masters it is afterwards the 
 problem which she has to solve in her subsequent meeting with 
 Orlando. In this Orlando, on the other sidej we perceive just 
 as readily the same niitfiiiiiiiMCT^Ni(>ittrita]llj",j;gBBgaiiF"'^"^i and, at 
 the same time, the power of self-command which knows how 
 to restrain it. He has been ' trained like a peasant ' by his 
 brother, and treated like a slave ; he feels the disadvantage of 
 his deficient education more than the crushed nobility of his 
 birth ; the ' spirit of his father grows strong in him;' he will 
 no longer endure the unworthy treatment ; and when Oliver 
 insults in him the honour of his father, he attacks his elder 
 brother, not so far," however, as, according to the romance, to 
 forget himself in acts of violence or to lay snares for revenge, but 
 even in anger he is master of himself. The feeHng of his 
 
396 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEASE' 8 DEAMATIG POETRY. 
 
 nothingness struggles in his mind with an ambitious striving. 
 He seeks the combat with the feared wrestler Charles, con- 
 tented to meet death, since he has no honour to Idse and no 
 friends to wrong, but stiU hoping to recommend himself by- 
 victory, and to secure himself from his brother. Instead of 
 this, he provokes the Duke to suspicion and excites Oliver to 
 designs against his life ; and although he has just tested his 
 own strength, he prefers to wander away rather than to meet 
 the malice of his brother. So in the wood afterwards, with 
 the anxiety of childlike fidelity and the strength of an irritated 
 wild beast, he is quickly resolved to maintain with sword and 
 violence the life of his fainting old servant, but he is gentle as 
 a lamb again when he meets with friendly courteousness. 
 Subsequently, when he sees his brother sleeping in the arms of 
 danger, he is not untempted to revenge, but fraternal love pre- 
 vails. Throughout we see the healthful, self-contained, calm 
 nature of a youth, which promises a perfect man. Everything 
 in him bespeaks a child of nature, who has remained pure and 
 uninjured in the midst of a corrupt world. What a shaming 
 contrast to the calumniator Jaques, whom he thus answers, 
 when he invites him to rail with him against the deceitful 
 world : ' I will chide no breather in the world but myself, 
 against whom I know most faults ! ' How innocent does the 
 young Hercules appear in his laconic bashfulness, when love 
 has ' overthrown ' him, when Eosalind makes him her valuable 
 gift and her still more valuable confession, and he finds no 
 words to thank her for the one and to reply to the other I 
 
 In all these characteristics, in all three individuals, we can- 
 not overlook the predisposition to a natural power of resistance 
 against the overwhelming force of outward evil and of inward 
 emotion. Endowed with this gift, they bear about with them 
 a spring of happiness, as is proved by the ladies in their merry 
 league in the very scene of hatred and persecution. This 
 spring, however, will of course flow more richly as soon as it is 
 set free from hindrances, and freed from the intricate and 
 manifold passions of a rude and intriguing society ; when it is, 
 as it were, left to itself and thrown on its own affections and 
 feelings. Hardly, therefore, is Eosalind's forced and uneasy 
 connection with her uncle broken up, than she feels herself 
 freer in the unhappiness of exile than in the happiness of a 
 court life ; the true friendship of Celia calls forth her innate 
 good humour, which had hitherto been fettered ; the prospect 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 397 
 
 of seeing her father again makes her enterprising and hold ; 
 she conquers her womanly fear, and takes upon herself to play 
 the part of a man, and that a martial one. The fair Granymede 
 in his hunter's dress exhibits forthwith a certain power of self- 
 command when compared to the enervated Celia ; the weariness 
 of the journey and the meeting with Silvius, whose tears open 
 his love-wounds afresh, cannot destroy his good ' humour. 
 Eosalind endures her love silently; not so the wandering 
 Orlando, who tells his to the deaf woods, while he carves the 
 name of Eosalind on the barks, and hangs odes to her praise, 
 the essays of an untutored talent, upon the trees. Celia dis- 
 covers the- poet ; amid the convulsions of their fate, the two, so 
 suddenly united and separated, meet again strangely and 
 unexpectedly ; when Eosalind surmises it by the hints of Celia, 
 we see again the intensely agitated being, who appears unable 
 to conceal her feelings. How her blood rises to her cheeks ! 
 What haste is there in her questions ! With what sweet 
 impatience does her anticipation burst forth ! One inch of 
 delay seems to her more than ' a South-Sea of discovery ! ' 
 When she now hears of his presence, and ventures to hope to 
 retain him and to possess him, pursued by no envious eye, 
 entirely and undisturbed in this pastoral solitude and retire- 
 ment, where, in the words of the romance, ' opportunity, the 
 sweetest friend of Venus, dwells in cottages,' we see her 
 who was before at the court so ' gentle, silent, and patient,' 
 suddenly seized with a wanton love of teasing, with the most 
 excited joy, and with breathless talkativeness ; her happiness 
 overflows like a spring tide, from which we are inclined to fear 
 everything. ' But in love as she was,' says the novel, ' she 
 shrouded her pains in the cinders of honourable modesty.' 
 Woman is 'apter to love,' says Eosalind in Shakespeare, ' than 
 to confess she does.' At the time when, under the impulse of 
 the moment, she discovered herself to Orlando, she gave the lie 
 to this her own rule, and all that she now does in the delight of 
 perfect idleness is as if she would make amends for her fault. 
 The characters are changed; once he was bashful and flatter- 
 ing, and she was candid ; now she is reserved with her love, 
 while he is confessing it to the winds and to men, and to all who 
 will listen to it. Once she had betrayed her feelings to him, 
 now she delights on their first meeting in drawing his con- 
 fession from him, and 'she goes through all the variations of it 
 with secret delight, and with feigned jest and derision. It is 
 
398 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKMSPEABE S DBAMATIO POETRY. 
 
 not difficult to bring one so proud of his love to an avowal that 
 he is the poetical panegyrist of Eosalind ; then she discovers 
 that he does not look like a lover, that he has nothing of the 
 'careless desolation 'of the lover about him: she would fain 
 hear his protest. She tries to set him against his love that she 
 may test its constancy ; it is a tonic to her, when with calm 
 certainty he says that ' he would not be cured ' of his love. 
 With her ingenious acuteness, she contrives to place herself in 
 a position to be herself and yet not to appear so, to enjoy the 
 presence and affection of her lover and yet not to surrender her- 
 self immodestly to one untested — to love, as she said, yet not to 
 confess, and thus to fulfil the desires of her impatient patience 
 and of he* eloquent silence. Whilst Shakespeare, foUo-niing 
 the romance, thus prepares the way, so that Eosalind, without 
 violating her morality, can give free scope to her love, he has 
 avoided all the express moralising of the romance, both here 
 and in Oliver's connection with Celia. Celia also exhorts her- 
 self to love with patience, not to be too timid nor too bold ; 
 she only yields when Oliver speaks of marriage ; modesty is 
 here also the guide of action. Shakespeare has treated this 
 connection of Celia's .very briefly. From an expression while 
 at the court, we may conclude that she regards love affairs 
 altogether more coldly and more practically than Eosalind; 
 her rapid engagement to Oliver is therefore not without its 
 design ; but that Shakespeare also regarded the speedy marriage 
 as a preventive against iinchastity may be gathered from a 
 single word. It would have weakened the power of the comedy 
 had the poet entered in any way further into the meaning of 
 the moral lectures of the romance. Moreover, he has so main- 
 tained Eosalind's character that the truth of the delineation itself 
 exempted him from this prosaic interruption. In herself she 
 is little qualified for reflection ; not from minute deliberation, 
 but from a natural instinct which adroitly seizes an offered 
 opportunity, she hits upon the expedient for curbing her 
 passion by forcing it into a play of fancy, and for mastering 
 heart and feeling by giving employment to mind and imagina- 
 tion. In this way she preserves her morality and wards off 
 melancholy and sadness from herself and her lover ; and thus 
 the poet, in a manner very different to that of Lodge in his 
 romance, obtains the unusual aesthetic advantage of introducing 
 this spring of wit into the barrenness of retired life, allowing it 
 to gush forth in its unhindered course, in free nature, far from 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 399 
 
 all conventionality. Formerly, in her paternal home, the dark 
 Celiawas the more meiTy of the two friends ; but now her more 
 quiet reserve constitutes a foil to the playfulness of Eosalind, 
 which, in her unexpected prosperity, knows no bounds. 
 
 Orlando enters into Eosalind's sport rdther passively than 
 actively. In their similar circumstances in the town, he was 
 the active one, as the man ought to be, and she the enduring 
 one ; in this little love intrigue the woman is rightly the insti- 
 gator and leader. He allows himself, neither willingly nor 
 unwillingly, to be drawn into the strange plan of wooing 
 Ganymede as his Eosalind. He discovered the resemblance 
 between the two, he regards her at first as the brother of his 
 beloved one, he is at ease and pleased when near her, he has an 
 object for his sighs, and what lover lamented and did not gladly 
 evidence his love ! But with all this he is not so ardent in his 
 service, because his healthful nature does not possess the melan- 
 cholic and sentimental vein of amorousness. When he keeps 
 not his time, Eosalind thinks that it might well be said of him 
 that ' Cupid had clapped him o' the shoulder,' but had left him 
 heart-whole. In this tone she torments the poor man who of 
 course cannot satisfy her, and this inflicted pain is only made 
 amends for by that which she herself suffers as soon as she 
 is alone. Then we see by her impatient humour, by her up- 
 braidings, by her tears, and by her fear of losing him again, 
 that her teasing frolicsomeness really required self-mastery, 
 that she in fact needed self-command to sustain her part, and 
 that tenderness and feeling went ever hand in hand with her 
 playfulness. This we might readily forget in those passages 
 in which she tortures him with assumed cruelty, in which she 
 almost heartlessly endeavours to make him fearful and anxious 
 respecting his marriage and his mistress, and in which she seems 
 to exhibit the characteristics of a cold ironical nature. In the 
 passage also in which she depicts to him a woman's wit (Act 
 IV. sc. 1), which is never to be checked, and never to be put out 
 of countenance, one might argue indeed sadly for poor Orlando. 
 But her nature throughout is marked by a rare combination of 
 the just balance of the powers of feeling and intelligence ; the 
 sensibility of Viola and the wit of Beatrice are blended in her ; 
 the poet has invested her with a remarkably free tongue, in 
 order that we may not be misled into the error of believing 
 that there was even a trace of conventional reserve or asceticism 
 in her discretion. Phoebe designates exactly this two-sidedness 
 
400 SECOND FEBIOD OF SSAKESPEAEE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 of her nature, when she says that her soft eye is at variance 
 with her sharp words, and heals the wounds which her tongue 
 makes. In the midst of her merriment therefore, when Orlando 
 goes away, how suddenly the softness of heart breaks forth in 
 the words : ' Alas, dear love, I cannot lack thee two hours ! ' 
 How she makes every effort to have him back quickly! How 
 she sighs away the short time of separation ! And then when, 
 instead of him, Oliver comes and tells the story of Orlando's 
 hurt, she faints away ; the complete wonian comes to light in 
 the disguised man, and her perfect love breaks forth from its 
 covering.' The riddle is now solved. Oliver sees through her : 
 ' You a man ? ' he says ; ' you lack a man's heart." Then she 
 betrays herself further, by expecting him to believe that her 
 swoon was counterfeited. He believes her not. The conviction 
 strikes him ; he leaves her, jestingly calling her Eosalind. We 
 must assume that Oliver imparted his discovery to Orlando. 
 Now it is Orlando's turn to carry on the sport that he may not 
 spoil her pleasure, and this is no small trial of his patience. 
 She asks him if his brother told him that she had counterfeited 
 a swoon. He answers ambiguously, ' Ay, and greater wonders 
 than that.' It is as if she feared his discovery, when she refers 
 this reply at once to Celia's betrothal: Every following wotd of 
 Orlando's increases in delicacy, if the part is thus understood, 
 and we feel that he knows from this time forth with whom he 
 has to do. And this also renders it explicable that the dis- 
 closure at last scarcely excites any surprise. 
 
 The contrast afforded by the pastoral episode between Phoebe 
 and Silvius will now become clear ; or should it not, we must 
 gather the explanation of it likewise from Lodge's romance, 
 where it is perspicuous even to insipidity. In contrast to the 
 active excitement of the court and town, peace and quiet rule 
 in this pastoral life ; while in the one envy and hatred carry 
 on their intrigues, in the other love at most plays its innocent 
 tricks. Love is, according to the romance, as 'precious in a 
 shepherd's eye as in the lookes of a king^ ' the opportunity for 
 love and its fidelity belongs especially to this class, because 
 solitude increases the disposition to sociability. Thiis we find 
 Silvius possessed of a violent and importunate love, full of all 
 those thousa,nd follies with which lovers magnify the smallest 
 thing that affects their passion into the most sacred and im- 
 portant matter. The tale, always true to it? one moral, upbraids 
 him with the immoderateness of his love, because he knows not 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 401 
 
 how to conceal it with patience. We here see plainly the con- 
 trast to the love of Rosalind, although in Shakespeare she says 
 that her passion was much upon the fashion of Silvius.' But 
 this is indeed as little the case as Eosalind resembles the 
 fashion of Phoebe, though in the same tone and manner she 
 shows herself averse to all hyperbolical protestations of love. 
 But this in her is the result of a healthful nature, which 
 dislikes every exaggeration ; in Phoebe, whom the poet depicts 
 as a regular beauty (black-haired, with bugle eye-balls and 
 cheeks of cream), it arises from coyness, hatred of love, and the 
 presumptuous pride of wishing to conquer it. The wise medium 
 'between timidity and craving for love, which is sought after by 
 the two friends, is missed by Phoebe and Silvius in an 
 opposite manner. That EosaUnd has a certain share of the 
 fashion of both of them places her, upon a middle ground, 
 upon which she shows herself at once capable and ready to 
 humble the pride of Phoebe with greater pride, and on the 
 other hand to strengthen the humility of the poor worm Silvius. 
 Between them both, the town lady and her Orlando appear as 
 the really ingenuous children of true nature, contrasted with the 
 overstrained creations of a conventional fiction. 
 
 Another contrast is formed by the relation of the clown to 
 Audrey, which is wholly Shakespeare's addition. Touchstone, in 
 his verses to the rough country girl, in intercourse with whom 
 he imagines himself like Ovid among the Groths, parodies the 
 languishing poetry of Orlando; in his false marriage by Sir 
 Oliver he parodies that of Eosalind and Orlando by Celia ; and 
 in his ' submissive humour in marrying the ugly Audrey he 
 parodies the unequal unions of the rest. His marriage, how- 
 ever, is only pretended ; he does not contract it, like Celia, to 
 avoid immorality, but to indulge in it. He does the contrary 
 to Eosalind and Orlando ; he misuses this natural life of retire- 
 ment, in the intention of again casting off Audrey at a con- 
 venient season. He uses the opportunity which here presents 
 itself, without possessing the fidelity which according to 
 Lodge's romance should belong to the place. He seems equally 
 devoid of the morality of either town or country. His language 
 reminds us of the time when he belonged to this rural life and 
 its habits, but he would now fain act the courtier. As Jaques 
 :went with the Duke into retirement, so he followed Celia from 
 attachment to her, but not from personal inclination ; he behaves 
 like a courtier when he speaks of his condescending affection 
 
 B D 
 
402 SECOND PEBIOB OF 8HAKESPEABE' S DSAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 when he repulses the poor William, when he displays his know- 
 ledge of the catechism of honour to the courtly bully, when he 
 .depreciates the shepherd's life to Corin, and in jesting exagge- 
 ration . perceives the same sin in the propagation of sheep 
 as Jaques seriously does in the chase. And in the same manner 
 he displays his loose courtly morals with respect to the honour- 
 able Audrey. 
 
 In Touchstone, Shakespeare has for the first time produced a 
 fool of a somewhat more elevated nature. In all the earlier 
 comedies there have been only clowns introduced, natural fools 
 whose wit is either studied and mechanically prepared or is 
 given out in droll unconsciousness. The fool alone in All's 
 "Well that Ends Well has somewhat of the ' prophetic ' vein in 
 him, which he ascribes to himself according to the general 
 notion of the age that fools, in virtue of their capacity for 
 speaking ' the truth the next way,' possessed something of a 
 divine and foretelMng character. Shakespeare, at any rate in his 
 artistic efforts, rendered complete homage to this notion of the 
 age respecting the higher significahce of fools. He left to the 
 Ben Jonsons and the Malvolios that over- wisdom, which from 
 learned haughtiness and pedantry, or from self-love or corrupt 
 taste, looks down contemptuously or censuringly on these 
 characters of comedy. As we have now often seen, he invested 
 even the simple clowns with a deeper significance, from the 
 relation in which he always placed them to the action of the 
 piece, without fearing to place constraint on nature and truth ; 
 for who has not often witnessed, in living examples, how mother- 
 wit solves unconsciously and easily problems over which the wise 
 labour, and how a childlike mind executes in simplicity that 
 which no understanding of the intelligent perceives ? But a 
 higher value than this is attributed by Shakespeare to the men 
 of wit, to the real fools who play their part with knowledge, to 
 whom full power is given to speak the truth, to rend asunder, 
 as often as they will, the veil pf mere propriety and hypocrisy, 
 and wittily to unmask the folly of others under cover of their 
 own. This appeared to Shakespeare ' a practice as full of labour 
 as a wise man's art,' and as useful as a chaplain's discourse. 
 For it appeared to him to belong to the most expert knowledge 
 of the world and of men, of the ' quality of persons and the 
 time,' to use appropriately and wisely the sting of seeming 
 folly ; and he admired the watchful and acute mind, which was 
 quick enough to discover the veiled weaknesses of men and 
 
AS YOV LIKE IT, 403 
 
 understood how like ' the haggard to check at every feather 
 that comes before his eye.' But for men in general he con- 
 sidered the presence of a fool as a useful test of head and heart. 
 To Parolles, Malvolio, and such-like knaves or angular pedants, 
 the witticisms of fools are like inopportune ' cannon-bullets,' 
 while to the generous and the guiltless, who have a free con- 
 science, they pass for ' slight bird-bolts.' The wit of fools 
 shoots vainly past these innocent ones ; those who shrink at the 
 whizzing of its arrows discover their folly, though perhaps the 
 motley man did not even aim at them. When life was in 
 harmony with this play of fancy, this privileged folly was a 
 profession, a vocation. Just at Shakespeare's time it passed from 
 life to the stage, and with this it began to disappear from society 
 itself. This was perhaps a further challenge to Shakespeare to 
 dignify it and to rescue it for his art. But from the coarseness 
 'of the actors, and the inclination of the people to laugh only at 
 the clumsy, ludicrous jokes of the clown, this was very difficult. 
 We have before mentioned what misuse of the privileges of the 
 fool were made upon the stage by Tarlton and Kempe ; as long 
 as this continued, as long as the principal art of these actors 
 and the principal pleasure of the public was to see them stretch 
 out the chin, let their hands hang, and twirl their wooden 
 swords, Shakespeare could hardly venture to briag a more refined 
 character of this sort upon the stage. Kempe twice withdrew 
 from the company at the Blackfriars theatre. Only when he 
 and his like were removed could Shakespeare write that more 
 refined programme in Hamlet for the actor of the fool, only then 
 could he bring upon the stage the fools of As You Like It, 
 Twelfth Night, and Lear. Touchstone, in our present piece, 
 is not quite so expert nor so sensible of his wit as the fools in 
 Twelfth Night and Lear ; but he is also not on the same ground 
 with Costard, Launce, and Launcelot. He stands on the 
 doubtful limit between instinct and consciousness, where this 
 character is the most acceptable. Jaques regards him as a 
 clown, who has ' crammed ' the strange places of his dry brain 
 with observation, which ' he vents in mangled forms ;' he con- 
 siders him as one of those ' natural philosophers ' (by whom 
 Warburton ought to have understood nothing more than a 
 natural fool) of whom Touchstone himself says that they have 
 learned no wit by nature nor art. The two ladies call him by 
 turns a natural and a fool ; Celia, in his face, ascribes to him 
 the. dulness of the fool, which is the whetstone of the, witty, 
 
 D D 2 
 
404 SECOND PEmOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 ■ -while to the true fool the folly of others is the whetstoile of his 
 
 . vdt. And Touchstone himself assumes the appearance of being 
 
 . wiser than he himself knew ; he shall, he says, ne'er be 'warfe of 
 his own wit, till he breaks his shins against it. On the other 
 hand, from his expressions in other passages, he regards himself 
 as far superior to the clown and the natural philosopher, and 
 
 .the Duke ,readily perceives his design behind his interposing 
 folly ; ' he uses his folly,' he says, ' like a stalking-horse, and 
 under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.' 
 
 Entirely corresponding with this two-sided capacity are 
 his actions and language throughout the piece. He performs 
 his tricks in the manner of the clowns, with whom roguish acts 
 pass for wit. On the other hand, the poet has consigned to 
 him the part of the comic chorus in the comedy, in which the 
 fool should always be employed. We have shown above the 
 contrast afforded by the connection between" Touchstone and 
 Audrey, compared with that of the other couples ; the idealised 
 pastoral love is parodied in it by one of a more real nature. 
 These contrasts were peculiar to the pastoral drama. Thomas 
 Heywood, in characterising the pastoral plays of Shakespeare's 
 time, uses these words : ' If we present a pastoral, we show the 
 harmless love of shepherds, diversely moralised, distinguishing 
 between the craft of the city and the innocency of the sheep- 
 cote.' We see, indeed, according to this definition, that Shake- 
 speare's play is nothing else than a pastoral ; the habits of 
 town and country are brought into manifold contrast, yet the 
 moral which the poet draws may be essentially diverse from 
 that which, in the pastoral romances and dramas of the age, 
 
 , would be usually inferred from that distinction of town and 
 country. Shakespeare has employed the mouth of his fool as 
 his stalking-horse, to express his opinion of the customary 
 
 i idealising of shepherd life in pastoral poetry, in thfe same sense 
 as it appears in his play and in the scenes it contains. On 
 Corin's question, as to how he likes this shepherd's life. 
 Touchstone answers hini : ' Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself 
 
 -it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life it 
 is naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well ; 
 but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Ifow, 
 in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well ; but in respect 
 it is]^not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a Spare life, look 
 you, it fits my humour well ;. but as there is no more plenty in 
 it, it goes much against my stomach. Hast any philosophy in 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 405 
 
 thee, shepherd?' It seems to me that perhaps all pastoral 
 poetry put together scarcely contains so much real wisdom as 
 this philosophy of the fool. He finds nothing to say against 
 the shepherd's life, but nothing also against the contrary 
 manner of living ; and the homely simplicity of Corin himself 
 is on his side in this, that he leaves courtly manners to the 
 court and country ones to the country. Shakespeare knew 
 nothing of the one-sidedness which condemned or rejected 
 either life in the world or life in retirement, the one for the 
 sake of the other. Eather does the fool's wit consider him 
 who merely knows the one, or, as the meaning is, merely 
 esteems the one, as ' damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one 
 side.' In Shakespeare's play, no expression of preference rests, 
 on either of the two kinds of life. In neither of the two circles 
 does he find the condition of happiness or virtue in itself, but 
 he sees happiness most surely dwelling, not in this or that' 
 place, but in the beings who have a capacity and a natural 
 share of qualification for either or for every other kind of 
 existence ; in those beings who, exiled fi:om the world, do not 
 feel themselves miserable, just as little so as when they are re- 
 called to the world from their solitude. The poet knows • 
 nothing of a certain situation, condition, or age, which would : 
 be a sure source of happiness ; but he knows that there are men. 
 in aU classes and generations, like his Duke, his Eosalind, and. 
 his old Adam Spencer, who bear in their bosoms that equanimity, 
 and contentment which is the only fruitful soil of all true 
 inner happiness, and who carry with them wherever they go: 
 a smiling Eden and a golden age. 
 
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 
 
 The serious part pf Much Ado About Nothing, the relation 
 hetween Hero and Claudio, is similar to the story of Ariodante 
 and Ginevra in the fifth Canto of Ariosto's ' Orlando Furioso,' 
 a subject which had been already handled in 1583, and was 
 performed before Elizabeth under the title of ' Ariodante and 
 Ginevra.' Ariosto's epos was.translated in 1591 by John Har- 
 ington, but the episode had been even earlier separated from 
 it, and had been twice translated into English ; Spenser also, 
 in the second canto of his ' Faerie Queene,' had introduced it 
 with some alteration. In Bandello's 22nd tale, ' Timbreo of 
 Cardona,' the same subject is handled ; and, arguing from the 
 names employed for, the acting characters, Shakespeare availed 
 himself of this source for his play without going back to 
 Ariosto. Now this tale did not afford the poet even a hint 
 of any moral view of the story ; it is a bald narrative, con- 
 taining nothing which could assist in the understanding of the 
 Shakespearian piece ; in the play we have just considered he 
 had to conceal the vast moralising of the source from which he 
 drew his material ; in this material, on the other hand, he had 
 to strike the latent ethical spark within it. The errors between 
 Claudio and Hero were transferred by Shakespeare from the 
 shallow novel into life; he dived into the nature of the inci- 
 dent ; he investigated the probable character of the beings 
 among whom it was imaginable ; he found the key-note by 
 means of which he could bring the whole picture into harmony. 
 The subject expanded in his hands ; the main action received 
 an explanatory prelude ; the principal characters (Hero and 
 Claudio) obtained an important counterpart in the connection 
 between Benedick and Beatrice, which is entirely Shakespeare's 
 property ; these characters gained an importance even beyond 
 the principal ones ; the plot, as is ever the case with our poet, 
 and as Coleridge has especially pointed out in this play, gave 
 
MUCS ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 407 
 
 place to the characterisation ; the question seems almost what 
 manner of men made the much ado about nothing, rather than 
 the nothing about which ado was made. The whole stress 
 seems to lie,' not in the plot, not in the outward interest 6f the 
 catastrophe, but in the moral significance which the disturb- 
 ance caused by the Bastard John exercises upon the two 
 engagements which are concluded and prepared, and again 
 dissolved and left unconfirmed, or rather upon the beings who 
 have entered into these engagements. But whilst the poet in 
 this manner studied the conditions of the subject represented, 
 and the natural capacity and culture of the characters qualified 
 to act in it, he has, it seems to us, lighted upon a soil which 
 places this play in an express contrast to As You Like It, which 
 was written at the same time. Considered as to outward form, 
 the teasing war of wit between Benedick and Beatrice calls to 
 mind the similar relation of EosaHnd to Orlando ; but in the 
 development of the plot an opposite course of events at once 
 meets the eye. While in the one a princely court and a great 
 feudal house appear mutually at variance, we pass in the other 
 into a similar circle in which the most delightful harmony 
 reigns. Whilp in the one the plan began- in a tragic character 
 with hostile persecution, and afterwards in the last three acts is 
 developed into a comedy of an xminterrUptedly cheerful nature, 
 in the other, on the reverse, the merriest humour pervades the 
 fijst three acts, and then the comedy threatens to change sud- 
 denly into a true tragedy. While in the one the characters 
 in the foreground are persons who, schooled by misfortune, and 
 endowed with self-command, equanimity, and self-possession, 
 became master over their misfortune, in the other we are 
 transported into a group of persons who, used to prosperity 
 and ahused by prosperity, have fallen, though endowed with the 
 finest natural disposition, into the opposite faults — into want 
 of stability, into self-loving inconstancy, into frivolity and 
 credulity ; in one word, into that giddiness which fickle fortune 
 produces, and in which the man too dependent on the 
 moment is not master of his judgment and resolves. And, 
 finally, while in the one those strong and undismayed cha- 
 racters in the height of their misery find comfort and allevia- 
 tion in the tender peace of a life of retirement, these effeminate 
 beings are alarmed at the summit of their prosperity by a 
 tragic incident, which arouses their indolent natures and im- 
 parts a salutary Warning to them on their course of life. 
 
408 SECOKD FEEIOD OF SHJKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Adhering to this view, we shall perceive that with all its 
 poetic licence the comedy under cor^ideration is connected in 
 all its parts, and that a deep hackground is here given to a 
 most insipid plot. We enter the house of the governor of 
 Messina, which is raised by riches and great alliances, and we 
 are struck with its untroubled domestic happiness, both as to 
 circumstances and persons. A merry company smiles upon us 
 in the first scene, on the reception of an unknown messenger ; 
 a friendly and honourable visit is announced which is even to 
 increase its gaiety and conviviality. The most intimate fami- 
 liarity exists among the members of the family, or rather of the 
 house, both high and low. The servants listen to the guests, 
 and give a report to their masters ; the uncle Antonio at the 
 masked ball accosts the waiting-maid, who reproaches him with 
 his waggling head, and ridicules his wit ; Hero's gentlewomen 
 presume even with the foreign guests ; they a:re accustomed to 
 go to the utmost bounds in jesting with Leonato's daughter 
 and niece. -Even the watch of Messina stands on a similar 
 intimate footing with the governor. Dogberry and Verges 
 talk with him as with any other gossip ; they are merciful and 
 lazy in their station and calling, and let everything go on in 
 the peaceful old way. In the family of the governor, Beatrice 
 is the sotil of mirth in the house, and, with a spirit always 
 cheerful, she spreads around her joy and gladness. But the 
 central point on which all hinges is the daughter of the house, 
 the quiet Hero. She is her father's pride and ornament and 
 love, compared to whom himself and everything else is thrown 
 into the shade. With a heart tender and foreboding, she 
 fascinates even when she is mute by the overpowering 
 impression of her chaste, modest nature. She can practise 
 no wanton playfulness, ['only at best behind the mask ; she 
 would fain not suffer the unseasonabls jests of her waiting- 
 woman ; when she has played Beatrice her successful trick, she 
 checks forbearingly every teasing word. When a scandalous 
 suspicion is cast in the most degrading manner against this 
 picture of innocence, shame struggles silently within her ; her 
 fiery eyes might have burned out the errors of her accusers, 
 but she can find no words, and sinks mutely in a swoon. To. 
 the one who knows her, to Beatrice, she appears as she is, 
 raised above all suspicion, although nothing speaks in her 
 favour, and all witnesses and proofs testify against her. Such a 
 being seems thoroughly qualified to form the happiness and 
 
MVCS ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 409 
 
 pride of a family -which consista of good, honourable, and 
 honoured men. 
 
 Into this circle the royal prince of Aragon comes on a visit. 
 He had been here before with his suite ; Claudio had already 
 fixed his eyes on the beautiful Hero; Benedick had already 
 sustained a skirmish of wit with Beatrice ; a,nd Borachio had 
 already made acquaintance with Margaret. War had taken 
 them away, and upon its successful termination they return to 
 spend a month in easy recreation. These also are all children 
 in the lap of fortune. The prince is thoroughly qualified to 
 spoil others and to be spoilt himself, to dispense happiness and 
 to enjoy it. He has a gloomy half-brother, who is a contrast 
 in everything to all the beings whom we see around the prince; 
 for this reason he cannot bear him ; a former quarrel gave 
 place to a reconciliation, but even now Don Pedro cares not 
 for his brother, and strikingly gives the preference to his new 
 favourite Claudio. He requires merry intercourse around him ; 
 a Benedick, whose humour never fails ; still more a Claudio, 
 who possesses not the sting of an evil tongue, which at times 
 in Benedick speaks unpleasant truths ; but rather he needs 
 both together, their bantering intercourse opening to him a 
 perpetual source of amusement. He assists the one in gaining 
 for a wife the rich heiress Hero, and this happiness he enjoins 
 him to seize quickly and without delay ; he makes the other in 
 love with Beatrice, and helps him to surmoimt the antagonistic 
 spirit, which might have made him aimlessly delay this happi- 
 ness. Of the two, Claudio is the more spoiled. An upstart, 
 poor, and still very young, he has achieved unexpected deeds 
 in the field ; he has brought tears of joy to his old uncle in 
 Messina by the importance he has gained ; he has thus acquired 
 the friendship of Benedick, and the favour of the prince, and 
 the Bastard John ascribes to him all ' the glory of his over- 
 throw.' In addition to this, he now obtains the gentle Hero, 
 to whom he brings a nature as virginlike and pure as her own. 
 He bears within him that which may fill him with a just self- 
 reliance ; good fortune increases it into a sensitive self-love, 
 even into vanity of outward advantages. Benedick asserts of 
 him that since he was in love he could lie for nights awake, 
 carving the fashion of a new doublet ; the old Antonio calls 
 him in anger — which exaggerates, indeed, but does not invent — 
 an ape and a fashion-monger ; and Borachio, when he gives Con- 
 rade an account of Claudio's deception by means of the false 
 
410 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRi. 
 
 Hero, makes a far-fetched reflection upon his love of fashion, it 
 almost seems in order that from this outward changeableness 
 in Claudio he may infer changeableness of heart. At any rate, 
 he expressly declines the idea that this reflection of his is 
 undue rambling from his story. 
 
 Among these natures thus merry in their prosperity a,nd 
 luxury, the Bastard John appears as their single contrast. 
 Fortune has never smiled upon him, nor he indeed upon 
 fortune. He is by nature of a sour temper, melancholy and 
 dejected, surrounded by servants of a similar character, re- 
 served, laconic, and gloomy even at the friendly reception of 
 his charming hosts. Incapable of concealing his feelings, he 
 exhibits his resentment and sadness to everyone, and his out- 
 ward reconciliation with, his brother cannot hide his unrecon- 
 ciled heart ; he would rather be disdained of all, than ' fashion 
 a carriage to rob love from any.' He is sick with envy and 
 vexation, especially with regard to Claudio ; he is inclined to 
 play him any bad trick, and ready to pay his confidential 
 servant with heavy ducats for his help in such mischiet It 
 dissatifies him that the feigned reconciliation afiixes on him 
 a kind of ' muzzle ; ' it seems a necessity of his nature on all 
 occasions, as it is in his present peculiar position, to play the 
 part of the destroyer of peace and joy ; he takes pleasure in 
 poisoning all the joy of his friends ; he feeds upon the idea of 
 working some mischief for them.. He throws himself among 
 them, in order that he may cross Claudio's marriage with 
 Hero. 
 
 The trick by which, according to the tale, the jealous 
 fortune-forsaken man suddenly disturbs the happy repose of 
 the rest, is followed up by Shakespeare with a second, much 
 more premised, which gives him more scope for developing his 
 characters. Borachio has betrayed to his master that the 
 prince would woo Hero for Claudio at the masked baU ; the 
 Bastard convinces himself that this takes place ; he seems to 
 find satisfaction in making himself believe that the prince is 
 wooing for himself ; he betrays the matter to Claudio whilst he 
 assumes the appearance of thinking he is speaking with. Bene- 
 dick. Claudio's unstable, credulous, and changeable character, 
 incapable of all calm reflection, is brought plainly to light on 
 this small occasion. He knows, and everyone knows the malicious 
 spirit of the Bastard who insinuates this suspicion of the 
 prince ; he knows from the prince himself that he was to play 
 
MUOH ADO ABOUT NOTHm&. 411 
 
 his (Claudio's) part with Hero ; yet John's mere word is enough 
 to make him consider his prince as convicted of breach of 
 friendship and fidelity, to make him leave Benedick irritated 
 and angry, and give up his Hero at once : ' I wish him joy of 
 her,' he says, bitterly indeed, yet lightly, and Benedick gives 
 him for this the taunt he deserves : ' so they sell buUocks." 
 The disaster proves to be a delusion ; it is in all parts the 
 prelude to the real action, and Shakespeare with his accustomed 
 profoundness has made use of this less important example, and 
 has taught us to know the beings who subsequently treat a 
 more significant matter with the same credulity and careless- 
 ness, and who disregard even the previous warning. Through 
 the failure of the first innocent trick, John is at once provoked 
 to a second of a more dangerous character. The incredible 
 calumniation of Hero is whispered by the Bastard to the prince 
 and Claudio. The prince himself now shows that he is of 
 the same fickle nature. Old and new experiences with this 
 man (John) are forgotten. The first deception had impressed 
 upon Claudio the principle that in the affairs of love all hearts 
 must use their own tongues and trust no agent ; but it affords 
 him no lesson for this new emergency that on so heavy a 
 charge laid against a being who seemed to him like Diana, he 
 should use his own eyes, and trust no accuser, least of all an 
 accuser such as this. But indeed his own eye was to be con- 
 vinced by the accuser! Before, however, it comes to this 
 proof, Claudio's proud self-love is so fearfully excited even at 
 the bare idea, that he forms the heartless, vindictive resolve, in 
 case of conviction, of exposing. Hero's dishonour before the 
 whole congregation in the church, at the marriage-altar, and 
 the prince inconsiderately joins with him. We see clearly 
 that this hasty resolve directly excludes true conviction ; they 
 ought to have caught Hero in the Very act, but hot watch in 
 the distance in night and fog, and take shadows for proofs. It 
 has been blamed as a fault of' composition in Shakespeare that 
 Claudio should have stood so near and have heard so distinctly, 
 and yet have been implicated in such a mistake ; but this is 
 only a well-founded fault of character in Claudio. The poet 
 has made even Borachio reproach Claudio that he had let his 
 very eyes be deceived; he permits the simple watchmen to 
 bring to light that which neither ' Pedro's nor Claudio's 
 wisdoms could discover;' they, the careless sleepers, caught 
 Borachio in word^ when he only related his deceit to Conrade, 
 
412 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKE8PEAME' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 but the others catch him not in the accomplishment of the 
 deed, though all their own and Hero's honour were at stake. 
 The cruel design of the public separation is now executed ; the 
 unready, inexperienced Claudio resigns his Hero, mth a bleed- 
 , ing heart, it is true, but he is blind to the proofs of her inno- 
 cence in her former and present behaviour ; his firm conviction 
 of her guilt perplexes even her own father. Leonato, grown 
 negligent like the others from prosperity, has received previous 
 to the marriage a notification of the apprehension of the 
 offenders, whose examination was wished for on that same 
 morning ; he left it to others. Now, when the fearful calamity 
 overtakes him, it finds him devoid of self-command and utterly 
 unfortified ; he wishes Hero dead, he would gladly strike at her 
 life without further inquiry, or even, like Friar Francis, noting 
 the lady; he rejects with violence all consolation and patience. 
 They agree to declare the calumniated Hero dead, that this may 
 pethaps influence Claudio ; but the passionate father destroys the 
 effect of this himself, when he publishes Hero's death to the 
 nobles with a challenge. And the old brother Antonio, he with 
 the ' waggling head,' who had just been reproaching Leonato 
 with his childish excitement, is seized in the same moment 
 with the same unrestrained pride of family, and revolts against 
 the disgraceful injury; a moment before he was acting the 
 consoling philosopher, and suddenly like a raging boar he 
 bursts forth, and would gladly risk even his frail life against 
 the young and powerful offenders. Upon neither does the 
 proclaimed death of Hero produce the effect which Friar 
 Francis had wisely intended. He had calculated in this 
 deception upon Claudio's changeableness. 'It so falls out,' 
 he says. 
 
 That what we have we prize not to the worth, 
 Whiles we enjoy it; but being lack'd and lost, 
 Why, then we rack the value. 
 
 But as certainly as the tidings were conveyed to him, 
 Leonato added only a fresh ado about nothing ; he brought 
 Claudio's feelings into war with his self-love, and with the 
 better part of this his sense of his honour and dignity. The 
 intelligence thus lost its salutary sting. The old frivolity 
 continues to play its part all the more undisturbed. Both 
 friends would fain get rid of the troublesome scene with the 
 old men as quickly as possible ; they fall at once into a jesting 
 
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 413 
 
 tone, which makes it difficult to Benedick to introduce his 
 serious business; they encourage him by his wit to 'beat 
 away ' their melancholy, which is not deeply seated ; his challenge 
 surprises them not, but it only calls forth Claudio's bitterness 
 and irritability, in which his frivolity arid, changeableness are 
 exhibited afresh. Again, he asks not for explanation or reason, 
 he perceives not Benedick's inward struggle, he angrily accepts 
 the challenge. As he had renounced at once the prince, his 
 patron, at the masked ball, and his beloved one at the mid- 
 night farce, he now does the same with his friend. Only when 
 they hear of John's flight does the prince become perplexed 
 and serious, and when the deception is cleared up. Hero 
 returns with all her former loveliness before Claudio's soul ; 
 it is when the guilt falls on him alone that his sense of honour 
 appears in the noblest point of view. As he avenged his own 
 wounded honour relentlessly against the house of Leonato, he 
 now avenges relentlessly on himself the family injury which 
 he has inflicted, submitting readily to every condition and 
 . compensation. 
 
 The poet has with extraordinary skill so arranged and 
 introduced the tragic incident that the painful impression 
 which is perhaps too sensible in the reading is lost sight of in 
 the acting. He omitted upon the stage the scene of Claudio's 
 agitation on overhearing Hero, in order that he might thus 
 avoid the gloom, and not weaken the comic scene in which 
 a trap is laid for the listening Beatrice. The burlesque scenes 
 of the constables, whose relation to the main action we have 
 intimated, are introduced • with the impending tragic events, 
 that they may afford a counterbalance to them and prevent 
 them from having too Hvely an effect on the spectator. But, 
 above all, we are already aware that the authors of the deception 
 are in custody before Hero's disgrace in the church takes 
 place ; we know, therefore, that all the ado about her crime 
 and death is for nothing. This tact of the poet in the struc- 
 ture of his comedy corresponds with that in the design of 
 Claudio's character, and in the unusually happy contrast which 
 he has presented to him in Benedick. With regard to Claudio's 
 ■ character, Shakespeare has so blended the elements in his nature 
 he has given such a good foundation of honour and self-reliance 
 to his unstable mind and fickle youth— that we cannot, with all 
 our disapprobation of his conduct, be doubtful as to his cha- 
 racter. Changeable as he is, he continues, stable in no choice 
 
414 SECOND FEPIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 of friends and loved ones, since he had never continuously 
 tested them ; at the slightest convulsion of events he is over- 
 powered by first impressions, and he is without the strength of 
 will to search to the. bottom of things. This would be an 
 odious and despicable character, if the changeableness were 
 not tempered by the excitability of a tender fefcling of honour. 
 Our interest in Claudio is secured by this blending of the 
 moral elements in his nature ; but the foundation for a comedy 
 and for a comic character does not appear to lie either in him or 
 in the whole action in \^hich Claudio is implicated. If we 
 separate it from the rest, we shall retain a painful and not 
 a cheerful impression. The poet has thus added the con- 
 nection between Benedick and Beatrice, in order to produce 
 a merry counterbalance to the more serious and primary 
 element of the play, and to make the former predominate. 
 The same self-love and the same spoiling by prosperity fall to 
 the lot of these two characters as they did to Claudio. But, 
 instead of his changeableness, we see in them only what, with 
 a fine distinction, we should (with Benedick) call giddiness. 
 We connect the idea of changeableness with a continual 
 wavering after resolutions taken; that of giddiness with 
 unstable opinions and inclinations before the same ; change- 
 ableness manifests itself in actions, it is productive of perni- 
 cious consequences, and for this reason causes contempt and 
 hatred ; giddiness manifests itself only in contrary processes of 
 the mind, which are by nature of a harmless kind, and this is 
 the reason why it offers excellent material for comedy. Few 
 characters, therefore, on the stage have such truly comic power 
 as these two, Benedick and Beatrice, and they have not lost 
 their popularity in England even to the present day. Shake- 
 speare's contemporary, Leonard Digges, speaks of them together 
 with Falstaff and Malviolo as the favomites of the public of 
 that day ; as characters which filled pit, gallery, and boxes in 
 a moment, while Ben Jonson's comedies frequently did not pay 
 for fire and door-keeper. And not long ago Much Ado About 
 Nothiiig was performed at the Princess's Theatre in London ; 
 the two principal parts were executed comparatively well by 
 players who perhaps possessed no extraordinary gifts, but who 
 had mutual pleasure in their acting ; and their acting, as in the 
 play itself, was a struggle and a contest, as it used to be 
 formerly in this representation of these characters by Grarrick 
 and Mrs. Pritchard. 
 
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 415 
 
 To understand the characters of Benedick and Beatrice 
 accurately demands the attentive examination of every word 
 and hint which the poet abundantly furnishes. The prince in 
 serious discourse speaks of Benedick as of a noble strain, of 
 approved valour, and confirmed honesty. We find him, when 
 we can observe his actions, true and sincere to the prince, when 
 he too thinks him faithless to Claudio ; and in the case of 
 Hero he is less fickle than the two other friends, he is the 
 only one who thinks at once of a trick on the part of Prince 
 John. Of unquenchable humour, of an indomitable passion for 
 raillery and provocation, he is like all Shakespeare's humourists 
 averse to sentimentality and enthusiasm, and a ridiculer of 
 poetry and love. If we listen to his teasing enemy, Beatrice, 
 he is an inconstant man, who changes his friendships like 
 a fashion, a cowardly boaster but a brave eater, a self-sufficient 
 chatterer, and a jester who misuses his wit for calumniation, and 
 who is melancholy from vanity if his jokes are not laughed at. 
 None of this slander seriously affects him but the nickname of 
 jester ; perplexed and wounded, he takes coimsel with himself 
 as to whether his merry vein had really procured him this, 
 title. Pride of intellect is the strong point of his self-love, 
 which is as powerful in him as in Claudio ; it appears in him 
 and becomes excitable and sensitive as soon as he is seriously 
 reproached. It is exhibited also in the vitiated taste which he 
 displays when speaking of his relation to the other sex. He 
 imagines himself to be iu favour with all women, but none is 
 right to him ; she who is to attract him must unite all con- 
 ceivable graces in herself. But while he believes in all the 
 good qiialities of women, he believes not in their fidelity ; 
 ■mistrust is one source of his averseness to the marriage into 
 which he has more and more reasoned himself. From this 
 conviction of the changeableness of women, and from vanity, he 
 has forced himself, as Claudio says, not without constraint, into 
 the part of an obstinate heretic in the contempt of beauty ; he 
 openly displays this contempt ; he offers a wager, and chal- 
 lenges the most unsparing wit against himself, if he should 
 ever marry. 
 
 For a being of Beatrice's sharp wit, the attitude which 
 Benedick assumes against her sex presents a twofold challenge 
 of an opposite kind : it provokes her to chastise him for his 
 arrogance and to inspire him with a better opinion. According 
 to the serious judgment of those who know her, she is endowed 
 
416 SECOND PEftlOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S JDEAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 with unquestionable mental and moral excellence, but this is 
 concealed under the veil of constant gaiety. She was born, as 
 she says, under a dancing star, only created to ' speak all mirth 
 and no matter,' she makes a point of keeping her heart on ' the 
 windy side of care,' and of removing every unpleasant impres- 
 sion far from her ; there is little of the melancholy element in 
 her ; she is never sad but when she sleeps, and not even sad 
 then; she awakes laughing over dreams full of wild tricks. 
 Those around her like to see her only in her cheerful animated 
 behaviour ; her jests to her friends are of a friendly character ; 
 and when she fears to wound she begs forgiveness for her bold- 
 ness. If we listen indeed to what Benedick says of her, she is 
 a bad and dangerous woman, an ' Ate in good apparel,' a Fury 
 and a Harpy, whose absence makes hell quiet, whose tongue is 
 as quick as it is poisonous. And so far these invectives are 
 true : she is superior to Benedick in rapid striking wit ; she 
 possesses with the utmost quickness of the tongue that also of 
 the eye, the keenest observation ; and a self-love -similar to that 
 of Benedick, and pride in her own talents, tempt her to make 
 sometimes a dangerous use of them. Like him she is touched 
 and easily affected when serious blame meets her ; those, indeed, 
 who relentlessly lash the bad points of all men would not have 
 discovered hers. She has the same nice taste with respect to 
 men that Benedick has with respect to women ; she has laughed 
 away a succession of suitors ; the young and the old, the talka- 
 tive and the silent, satisfy her not. In her treatment of Bene- 
 dick, moreover, she is irresistibly provoked to punish his 
 .cdntempt of women with greater contempt of men, his wit 
 with wit more rude and more offensive. She declares herself 
 agreed with him in that point, in order that she may form all 
 the more striking contrast to him. She acts the sworn vestal, 
 who delights to lead her apes to the gates of hell and to be 
 happy with maidens in heaven ; she would rather hear anything 
 than a man's protestations of love; wooing, wedding, and repent- 
 ing she sees following each other in necessary succession ; and 
 in the same spirit of contradiction she swears to her uncle that 
 she will never take a husband. 
 
 This proud, presumptuous, self-conceited contempt of both 
 for each other and for the whole sex is presently to be caught 
 in a clumsy trap, and to have a ccimic fall. The net placed for 
 them by their friends is simple indeed, but well adapted to the 
 characters, and to the relation in which they are placed. They 
 
MUCB ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 417 
 
 are both self-loving, and fastidious from self-love, and this has 
 produced in them a contempt of the whole other sex and an ex- 
 clusive regard for the one exception, who defies this very self-love. 
 This exaggerated condition necessitates the overturning of the 
 obstinate aversion which they avow. For in their innermost 
 soul neither pf the two has renounced all love. When Benedick 
 reflects upon it by himself, he considers certainly Claudio's 
 desertion and variableness in this respect as very laughable, but 
 he by no means promises that in an extraordinary case the same 
 may not happen to him. In favour with all women, as he 
 believes, only not with Beatrice, this alone is stimulus enough 
 to draw his attention to her ; he finds'her besides, from the very 
 first, more beautiful than the little Hero. Both are in their 
 merry nature and jesting qualities far too exclusively thrown 
 upon each other for their bantering war not to have in it an 
 element of peace and a germ of love. For Beatrice is on her 
 side just as little wholly unattracted by the charms of love 
 and marriage. How pleasurable the interest she takes in the 
 happiness of Hero and Claudio ! With what gentle teasing she 
 turns back three times to the bridal pair and wishes them joy ! 
 How the sigh escapes her in the midst, that she may sit in a 
 corner and cry heigh ho! for a husband ! She has already 
 pondered over the moderation that must take place in Benedick's 
 nature, if he is to please her, when she wishes that in his talka- 
 tiveness he had half the melancholy and half the silence of 
 Prince John. In the introductory scene she inquires urgently 
 of the messenger after all his bad qualities, that she may hear 
 'his good ones, and afterwards she confesses to us that she knows 
 his worth not raerely through report. She does indeed early 
 that which we find her doing subsequently, she ' trans-shapes ' 
 his virtues, and then sighs that he is the properest man in Italy. 
 Similarly as they are formed in nature and mind, a similar 
 delight in each other has half drawn them together, but their 
 spirit of contradiction holds them apart and threatens to divide 
 them for ever. At the masked ball they mutually fall into the 
 doubting conviction that they seriously entestain a bad opinion 
 of each other. She believes that he has spoken evil of her, she 
 is irritated at his remark that she had her good wit out of the 
 Hund/red Merry. Tales; he, on his side, is out of humour, 
 because she has called him the prince's jester. This disagree- 
 ment is immediately followed by the plot of the friends to make 
 them fall in love with each other. The plan is founded on the 
 
 £ E 
 
418 SEC02W PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEAEE'S DRAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 self-love of both. To each of the two they first speak his own 
 praisoj and then urge the worth of the other ; before each they 
 declare the world's blame of their pride, and they infinitely 
 flatter the pride of each by declaring that such a praise- 
 worthy being, one so diflScult to conquer and so froward even in 
 defeat, may be brought to subjection. 
 
 This flattered self-love is the bait by which both allow 
 themselves inconsiderately to be caught. They acknowledge 
 their pride and their repulsive manner, and resolve without the 
 slightest scruple to heal the sufferings and to requite the love 
 of the other. He only calls to mind his giddiness, which he 
 expressly acknowledges at the end of the play, and the raillery 
 which threatens him from his friends at this change of resolu- 
 tion ; this opposition does not occur at aU to the more sensible, 
 more deeply affected woman. Both are still further confirmed 
 in the belief of their mutual love by the plotters, who in their 
 conversation incidentally discover somewhat of that which 
 should be a secret to both. 'I know who loves him,' says 
 Claudio to Benedick, and Margaret rallies Beatrice stingingly 
 upon her admirer ; both must look upon this as a fresh con- 
 firmation of that which they think they have learned by slily 
 listening. She is now sick at heart ; she has dropped her wit 
 and Margaret brings it forward against her; she involuntarily 
 sighs her heigh ho ! after the man of her heart. Benedick, on 
 the other hand, becomes more silent ; he feigns tooth-ache in 
 order to escape the derision of his malicious friends ; he appears 
 on the scene in more careful attire, just as he had before 
 teasingly remarked of Claudio ; when they banter him upon his 
 brushed hat and his smeU of musk, they snatch away his hat 
 and handkerchief to examine them, while he stands comically 
 defenceless before the wit of the imsparing mockers, abandoned 
 to his just punishment. With all this change it would have 
 been difficult to the two lovers in the midst of their hostile 
 raiUery to have come to a serious explanation ; the concluding 
 scene itself proves this, after events have led to this explanation. 
 This is brought about by the heartless scene which Claudio 
 prepares for Hero in the church. The better nature of Beatrice 
 bursts forth to light amid this base ill-treatment. Her true 
 love for Hero, her deep conviction of her innocence, her anger 
 at the designed malice of her public dishonour, stir up her 
 whole soul and convert it into a perfect contrast to that which 
 we have seen in her hitherto. This scene possesses infinite 
 
MUCH ABO ASOUT NOTHING, 419 
 
 effect, when performed without the least caricature, displaying 
 these acutely sensitive natures in all their agitation of feeling, 
 yet without falling into a sentimental tone of which they are 
 incapable. Sorrow for Hero and for the honour of her house 
 makes Beatrice gentlcj^nder, and weakendd into tears ; this 
 ' happy hour ' facilit^s ttf both their serious confession. But 
 at the same time this hour of misfortune tests these beings, 
 accustomed as they are only to jest and raillery, by a heavy 
 trial, in the sustaining of which we are convinced that these 
 gifted natures are not devoid of that seriousness of life which 
 regards no earnest situation with frivolity. We should more 
 readily have imputed this gift to Claudio, but we find it existing 
 far more in the humorous couple who had not taken life so 
 lightly, and who had at least accustomed themselves to truth. 
 Beatrice places before Benedick the cruel choice between her 
 esteem and love and his connection with his friend. His great 
 confidence in her, and in her unshaken confidence in Hero, lead 
 him to make his difiBcult decision, in which he acts with vigour 
 and prudence, very differently to Claudio in his difficulties. 
 Beatrice, the untamed colt, learns at the same time how the 
 most masculine woman cannot dispense with assistance in certain 
 cases; she has moreover seen her Benedick in a position in 
 which he responds to her ideal of a man, in whom mirth and 
 seriousness should be justly blended. Even Schlegel considered 
 it well-conceived that Shakespeare, in order to prevent these 
 friends of iriirth from^ being confounded with jesters by pro- 
 fession, brought them to a point upon which they understood no 
 trifling. The whole course of this mischance, as it affected in 
 its results even this merry couple, possesses a striking analogy 
 with the close of Love's Labour's Lost. In that play Eosaline 
 tests the mocker Biron in consequence of the exhortation of 
 fate, in this play fate itself tests both and finds them prepared 
 for a serious course of life. Benedick goes off the stage with 
 a confession of his giddiness, but it is a giddiness overcome, and 
 we have no reason to be anxious either for the constancy or 
 peaceableness of this pair. The poet has bestowed upon them 
 two names of happy augury. 
 
 It is not every reader of the play who has thus regarded it. 
 Mrs. Jameson was inclined to stake little hope upon the domestic 
 peace of these warlike wooers ; Campbell went so far as to call 
 Beatrice an odious woman. We will not specially enter into an 
 examination of these expressions, but will only connect with 
 
 E E 2 
 
420 SECOND PESIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S LBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 them two general observations which will be here in place. 
 With respect to the value of Shakespeare's humorous characters 
 in themselves, we must not be led astray by the excellence and 
 readiness of their wit and intellectual powers, and draw any 
 conclusion from these as to their moral and general estimation 
 in the eye of the poet himself. We have already had too 
 frequent occasion to make this remark, for us to wish to dwell 
 upon it here. But for the comic characters throughout, it is 
 well, if once for all, we view them as a kind of society in which 
 Shakespeare has never introduced traits of a profound nature or 
 of powerful passions. Great and exalted virtues and heavy 
 ■crimes are in general excluded from this soil, unless in the plays 
 which, according to our distinction, we would rather call dramas 
 '{Schauspiele) than comedies, such as the Merchant of Venice, 
 Cymbeline, and Measure for Measure. In the comedies the 
 characters are disfigured and distinguished only by faults and 
 excellencies of a lighter kind, and the highest excellence 
 attached to the most, conspicuous personages is only of com- 
 parative value. The tragic struggle with vast passions, the 
 shock against the dark powers which guide the • destinies of 
 man, and deeds of unwonted sacrifice and strength of will, are 
 not here to be found ; they would destroy the character of the 
 ■comedy, which is levelled against the weaknesses of hutnan nature, 
 and which, therefore, moves in the usual track of- social inter- 
 course, among men of an ordinary mould. In this point of 
 view we are justified in seeing in Beatrice and Benedick more 
 Tcalistic natures, not to be compared, it must be admitted, with 
 Petruchio and Katharine, but on the other hand not even bear- 
 ing the ideal colouring of Eosalind and Orlando. In Shakes- 
 peare's spirit we must not despise this ruder realistic nature; 
 in his spirit also we must just as little overrate it. If with 
 regard to Beatrice and the women of this sort in Shakspeare 
 we would wish to fathom the poet's own estimation, after atten- 
 tive consideration we readily arrive at the conclusion that at 
 ■different periods of his life this varied perhaps with himself. 
 We have before drawn attention to the fact, that in the plays 
 belonging to Shakespeare's early period there is a remarkable 
 preponderance of bad women; the poet's own experience ap- 
 peared at that time to have inspired him with no advantageous 
 ■opinion of the female sex. In the second period another type 
 of female character prevails. We cannot mistake a certain 
 family resemblance between Silvia in the Two Grentlemen of 
 
MUCH ABO ABOUT NOTHING. 421 
 
 Verona, Eosaline and her companions, Portia and Nerissa,, 
 Eosalind and Beatrice. All of these possess in different degrees 
 that vein of wit which makes them mistresses of conversation, 
 and which, however modest thb heart may be, often permits the 
 tongue to speak immodestly ; they have almost all a preponder- 
 ating development of the understanding, of the intellectual 
 powers, often too of those of the will, a development which at 
 times seems to step heyond the limits of the feminine nature. 
 They have all more or less something of unwomanly forward- 
 ness in their nature, something of domineering superiority ; 
 and therefore the men in contact with them play more or less a 
 subordinate part, or at any rate have trouble in making them- 
 selves a match for the women of their choice. 
 
 Shakespeare must at that time in London, in the wider circle 
 of his acquaintance, and in his intercourse with the higher 
 classes, have become intimate with women who withdrew him 
 suddenly from his former ill-humour with the sex into a devoted 
 admiration of them. In his Tortia he has depicted an ideal of 
 womanhood, bordering on perfection, not to be surpassed by any 
 man in strength of will and self-mastery, in mind and circum- 
 spection. In his later works Shakespeare has rather dropped 
 this kind of feminine ideal. A still deeper intimacy with 
 woman's nature made him at last tarry with greater delight on 
 the feeling side of the womanly character, and with slight 
 touches he delineated those tender beings, who persevere rather 
 in the sphere of instinctive life which is assigned to the woman, 
 who avoid immodest words as well as actions, who are devoid of 
 intellectual superiority, but who possess, in the purity of their 
 feelings, a far more certain power than those former favourites 
 of Shakespeare exercised in their wit. In that earlier period 
 Shakespeare would hardly have expressed with emphasis, as in 
 Lear, that ' a voice ever soft, gentle, and low was an excellent 
 thing in woman.' He has indeed even at that period depicted 
 those characters of retired feminine modesty, a Bianca, a Hero, 
 and a Julia in the Two Grentlemen of Verona, but he kept them 
 much in the back-ground ; , his Juliet in Eomeo stands in a just 
 medium between the two classes of female characters which we 
 perceive in Shakespeare's plays. Subsequently, however, he 
 placed his Viola, Desdemona, Perdita, Ophelia, Cordelia and 
 Miranda,Jin the foreground of the scenes ; and that most charm- 
 ing of all, Imogen, whom he raised even above the highly 
 sustained ideal of Poi-tia. In this manner Shakespeare's know- 
 
422 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Jedge of the female sex became more and more refined, and his 
 female characters rise in inner value and in moral beauty in the 
 same degree as they lose outward brilliancy and intellectual 
 acuteness. But to which class of women Shakespeare adjudged 
 the higher value we may easily infer from the one fact that he 
 restricted the former to his comedies alone, and gave the pre* 
 ference to thg latter in his tragedies, in which the profoundest 
 side of human nature in both sexes first comes in question. 
 
TWELFTH-NIGHT; OE, WHAT YOU WILL. 
 
 'What you Will' was performed on February 2, 1602, as 
 we learn from the diary of the barrister Matmingham, who 
 assisted at the representation, and who was struck with the 
 similarity of the piece to Plautus' ' Mensechmi ' and the Italian 
 play GVInganmi. The sources which Shakespeare may have 
 had before him, are in the first place these very IngaTvm, a 
 comedy performed in 1547, and printed in 1582. Also Bandello's 
 tale (II. 36), ' The Twins,' and another Italian comedy several 
 times published, OV IngaTvnati (comBAia. degli Academici intro- 
 nati di Siena) which is an alteration of the ' Enganos ' of the 
 Spanish poet Lope de Eueda, a piece which more faithfully fol- 
 lows Bandello's novel. Besides these, in Bamaby Eich's ' Fare- 
 well to Military Profession,' 1581, there is a tale of ApoUonius 
 and Silla, which treats the same subject, namely the connection 
 of the four lovers. It is hard to say to which of these sources 
 Shakespeare is most indebted, as he in truth stands equally 
 remote from all ; so remote 'indeed, that we may leave the 
 connection of his comedy with them wholly unexamined. The 
 comic elements are entirely Shakespeare's own ; the love-affairs 
 are treated in those tales and comedies so superficially, so coarsely 
 and so dissimilarly in' every way, that the bare externals of the 
 plot can alone have afforded the poet a mere suggestion ; 
 namely the series of confusions between the duke who loves the 
 countess, and the countess who loves the page, and the page 
 -who loves the duke, until the brother of the page steps between, 
 and the difBculties vanish. Even in this circumstance, the 
 errors which arise from the similarity of the twins Sebastian and 
 Viola, and which call to mind the 'Mensechmi,' are Shakespeare's 
 addition. By this addition the scene acquires greater extent ; 
 it connbcts the main action with the occurrences between Sir 
 Toby and Sir Andrew, the intricacy and liveliness is increased, 
 and the wholly unexpected conclusion, the surprising and 
 
424 SECOND FEEIOD OT SHAKESPEABE'S DEAMATIO POETRY. 
 
 exciting catastrophe is gained by it, and this contrasts peculiarly 
 with the quiet issue of As you Like It. 
 
 However successfully the plot is woven out of these com- 
 plexities, no importance is laid upon it, as is the case in all 
 Shakespeare's more finished works. The progress of the poet 
 compared to the time when he executed the Comedy of Errors, 
 may be proved here by a tangible instance. That was truly a 
 comedy of intrigue ; in ' our discussion of the play we have 
 already indicated how inuch imnaturalness was comprehended in 
 this mere definition, and to how many improbabilities the writer 
 was exposed. Shakespeare has here avoided this. The simi- 
 larity of the twins pre-supposed, the possibility of the mistake 
 is accounted for by the fact that Viola has intentionally put on 
 the same dress as her brother ; the probability of the meeting 
 is a matter of course, as both, after they have suffered shipwreck, 
 would from their station and acquaintance seek safety at the 
 court of the inhospitable lUyria. The unnaturalness of the seeking 
 brother not being reminded at the first mistake of the one 
 sought, is here wholly avoided. As soon as at the first strange 
 meeting ,Antonio utters the name of Sebastian in the presence 
 of Viola, she conceives a hope of her brother's life, and guesses 
 the state of things, which she cannot at the moment explain. 
 But even by this the possibility of longer deception is cut oflf, 
 and the plot loses the significance which, would otherwise be 
 given to it. The matter in question in this play, as in all others, 
 is not the plot, the outward web of the action, but the actors 
 themselves and their nature and motives ; it is not the effect, 
 but the cause and the agencies. If we .examine these, the 
 resemblance of the story with that of the Comedy of Errors is 
 at once wholly lost sight of, and we discover rather an afSnity 
 between this piece and Love's Labour's Lost, where the 
 importance of the plot was so small, and so remarkable a stress 
 was laid upon the motives for action. 
 
 The narrative which lay next at hand for Shakespeare, 
 among the various sources above-mentioned, is that by Eich; 
 that the poet was acquainted with his book, is asserted also, by 
 the recent editor of it in the writings of the Shakespeai-e Society* 
 In the introduction to the tale of ApoUonius and Silla, a very 
 apt retiection is premised, and this may perhaps guide us to the 
 intention of our present play, and point out to us the leading- 
 idea upon which the poet worked. ' There is no child,' it there 
 .says, ' that is born into this wretched world, but before it 
 
TWELFTH-NIGHT; OS, WHAT YOU WILL. 425 
 
 doth suck the mother's milk it taketh first a sup of the cup of 
 
 error. In all other things, wherein we show ourselves to be 
 
 most drunken with this poisoned cup, it is in our actions of 
 
 love ; for the lover is so estranged from all that is right, and 
 
 wandereth so wide from the bounds of reason, that he is not able 
 
 to deem white from black, good from bad. . If a question might 
 
 be asked, what is the ground indeed of reasonable love, whereby 
 
 the knot is knit of true and perfect friendship, I think those 
 
 that be wise would answer — desert : for to love them that hate 
 
 us, to follow them that Qj from us, to fawn on them that frown 
 
 on IIS, to curry favour with them that disdain us, to be glad to 
 
 please them that care not how they offend us; who will not 
 
 confess this to be an erroneous love, neither grounded upon wit 
 
 nor reason ? Wherefore in this historic following, you shall see 
 
 Dame Error play her part with a leash of lovers, a male and two 
 
 females.' Here again in the sense of the passage which we 
 
 quoted before from Thomas Heywood, love in itself, love at any 
 
 rate without desert would be represented as a folly ; the lovers 
 
 would, as we say, have made fools of themselves, the Duke to 
 
 Olivia, Olivia to Viola, and Viola to the Duke, without meeting 
 
 with a return. But this again would be only an intrigue, a 
 
 love-affair, a situation, which in Shakespeare's eyes, in order to 
 
 have a poetic attraction, must first have a psychological foun^ 
 
 dation. His first enquiry was as to the kind of nature, both of 
 
 the beings and of the love, which could possibly and probably 
 
 have fallen into the foolish error of a hopeless passion ; to this 
 
 enquiry he found no sort of answer in his authorities ; the 
 
 answer, which he gave to it in his play, explains it to us on all 
 
 points ! 
 
 As in Love's Labour's Lost,, so in "What you Will, two 
 different strata of society are represented — characters of a more 
 refined organization, and caricatures in which the vices of human 
 nature grow as luxuriantly as weeds. Just as in Love's Labour's 
 Lost, taking our start from glaring sketches of this sort, we 
 more readily found the key to the less obvious characters of the 
 nobler personages, so is it also here; these chaiacters are 
 Shakespeare's addition, and precisely in them must he all the 
 more distinctly indicate the reason for which he added them, 
 and brought them to bear on the original part of the story. In 
 the centre of this lower group stands Malvblio. He is an austere 
 puritan ; his crossed garters point him out as such ; to hiTn 
 therefore the demand, required of him from the clown in his 
 
426 SECOND FEBIOD OF 8HAKESFEABE' B DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 character of parson, is doubly wicfeed, namely that he, should 
 hold the, opinions of Pythagoras on the transmigration of souls. 
 Pedantic, more than economical, conscientious and true, grave 
 and sober, he is a servant suitable to Olivia's melancholy bias, 
 to her moral severity, and to her maidenly reserve ; she prefers 
 him, and he ingratiates himself into her favour, he watches an 
 opportunity for punishing the rough youngsters, who make an 
 alehouse of his lady's palace ; he acts the talebearer and informer ; 
 his eye is everywhere ; he brings Fabian out of favour about a 
 bear-baiting ; the captain, who saved Viola, is scarcely landed, 
 when Malvolio has him apprehended on account of a quarrel. 
 He regards himself as far superior to the society in his mistress' 
 house ; he considers the wise men, who can be pleased with fools 
 and their jests no better than fools themselves ; he looks down 
 contemptuously on the 'shallow things,' Toby, Fabian, and Maria, 
 who persecute him with the bitterest malevolence on account of 
 his time-serving, his afifectation, and his assumed importance. 
 He is sick of self-love, so says the countess herself to him ; he 
 is the best persuaded of himself, and thinks himself ' crammed ' 
 with excellencies ; when the countess laughingly upbraids him 
 with his intolerable dress, he takes it fox serious praise. It is 
 his groimd of faith that all who look on him love him ; thus a 
 single word from the rogish Maria has already kindled in him 
 the idea that Olivia ' affects ' him. That she so strikingly rejects 
 the Duke is another proof to him that he is more congenial to 
 her melancholy humouTi Even before Maria places the letter 
 in his way, with which she means to make his imbounded self- 
 conceit a ' nay word,' he regards himself in the prospect of the 
 dignity of count, and loses himself in inflated fancies. After he 
 has read the letter, he doubts no longer that Olivia commands 
 him seriously tp ' cast his slough ' and to abandon his servile 
 nature. He now learns the letter by heart, and does literally 
 what it requires of him. He regards the happiness, into the 
 haven of which he thinks to steer in perfect, security, as the 
 direct work of the care of Jove for his highly important person, 
 when in fact only the ' shallow things,' whom he considered so 
 far beneath him, are making him run aground on the shoals of 
 his own self-conceit. Self-loVe is, therefore, in this comical 
 character also the distinguishing feature of his nature; it has 
 degenerated into that degree of self-conceit which fancies itself 
 able to master all, because it sees itself not only at the aim of 
 perfection, but also of the happiness which belongs to this per- 
 
TWELFTH-NIGHT; OB, WHAT YOU WILL. 427 
 
 fection. In MalvOlio, therefore, this self-conceit imagines a 
 ' desert,' without a shadow of reality having given cause for it, 
 and even without an emotion of his own love being called into 
 play. Like the false love of glory in those caricatures of 
 Holofernes and Armado, his self-conceit had instinctively grown 
 Tip to such a degree that it is unconscious of itself, that nothing 
 brings it to self-knowledge or improvement ; the follies and 
 caprices which spring up in him grow into gigantic size, whether 
 trampled down or nurtured. 
 
 The reverse to this caricature is the squire Sir Andrew. 
 
 He is a melancholy picture of what man would be without any 
 
 self-love, the source indeed of so many weaknesses. To this 
 
 straight-haired country squire, life consists only in eating and 
 
 drinking ; eating beef, he himself fears, has done harm to 
 
 his wit ; in fact he is stupid even to silliness, totally deprived 
 
 of all passion, and thus of all self-love or self-conceit. He 
 
 looks up to the awkward Sir Toby, as well as to the adroit fool, 
 
 as paragons of urbane manners, and seeks to copy their 
 
 phraseology ; he is the parrot and the utterly thoughtless echo 
 
 of Sir Toby ; he thinks to have everything, to be and to have 
 
 been all that Sir Toby was and had ; he repeats his words and 
 
 imitates him, without even understanding what he says. The 
 
 dissolute Sir Toby has brought him forward as a suitor for 
 
 Olivia, that he taay fleece him ; but the poor suitor himself 
 
 believes not in his success, and is ever on the point of departing. 
 
 He despairs of his manners, and the cold sweat stands on his 
 
 brow if his business is only with the chamber-maid. He 
 
 repeats indeed after Sir Toby that he too was adored once ; but 
 
 we see, while he says it, by the stupid face, that on tliis point 
 
 beyond any other he is totally without experience. He has 
 
 never been so conceited as to believe himself seriously regarded 
 
 by any ; his mistrust of himself is as great as his mistrust of 
 
 others is small. When Sir Toby seeks to persuade him and 
 
 others that he is a linguist, a courtier, a musician, a dancer, 
 
 and a fencerj, the desire seizes him for a moment perhaps, after 
 
 his corrupter has dragged him away to drink wine against his 
 
 will, to look a little at himself; but close behind this paroxysm 
 
 of feeble and trifling conceit there lurks ever a renouncing 
 
 of self and a contempt of all his gifts. Scarcely can poverty 
 
 of mind be more bluntly derided than when Sir Toby asks 
 
 him reproachfully if this is 'a world to hide virtues in!' 
 
 Justice Shallow in Henry IV. had at any rate a vein of bragging 
 
428 SECOND FEBIOD OF SHAKESFEABE'S BEAMATIC FOETSY. 
 
 ■which affects the lacking self-reliance ; but Sir Andrew is at 
 best to be compared with his cousin Slender, whose love of 
 bear-baiting he also shares. His apathy and cowardice are all 
 the more plainly brought to life from his quarrelsome dis- 
 position, and from the disputes into which he is led ;. if his 
 mentor Tobias had not done it, his courage would never 
 have urged him even against the maiden-like youth, Viola; 
 the utmost extent, of his boldness towards Malvolio is to send 
 him a challenge and then to break his word. Thus this pre- 
 cious man, to whom Sir Toby assigns not so much ' blood as 
 will clog the; foot of a flea,' is a hopeless and inconsolable wooer, 
 not like Malvolio from self-conceit, but rather from the entire 
 lack of all that can be called self-love or reciprocal love. Be- 
 tween them both, in a skilfully sketched, though rather remote 
 Contrast, the poet has placed Sir Toby, who cheats his friend 
 of his horses and ducats, whilst he decoys him with the pro- 
 spect of his niece's hand. A drunkard, a coarse realist of the 
 lowest sort, he yet possesses a slyness in seeing through the 
 weaknesses of men who do not lie beyond his range of vision ; 
 rough and awkward in his manners, he yet so far knows how 
 to assume the fashions of the town as to impose on Sir Andre-?*' ; 
 impudent enough to make an alehouse of Olivia's palace, and 
 to take no heed when she orders him to leave, he yet knows 
 how to keep on good footing with the servants of the house. 
 He has nothing of the high soaring vanity of Malvolio, but yet 
 he looks down with blunt pride not merely upon Sir Andrew and 
 Malvolio, but upon the clown and Olivia ; and he believes him- 
 self adored by Maria, the only one whose volubility gives him 
 the impression of superiority. However, his egotism manifests 
 itself in that dangerous manner in which Falstaff considered 
 inferior minds as his natural prey ; he avails himself of the 
 weaknesses of others, that he may play them deceitful or teas- 
 ing tricks. In this he is seconded and surpassed by Maria, 
 with whom he entangles himself in the common plot against 
 Malvolio ; cunningly and flatteringly she ensnares him ; and 
 the ready spider carries off the heavy fly as a prey, as her 
 husband. The one who, with his arrogance of rank, aspires 
 higher, forfeits his chimerical hope ; the other, who with rude 
 arrogance looks down upon his companions, is ensnared unex- 
 pectedly and almost without his will by a witty maiden far 
 below his own rank, who will try her cunning hereafter in 
 
TWELFTH-NIGHT; OB, WHAT YOU WILL.. 429 
 
 persuading him to better manners with better result during 
 their married life than before. 
 
 As in Love's Labour's Lost, the caricatures of the burlesque 
 part of the comedy are placed by the side of a series of cha- 
 racters in whom the same fault lies concealed^ which in those 
 caricatures shot forth like a wild growth of nature into ex- 
 travagant forms ; a fault, indiscernible outwardly from the veil 
 of refined cultivation, but in its nature not dissimilar from that 
 manifested in them ; so it is in this play. This same Olivia, 
 to whom Malvolio's thoughts soar in laughable fashion, attracts 
 also the eyes and the heart of the duke Orsino, a man who is 
 so endowed with personal pretensions and excellencies, that he 
 seems separated from Malvolio by a still greater distance than 
 the King of Navarre in the other play is from Armado. Olivia 
 herself, who turns coldly from him, considers him virtuous, 
 noblQ, of stainless youth, free, learned, valiant, gracious in 
 person, and of great estate. His mind, wholly filled with his 
 love for Olivia, seems stirred by deep sentiments of the most 
 sacred tenderness and truth. Sunk in melancholy, he avoids 
 all noisy society ; the chase and every other employment is a 
 burden to him ; ' unstaid , a,nd skittish ' in everything, he seems 
 prompted by the desire to compensate for this variability by 
 the firm constancy of his love. To nurture this love with the 
 most delicate and strongest aliments is his sole business ; he 
 courts therefore the solitude of nature, and surrounds himself 
 with music. He attracts the clown from the Countess' house, 
 that with his full-sounding voice he may sing to him songs of 
 hopeless unrequited love. A tender poetic soul, the Duke with 
 delicate feeling has made his favourite poetry the popular song 
 of the spinning-room, which is more exquisite and simple in 
 its touching power than aught that lyi-ic art has created in the 
 erotic style ; he revels even to satiety in the enjoyment of 
 these soft heart-felt tunes, which are like an echo to the heart. 
 This proneness to go to extremes in his love, in his melancholy, 
 and in all inclinations which are congenial to and in accordance 
 with his ruling passion, is expressed in all that the duke says 
 and does. His desires pursue him ' like fell and cruel homids ; ' 
 he loyes, in the words of his messenger, ' with adorations, withi 
 fertile tears, with groans, that thunder love, and with sighs 
 of fire.' He himself calls his love more noble than the world; 
 he compares it to the insatiable sea ; no other love, least of all 
 that of a woman, is like his ; he makes a show of it everywhere. 
 
430 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 by messengers, before musicians, and companions, and even 
 the sailors know the history of it. But this very inclination 
 to exaggeration induces us to look more closely into the 
 genuineness of this most geniune love. It almost seems as if 
 the Duke were more in love with his love, than with his 
 mistress ; as if like Eomeo with Eosalind he rather speculated 
 in thought over his fruitless passion, than felt it actually in 
 his heart ; as if his love were rather a production of his fancy 
 than a genuine feeling. It startles us, that just that which in a 
 paroxysm of self-loving commendation he said of his own love ' 
 compared to the love of woman, he himself contradicts in a 
 calm thoughtful moment, when he says to Viola that the 
 fancies of men are more giddy than women's are, more longing, 
 but yet more wavering, sooner lost and worn. Thus is it with 
 his own. To give an air of importance to their love, to pride 
 themselves and to presume upon it, is in truth the habit or 
 rather the bad habit of men. Viola tells him, what is just 
 his case, that men make more words about their love, that they- 
 say more, swear more, but their shows are more than will, for 
 they prove much in their vows, but little in their love. Olivia 
 must feel this throughout the urgent suit of the Duke ; she 
 calls his love heresy, and turns coldly away from his seeming 
 fervour. She sees him send to her, and she hears of his longing, 
 but she sees him not bestirring himself in his own cause. She 
 hears a claim advanced, but she finds no desert, imless it be 
 that of higher rank ; and it is this very superiority iu the Duke 
 Which she disdains. Must she not have remotely gathered 
 even from his messages the refined conceit of her princely 
 suitor, with which he presumes upon his love : ' it can give 
 no place, it can bide no denay.' Must she not despise this 
 very tone of rank, in which he bids Cesario tell her that he 
 prizes not a quantity of dirty lands and values not her fortune ? 
 Must not all this sound in her ears as if the Duke meant that 
 nothing might and could be lacking to him and his love, as if 
 he grounded his pretensions rather upon his princely rank than 
 tipon the high nature of his love ? In other instances she is 
 far removed from coldness and contempt ; something in the very 
 nature of the Duke must have provoked her proud disdain, and 
 we shall feel that he indeed gave her good cause for this. 
 
 That the aim and object of desire are missed by this self- 
 rieflection on love, by this melancholy tarrying upon an un- 
 defined yearning, by this too-tender nurture of a self-pleasing 
 
TWELFTH-NIGHT; OS. WHAT YOU WILL. 431 
 
 passion, and ty the languid inactivity YMch it produces, are 
 shown by Orsino's example ; and the poet has not neglected 
 to make this lesson still more forcible by a striking contrast. 
 The fool, no less than Olivia, has seen through the Duke's 
 disease, and he tells him of an excellent remedy, ' I would 
 have men of such constancy,' he says, ' put to sea, that their 
 business might be everything, and their intent everywhere ; for 
 that's it, that always makes a good voyage of nothing.' Thus, 
 those natures which, forgetful of all else, become absorbed in 
 one constant affection, he would drive into the very element of 
 adventure, that they might forget their ponderings upon one 
 intent, that in a natural course of life they might be delivered 
 from the hard service of one idol, that that freshness might be 
 restored to them which permits a man even in matters of love to 
 reach his aim more quickly and easily, while the weak votaries 
 of love forfeit their end. Shakespeare has illustrated this in the 
 young Sebastian. For he is just such a youth', free-hearted, un- 
 injured, and virgin-like, who, seeking adventures with his sister, 
 apparently without any definite object, undertook a voyage, suf- 
 fered shipwreck, and proved himself in the shipwreck a man of 
 courage and hope, a man provident in peril ; being cast ashore, 
 he laments for his sister with the utmost tenderness ; but, like 
 his sister, he quickly and practically embraces a plan for his 
 immediate future, appearing throughout quick in resolve, 
 vigorous, never weary, and free in mind and action. Inoffensive, 
 trusting to fortune and his good nature, he receives a purse 
 from his captain, without knowing how he is to repay it ; he 
 gives a liberal present out of it to be free from a troublesome 
 companion ; imexpectedly involved in an adventiure of the most 
 strange, most magic nature, he enters into it with deliberate 
 circumspection ; drawn into the quarrel of the squires, he at 
 one stroke gives back the blows due, and proves to Olivia that 
 he would know how to free her from her dissolute guests. The 
 charm exercised by a nature at once so fresh and so victorious, 
 Olivia is not alone to experience. The poet has taken care 
 that the instinctive feeling of the Countess should not be con- 
 strued into womanly weakness, for men of strong nature 
 entirely share it with her. The rough captain Antonio is 
 attracted to this youth by an equally blind impulse of pleasure 
 and love ; he loiters about him, in spite of the danger to which he 
 exposes himself in the adverse town; for his sake he takes 
 delight in this danger, and unrestrainedly bestows his love 
 
432 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKE8PEABE' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 upon him ; lie himself calls it a -witchcraft which drew him to 
 the joyous dexterous youth. 
 
 A feminine contrast to the Duke and his assuming self- 
 conceited love is presented in Viola's unpretending modest 
 nature, and her quiet reserved passion. From the testimony 
 of her brother she is accounted beautiful by all ; the Duke, too, 
 considers her lips ' smooth and rubious ' as Diana's, and her 
 soft clear maidenlike voice strikes him, when he sees her in 
 the page's dress. ' She bore a mind,' says Sebastian, ' which 
 envy could but call fair.' She is of her brother's harmless 
 nature ; enterprising even in misfortune, free and cheerful 
 in spirit, and quick in intelligence when the occasion demands 
 it ; but far more conspicious is the compass of her feeling and 
 the quiet modesty of her most womanly nature. When, wrecked 
 and impoverished, she is driven to the inhospitable shore of 
 lUyria, her first wish is to go to Olivia, in order that she might 
 withdraw from the world ; when this appears hard to compass, 
 she goes in man's attire to the Duke, whose name she has at 
 least heard in her father's house. Scarcely is she with him 
 than she wins the favour and full confidence of the tender- 
 hearted lover; she is commissioned with his messages to Olivia; 
 but she herself just as quickly conceives an affection for the 
 Duke ; she herself would be his wife, and she confesses it in 
 secret with one passing sigli. A serious hope of possessing 
 Tiim never occurs to her ; she delivers her- message with the 
 truest feeling of duty. At the contemptuous meeting which 
 befalls her in Olivia's house, she might think herself justified 
 in retiring, but she does not ; fronj. the strict command of her 
 master she even breaks a little through the barriers of, courtesy, 
 that she may be admitted to her presence. It is indeed her 
 wish and her interest to see the beloved of her lover face to 
 face. As soon as she perceives her beauty, the playful tone in 
 which she began her conversation sinks into impassioned ear- 
 nestness. She finds no sense in the denial of a love so suffering 
 as the Duke's ; she tells Olivia what she would do were she in 
 the Duke's place, to allow her no rest : — 
 
 Make me a willow- cabin at your gate, 
 
 And call upon my soul Within the house ; 
 
 Write loyal cantos of contemned love, 
 
 And sing them loud even in the dead of night ; 
 
 Halloo your name to the reverberate hills, 
 
 And make the babbling gossip of the air 
 
 Cry out ' Olivia r 
 
TWELFTH-NIGHT; OB, WHAT YOU WILL. 433 
 
 But it was just this which the Duke did not do towards 
 Olivia ; he caused songs to be sung and repeated, he made her 
 name known through report, he led a deathlike life in retire- 
 ment, but Olivia herself perceived nothing of a life in his love. 
 And just that which Viola would have done as a man and as a 
 lover, she herself did with respect to the Duke; not in that 
 degree of which she here speaks of the man, not in the noisy 
 manner which she assigns to men, not so urgent and aggressive, 
 but all the more hearty and tender in silent patience. Thus 
 she had indeed made her willow-cabin in the house where her 
 soul dwells, but she guards it with quiet resignation and with- 
 out pretension. The man who has no power over Olivia 
 captivates her heart more and more ; his words affect her who 
 hears them from him she knows very differently to the influence 
 of his messages over the distant Olivia ; moreover, he touched 
 her heart far more deeply from his hopeless position, which is 
 so analogous to her own. On the other hand, she steals gently, 
 though disguised as a boy, into the heart of the man ; in a 
 masterly manner she knows how to speak of the passion which 
 torments him, and his most subtle observations meet with 
 understanding and interpretation from her ; her true devotion 
 fascinates him all the more, the less he finds elsewhere a response 
 to his lively feelings. But at the same time she does all that 
 for her love which a woman of her nature in this position ever 
 can do. She might have gone so far in her sincerity as to 
 discover her sex to Olivia ; but to this heroism neither does her 
 nature prompt her, nor does she allow her love to reach it ; she 
 contents herself with leaving to fate the unravelment of the 
 knot. In the meanwhile she knows how to whisper to the- 
 Duke that she shall never love wife as she does him ; and in a 
 fortunate hour she tells him, in case the secret of her disguise 
 should ever come to light, the history of her humble adoration, 
 before which his love must stand deeply confounded. It may 
 sound as if she had designed this with premeditated cunning. 
 But it is not so. Orsino's words upon the premature fading 
 of women have moved and touched her in her inmost soul ; the 
 clown sings a deeply affecting song full of death longing ; and 
 then the Duke gives her his fresh commission with fresh ex- 
 pressions of the superabundance of his love. It is then that full 
 of emotion she tells him the history of a pretended sister, whose 
 life was a blank ; who never told her love, but let * conceal- 
 ment, like a worm i' the bud, feed on her damask cheek ; ' who 
 
 F F 
 
434 SECOND JPERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S BEAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 with pale melancholy sat ' like patience on a monument, smiling 
 at grief.' Say, she asks him, ' was not this love, indeed? ' and 
 then, overcome by her words, she )3ursts forth into tears and 
 goes. The issue of the affair needs no justification after this 
 scene, one of the finest that Shakespeare has written. When 
 Orsino at last goes personally to work, and is rejected by Olivia, 
 his shallow love for her turns suddenly into hate and jealousy ; 
 he wishes to sacrifice her favourite to his revenge, and the victim 
 offers herself readily to the knife. He now learns that Olivia 
 is married to this favourite, and his hate passes for. a moment 
 to Viola.* Now for a while this love-lacking heart is a blank ; 
 and then when suddenly matters are explained, the noble char 
 racters with which Viola has inscribed herself on this heart 
 stand forth in full splendour. The whole charm of this being 
 can be displayed by the actress in this last scene almost by 
 silent acting, while full of womanly shame she first struggles 
 against the confession of her disguise, and is then made happy 
 by the suit of the Duke, who has suddenly learnt from her 
 modest love and its language. 
 
 As the central point of the whole action, Olivia stands in a 
 less simple character among the three last sketched figures; 
 her relation to the self-loving trait in the Duke's character is 
 unusually skilfully and delicately woven. As we see her at the 
 very outset, we infer from her bearing that she is a woman of 
 unusual energy. She is mourning the death of her father and 
 brother ; for seven years she intends to go veiled, that she may 
 bear the last deceased in remembrance ; oppressed by melan- 
 choly, she laments in cloisterlike retirement, and has abjmred the 
 company of men. The power of feeling which induces such a 
 resolve, and the strength of character which trusts to itself to 
 carry it out, influence her whole nature. She is an august lady 
 of free and serious mind ; not of a humour to bear the jests of a 
 messenger, but thoroughly capable of thoughtfully receiving the 
 significant thrusts of her fool ; not sufficiently masculine to 
 dismiss with more than words the dissolute relatives who beset 
 her house, but carefully considerate of maintaining order by her 
 puritanical steward and of ruling over her house in a prudent 
 and sober manner. On her seal she bears the chaste Lucrece ; 
 she holds Malvolio in honour for the sake of his virtuous zeal ; 
 ' my mouse of virtue ' is the caressing term which the fool 
 confers upon her ; by various traits she sustains the severely 
 moral character which these qualities indicate ; she is an enemy 
 
TWELFTH-NIGHT; OB, WHAT YOU WILL. 435 
 
 to all fashionable dress, to all gloss within and without ; if Viola 
 calls herself her servant, she considers it ' lowly feigning.' This 
 austere virtue might seem to be a constitutional fault. The 
 manner in which she turns her back on the Duke's suit allows 
 us to infer pride, and even a hardness of character, arising from 
 icy coldness; both Orsino and Viola reproach her with this. 
 But in the bearing which she assumes towards the Duke, the 
 principles are still to be perceived which belong to such a 
 character. By her frosty refusal she requites the Duke for the 
 coldness which lies in his apparently ardent proposals ; to his 
 pride of rank she opposes an estimable pride of character, and, 
 as the main motive for her refusal, she seems to assert her 
 resolve never to marry above her rank ; not without grounds is 
 she averse to the Duke, for she has read his heart and finds his 
 love heresy. Nevertheless, in the manner of her rejection, there 
 is something as unjust in her just pride as in the manner of 
 Orsino's wooing ; the words which she speaks to the Duke per- 
 sonally, witness to an aversion expressed with cruel severity ; 
 she has never tried to know the Duke as Viola knows him ; the 
 latter cannot, therefore, understand her pride, and wishes her 
 the avenging requital of a similar contempt. This wish is 
 immediately realised through Viola herself and through the 
 ■evil enemy that lurks in Mr disguise ; Olivia's pride is to meet 
 with a similar fall as that of the Duke's through herself ; the 
 Duke, with his artificial passion, biassed by bis pride of rank, 
 loses his object ; Olivia, with her suddenly awakened affection, 
 which in its violence subdues all her pride of character, errs for 
 a time in her object. As soon as Viola from the depths of her 
 innermost experience has named the steps she would take were 
 she in Orsino's place, this love-breathing tone strikes fire at once 
 into Olivia's bereaved heart; the flame kindled in Viola is 
 transferred to her, she becomes suddenly restless and absent, 
 inquires after the servant's parentage, fixes her eyes steadfastly 
 upon him, sends him a ring, and invites him to come again. 
 That she is not haughty by nature comes here suddenly to light ; 
 that she is not cold is shown by this enkindled passion ; she is 
 even far removed from the tender, deeply feminine nature with 
 which Viola bears and conceals her love. Indeed, with the same 
 eagerness as that with which she had before expressed her aver- 
 sion to Orsino, she now pursues this awakening passion ; then 
 as now she is overpowered by one energetic feeling which she 
 actively follows out, far removed from bearing it patiently like 
 
 r F 2 
 
436 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEAEE'S DEAMATIC 'POETRY. 
 
 Viola. Like the latter she gives vent to a fatalistic expression, 
 as if she would suffer herself to be ruled by fate ; but at the same 
 moment, far more than Viola, she lends a hand to fate, by 
 sending the ring after the messenger. Viola succeeds in bearing 
 her love in painful secrecy, but Olivia is obliged to confess that 
 ' a murderous guilt shows not itself more soon than love that 
 would seem hid.' She passes from the one extreme of a some- 
 what intense melancholy and resignation to the other extreme 
 of ardent passion. That which the Duke had anticipated from 
 the fir^t becomes true : — 
 
 She that hath a heart of that fine frame, 
 To pay this debt of love but to a brother, 
 How will she love, when the rich golden shaft 
 Hath killed the flock of all affections else 
 That live in her. 
 
 Wit and understanding, virtue and honoxu:, pride and self- 
 reliance — nothing is able to master this passion in her. With 
 open eye and ear she might* have avoided the whole mistake of 
 thus losing her heart in the wrong place. Her moral nature 
 struggles with her love, and she inquires anxiously whether 
 Viola thinks disadvantageously of her honour. When she is 
 rejected, her pride rises on the side of her honour, her position, 
 and her understanding, which alike speak against her passion. 
 ' Why then, methinks,' she says, collecting herself, ' 'tis time to 
 smile again.' Up to this point we might believe that in her 
 love, as in the Duke's, somewhat of pride of rank was at work, 
 and that she wooed the lowly page regardlessly, sure of success, 
 as if she could not fail, and that she now draws back suddenly 
 cooled, as the Duke had done from her. But it is just here 
 that we perceive that her passion is of quite another metal to 
 that of the Duke. Even her pride, her last weapon against her 
 overpowering feeling, is blvmted ; she perceives her fault, but 
 headstrong it mocks reproof ; a fiend, she confesses, like Viola, 
 might bear her soul to hell ; she reads scorn in her countenance, 
 but she feels that it looks beautiful in her; she would even gain 
 the disdainful youth by bribery. We see indeed that if in her 
 bearing towards the Duke she displayed somewhat of his pride 
 in her character, she now, in her impetuous passion for a servant 
 whom she had scarcely known, developes somewhat of the bold 
 adventurous character of Sebastian, with whom the same good 
 fortune brings her into contact. ' Love sought is good,' she 
 says, 'but given unsought is better.' The latter, Sebastian 
 
TWELFTH-NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL. 437 
 
 meets with in her, and she also in Sebastian, although she was 
 conscious of having plainly sought it. It is indeed by a pure 
 chance, interrupting the hitherto strictly psychological course, 
 that she meets Sebastian, but the poet has excellently made use 
 of this in order to lead us to overlook the improbability of the 
 circumstance. She meets him in agitation, anger, and care for 
 his life ; she believes that he too, her imagined Cesario, is in 
 similar agitation ; the quarrel with the rough fellows, it must 
 seem to her, have called into play the more manly powerful 
 natm-e which she had not hitherto perceived in him ; all th^ 
 more must he now please her. She finds him who was before 
 so refractory now suddenly inclined, and this must be an intoxi- 
 cating joy to her. In her ' extracting frenzy,' as she herself 
 calls her condition, she forgets every other business, but never 
 her own dignity and her noble behaviour ; jealous and doubtful 
 in her soul, she chains her unexpectedly obtained favourite 
 indissolubly to herself in the bonds of marriage. From the 
 lack of restraint throughout the victorious career of her love, 
 she has yet to endure a moment of anxiety and shame, but the 
 spectator knows already that the palm of victory and happiness 
 is guaranteed to this bold passion, which has fully eradicated in 
 her all pride, even the pride of position, and that of rejection, 
 provoked by rejection. 
 
 There yet remain's to us to say a word upon the fool Feste, 
 to whom the poet has in this play assigned a very peculiar 
 position. He appears quite out of all the action, out of the 
 reach both of chance and of the passions which are at work 
 throughout the play. We could almost fancy that he was 
 brought into the different scenes only to act the witty enter- 
 tainer, or, as he calls himself, the corrupter of words, or indeed 
 that his part was designed for a favourite singer. It is striking 
 that in all the comedies which we have been now examining— 
 indeed in all Shakespeare's. plays of this period, in Henry VIII., 
 in Measure for Measure, in Hamlet, Othello, and Caesar — the 
 musical element appears. The Blackfriars company may about 
 this time have been in a fortunate connection with singers and 
 composers ; thus in Much Ado About Nothing, where a song is 
 put into Balthazar's mouth, and the folio edition of 1623 
 substitutes the name of the singer. Jack Wilson, for Balthazar, 
 Eimbault has endeavoured to prove that this singer was no other 
 than a well-known John WUson, subsequently Doctor of Music 
 at Oxford. Here also, the fool appears as a singer by profession. 
 
438 SECOND FERIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'8 BBAMATIC POETEY. 
 
 singing with equal skill love-songs of a merry and tragic nature, 
 comic jigs and heart-rending canons. With aU this he is a 
 careless cheerful fellow, troubling himself about nothing, placed 
 in the midst of the busy company, a wise fool among the foolish 
 wise. No other of ShaJsespeare's fools is so conscious of his 
 superiority as this one. He says it indeed too often, and he 
 shows stiE oftener that his foolish wisdom is in fact no folly, 
 that it is a mistake to call him a fool, that the cowl does not 
 make the monk, that , his brain is not so motley as his dressi. 
 ^he poet has not in this play brought the words and actions of 
 the fool into relation with the one main idea of the piece, but 
 he has opposed him rather to the separate characters in separate 
 expressions. It is in this play that that instructive passage 
 occurs, which designates the fool's difiS<;ult office as demanding 
 that he should ' observe their mood on whom he jests, the 
 quality of persons, and the time, and check at every feather 
 that comes before his eye ; ' this is exactly the part which 
 Shakespeare has made the fool here play^ He is fit for anything ; 
 he lives with each after his own fashion, knowing their weak- 
 nesses, considering their nature, carefully adapting himself to 
 the mood of" the moment. When anyone, Viola or the Duke, 
 wishes to speak with his mistress, he knows how to beg grace- 
 fully ; when he sings to the melancholy Duke, he refuses re- 
 compense ; he deprecates expressly the idea of his begging 
 being construed into covetousness. He boasts of being a good 
 steward, but in the dissolute society of the squires he is himself 
 also a little mad ; yet not so mad as to allow even their bloody 
 tricks to pass unpunished. He knows how to discrimina!te 
 between persons as well as between time and place. With 
 natural, fresh, free natures, such as Sebastian and Viola, he is 
 at once on a friendly footing. On the other hand he punishes 
 Malvolio for the contempt with which he speaks of him and his 
 profession ; he joins in playing him the trick- which is to cure 
 his self-conceit, and he tells him this with impressive warning, 
 in case of repetition. To Sir Andrew he talks glaring nonsense 
 which enchants him ; he knows that he passes for no fox with 
 the coarse Sir Toby, the more craftily and easily he watches 
 Maria, as she lays her bait to the churl of ' most weak ■pia 
 mater,' and he praises her as the inost witty of her sex, if she 
 can wean him from drinking. To his mistress Olivia he is 
 faithfully devoted, as one belonging to her house ; he condemns 
 the extravagance of her incipient melancholy ; he distinctly 
 
TWELFTH-NIGHT; OB, WHAT YOU WILL. ■ 439 
 
 designates the affair between her and the Duke as foolish ; he 
 promotes the connection with Viola and Sebastian. He keenly 
 penetrates the Duke's changeable disposition, and bitingly 
 although good-naturedly upbraids him with it ; at the same time 
 he tells him, as we have before mentioned, of a remedy which 
 exactly gives a key to the iuward condition of the lover's 
 character. If the fool be cleverly played, it can, therefore, be a 
 guide through the most important points of this comedy. 
 
 In common with the Merry Wives of Windsor and the 
 Taming of the Shrew, What You WUl is the purest and merriest 
 comedy which Shakespeare has written. In the Comedy of 
 Errors, in Love's Labour's Lost, in As You Like It, in Much Ado 
 About Nothing, tragic incidents interi-upt the course of comedy. 
 Here there is nothing of the kind ; even the sentimental and 
 at first somewhat elegiac connection between the lovers takes a 
 cheerful turn from the mistakes between Sebastian and Viola. 
 In this manner the burlesque part of the comedy becomes 
 conspicuous, reaching such an extent of excess and wantonness, 
 that even Fabian declared that the self-conceit of Malvolio, 
 represented on the theatre, would appear an improbable ia- 
 vention, and he calls the absurdity of Sir Andrew suitable to a 
 Carnival frolic. The piece, according to its title, was intended 
 for Twelfth Night, the eve which ushers in the Carnival, a 
 season in which at that day in England, as at the present time 
 with us, beanrkings were chosen by lot, merry court-scenes 
 were acted ia family circles, and masquerades for the purpose 
 were performed in the theatres. For a mad season such as 
 this, mad jests are here presented, as it were, for choice (What 
 You Will). And the piece in truth is constituted throughout to 
 make a strong impression of the maddest mirth. Eightly 
 conceived and acted by players who even iu caricature do not 
 miss the line of beauty, it has an incredible effect. The 
 Grermans, indeed,, in the representation of such plays, miss the 
 English tradition, and above all the ease of movement and the 
 absence of all artificial and affected histrionic action. In the 
 representation of the Shakespearian comedies on the English 
 stage, even at the present day, the most lively action prevails, 
 and every player appears as if in his simple easy natm-e. As no 
 prompter suggests, the actor is compelled to possess himself of 
 his part, so that, as it were, he lives rather than acts that which 
 he has to perform. The protraction of the answers, and the heavy 
 lengthening of light scenes which ought to pass on rapidly, are 
 
440 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 thus prevented ; the answer of the one addressed interrupts the 
 last word of the speaker ; the exit off the stage is so managed 
 that the speakers pass off with the last syllable ; with their 
 departure one scene changes and a new one begins ; the intervals 
 between the different acts last but a few minutes ; thus such a 
 piece passes quickly before us and carries us with it ; the exact 
 delineation of any single situation is nevertheless stamped deeply 
 on the mind. But for this even the subordinate parts must be 
 performed by clever actors ; the players must not be a second 
 idle ; all of them, even the mute persons, even the silent spec- 
 tators of the action, must suit the circumstances of the case, 
 according to the nature of every moment. But that which in 
 Germany almost always spoils the Shakespearian pieces, in addi- 
 tion to lack of refinement and psychological knowledge, is the 
 want in most actors of all natural and easy style. Their smooth, 
 soulless, declamatory manner, devoid of all inner life, is at once 
 fatal to these pieces, which should be performed in the tone of 
 perfect nature and with plenty of life. Neither the agitation 
 of the tragic, nor the emotion of the elegiad, nor the naive 
 seriousness of the burlesque parts of Shakespeare's works, are 
 obtained by our actors. To what' melting power and sweetness 
 ■may such scenes be raised as that in Much Ado About Nothing 
 where Balthazar sings, and that in Twelfth-Night where the 
 fool sings before Orsino ; these compositions being for the most 
 part from musicians of Handel's time or school, they often 
 entwine a bond of the sweetest harmony around the great com- 
 poser and our poet ; but few actors on our own stage, have an 
 idea of the tender deathlike attention which their effect can 
 produce. But, above all, no one would condescend to act the 
 ridiculous personages with such perfect devotion as to render 
 evident that each of these characters is just as much or even 
 more occupied with himself as the noblest creations of man 
 placed near them. Each actor in such parts throws just so 
 much irony in his acting as he thinks necessary to exhibit the 
 superiority of his wisdom over the foUy which he is to represent, 
 and sufficient to ruin his acting, his character, and the piece. 
 
IV. SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS. 
 
 We have reached the close of the second period of Shakespeare's 
 writings, and have surveyed the three-fold series of plays which 
 belong to it. An abundance of poetic reflections, and of moral 
 ideas and truths, meet us in these works, and have at all times 
 fascinated us ; but in the manner in which we have considered 
 and grouped them, they seem to bring the poet himself per- 
 sonally soniewhat nearer to us. We cannot have failed to per- 
 ceive that there was manifold harmony in the design that 
 originated these plays, and that here and there they were pene- 
 trated by the same ethical idea, however different were the 
 subjects. ' Several characters appeared to us as transcripts of the 
 poet's mind ; various opinions, truths, and situations, treated 
 .with especial emphasis, seem to remind us of the poet's own 
 experiences. We stated before, at the commencement of this 
 second period, that after a survey of the works belonging to it 
 we would return to the history of. Shakespeare's life, and search 
 if possibly we might discover a spiritual thread by which to 
 trace a connection between the poems and the poet's life. If 
 such a relation exists, it can alone be sought for in Shakespeare's 
 sonnets, for they are the only productions of the poet which 
 afford us an immediate glance into his own inward life. It is, 
 therefore, incumbent upon us, before we take a view of the 
 further fortunes of the poet's life, to cast a glance upon this 
 series of poems. 
 
 Shakespeare's sonnets are occasional poems, which were not 
 originally intended for publication. The first mention of them 
 is in Meres' 'Wits Treasury' in 1598. He designates them 
 entirely as private poems, calling them ' Shakespeare's sugred 
 Sonnets among his private friends,' over which 'the sweete 
 wittie soule of Ovid ' had passed. Immediately after this com- 
 mendation, and it' seems attracted by it, a bookseller named 
 W. Jaggard hunted out these sonnets, and published in 1599, 
 under the title of ' The Passionate Pilgrim,' a collection of 
 
442 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKE8FEABE' S DSJMATIC POETRY. 
 
 short miscellaneous poems, among which were some avowedly 
 by other poets ; a few sonnets out of Love's Labour's Lost were 
 inserted ; two others upon the theme of Venus and Adonis might 
 easily have been suggested by Shakespeare's poem on this 
 subject, and have been composed by another pen ; only two 
 sonnets of the series of ' private poems ' did the piratical pub- 
 lisher succeed in captiuring. We may conclude from this that 
 these poems were carefully kept secret ; perhaps, also, there 
 were no other sonnets of Shakespeare than the collection which 
 was subsequently published in a more complete form. They 
 appeared at the same time with the supplementary poem of ' The 
 Lover's Complaint,' 1609, under the title: 'Shakespeare's Son- 
 nets. Never before imprinted.' A mysterious obscurity sur- 
 rounds even now this manifestly legitimate edition. It has the 
 appearance of not being published by the poet himself. Con- 
 tr,ary to all custom, the publisher T. T. (Thomas Thorpe) wrote 
 a dedication to them, and this indeed to an unknown individual, 
 designated only by the initials Mr. W. H., whom he styles ' the 
 onlie begetter of, these sonnets,' and 'to whom he wishes 'all 
 happinesse and that eternitie promised by our ever-living poet.' 
 The sonnets of Shakespeare, from the mystery in which they 
 were veiled with respect to this ' begetter,' and from the ob- 
 scurity of their whole purport, have ever been a perplexity to 
 the interpreter and biographer ; and in the only clear and 
 distinct part of this purport, they have been a perplexity to the 
 admirers of the poet. The first 126 sonnets in the collection 
 are addressed to a friend ; the last 28, the contents of which we 
 have before characterised, bespeak that intercourse with a light- 
 minded woman which was an outrage to all who wished to see. 
 no defect in the poet. But even the greater part, it was here 
 and there believed, must be interpreted to the disadvantage of 
 the poet. With such blind prejudice were these poems long 
 read, that as late as Malone's time they all, even the first 126, 
 were believed to have been addressed to a woman ! And even 
 after it had happily been ascertained that they were intended 
 for a male friend, Chalmers came with his ' Apology for the 
 believers in the Shakespeare papers,' in 1797, and explained 
 that the person to whom they were addressed was Queen 
 Elizabeth 1 When at length it was established (a fact at the 
 outset impossible to be mistaken) that the sonnets were written 
 to a young friend, the enthusiastic and amorous style awakened 
 a severe suspicion, from which even other poets of the time 
 
SHAKESPEABE'S SONNETS. 443 
 
 were not free. It belonged to the superabundant style of this 
 Italian school of poetry, as it did to the complimentary cha- 
 racter of the age, that an unmeasured expression of flattery and 
 tenderness distinguished all writers of that day, and all clients 
 of noble art-patrons from Naples to London. Shakespeare, in 
 the dedication of his Lucrece to the Earl of Southampton, speaks 
 of the love without end ' which he devoted to him ; Ben Jonson 
 subscribes himself to Dr. Donne as his ' true lover ; ' Shakes- 
 peare also in his sonnets calls his favourite young friend his 
 ' lovely boy.' This was in harmony with the style of the age, 
 although the age itMf did not always thus regard it. Barnfield, 
 in his 'Passionate Shepherd' (1595), bewails in a series of son- 
 nets his love for a beautiful youth ; it was an innocent imitation 
 of one of Virgil's Eclogues ; but the same construction was put 
 upon it as upon Shakespeare's sonnets. On closer consideration 
 this revealed itself. But uncertainty still prevailed as to the 
 youth who won from Shakespeare such extraordinarily deep 
 affection or such shallow pompous flattery. It was of no use 
 for interpreters to suggest that the sonnets should be regarded 
 as if they were inerely addressed to a creature of the imagination, 
 as if they were fictions of the fancy, and as if they had been 
 written in the name of other friends ; they must indeed have 
 had scarcely a presentiment of the nature of this realistic poet 
 seriously to believe that he had used his pen thus dipped in his 
 own heart's blood in the hire of another, or that he could ever 
 with his free choice have suffered his art to depict so strange a 
 fiction as that most strange connection delineated in these son- 
 nets. For where the subjects are distinct, wherfe profound 
 reflections and feelings occupy the poet, what in all the world 
 could have induced him to utter these emotions of his soul in 
 the form of amorous outpourings to a friend, if such a friend 
 were not truly and bodily at his side, sharing his inner life ? 
 We are too much accustomed to see this form of sonnet only 
 employed in the idle play of forced fancy among spiritualistic 
 poets. But if the Shakespeare sonnets are really to be dis- 
 tinguished above others, they are so only because a warm life 
 lies within them, because actual circumstances of life appear 
 even under the pale colouring of this form of poetry, and because 
 the full pulsation of a deeply excited heart penetrates the thick 
 veil of poetic formalism. 
 
 It is clear that the sonnets are addressed only to one and the 
 same youth ; even the last twenty-eight sonnets to a woman relate 
 
444 SECOND FEEIOD OF SHAKESPEASE' 8 DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 from their purport to the one connection between Shakespeare and 
 his young friend; and Eegis, in his Grerman translations of the 
 sonnets, has justly perceived that these . should properly be 
 arranged with the sonnets 40-42. The sonnettist says himself 
 that he is continually expressing one old love in a new form. 
 The same caressing tone ever returns, even after it has been 
 interrupted by more serious subjects of discussion; the 'sweet 
 boy ' is the poet's bud and rose to the last. If we must even 
 admit, as has been often the case, that the sonnets originated at 
 great intervals of time^ the poet has himself told . us why he 
 continues even at a later period to ascribe in poetic fiction the 
 bloom of youth to his friend ; he would, he says in sonnet 108, 
 ' like prayers divine, each day say over the very same, counting 
 no old thing old ; ' his ' eternal love ' weighed not ' the dust and 
 injury of age.' To this ever-loved one Shakespeare assigns 
 beauty, birth, learning, and riches; from the most superficial 
 reading it is evident that he was a young man of high rank in 
 society, whose distance from the poet rendered it necessary that 
 their mutual relation should be concealed from the world. It 
 was evidently on account of this outward incongruity that the 
 sonnets, when they appeared, were neither dedicated by Shake-, 
 speare himself, nor was the name of the ' only begetter ' desig- 
 nated by the publisher ; indeed, we may admit with certainty 
 that the initials Mr. W. H. were intended to mislead. The 
 begetter, that is the person to whom the sonnets were addressed, 
 was evidently not of the middle class. Collier and others, 
 indeed, have understood by the ' begetter ' only the 'procurer 
 who collected the sonnets for the publisher, but the publisher 
 himself in tlie dedication plainly designates that ' begetter ' as 
 the very man to whom Shakespeare in the sonnets promised 
 immortality through his verse. This ' begetter ' is necessarily 
 the same man whom the 38th sonnet calls in a similar sense 
 ' the tenth muse ' and ' the argument ' which never suffers the 
 poet to want ' subject to invent ; ' the same man whom the 
 78th sonnet enjoins to be ' most proud ' of the poet's works, 
 because their ' influence is his, and born of him.' 
 
 That the man to whom the sonnets in the edition of 1609 
 are dedicated is therefore the man to whom they were addressed 
 is quite indubitable. We shall scarcely guess his name, however, 
 fr6m the initials Mr. W. H., by which the dedication designates 
 him, as they were evidently intended to deceive. They might 
 have very easily been addressed to a nobleman, although the 
 
SHAKEaPEASE'a S0NKET8. 445 
 
 begetter is here termed Mr. ; when Collier thinks that at that 
 time no one would have ventured thus familiarly to denominate 
 one of the nobility, he forgets that in accordance with the 
 contents of the sonnets, and with the nature of the connection, 
 this misleading was undoubtedly intentional, and rested on an 
 understanding with the noble lord. And thus the doubtful 
 begetter might even bear a name to which the initials W. H. 
 had no reference. If the darling of Shakespeare were, according 
 to Drake's supposition, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, 
 we might believe that the initials W. H. concealed and betrayed 
 just as much of the truth, as was intended by the dedication. 
 We are not, for this reason, inclined to favour Boaden's supposi- 
 tion ('On the Sonnets of Shakespeare,' 1837) that they were 
 intended for William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. It is true 
 that from the personal advantages, and from the position which 
 Pembroke occupied, he might well have been the Mend and 
 patron to whom Shakespeare would have dedicated such sonnets. 
 He was handsome enough for such praise, and great enough for 
 such distinction ; he was a protector of all learning ; himself a 
 scholar, himself a poet, he was universally beloved and respected ; 
 he was an especial patron of Shakespeare, and a friend to his 
 dramas, as may be seen from the dedication of the edition of 
 Shakespeare's works in 1623. But from the period and the 
 age of the Earl of Pembroke it is not possible that the sonnets 
 were addressed to him. He was born in 1580, consequently in 
 the year 1598, when Meres mentions the sonnets, he was eighteen 
 years old ; and it is not imaginable that Shakespeare would 
 have exhorted so urgently a young friend of this age to marry, 
 as he does in the first sonnets ; moreover, this would oblige us 
 to admit that these same first sonnets were not written before 
 1598, though it appears probable that they were produced some 
 years earlier. Boaden is therefore obliged to add to the one 
 improbable supposition a second, namely, that the sonnets 
 published in 1609 were not those mentioned by Meres ! But 
 he has here overlooked the fact that two of our sonnets were 
 printed by Jaggard as early as 1599, and that, if these were in 
 being, the whole series must also have been in existence, because, 
 taken apart from the collection, they have no meaning. Amid 
 these doubts. Collier despaired of coming to any opinion as to the 
 hero of these sonnets. But this appears to us to limit all 
 conjecture too much. Nathan Drake's supposition that the 
 Earl of Southampton was Shakespeare's youthful friend, the 
 
446 SECOND PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S JDEAMATIO POETBi. 
 
 object of such hearty affection and reverence, rests, in spite of 
 all opposition on the part of the English editor with his hostility 
 to conjecture, upon such sure grounds, that we must regard all 
 hypothesis in the light of a sin, if we do not adhere to this one. 
 The caution of the critic does not require that we should repu- 
 diate a supposition so extiaordinarily probable ; it requires alone 
 that we should not obstinately insist upon it and set it up as an 
 established certainty, but that we should lend a willing ear to 
 better and surer knowledge whenever it is offered. 
 
 The Earl of Southampton was born in the year 1573, and 
 ■from 1590 he resided in London. His mother's second husband 
 was the Lord Treasurer Sir Thomas Heneage, whose office 
 brought him into connection with the theatre ; this may have 
 given his step-son opportunity of gaining a taste for the works 
 of the stage and inclination to afford them protection. He was 
 early a patron and a passionate friend of the drama. In a 
 letter from Kowland White to Kobert Sidney (1599) it is said : 
 ' The Lord Southampton and Lord Eutland come not to the 
 court ; they pass away the time in London, merely in going to 
 plays every day.' At the same time he was early the patron of. 
 all scholars ; the excellent Chapman calls him in his Iliad ' the 
 choice of all our country's noblest spirits ; ' Nash, in speaking 
 of him, says : ' Incomprehensible is the height of his spirit, both 
 in heroical resolution and matters of conceit.' Beaumont asks, 
 who lives on England's stage and knows him not ? All poets 
 and writers vied with each other in dedicating their works to 
 him. Taking for granted that Shakespeare addressed his son- 
 nets to him, he says this himself in the 78th : — 
 
 So oft have I invoked thee for my Mu8e 
 And found such fair assistance in my verse, 
 As every alien pen has got my use 
 And under thee their poesy disperse. 
 
 Shakespeare himself, in 1593, dedicated to him his Venus and 
 Adonis, in a style of humble distance ; in the following year 
 his Lucrece appeared with a bolder dedication, which speaks 
 already of the ' love without end ' which he devotes to him, on 
 account of which the poet feels himself assured of a good recep- 
 tion for his little work, not from the worth of his ' untutored 
 lines,' but from ' the warrant ' which he has of the Earl's 
 honourable disposition. We have before conjectured that these 
 two descriptive poems of Shakespeare's, if they originated 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS. 447 
 
 earlier, were yet revised for publication at this time. The 
 character of the poetry, full of conceits and epigrams, is the 
 same as that which prevails in most of these sonnets. In the 
 53rd sonnet he says : — 
 
 Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit 
 Is poorly imitated after you ; 
 On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set, 
 And you in Grecian tires are painted new. 
 
 We should think this alludes directly to both poems ; the first 
 passage distinctly; the second almost more so. In Lucrece, 
 Shakespeare has mentioned Helen in the description of a picture, 
 and it is as if the retrospect had suggested to him the allusion 
 ' you in Grrecian tires are painted new.' The image of the coy 
 Adonis is closely connected with the substance of the first 17 
 sonnets, and the stanzas 27-29 of the poem are written 
 thoroughly in the style of these first sonnets. These are the 
 poems in which Shakespeare earnestly advises his young friend 
 to marry, that he may secure to the world a copy of his beauty 
 and excellence. In this same year, 1594r-5, which might easily 
 be the date of the commencement of the sonnets, judging from 
 the intimate connection between Southampton and Shakespeare 
 which the dedication of Lucrece betrays, the earl paid his 
 addresses to Elizabeth Vernon, a cousin of his friend the Earl of 
 Essex. The queen did not desire this union, and subsequently, 
 when in 1598 or 1599 they married without her knowledge, she 
 ordered both to be -placed in confinement ; this seems indeed to 
 indicate a position in which such an impressive admonition as that 
 which Shakespeare repeats in those first seventeen sonnets would 
 not be out of place. At that time Southampton was scarcely 
 twenty-two years old, an age young enough to admit of Shake- 
 speare's caressing expressions, ' sweet boy ' and others, and 
 advanced enough to allow of exhortations to marry. With, 
 respect to this connection between the earl and Shakespeare, a 
 notice is preserved which, if it were fully proved, would testify 
 the imusual nature of this union betweeti two men of unequal 
 birth, and this in such a manner as to explain to us the entire 
 devotion of our poet towards the youth. Eowe relates in his 
 life of Shakespeare, as a matter which would have been incredible 
 to him had it not rested on the authority of Sir William Dave- 
 nant, who was well acquainted with Shakespeare's affairs, that 
 Southampton once gave Shakespeare the sum of a thousand 
 
448 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S DEAMATIG POETRY. 
 
 pounds, a sum that according to the present value of money we 
 may estimate at five times as much, in order to enable him ' to 
 go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to.' 
 It was customary to reward dedications with gifts, but not with 
 gifts of such importance. It was at the very time of Shake- 
 speare's two dedications that the Blackfriars company began to 
 build the Grlobe on the Bankside. In consideration of the 
 interest which the earl took in all that concerned the stage, and 
 in consideration also of those dedications and of this under- 
 taking of his favourite company, Collier considers it not im- 
 probable that Southampton might have given this sum, partly 
 to reward Shakespeare, and partly to enable him to take a share 
 in the new building; indeed, there are no modern English 
 editors who do not show themselves as credulous of tradition in 
 this money-matter as we prefer to be in other matters which 
 throw light on the internal history of the poet's life. More- 
 over, it well agrees with this tradition that just at this time 
 Shakespeare's outward circumstances assimied a better ap- 
 pearance, and that he could assist his father's impoverished 
 family. At all events the connection which these relations 
 between the two parties indicate was a most unusual one, and 
 in those days especially was quite out of rule ; both Shake- 
 speare's personal contact with Southampton, as well as the 
 connection • to which the sonnets refer. That Shakespeare 
 should have made several such uncommon alliances is certainly 
 hard to believe. And it has, therefore, always appeared to me 
 incomprehensible why in England the identity of the object of 
 these sonnets with the Earl of Southampton should be an idea 
 so much opposed. For if ever a supposition bordered on 
 certainty, it is this. 
 
 It has been asserted, on the other hand, that no allusions to 
 the occurrences of Southampton's life were contained in the 
 sonnets. Here again it is forgotten that from the purport of 
 the sonnets themselves, and from the nature of the connection, 
 all that would too plainly refer to the earl must have been 
 omitted. But we have reason to believe that these sonnets 
 were altogether written before the Earl of Southampton had 
 had any adventures at all. His public life began in 1597, when 
 he made a short expedition to the Azores with the Earl of Essex. 
 In 1601 he took part in the conspiracy of the same nobleman, 
 his kinsman ; he was thrown into prison, and was only released 
 by the death of the queen. It is not quite impossible that 
 
8HAKE8PEABE'8 BONNETS. 449 
 
 more than one allusion to the expedition to the Azores is con- 
 tained in the sonnets; the whole group, from 43-61, speak 
 abundantly of an outward separation between the two friends, 
 which falls heavily upon the poet. But it is more probable 
 that these passages refer to a less important absence of his 
 friend, and that all the sonnets were written before 1597. 
 Everything combines in giving greater certainty to this date of 
 the sonnets than to the conjecture relating to the person of the 
 Earl of Southampton. We have said that Meres mentions the 
 sonnets ; we feel ourselves obliged to regard it as a fact that he 
 intended our sonnets, because he designates them as private, 
 poems amongst Shakespeare's friends, and because in 1599 two' 
 of the series were published, which lose their signification and 
 iniport apart from the rest. The sonnets thus originated prior 
 to 1598. As regards the question of time, the passage has been 
 always overlooked where, in one of the later sonnets, the poet 
 expressly says that three years had passed since first he had seen 
 his friend. If we assume that this was in 1593, in the year of 
 the dedication of Venus and Adonis, the latter poems must have 
 been written before 1597, for we believe that we shall be able 
 to prove presently that the sonnets in the first edition of 1609 
 are chronologically arranged according to an inner connection. 
 Collier and others say indeed that the sonnets were written at 
 very different periods, some in youth, some at a more advanced 
 age, that in some the poet speaks of his 'pupil pen,' in others 
 of his age. But this rests indeed upon the carelessness of the 
 readers. If we were to take seriously the poet's poetical exag- 
 gerations concerning his age', they would have no sense even if 
 the sonnets were first written in 1608 ; Shakespeare was then 
 forty-four years old. But incidentally — and this also is quite 
 overlooked — the poet speaks of his age in one of the two sonnets 
 printed in Jaggard's collection in 1599 ; he was then only a 
 few years past thirty ! These allusions to his age can thus only 
 be understood relatively, in comparison with the age of his 
 young friend. And even then no great difference appears to 
 exist. In the 81st sonnet he says : — 
 
 Or I shall live your epitaph to make, 
 
 Or you survive when I in earth am rotten. 
 
 This indicates no great difference of age ; but it agrees best 
 with the actual difference of nine years which existed between 
 Shakespeare and Southampton. It might be regarded purely 
 
 G a 
 
450 SEOOm) FERIOJ) OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 as a poetic license, when the sonnettist launches forth upon his 
 wrinkles and his autumn-time of life. Thus Eobert Greene, in his 
 'Farewell to Folly,' 1591, says also that age is approaching, and 
 he is speaking of his many years at a time when he was not 
 much past thirty. We will, however, not call it a mere poetic 
 freedom. For to a man active betimes, to a youth of fancy 
 who has accomplished much in his early years, who has lived 
 quickly and effectively, and who understands how to measure 
 the value of time, that moment will ever be a solemn one in 
 which he leaves the twenties, the spring-tide of his first fresh 
 youth, and approaches the turning point of that ' mezzo del 
 cammvn di nostra vita ; ' to him the first reflection upon thei 
 stealing advance of age will ever be more gloomy than to the 
 man who strives piatiently in the long routine of life's di£&- 
 culties, to whom the twenties are years of privation and of care. 
 In this first seriousness of age, in this sad retrospect at the 
 charming youth of his beloved friend, Shakespeare might well 
 say (sonnet 73) that for him the time had come, 
 
 When yellow leaves, or none, or few, 4o hang 
 Upon these boughs which shake against the cold. 
 Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 
 
 He might say this, and no one possessed of experience and fancy 
 would marvel, even if this sigh of tenderest melancholy should 
 come from the lips of a poet of thirty years of age. Internal 
 evidence may be added to the outward grounds which we have 
 advanced with regard to the exact date of the soimets. These 
 poems belong to the Italian period of Shakespeare's writings. 
 They are written at the time at which all the most famous col- 
 lections of sonnets by English poets appeared : Daniel's ' DeHa,' 
 1592, from which the form of the Shakespeare sonnets is 
 imitated; Constable's 'Diana,' 1594; Spenser's 'Amoretti,' 1595'; 
 Drayton's ' Idea's Mirror,' 1594, and others. We have seen above 
 how about this time Shakespeare's taste began to change, how 
 he bade adieu to the lyric forms of the south, how he drew 
 closer to the national Saxon taste, and how the simple songs of 
 the people henceforth supplied the lyric passages in his dramas 
 which in Love's Labour's Lost are occupied by sonnets. The 
 historical plays based on the national annals removed him still 
 more from the Eomanic taste. To anyone who has attentively 
 read Shakespeare's poetry in chronological order, it will appear 
 plainly impossible that he could have written a long series of 
 verses of this kind after 1598. 
 
SHAKESPEABE'a SONNETS. 451 
 
 We will now endeavour to follow the inner thread which 
 hinds together the sonnets of Shakespeare. In so doing we 
 shall not suffer ourselves to be misled by the adversaries to this 
 mode of explanation, some of whom must have read these poems 
 without any attention or imagination, and who have in con- 
 sequence interpreted this interpretation as if the sonnets were 
 regarded as an originally connected whole, as a rhyming chronicle 
 intentionally delineating a section of the poet's life. Others 
 already have perceived before us (Armitage Brown, ' Shake- 
 speare's Autobiographical Poems,' 1838) that these poems are 
 divided into different groups, each of which touches on a dis- 
 tinct subject; but in the separation and characterisation of 
 these groups we do not wholly coincide with Brown's views. All 
 these groups form together a single whole, a history of the 
 poet's inner life, following an exact psychological course full of 
 nature and truth ; the sonnets are chronologically arranged in 
 order to unroll this course before us. What renders the dis- 
 tinction between these groups difficult, and may easily mislead 
 the reader into denying a distinction at all, is the interruption of 
 the sonnets relating to stated circumstances by some of an 
 entirely general character, which proclaim with great uni- 
 formity the praise of the friend. These vague songs of praise 
 are scattered throughout the whole collection, veiUng the real 
 purport of the rest, that is of the true occasional poems. The 
 -sonnets were of course written singly, and the greater part 
 would naturally belong to those universal poems of homage 
 which expressed the constant relation between the friends, and 
 which, from their purport, did not belong to any fixed condition 
 or period. The poet, in arranging them for the press,' would hardly 
 accurately observe to what time they belonged ; he could not 
 place them monotonously together ; he would be obliged to 
 distribute them among the groups which exhibit the touching 
 iistory of the connection. If we do not suffer ourselves to be 
 disturbed by the insertion of these insignificant pieces, we shall 
 find the history of that inner life distinct and expressive. One 
 thing more, moreover, must not mislead us ; this is the form of 
 the sonnet itself, and that which is incidental to it. This style 
 of poetry has frequently been attacked, aftd it has often 'been 
 defended. If we would seek for cutting weapons of attack, we 
 may find them in Shakespeare's sonnets. What a living picture 
 would our poet; have left behind if, when prompted by his love, 
 he had sung the union of soul with his sweet youth in the free 
 
 a G 2 
 
452 SECOND PESIOS OF SHAKESFEASE'S VBAMATIG POETBY. 
 
 forms suggested by the moment and by the nature of the cir- 
 cumstances ! But as he moulded all into this one angular form, 
 which admits of no distinctness and which spreads a dim mist 
 over each tangible meaning, We can readily understand how it 
 was that for so long a time the bare actual circumstances could 
 be misunderstood or overlooked. This one drawback is fol- 
 lowed by another, arising equally naturally from the style. 
 The want of reality in these indistinct poems was to be supplied 
 by poetic brilliancy ; the relation between the means and the 
 object, between cause and effect disappears ; far-fetched thoughts,, 
 strange exaggerated images, and hyperbolic phrases, mislead the 
 understanding ; profound conceits and epigrammatic fancies, 
 sparkling for their own sake, cast the subject in question on 
 this very account into th^ shade. This intensely poetic lan- 
 guage does not prevent even the repetition of matter and ex- 
 pression in the same monotonous form, so that the tautology 
 is constant. And as in Lucrece the poet involuntarily ex- 
 perienced surprise at the peculiarities of that conceit-style of 
 ■ the Marinists, here also intbemidst of his work he acknowledges 
 (sonnet 76) that his verse is ' barren of new pride, so far from 
 variation or quick change,' that he writes ' all one, ever the 
 same,' and keeps his ' invention in a noted weed.' In this weed 
 it is not easy to recognise the true and real purport ; tact and 
 comparison must teach us not to accept it all too much as 
 simple truth, and yet also not unthinkingly to lose the certain ' 
 meaning. 
 
 We are of opinion, with Cunningham and others, that the 
 sonnets of our poet, aesthetically considered, have been over- 
 estimated. With respect to their psychological tenor, they 
 appear to us, with the total lack of all other sources for th& 
 history of Shakespeare's inner life, to be of inestimable value. 
 They exhibit the poet to us just in the most interesting period 
 of his mental development, when he passed from dependent to 
 independent art, from foreign to national taste, from sub- 
 serviency and distress to prosperity and happiness ; aye, even 
 from loose morality to inner reformation. And in addition to 
 the gigantic, scarcely comprehensible picture of his mental 
 development, which is presented to us in his dramas of thi& 
 period, we here receive a small intelligible painting of his inner 
 life, which brings us more closely to the poet himself. We 
 live with him throughout an intercourse which was probably 
 one of the greatest events in the calm routine of his existence ; 
 
SHAKEaPEASE'8 SONNEW. 453 
 
 T7e read the touching story of a full, feeling, and warm heart, a 
 story that no one can contemplate without deep emotion ; we 
 perceive the gentle undulation and the stronger current of an 
 -aspiring passion ebbing and flowing, the psychological story of 
 which we can follow in all its depth. We have before learned 
 that Shakespeare was not happy in his married life. The void 
 which would thus be left in his heart seemed to be entirely 
 filled when he received the love of the noble youth, who from 
 his high position extended his helpful hand to him in his low- 
 liness and poverty, and perhaps first cast a higher intellectual 
 light into an outwardly joyless existence. Truly the develop- 
 ment of this connection of the poet with his ' fair friend ' is the 
 detail of a strong passion, violent even to suffering, such as a 
 man generally feels only for a woman. In England no one 
 ■until now has felt any sympathy in this history of the poet's 
 ieart. Great care has been taken to discover, from a hundred 
 scattered notices, how much the poet was ' worth ' at the dif- 
 ferent periods of his life, but no one with true devotion has 
 studied these sources connected with the history of his heart. 
 Perhaps for this a more youthful people is required, a people 
 siich as the G-erman, whose hearts are not yet hardened by 
 ■exclusive attention to politics and common interests. Nay, the 
 whole secret of our deep interest in Shakespeare seems to rest in 
 this — that the degree of development and culture of our na;tion 
 at the present day is nearly the same as that of England in 
 Shakespeare's time, and that advantageously for us this great 
 poet hafe not come upon us unawares, as was the case with 
 England, but that since the period of his appearance, by the 
 nurture of ppetry through two hundred years, the soil with us 
 has been slowly and thoroughly prepared for him. 
 
 We will now pass finally to the- analysis of the separate 
 groups of our sonnet series, and following the given arrangement 
 of the poems, we will relate the history of the connection be- 
 tween the two friends. 
 
 Sonnets 1-17. The first seventeen sonnets urge upon the 
 ' tender churl ' in a fotcible and even importunate manner to 
 marry ; they call him ' the world's fresh ornament,' the ' only 
 herald to the gaudy spring,' on whom it is enjoined as a duty to 
 leave behind a new impress of the beautiful seal, carved by 
 natm-e as a ■ copy ; and in this series we may admire the rich 
 invention of images with which the poet varies a theme so 
 simple. From the 14th sonnet the subject passes gradually 
 
454 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEABW S DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 into the more general praise of the beauty and truth of his 
 young friend ; yet in sonnet 17 he says, in pursuance of his' 
 former theme, 
 
 Who will believe my verse in time to come, 
 If it were flll'd witli your most high deserts ? 
 But were some child of yours alive that time, 
 You should live twice ; in it, and in my rhyme. 
 
 Nevertheless, continues sonnet 18, abandoning this theme, 'thy 
 eternal summer shall not fade.' The praise of his friend was; 
 carried to a great height in these first sonnets ; farther on the 
 poet recollects, as it were, that he wiU not continue in this 
 exaggerated style; he will not imitate that Muse (Drayton). 
 ' stirr'd by a painted beauty to his verse ; ' he wiU. not take all 
 his ornaments &om heaven, from sun and moon, from ' earth 
 and sea's rich gems,' from ' April's first-born flowers,' and from 
 all the rare things that ' heaven's air in this huge rondure 
 hems ; ' he will write truly as he loves ; he will Jiot weaken his 
 own heart with abundance (sonnet 23) ; rather, 'for fear of trust," 
 he will ' forget to say the perfect ceremony of love's rite ; ' and 
 Ms friend shall ' learn to read what silent love hath writ.' In 
 fact, in the following group, the elaborate form of the first series 
 is interrupted by the expression of the most lively sentiments, 
 while their theme is no longer of so superficial a character as 
 that of the earlier ones,, but is drawn from thesotJ of the poet. 
 Sonnets 18-40; The subject which links together thei second 
 series is the inequality of the jposition of the two friends. The 
 history of their close connection begins here, for the first seven- 
 teen sonnets might have been written from a distance. We 
 here plainly perceive the devotion with which the young noble- 
 man surrendered himself to the poet so superior in mind, and 
 with which the poet returns this condescending friendship, by 
 turns exhibiting modesty and self-confidence, reserve and fami- 
 liarity. He must confess (sonnet 36) that 
 
 we two must be twain, 
 Although our undivided loves are one : 
 So shall those blots that do with me remain, 
 Without thy help by me be borne alone. 
 In our two loves there is but one respect, 
 Though in our lives a separable spite, 
 Which though it alter not love's sole effect, 
 Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight. 
 
 He may not evermore acknowledge his friend, nor may he with 
 public kindness honour him, lest he take from his name that 
 
SHAKESPEABE'8 SONNETS. 455 
 
 honour which he would give to his friend. ' But do not so ; ' 
 cries the friend-poet, 
 
 I love thee in such sort, 
 As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report* 
 
 The poet will in this manner take care of his honour. Thus 
 subsequently he desires that his friend (sonnet 71) should not 
 liiourn for him when he is dead, but let his love decay even with 
 his life, lest, as he says. 
 
 The wise world should look into your moan, 
 And mock you with me after I am gone. 
 
 The poet has many departed friends to deplore, but the one new 
 friend compensates for all. Yet the sense of the cleft which 
 separates them both torments him throughout, and his humility 
 suffers him not to continue in his self-reliance. If in one place, 
 elevated by the honouring friendship, he declares his readiness 
 to resign all dignities of rank, elsewhere he longs after a more 
 honourable position that he may be more worthy of his friend. 
 The contentment expressed in sonnet 25, where he willingly 
 renounces honour and title for the place where he ' may not 
 remove, nor be removed,' is at variance with his desire elsewhere 
 (sonnet 26) for a favourable star, which ' puts apparel on his 
 tattered loving, to show him worthy,' that he may dare to boast 
 how he loves his friend ; till then he will not show his head 
 where he may be proved. This double condition of feeling is 
 expressed by the 29th sonnet in the most poetic and deeply 
 affecting manner : — 
 
 "When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 
 
 I all alone beweep my out-cast state, 
 
 And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, 
 
 And look upon myself, and curse my fate, 
 
 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
 
 Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd. 
 
 Desiring this man's art and that man's scope. 
 
 With what I most enjoy contented least ; 
 
 Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 
 
 Haply I think on thee, and then my state. 
 
 Like to the lark at break of day arising . 
 
 From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate ; 
 For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings, 
 That then I scorn to change my state with longs. 
 
 Sonnets 40-42. The three following sonnets, in which the 
 poet complains of the robbery of his love, have been already 
 
456 SECOND PERIOD OF 8HAKE8PEABE' S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 anticipated by sonnets 33-35 ; in the former group the con- 
 nection is introduced and defended in a roundabout way, which 
 the poet himself designates as a fault. The sonnets 40-42 
 gently reproach the young friend for his robbery of a beloved 
 one, for whom, according to the whole tone, the poet cares but 
 little ; whom his friend on his side also, as it seems, despises, and 
 apparently withdraws from only in wanton raillery. The son- 
 nets 133 and 134 make it clear that the same woman is here 
 intended as the one to whom the last group of sonnets, pre- 
 viously discussed, was addressed. This group ought to have been 
 introduced here as an episode, although it was certainly expedient 
 to remove it, in order not to interrupt the development of the 
 connection between the two friends. The wantonness which is 
 aEuded to indicates, in a new and no very edifying manner, how 
 closely the two friends were now united. The rich man takes 
 from the poor friend his one lamb, blemished as it might be ; 
 he forgives it in his compliant position, he finds that in the 
 ' lascivious grace ' of the youth, ' all iU well shows,' and that 
 these ' pretty wrongs ' befit his years, which are ever exposed 
 to temptation. 
 
 Sonnets 43-61. Tbe following series, as far as the 61st 
 sonnet, were written during the absence of his young friend ; 
 they were temporarily separated ; a ' sad interim 'is bewailed, 
 though it does not ' kill the spirit of love with a perpetual 
 dulness.' Even when the single poems do not speak plainly of 
 this theme, they yet have reference to it. It is begun in sonnets 
 43-45 ; in sonnet 46 it seems to be lost sight of, but the 47th 
 sonnet refers both poems again to the principal theme. Thus 
 subsequently the sonnets 53-55 appear to deviate, but the 
 56th sonnet unites the" little series again to the main subject, 
 the absence of the friend. The whole tone of these poems 
 expresses longing after the absent one ; the friendship is 
 strangely mingled with a jealousy which throughout gives it a 
 painful sting ; it is as if the poet strove more earnestly in the 
 separation to preserve the favour of his friend. How natural 
 is it that just in this time of absence the thought should tor- 
 ment him, whether the man of high position, accustomed from 
 early youth to the happy principles of equality, might not some 
 day wholly alienate himself from him. In this presentiment of 
 a bare possibility, a timid half-expressed self-reliance on his 
 own desert struggles with the devotion of the moment while he 
 
SHAKESFEARE'B SONNETS. 457 
 
 yet possesses his friend. The 49th sonnet is in this respect full 
 of expression : — 
 
 Againsti that time, if ever that time come, 
 When I shall see thee frown on my defects, 
 When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum, 
 Call'd to that audit by advised respects ; 
 Against that time, when thou shalt strangely pass 
 And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye ; 
 When loVe, converted from the thing it was. 
 Shall reasons iind of settled gravity ; 
 Against that time do I ensconce me here 
 Within the knowledge of mine own desert, 
 And this my hand against myself uprear, 
 To guard the lawful reasons on thy part : 
 
 To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws. 
 
 Since why to love I can allege no cause. 
 
 Sonnets 62-77. The serious mood, which has before over- 
 come the poet, gains stiU more ground. The formerly often 
 playful tone ceases ; another period begins ; events seem to He 
 between this and the earlier parts. The poet speaks much and 
 often of his age, thoughts of decay and of the frailty of all things 
 occupy his mind, and the glance he casts upon the eternity of 
 his poetry seems but little to divert him. In sonnet 73, the 
 presentiment of an early death appears ; even the idea of his 
 favourite's futm-e age now torments him. A longing after death 
 seizes him when he looks upon the evils of society generally, or 
 upon those more closely connected with himself — evils that 
 , abound in the republic of letters. A disgust, which he often 
 expresses in his dramas, takes possession of him when he obr 
 serves the falsehood of the world, borrowing beauty from paint 
 and plaited hair ; the vitiated age, when beauty no longer ' lived 
 and died as flowers do now,' when 
 
 the golden tresses of the dead, 
 The right of sepulchres, wete shorn away. 
 To live a second life on second head. 
 
 As years advance he sees this abhorred world entered by his 
 young friend, whom for a delicious moment he had along 
 possessed ; he sees hina fallen into bad company ; they slander 
 the beauty of his mind according to the outward appearance ; 
 to his fair flower they add ' the rank smell of weeds.'. Whilst 
 he protects him from every suspicion, he blames him gently, 
 because this contradiction between his true desert and its ' show ' 
 is his own fault, as he does ' common grow.' The dawning 
 
458 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESFEABE' 8 DSAMATIC FOETSY. 
 
 jealousy of the favourite, whom now other society also claims, 
 conceals itself under the veil of moral carefulness. It lies in 
 the nature of this passion,, that where it once has taken root it 
 is difficult to eradicate it. It binds the poet more and more 
 within its fetters; we may observe the finest marks of its 
 increase and indication in our poetic documents. He writes in 
 sonnet 70 : — 
 
 Slander's mark was ever yet the fair. 
 So thou be good, slander doth' but approve 
 Thy worth the greater, being woo'd of time. 
 For canker vice the sweetest jDuds doth love, 
 And thou present'st a pure unstained prime. 
 Thou hast pass'd by the ambush of young days. 
 Either not assail'd or victor being charged. 
 
 This praise, in which may lie so many reasons for delight, 
 should be read in connection with the remaining poems, in order 
 that we may feel the painful tone in which it is uttered. And 
 with this we must also compare the joyful wantonness with 
 which, in the former untroubled days, the most opposite re- 
 proaches had been made ! Here he says so sadly that his friend 
 is ' not assailed' or not won, and before he spoke so playfully in 
 those favourite lines which we have already read in Titus and 
 Henry VI. :— 
 
 Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won, 
 Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail'd. 
 
 Here how discontented : ' he has passed the ambush ; ' there, so 
 contented : ' temptation follows him, and the pretty wrongs 
 befit him well.' A greater austerity, it must be admitted, ap- 
 pears in these later sonnets, and in such a manner as allows us 
 to infer a change of mind in the poet ; yet we hear in them stiU 
 more plainly the voice of jealousy, which grudges to the world 
 and its judgment both his friend's virtues and faults. Now he 
 wishes that the world could once see his pleasmre, and then he 
 counts it best to be alone with his friend ; now he is ' proud as- 
 an enjoyer,' and anon doubting ' the filching age will steal his 
 treasure.' We feel throughout that the social relations of the 
 young nobleman change and expand, that he steps beyond the 
 exclusive possession of the poet. The way is prepared for the 
 following group, in which the noble patron of art appears more 
 decidedly surrounded by other poets and literary clients. 
 
 Sonnets 78-86. There was a time when our poet alone 
 called upon the aid of the kind patron, and when his verse 
 
SHAKESPEASE'S SONNETS. 459> 
 
 alone ' had all his gentle grace ; ' but now he laments that hisr 
 ' gracious numbers are decayed,' and that his ' sick muse doth 
 give another place.' Alien pens had got his use, and under his 
 patron's name dispersed their poesy. He grants that his friend 
 was never 'married to his muse,' but it grieves him. He 
 ventures not to reproach his friend that he shoxxld receive the 
 ' dedicated words ' of other writers, especially when he finds his 
 worth ' a limit past ' the praise our poet had bestowed upon him, 
 and therefore ' enforced to seek anew some fresher stamp of the 
 time-bettering days.' Yet he commends to him his simple^ 
 ' true, plain words,' which would retain their value by the sid& 
 of the strained rhetoric of the other. Nay, he arms himself 
 with his proudest self-reliance, and tells his friend. 
 
 Your monument shall be my gentle verse, 
 Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read ; 
 And tongues to he your being shall rehearse 
 When all the breathers of this world are dead. 
 
 But this self-reliance endures not the jealous emotions in the' 
 poet's heart ; . there is no passion which so completely casts 
 down proud self-confidence as a jealousy not entirely hope- 
 less, and springing from true loye. As he says in the 80th son- 
 net, 
 
 O, how I faint when I of you do write, 
 Knowing a better spirit doth use your name. 
 And in the praise thereof spends all his might, 
 ■ To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame ! 
 
 The modest man, as if he must still hold in honour the choice 
 of his friend, painful as it is to him, calls himself ' a worthless 
 boat ' compared to the proud, ' taU building ' of the new favourite^ 
 And who was Drayton, whom some imagine to have been this 
 favoured one, or indeed Dee, whom others find in him I And 
 yet it cast him down to see the approbation of his beloved be- 
 stowed upon another, and he ' inhearsed ' his ripe thoughts in 
 his brain, ' making their tomb the womb wherein they grew.' 
 His self-reliance whispers to him yet again that he has nothing 
 to fear from the proud full sail of his adversary, nor in ' that 
 affable familiar ghost, which nightly gulls him with intel- 
 ligence ; ' fear of him makes him neither dumb nor sick, only 
 when his friend's favour prospered the verse of his rival, theui 
 lacked he matter, and his own verse became enfeebled. 
 
 Sonnet 87-95. That feeling of estrangement, which in 
 this increasing jealousy we have seen taking possession of the- 
 
460 SECOND PERIOD OF SSAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 poet's heart, appears consummated in the next epoch of the 
 development of this union of the friends, and is coupled with 
 the deepest, most touching grief. Still the value of this love 
 stands to him high above everything , but the fear that his 
 darling may suddenly wholly withdraw from him has grown to 
 a certainty. The remembrance of the difference of his friend's 
 rank rises again in the poet's soul with a bitter warning. Once, 
 when he had described this union with his friend, it had been 
 with joyful confidence, even when concealed under elegiac 
 laments ; now it is with tragic despondency. He had once ex- 
 pressed (sonnet 49) that he had no ground, no right, no claim 
 upon his love, but be did this so calmly, because himself 
 incredulous ; he had exhibited only, as a poetic fancy the case 
 which now is at hand as a reality. Notwithstanding,, he is so 
 kind, so ready for resignation, that he permits his friend to add 
 to his self-known unworthiness even invented faullts, which can 
 justify him in forsaking him. As soon as he knows his will, he 
 will ' acquaintance strangle, and look strange,' he will be absent 
 from his walks, and will banish from his tongue his sweet be- 
 loved name : ' lest he (too much profane) should do it wrong, 
 and haply of their old acquaintance tell.' In the 87th sonnet 
 he writes h™ as it were a parting letter : — 
 
 Farewell ! tliou art too dear for my possessing, ' 
 
 And like enougii thou know'st thy estimate : 
 
 The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing ; 
 
 My bonds in thee are all determinate. 
 
 For how do I hold thee but by thy granting ? 
 
 And for that riches where is my deserving ? 
 
 The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting, 
 
 And so my patent back again is swerving. 
 
 Thyself thou gavest, thy ovm worth then not knowing, 
 
 Or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking; 
 
 So thy great gift, upon misprision growing, 
 
 Comes home again, on better judgment making. 
 Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter, 
 In sleep a king, but waking, no such matter. 
 
 However resolute this letter of renunciation sounds, it was 
 not so seriously intended. The strength of fidelity or the weak- 
 ness of love leads him ever back again to the object, who rises 
 above the power of his resignation and stifles every feeling of 
 self-reliance. He wallows deeper in the painful thoughts of 
 this separation, and tears his wounds wider and wider asunder, 
 nevertheless without being able to bleed to death. Misfortunes, 
 
SHJKESPEAEE'S SONNETS. 461 
 
 too, meet him from without; he complains of the 'spite of 
 fortune.' 'Hate me when thou wilt,' he writes in the 90th 
 
 sonnet, 
 
 if ever, now ; 
 Now, while the worid is bent my deeds to cross, 
 Join with the spite of fortune, make me how, 
 And do not drop in for an after-loss : 
 Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow. 
 Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe ; 
 Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, 
 To linger out a purposed overthrow. 
 If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, 
 When other petty griefs have done their spite. 
 But in the onset come : so shall I taste 
 At first the very worst of fortune's might. 
 
 Even this degree of pain at wounded affection and self-lov& 
 is not the worst. He fears even that his love may be false, and 
 he, the lover, know it not. His , looks may he with him, his- 
 heart in another place. He seems in sonnet 94 to doubt 
 whether he shall reckon him among those dangerous superior 
 natures ' that do not do the thing they most do show,' who 
 misuse the privilege they possess to cover every blot with 
 beauty's veil ; who are lords and owners of their faces ; who 
 move others, while they are themselves as stone, immoved, cold,, 
 and slow to temptation. He fears that he might have lavished 
 his heart laden with rich treasure upon cold superj&cial vanity, 
 and no more painful experience could have befallen the man who 
 had staked so much piu-e love and fidelity upon this one friend.. 
 
 Sonnets 100-126. But a happier destiny spared our poet 
 this bitter experience. It had certainly come to this — that a 
 neglect on the part of the noble friend was followed by a corre- 
 sponding neglect on the part of .the poet; that a cooling of the 
 first love, an estrangement between the two had arisen ; that a 
 shadow had fallen on the union which had begun with so much 
 promise. But these shadows dispersed, and the equal fault of 
 both counterbalanced and neutralised each other. The 120th 
 sonnet clearly sets forth the circumstances which the whole of 
 the last group allows us to conjecture. It ' befriends ' the poet 
 that his friend was once unkind ; for now, when the sky is again 
 serene above them, every word in- this last series of sonnets 
 proclaims that their union now for the first time stands abova 
 the reach of caprice, that full contentment has returned, that 
 
 ruined love, when it is built anew^ 
 Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. 
 
462 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 The poet now accuses himself, that he had alienated himself 
 from his friend, that he had neglected his 'dear purchased 
 right,' and had for a time slumbered in his love. He looks 
 hack upon the three years past, when their love was new, and 
 he celebrated its spring : — 
 
 Then I was wont to greet it with my lays, 
 
 As Philomel in summer's front doth sing 
 
 And stops her pipe in growth of riper days : 
 
 Not that the summer is less pleasant now 
 
 Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, 
 
 But that wild music burdens every bough 
 
 And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. 
 Therefore like her I sometime hold my tongue, 
 Because I would not dull you with my song; 
 
 His silence and his absence thus began with that song of the 
 new favomite's, with the divided favour of his friend, with the 
 jealousy which disburdened itself in those outbursts of inward 
 pain, when the poet looked backward to the old times, and for- 
 ward to the day when he should see his darling completely 
 separated from him. He now pathetically calls upon his muse 
 to begin anew the interrupted song, to celebrate again the old 
 idolatrous worship of his love, to survey the sweet face of his 
 friend, ' if time have any wrinkles graven there.' He finds that 
 he has ' by waning grown,' and seems to hold in his power ' time's 
 fickle glass, his sickle.' His song goes on with the old praise 
 upon the excellence of his friend, and extols the poet's love as 
 ' strengthened, though more weak in seeming.' He triumphs 
 thai? neither his own fears, nor the prophetic soul of the wide 
 world, could control the lease of his true love. The moon has 
 endured her eclipse, the sad augurs mock their own presage, 
 and peace proclaims olives of endless age ; with the drops of 
 this most balmy time his love looks fresh. The poet acknow- 
 ledges anew the moral errors to which he was exposed, but he 
 asserts ' by all above,' that these ' blenches gave his heart 
 another youth.' Once more he casts a glance upon the stigma 
 'which vulgar scandal stamped upon his brow,' but he feels 
 now for ever assured that his friend's love and pity will efface 
 the impression. Even this last matter which depressed him he 
 seems to cast aside with lighter heart, in new confidence in the 
 duration of their friendship. ' What care I,' he says in the 1 1 2th 
 sonnet, 
 
 who calls me well or ill, 
 So you o'ergreen my bad, my good allow ? 
 
SHAKESFEABE'S SONNETS. ' 463 
 
 You are my all-the-world, and I must strive 
 
 To know my shames and praises from your tongue ; 
 
 None else to me, nor I to none ajive, 
 
 That my steel'd sense or changes, right or wrong. 
 
 In so profound abysm I throw all care 
 
 Of others' voices, that my adder's sense 
 
 To critic and to flatterer stopped are. 
 
 This, then, is the history of the origin and growth of this 
 union of soul as we read it in Shakespeare's sonnets. It is a 
 connection in itself of no great importance ; nay, in the way 
 in which it is poetically expressed, it is not without distortion. 
 But it testifies to a strength of feeling and passion in our poet, 
 to a childlike nature and a candid mind, to a simple in- 
 genuousness, to a perfect inability to veil his thoughts or to 
 dissemble, to an innate capacity for allowing circumstances to 
 act upon his mind in all their force and for re-acting upon them 
 — in a word, it testifies to a nature as truthful, genuine, and 
 straightforward as we imagine the poet from his dramatic 
 works to have possessed. The sonnets represent the psycho- 
 logically connected and undivided course of an occurrence of his 
 inner life, which could not easily extend over a space of three 
 years ; the internal evidence upon the matter speaks thus for 
 the complete accomplishment of the whole series within the 
 time admitted by us. For the more accurate characterisation 
 •of the youth of whom they treat, we learn little or nothing in 
 the whole series of poems. The bad form of the sonnet prevents 
 us indeed from gleaning niuch from these poems as to the 
 nature of his friend ; and, m.oreover, at the sge which we imagine 
 the young man to have reached, the character is first estab- 
 lished and formed. If we once again admit the conjecture 
 advanced, that Shakespeare's favourite was the Earl of South- 
 ampton, the few traits of which we can lay hold are in strict 
 accordance. It is well known that the Earl was a man of fine 
 powers of mind, eagerly excited in the young art of that inquisi- 
 tive age, as the sonnets so appropriately designate it, and that 
 he was a patron of all poets and scholars. That he was a man 
 of refined manners, of a liberal nature — capable of surmounting 
 class prejudice in a manner unusual at that time, and of 
 extending his hand, heedless of his position, to an amiable man 
 like Shakespeare — we know partly from his avowed connection 
 with Shakespeare, and partly from what we can gather from 
 touches in the history of Ms life. He possessed a free indepen- 
 dent disposition and defiant self-will, little in harmony with the 
 
464 SECOND PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEABE' S DBAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 absolute age of Elizabeth and James ; he had married Eliza 
 Vernon against the will of the queen ; in 1601, he was involved 
 in the conspiracy of the Earl of Essex, a frivolous and bold imder- 
 taking, testifying to the infatuated self-confidence of its 
 instigator. He was known to be in other instances also of fiery 
 temperainent and ready for dispute ; even under James, both in 
 parliament and in privy council, he was on the side of the 
 opposition, popular, and averse to all feeble-hearted policy. 
 Such probably we imagine would be the qualifications of the 
 man, and such the natural endowments of one who from his 
 earliest youth could win so great an affection from Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 In the foregoing analysis of the sonnets we have only ad- 
 vanced that which concerns the connection between the two 
 friends. Still more important is the light thrown by, them, 
 upon the circumstances and inward life of Shakespeare himself.. , 
 We find our poet, however elegiac is the colouring of his mind 
 in the sonnets, in the fresh bloom of prosperity. In the years. 
 1593—1594, his narrative poems first gained for him notice in 
 the best circles of society ; they ranked him among the learned, 
 and the name of Southampton, to whom they were dedicated,, 
 was their protection and recommendation. Thomas Nash would 
 have anticipated a greater poet in Shakespeare had he con- 
 tinued to write in the Italian style, and relinquished his 
 dramatic vocation. Eichard Barnfield, in his' ' Encomion of 
 Lady Pecunia' (1598), places the poet 'in Fame's immortal 
 book,' on account of his honey-flowing vein in Venus and Lucrece,, 
 without any mention of his plays ; whilst at the same time Meres 
 applies to these poems, and to his dramas equally, Horace's exegi 
 monv/mentwm. This acknowledged praise may well explain the 
 happy self-reliance of the poet expressed in the sonnets. 
 Throughout it is moderated by genuine modesty ; he calls his 
 lines poor and rude compared to the products of the. advancing 
 age and of rapidly progressing poetry ; he considers them no- 
 thing worth and ' doing him disgrace ; ' but throughout these 
 paroxysms of self-dissatisfaction we perceive the confidence with 
 which he so often reminds his friend that the earth can yield 
 him but a common grave, while he shall lie ' entombed in men's 
 eyes.' This happy state of things, which we detect in his inward 
 feelings, we find also in his outward relations at this time ; and 
 if we may credit the report of Southampton's mtmificent gift, 
 t^is state was also suddenly determined by the favour of this 
 
SHAXESPEABE'S SONNETS. 465 
 
 friend. Shakespeare's father had in 1578, in a time of need, 
 mortgaged the landed property of his wife, called Ashbies, to 
 Edmund Lambert for AQl ; it was a small estate of sixty-five 
 acres of land, which was well worth three times that sum. The 
 mortgager was again to be put in possession, if on or before 
 Michaelmas-day, 1580, the money borrowed was repaid. This 
 took place ; but the estate was withheld under the jpretext that 
 other debts owed by the old Shakespeare to Lambert must be 
 first discharged. The Lamberts had large connections ; the old 
 Shakespeare on the contrary speaiks of himself in his bill of 
 compMnt, in 1597, as ' of small wealth and very few friends and 
 alliance.' It was in this year that he first ventured to complain, 
 as now for the first time he seems to have had the means of 
 supporting his cause. Similar slight notices occur several times 
 as the prosperity of the family rose. At the period of the great 
 dearth of 1597, there is a register of the corn then in the town 
 of Stratford ; in the list John Shakespeare is not mentioned at 
 all, probably because he lived in the house of his son, who gladly 
 laid out his wealth in his paternal city ; William Shakespeare 
 is registered for 10 quarters, comparatively a large quantity. 
 In the year 1598 Shakespeare possesses one of the best houses 
 in the best part of Stratford, known as ' the great house ' or 
 'New Place.' In the years 1601-1603 we know that he bought 
 three different pieces of land in his paternal city, and in 1 605 
 he made his largest known gain in the purchase of the unex- 
 pired term of a long lease of the great and small tithes in Strat- 
 ford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcom, for 440L in cash. 
 From 1597 we find him continually occupied in this manner in 
 financial and economical affairs, which testify to an increasing 
 prosperity. Collier finally reckons his income at 400i. a year. 
 In the diary of Mr. John "Ward, of Stratford, whose memoranda 
 extend from 1648 to 1679, it is even stated that he had heard 
 that Shakespeare in his elder days spent at the rate of 1000?. a 
 year— a proof at least that he had the reputation of being a very 
 rich man. 
 
 In the first intoxication of his youthful success, Shakespeare, 
 it appears, continued the dissolute life in which he had indulged 
 at Stratford. His connection with that vicious yet attractive 
 woman exhibits him to us as a prey to a common passion. The 
 poet finds his friend surrounded by dangerous company; he 
 winks at first at his youthful errors, because he knows there is 
 good in him at the core ; yet he subsequently fears the pressure 
 
 H H 
 
466 SECOND PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE' B DSAMATIC POETSY. 
 
 of repeated temptation. He fears that slander may deaden the 
 sensibility to reputation, he reproves the too great affability and 
 condescension of his favourite. And while the poet blames 
 the youthful manners of his friend, he also looks back re- 
 provingly upon his own past conduct. He acknowledges con- 
 cealed faults, wherein he is attainted ; he speaks of self-love as 
 ' grounded inward ' in his heart, and of affection as an ' old 
 offence ; ' he accuses himself of a ' bewailed guilt,' which may 
 do shame to his friend ; if this friend ever should find cause to 
 slight him, he will on his side ' ensconce ' himself within the 
 knowledge of his own desert, and uprear his hand against him- 
 self. We know not what definite guilt it was which thus 
 pressed heavily upon Shakespeare, and which he had to bewail, 
 yet we do know enough from his life to be able at all events 
 to refer to this expression ; and it serves to animate the picture 
 which we like to form of the poet, if we can rely upon any 
 tangible evidence, with full readiness to relinquish it again 
 upon better information. But that which depressed the poet 
 far more than his actions was Ms rank ; indeed, it is conceiv- 
 able that the faults and defects which he sees attached to him- 
 self were for the most part only those undeserved ones which 
 the age linked to the position of an actor ; possibly indeed even 
 those which were deserved were such as life in this position and 
 the continual allurement of fancy only too readily induced. 
 Nothing is more touching than the sight of a mind so great, 
 standing superior as it does to the prejudices of all ages, and 
 yet almost succumbing imder the weight of this depressing 
 popular feeling. In sonnet 111, he writes to the friendly noble- 
 man: — 
 
 O ! for my aake do you with Fortune chide, 
 
 The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
 
 That did not better for my life provide 
 
 Than public means, which public manners breeds. 
 
 Thence comes it that my name receives a brand ; 
 
 And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 
 To what it works in, like the dyer's hand : 
 
 Pity me then, and wish I were rmew'd; 
 
 Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink 
 
 Potions of eysel 'gainst my strong infection, 
 
 No bitterness that [ will bitter think, 
 
 Nor double penance, to correct correction. 
 
 The metamorphosis after which the poet sighs, the renovation 
 of his being, we' seem to perceive taking place from a few inti- 
 
SHAKESPEAEE'S SONNETS. 467 
 
 mations, especially in the last group of our sonnets. The renewal 
 after which he aspired may be understood and inteifpreted in dif- 
 ferent ways. In his outward career it is very remarkable that, at 
 the period of the origin of these sonnets, we first find Shakespeare 
 endeavouring to raise himself above his position, to enter the 
 rank of the gentry, and to advance in consideration and esteem by 
 increasing his worldly possessions. The great man evidently 
 did not escape this weakaess any more than his colleague Alleyn, 
 who even aspired to nobility. The history bi the step which he 
 took for this purpose is strange enougjh. It had been aflBrmed, 
 long ago, that John Shakespeare, William's father, had received 
 permission to bear a coat of arms ; but no such patent exists. 
 There is indeed a confirmation of such a right in 1596, but 
 very probably this was solicited by our poet himself, and not by 
 his father. This document mentions that the hetalds had been 
 ' by credible report informed ' that ' the parents and late ante- 
 cessors ' of John Shakespeare had been advanced and rewarded 
 for their services to Henry VII., no trace of which, however, is 
 to be found in the archives of the period ; unless this statement 
 refer to the Ardens, who were certainly the ' antecessors ' of 
 WiUiam Shakespeare, but not of John, and who certainly re- 
 ceived favour and promotion, from Henry VII. In 1599 an 
 exempUfieation of arms was procured, in which it was stated 
 that the ' great grandfather ' of John Shakespeare had been re- 
 warded with lands and tenements by Henry VII. ; this was the 
 case with William's great grandfather by his mother's side, but 
 not with John's. The poet-actor, who from his profession could 
 not have claimed a grant of arms, put forward his father's name, 
 as having been bailiff and 'justice of the peace,' and coupled 
 that fact with the deserts of his own maternal ancestors. 
 It is an authentic fact that Sir William Dethick, who was 
 Grarter-king-at-arms in 1596 and 1599, was called to account 
 for having forged pedigrees and granted coats to persons whose 
 circumstances and station in society gave them no right to the 
 distinction ; the case of John Shakespeare was expressly charged 
 against him. The artifices which Shakespeare employed in taking 
 this step sufficiently show of what importance the matter 
 was to him. However, all these measures for the elevation 
 of his outward rank seem to receive their true light only from 
 the determination with which Shakespeare strove as early "as 
 possible to escape from his position as an actor. It appears 
 beyond a doubt that soon after the accession of King James to 
 
 H H 2 
 
468 SECOND PEMIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 %'he throne in .1603, at which period he acted in Ben Jonson's 
 ' Sejanus,' he completely retired from the stage, and lived, first in 
 London and subsequently at Stratford, as a dramatic poet only. 
 No one will surely blame Shakespeare for this step. For we 
 must remember how far the contempt of this position extended, 
 and how absolute was the magisterial power against it, in order to 
 understand the impatience with which a free spirit could submit 
 to this oppression, however great the enthusiasm for the art and 
 the liberty of the stage. In 1581 Elizabeth, in spite of all her 
 royal favour towards the stage, had given authority to Tylney, 
 the master of .the revels, to compel into her service at their 
 pleasure the actors and dramatic poets of every company, or to 
 cast them into prison! To see art thus 'made tongue-tied by 
 authority,' and ' strength by limping sway disabled,' drew those 
 life-weary sighs from the poet in his sonnets, even in his prime. 
 Who could blame him that he felt the ignominy of such a con- 
 dition beyond others, when once, by his intercourse with his 
 patron, be had gone h&nd in hand with honour and respect, 
 which seenaed spotless in the eyes of the world? If at the 
 present day of ..class-levelling, disregarding the custom of other 
 ages, we are inclined to look unjustly upon the steps that 
 Shakespeare took to raise himself 6utwar(Hy aboye his position, 
 we may .with all the greater satisfaction linger upon the strength 
 of , mind with which he strove to soar beyond the reach of pre- 
 judice. .That this was for him an actual, great, inner struggle, 
 is not so easily comprehended by us from the nature of the age 
 in which .we live; nevertheless, it is a fact undoubtedly con- 
 firmed by, his impressive 4;reatment of the questions upon the 
 prejudices of position and birth which we have observed in the 
 dramas, rof this period, and by what we have just read in the 
 sonnets. In these poems, whenever the poet dwells upon the 
 difierence of rank between the :two fr/ends, and especially upon 
 his own -social position, .the ^prevailing tone is resignation, a 
 humible feeling of unworthiness and of degradation, a readiness 
 to renounce, to bear alone the dishonour of his profession and 
 the stains which were attached to it, and to yield his right to 
 his noble friend, of knowing him no more, or of disowning him. 
 Only occasionally .does the poet rise to that .self-reliance which 
 makes him disregai^ this prejudice, the oppressive existence of 
 which was tourly felt by him, and to overcome which therefore 
 demanded no little power. And truly in those passages, and 
 throughout in elevated poetic language, the elevating strength 
 
SHAKESPEAEE'S SONNETS. 469 
 
 of the inner resolve lies excellently expressed. Attention has 
 already been drawn to them — to those passages in which, rousing 
 himself from the thoughts of self-contempt, he draws such joy- 
 fulness from the remembrance of his friend as to ' scorn to 
 change his state with kings.' And those others in which, seeing 
 in his friend his whole world, he- disregards the fame of others, 
 and throws all care of others' voices into the profoimdest abysm. 
 But with this self-reliance with regard to his social position, a 
 still more thorough renewal appears to have been linked. In 
 the most different passages of the later sonnets, where a more 
 serious mood has seized him, he glances upon his past conduct 
 with the severity of fresh austerity ; he holds before his eyes a 
 mirror, in which he reads an unworthiness not depending upon 
 his position ; and he exonerates himself frqm it, if we may be- 
 lieve the most solemn words of such a truthful man, by the 
 prejudice that a moral stain must of necessity cMng to his 
 position. In the 110th sonnet he says : — 
 
 Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there, 
 
 And made myself a motley to the view,. 
 
 Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap- -jirbat is most dear, 
 
 Made old offences of affections ne-w.. 
 
 Most true it is that I have look'd on truth 
 
 Askance and strangely ; but, by all above,, 
 
 These blenches gave my heart another youth. 
 
 Is it not as if Prince Henry were looking back upon his wild 
 days, which were to him a time of trial, blunting the growth of 
 strong passion ? We Germans, in the lives of our own Goethe 
 and Schiller, can point out the fruitful periods in which these 
 men, so highly gifted and equally endowed for evil, after having 
 been carried away by youthful affections and excesses, recovered 
 again the germs of good within them, and returned to the 
 seriousness of life and to the dignity of morality ; and we may also 
 believe that in Shakespeare there was a similar metamorphosis 
 of moral purification and transformation, which in a man so 
 richly gifted is perhaps a necessity greater than we imagine — a 
 stage of development and progress to be observed in all striving 
 and deeply impassioned natures. 
 
 Not unfrequently the conjecture has been expressed that 
 Shakespeare conferred upon Prince Henry many essential 
 qualities of his own nature. If this were decided, we should 
 have a sure and tangible point of connection, uniting his life 
 with his poetry, and proving between the two the most intimate 
 
470 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 relation, which would afford lis a definite idea of the character 
 and intellectual stature of our poet ; and it would be a point of 
 connection of such an important kind that it would at once 
 spare us any further search after separate scattered relations 
 between Shakespeare's life and writings. If we perceive the 
 fervour, love, and -depth with which the poet planned and exe- 
 cuted the character of Prince Henry, we shall be inclined even 
 upon this one ground to consider this conjecture at any rate 
 more narrowly. But we know enough from Shakespeare's life, 
 and we have besides in his writings abundant points of com- 
 parison which afford no little justification for this supposition. 
 He, too, had been carried away in his life with wild and unre- 
 strained companions-; he had felt uncomfortable at home from 
 an unhappy mariiage-; he followed a degraded profession, 
 degrading even in his own opinion ; he looked back repentantly, 
 as we have seen above, upon the faults of an impassioned 
 nature, and struggled to shake them off. We should readily 
 believe of the poet of the Venus and of that last series of sonnets, 
 even without the slight intimations of biographical documents, 
 that for a long while he had wandered in the mazes of love. 
 But if in the sonnets we have observed the affectionate nature, 
 which in connection with his young friend passed so deeply and 
 thoughtfully through that trifling but pure inner life, insigni- 
 ficant as it might be, we shall understand fuither that the same 
 poet rose to the praiseworthy glorification of the passion of love 
 in Eomeo and Juliet ; aye, thait he found precedents within for 
 the sources of that jealousy of an outcast which he subsequently 
 depicted in Othello with such fearful truth. "We see from these 
 poems, as well as from, the circumstances of life indicated by the 
 sonnets, a nature in which so great was the fermentation of 
 passion that purification was inevitalie. If the poet speaks the 
 truth to us in this passage quoted, tliat ' the blenches gave his 
 heart another youth,' then his own sentence applies to himself : 
 ' best men are moulded out of faults ■; and for the most, become 
 much more the better for being a little bad;' thus he has him- 
 self, like his Prince Henry, ^v-ea. proof that that is a fruitful 
 field in which, while untilled, the weeds grow most luxuriantly, 
 and that 
 
 Wholesome berries thrive and ripen best, 
 
 Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality. 
 
 This inner purification, according to the sonnets, derived its 
 impetus from intercourse with his noble friend. As his Prince 
 
BHAKESFEARE'S SONHfETS. 471 
 
 Henry in a higher sphere of life descended to nature and plain 
 simplicity, so he, in his lower outcast existence, aspired to nobler 
 habits and to a more honourable position ; by opposite means 
 he arrived at the knowledge of the higher and lower strata of 
 society, weighed their worth, and drew in their advantages, and 
 attained to that full, complete view of human nature which we 
 admire in the poet, and which he has imparted to his Prince 
 Henry. If the friendship with that noble youth existed as 
 closely and ardently as we assume, and was cemented at the 
 period in which Shakespeare dedicated his Luerece to the Earl 
 of Southampton in 1594, we understand all the better why the 
 poet at this very time wrote that poem of friendship, the Mer- 
 chant of Venice ; and we call to mind that it was about the same 
 smn lent by the princely merchant to the adventurer Bassanio 
 for his prosperous journey that Southampton gave our poet for his 
 share in the Globe, and for his expedition to the Grolden Fleece. 
 If the poet, so inferior in birth, felt himself indeed so blessed, 
 as the sonnets tell us, in that friendship, in which his intellectual 
 worth balanced the inequality of outward position, we under- 
 stand all the better why also at this very time he wrote the 
 history of that poor Helena, and why with so much emphasis he 
 depicts the circumstances, when 
 
 I'he mightiest space in fortune nature brings 
 To join like likes, and kiss like native things. 
 
 We understand now, also, why the common idea of so many 
 of his plays of this period lay in the everTrepeated precept that 
 true nobility was alone that of virtue and merit, and why the 
 spirit of all the Shakespearian poetry of this period expressed so 
 forcibly an aversion to aU show, to all glitter, and false orna- 
 ment. All the thousand reflections upon the character and 
 worth of men, upon real merit and imaginary nobility, may be 
 referred, we see, to the one great emotion which engrossed 
 Shakespeare at this period, to that connection with his friend 
 and to his variance with his position, to that remarkable inner 
 conflict in which he strove to overcome the prejudices of the 
 world. "We have seen that it was a severe conflict within him, 
 which he endured not passively with cold heroism, but in which 
 he rather sustained defeat in hours of weakness; we under- 
 stand, therefore, that for years his soul was agitated by it, and 
 that this conflict thus profoundly expressed itself in his writings 
 of this period. If, tiurning from this profound vocation of his 
 
472 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 poetry to contrast show and reality, we refer again to the cha- 
 racteristics of his life, we understand better why the poet was 
 so deeply averse to his position as an actor, and finally renounced 
 it, for this art makes show its very business. Taking all 
 together, we think we perceive a certain necessity that the 
 poet's greatest designs at the period of these inward emotions 
 should have culminated in such creations as the Merchant of 
 Venice and in such a character as Prince Henry. For how 
 readily must he have mirrored himself in a being whom he 
 placed at that highest point at which a man is able to cast from 
 him that last prejudice — that, namely, of minding prejudice 
 more than is necessary ; of not caring for the appearance of 
 evil when he is conscious of a good object ; of not striving after 
 the appearance of good when the good deed is accomplished; 
 and of being satisfied with the self-consciousness that needs- not 
 outward praise and recompense, and cares not for outward 
 blame and injury. 
 
 Well may we, therefore, believe that in the most essential 
 respects the character of our poet was reflected in Prince Henry ; 
 that he perceived in the meagre outlines of the Chronicle a 
 frame in which he could insert the picture of his own nature. 
 A strong evidence of this we certainly cannot give ; but there 
 is one consideration which is of more weight in this respect 
 than all written documents. A character of this simple and 
 admirable kind, and of a nobility so noiseless and so deeply 
 seated, could only be depicted by the poet from the experiences 
 of his own life and being. The traits of hypocrisy and frivolity, 
 of warlike ambition and thirst for glory, of avarice and of ex- 
 travagance, the furrows which the sharp ploughshare of love or 
 jealousy makes in the heart, these a clever and experienced man 
 can gather from the men around him, even if in his own nature he 
 knows but little of them. But that quiet virtue of extreme humi- 
 lity, the resignation of self-consciousness, the contempt of show, 
 these are qualities which are seldom presumed in other men, and 
 are with difficulty fathomed to their source in such a manner as 
 in Henry IV., unless the observer himself possesses a measm-e of 
 the rare virtue, and knows its traits from acquaintance with his 
 own soul. From Shakespeare's life and writings we can easily 
 gather some such traits, which afford a parallel between him 
 and the prince ; but, it is far more important for this parallel, 
 if we compare the nature of tliis his favourite with the impres- 
 sion produced by his works which delineate his own character 
 
SHAKESPEASE'S SONNETS. 473 
 
 in bold • outline. All that most strikingly characterises these 
 works and their origin may be referred to the same funda- 
 mental principle upon which he formed the nature of his prince. 
 His art as well as his moral wisdom breathes throughout the 
 same unvarnished truth as that with which he invested his hero ; 
 the same contempt of all traditionary rules, conscious that with- 
 out rules he could hit the measure of the beautiful and the good ; 
 the same principle of comprehending life in all its completeness 
 and in aU its varieties. In Shakespeare's nature, as in Henry's, 
 aU that can be called show, gloss, or false ostentation is, as if 
 intentionally, cast aside ; and as to the eye of the ordinary 
 reader the royal Henry withdrew unnoticed and unattractively 
 into Ms modest retirement, so for centuries after Shakespeare 
 did the jewel in his works lie hidden. Deceived by the appear- 
 ance of disorder, barbarisms were perceived where the highest 
 art had been employed, and coarse morality was seen where the 
 purest nobility of mind and tried wisdom taught the severest 
 laws of moral life. Void of splendour as was the immediate 
 influence of Shakespeare's splendid works, was their entrance 
 also to the world. When Shakespeare disdained to make him- 
 self longer ' a motley to the view,' when he withdrew from the 
 stage to his poetry, this also was an involuntary step, in har- 
 mony with the profound bias of his nature from show to reality. 
 Previous to him, we may say, the poet was in the pay of the 
 actor ; the kernel of the art was not freed from the shell ; but 
 since Shakespeare gave to dramatic poetry an independent value, 
 the perishable dramatic art became subject to the poetic, and 
 form was vanquished in the service of mind. But for this he 
 placed no more value upon his works than the least of those who 
 composed dramas before and with him ; he cared little for their 
 printing, not at all for their collection and for their pm-e and 
 genuine form. Modest and silent he gave this great bequest to 
 the much agitated and distracted age ; and as his own Prince 
 Henry turned from his deeds of glory, he passed away from his 
 works careless of fame. Yet to a still higher degree do we per- 
 ceive that inmost characteristic of the poet, in obedience to 
 which he pressed in all things aftier truth and pure nature, if we 
 look at the relation in which his poetry stands to actual life, 
 in comparison with the poetry of other ages and nations. 
 Antiquity, in happy completeness of life, knew not of the con- 
 trast between nature and conventionality ; the Middle Ages, with 
 their extravagance of spirit, iirst produced the deviation of life 
 
474 SECOND PERIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 from the source of simple naturalness. The whole poetry of 
 the age of chivalry was in unerring harmony with the conven- 
 tional forms of the life of the period. The epos too of the 
 Italians, and the drama of the French and Spanish, went hand 
 in hand with it. But Teutonic art did not set before itself so 
 simple a task. It did not receive life in so orthodox a belief as 
 it found it; excited by the spirit of Protestantism, it estab- 
 lished itself in opposition to custom, when it had become an 
 abuse of habit ; the ideal lies in it, not as in southern art in refined 
 forms, but in a retrospective glance at an original purity of life, 
 and in' the endeavour to give back to human relations and cir- 
 cumstances that truth and nature which had been lost amid the 
 arbitrary rules of conventionality. This opposition between 
 ideal art and real life Shakespeare was the first in the Teutonic 
 nations to denounce. His predecessors began it, but they fell 
 into the opposite extremie of the coarsest nature ; he, however, 
 moderated this opposition with wise restraint ; and by his in- 
 fluence the German poetry of" the last century attained the 
 position in which it speedily proved itself so active. 
 
THIED PERIOD OF 
 SHAKESPEAEE'S DEAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 We have been able to become acquainted with oiir poet, at 
 least in isolated features of his life, during the first and second 
 periods of his poetical career. In the second some precious 
 documents have been given us, which allow us to cast a glance 
 upon the history of his soul. Of the third epoch of his life we 
 know scarcely anything. We learn from time to time some- 
 thing of his financial affairs and circumstances, of purchasing 
 and selling, which exhibit him constantly as a man of wealth 
 and comfort. The most important public events which occurred 
 in this latter period of his life vvere the death of Elizabeth, the 
 accession of James I., and the consequent union of the three 
 kingdoms. Shakespeare celebrated these changes in his Mac- 
 beth (1605) ; in which, besides the skilful interweaving of the 
 Stuarts, and the patriotic salutation to the first king who carried 
 ' two-fold balls and treble sceptres,' a flattering reference to the 
 Scottish dynasty was implied in the subject itself. Schlegel 
 justly compares the ingenious and at the same time artistically 
 independent manner in which this drama is formed into an 
 occasional poem with Sophocles' praise of Athens and ^schy- 
 lus' glorification of the Areopagus in the Eumenides. Shake- 
 speare celebrates in Macbeth an ancient debt on the part of 
 Scotland to England, whose assistance at that time freed the 
 Scottish throne from the tyrant, and established the lawful king, 
 together with milder customs ; and this old debt Scotland now 
 discharged, when she gave a king to the empty throne of the 
 Tudors, who preserved the peace which Elizabeth had planted, 
 and introduced a love of art and learning. Shakespeare himself 
 
476 THIBD PERIOD OF SBAKESPEABE'S DBAMATIC FOETEY. 
 
 is supposed to have written an epigram, still extant, which 
 extols James for his knowledge; and according to another 
 tradition, the king — who from more than one testimony loved 
 to see the plays of our poet — wrote him a kind letter in his own 
 hand. At any rate Shakespeare's honourable position and esti- 
 mation continued under this king. From some knowledge of 
 localities in Macbeth, it has been concluded that the poet had 
 personally visited Scotland. A division of his company under 
 Laurence Fletcher, probably an elder brother of the poet, was 
 in Scotland from 1599 to 1601, but Shakespeare at that time 
 was so active in writing for the London stage that his presence 
 in Scotland is not very probable. Immediately upon his arrival 
 in London, James took the Slig-kespeare company into his pay 
 and patronage, and Called them the royal servants ; the patent 
 specifies nine players, among whom Fletcher stands at the head, 
 and Shakespeare occupies the second and Burbadge the third 
 place. The document grants the company their former liberty 
 to play throughout the kingdom, and secures to them protection 
 from all damage, and all the courtesies which formerly fell to 
 the lot of people of their place and quality. 
 
 We have seen how, at the close of the sixteenth century, 
 Shakespeare wrought with indescribable activity, and was pos- 
 sessed with an overpowering desire to indulge his creative genius. 
 The cheerfulness, the confidence, and the copiousness with 
 which we saw him work at the close of the second period, 
 continued in the first few years of the third, or rather it in- 
 creased. In the six years which elapsed between 1598 and 
 1 603, Shakespeare wrote on the average at least two plays a 
 year. Subsequently his works become more rare; from the 
 years 1604 to 1612 there is on the average only one play a year,- 
 and this alone contradicts the notice of Ward, that Shakespeare 
 in his older, days, when he lived at Stratford, furnished two 
 plays annually for the stage. It is much more probable that 
 from the year 1612, when the poet took up his abode in Strat- 
 ford, h,o not only sought to free himself from his personal con- 
 nection with the stage as an actor, but he also concluded his 
 dramatic and poetical career as an author. 
 
 Comparing Shakespeare's dramas of the third period with 
 those of the second, the most striking difference is, as we before 
 intimated, that from the beginning of the new century the 
 tragedy and the serious tragic drama predominate to a remark- 
 able degree. Previous to 1600, if we set aside the seven pieces 
 
THIBD PERIOD OF SRAKESPEASE' S DSAMATIC POETRY. 477 
 
 of the first period, there are twelve comedies and merry plays 
 to four real tragedies ; but after the group of comedies last 
 discussed, there now follow eight tragedies of the gravest im- 
 port, and in truth no more comedies. *For the dramas (Cym- 
 beline. Measure for Measure, the Tempest, and the Winter's 
 Tale) have all more or less a tragic colouring; and even in 
 Troilus and Cressida the seriousness and thougbtfulness of the 
 poet in his work prevent a sensation of mirth. The merry 
 humoiurists, the comical female characters, and the shallow 
 figures of his romantic comedies wholly cease from this time. 
 If in the plays of the second period we found the poet occupied 
 with reflections on the contrast between outward show and in- 
 ward reality, between the actual and the conventional value of 
 things — a theme capable of the most manifold poetical represen- 
 tation — another system of thought, thoroughly serious, elegiac, 
 and tragic in character, appears predominant in the grand 
 creations of the later period. In their subject-matter we see a 
 new moral relation in the foreground, which returns again and 
 again under various modifications, and seems to fascinate the 
 poet's reflection and consideration with the same power as the 
 previous subject which we discovered in the works of the middle" 
 period. The unnatural dissolution of natural bonds, oppression, 
 falsehood, treachery, and ingratitude towards benefactors, friends, 
 and relatives, and those to whom the most sacred duties are 
 owed — this is the new tragical conception which now most 
 powerfully and profoundly occupies the poet in the various 
 works of this epoch of his life. Thus in Julius Caesar, Brutus' 
 defection is represented as an act of faithlessness and ingratitude, 
 which the spirit of the murdered friend resents and retaliates. 
 In Henry VIII., Wolsey's self-seeking plans, in opposition to 
 his royal patron, express similar unthankful faithlessness. 
 Macbeth's treason towards his benefactor Duncan displays the 
 same ingratitude in a stiU higher degree. And as in Lear 
 this ingratitude and faithlessness advance by gradual progress 
 through friends, princes, benefactors, and relations to the 
 highest pitch of vice, in the profligate alienation of children 
 from their father, and in the rebellion of kindred blood in the 
 bosom of the family, so in Lear and Cymbeline we find set 
 before us the pure contrast of unshaken fidelity in the child, 
 the subject, the servant, and the wife. I^ Troilus the same 
 theme is continued in the faithlessness of Cressida to her lover, 
 and the violation of their leagues by the Grreeks. In Antony 
 
478 THIRD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 there is represented as the catastrophe in the hero's fate the 
 faithless rupture of old and new formed ties of policy, of friend- 
 ship, and of marriage, in order to keep faith with a,n unworthy 
 paramour. Coriolanus' defection from his country falls more 
 remotely under the same category. So again the subjects of 
 Timon and the Tempest — the disgraceful ingratitude and the 
 faithless alienation of false friends in the one, and the usurpa- 
 tion of brother against brother in the other— rank entirely 
 under this head. 
 
 Whether the striking constant recurrence of the poet to 
 such instances of injured confidence, broken obligations, evident 
 ingratitude, and breach of natural ties, can be accounted for by 
 any personal and sorrowful experiences, which would at once 
 explain why he dwelt more on these dark pictures than on the 
 bright opposite of fidelity, we do not unfortunately know; 
 indeed, we should scarcely be able to guess the circumstances 
 in Shakespeare's life which corresponded with his inclination to 
 the tragic, if from outward facts and from probable grounds 
 and causes we attempted to trace his more serious, more gloomy 
 frame of mind. We have heard from his sonnets that at the 
 zenith of his attachment to hi^ young and noble friend some 
 adverse fate befel him, which involved him in affliction and 
 melancholy. This unhappiness we can refer to nothing unless 
 it be to the death of his son Hamlet in the year 1596. A 
 heavy blow also to his heart was indisputably the rebellion of 
 the Earl of Essex in the year 1601, in which Southampton was 
 involved; as well as the conspiracy in 1603, which cost the 
 lives of Watson and Clarke. Essex was beheaded in February 
 1601 ; Southampton remained in confinement during the reign 
 of Elizabeth ; in 1603 began the long imprisonment of the 
 famous Raleigh, who certainly stood high in Shakespeare's 
 esteem, if not in a still closer relation to him. It is possible 
 enough that Julius Caesar was written just about 1601 or 1602, 
 not without reference to these conspirators and independent 
 spirits. From the prologue to Henry V., and subsequently in 
 Macbeth, we see what a sympathising delight Shakespeare mani- 
 fested in Essex. Stevens has conjectured that in the account 
 of the /death of the Thane of Cawdor he had in view the be- 
 haviour of the earl at his execution. Much importance cannot, 
 however, be placed on these allusions ; those misfortunes also 
 ■ do not appear sufficient to call forth such an important change 
 
THIED PERIOD OF SHAkESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETSY. 479 
 
 in the tone of his life as is to be recognised in Shakespeare's 
 works after the year 1600. A much more satisfactory explana- 
 tion of this change may be found in those inward experiences of 
 the poet, by which, at a still earlier period, he had acknow- 
 ledged to his friend that his nature had been transformed, 
 refined, and purified. To himself also, as he so frequently 
 represents in his humorous characters, the hour seems to have 
 arrived for renouncing the frivolities of the world. As age 
 advanced upon him he acquired that extended knowledge of 
 history, and that increasing experience of life, which never 
 dispose men with any depth of character and cultivation to be 
 more merry, more frivolous, and more shallow as years move on. 
 If we take into account his aversion to his profession, and the 
 impression which the degeneracy of stage poetry may have made 
 upon him, the crudeness of the age so repugnant ■ to him in 
 many of its features, and the capricious and often sanguinary 
 despositism of the Government, we have motives sufficient to in- 
 cite the poet to descend still deeper into the recesses of human 
 nature, to roll back the page of history farther than he had 
 hitherto done, to search after passions of still greater violence 
 in the traditions of the past, and to trace still deeper furrows 
 on the brow from the more profound contemplation of the world 
 and of humanity. It is, however, striking . that the very play, 
 the hero of which bears the name of Shakespeare's deceased 
 son, may be regarded as a vehicle for the elegiac temperament 
 of the poet. Hamlet is the only piece of this later period in 
 which we might conjecture a pathological interest on the part 
 of the poet ; Hie might imagine that he had treated the hero as 
 a counterpart to Prince Henry, and in both together we might 
 feel that Shakespeare had displayed the various points of his 
 own nature in greater fulness than had been possible in one 
 alone. In one of the sonnets the melancholy feature in Hamlet's 
 character is so prefigured as to tempt the belief that the plan 
 of this poem was projected by Shakespeare since the period in 
 which ' the world was bent to cross his deeds.' We may call to 
 mind in Hamlet's famous soliloquy the motives which led him 
 to infer the idea of self-murder from the consideration of the 
 course of this world, the weariness at the whips and scorns of 
 time, the oppressor's wrong, the pangs of despised love, the 
 law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns of merit ; and 
 we shall read a similar soliloquy in the 66th sonnet, which the 
 
480 THIRD FEEIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 poet addressed, like all the others, to his friend.' But if the 
 reader assumes this correspondence between this personal poem 
 and the drama alluded to, he must beware of hence inferring 
 that a hypochondriacal state of mind attacked Shakespeare in 
 his later years, making him regard the world and its course 
 with a darkened vision, and suggesting to him the gloomy and 
 dismal pictures of, his tragedies, as somewhat far removed from 
 his former nature. We utter this warning, because even here 
 pur Romanticists have sought to mislead us on a false track. 
 William Schlegel called Hamlet a ' tragedy of thought,' sug- 
 gested by constant and never satisfied reflections on human 
 destiny, on the sad complexity of the events of this world. 
 This view was embraced by Frederic Schlegel in his history of 
 literature, and he unfolded it further : he perceived in Shake- 
 speare a nature deeply sensitive and austerely tragic, a dis- 
 position isolated, reserved, and solitary — and this in the poet 
 whom these very Eomanticists could not sufficiently admire for 
 his wit and mirth ; in the man who, in the great mart of life, 
 was to be the judge and agent in every question and in every 
 kind of intercourse. These critics impute the confused and 
 dull perception of their own temperament to the mighty mind 
 whose measurement so far transcends their own. Even in 
 Hamlet, Shakespeare has delineated with such acuteness and 
 distinctness this weary depression and unsatisfied frame of 
 mind, this exaggerated desire for prying into the gloomy side 
 of life, and he stands himself in such clear and distinct light, 
 superior to such mental disorder, that this very play must be 
 regarded as a triumph over this vein of melancholy, if any such 
 existed within him. If such a gloomy elegiac mood had perma- 
 nently haunted him, he could not possibly have written the 
 
 ' Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, ' 
 
 As, to hehold desert a beggar born, 
 And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, 
 And purest faith unhappily forsworn, 
 And gilded honour shamefully misplaced. 
 And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, 
 And right perfection wrongfully disgraced. 
 And strength by limping sway disabled, 
 And art made tongue-tied by authority, 
 And folly (doctoivlike) controlling skill. 
 And simple truth miscall'd simplicity, 
 And captive good attending captain ill : 
 
 Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, 
 
 Save that, to die, I leave my love alone. 
 
THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 481 
 
 merriest of his comedies almost at the same time with Hamlet, 
 nor have continually inserted in his serious tragedies the most 
 comic scenes full of unclouded humour. And in his latest 
 tragedies, in Macbeth and Lear, let no one imagine that what 
 he depicted there of austerity and cruelty was contemplated by 
 the poet with less acute sensibility than by ourselves. It was 
 his vntention to exhibit harsh and violent subjects, and his 
 tenderness of feeling in the midst of these plays ever appears 
 in closest juxtaposition with the severity which the subject 
 required. If anyone believes that Shakespeare, during this 
 latter portion of his life, was sunk in melancholy, and imagines 
 him dwelling with satisfaction upon the gloomy pictures of his 
 tragedies, we have only to draw his attention to Cymbeline, 
 where the poet's true theme and subject is the complexity of 
 the affairs of this world, their apparent contradictions, discords, 
 and injustice; and where he resolves them into a harmony 
 which utterly excludes from his heart every idea of shallow 
 discontent, of weak disgust of the world, and of a spirit harassed 
 into sourness. 
 
 The plays of Shakespeare's second period turn especially 
 upon love, friendship, and patriotism, and upon aU the most 
 sacred emotions which most engage a youth ; and in all these 
 plays we have found the key to the prevailing idea in the personal 
 nature, history, and circumstances of the poet himself. The 
 works of the third period take a wider range in subject and 
 interest, from the increasing sphere of observation attained by 
 the mature man ; they enter more acutely into the investi- 
 gation and solution of the profounder problems of Ufe ; they 
 divide themselves into several groups, in which we see tragedy, 
 history, and romantic plays appearing in much more pure and 
 more refined forms than before ; and it is singular that in 
 these groups the different dramatic styles coincide at once with 
 the different times and localities in which they are played. 
 This striking and self-evident grouping has induced us to 
 depart, in our further discussion of the plays, from the strict 
 succession of time. We shall, as we have already indicated, 
 select Measure for Measure as forming a transition play to the 
 tragedies from the comedies last discussed. Next to that group 
 of comedies we ought — according to all indications, if we adhere 
 strictly to chronological order — to place the tragedies of Othello, 
 Csesar,andHamlet(1600-2). We shall, however, shift Csesar back 
 to the other Eoman plays, and place by Hamlet its counterpart, 
 
 1 1 
 
482 THIEB PEEIOD OV SHAKSSPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Macbeth (1605); and next to this Lear (1605) and Cymbeline 
 (1609), which present a similar relation to each other. In 
 four of these plays we stand in the world of myths and heroes 
 of Grallo- Germanic antiquity, in which Shakespeare sought for 
 more powerful passions for a magnificent tragedy than later 
 civilised, ages could afford ; on this account Othello is naturally 
 ranged with them. From these works, where the genius of the 
 poet is at its height, we pass, through Troilus and Cressida 
 (1608-9), to the three Eoman histories (Antony, 1607, Corio- 
 lanus, 1610), in which this tragic-historical style is fashioned 
 into a purer form, owing to lesser dependence on national 
 material and purer sources of authority. To these we add 
 Timon (16lO), that we may place the representations from the 
 old world completely together. From this historical world we 
 pass back again, in the Winter's Tale and the Tempest (1611), 
 to the fantastic ^orld of wonder ; so that in this third period 
 we meet again with the same features which we have already 
 observed in the first ; as if Shakespeare, from an instinctive 
 necessity, seized at once on the most various subjects, periods, 
 and styles, in order to avoid rooting himself in any one-sided 
 direction or frame of mind. . 
 
 In all the works of this period Shakespeare remained true 
 to the n9,tional Saxon character, after he had once laid aside 
 the Italian taste in art. In What You Will he expressed most 
 distinctly his delight in the old homely popular soiigs, and in 
 the deep effect which this simple art produces far more than 
 any affected language of the fashionable poetry. The specimens 
 of Italian lyric now cease entirely, the allusions to the songs 
 and wise adages of the people become more frequent, unnatural 
 conceits are withdrawn, and for the future, where the diction 
 borders on bombast, the design of the characterisation is always 
 readily perceived. If strong and vehement language is em- 
 ployed, it is accounted for by the temperament of an Othello 
 or a Coriolanus ; if profoundness, it is now no longer lavished, 
 as in former conceits, on shallow, ideas, but is enjoined by 
 the subject itself. With regard to : the externals of the poetic 
 language, the thyme is more and more confined to elevated 
 passages, to proverbial sentences and condluding verses; the 
 formation of iambics is more free and irregular ; in that pro- 
 ductive period, at the close of the century, there is a singular 
 predominance of prose. Whether in this lighter difction, or in 
 the most sublimely pathetic passages, or in the wise proverbial 
 
THIBD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S VEAMATIO POETRY. 483 
 
 ■sentences with which Hamlet and Troilns are interspersed in 
 such rich abundance, Shakespeare has ia this period far ad- 
 vanced in everything, in subjects, in ideas, and in forms ; 
 within it lie almost all the magnificent works which ever come 
 foremost to our mind when Shakespeare is spoken of. The 
 English language was fashioned anew under his hands, as our 
 own was under L^ither's ; and with pride Meres declares of him, 
 * As Stolo said that the Muses would speak with Plautus ' 
 tongue, if they would speak Latin, so I say that the Muses 
 would speak with Shakespeare's fine-filed phrase, if they would 
 speak English.' 
 
 And this fine-filed phrase was so completely given to the poet 
 by nature that in fact he is said never to have needed the file. 
 The editors of his works declared with admiration, and Ben 
 Jonson with blame, that scarcely a blot was found in his manu- 
 scripts. Ben Jonson — who, with all the reverence for our poet 
 which he displays in his discoveries, had no glimpse into 
 •Shakespeare's soul — wished that he had made a thousand blots, 
 and that he had possessed as much control over the exercise of 
 his wit as he possessed of wit itself. He applied to him what 
 Augustus says of Hatterius : sufflammcmd/iis erat ; so that 
 ridiculous things might not have here and there escaped him, 
 -as in the verse which we read differently in our present text : 
 
 Csesar did never wrong, tut witli just cause. 
 
 According to the present judgment of Shakespeare, no one any 
 longer perceives that the exercise of his wit was any worse than 
 the wit itself. If he polished isolated passages and separate 
 lines but little (for with congenial actors but little depended 
 upon these in works only written for representation), we know 
 well that he undertook very essential improvem,ents on a large 
 -scale, sometimes even completely remodelling his plays. But 
 the 'break' which Ben Jonson wished to lay upon Shakespeare 
 might have transformed Shakespeare into Ben Jonson. -Far 
 rather we prefer to have the man with all his faults, if they 
 will point them out to us ! For the verse quoted, even if it 
 once did stand thus written, may be nonsense to the mind of a 
 pedant, but certainly not to any Caesarian statesman or warrior. 
 Besides, where the growth is so luxuriant, redundancy is not 
 merely pardonable and unavoidable ; but it belongs to the man 
 and to his nature, and it can never interfere with our love for 
 these wonderful creations. This every reader will experience 
 
 I I 2 
 
484 THIEB FESIOD OF SHAKESPEAEE'S DEAMATIC FOETEY. 
 
 who impresses upon himself the wise counsel expressed by 
 Shakespeare's friends in the preface to his works (1623) : ' Read 
 him therefore ; and again and again ; and if then you do not 
 like him, surely you are in some manifest danger — not to 
 understand him ! ' 
 
 Shakespeare died in the year 1616, on the 23rd April. It 
 appears that he had been ill for a long time, and had for this 
 reason made his will. The report, therefore, which Mr. Ward 
 noted in his journal, is not very credible, that Shakespeare had 
 caroused too much at a visit from his friends Ben Jonson and 
 Drayton, and had on accoimt of this died of a fever. The mere 
 similarity besides of the tradition of Grreene's death renders it 
 suspicious. The poet had lived to see the marriage of his two 
 daughters. At 45 years of age he had already become a grand- 
 father. He left his family well provided for. 
 
 After his death his bust was placed in Stratford as a 
 memorial, the opinion of which by competent judges is that the 
 face was copied after death. The editors of his plays in 1623 
 added another picture of the poet to his works, which is thinner, 
 more intellectual, and not so bloated as the bust. Shakespeare's 
 contemporaries call him a fine, well-formed man, and with this 
 the high brow and the large, bright, and calm eyes of this 
 picture well accord. Ben Jonson praised the likeness, and it 
 gave rise to a thousand improved copies. In itself it is a very 
 imperfect drawing, from which we are led to infer that Shake- 
 speare's physical form corresponded with the normal equanimity 
 of his mind, and to delineate regularity of form and feature 
 without being lifeless and insipid is ever notoriously difficult. 
 
 We will now follow the poet through the series of the works 
 of his later years, and endeavour in conclusion, in looking back 
 upon the results of our reflections, to gather together his 
 poetical, moral, and intellectual qualities in one complete 
 picture, which will bring expressively before us the inner 
 characteristics of this great mind. 
 
MEASURE FOE MEASUEE. 
 
 The vein of deep thought, which so strikingly distinguishes the 
 works of Shakespeare's latter period, beats in its fullest pulse 
 in Measxire for Measure, the drania most closely linked to the 
 comedies last discussed. It was performed in the year 1604 ; 
 and probably not written much earlier. The basis of the piece 
 is an Italian tale in Giraldi Cinthio's ' Hekatomithi ' (8. 5.), 
 translated in Whetstone's 'Heptameron of Civil Discourses,' 
 1582. The cruel and painful purport of this tale is briefly 
 this. The Emperor's deputy in Inspruck, Juriste by name, 
 who is enjoined to be guilty of nothing contrary to justice 
 during his prince's absence, passes sentence of death upon a 
 youth on account of the crime which Claudio commits in 
 Measure for Measure ; by the double promise of marriage and 
 the release of her brother he seduces the pleading sister (Exitia) 
 into the same crime for which he had sentenced her brother ; 
 he orders him, notwithstanding, to be put to death, and the 
 corpse to be sent to his sister's house. The Emperor sentences 
 his deputy to marry Exitia and then to be beheaded. At her 
 intercession his life is spared, and she retains him as her 
 husband. 
 
 The same Whetstone who translated this tale had before 
 ^1578) published a play in ten acts upon this subject, entitled 
 ' Promos and Cassandra,' which was never performed. Even he 
 felt the necessity of moderating the repulsive tenor of the 
 marrative. As the play was a comedy, owing to its happy con- 
 clusion, he interspersed the serious action with burlesque 
 interludes, which caricature the meaning and thus afford a 
 counterbalance to the painful impression. The sinning 
 brother, as in Shakespeare, is not put to death ; the gaoler sets 
 him free, and carries the sister the head of a dead man instead 
 of that of her brother. For the rest the details are similar to 
 those in the novel. 
 
 Shakespeare, on his part, has in his Measure for Measure still 
 more moderated and purified the story by carrying out still 
 
486 THIBB FEBIOS OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 further Whetstone's track. In his play the head of the dead 
 man is not brought to the sister, but, with a more natural and 
 less cruel object, to the judge. The sister's fall is avoided by 
 the introduction and substitution of Angelo's former affianced 
 one, and thus a change is effected in that part of the story 
 which is the most offensive, because the marriage with the 
 murderer of her brother, or with him who at any rate had 
 ordered the sentence of death to be executed, is extraordinarily 
 degrading to the woman. 
 
 In spite of all these improvements, however, most readers-, 
 at the present day feel- that all that is offensive in the tenor of 
 the piece is not yet wholly removed. We are not inclined to 
 pardon the poet for having brought upon the stage the cruel 
 subjects of the Italian novelists both here, in All's Well that 
 Ends Well, and in Cymbeline, and for having required us to. 
 look with the more sensitive e^e on the representation of that 
 which in narration falls less forcibly on the blunter ear. 
 Measure for Measure, indeed, is performed even to this day in 
 moral England, and that without abridgment or alteration^ 
 thus proving that the representation itself softens much which 
 appears repugnant to us in the piece. Notwithstanding, the 
 play found little favour with most English critics, Hunter^ 
 Knight, and others; even an admirer like Coleridge called 
 this play the most painful or rather the only painful work 
 among Shakespeare's dramas. He considered the comic and 
 tragic parts alike bordering on the detestable, the one disgust- 
 ing, the other terrible ; he called the pardon and marriage of 
 Angelo degrading to the female character and not in conformity 
 with the demands of severe, indignant justice; for cruelty 
 combined with lust and infamous baseness could not be for- 
 given, because we could not consider it heartily repented of.^ 
 These objections would be indisputable were we convinced, 
 from the course of action and the nature of the actors, that a 
 sincere repentance on the part of Angelo was inconceivable, and 
 were we to admit that ' severe, indignant justice ' is the only 
 true justice — a justice in this instance well employed. To 
 form a correct judgment on these passions it is necessary that 
 we should as usual go back to the motives of action, and dis- 
 cover their psychological connection. 
 
 A novel taken from Shakespeare's play, furnished with 
 all his characteristic touches and with his representation of 
 circumstances, and placed by the side of the original source or 
 
MEASUEE FOE MEASUBE. , 487 
 
 by the side of Whetstone's play, would evidence, in the simplest 
 and most striking manner, the wonderful difference from others 
 which renders our poet so unique and distinct. What a rich- 
 ness of reflection do we meet with in Shakespeare when we 
 search into the elements of the facts before us I What a depth 
 in the characters, compelling attention from us even before we 
 see them entangled in such painful intricacies ! What a bold- 
 ness in bringing the very noblest characters into these same 
 odious intricacies, just as if he aimed at multiplying the diffi- 
 culties and contradictions of the plot ! And, moreover, what a 
 careful construction of circumstances, so that from the outset 
 our apprehension is calmed as to the gloomy incidents, and we 
 are allowed to anticipate an end not altogether disastrous ! 
 
 In the first place, in how masterly a manner is the ground 
 prepared on which the poet has placed the scene of these 
 habits, characters, and incidents ! The scene is laid in Vienna. 
 Moral corruption here ' boils and bubbles till it o'erruns ; ' 
 society is destroyed by it, and all decorum is lost. We cast a 
 glance into the prisons and ■ brothels, which allows us to 
 estimate the extent and shamelessness of the prevailing 
 licentiousness ; in the streets we see dissolute fellows who 
 make fuU use of the freedom with which low manners may 
 evade the law. Debauchery has become a common custom. 
 Every mind seems occupied with transactions and matters of 
 this kind. The man who, like Angelo, has never exposed 
 himself to evil report, is not regarded as sound and perfect ; 
 the Duke, who has never had intercourse with women, escapes 
 not the poisonous tongue of Lucio, the light-minded calumni- 
 ator ; and even in the cloister, where the Duke hides himself, 
 Friar Thomas believes at first that an affair of gallantry drives 
 him to that place of secrecy. Existing restraints are east 
 down ; unbridled liberty plucks justice by the nose ; law, like 
 an unused rod to the child, is rather mocked at than feared. 
 There is a severe old statute which awards the punishment of 
 death to unchastity. It has been set aside for fourteen years as 
 too severe, or, as Claudio, whom it subsequently touches, says 
 exaggeratingly, for ' nineteen zodiacks,' and it has fallen into 
 oblivion. It was a scarecrow, says Angelo, which, from custom 
 and want of motion, was become rather a perch for birds of 
 prey than their terror. 
 
 "The reigning duke, who had thus allowed this law to 
 slumber, had done so from kindness of heart and innate mild- 
 
488 THIED PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'8 DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 ness. He thinks himself justified in bearing testimony to 
 himself that even to the envious he must appear a scholar, a 
 statesman, and a soldier. He holds that high moral opinion 
 that the ruler and judge ought to be as holy as he is severe, a 
 pattern in himself, ' grace to stand and virtue go ; ' he considers 
 him as a tyrant who punishes in others the faults jnto which 
 he falls himself. His whole nature is that of a man of moder- 
 ation, gentleness, and calmness, his whole endeavour that of a 
 circumspect philosopher. He loves his people, but he does not 
 relish their loud applause and thronging, nor does he think the 
 man of safe discretion that affects it. He has a leaning to 
 solitude, and plays the part of a friar perhaps even better than 
 that of a statesman ; his earnest endeavour was always to know 
 himself, but it also seemed a kind of necessity with him to 
 know men and to test the instruments of his rule. This cir- 
 cumspect wisdom, never seeing things imperfectly or from one 
 point of view, shows itself also in his conduct respecting the 
 morality or immorality of the people of Vienna, which by 
 degrees had attained to such a height that the prince could no 
 longer remain inactive. He is himself not of a sensual nature, 
 but he does not, like Angelo, judge those who are so with un- 
 reasonable severity and strictness. In this mild spirit he has 
 allowed those severe laws to slumber, but by this he has given 
 free course to crime ; these fruits of his kindness rouse him 
 into seeking a remedy. But even while he now has recourse to 
 severity, he allows himself to be governed by the same two- 
 sided consideration which is throughout peculiar to him ; he 
 reflects that it would be tyrannical in him if he, who by his 
 lenity had first given a free passage to sin, should all of a 
 sudden turn to rigour. He therefore withdraws himself, and 
 imposes on a deputy this office of making the change from the 
 hitherto lax administration of justice to a new inculcation of 
 the old, neglected, and severe laws. 
 
 For this post he chooses, with a well-weighed and ' leavened * 
 purpose, not Escalus, the man who first ought to be considered, 
 who is next the Duke in rank, and is like him of a wise moder- 
 ation and upright spirit, endowed with all the qualities of a 
 great justiciary and statesman, but the younger Angelo, whose 
 severe morals and firm discretion appear to recommend him as 
 specially suitable for restoring sharper discipline. A sacred 
 halo surrounds this man, who enjoys an unapproachable 
 reputation for integrity and purity of life. He presents the 
 
MEASVBE FOB MEASUEE. 489 
 
 strange phenomenon of an isolated stoic in the midst of a 
 Sybarite city ; we see him with a serious suitable bearing, with 
 sober countenance and well-considered words, as if he would 
 frighten away all kind of levity. The duke calls him severe 
 and precise ; he scarcely allows that his blood flows, or that 
 ' his appetite is more to bread than stone.' In the eyes of the 
 wanton debauchees he is a man 'whose blood is very snow- 
 broth ; ' one who has blunted the natural stings of the senses 
 with profits of the mind, study, and fast. In the silent de- 
 liberations of his own soul he can confess to himself that 
 sensual delight never stirred his temper, and that ' when men 
 were fond ' he smiled, as at a contemptible and incredible thing. 
 When Escalus, subsequently, on his severity towards the im- 
 moral, reminds him of the possibility of a similar crime in 
 himself, he does not hesitate to call down upon himself punish- 
 ment and blame, and proudly to answer : ' 'Tis one thing to be 
 tempted, another thing to fall.' That this virtue and sobriety 
 in such extreme youth is constrained and exaggerated is 
 evidenced by the anxious care with which Angelo lays greater 
 stress upon outward appearance than upon inward reality. He 
 is continually upon his guard against envy, he has the most 
 nervous ambition never for a moment to lose his irreproachable 
 reputation. This ambition, this pride in his virtue, he- hardly 
 even ventures to confess to himself in his soliloquies. This 
 ambition is closely connected with his aspiring endeavour after 
 outward rank and dignity. He has bmied himself in the 
 study of politics and law ; occupied in these grave employments 
 he has really repressed his ardour and affections, he has formed 
 equally severe and uncompromising principles for his moral 
 life and conduct, for a knowledge of law, and for the exercise of 
 politics and justice, in order that with all these qualities he 
 may advance himself on the path of honour. 
 
 These unnaturally strained endeavours are observed by the 
 psychological Duke in the useful, promising young man thus 
 richly endowed by nature. He appears to distrust his political 
 as well as his moral ambition, and he welcomes the opportunity 
 of at once testing both. The investigating and observant 
 Prince had marked how he had once before acted in a situation 
 concealed from the eyes of the world, and this experience 
 appears to have made him doubt whether the talented man was 
 not, in his ambitious efforts, on the road to become a cold 
 ascetic, a heartless lawyer, and an egotistical diplomatist; 
 
490 TUmi) PEBIOD . OF 8HAKE8PEAEE '8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 whether the feigned show of virtue did not weigh with him. 
 more, than his still untested virtue. The Duke had learned 
 that this Angelo was affianced to one Mariana, the sister of 
 Frederick, a noble and famous naval hero. Before the ap- 
 pointed nuptials, the brother perished at sea with his vessel 
 and with the dowry of his sister ; and the bridegroom was 
 cruel and hard-hearted enough to forsake her who could now 
 advance him no further either with her property or kindred \, 
 nay, he even pretended discoveries of her dishonour in order to 
 give a colour to his proceedings. In this trait, also, we at once 
 recognise a proud aspiration after rank, property, and im- 
 portance, and a proud display of highly sensitive morality ; the 
 poet has wisely started with this, just as in Much Ado about 
 Nothing he preluded Claudio's subsequent deception by an 
 earlier one, in order more definitely to mark out the character, 
 The Duke, in conferring upon Angelo the post of deputy, has 
 before him the double aim of testing how he will be affected 
 in this wider field of action, to what steps his severe morality 
 will lead him, and what influence his new power wiU. exercise 
 upon his character. The Duke himself pleads a journey as a 
 pretext, but, disguised in a friar's habit, he watches all events 
 in the immediate neighbourhood. The manner in which we 
 see the circumspect man watching every incident, and, as it 
 were, playing the part of Providence, has the effect of rendering 
 us prepared and calm as the events unfold before Us ; all that 
 is painful and severe in them thus becomes much mitigated ; 
 in the play itself we perceive the superior scene-shifter and 
 observer, before whom the action seems to pass like a drama, 
 within a drama ; in this way we are unconcerned for the evil 
 issue of the evil actions. In the novel, and in Whetstone's 
 piece, no trace of this arrangement is to be found, nor of the 
 delicacy which dictated it. 
 
 Now begins the official career of the eager young statesman. 
 He ' picks out ' from the du'st the Draco-like statutes ; the law 
 is no longer to remain a derided scarecrow ; unexceptional 
 mercy is no longer to prevai}, but unexceptional justice. The 
 inflexible lawyer is satisfied that the world should perish, so 
 that law should hold its course ; he imagines himself humane 
 when, in the administration of justice, be aims at intimidating, 
 because, by unsparing severity, the law, like a prophet, stifles 
 sin before its birth, or takes the germ of development from the 
 evil already ' hatched.' In this behaviour his moral indignation 
 
MEASURE FOB MEASURE. 49L 
 
 concurs with the overweening feeling of his own purity and 
 with the pride of his new dignity ; it suits his inclination to 
 use like a giant the ' giant's strength ' conferred upon him» 
 Even now Claudio and Lucio see that double bias of his soul at 
 work in the new part he is playing ; they see his pride of virtue,, 
 his desire to make himself a name, and his delight in the new 
 splendour of his government. The young deputy orders all 
 disorderly houses in the suburbs to be ' plucked down ; ' the 
 prisons are jB.lled with offensive criminals of every kind ; even a. 
 young noble we see publicly led to prison, to the scandal of the 
 town, for the sake of a single offence ; an example is to be 
 made of him which will strike the eyes of all. Whether 
 intimidation from the crime in question was to be attained by 
 this severity seems indeed to be rendered very doubtful by the 
 ijnmediate results. Judges, such as the Lucios and the 
 Pompeys, who know the nature of this sin and the nature of 
 men, give us the small consolatory prospect that this class of 
 crime, grown indeed too great, would not be ' extirped, till 
 eating and drinking be put down ; ' that if. heads were to be 
 cut off for this there would soon be a want of heads. And yet 
 this is not even pointed out as the first difficulty. With the 
 pulling down of those abodes of crime, crime is in no wise 
 extirpated, it only changes its place. Habitual sinners do not 
 allow themselves to be frightened by admonition and threaten- 
 ing. Besides, the instruments of justice err : the stout Elbow, 
 of the race of the Dogberrys, apprehends a poor knave who> 
 according to the intimations of the Clown, is indeed not capable 
 of sinning, while in Elbow's own house matters are worse, and 
 his own wife is notoriously more guilty than the imprisoned 
 Froth. This then, according to Shakespeare's method, is the 
 burlesque parody of Angelo's administration of justice, who is at 
 last more open to sin than any of his delinquents. For those 
 who pass unpunished in this system are just the most obdurate 
 and the most crafty, whom the law ought to have touched first. 
 of all. A Lucio, the infamous slanderer and liar, whose familiar 
 sin it is ' with maids to seem the lapwing and to jest,' who 
 coldly brings his accomplice into misfortune as his sacrifice, 
 but hesitates not to free himself with false oaths, this incor- 
 rigible man is just out of reach of the law, he mocks at its 
 severity, and passes unpunished, while a lesser offence is to 
 bring his friend Claudio to the block. 
 
 Claudio was betrothed to a near friend of his excellent 
 
492 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMAIIC POETRY. 
 
 •sister Isabella ; by a secret union she became his wife ; the 
 outward form of marriage was postponed, because Juliet's 
 dower renjained in the coffer of her, friends, whose favour had 
 to be gained for the marriage, Juliet is a being who appears 
 honourable by the mere friendship of Isabella ; we only catch a 
 glimpse of her in her prison, composed and repentant in her 
 innermost soul. Claudio himself is designated as a man true 
 to his word, all the less therefore was their mutual error free 
 from any bad intent. He erred because, with a lively and 
 sanguine nature, very different to Angelo's, he surrenders him- 
 self to every momentary impression. The poet shows us the 
 ■excitable and easily influenced nature of the man very 
 distinctly in the scene in which he is at first filled with the 
 Duke's representations of the evils of life and the consolations 
 ■of death, but immediately afterwards he is overwhelmed by his 
 own ideas of the horrors of death, compared to which even 
 the weariest life seems to him a Paradise. We perceive the 
 «ame nature subsequently, when, in the first feeling of honour, 
 he utterly rejects the price at which Isabella is to purchase his 
 life, and immediately afterwards, when he pictures to himself 
 the terror of death, he would gladly see her pay the price. 
 ' He pffended as in a dream,' the provost hitnself says com- 
 passionately of Claudio ; ' all sects, aU ages smack of this vice,' 
 and he alone is to fall a sacrifice to a pitiless law ;• he is to die 
 by that Angelo who has been guilty towards Mariana of a 
 much worse moral crime from a perfectly similar motive. For 
 which, indeed, was the more guilty, the anticipation of matri- 
 monial right on the part of the faithful Claudio, or Angelo's 
 breach of faith and dissolution of a firmly contracted alliance ? 
 Must not the similarity of the circumstance have reminded the 
 ■severe judge of his own guilt ? The remembrance of ,it is 
 abundantly brought home to him by Escalus, by Isabella, and 
 by the Provost. But he thinks only of the letter of offence 
 and law, and in his invulnerableness he feels himself secure 
 against all the remonstrances and appeals to his own bosom. 
 He forebodes not how soon even this his pride of virtue was to 
 be confounded. 
 
 Claudio sends a request to his sister Isabella, since his 
 appeal cannot reach the Duke, that she would petition Angelo 
 for his life. He knows that her youth and beauty will move 
 him, he knows that she possesses happy mental endowments, 
 that she is able to persuade ' when she will play with reason 
 
MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 493- 
 
 and discourse.' He also knows that she sees through men 
 judiciously ; at any rate she proves it afterwards in his own 
 case. She knows him thoroughly when she has to deliver 
 Angelo's request to him; she sees through his weakness and 
 love of life before she utters it ; when he gives her his assurance 
 she believes him ; his firmness at first fulfils the expectations- 
 of her belief, but his despondency justifies still more her former 
 fear. This knowledge of human nature, this mind and beauty, 
 and these rich endowments for the world and its use, Isabella 
 is on the point of carrying into the cloister. She possesses, like 
 the Duke, in well-balanced proportion, that two-sided nature, 
 the capacity to enjoy the world according to circumstances or 
 to dispense with it. She has already begun her noviciate ; the 
 rule of the cloister is known to her ; to her its restraint is too 
 slight rather than too strict. The low-minded Lucio, to whom 
 an Angelo and his virtue, the Duke and his rank, the monk and 
 his oflBce, are not too sacred to be profaned by his aspersions,, 
 finds in Isabella alone one who is capable of inspiring him with 
 respect by the impression of her nature ; he sees her already 
 as ' a thing 'ensky'd,' sainted by her renouncement, an immortal 
 spirit, ' to be talked with in sincerity, as with a saint.' When 
 she learns her brother's crime she is rigorous enough to raise 
 no objection to the law and its execution ; nor is she so over- 
 heroic in her virtue as not to feel the human emotion of 
 desire to save her brother's life ; she sees in his case a 
 punishable crimej but she sees no crime in pardoning him ; she 
 goes even so far in the presence of the judge as to estimate 
 Claudio's fault less than she thinks it. Strong as she is, she 
 does not hesitate to take upon herself and her whole sex the 
 show of weakness, a great contrast in this to Angelo, who falls 
 with a show of strength and moral austerity. When her virtue 
 is put to the test she exhibits herself in truth as the hero sh& 
 had formerly supposed Angelo to be ; and, sympathisingly as 
 she had before felt for Claudio, as soon as he wishes to purchase 
 his life with her shame, regardless of her twice-repeated re- 
 minder of their honourable deceased father, she indignantly 
 rejects him, for she now regards his sin not as ' accidental, but 
 a trade.' However much ^ this severity and heroism may seem 
 in its asceticism and sobriety similar to Angelo!s pride- of virtue 
 and show of honour, yet even in this she is the opposite to 
 Angelo, being so far from all false pretensions that, upon the 
 friar-duke's remonstrance that 'virtue is bold and goodness; 
 
■494 THIED PESIOD OF 8HAKE8PEABE' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 never fearM^' she hesitates not to take upon herself the 
 appearance of crinae for the sake of a truly virtuous object, and 
 •agrees to his adventurOTis plan, which by a pious fraud is to 
 procure safety to her brother, and. to restore her faithless lover 
 to the rejected Mariana. Sympathy with her brother does not 
 lead her to disregard the sin, but only the appearance of sin ; 
 ■feeling and womanliness are developed in the very action 
 which seems to demand a masculine renunciation of womanly 
 delicacy. A similar instance is again subsequently to be re- 
 marked in her when she is petitioned by Mariana to implore 
 for the life of Angelo, whom she still regards as the murderer 
 ■of her brdther. It may seem to require the strength of mas- 
 ■culine asceticism, when she even now calms herself upon her 
 brother's death that he ' had but justice ; ' but it certainly 
 demanded the utmost womanly gentleness and pity, and the 
 absence of every feeling of spite and revenge, when, in the 
 same breath, she petitions for Angelo's life. The whole 
 character of this woman is pervaded by a mixture of commiser- 
 ation and strength of character, of personal purity and for- 
 bearance for the weakness of others, of tenderness and firmness, 
 of womanly timidity, and even mistrust of self and resolute 
 decision of action, of modesty and ability, of humility and the 
 -exhibition of mental and moral power. She stands in the 
 midst of the universal depravity, elevated in stainless purity of 
 soul far above all the basenesses of crime, a being whose 
 thoughts were already wafted above the earth, and whose 
 feelings were free from the emotions of all common passion. 
 
 However much such a being, from the almost supernatural 
 greatness of her virtue, may forfeit our sympathy, yet, if we are 
 to give a slight symbolic interpretation to poetry, it was in 
 excellent accordance with the poet's plan to present just such 
 an angel as the tempter of Angelo's virtue. Both characters 
 and the results of their meeting are only to be explained by 
 the most attentive weighing of each word in their intercourse 
 together. Isabella, accompanied by Lucio, appears before the 
 deputy, and the natural disinclination of her chaste soul to 
 plead for a vice which she most abhors is still struggling 
 within her with commiseration for her brother ; her petition 
 takes, therefore, the significant turn of enjoining condemnation 
 of the sin and pardon for the sinner. She is in strife between 
 wishing and not wishing, she is, therefore, not in the humour 
 for persuasion ; in this frame of mind she cannot will to ' play 
 
MEASURE FOB MEASURE. 495 * 
 
 "with reason and discourse ; ' she acknowledges, therefore, at 
 the first official and laconic refusal, the justice of the severe 
 law ; she gives up the life of her brother and retires. Even 
 this trait, this strange manner of urging a suit, must strike the 
 sober and serious judge and inspire him with esteem. Upon 
 Lucio's reproachful censure of her coldness, she resumes once 
 more the interrupted petition. Acknowledging the justice of 
 the law, she sees nothing which can stand in the way of mercy. 
 She maintains this with judgment, she puts it to his heart with 
 feeling ; maidenly timidity is laid aside ; with the emotions of 
 pity she recovers at once her natural eloquence, and displays 
 more and more her noble heart. At the first sound of this 
 touching tone, struck from the soul of the great and severe 
 woman, Angelo feels himself moved, and, as if in foreboding of 
 the power which this being might obtain over him, he prays 
 her to begone. She seizes him more strongly; she reminds 
 him of the eternal justice which had found mercy and atone- 
 ment for the whole forfeit race of man. He wishes not to 
 appear in her sight as a barbarian, and, in more words than are 
 Tiis wont, he condescends to explain to her the human side of 
 pity in his severe administration of justice. He concludes with 
 a renewed refusal, and with the request , that she should be 
 •content. The general grounds on which she had striven to 
 shake his official conscientiousness and feeling ^,re now ex- 
 hausted ; her natural aptness makes her now change the mode 
 •of attack : she speaks to him personally ; and, as his last words 
 had shown him as a man of sensible intellectual nature, she 
 involuntarily calls to her aid the last weapons of her mind. 
 * So,' she says. 
 
 You must be tlie first that gives this sentence ; 
 And he that suffers : Oh, it is excellent 
 To have a giant's strength ! but it is tyrannous 
 To uae it like a giant ! 
 
 From this tone she passes even to sarcastic bitterness in her 
 image of the puny great ones of the earth, who, if they could 
 thunder as Jove does, would consume their short-liv^d exis- 
 tence in nothing but thundering ; in comparing the little brief 
 •authority of man with Grod she at the same time indirectly 
 reminds him of his fleeting appointment, which ought to 
 oblige him all the more in the exercise of his power to bear 
 in mind his 'glassy essence.' But how completely does the 
 ■deeply thoughtful conclusion of this attack break the point of 
 
496 TUmD PERIOD OF SBAKESPEAEE'S DEAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 all that might be offensive and irritating in it ! ' Proud man,* 
 
 she says, 
 
 like an angry ape, 
 Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, 
 As make the angels weep : who, with our spleens, 
 Would all themselves laugh mortal. 
 
 How beautifully does this characterise this half-sainted being, 
 that she believes angels are weeping over our human arrogance, 
 that when she invests them in idea with her human satirical 
 nature she sees that they would laugh themselves mortal,, 
 because this disposition has, in her eyes, no part in heaven.. 
 Isabella gives time to the silent and surprised Angelo to reflect 
 upon the profoundness of her words and the deep traits of her 
 character, while she now is in the mood to give free course to 
 her eloquence. She surprises and occupies him with ever new 
 and striking attacks upon his innermost feelings. The mere- 
 glance at this man has betrayed his nature to her instinctive 
 knowledge of the human heart ; in a moment she has perceived 
 that which the Duke and Claudio and Lucio have gained from 
 long observation of his character, namely, that be is deeply 
 impressed with his powerful position and his unblemished 
 virtue. She therefore first reminded him of the right use of 
 his power, and she reminds him now of that of his virtue ; she 
 flatters at the same time (without wUlvng it, since, according 
 to her subsequent expression, she fully believes in his virtue) 
 the best part in him, and by this gives additional force to that 
 which might have been marred by her bitterness upon the 
 arrogance of the great. She puts it to his heart that we 
 ought not to weigh our brother with ourselves, that he ought 
 not to weigh hers with himself. She only hints upon this 
 strength of his virtue ; but, that she may not have even the 
 appearance of flattery, she returns to the idea of outward 
 power and greatness : — 
 
 Authority, though it err like otheis. 
 Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself. 
 That ^ns the vice o' the top. 
 
 She means that necessity for the maintenance of outward 
 dignity, which is imposed upon the mighty, compels him the 
 more to govern his faults and sinful inclinations, and, when 
 these cannot be repressed, to cover them over with the varnish 
 of a fair show ; she reminds him thus that if deep within hia 
 
MEASUBt! FOE MEASURE. 497 
 
 own heart he perceives the disposition to such a 'natural 
 guiltiness,' and acknowledges such a weakness as human 
 and natural, he must then ' sound no thought ' against her 
 brother's life. She touches him thus on the side of his pride 
 of virtue, and at the same time of that hypocrisy and pretence 
 of sanctity which lay deep in the secrets of his bosom ; what 
 wonder, then, tlyit all the hitherto quiet feelings of his soul 
 burst forth at last in the expression of deep astonishment : 
 ' She speaks, and 'tis such sense, that my sense breeds with it.' 
 He receives in an understanding and ready spirit the pregnant 
 riddles which she utters, since every word is drawn from the 
 Innermost system of his own principles, his thoughts, and his 
 whole nature. Yet till now he is ever master of himself; once 
 more he bids her farewell. Then, in one simple repeated 
 request, the fatal word escapes him : ' Come again to-morrow ! ' 
 — in these few syllables the path of temptation is entered. 
 Yet once more the proud man has the opportunity for a happy 
 retreat. ' Hark^' she says, ' how I'll bribe you ! ' ' How ! 
 bribe me ? ' he asks. And Lucio fears at once that this one 
 word would mar her suit. But she gives the matter a new 
 turn, which must have aga!in fascinated the wavering m^n : 
 ' Ay,' she replies, ' with such gifts that heaven shall share with 
 you, with prayers from preserved souls, from fasting maids, 
 whose minds are dedicate to nothing temporal.' 
 
 He confesses now, when we are alone with him, that he is 
 on the way leading to temptation, ' where prayers cross ' his 
 wishes. We find him thus again subsequently, when his own 
 prayers and thoughts are at variance ; heaven has his empty 
 words, his imagination anchors on IsabeEa. Suddenly the 
 suppressed feeling revenges itself on the unnatural restraint, 
 and all that has made the man hitherto ambitious and proud 
 fails him, his studies are grown ' feared and tedious ' to him, 
 and his virtuous gravity he could change for ' an idle plume.' 
 He who was never in the least exposed to the temptation of 
 light women's art or nature, he yields to the dangerous temp- 
 tation of modesty ; the cunning enemy catches the saint with a 
 saint, and goads him on to sin ' in loving virtue.' Isabella 
 herself, after she had .surveyed the whole course of Angelo's 
 error and had suffered from it, bears witness to him that she 
 must believe a due sincerity governed his deeds till he met 
 with her. And that this whole appearance, that so much mind, 
 beauty, and virtue, in wonderful combination, should seize the 
 
 K.K. 
 
498 THIBD FERIOD OF SHAKE8PEABE' S DRAMATIC POETST. 
 
 fancy of the man, should suddenly overpower his senses and 
 compel him to acknowledge that his blood is like the blobd of 
 other men, that she at once should overthrow his statesmanlike 
 composure, his judicial gravity and bis ascetic placidity, who 
 would not understand this ? But why is not his first thought 
 of an honourable and lawful love ? Why do his thoughts tarry 
 at once upon the picture he so condemns, while he asks 
 himself: — 
 
 Having waste ground enough, 
 
 Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary, 
 
 And pitch our evils there ? 
 
 If he regards her, as was possible from his knowledge of her, as 
 an already dedicated nun, his designs were all the more criminal. 
 But even without this, his connection with Mariana must have 
 been in his constant remembrance, and he had to fear her 
 protest against every marriage ; he avoids the public announce- 
 ment of this secret history, and loses himself more and more in 
 the intoxication of his passion, which seduces him to take such 
 an advantage of his power and opportunity as allowed him to 
 maintain the appearance of blamelessness, except in the eyes of 
 one whose estimation ought indeed to have out-balanced that 
 of all the rest of the world. His earlier heartless behaviour 
 towards Mariana is thus the source of a second greater outrage ; 
 the natui'e at work in the one influences this new connection 
 also. When Isabella visits him again at the appointed hour, 
 he resigns himself like a fatalist to the impression which he is 
 to receive from her : he is divided in his mind as to his suit, 
 just as she had been as to hers when she first came to him. 
 Once more she is quickly retiring, satisfied with his refusal. 
 He holds her back. He would fain even now avoid the temp- 
 tation, but Isabella is dangerous for him ; she is clever, he can 
 speak to her without the blunt distinctness which would even 
 now make him blush. Unhappily she half meets him with a 
 sentence which he could misinterpret with her depreciation of 
 the magnitude of a crime like her brother's. Upon his first 
 insidious question she quickly understands him, but she is 
 under the conviction that he only intends to test her. She 
 evades him with equivocal replies, which leave him in doubt 
 whether craftiness or innocence speaks in her ; the clever game 
 of her first conversation begins again on a more dangerous 
 ground ; her misunderstandings allure him continually to speak 
 indeed in riddles, but in ever clearer ones. When once 
 
MEASURE FOB MEASURE. 499 
 
 again she makes a general remark upon the frailty of the 
 female sex, which may sound like compliance, he steps boldly 
 and plainly forward; the same tongue which had uttered 
 sentence of death against the sin invites to a more disgraceful 
 perpetration of the same sin. Not yet does she helieve it fully ; 
 it is only when he swears to it that her whole abhorrence of 
 him hursts forth. It makes no impression upon the cold 
 lawyer, upon the heartless, cautious man, who has before 
 weighed every emergency, and is on the very road to harden 
 himself into a regular villain. He rests his boldness upon the 
 protection which his ' unsoiled name ' affords him ; he knows 
 that in her tender shame she will not venture to inform against 
 him, since she will be herself more damaged than he ; his ^ false 
 will o'erweigh her true.' The vein of tyranny, which had 
 slumbered in this man of cold conventionality, awakes as soon 
 as he is excited and has once cast the mask aside ; he torments 
 her now even with the threat of aggravating her brother's 
 death. When he now believes himself to have reached his aim, 
 and has committed the one misdeed, he is drawn stiU further 
 along the downhill path of crime ; and more and more apparent 
 becomes the deep shadow cast by the light of this richly-gifted 
 man, and the evil disposition hitherto concealed within his soul. 
 He weighs in his mind the embarrassments which must result 
 from the release of Claudio, whose death, with inexorable 
 severity, he had solemnly announced from the public judgment, 
 seat. His pardon, unexpected as it would be, would support an, 
 accusation from Isabella, were she to venture one. But that 
 which expressly determines him, contrary to his promise, toi 
 permit the sentence against him to be carried into execution, 
 is the fear that the riotous youth may seek revenge for ' so- 
 receiving a dishonoured life,' and that he will not be restrained 
 by the considerations which are to be expected from the shame 
 and prudence of Isabella. 
 
 As soon as Angelo has reached this extreme, repentance 
 seizes him ; he perceives with fear into what evil the loss of 
 virtue is resistlessly carrying him; he stands crippled and. 
 incapable for everything; the summons of the Duke, who 
 announces his return and invites public information of alL 
 injustice, strikes his heart with anguish. How gladly would he 
 believe that the Duke is mad ! What frightful torture must 
 oppress him when he hears the modest Isabella in the open 
 street denouncing fearful accusation of such nameless baseness, 
 
 K E 2 
 
500 THIRD FERIOB OF SHAKESPEABE'8 DBAMATIC POETSY. 
 
 and this in the man whose virtue had hitherto appeared un- 
 equalled ! How must pain and despair seize him when he 
 hears the voice of the rejected Mariana, and sees her veil drop ! 
 How disgraced at last he stands before all the world, he who till 
 now has been regarded as a saint ! How confounded must he 
 depart, constrained to consummate the formality of marriage 
 with Mariana, after the consummation of which his possessions 
 are to fall to the, forsaken one, and his execution is to take the 
 place of Claudio's. A load of dishonour and disgrace is now 
 cast upon him, to whom honour and dignity, or at any rate the 
 mantle and show of dignity and honour, had been beyond every- 
 thing ; and this veiling mantle is now so violently withdrawn 
 that the very body and substance of his honour is also lacerated. 
 . How deeply degraded he who hitherto had stood highest in 
 opinion now stands in the estimation of the good, of the Duke 
 and of Escalus ! We may thus readily believe him when he 
 says to the latter that ' sorrow sticks so deep in his penitent 
 heart, that he craves death more willingly than mercy.' For 
 must not death to a criminal of this character have been a 
 greater benefit than a life of shame ? His life is, however, to 
 be spared, and he is to be raised from his fall. The poet, in 
 this character, has designed a new variation of his favourite 
 theme of show. The task in Angelo is a worthy sequel for the 
 actor who represented the gross hypocrisy arising from the 
 systematic selfishness of a villain like Eichard, and the regard- 
 less contempt of all show, based as in Prince Henry on the 
 absence of all selfishness. The actor is here required to represent 
 a man who is too little for the great, bold, and dangerous 
 projects of an ambitious selfishness; too noble for the weak 
 errors of a vain self-love, who wavers negatively between the 
 two, who aspires after honour, who would be a master in his 
 political vocation, a saint in his moral life, but who, in the hour 
 •of temptation, is found as false and tyrannical in the one as he 
 is hypocritical and base in the other. The task demands that 
 the actor should not 'allow the mental endowments and the 
 germ of good in this character utterly to be lost sight of in the 
 midst of his fall ; that he should let the original nobility of this 
 nature appear through all its immoderate errors, and thus leave 
 open the sure prospect of a radical reformation and repentance. 
 Or could it be true, as Coleridge was of opinion, that sincere 
 repentance on the part of Angelo was impossible ? Certainly, 
 after this deed, there was no more show for this man» The 
 
MEASURE FOE MEA8USE. 501 
 
 eyes of the tester would no more, leave him; he would deceive 
 no one again. He has henceforth only the prospect of becoming 
 a great criminal or of raising himself to lasting virtue and 
 honour. Isabella — she who has most to complain against him — 
 petitions for him, and seems to trust in the germ of good within 
 him. Mariana — she who takes the greatest interest in him — will 
 keep him with all his faults, and she pleads in his behalf that 
 ' men are moulded out of faults, and become much more the 
 better for being a little bad.' She speaks in the sense of the 
 prince in Whetstone's play, who says at last to the pardoned 
 judge : ' If thou art wise, thy fall can make thee rise ; when the 
 lost sheep was found, for joy a feast was prepared.' 
 
 But the severe indignant justice which Coleridge desired 
 was not executed upon Angelo. Not though he had so solemnly 
 challenged the whole rigour of the law against himself and had 
 uttered his own sentence I Not though he even deserved a 
 severer doom than Claudio, against whom he had committed a 
 judicial jnurder when his own greater crime was to go 
 unpunished ! Not though his misdeed was magnified by a new 
 moral disgrace, by a broken promise and an oflScial error, in 
 ordering an execution at an unusual hour ! Not though from 
 him to whom much is given more ought to be required ! 
 Even the Duke's own feeling and sentence seemed unrelentingly 
 to condemn him. If he once pronounced himself a tyrant for 
 suddenly punishing that which he had before overlooked, how 
 must he have regarded Angelo, who punished with death a 
 crime less severe than that which he had himself committed ? 
 And, moreover, this severe condemnation had solemnly fallen 
 from the lips of the Duke : — 
 
 An Angelo for Claudio, death for death : 
 
 Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure, 
 
 Like doth greet like, and Measure still for Measure. 
 
 This equal retribution has ever been the poetical expression of 
 a ' severe and indignant justice,' and its sentence seemed here 
 to be inexorably pronounced. Yet, apart from poetry, Angelo's 
 doom would not be in law altogether in conformity with justice. 
 Angelo's double crime — the disgrace of Isabella and the death of 
 Claudio — had indeed not been carried out. The severest law 
 could have pronounced upon Angelo only the highest chastise-^ 
 ment for attempt. Moreover, the Duke is not in earnest as to 
 his sentence of retaliation ; it is only one of those exciting tests 
 
502 THmO PERIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S DBAMATIC POETBY, 
 
 wMch he has delighted in inflicting upon Claudio and Isahella 
 and now upon Angelo. He says indeed expressly that Angelo 
 shall die on the very block ' where Claudio stooped to death,' 
 while the latter, by means of himself and his contrivancesj is still 
 alive. And how could the Duke execute the sentence of death 
 on Angelo; when he had himself expressly led him upon this 
 ground of temptation and trial by reviving severe discipline, 
 and by confiding to him so high and slippery a position ? How 
 ashamed must he have stood before his Isabella, who was so 
 just that she liked not intent and thought to be punished ; who 
 was so mild and good that, even wh6n she believed Claudio 
 dead, she took into account in Angelo's favour the temptation 
 to which he was exposed by her mere appearance ! If she was 
 ready thus to take a crime upon herself on account of the 
 opportunity she had involuntarily afforded, must not the Duke 
 have seriously charged himself with the temptation which he 
 had consciously and wilfully occasioned ? And how could he 
 execute this severe act of punishment ; he who shuddered to 
 consign to death the gipsy Barnardine — a brute, a Caliban, a 
 heavy stubborn malefactor ? he, in whose heart, not ' severe 
 indignant justice,' but mercy and mildness lay? he who de- 
 manded of the prince who bears the sword of heaven that he 
 should pay to others neither more nor less than he could justify, 
 after weighing his own offences and respecting human 
 weaknesses ? 
 
 And this indeed is not only the spirit of the Duke, but that 
 of our whole play, in which the Duke is, as it were, the chorus : 
 ^namely, that true justice is not jealous justice, but that 
 circumspect equity alone, which suffers neither mercy nor the 
 severe letter of the law to rule without exception, which awards 
 punishment not measure for woeasure, but with measure. 
 Neither the lax mildness which the Duke had allowed to 
 prevail and which he himself condemns, nor the over-severe 
 curb which Angelo applied, is to be esteemed as the right pro- 
 cedure; the sluggishness which gives license to sin, and the 
 system of intimidation which destroys the sinner with the sin, 
 meet with the same condemnation. This play, in its strikingly 
 practical character, has become like a defence of the corrective 
 system, the only system of punishment which a poet's moral 
 intuition could pronounce to be suitable to the world. The 
 Duke loves to employ intimidation in suspense, threats, and 
 torments of imagination, but in actual cases of penalty he 
 
MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 503 
 
 permits mercy to rule when possible, thus giving opportunity 
 for moral reformation. Like Escalus, he pursues sinners by 
 habit and trade rather than the casual fallen one, the bawd and 
 the seducer rather than the seduced ; thrice they warn even the 
 more punishable of their punishment ; and the poetic punish- 
 ment which this evil meets with in Pompey is not the removal 
 of the person, but the investing of his crime with dishonour and 
 with the detestation which belongs to the hangman's office. 
 The Duke despairs not even of the dull Bamardine ; his first 
 thought upon the picture sketched of him is that he wants 
 advice ; and although in his own opinion this murderer has 
 justly incurred the penalty of death, he attempts at last even in 
 him the effect of instruction. It is for this reason that so much 
 stress is laid throughout the play upon the mercy which 
 mediates between severe justice and crime, and it is for this 
 that the poet turns so decidedly against the absolute execution 
 of the law, and the Kteral meaning of its letter. Whilst he 
 quotes in Claudio's lips the word of God (Rom. IX. 15): 'I 
 will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,' he looks with 
 bitterness on the human justice which assumes the infallible 
 position of that Judge, 'who even in his arbitrary will must 
 appear just to us. But, between man and man, the poet 
 desires that every sentence should by all means as much as 
 possible have regard to the motives of the erring, and should 
 certainly (to continue the " words of the apostle) rest somewhat 
 on ' him that wiUeth and him that runneth ' (' an Jemandes 
 Wollen oder Laufen '). Thus, in Germany also, poetry, at the 
 period of its revival in Goethe's youth, afforded a similar 
 practical opposition to the inhuman and merciless punishment 
 of errors in which human inclinations concurred, the strength 
 of which and their proportion to our education and power of 
 resistance we have not bestowed upon oiurselves. The German 
 poems of the former century, which stirred up all the feelings 
 of humanity against the practice of capital punishment for 
 child-murder, niay be closely compared with this piece, which 
 stood in similar relation to equally barbarous English laws. 
 Thus, for instance, Chalmers drew attention to the revival of a 
 statute in 1604, which decreed death to all persons who 
 married whilst their former husbands or wives were yet alive. 
 
 But whilst our play in the first place recommends moder- 
 ation in the exercise of justice, it occupies at the same time a 
 far more general ground, and extends this doctrine to all human 
 
504 THIBS PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEAEE'S BBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 relations, exhibiting, as it were, the kernel of that opinion so 
 often expressed by Shakespeare, of a wise medium in all things. 
 It calls us universally from aU extremes, even from that of the 
 good, because in every extreme there lies an overstraining, 
 which avenges itself by a contrary reaction. There was good in 
 the Duke's mildness, but it turned to the detriment of the 
 common weal, and scattered the seeds of crime. There was 
 good in Angelo's severity, but it erred throughout by the ex- 
 aggeration of its aims, and, as in the case of Elbow, the question 
 might have been put also with respect to him : ' Which is the 
 wiser here ? Justice or Iniquity ? ' There was good in Angelo's 
 serious political studies, but the suppression of the feelings 
 which accompanied them avenged itself by bursting asunder 
 the unnatural restraints. There was good in his exalted virtue, 
 but when he prided himself in it he ' fell by virtue.' If it is 
 indeed excellent to have a giant's strength, the warning is 
 given not to use it like a giant. We are dissuaded from all 
 unbridled action, because the reaction will be restraint : — 
 
 As surfeit is the father of much fast, 
 So every scope by the immoderate use 
 Turns to restraint. 
 
 As this doctrine of the harmful excess of all and even of good 
 things lies in the facts, so it ii to be found also in the images, 
 arid similes of this poem so rich in maxims. Thus the crowd 
 around the sick man, who wish to help, becomes an injury ; the 
 crowd around the beloved prince, for the sake of applause, 
 becomes a burden. In a similar manner this doctrine lies in 
 the characters and in the contrast of their position with regard 
 to. each other. The single character of Angelo, with the 
 unnaturally overstrained exaggeration of his nature, counter- 
 balances a series of contrasts; his severity counterbalances the 
 mildness of the Duke^ his sobriety the levity of Claudio, his 
 heartlessness the tender weakness of his faithful Mariana, and 
 his anxious adherence to the appearance of good Lucio's in- 
 diflferenee to the basest reputatioij.. Between these extremes 
 stands Isabella alone, a type .of a complete human nature, 
 rendering it plain that aU extreme is but imperfect and frag- 
 mentary ; that moderation is not weakness and indolence ; that 
 far rather it forms in man the true moral centre of gravity, 
 which holds him secure from all waverings and errors, and 
 qualifies him for the highest power which can be required of 
 man. 
 
OTHELLO. 
 
 Feom the same collection of tales by Giraldi Cinthio (' Heka- 
 tomithi' III. b. 7), from which. Shakespeare borrowed his 
 material for Measure for Measure, he took that for Othello.. 
 He read it probably in the Italian original, for no English 
 translation of his time is known. 
 
 The story of the Moor of Venice offered somewhat more to 
 Shakespeare than that of Juriste for his Measure for Measure ; 
 yet here, also, all is poor and barren in motive and characteri- 
 sation. Disdemona (for so her fatal name is here written) loves 
 the Moor for the sake of his virtues, and marries him against 
 the will of the family. The ancient destroys the happiness of 
 the pair because he loves Disdemona and believes her to be 
 enamoured of the Moor's lieutenant. The circumstances which 
 serve to provoke the jealousy of the Moor, the dismissal of the 
 lieutenant, Disdemona's intercession for him, the lost pocket- 
 handkerchief, &c., are to be found in the story, but aU in much 
 simpler form, and without the ancient appearing so prominently 
 as in Shakespeare to be the originator of the favourable circum- 
 stances which are to serve his ends. The figure of Eoderigo is 
 wholly wanting in the tale. There is a shadow cast upon the 
 Moor, especially in the unpleasing conclusion. He allows his 
 wife to be barbarously murdered by the ancient, then seeks 
 carefully to hide the cause of her death, and upon the rack 
 denies his guilt, upon which he is banished, and subsequently is 
 put to death by a relative of Disdemona. One sees, out of this 
 single comparison, what a gulf even here separates the novel 
 from the drama; 
 
 We place Othello— the origin of which we can assign to no 
 definite period beyond the notice of a performance in 1604 — by 
 the side of Measure for Measure, as a play which, though from 
 another point of view, makes a similarly painful impression 
 upon most readers. Both pieces demand the somewhat stronger 
 
.506 THIRD FEEIOD OF SHAKJSSPEASE'S DBAMATIG POETBT. 
 
 nerves of the time in which they originated. The bare subject 
 ■of both repels us, the latter still more deeply by the cutting 
 truth of its development. Both pieces evidence, beyond many 
 other works of Shakespeare, that our poet's interest in moral 
 and psychological truth was higher than that in outward 
 sestlietic, beauty, and above all far higher than his consideration . 
 for over-softness of feeling. In ^Measure for Measure, with the 
 ^eatest refinement of feeling, he softened and moderated the 
 painful situation which formed the plot of the story; but he 
 would not go so far as to lose sight of the whole piu^ort, 
 morally so valuable. In Othello, with wonderful psychological 
 perception, he created a magnificent tragic field for the passion 
 of jealousy, which commonly belongs rather to man's petty self- 
 love and is better suited to comic treatment ; but, just for this 
 reason, he forfeited the possibility of considering the feelings of 
 his readers and of forbearance in agitating their minds. With 
 his sense of psychological truth he sought the ground of a 
 passion of such strength as the issue of the story of the Moor of 
 Venice supposed, and he accepted it, when found, with all its 
 necessary consequences. He suffered the flood of this excited 
 sea to rise according to the power of the storm, immindful of 
 the finer natures which could not stand the hurricane. Even 
 TJlrici, who generally stood on the side of our poet against 
 criticising opinion and prejudice, considered the harshness 
 evinced in the loss of the beautiful as outweighing the conso- 
 latory and elevating element ; because the conclusion does not 
 afford here, as in Eomeo and Juliet, an agreeable denouement. 
 But this, it seems, lay unavoidably in the subject itself. 
 Eomeo and Juliet perish by their own will in the excess of a 
 passion of love, which even in its agony appears sweet to us ; in 
 the tragedy before us the innocent wife falls by the hand of her 
 husband under the frightful power of the bitterest and most 
 malignant passion, which completely annihilates the sweeter 
 emotion of love. This was indeed only to be avoided by re- 
 linquishing the subject itself, which would certainly be a far 
 greater cause of regret than if the poet had not written 
 Measure for Measure, on account of its painful plot. The 
 question therefore is only whether the poet, having once under- 
 taken the theme, has done all that he could to avoid what is 
 needlessly terrible, and to soften what is necessarily severe. 
 That he has done this must have appeared evident even to 
 Ulrici. For he perceived that by carefully comprehending and 
 
OTHELLO. 507 
 
 considering the whole, the harmony which he had before missed 
 became apparent. This different result from a different mode 
 of contemplation can scarcely be the consequence of an inner 
 want of harmony in the poem, or the careful consideration of 
 the whole would tend to reveal it ; whilst, on the contrary, we 
 are all the more convinced that although passion is here aroused 
 and displayed in all its strength and power, and is manifested 
 in the most terrible actions, yet no actual discord in the melody 
 is to be perceived. The fault, therefore, must lie in ourselves. 
 Our understanding of the play is not in unison with oiur moral 
 or aesthetic feelings ; either our judgment is at fault in the final 
 comprehension of the play, or our feeling errs in the first im- 
 pression it produces. 
 
 By examining the play and ourselves more narrowly, we 
 shall discover that, so far as the object and design of the drama 
 is concerned, our moral perceptions are opposed to those of the 
 poet. The entire spirit of the tale of the Moor of Venice is 
 laid down by Griraldi Cinthio in the following plain words from 
 Desdemona : ' I fear,' says she, ' that I must serve as a warning 
 to young maidens not to marry against the will of their 
 parents ; an Italian girl should not marry a man whom nature, 
 heaven, and mode of life have wholly separated from her.' These 
 prosaic truths meet Us also in Shakespeare's tragedy, set forth 
 in glowing poetry, and grounded on the deepest experiences of 
 life. At the present day, however, we have not so lively an 
 appreciation of the first of these truths, and we do not estimate 
 so highly the opposition of Othello and Desdemona against 
 family claims as was the case with Shakespeare and his time. 
 If we follow our natural method of consideration, we do not 
 perceive the crime which makes the sufferers deserve such 
 suffering, and we stumble at their heavy punishment. If we 
 place ourselves and our judgment (which with some knowledge 
 of history is not so difficult for us) at the poet's point of view, 
 we find his solution of the problem logical, right, and irre- 
 fragable. Who is to decide whether we or the poet are right 
 in the estimation of this starting-point? For moral ideas, 
 where they are interwoven and brought into contact with social 
 ones, necessarily change with the nature of society. It appears 
 however to us essential, if we would be just to the poet and his 
 works, that we should seek his point of view and place ourselves 
 in his position. For it would at any rate be well for us not to 
 rely too confidently on our personal and present ideas, customs. 
 
508 THIED PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 habits, and views, nor to feel too secure in them in the presence 
 of such a man. For if anyone were free from the prejudices of 
 his 'age, it was he. Have we not seen him, in the play which we 
 discussed before this, taking a position in human affairs such as 
 our German poets only reached two centuries later ? Shall we 
 not see him, in the piece which we shall discuss after this, pre- 
 paring the way for all that sentimentality and softness of 
 feeling which' two centuries after him first became popular in 
 the poetry and mental disposition of the Teutonic nations? 
 These plays were written at the same time ; do we not then 
 place ourselves in the same rank with Voltaire, when in Othello 
 we condemn the poet as a pedantic preacher of morality, while 
 in Measure for Measure he appears to us so liberal in sentiment, 
 and in Hamlet so refined and sympathetic ? In the exami- 
 nation of the inner truth of thife poetic picture we must not 
 merely consult our moral-social theories or feelings, but before 
 everything our experience. For we shall then easily perceive that 
 our experiences even in the present day do not accord with our 
 own theories. Anyone who has had opportunity of drawing 
 frequent experience from family and married life will find that 
 do other of Shakespeare's plays presents such rich and striking 
 application to the actual, oft-recurring circumstances of life — 
 to circumstances and experiences which attest that the tragedy 
 caused by parental tyranny is often exceeded by that arising 
 from the wilfulness of the child. With however good reason 
 we assume to ourselves the freedom of the marriage choice and 
 the. right of the child, yet the counter-claim, which Shakespeare 
 makes in the Winter's Tale, is the most just and natural which 
 can be advanced : in making this choice the father should at 
 least be heard. However independently the newly-founded 
 family ought to enter upon life, universal experience tells us 
 that there is no security when it has forcibly sundered itself 
 from the elder families out of which it arose. Men who from 
 caprice or wilfalness disturb the peace of a family are little 
 qualified to maintain peace in their own. The first trans- 
 gression makes the way easy for another; the deceitful act 
 makes even him mistrustful against whom it was practised in 
 love ; the passion which once forsakes the path of discretion 
 destroys the belief in self-command and in the power of virtue. 
 And where doubts of this kind are once planted in the mind, 
 unhappiness and discord are necessarily the bitter fruit. Fol- 
 lowing out this sad experience, the poet has depicted these 
 
OTHELLO. 509 
 
 family discords in different points of view, in Lear and in 
 Cynabeline, in Othello and in the Winter's Tale ; and from their 
 consideration he has risen, not as a passing fancy, but from wise 
 principle, to that severe moral austerity which he so im- 
 pressively acknowledges in Othello. Hence we may ask 
 whether this elevated morality — then, or now, or at any other 
 time — can be called too severe ; and whether it is not rather that 
 our own laxity of morals and slackness of feeling is too great, 
 rendering us unfit for this austerity, and therefore insusceptible 
 of the ' tragic example set in Othello, and too sensitive to his 
 fearful warning. The question is whether this moral energy, 
 which we despise, is not rather urgently to be commended to us ; 
 and whether it could be commended to us from a more un- 
 suspicious source than by this cheerful, large-hearted man, 
 such as we find Shakespeare in all his plays of this date ? The 
 question is whether the weaker feeling of Sterne's time was of 
 more value, when people wept over Hamlet's sensitive nature, 
 or the stronger judgment which condemns his weak-minded 
 indecision ? ' And while in all ages there will be men who 
 answer differently these and similar questions, and while these 
 questions must always and ever remain unsolved riddles, one 
 thing is established with all the greater certainty from these 
 very questions, and above these very doubts : — that the poet, 
 who with such unbiassed feeling and undivided judgment united 
 in himself the double and scarcely reconcilable qualities of 
 mildness and severity, self-discipline and freedom; that this 
 poet must have had a greatness of soul and spirit before which 
 it is good to humble oneself, by whi^ch it would be well to be 
 influenced, and by the just perception of which the richest 
 treasure is to be gained by every thoughtful man. 
 
 We will therefore endeavour, with the utmost possible 
 fidelity, to point out the leading features of this tragedy, in 
 order to discover the true meaning of the poet, unmixed with - 
 our own views and opinions. This task is easier in this play 
 than in many others. The sense is simple and scarcely to be 
 missed, because the story is not complicated, because the one 
 action hinges upon one passion of giant magnitude, the whole 
 history, origin, and increase' of which we can follow in its whole 
 course. It is on this account that this play, beyond all Shake- 
 speare's tragedies, has ever excited a great interest. The old 
 editors of Shakespeare's works, from Johnson onwards, surpass 
 themselves in their consideration of such a piece, in their 
 
510 THIBD FEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DEAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 remarks, in their conception of single scenes, and in their 
 estimate of characters ; and later critics have with acuteness 
 and penetration explained the whole structure of this and 
 similar favourite plays. 
 
 The task imposed upon the poet was to exhibit the passion 
 of jealousy to an extent in which the lover can be thought 
 capable of destroying the object of his love. We think a man 
 of inflamed sensibility, of heated blood, and of the most violent 
 irritability, eispecially capable of such a deed ; and even him 
 only in the frenzy of intoxication, in the sudden incentive of 
 opportunity, and in the feverish excitement of a fit of rage. 
 But such a deed would never be a subject for art ; such a man, 
 acting in an irresponsible condition,, would never win our 
 sympathy for his tragic fate. Could it, however, be conceivable 
 that such a deed could ever be committed by a man of fixed 
 character and steadfast disposition, who previous to the act had 
 even captivated our interest ? by a man in whom this passion, 
 one of the lowest which actuates a human being, could appear 
 so ennobled that, even in spite of and after such a deed, he 
 could engage our sympathy and even excite our pity? It 
 would appear impossible ! And yet the poet in Othello has 
 made such a man commit such a deed. Or, rather, he has 
 depicted it as committed by a man who united the two natures, 
 calmness and ardour, rashness and circumspection — the traits 
 which make the murder possible, and those which allow us to 
 admire and to pity the murderer. How the poet was to evolve 
 truth in such a contradiction, was the point which required 
 his utmost art and knowledge of human nature. This task, 
 however, he discharged in such a manner that the play of 
 Othello must for this reason be reckoned among his highest 
 works. 
 
 Let us first bring out the image of the Moor from the 
 shadow of the Past, before we consider him in the action of the 
 play. 
 
 Othello is by race, complexion, habits, and natural dis- 
 position, a stranger in the state which we see him serving, 
 although he has become a Christian and a Venetian. The stain 
 of his birth is ever kept in fresh remembrance by his dark skin, 
 and neither his deeds nor his royal origin can free him from 
 the prejudices of men. The peculiar disposition of his Mauri- 
 tanian race, his violent temperament, the power of passion, and 
 the force of a tropical fancy, were not to be efifaced, however 
 
OTHELLO. 511 
 
 much the self-command of the much-tried man, steeled by 
 deeds and sufferings, had attempted it. He had missed in life 
 aU that most surely destroys in us the original and luxuriant 
 strength of passions : — ^namely, the quiet, early, uninterrupted, 
 all-powerful influence Qf education and conventional habits, 
 which softens the wild natural power of our impulses by modi- 
 fying and relaxing it from the very outset. All that birth and 
 origin had in this respect called forth in Othello, his fate, 
 education, calling, and life had continued. From his seventh 
 year he had grown up in the 'tented field,' and had remained 
 estranged and alienated from the peaceful world, from citizen- 
 life, from th6 influence of home, from the arts, from cultivation, 
 enjoyment, and repose. He was a ' full soldier,' to whom th& 
 flinty and steel couch of war was as a thrice-driven bed of down, , 
 In his speeches all his images and comparisons are taken from 
 the wars, the sea, or the chase. When landing in Cyprus he 
 has just escaped the tumult of the elements ; his heart is opened 
 and his tongue loosened, and contrary to his habit he is 
 talkative, kindly, and tender ; in deeds and dangers he finds the 
 source of cheerful vigour. His spirit, his range of sight, his^ 
 power of mind, his cool determination, are all influenced by ■ 
 them ; the noblest gifts and acquirements of his nature are at 
 their highest point when dangers surround him ; it is a grand 
 picture which lago draws of that immovable calmness which 
 never left him even when the cannon scattered his battle array, 
 and tore his own brother from his side. Impelled by an heroic 
 nature he has yielded to this inclination for deeds and ad- 
 ventures, and to this delight in bold and threatening enterprises, 
 journeying by land and sea to the ends of the earth to behold 
 its terrors and its wonders. He had been in ' antres vast and 
 deserts idle ; ' he had had ' hair-breadth scapes i'th'imminent 
 deadly breach ; ' he had been taken prisoner, and sold to slavery, 
 and again redeemed ; he had seen 
 
 Cannibals that each' other eat, 
 The anthropophagi, and men whose heads 
 Do grow heneath their shoulders. 
 
 SoheJoldJOegdemona, when he was least inclined for fable ; 
 he infonned-the_sen§te__of_VeBic6 of this narration, when the 
 most accurate truth was his duty and his interest ; the strongest 
 sincerity lay besides in his nature and principles. He, there- 
 fore, must have believed that he had actually seen those marvels. 
 
512 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 of distant regions; his southern fancy had mingled with his 
 power of observation, or he related only - from hearsay ; ' 
 credulity and superstition betray at any rate his origin and the 
 power of his imagination ; and these are traits which it behoves 
 us to hold in lively remembrance, in order subsequently to 
 comprehend the incredible and fatal exercise of these very 
 qualities. The belief in mysterious powers is deeply rooted in 
 that reduntant imagination, which is so natural in the hunter, 
 the sailor, and the adventurer. The magic with which he 
 invests the handkerchief, his wedding-gift to Desdemona, is 
 not merely feigned to increase its value and significance in her 
 estimation ; she receives it so trustfully that she questions not 
 his belief in such wonderful powers;, and there are other 
 passages in which he speaks credulously of the omen of a 
 * raven o'er the infected house,' and the influence of the moon 
 upon the spirits of men. With this previous history Othello 
 had entered the service of the Venetian state. He had become 
 so naturalised there that like a patriot he held the honour of 
 the state as his own honour : this he showed at Aleppo, when, 
 in the midst of the enemy's land, he stabbed the Turk who 
 insulted Venice by striking a Venetian. By his warlike deeds 
 he had made himself indispensable to the state ; he was ' all in 
 all ' to the senate ; the people and public opinion, ' the sove- 
 reign mistress of effects,' were on his side. Among the noble 
 and the higher classes alone he had open enemies and enviers ; 
 those who possess the privileges ever possess the prejudices 
 also. "We hear, indeed, the tone in which lago and Eoderigo 
 speak of the ' black devil ' and ' the thick-lips ; ' we hear how 
 poisonously lago, under the mask of good intention, tells hini 
 to his face the prejudices as to his colour and birth which are 
 circulated in Venice ; we see plainly at what a distance he was 
 regarded by Brabantio, at whose house he was even a favoured 
 guest. In the eyes of these people he was not the deserving 
 warrior of their country, but avagrant^j vagabond, a nd_fordgg^ 
 b^rbgxian ; the finger of scorn pointe3at him, and he felt it. 
 That he should meet his enemies with disregard and contempt 
 lay in his proud nature ; we hear that he rejected important 
 
 1 Thus, as Sir Walter Raleigh, in the description of his journey to 
 Guiana in 1505, tells of the cannibals, amazous, and the headless pepple of 
 Ewaipanoma, on which Shakespeare, according to commentators, must have 
 thought in this passage of the wonders of Othello's journey; although he. 
 may just as well have had Mandeville before him. 
 
OTHELLO. 513 
 
 requests for lago; we see him opposing the pride of the 
 
 senator's cap (Brabantio) by the assertion of his own royal 
 
 birth ; if he so treats the powerful and influential father-in-law 
 
 in the moment of closest union, how might he have acted in 
 
 the case of provocation ? There rested upon him, as upon the 
 
 descendants of the Jewish people, the stain of imequal birth 
 
 and the fate Of expulsion ; the more his services emancipated 
 
 him, the more sensitive, we may believe, would he be to the 
 
 prejudices which yet remained. But before he attained to this 
 
 position of importance, throughout his whole life resentment 
 
 and bitterness must have been planted in his spirit through this 
 
 pariah-condition. TheJeeliag._of_d^reciation 0£pr^sed_him ; 
 
 disunion with the' world and discord with his fellow-men raged 
 
 silently within him ; this gave him the grave expression and 
 
 the silent reserved nature, with its tendency to brooding 
 
 thought; it gave him the inclination, so common to rugged 
 
 characters, to yield to soft compliant dispositions, to the 
 
 apparent honesty of the hypocritical lago,- to the pliable Cassio, 
 
 and entirely to the gentle Desdemona. There was a time when 
 
 this feeling of rejection produced a disturbance within him 
 
 which, with one of his strongly expressive comparisons, he 
 
 called ' chaos,' &.nd which he shudders to look back upon. He 
 
 had cooled his hot Moorish blood, but he could not change it. 
 
 He had learned to repress his raging temperament in the 
 
 school of circumstances, but these struggles, we imagine, had 
 
 become hard to him, and had often been fruitless. If from 
 
 some just and heavy cause the flood-gates of restrained passion 
 
 gave way, then his condition became ' perplexed in the extreme,' 
 
 stubborn ■ obstinacy seized him, and the outburst of frightful 
 
 emotions betrayed the inherent power of his nature, threatened 
 
 his mind with distraction, and overcame even his body with 
 
 spasms and faintness. 
 
 But the degree of self-command which Othello exercised,! 
 and the measure of self-possession and power over his passions! 
 which he acquired, attract us to him still more than his deeds" 
 and watlike talent. The profession of arms had invested him 
 with calmness, firmness, severe disc ipline, and strength of 
 wilL.aad_jjiirpo§a4- these qualities related to his innermost 
 nature, and influenced his intercourse with men. After a long 
 camp-life he could no longer refine his habits according to the 
 gentle fashion of courtly society, but he disciplined them like a 
 soldier. He had cooled down his anger and zeal on principle. We 
 
 L L 
 
\ 
 
 514 THIRD PEBIOD OF 8HAKESFEASE' 8 DSAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 find Mm, on our first acquaintance with him, leaving upon every- 
 one around him the impression of a mastery over self which is 
 firmly to be relied on ; he appears to all a man of large heart, 
 one not easily irritated, whom no passion decides, and whose 
 firm virtue no chance nor fate can shake. Based upon this 
 4nward re pose , the beautiful qualities of his character appear 
 the more clearly. A warrior, knowing ' little of this great 
 world,' he.J md, no great versa tility of mind ; he was ' little 
 blessed with the set phrase of speech ; ' ignorant of the arts of 
 cunning and craftiness, he was pliable, credulous, and easily 
 deceived by the hypocrisy which he perceived not. With these, 
 his mental deficiencies, the excellent natural qualities of his 
 heart stand in the closest union. His confidence was without 
 limits when once established ; to dissemble was diflScult to him, 
 aye, impossible ; all ostentation and conceit were foreign to 
 him ; the candour, the lack of suspicion, the constancy of this 
 true sotd, his perfect kindness, his thoroughly noble nature, 
 were acknowledged even by his enemies. This strong self- 
 discipline, this calm demeanour, and this noble-mindedness, 
 were combined with the most manly sense of honour. He had 
 won for himself the honour which others inherit; and he 
 defended it with the jealousy and care with which the pos- 
 sessor watches over a property whose acquisition had been - 
 difficult. Laboriously had Othello thus acquired that even 
 balance of conduct, arising from the genuine honest self- 
 reliance to which his merits had advanced him. But even at 
 this highest point of his self-contentment we never wholly lose 
 the impression that his self-reliance does not stand unalterably 
 firm, and that this evenness of conduct fiuctuates in the 
 balance ; we feel that the one scale, weighted with the acknow- 
 ledgment he meets with, alternates with the other scale of 
 secret discontent springing from the feeling of his birth. The 
 slightest jar on the one side or the other would, we fear, 
 disturb the equilibrium, if not wholly destroy it. 
 
 But at the point of time at which the play begins, an 
 unexpected happiness befalls the Moor, which seems as if it 
 must for ever ensure this equilibrium : the most perfect woman 
 in Venice falls to his lot. In the delineation of this woman 
 the poet has sketched a character of extraordinary truth and 
 naturalness, the comprehension of which must next occupy our 
 attention. Shakespeare has invested Desdemona with all that 
 can render her precious and invaluable to the Moor. He has en- 
 
OTHELLO. • 515 
 
 do-wed her -with a beauty ' that paragons description and wild 
 fame.' Othello became acquainted with her as a busy housewife, 
 ' delicate with her needle, an admirable musician,' whose voice 
 could ' sing the savageness out of a bear,' and even had charms 
 for the Moor, though he cared not for music. In the affair 
 with Cassio we observe her kindly zeal for others, her goodness 
 and gratitude. Her father Brabantio says of her, that she is 
 ' of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion blushed at herself.' 
 Essential traits of her character are indicated by the poet In the 
 passage (Act ii. sc. 1) in which lagoi, challenged by Desdemona, 
 sketches the picture of a ' deserving woman,' to disfigure it 
 after his own fashion with an ' impotent conclusion ; ' in this 
 picture he evidently takes her own character as a model. For 
 it accords with her when he says that she was ' ever fair, and 
 never proud,' as her choice demonstrates. It accords with her 
 that she had ' tongue at will and yet was never loud,' as he 
 gave evidence before- the senate. We are' also inclined to 
 believe of the modest maiden all that lago further adduces as 
 tokens of womanly merit ; that she ' never lacked gold, and yet 
 went never gay ; ' we know of her that she could ' see suitors 
 following, and never look behind; 'we can observe that ' she 
 could think and ne'er disclose her mind ; ' and that, on the point 
 to become mistress of her desires, she can delay or resign them. 
 And in the most tragic moment of her life -we subsequently see 
 how far from all revenge she is, when she blesses her calumniator, 
 and in her death seeks to save her murderer by an untruth 
 which merits heaven. One ironical trait is added by lago to 
 his picture of a ' deserving woman,' and this, among so many 
 moral endowments, appears like a mental deficiency ; he invests 
 her with no more wisdom than was necessary not to sacrifice an 
 evident advantage for a disadvantage, not ' to change the cod's 
 head for the salmon's tail.' And in truth Desdemona does not, 
 at any rate, possess the quick wit of those Beatrices and 
 Eosalinds, which, with word-catchers and sophists, like lago and 
 the clown, would come off victorious in the combat. In her 
 retired life the highest blessing which ignorance of the world 
 and of its vain propensities can impart has become hers ; the 
 happiest freedom from all prejudice -with respect to rank and 
 position, and the pm-est human development of all the qualities 
 of the heart; but great circumspection, ready activity and 
 versatility of mind, penetration and knowledge of Inmian 
 nature, are not to be acquired in this school. She is regarded 
 
 Ii ju 2 
 
516 THIRV^FERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DSAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 by the Moor as prudent and imaginative, but she is so no 
 further than is necessary to a little feminine dissimulation 
 and denial, consistent with the unsuspicious nature of a good 
 conscience; she would not be capable of serious insincerity; 
 even the prudent and innocent subterfuge dies upon her lips, if 
 any severity of accusation has made her timid. Conspicuous 
 mental endowments would perhaps have repelled rather than 
 attracted the Moor ; his own plain nature would not have felt 
 easy by the side of a woman of this kind. This genuine man- 
 liness is only attracted by the most genuine womanliness, and 
 this again Othello would have found belonging rather to the 
 feeling than to. the witty nature of woman. He would ex- 
 change the splendour of all mental endowments for the one 
 characteristic whieh belongs to Desdeoiona, that highest charm 
 of the womanly nature, which lago names not, because he 
 knows it not or believes not in it : namely, her humility, her 
 harmless ingenuousness, her modesty and innocence. The 
 mirror of this soul has never been darkened by the breath of an 
 impure thought ,; it abhors her to speak the mere word of sin ; 
 her name is clear and ' fresh as Dian's visage.' The genuineness 
 of her soul and mind culminates — and this is the highest point 
 of her nature — in a perfect freedom from suspicion too deeply 
 rooted in her for this suspicious world. This unsuspiciousness 
 is the source of all her noble qualities, but it is also the cause 
 of her calumniation and aspersion ; it leads her to raise faults 
 into noble virtues, hut to be less circumspect in guarding her own 
 virtue; the excess of her consciousness of innocence makes her 
 idle and careless of appearance ; she never needed the law, and 
 knew of no sin ; she might err against many rules of conven- 
 tional custom, but her heart would be pure from stain, because 
 any infraction of the eternal moral law would be impossible to 
 her ; she has no suspicion of other men, and dreams not that 
 they could think evil of her ; this ingenuousness, therefore, is 
 the source of her happiness, and also the cause of her un- 
 happiness. 
 
 It is not every woman who would take the step towards her 
 happiness which she does ; it could alone be done by the most 
 conscious design and cunning, or by the unconscious and naive 
 innocence whieh in Desdemona produces this degree of un- 
 suspiciousness. She has heard ' by parcels ' the story of 
 Othello's life. The charm which an energetic manly nature 
 exercises upon a healthy feminine soul has seized her; an 
 
OTHELLO. 517 
 
 affection like that whicli Ulysses awakens in Nausicaa is aroused 
 in her. She had shunned the 'curled darlings' of Venice who 
 had wooed her; the deep interest which she took in the 
 great warrior directed her eye to him, dissimilar as he was to 
 her in beauty, habits, and years. She had to struggle with the 
 natural disinclination to a being so diverse, and feared to look 
 on him before she learned to love him ; an experienced woman, 
 who had not like her been deprived of maternal guidance and 
 education, would have listened to this first voice of the soul, but 
 she could not do so. The great qualities of Othello's heroic 
 nature prevailed over her who was of a less sensual nature. 
 She ' saw his visage in his mind ; 'her love was not the fruit of a 
 fleeting ebullition of passion, but the slowly ripened admiration 
 of his valour and manly power ; she surrendered herself to him 
 with the determination of a perfectly confiding feminine soul i; 
 innocent and unmindful she submitted to the ridicule of the 
 world, and endured patiently the tnunpet of report. She did 
 not understand the concealment of these powerful emotions in 
 her soul ; it is more just to say it did not occur to her to 
 attempt it, Othello took a pliant hour to dilate his pilgrimage 
 intentively to her. The pity which, according to Olivia's 
 experience also, is a first step to love, added to her admiration. 
 She gave him a 'world of sighs ;' and she swore — even in re- 
 membrance the Moor deemed it strange and wondrous pitiful — 
 that she wished she had not heard his story. The idea of the 
 burden of difficulties which opposed her love, and of the pain 
 which the destruction of her quiet desires would prepare for 
 her, drew from her this sigh, which she was as little able to 
 restrain. She went still further : she wished that heaven had 
 made her such a man, and bade Othello that if he had a friend 
 that loved her, he shouHd but teach him how to teU his story, 
 and that would woo her. With this hint the maiden proiFered 
 herself to him — a being worthy in his estimation to grace an 
 emperor's side. Perhaps with him nothing less than these 
 advances from such a being would have availed to draw him 
 closely to a woman, for he was little tempted to the service of 
 love and women. The nature of the warrior designed for action 
 is, according to general experience, rarely sensual ; besides, his 
 roving life had never permitted the feeling of domestic repose 
 to gain ground in him. But that he loved Desdemona, he says 
 himself, he would not have relinquished his unhoused free 
 condition. Years had long extinguished in him the first glow 
 
518 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 of passion. In the evening, when Desdemona followed him, he 
 is called to the senate ; he will speak one word with her before 
 he goes, and it is but one. In the same night, not enjoying 
 his love, and separated from Desdemona, he sets out for 
 Cyprus, and with both there is not a word of resistance. In the 
 bridal night at Cyprus they are roused by tumult, and the 
 disciplinarian captain is in all haste and circumspection at his 
 post. He had even solemnly _ sworn to the senate that the 
 presence of his wife would not ' taint his serious business,' nor 
 his disports corrupt it ; on the contrary, if ever the light- 
 winged toys of love should foil 'with wanton dulness' his 
 speculative and active instruments, housewives should make a 
 skillet of his helm, and all indign and base adversities should 
 make head against his reputation. His love is not that love in 
 idleness which, leads Proteus and Eomeo into effeminate useless- 
 ness ; but, yielding to the daims of his vocation, he unlooses, as 
 it says in Troilus and Cressida, the amorous fold of Cupid from 
 his neck, and ' like a dewdrop from the lion's mane,' shakes it 
 to ' airy air.' It is just this that Desdemona desires in him ; she 
 is ready to go with him in war and sea, in order that he should 
 not be bereft of the deeds for which she loves him. And in 
 this characteristic there lies another link to enchain him to 
 her, a quality which must make him happy, and must dispel in 
 him the night of chaos. Whatever honour the state and 
 people of Venice had shown him, it had only been because th6y 
 had reaped advantage from it ; it had been, as it were, in spite 
 of his person and the prejudice that weighed heavily upon it. 
 But Desdemona had been the first and the only one to love his 
 personality as the very source of his deeds; and this love, 
 coming to him from such a being, could counterbalance the 
 hatred and envy of the world. With this love there falls a 
 sunshine upon his life which resolves into perfect harmony 
 every former discord. What wonder that she afterwards 
 ' played the God ' with him, and could win him over to aU that 
 she wished ? that he would not resign her for a world, which 
 heaven "might make him of one entire and perfect chrysolite, 
 and offer it in exchange ? She is henceforth the place where 
 he can garner up his heart, where he must live or 'bear no 
 life ; ' she is the foimtain (these are all his own words) from the 
 which his current runs, or else dries up. 
 
 So much did Desdemona in her innocence do for the man 
 of her admiration and choice ; but she does yet more for himj 
 
OTHELLO. 519 
 
 and this more was too much, for it led beyond the deceptiye 
 barrier between happiness and unhappiness. She united 
 herself to him without the knowledge and will of her family, 
 and assents to an elopement from her father's house. The free 
 consent of her father must have appeared to both unimaginable ; 
 the pride of Othello, which struggled against stooping and 
 iinploring, the mistrust of his darker nature (a heritage of the 
 old variance), his regardlessness, the conviction that his services 
 would out-tongue the complaints of the father, and the feeling 
 of his indispensableness, co-operated on his side to the step 
 which she took to please him in the obedience of the already 
 married wife. Thus Othello sails into, the harbour of his 
 happiness with a hostile attack, and himself inserts a new' 
 discord into the wondrous solution of the old torments of his 
 soul. Brabantio is indeed a man who, with wounding pride, 
 would have set a value upon his Venetian blood in opposition 
 to the Moor. He would scarcely have consented to this union, 
 which would have appeared to him against all rules of nature ; 
 he says himself that he would have refused his daughter to the 
 Moor ; that if he possessed another child this experience with 
 the first would have taught him to hang clogs on her. He 
 is inclined to insist upon his paternal right and upon the 
 honour of his house even with tyrannical severity ; Desdemona's 
 step appeared to him a revolt and a treason of the blood; 
 superstitious as he is, he is convinced in the bitterest serious- 
 ness that impious magic has ensnared the heart of his child to 
 'faU in love with what she feared to look on.' He had 
 scornfully expelled the wooing Eoderigo from the house ; he had 
 attempted to wrest his daughter by force of arms from the 
 abductor Othello; in the midst of the weightiest and most 
 pressing business of state he brings forward his complaint, for 
 his grief ' swallows the general care.' But, in spite of all this, 
 who can conjecture the influence that the way of truth might 
 have had over this severe and obstinate man ? The improbable 
 so often comes to pass ; Othello and Desdemona might have 
 experienced this in Brabantio had they taken the straight 
 course of action, instead of allowing Brabantio, as they do, to 
 experience it in them. He had heard the unvarnished story of 
 Othello's natural witchcraft, with which he had bribed Desde- 
 mona herself to woo him ; the father swears that if this is 
 confirmed out of Desdemona's mouth as only half the truth, 
 he will undertake nothing further against the Moor. He might 
 
520 THIBB PEBIOD OF 8HJXESPEASE' 8 SBAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 have said the same if his daughter had not rebelled against 
 him ; and he might have given her in her new home his 
 blessing, if not his good will. And how good had it been for 
 the wife of the soldier, whose vocation drove him here and there 
 in the world, to have at times a refuge in her father's house ! 
 How good for the wife of the Moor to have the support of her 
 family to oppose to his foreign nature ! How good it had been 
 if, at once upon that fatal expedition to Cyprus, she could have 
 tarried under her father's roof, which both now so scornfully 
 refuse ! As soon as Desdemona has confirmed the Moor's 
 narrative, Brabantio in heart and word abandons with bitter 
 grief his ^ jewel,' his only child. ' God be with you ! I have 
 done 1 ' With these words he hurries to the affairs of state, and 
 stifles grief and anger within his crushed heart. At the first 
 moment he saw bitterness before him for the rest of his life ; 
 the marriage was fatal to him, and sorrow cut in twain the 
 threads of his old life. In his anger and involuntary curse 
 germinated the little unnoticeable shoot, which grew into the 
 powerful root of revenge, and finally undermined the edifice of 
 love and life raised by Othello and Desdemona. In departing, 
 the father had warned the .Moor to be watchful : she had 
 deceived her father and might deceive him also ! This was 
 the, first sting that settled in his soul-r-he felt not its point now, 
 when he staked his life on her fidelity. But the significant 
 tokens of destiny and the forebodings of the soul permitted not 
 the blessing of possession to prosper for a moment in either. 
 In the evening of their first union, in the bridal night, they 
 were disturbed ; on the voyage to Cyprus they were separated, 
 and their stormy voyage is like a symbol of the fate which 
 awaited them. United with her again, Othello stands on the 
 threshold of the highest happiness, but there lies over his soul 
 something of an unbelieving foreboding. Joy ' stops ' his 
 voice, -the fulness of his heart discharges itself in violent 
 kisses. ' If I were now to die,' he 
 
 'Twere now to be most happy ; for, I fear 
 My soul hath her content so absolute, 
 That not another comfort like to this 
 Succeeds in unknown fate. 
 
 It is like Eomeo's foreboding on entering the house of the 
 Capulet. The Moor is immediately entangled in the nets of 
 lago, which the latter weaves out of the virtues of both for 
 
OTHELLO. 521 
 
 their destruction. They would not have ensnared him if that 
 curse of Brabantio had not exercised its natural magic power. 
 
 We must next make ourselves acquainted with the fearful 
 instrument whom fate employs in destroying the happiness of 
 this union. 
 
 The character of lago is maintained by the poet through- 
 out in a great and profound contrast to Othello. Among the 
 many opposite relations to each other in which the poet has 
 ever placed his main figures, in obedience to the fundamental 
 idea which occupied him, this is by far one of the most pro- 
 found and remarkable. The essentially different qualities of 
 malevolence, envy, and jealousy are united under the common 
 characteristic of dissatisfaction at the good possessed by others. 
 This common idea marks the characters of both Othello and 
 lago, however widely they differ in modification. In Othello 
 this dissatisfaction is originally grounded on that dark feeling of 
 neglect which his birth brings upon him. In spite of his glo- 
 rious deeds he never attained to the enjoyment of honour, 
 which devolved upon others without merit on their side. With- 
 out grudging to others their advantages, he had a right, in the 
 consciousness of his superiority, to be dissatisfied at his exclu- 
 sion from them. On this ground his love for Desdemibna is 
 rooted, because she appeared not to share this prejudice of the 
 world ; and upon this ground also rests his jealousy, because he 
 is constrained to believe that she top has deceived and misused 
 him. Well-foimded jealousy justifies malevolence ; for the 
 possession of the wife is a blessing which others have no claim 
 to share. In Othello it is, moreover, stiU more justifiable, 
 because with him it is heightened to its enduring strength 
 rather by the feeling of wounded honour and deceived con- 
 fidence than by the sense of lost love and fidelity ; and as regards 
 his honour, man is his own judge. In lago, on the contrary, a 
 similar disposition appears to produce a perfectly different 
 appearance and nature. 
 
 In the first place, he does not possess this sensitive feeling of 
 honour and this jealousy of stainless honour as regards both his 
 house and person. Good name and reputation are indifferent to 
 him ; however beautifully he understands how to talk of it before 
 the Moor, entering into his feelings, he expresses himself to Cassio 
 in a perfectly opposite manner, according to his own feeling, 
 and declares that the loss of reputation is to him of less offence 
 than any other material injury. Anyone who has a sensitive 
 
522 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 feeling of honour must know men whom he esteems, for only- 
 such can wound our honour. Such men lago knows not. To 
 his incarnate egotism only those men appear as fellows of ' some 
 soul' who seek their own advantage, indifferent to the injury of 
 others ; who know how to advance themselves, careless of the 
 means used. One who 'knew how to love himself he has 
 never found. He purports himself to become a speaking 
 example of this his human ideal. Towards all others he is 
 filled with deep contempt. In the presence of Desdemona he 
 calls himself a slanderer ; and he evidences at once his strength 
 in this quality, when, in characterising the different kinds of 
 women, he ' praises the worst best,' and declares her whom he 
 must acknowledge to be truly deserving to be a being of an 
 inferior kind, good enough ' to suckle fools and chronicle small 
 beer.' He believes not in honourable men, because he believes 
 not in virtue ; it is ' a fig ' to him. To him reason alone is the 
 measure of things, because it is the influencing power in all our 
 actions. The simple man, the blockhead, such as Eoderigo, is 
 to him only a machine, whom he uses according to his interest. 
 ■The credulous and honest man, .such as Othello, is to him a 
 ' fool ' and an ' ass,' whom he leads according to his necessity. 
 The moral and conscientious man, such as Cassio, is to him 
 ' too severe a moraller,' a tender weakling, whom he uses for his 
 wicked schemes. The pure blameless one, such as Desdemona, 
 is to him an insignificant creature, and, what is more, the 
 natural aim of his love of calumny ; for he does not believe in 
 this same blameless purity, and still less does he like to believe 
 in it. 
 
 If that jealousy of honour, which at length made OtheUo 
 such a severe murderer, is utterly foreign to lago, jealousy of 
 love is so also. Every feeling for this is lacking in him. Black 
 in his soul, as Schlegel called him, he is cold, unfeeling calcu- 
 lation throughout ; in every single action this permanent stony 
 hardness of his heart comes to light — a hardness which only grief 
 and rage occasionally unnaturally produced in Othello ; a hardr 
 ness evidenced perhaps still more, and more awfully, when he 
 does not act directly. With icy coldness he sees Othello in a 
 swoon, and with pitiless insensibility he sees the unhappy 
 Desdemona, who had done him no wrong, fall a sacrifice to his 
 malignity. Reflecting upon means to revenge himself, he 
 forges at first double plans. Among them is even one — and this 
 in the novel is represented as his design — for himself making 
 
OTHELLO. 523 
 
 Desdemona unfaithful to the Moor. But he who only knows 
 self-love cannot in deed and earnestness love this charming 
 being ; as he himself says, not even ' out of absolute lust.' He 
 would, however, have reasoned himself into this love for the 
 aims of his revenge alone, just as he reasoned himself into 
 jealousy. He had heard by report that the Moot had been 
 trifling with his own wife. He knows well that it is false, but 
 he ' will do as if for surety.' He will be even with the Moor ; 
 he so buries himself in his thought that, 'like a poisonous 
 mineral, it gnaws his inwards ; ' yet even this jealousy, in 
 glaring contrast to Othello's, is only artificial ; only a means to 
 other ends, only a whetstone to his revenge against the Moor. 
 For his wife had formerly little and now nothing to suffer from 
 this jealousy, just because he has no other ground of vengeance 
 against her than against Othello. 
 
 lago is thus a stranger to the jealousy of honour and love ; 
 but, on the other hand, he is filled with a coarser variety of this 
 passion, with jealousy of rank, with ambition of position, with 
 true envy and malevolence. Somewhat of the kind is possibly 
 to be perceived in Othello on the occasion of Cassio's advance- 
 ment. In this contrast the whole difference between Othello's 
 kindly nature and lago's coldly prudent one comes to light. 
 This is at once the point at which these cliaracters come into 
 hostile collision, and at which Othello commits an error against 
 lago, and himself causes the assaults of this dangerous enemy. 
 He has awakened this jealousy of rank in lago, and has spurred 
 him by it to a thirst for revenge ; and there lies a touch of 
 retribution in the circumstance that lago imbues him in return 
 with that jealousy of love and honour which urges him to such 
 frightful revenge. That lago is a valiant soldier is the testi- 
 mony of all. The Moor has seen proofs of his ability among 
 Christians and heathens ; lago had expected, therefore, to have 
 received the position of lieutenant ; according to the old custom 
 of ' gradation,' and if favour and affection were not to decide, it 
 belonged to him ; his merit also awarded it to him in his own 
 estimation : ' I know my price,' he says ; ' I am worth no worse 
 a place.' But Othello, in his conduct to him also, undesignedly 
 allows himself to be governed by undue regardlessness. He 
 prefers Cassio before him — a man who, as a foreigner (a Floren- 
 tine) and as a younger comrade, must even doubly provoke' 
 lago's envy, and who (as far as we may judge from our own 
 acquaintance with him) is not too unfairly dealt with by his 
 
524 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 adversary when he calls him, in comparison with himself, rather 
 a soldier of ' the bookish theoric,' who understands nothing of 
 the practice of war. The feeling of slight raises lago against 
 Othello, and arouses his diabolical enmity. Othello should 
 have thought thrice before he inflicted upon another an injury 
 from which he had, himself suffered so much; he should not 
 have inflicted it upon one who could not patiently command 
 himself in silent suffering, who, once excited, filled every 
 thought with plans of revenge, and whose mind was inex- 
 haustible in expedients. Added to this, lago possessed all the 
 gifts impossible even to be imagined by the Moor. For while 
 Othello is open and honest, simple and upright, lago is endowed 
 with all the arts of dissimulation. While Othello is harmlessly 
 trustful and ignorant of the world, lago is an observer of human 
 nature, flexibly and adroitly aware how to handle everyone 
 after his kind, and to manage everything according to time 
 and circumstance. And while Othello is patient, good-natured, 
 and noble, lago is active and malicious, his inflamed hatred 
 requiring vent and action. For the sake of Cassio's advancement 
 he had been slighted by Othello ; but he feels, and as regards 
 his mental capabilities only too justly, not merely qualified for 
 Cassio's position ; and, as the Moor refuses it to him, he is 
 impelled to show him, with fearful distinctness, how far superior 
 he is even to himself. 
 
 If lago's actions could be entirely traced to this wounded 
 self-reliance, as to their radical cause, the character would 
 appear infinitely more excusable; but his malevolence has a 
 still deeper source, imparting to the man that fearful trait of 
 malice which makes Othello look for his cloven. foot. It is 
 indeed not only envy coveting the possessions and honour of 
 another, it is not only malevolence believing itself more worthy 
 of happiness than others, which forms the innermost nature of 
 this character; it is far more the climax of these passions 
 actively indulged in, dissatisfaction at the perfection of others, 
 and aversion to the good in itself. This depth of his wicked- 
 ness is manifested in his relation to Desdemona. In Koderigo, 
 Cassio, and Othello, a man like lago has only outward endow- 
 ments to envy, and no inward superiority. In Desdemona, who 
 excludes him from no appointment and no rank, his eye is 
 necessarily directed to her inward perfections. Had these been 
 indifferent to him, it would be too unnatural for him to have 
 plunged this guiltless and helpless one into the severest misery. 
 
OTHELLO. 525 
 
 But they are far from being so. Otherwise he would not be so 
 indefatigable in degrading her and her virtues ! In Othello he 
 was willing to acknowledge a good quality, even if he distorted 
 it into a mental weakness ; but in Desdemona it would have 
 been altogether more difl&cult to him to acknowledge such a 
 quality ; or, even if he does so, his malice is still more busy in 
 defiling the mirror-like purity of the image of her being. The 
 aim of this involuntary outburst of his love of detraction seems 
 throughout to be that of dissuading himself from belief in her 
 virtue and goodness. In estimating this leading feature of 
 lago's character, it is indifferent whether he believes or not all 
 that he says to Desdemona's disadvantage ; unconscious to him- 
 self there lies within him a necessity to depreciate the good, 
 aye, even to annihilate it. Just because she offers him no 
 cause of hatred and injury, he seeks to devise means for the 
 exercise of his censoriousness and envy. His whole plan for 
 the excitement of Othello's jealousy is based on the persuasion, 
 which he more and more endeavours to raise into a conviction, 
 that Desdemona is no better than others ; that a ' super-subtle 
 Venetian,' as he calls her to Roderigo, in spite of the little 
 prudence which he knows she possesses, must understand the 
 art of deceiving as well as anyone ; that she must perceive the 
 unsuitableness of her union with Othello, and, young and 
 womanly as she is, must seek change, and must prefer the 
 graceful Cassio to the Moor ; that' nature — that is, what h& calls 
 nature, sensuality and fickleness — will operate in her as in 
 others. If he had believed in her virtue, how could he ever 
 have believed that the Moor, simple as he too was, would doubt 
 of this virtue ? Whenever he is seized with the passing feeling 
 of belief in lier virtue, he is all the more eagerly desirous of 
 transforming it to crime, and of spinning out of her very good- 
 ness the web which is to destroy her and everyone. Nothing, 
 says Bacon, reconciles envy with virtue but death. 
 
 He thus sets an example of the old and sad doctrine, that 
 the world falls a prey to the circumspect and unprincipled man 
 of action, who is regardless of means. His superiority — all that 
 is connected with mind, activity, and adroitness— is the first 
 point that strikes the eye of every observer of this character ; 
 he is a type of those dangerously endowed beings whose brains 
 have become sharp and inventive with the hardening of their 
 hearts. It has been rightly said that this versatility of his 
 mind and this power of his will keep our interest in lago ever 
 
526 THIBB FEBIOD OF SHAKESFEAEE' 8 DSAMATIC POETST. 
 
 active, without, however, blunting our horror of him ; the dis- 
 gust with which his aims inspire us (according to Schlegel's 
 reversed view of the subject) is thus rendered bearable ; because 
 the attention of the spectator is diverted by the means used, 
 which offer endless employment to the understanding. We see 
 this man at the highest point of his genius in the first scene of 
 the fifth act, which is the more glaring repetition of the night 
 in which he makes Cassio drunk. He reflects on the means by 
 which he can kill two birds with one stone, and get rid of two 
 of his burdens — Eoderigo and Cassio ; he excites the one against 
 the other ; he sees Eoderigo fall ; with quick ear he hears that 
 Cassio's coat is proof against a thrust ; he gives him, therefore, 
 a wound on the leg ; immediately afterwards he appears again 
 in his shirt, and stabs the hitherto only wounded Eoderigo, sud- 
 denly reflecting that if repentant he might confess everything ; 
 he then convinces himself as to whether Cassio recognised him 
 when he wounded him ; he seeks finally to shift the suspicion of 
 the bloody deeds upon Eianca. All critics have dwelt with 
 equal emphasis upon these qualities here seen in action ; quali- 
 ties which render lago never confused, never embarrassed, and 
 shrinking from nothing; which make him quickly decided in 
 every change of circumstance ; which enable him to fix his eye 
 upon his aim, carefully seizing his means ; surely and deeply 
 seeing into men and into their springs of action, and with far- 
 seeing glance creating the circumstances which are again to 
 forward his plans. Compared to the novel, great stress has 
 always, and not unjustly, been laid upon the point that the poet 
 attributes all to lago's contrivances, which in the novel is the 
 work rather of chance. The wickedness of the character and 
 its demoniacal superiority is thereby extraordinarily increased; 
 and it has, therefore, been doubted whether this character is 
 natural, and whether any trace, however slight, is to be dis- 
 covered of any element of good mixed with that of evil in him. 
 The poet himself suggests this idea to the reader, when Emilia 
 surmises that some ' eternal villain ' must have ensnared 0th eUo 
 ' to get some office,' and when lago himself replies : ' There is 
 no such man : it is impossible ! ' But in Eichard III., in the 
 history of his own country, Shakespeare had found the portrait 
 of a character which perhaps had in reality committed more 
 unnatural deeds than lago in poetry. After that, he might 
 well assume the possibility of such a form of human nature. 
 Yet the poet, as we perceived above, endeavoured to link even 
 his Eichard, at any rate, by one weak thread to the good side of 
 
OTHELLO. 527 
 
 human nature, namely, by his superstition and the involuntary 
 paroxysms of conscience. Not even this little has he left to 
 lago. Thus, at least, it appears. But perhaps, on closer inspec- 
 tion, one such small passage may be discovered even in him ; 
 where even he is fettered by this conscience, which he would 
 have called a weakness, or, like Kichard, an invention. Above 
 all, if we admire the skiU of lago's machinations, we must not 
 go so far as to believe that according to his mere arbitrary will 
 he determines and prepares the destinies of human beings ; the 
 poet, had he so arranged it, would have lost the first and highest 
 aim of tragic poetry, which is ever intended to exhibit that 
 man himself is the originator of his own fate. In following 
 out the course of action, we shall on the contrary perceive 
 throughout how far fate forwards lago's plans, how far the actual 
 though perhaps vague consciousness of guilt in those he pursued, 
 assisted him in making a devised guilt credible. lago's plans 
 are from the first in no wise so established that he had nothing 
 to do but consistently to pursue his aims and means in one 
 direction. In the soliloquy at the close of the first act, 
 the idea which he subsequently carries out floats dimly in 
 his mind. In the meanwhile other projects, such as his 
 designs upon Desdemona, cross this first plan. In a later soli- 
 loquy (Act II. sc. 1) he acknowledges to himself this vagueness 
 in his projects : they are only a dream — ' 'Tis here, but yet con- 
 fused.' The wit and understanding by which we work demand, 
 he well knows, favourable opportunity ; and this, therefore, he 
 awaits for his designs. Meanwhile the purpose and the desire 
 to let circumstances themselves forward his schemes become 
 more and more developed in his mind, and he experiences a 
 lively joy in finding the natiure of his characters suitable to 
 them, and fate only requiring, as it were, that he should give 
 the impetus. This wonderful interweaving of means — and the 
 furtherance which his evil designs meet with from his desire of 
 revenge, from chance, and from the nature of his victims them- 
 selves — first give lago the eminent position in which he appears' 
 throughout as the executor of fate. And here, delicately and 
 excellently, is the train interwoven, which shows even in this 
 man a trace of conscience and a little remnant of awe. 
 Throughout he betrays an involuntary inclination to persuade 
 himself that he has just grounds for his revenge, and that his 
 calumnies wiU .be verified by actual sins. Throughout he 
 betrays the propensity to contrive his misdeeds by insidious 
 counsels, and to impute the issue to the awkwardness of the im- 
 
528 THIED FEEIOV OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 mediate actors. Throughout he seeks to hide himself behind 
 truths, when he has lies and deceit in his heart. He would fain 
 deceive even his own conscience, and perpetrate his deeds with 
 as little guilt as possible, casting the appearance and the reality 
 of the guilt upon the innocent. He therefore takes it for 
 granted that' he has grounds for jealousy of Othello; he there- 
 fore ' well believes ' that Cassio loves Desdemona and Desdemona 
 (]assio ; he therefore even thinks that he has cause to fear for 
 his wife on account of Cassio ; he therefore finds it so natural 
 that Desdemona should deceive Othello; he therefore even 
 makes a show of truth and honour, as if he aimed at deceiving 
 even a secret judge. For this reason he warns Othello so kindly 
 of jealousy, and so truly of his censoriousness and suspicious 
 nature ; and this trait also marks the sarcastic boldness of that 
 truth with which he concludes his advice to Cassio to entreat 
 Desdemona to intercede for him : he would wager anything 
 that ' this crack of their love shall grow stronger than it was 
 before.' Another evidence of it is the diabolical skill with 
 which lago misuses the foolish Eoderigo as a shield and weapon 
 for his own designs and deeds. This quality in lago, of which 
 we are speaking, is not exactly the main key to his character, 
 but it is indeed a double key, which in another manner leads 
 very nearly to the same solution as that at which we arrived 
 above. Everyone has therefore vaguely felt that in the soli- 
 loquy at the close of the second act the main explanation of 
 the nature of this villain is to be sought, tago, in a kind of 
 enthusiastic self-contentment with his ' divinity of hell,' asks who 
 would now call him, a villain ? — him, who had given his friend 
 Cassio indeed the sincerest counsel, which would never have led 
 him, the counsellor, to his aim, if Cassio and the Moor and 
 Desdemona had fiot assisted him in destroying themselves. 
 
 After having thus pointed out in Othello's and Desdemona's 
 nature the threads with which they spin their own fate, and 
 rendered ourselves better prepared to see the entanglements 
 of this spider lago, at work within his double net, we shall now 
 more easily comprehend the origin of Othello's jealousy, its 
 form and kind, and its effects. We shall throughout let the 
 poet himself speak, seeking the merit of explanation only in 
 the arrangement of facts, in gathering together scattered traits 
 of character, and in more strongly emphasising the principal 
 points, upon which the reader and actor must throw that stress, 
 that stronger light, which gives the picture its full efficacy and 
 
OTHELLO. 529 
 
 truth. There are five essential agents which influence the crea- 
 tion of this fearful passion in Othello, and which we must con- 
 sider in succession, each one more active and of greater weight 
 than the other : the perfect dissimulation of lago, the character 
 of Cassio, the excitable nature of Othello and his whole relation 
 to human society, above all the curse-burdened commencement 
 to his marriage and the natural disposition of Desdemona, 
 which in the Subsequent development of this marriage continues 
 to operate as fatally as it had done at its origin. 
 
 It is clear that a man so base, and in possession of such 
 mental resources as lago, would easily ensnare a man so little 
 circumspect, and so unarmed against cunning and deceit as 
 Othello. His audacious assurance in his plans of vengeance 
 against the Moor, as well as against the equally unsuspicious 
 Cassio and Desdemona, is so great, that at the moment he is 
 undermining their peace he- is appearing at the same time as 
 their best friend and most careful adviser. At the very begin- 
 ning of the play we find lago as the disturber of the first hour 
 which the new married couple spend together : he gains in 
 Eoderigo a lasting tool for his vengeance. To Othello, how- 
 ever, he feigns himself at the same time to be a watchful and 
 prompt friend. He assures him that it was difficult to him not 
 ' to yerk ' the proud Brabantio ' under the ribs ; ' and when the 
 latter comes to try the force of arms against Othello, he presses 
 quickly forward to attack Eoderigo, as if he were most jealous 
 to stake his life for Ms general's happiness and ' safety. The 
 Moor always esteemed him as a brave soldier; lago now 
 draws closer to him with that personal interest of which 
 Othello is so susceptible. He is at once rewarded by the 
 confidence with which Othello commits to him the escort 
 of his wife. The scene is transferred to Cyprus. lago's next 
 object is to strike a blow at Cassio. He entangles him in the 
 unseasonable quarrel which exposes him to the anger of the 
 general; but he himself appears in his report as the honest 
 soldier, and at the same time as the forbearing friend of his 
 lieutenant. He now brings the latter from his appointment ; 
 he soon gains the appointment for himself ; yet, far removed 
 from being Satisfied with these results, they are only so many 
 incentives to him to set ever w'ider bounds to the course of his 
 vengeance. He employs the moment in which Cassio is shat- 
 tered by his fall to attempt to make him and Desdemona 
 suspicious to the Moor.. He enjoins him to solicit Desdemona 
 
 M M 
 
530 THIBD PEBIOD OF SSAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 to intercede for, him. He knows that unsuspecting he can and 
 will do this ; he knows that Desdemona, equally unsuspicious, 
 will bring about her suit for Cassio ; in the meantime he goes to 
 bring the Moor unexpectedly to this interview, and with an 
 exclamation, apparently heedless, he plants the first suspicion 
 in his heart. Everything hinges on the skill with which this 
 first ground of Othello's jealousy is designed ; as soon as the 
 soil is prepared for it this passion increases of itself and creates 
 its own nourishment. Here, therefore, at the very outset, his 
 hypocritical arts display their most masterly powers That at 
 the close of the conversation Othello says of him, ' this fellow's 
 of exceeding honesty and experience,' is the most eloquent 
 eulogium of his cunning adroitness in dissimulation, or of the 
 delineation of hypocrisy by the poet's pen. With what open- 
 ness does lago accuse himself of foul thoughts, and warn the 
 jealous man of himself and his censoriousness ! With what 
 good intentions and palliating excuses does he allege that ' the 
 best sometinies forget'! How fearfully he paints the torments 
 of the lover who has cause to doubt ! • How forcibly he warns 
 of the green-eyed monster Jealousy, while Othello had caught 
 already at the still unbaited hook ! How tenderly he recom- 
 mends forbearance to him for the sake of his good name, 
 by which he touches indeed the string which produces the 
 sharpest discord for the Moor. Once wrapped in this veil 
 of tried honesty, lago has for the future an easy and successful 
 game. He entangles the Moor in a twofold unhappy delusion ; 
 all the doubts in the world occur to him concerning the fidelity 
 and honour of Desdemona, no doubt strikes him as ta the 
 dissimulation of this villain. The light and dark side of 
 Othello's nature, his unsuspicious mind and his suspicion, err 
 decidedly in the first decisive moment. Desdemona's beha- 
 viour still here and there overpowers him with the impression 
 of her perfect innocence, but the various apparent proofs of her 
 guilt weigh heavier with him. Her integrity rests quietly and 
 iiiactively in itself, while the honesty of lago presses ever 
 actively forwards in new proofs and services. Othello perceives 
 in him at first small tokens and qualities of falseness, but 
 he imputes another signification to them from the beginning. 
 To suffer the whole being of the malicious man to affect him is 
 a matter that Othello understands not. His own honesty of 
 nature has made him so short-sighted with regard to knaves 
 and knavish tricks, that even that accomplice of lago's, the 
 
OTHELLO.. 531 
 
 imfortunate Eoderigo, surpasses himi in acuteness. He is 
 fascinated by a passion as dazzling as that of the Moor, he 
 is urged by & sensual love for Desdemona, and lago keeps 
 up this passion in him just as artfully as that in Othello, 
 and deceives both credulous souls in a similar manner. Even 
 this weak head, however, has, at any rate, fits of suspicion 
 against the fake ancient, suggested to him. by fear of the loss 
 of this money ; but Othello, who is threatened by a loss so much 
 greater, and who is so shattered by the mere idea of this loss, is 
 not provoked by this grief to the shadow of a suspicion against 
 the suspecter of his wife ; nay, even after Ms fearful deed, 
 even after the first doubt in his conviction of Desdemona's 
 infidelity, no doubt of lago's integrity touches his soul. So 
 securely had the revengeful hypocrite taken possession of this 
 heart for the purpose of filling it with incurable jealousy. 
 
 By this plan he could hope to work, out his revenge in the 
 boldest manner, because the most favourable material for it 
 (for this very plan) lay ready for him. in the persons and 
 circumstances. In casting suspicion upon Desdemona's connec- 
 tion with Cassio, the mere personal appearance of the latter 
 was strikingly in his favour. He had acted the mediator 
 between her and Othello, and how truly and silently he had 
 kept this secret is exhibited in his conversation with lago 
 (Act. I. sc. 1), where he affects ignorance of the whole mar- 
 riage history.. He had become so intimate with both that in 
 intercourse with Desdemona he could indulge in all proper 
 familiarity. She had been so frank with him that she had 
 often spoken to him ' dispraisingly ' of the Moor, while he had 
 taken the part of the latter; and that Othello knew. In 
 outward manners, form, and appearance, no greater contrast 
 can be imagined than that between Cassio and the Moor. 
 Beautiful in figure and face, young, of ' a smooth dispose,' 
 as lago says, ' almost damned in a fair wife,' endowed with all 
 the gifts and arts of the elegant world, he possesses all that in 
 which the Moor knows himself most defective ; he is naturally 
 an object to attract the attention of women, and in this point 
 he is just as seducing as he is seducibloi If on this very point 
 the mistrust of the Moor in his own endowments could be 
 stirred up, it would be easy to direct suspicion to this gifted 
 substitute. So long as he still believed in Desdemona's virtue, 
 it might appear to him compatible with it for her to have 
 indulged a weakness for this very Cassio. For there was no 
 
 THIS. 2 
 
532 THTBD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 other man so faithful to his duty, so heartily devoted to his 
 general, no other who so scrupulously valued his good name, no 
 other who with more feminine timidity insisted upon good 
 morals. The vices of men, such as drunkenness, were foreign 
 and detestable to him; the name 'drunkard' from Othello's 
 lips was as sad to him as to Desdemona was that invective 
 against her womanly honour, which she could not utter. But 
 all these virtues were almost too refined to furnish confidence 
 in their stability ; lago was thus right when he regarded 
 Cassio as a man formed for suspicion. That his good-nature at 
 times passes into quarrelsomeness is known by all the world ; 
 that his aversion to wine may be overcome as occasion offers, 
 and that then even his zeal for service may be exchanged for 
 forgetfulness of duty, has been a matter of experience to Othello. 
 If anything is yet wanting to make him a fit person for ,Iago's 
 tragedy, it is that similar uUsuspi^eiousness of character which 
 belonged to Desdemona and Othello, that similar confidence in 
 lago's honesty and friendship which he, too, doubts not even to 
 the end. , 
 
 lago's power of dissimilation and Cassio's seducing gifts 
 would nevertheless have not ensnared the Moor into that im- 
 m.oderate error of his suspicion, if all the earlier circumstances 
 of his life and the manner of his union with Desdemona had not 
 facilitated its growth. Othello knows himself quite free from 
 the empty motives which urge others to jealousy. In himself 
 he is as incapable of groundless suspicion as of groundless anger. 
 It troubles him not if others extol his wife's beauty and endow- 
 ments, even though they were to depreciate him by the com- 
 ' parison. His self-reliance is still strong : ' she had eyes,' he 
 says, ' and chose me.' But this self-reliance was just on this 
 point so easily to be shaken. For as soon as lago only reminds 
 him of the arts of the Venetian women, ' not to leave't undone, 
 but keep't unknown,' of the Venetian deceit which Desdemona 
 practised on her father, of the dissimulation with which she had 
 shut his eyes, then the ardent imagination of the susceptible 
 man is directed to the point where there is no lack of inflam- 
 mable material. lago uses to the Moor the very words of 
 Brabantio, which he, being present, had heard: ' She did 
 deceive her father, marrying you ; and when she seemed to 
 shake and fear your looks, she loved them most.' ' And,' says 
 the struck Moor, ' so she did.' The expression which is to be 
 thrown into these words cannot be significant enough. In 
 
OTHELLO. 533 
 
 passages like these Ira Aldridge put to shame the most culti- 
 vated actor. The curse of the father discharges itself in them 
 upou Othello's soul ; the light of his faith in Desdemona is with 
 them extinguished. From this time musingly and silently he 
 loses himself in the thought, whether in her choice she may not 
 have erred against nature, and in pursuing this path both he 
 and she are lost. lago seizes it at once with the ready skill of 
 his wickedness, well knowing that this is ' the point ' which it be- 
 hoves him to cultivate. Under the appearance of bold and 
 inconsiderate openness, he represents to him, with all the em- 
 phasis possible, the unnaturalness of their unsuitabiUty, and 
 suggests for his consideration whether ' a will most rank and 
 thoughts unnatural ' may not have been at work in Desdemona ; 
 whether, recoiling to her better judgment, she may not have 
 -repentingly compared him with her own countrymen. This 
 rankles in the mind of the Moor. Because his years decline, 
 yet therefore not so much — but because those soft parts of con- 
 versation are lacking, and because he is black — how possible that 
 against these her taste and her prejudice may have stumbled ; 
 From this point of view how readily does his wife seem exposed 
 to the most natural doubts ! Still self-reliance and mortification 
 struggle within him, but his fancy lingers already upon the one 
 fearful idea : ' I am deceived and abused.' His first resolve is 
 hatred and rejection. To torment himself with suspicion lies not 
 in his nature ; he will not doubtingly love, and loving he will not 
 doubt ; if he must doubt, he will see and prove, and according 
 to the result he wilLmake an end of love or jealousy. This is 
 now an incitement to lago to provide an apparent proof. 
 
 Immediately after lago (Act iii. sc. 1) had sown the first 
 seeds of suspicion in Othello's bosom, Desdemona had left at his 
 request. At this threshold of the labyrinth of jealousy the full 
 impression of his present happiness stood before Othello's 
 versatile fancy, joined to the impression of the fearful future 
 which would fiwait him if he had ever cause to renounce that 
 happiness ; and these impressions disburden themselves in those 
 few words so full of meaning, so full of mingled happiness and 
 bitter foreboding, which must be regarded as the commencement 
 of the catastrophe, as the main substance of Othello's passion, 
 and as the guide to its development : — 
 
 Excellent wretch! Perdition catgli my soul 
 But I do love thee ! and when I love thee not 
 Chaos is come again ! 
 
534 THIED PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEABE' 8 DEAMATIC FOETEY. 
 
 No doubt has been yet named to him, and already before his 
 busy imagination there stands the complete picture of his pos- 
 sible misery, which according to his fashion he compresses into 
 a single word. Subsequently Desdemona's mere appearance 
 seems for once to master his doubt, and he goes a"way with her. 
 But immediately afterwards, -when he returns, he is entirely 
 overpowered, and that without fresh cause, by the idea that the 
 endless happiness which this wife had prepared for him was 
 only a delusion, and that she had been false to him. But how 
 is it possible that this man, so deliberate in fight and danger, 
 and who subsequently executes that fearful punishment on Des- 
 demona with such considerate calmness, should now be so 
 dazzled by the mere idea of possible things as to take them for 
 actual? How is it possible that his whole being should be 
 shattered by a fancy and be upset by a delusion ? Is it not 
 unnatural that thus, without conceivable ground, Othello should 
 suddenly be so utterly disturbed that he utters a painful fare- 
 well to his tranquil mind, to his content, to his glad vocation — 
 war, that he sees his occupation gone, that he seizes in rage and 
 fearful excitement the destroyer of his peace, and entreats him 
 for proofs when further proof was scarcely indeed required ? 
 We must, however, bear in mind that all false jealousy rests 
 on mere imagination-; that this delusion, because it is a weed, 
 grows luxuriously upon the poorest soil and in the scantiest 
 space, and that here a soil of fatal fertility was prepared, inas- 
 much as position and circumstances gave an unusual force and 
 depth to the suspicion, and opened to the quick eye of doubt so 
 wide a view that -the near would almost necessarily be over- 
 looked. We must bear in mind that in this first inroad of a 
 suspicious fancy lay the greatest disturbing power, destroying 
 at once in the Moor all resolve and all ability for examination. 
 We must bear in mind, finally and above all, the fearful excite- 
 ment that would be produced in Othello from the whole course 
 of his life and fate at the mere supposition of Desdemona's in- 
 fidelity. If she' were really false and untrue towards him, she 
 had not fallen from him in the ebullition of passion, but her 
 falseness was premeditated, and the marriage with him had 
 been a finely woven deceit I His noble nature, his childlike 
 openness, had been abused in the basest manner, as lago forgets 
 not to impress upon him ; with quiet circumspection a dis- 
 graceful game had been carried on with his manly uprightness 
 and candour. AH the pity and sympathy which she had shown 
 
OTHELLO. 535 
 
 him was but the dissimulation of the vilest prostitute ! All the 
 love ' which he had thotight to have found in her was only a 
 mockery, and the whole heaven which she had opened to him 
 was a hellish deception ! Faith in all virtue and in all mankind 
 was shattered in him, and this purest vessel was a ' cistern for 
 foul toads to knot and gender in ! ' And this immense ruin had 
 befallen hi/rn, who with such bitter efforts had aimed at great- 
 ness and honour, who stood before the curious and admiring 
 world, who had at last attained even this envied and delightful 
 contentment, the possession of such a wife ! This single blow 
 had hurled him from the height so laboriously reached into the 
 depth of an immeasurable ignominy, which would make him 
 the derision of the age. And this humiliation, this disappoint- 
 ment, this crushing of his heart, had been inflicted upon him by 
 the being whom he had regarded as the most valuable possession 
 which the world comprised ! And this idea, which carried with 
 it his utter ruin, both of heart and position, approached so close 
 to probability! He who had aroused it in him spoke so 
 honestly and so anxiously ! She who was accused had committed 
 one irregularity, why not another also ? If she had committed 
 an error against her father who had begat her, why not this 
 against her husband, who was foreign to her, and a black ? 
 Had not he who was accused with her, the virtuous Cassio, 
 had not he also, contrary to all expectation, equally deceived 
 Othello's confidence ? And the. victim of all this deception was 
 he, the Moor, upon whom the old curse of rejection had ever 
 weighed heavily ! All this, this whole extent of that one idea, 
 was not, as by. us now, expressed and circumscribed by Othello, 
 for it lay neither in the nature of his brooding silence, nor in 
 the nature, of his momentary outbm-sts of rage, to be able to 
 display to himself- or others his condition within. He has a 
 strong designation for the fearful condition of his soul, which 
 now as of old returns in him, but he cannot analyse it. That 
 this, however, was indeed the shattering purport of his innermost 
 thoughts and ideas, lies in the nature of the matter and appears 
 forthwith in the effects; the actor must introduce it in the 
 expression of the sudden change of the whole being. 
 
 Othello knew himself rightly when he said that he could 
 not long torment himself with uncertainty and doubts; the 
 passionate blood and the power of his imagination fret him ; he 
 presses lago for proofs ; it is as if he longed for the ooniirmation 
 of Desdemona's falsity as for comfort; sm-ely it would now 
 
536 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 require many certain facts to convince him of her innocence, 
 whilst one apparent proof will strengthen his helief in her 
 guilt. In the excellent delineation of the jealousy of the weak, 
 which Gottfried of Strasburg has sketched in his Tristan, 
 sensual weakness is characterised in a contrary manner. King 
 Marke shuts his eyes to the certainty of the infidelity of his 
 Isolda ; he gladly allows his doubt to be removed, he deceives him- 
 self with confidence in her innocence ; the sinner is too beautiful 
 for liim to hate her, and from lust he overlooks injury and disgrace. 
 The jealousy of the strong differs in this, that all the pain which 
 it excites refers to the loss of honour and not of enjoyment, and 
 this gives it its depth. WiUiam Schlegel, indeed, seemed to 
 deduce the strength of passion in OtheUo merely from his 
 strong sensuality. The dream of Cassio which lago relates to 
 Othello poisons his fancy, we must confess, with sensual images, 
 which never subsequently loose their hold of him. Schlegel, 
 misled by these passages, considered his jealousy to be of the 
 sensual kind which in the tropic zones has produced the 
 unworthy watchfulness over women. But it is not so in this 
 man, advanced as he is in years, and on this , point no longer so 
 excitable. The idea of sharing with others the attractive 
 beauty of his wife, the idea of the greatness of this beauty 
 which he then resolves to annihilate, these thoughts rise in his 
 mind amid others, as we can weU conceive ; for instance, when 
 he sees her sleeping before him in all her charms just before 
 his fearful ideed; and when with lago the remembrance of this 
 charm seizes him, and wrings ftom him the sorrowing words : 
 ' But yet the pity of it ! ' At these moments he is mild and 
 tender, and we see that the thought' of his privation of this 
 charm and enjoyment neither stimulates him to revenge nor 
 restrains him froni it. But that which excites him so fearfully 
 in this idea of Desdemona's intimacy with Cassio, which lago 
 has excited, is nothing but the shattering thought of the 
 shameless game which this mirror of virtue must have played 
 with him, and of the shame and dishonour which she drew 
 upon him. In- this sense we must read the-, subsequent outburst 
 of his rage before Desdemona herself, tod the passages in 
 which the picture of the deceived husband presents itself to him, 
 and we shall find indisputably that the anger of a hero at his out- 
 raged and misused honour is here speaking, and not the jealousy 
 of a slave to sensuality. We do not mean to say that these 
 ideas do not also of themselves seize the lively fancy of the, 
 
OTHELLO. 537 
 
 Moor ; they overwhelm him at the first suggestions with that 
 force which seems on all occasions to belong to his strong 
 nature ; it is from this that he falls subsequently into a trance. 
 Yet his jealousy, as it appears to us, is not influenced nor 
 characterised by these ideas, nor is it urged by them to its 
 extreme. In the very scene (Act iii. sc. 3) at which we stand, 
 these ideas help to prepare the irritable frame of mind, but the 
 first and the decisive outburst foUows only when lago mentions 
 that he has seen the handkerchief, Othello's first, gift to 
 Desdemona, in Cassio's hands ; only when Othello believes that 
 he has now a certain proof. Still lago himself has only doubted 
 whether the handkerchief which he has seen really and in truth is 
 that very one, or only any one of Desdemona's ; and already the 
 furious man blows his love to heaven, calls black vengeance 
 from his hollow cell, and swears with all the reverence due to a 
 sacred vow, almost with deliberate rage, that his bloody 
 thoughts shall never ebb back to humble love till revenge 
 swallows them up. In other passages also Othello proves that 
 he is master- of the agitations of passion, and that anger and 
 zeal overpower him only where he has ground and certainty for 
 his suspicions. No smouldering fire of sensuality helps in this 
 case to plunge him into the over-hasty conviction of Desde- 
 mona's infidelity ; superstition and a bad conscience are the 
 only agents. Upon the handkerchief and its faithful preserva- 
 tion rested, according to prediction, the happiness of his 
 marriage ; the giving away of the dear treasm-e commended to 
 her was to him a sure proof that the relation was broken; 
 fickleness in the treatment of the pledge must have recalled to 
 the Moor's remembrance the similar fickleness which Desdemona 
 had committed against her father in her union with him. 
 
 It is true, in the moment of his first outburst of rage, 
 Othello still lacks the strong proof that the handkerchief and 
 the fidelity of Desdemona are bestowed upon another. But he 
 goes to gain this proof from her for himself. Her behaviour 
 can only serve to confirm her guilt to him. If in lago's 
 hypocrisy, in Cassio's suspicious qualities, in Othello's own 
 excitability, in the previous history of the married pair, there 
 were already powers enough at work to call forth the jealousy of 
 even a more sober-minded man, and that even in still more 
 fearful force, a still more powerful agent was added to all this in 
 Desdemona's character. The wide division between the two 
 natures is obvious, but unhappily it was not perceived by 
 
538 THIRD PEJSIOD OF SHAKESFEASE' 8 DRAMATIC POSIT^Y. 
 
 Desdemona, and it was, moreover, difficult for her nature to 
 perceive it. She believes him inaccessible to jealousy, she 
 expects not this weakness from his manly power ; and she is 
 right ; in its general nature this passion would be as little 
 found in him as in Desdemona. In woman's natm-e it is too 
 often the property of love to torment itself and the lover with 
 petty jealousies for the sake of the joy of reconciliation and of 
 quieted doubt, and for the sake of keeping the fire of love bright 
 by their light. But the love of Othello and Desdemona was not 
 formed for such trifling : and that which she had never known 
 in herself or in him in its weakest form, how should she 
 forebode in him in its most fearful degeneration ? And yet,, had 
 anything been able now to save both, it would have been alone 
 Desdemona's cunning and intelligent adroitness, her perception 
 of his condition enabling her to cure it, and by a beneficial 
 delusion to lead the now deluded Moor back to truth. The 
 cunning of an Isolda and the prudence of a coimsellor like 
 Brangane, imited to Desdemona's innocence, might have again 
 exorcised the evil spirit in Othello. But how far removed is 
 this kind of mental strength, often bestowed by nature on the 
 weak woman, from this pure and guiltless being ! Her in- 
 genuousness knows nothing of the shielding arts of foresight ; 
 carelessly she commits some indiscretion every moment, and 
 this helps to her destruction. Othello, seeking to find a 
 foundation for his suspicion, stands before his wife "in deep- 
 inward emotion, and inquires after the gift whose fatal signi- 
 ficance he explains to her with fearful earnestness ; she is 
 alarmed at the loss of the handkerchief, but she forebodes 
 nothing of the ground nor of the depth of his emotion. 
 The poor creature had let the handkerchief fall in a kindly 
 service for the Moor; in this little circimistance carefiil- 
 ness and carelessness were just as closely united as affection 
 for Othello and want of affection towards her father had 
 been before in' the great circumstance of her marriage. 
 On both occasions, and at all times, she is influenced by 
 her natural disposition, her unsuspiciousness, which is the 
 consequence of the best consciousness. In this error she 
 is aware of no fault, in the midst of her consternation 
 she is unconcerned, she feels the threatening in Othello's 
 passionate words, but she has never seen him so, and she knows 
 not how to treat the strange-humoured man ; in contrast to his 
 angry Moorish rage her lighter Venetian nature is unhappily 
 
OTHELLO. 539 
 
 called into play ; with levity she passes from this grave conver- 
 sation to her suit for Cassio, and thus pours oil on the flame. 
 Innocently she does in small things that which she may seem 
 to Othello to have done in great ones : she seems carelessly to 
 trifle with the happiness and unhappiness of a man justified in 
 his self-reliance, and to admit an insignificant rival ; the one 
 scene may reflect to him the whole nature of their relation. As 
 soon as lago hears that Othello has left his wife in anger, he 
 hastens to him in triumph ; the only danger to his intrigues is 
 the efifect upon the Moor of the whoUy innocent nature of 
 Desdemona ; he hears that its influence has not heen softening but 
 exciting ; this is .an immense step gained. He finds him more 
 calm than he had imagined (Act it. sc. 1.) ; he purposes once 
 again to attempt his former arts, once again to remind him of 
 the handkerchief, once again to depict to his senses the revolt- 
 ing image of her infidelity, when he perceives by the swoon 
 into which Othello falls that his poison has already worked 
 more effectively than he thought. He now becomes bolder, and 
 ventures to exhibit Cassio to him as a victorious lover. Othello 
 wishes to be found ' most cunning in his patience ; ' but the 
 listener betrays the impatieiiije which boils in him, and which 
 allows him only to observe Cassio's malicious mimicry, but not 
 to hear his words distinctly. Subsequently, when he reads 
 Lodovico's despatches, he shows that he can listen well enough 
 when he will ; now in the inward throng of his doubts he only 
 half hears everything, and therefore with prejudiced judgment. 
 Bianca's words respecting the handkerchief might have startled 
 him had he heard them ; but in the mere sight of the hand- 
 kerchief he sees the confirmation of his suspicion ; to prove it 
 and to fathom the matter never occurs to him. This publicity 
 of his shame, this equalisation of his wife with the lowest women 
 of the street, entirely destroys the self-command of the Moor. 
 The feeling of his endless loss seizes him sadly in the midst of 
 the fury of his revenge. But it gives way again just as quickly 
 when in Lodovico's presence he believes that Desdemona is 
 trifling with him so shamelessly that she does not avoid acknow- 
 ledging it before the eyes and ears of all. This overcomes the 
 once calm, self-mastered man to such a degree of self-forgetful- 
 ness that he strikes his wife in the presence of the Venetian 
 ambassador ; for well might it now seem to him that the faith- 
 less pair must have been ' as prime as goats, as hot as monkeys,' 
 that is, worse than even lago had before depicted them ; re- 
 
540- THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 memtering these words of lago's he hastens away. All that 
 occurs, moreover, in this scene, would have made Othello cir- 
 cumspect and perplexed had his frame of mind been different. 
 Cassio, as governor of Cyprus, must now be an unapproachable 
 person to the disciplinarian warrior ; Desdemona's joy at Cassio's 
 promotion ought, instead of provoking him, rather to have 
 consoled him, for how should she, in .intimate connection with 
 him, have rejoiced at a separation from him ? But let the most 
 circumspect reader prove for himself whether, in quietly reading 
 the play, he will not forget to make these reflections ! How 
 should Othello make them, when he has fallen a prey to the 
 unhappiest deceit ? 
 
 The actor of Othello must not overlook that in the scenes 
 hitherto mentioned we see his good nature and his chaotic mood 
 exhibited by turns, the higher and lower nature which possess 
 this man, the twofold product of a strong nature and a character 
 trained on principle. EagCj fury, bitterness, and despair are 
 predominant so long as he Is in doubt, and the idea of his shame 
 only by degrees becomes complete in him ; as soon as he has 
 approached this point, the repose of cold resolve appears pre- 
 eminent, but with it also the feeling of his loss and of infinite 
 sorrow. So far, in the last scene, had he attained already to 
 this calmness in his resolve, that, even repressing in himself the 
 Voice of right, he would not expostulate with Desdemona lest she 
 should disarm his vengeance by amiability. Yet it urges him to 
 inquire of Emilia. Her. words also (Act iv. sc. 2) ought to 
 have made him thoughtful and mistrustful ; she warns him of 
 the insinuations of a calumniator ; she, too, the wife of. lago ! 
 But he regards her as a ' subtle whore,' and her pious kneeling 
 and praying he appears almost to take as a proof of her partici- 
 pation in guilt. lago has not neglected to taunt OtheUo upon 
 his credulity ; he thus secured it to himself and his suggestions, 
 and sharpened the mistrust of the Moor against the believed 
 guilty one. When Desdemona comes, Othello forgets his inten- 
 tion of not expostulating with her, but he seems to cling all the 
 more expressly to his purpose of not allowing himself to be 
 overconae by her sweet nature nor to be turned from his fearful 
 doom.. And yet this being exercises at once her charm over 
 him, and the man who had not learned to weep breaks forth in 
 tears, and thrice quickly bids her to go away, as if he feared 
 already that -her sweetness would draw forth his softness and 
 mildness and annul his vow of vengeance. And now follows 
 
OTHELLO. , 541 
 
 the beautiful passage, which cannot be too touchingly acted — 
 the passage in which Othello appears incomparably more un- 
 happy than he has been cruel and barbarous before, in which he 
 once again, after his fashion, in few but pregnant words designates 
 his character and condition in its whole compass ; declaring to 
 what sufferings, to what greatest of trials, he felt himself steeled ; 
 what measureless happiness she had bestowed upon him, and in 
 what a condition of shame she had now plunged him, when even 
 the angel of patience looked grim as hell ! She awakens in him 
 the idea of the sin of which he believes her guilty; he dwells 
 upon it with its coarsest images, but he is not roused by this 
 from his tender mood. Then suddenly his rage bursts forth 
 anew at her innocent question : ' What ignorant sin have I 
 committed ? ' The verb to comrrdt is used in a particular sense 
 for the crime of adidtery ; but this the modest woman knows 
 not; and again, according to the fatal characteristic of her 
 nature, by her very innocence she provokes her husband to re- 
 gard her as a shameless criminal. In this scene of the meeting 
 of Othello with Desdemona, and in all those in which the latter 
 appears with Emilia and others, we see plainly the unhappy 
 effects of the different nature and descent of the married pair, 
 and how the abandonment of the paternal home, and the unad- 
 vised and defenceless surrender of herself to the stranger, are thus 
 revenged on Desdemona. The Moor, once made suspicious, sees 
 in her only the dissembling Venetian ; she, ever unsuspicious, 
 forebodes not what has passed in his mind, and even after her 
 attention has been drawn to his jealousy she knows not how to 
 meet it. She herself suspects no one, and understands not that 
 she is suspected. A child in innocence, she is a child as regards 
 rebuke ; she can bear no more of this kind of pimishment than 
 a child; now, thus mistreated and harshly used beyond all 
 moderation, for a moment her nature is hardened ; she cannot 
 weep ; still less could she have further intercourse with Othello, 
 and ask him to analyse the grounds of his displeasure ; it is 
 only when Emilia assists her with her words and feelings, that 
 her tears, her sensations, and her protestations iind vent. When 
 she is afterwards alone, and is undressed by Emilia^ her inner- 
 most soul utters its misgivings upon her situation, and she sings 
 that touching song of Barbara and provides an arrangement 
 for her death ; but her meditative spirit receives not the deep 
 impressions which lie upon her heart ; she would otherwise have 
 more circumspectly weighed her relation to her husband, she 
 
542 THIRB PEBlOB OF SHAKESPEARE'S DBAMATIO POETRY. 
 
 would have seen through his painful condition, she would have 
 felt his sorrow rather than his outbursts of rage, she would not 
 without persuasion have resigned the deeply troubled man to a 
 sleepless night, and she would not have laid herself to rest with 
 so little solicitude. In the midst of the excellent scene (Act 
 IV. sc. 3), in which Desdemona's beautiful nature is so richly 
 portrayed, we can perceive a cleft which, if it did not now once 
 for ever separate this couple, would have ever occasionally sepa- 
 rated them again and again. Both beings, at the moment when 
 their connection experiences its first trial, veil their innermost 
 thoughts from each other, instead of revealing them ; the Moor 
 will not expostulate with her, even in the hour of her death he 
 will not believe her oath, and hardens his heart at her denial ; 
 she too, although she finds his very anger and scorn charming, 
 like an injured child refuses to speak ; and even with death 
 before her, when she hears of Gassio's murder, she finds no word 
 to assert her innocence, but in the bewilderment she once more 
 accuses herself by speech and behaviour, and like a frightened 
 deer she falls a victim to the death which she would gladly have 
 escaped. 
 
 To this murder itself Othello proceeds with the calmness of 
 a judge ; the feeling of the man and the husband, and the sen- 
 sibility of the injury to his honour and love, are therefore not 
 extinct in him. To estimate this his deed from his mind, we 
 must remember his severe service and the incorruptible disci- 
 pline which we have before seen him exercise towards Cassio. 
 This is essentially a prelude to the main action, allowing us, in 
 a less exciting^ case, to cast a calmer glance into the innermost 
 nature of this strange character. No conviction of Gassio's well- 
 regulated life, no familiarity of personal relation to him, could 
 then move him to spare the favourite in such a serious matter, 
 a matter in which he would not even have spared his own 
 brother. He made an example of Gassio, not from anger, for 
 his wrath is only aroused by examination into the confirmed 
 guilt of his lieutenant, but from prudence and from a political 
 sense of duty. In this we trace the same mode of action, in a 
 case which. has nothing to do with love and jealousy, as he now 
 pursues towards Desdemona. Here, too, anger overpowers him, 
 especially at those times when he thinks he has received proofs 
 or confessions of her guilt ; here, too, he punishes not in wrath, 
 but from a feeling of honour. It is not passion (with these 
 
OTHELLO. 543 
 
 words he approaches Desdemona's bed), hut it is the cause which 
 urges him. The reflection, therefore, whether after the accom- 
 plishment of the deed he might repent that which could never 
 be amended restrains him not. Her beauty and her charms ex- 
 tort tears from, him yet again, but they could not weaken his 
 resolve ; the magic of her kiss almost persuades justice to break 
 her sword, but it remains firm. A higher justice speaks in his 
 ' cruel tears ; ' once dead, he would kill her even a second time, 
 and the murder which is to heal her sin will not injure his love; 
 his sorrow is like that of heaven, ' it strikes where it doth love.' 
 Since he would thus punish her from love, his first thought of 
 repudiating her with hate had vanished ;' he will not expose this 
 beloved being to the contempt of the world nor abandon heir to 
 sin, but withdraw her from both, from shame and sin, by his 
 punitive rather than avenging deed. For this reason, once 
 again in the last moment, he is agitated at her denial of the 
 crime of which he is firmly convinced ; he would fain punish as 
 her last judge for the sake of atonement and purification ; her 
 denial provokes him to call that a murder which he thought a 
 sacrifice. Here, too, in one word he compresses in his fashion an 
 infinity of inward feelings, for which he had no separate 
 designation. He regards himself as the chastising judge of her 
 shame, and as the physician of his honour; he performs this 
 deed, according to his last testimony, not from hatred, but from 
 honour. When he finds himself mistaken he punishes himself 
 with the same exalted coolness and calmness, and with the same 
 propitiatory act ; and therefore there lies such deep significance 
 in the fact that at his suicide, at the very last, he remembers 
 the stab with which he had smote the Turk in Aleppo ; he had 
 then found the honour of the Venetian state as great a provo- 
 cative as his domestic honour is now ; and to avenge this 
 honour the peril of his life could as little restrain him then as 
 the annihilation of his most precious possession can now. 
 Therefore, after Desdemona's death, he is far from repenting of 
 his deed or concealing it. He permits her not in dying to take 
 the deed upon herself, he pleads aloud guilty to the deed, to 
 which just grounds alone have urged him. He is therefore hard 
 to convince that he has erred ; Desdemona's angelic falsehood 
 at her death, and Emilia's accusation of her own husband, con- 
 fuse him not, because his conscience was clear ; repentance and 
 revenue only turn against himself when the proof against his 
 
544 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'B DSAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 own conduct is as certain as he had before believed that against 
 Desdemona's. 
 
 From the moment when Emilia learns Othello's deed from 
 his own lips, the poet disburdens us in a wonderful manner of 
 all the tormenting feelings which the course of the catastrophe 
 had awakened in us. Emilia is a woman of coarser texture, 
 good-natured like her sex, but with more spite than others of 
 her sex, light-minded in things which appear to her light, 
 serious and energetic when great demands meet her ; in words 
 she is careless of her reputation and virtue, which she would not 
 be in action. At her husband's wish she has heedlessly taken 
 away Desdemona's handkerchief, as she fancied for some in- 
 different object. Thoilghtless and light, she had cared neither 
 for return nor for explanation, even when she learned that this 
 handkerchief, the importance of which she knows, had caused 
 the quarrel between Othello and Desdemona ; in womanly 
 fashion she observes less attentively all that is going on around 
 her, and thus, in similar but worse unwariness than Desdemona, 
 she becomes the real instrument of the unhappy fate of her 
 mistress. Yet when she knows that Othello has killed his 
 wife, she unburdens our repressed feelings by her- words, testi- 
 fying to Desdemona's inno'cence by loud accusations of the Moor. 
 When she hears lago named as the calumniator of her fidelity, 
 she testifies to the purity of her mistress by unsparing invectives 
 against the wickedness of her husband,- aind seeks to enlighten 
 the slowly apprehending Moor, whilst she continues to draw 
 out the feelings of our soul and to givp them full expression 
 from her own full heart. At last, when she entirely perceives 
 lago's guilt in the matter of the handkerchief and therefore her 
 own participation in it, her devoted fidelity to her mistress and. 
 her increasing feeling rise to sublimity ; her testimony against 
 her husband, in the face of threatening death, now becomes a 
 counterpart to Othello's severe exercise of justice, and her death 
 and dying song upon Desdemona's chastity, is an expiatory re- 
 pentance at her grave, which is scarcely surpassed by the Moor's 
 grand and calm retaliation upon himself. The unravelment and 
 expiation in this last scene are wont to re-awaken repose and 
 satisfaction even in the most deeply agitated readef . Moreover, 
 when the play is justly represented, the painful excitement in 
 the third and fourth acts is far more softened than in the 
 reading. All that we have alleged as a reason for tolerating the 
 
OTHELLO. 545 
 
 character of lago co-operates in inducing tMs ; we are diverted by 
 the mental suspense with regard to all the levers in motion ; and, 
 added to this, the rapid progress of the play does not suffer 
 single emotions to dwell so long on the mind. This milder 
 impression will be much increased if the actor of Othello con- 
 ceives the character as Burbadge, from an allusion before 
 mentioned, must have done : allowing the deep and painful 
 sorrow of the being thus helplessly thrown back into misfortune 
 to predominate throughout over the fury and rage of the jealous 
 man. In the Grerman translation the Moor acknowledges in 
 conclusion that he was hard to rouse, but once roused that he 
 was infinitely furious (wnendlich raste). One such expression 
 can utterly disturb this part, and with it the effect of the whole 
 piece. In the English original Othello acknowledges only that 
 he was 'perplexed in the extreme,' and he denotes by this 
 nothing else than that return of ' chaos,' the pressure of a 
 terrible inward unhappiness. If, by suitable representation, the 
 spectator attains at least to as much sympathy with the Moor 
 as indignation against him, he will bear the death of Desdemona 
 with more emotion than bitterness, and the atoning death of 
 Othello win expiate for all. Or, in spite of all our explanations, 
 does the ruin of both remain too terrible, because their end is 
 so much less reconciliatory than that of Romeo and Juliet ? 
 Yet it caimot be pleaded for them, as for Eomeo and Juliet, 
 that their secret marriage was made in the ardent intoxication 
 of early youth and in the unreasonableness of passion ; they 
 entered on their union with cooler feelings and in full self- 
 possession. It cannot further be pleaded for them that their 
 self-willed union, like that between Eomeo and Juliet, was con- 
 cluded in the midst of threatening fates, amid the bitterness of 
 contending families, on the ruin of domestic relations, that it 
 was the only expedient for the two lovers, favoured moreover by 
 a holy man, and offering a prospect of peace between the dis- 
 cordant houses. Here, on the contrary, the peace of a family 
 was disturbed, and the happiness and life of a father destroyed. 
 If even there the secret union bore its bitter fruit, if wild joy 
 had a wild end, here also, according to the words of the demon- 
 like lago, the violent commencement must have an answerable 
 sequestration. Not alone did OtheU'o intend, but the poet also 
 intended that the death of Desdemona should be brought as a 
 sacrifice, and that of Othello as an atonement, to the manes of 
 
 N N 
 
546 THIRD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEJBE'S DEAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 the broken-hearted father. The tidings of her father's death 
 no longer reach Desdemona. ' I am glad thy father's dead,' 
 says the uncle who brings the tidings, othervdse the fate of his 
 child ' would do him a desperate turn.' This verdict, however, 
 may be reversed. If Desdemona had lived to know of her 
 father's death, not the death itself, but the cause of it, would 
 have been an experience to her as terribly undeceiving as the 
 lost confidence of Othello. For as she had no foreboding of this, 
 she had none also of the effect which her independent step had 
 had upon her father. The same nature and qualities were at 
 work in her when she gave the fatal blow to the life of her 
 father as when she gave occasion for the suspicion of her 
 husband. The same innocence of heart, the same lack of 
 suspicion, the same inability to intend harm to anyone, allowed 
 no touch of bashfulness to appear in her in the first instance 
 before the public council, and placed in her lips subsequently 
 the dangerous intercession on behalf of Cassio. In both cases 
 she intended to do right and good, and from the very purity 
 of her consciousness arose her misinterpreted actions. Like 
 Othello, like Eomeo and Juliet, she falls a sacrifice to her own 
 nature, and not to the law of any arbitrary and unjust moral 
 statute ; to a nature which, in the strength of that simplicity 
 and originality which excites our interest, oversteps the limits 
 of social custom, unites guilt and innocence in strange combina- 
 tion, draws death as a punishment upon itself, and endures 
 death like a triumph — a nature which divides our feelings 
 between admiration and pity. It seems as if perfect satisfaction 
 was here afforded to all the demands of tragedy. It seems also 
 that the picture is consistent with the freest moral view. For 
 the poet, by this conclusion, has not once for all condemned 
 ~ every unequal marriage, nor every secret union, just as little as 
 in Eomeo he has condenmed all passionate love. Shakespeare 
 has never and nowhere meditated upon moral problems with 
 such partiality of judgment. Otherwise, in All's Well that 
 Ends Well, he would not have carried an unequal marriage to a 
 prosperous end through so many difficulties ; he would not, in 
 Cymbeline, have suffered a secret union to turn out for good, 
 nor in the Merchant of Venice would he have justified the 
 abduction of a chUd and a self-willed marriage. Not the letter 
 of the law, but the circumstances and nature of men, are in the 
 poet's wise opinion the spring from which good and evil, 
 happiness and unhappiness arise. These furnish also the line 
 
OTHELLO. 547 
 
 of conduct according to which both must be measured. In 
 proportion to the circumstances and nature of the m&.n, evil 
 often becomes a source of good and good a source of evil, 
 apparent happiness a misfortune and misfortune a happiness. 
 And this is with conscious intention observed and carried out in 
 this play, in which the noble Desdemona Mis into sin through 
 innocence and goodness, and by a sinful lie commits the most 
 beautiful act of forgiveness. 
 
 N N 2 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 The story of Hamlet originally appeared in a clumsy form in 
 ' Saxo Grrammaticus; ' it was afterwards treated more gracefully 
 in Belleforest's 'Tales' (1564), and from this was taken the 
 English edition of ' the Hystorie of Hamblet,' the earliest 
 known impression of which was in 1608. According to this 
 fable, Horvendile was killed by his brother Fengon, who took 
 possession of his dominions and of his wife Greruth. The feigned 
 madness of Hamlet is the central point of the story, and his 
 ambiguous, ingenious, yet insane propositions were, to a Scandi- 
 navian taste, the main charm of the narrative, which concludes 
 ■with Hamlet's successful revenge and his elevation to the throne. 
 The scene in which Hamlet endeavo.urs to recall his mother to 
 the path of virtue, murdering the listening spy, and the snare 
 which he lays for the ambassadors sent to England, are the only 
 touches which could guide Shakespeare in his own different com- 
 prehension and treatment of the story. The characters of Laertes 
 and Ophelia are wanting in the original ; utterly unconnected 
 "with the main action there is a maiden^ brought up with Hamlet 
 and beloved by him, whose enduring affection he gains, con- 
 juring her to hold the secret of their love in the profoundest 
 silence. Poor, crude, and clumsy, the one touch is a type of the 
 whole story. To no other play of Shakespeare's is a source of 
 such rude deformity assigned, and from this source he has formed 
 a, tragedy which, wherever the poet's name is mentioned, is the 
 first that comes to remembrance ; which appears to unite the 
 most contradictory points of his art and genius ; which sur- 
 passes in originality eveiy other of his dramas, and is yet so 
 popular and so free from all artifice. It is a text from true 
 life, and therefore. a mine of the profoundest wisdom; a play 
 which, next to Henry IV., contains perhaps the most express 
 information of Shakespeare's character and nature ; a work of 
 such a prophetic design, and of such anticipation of the growth 
 of mind, that it has only been understood and appreciated after 
 the lapse of nearly three centuries ; a poem which has so influ- 
 
HAMLET. 549 
 
 enced and entwined itself with our own later Grerman life, as no 
 other poem even of our own age and nation could boast of 
 having done, with the exception of Faust alone. 
 
 There, were special historical and literary circumstances in 
 Shakespeare's time, which must have brought this rough legfend 
 in an unusual manner before the poet's mind, and must have 
 suggested it to him for closer consideration. The events which 
 took place in Scotland in 1567, on the murder of Damley and' 
 the marriage of his widow, Mary Stuart, with Lord BothweU, 
 afforded in the immediate past a living countei-part to the action 
 in Hamlet. There was too an older play of Hamlet, which 
 intervened between the original source and Shakespeare's 
 tragedy. At the close of the sixteenth century, when revenge 
 was the theme for competition throughout a whole series of 
 tragedies, this subject was not overlooked. According to 
 Thomas Nash, in his preliminary epistle to the 'Menaphon' 
 of Eobert Grreene, to which we have before referred, there was 
 a drama upon Hamlet as early as 1589, and perhaps even 
 1587; in the year 1594 a play with this title was represented 
 at the theatre at Newington Butts, and this may have been 
 that older Hamlet. Several English critics believe this old 
 play itself to be the work of Shakespeare's youthful hand. 
 And it is certain that the poet was occupied with this subject, 
 as with Eomeo and Juliet, at an earlier stage of his dramatic 
 career. According to the much enlarged quarto edition of 1604, 
 the play received the form in which we now read it in about 
 1601-2; indeed, the manifold allusions in it to Julius Caesar 
 wolild lead us to believe that this last revision occurred at the 
 same time as the Eoman historical play of this title. But in 
 the first cast the play did not stand as we now read it. We 
 possess a quarto edition of 1603, which is regarded indeed by 
 Collier, Dyce, and Mommsen as a faulty and illegal print of 
 the complete piece, but on the other hand, in the indisputably 
 more reliable opinion of Knight, Delius, and Staunton, it con- 
 tains an earlier design of the poet's, though in a mutilated form; 
 the comparison of this with the riper work, just as in the case 
 of the two Eomeos, manifests the advancing mind of the poet 
 in that point especially which interests us and our method of 
 interpretation ; namely, in the more distinct formation of the 
 play upon one fundamental idea. That the edition of 1603 is 
 not merely a pirated copy of the complete work may be 
 gathered from the different names which Polonius and his 
 
550 THTRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 servant bear in it, the one Corambis, and the other Montane. 
 But far more its whole character proves that Shakespeare's early 
 play, though it included, it is true, all the actual circumstances 
 of Hamlet, afforded no exact realisation of their intrinsic mean- 
 ing. We miss in it a series of passages which the poet must 
 have subsequently inserted for the purpose of more distinctly 
 characterising his hero, and his nature and course of action. 
 The significant contrast between Horatio's character and Ham- 
 let's, which is put into the mouth of the latter just before the 
 play of Gonzago's death, is not in the older text. All those 
 sententious allusions to the meaning of the play in Gronzago's 
 part are wanting. The short soliloquy (Act III. sc. 2) is omitted, 
 in which the motive for Hamlet's passionate agitation is stated, 
 and which explains the scene with his mother and the murder 
 of Polonius. In the soliloquy of the king (Act iix. sc. 3) all the 
 finely interspersed contrasts are absent, which assist to a more 
 true understanding of the piece. We miss the whole scene in 
 which Hamlet falls in with Fortinbras' troops, and the whole 
 soliloquy which affords the readiest key to the idea of the entire 
 work. If all these were the accidental omissions of a fraudulent 
 copyist, there, must have been a kind of method in his want of 
 reading. But it is far more probable that the poet in the later 
 revision of his work added these enlightening touches to the 
 riddle of his drama, which for so long a time was a book with 
 seven seals, and which at its first appearance was probably in no 
 less degree a mystery to many. 
 
 Since this riddle was solved by Goethe in his ' Wilhelm 
 Meister,' we can scarcely conceive that it ever was one, and we 
 are hardly disposed to say anything more towards its elucida^ 
 tion. No work of Shakespeare's is truly more clear in its design 
 than this, although none, if we except the sonnets, has been so 
 long and so entirely misunderstood. We have before amply 
 quoted Voltaire's complimentary verdict. Malone also could 
 make nothing out of the play ; he considered that Hamlet's 
 feigned madness conduced little to its object. Others, like 
 Akenside, maintained that the poet intended to attribute actual 
 madness to Hamlet; and we know that Tieck also attempted 
 similar old innovations. Johnson discovered no adequate cause 
 for Hamlet's feigned madness ; he called Hamlet rather a tool 
 than a free acting being, because he makes no preparation for 
 the punishment of the convicted king, who falls at last in con- 
 sequence of a circumstance in nowise brought about by the son, 
 
HAMLET. 551 
 
 in -whom revenge was a duty. All the want of design pointed 
 out in Voltaire's censures suddenly, however, crumbled into 
 dust, when Goethe demonstrated the strict logical consistency 
 of the play ; all that appeared to lie open to criticishi in the 
 reproaches of Johnson and Malone was changed at once into so 
 many eulogiums, when it was shown that it was the very design 
 of the poet to represent his hero as a man whose reason had 
 been disturbed by the shock of too difficult a task; to lead him, 
 according to that profound simile of Horatio's, to the dreadful 
 summit of a steep whose height makes him giddy : as Groethe 
 has expressed it, to delineate a mind oppressed by the weight 
 of a deed which he failp to carry out. 
 
 That this was really the design of the poet is evident from 
 the facts themselves ; but it is also made palpable by express 
 and repeated reference to the meaning he intended to convey 
 through them, and this even to a greater degree than in Eomeo 
 or in any other play. Let us once more clearly consider both, 
 namely, the facts and the elucidations which the tragedy itself 
 unfolds. 
 
 An heroic king of Denmark — a man without ' his like,' of 
 noble form and majesty — was murdered by his brother, who sup- 
 planted on the throne the son of the deceased king, and had 
 even during the life of the latter stolen the affections of his 
 queen by insinuation and gifts. Ambition, thirst of power, and 
 evil desires, had urged him to this xmnatural deed ; he under- 
 stood how 'with devotion's visage, and pious action, so to sugar 
 o'er the devil himself,' that the queen, now his wife, surmises 
 not the murder. No outward comeliness commends the bloated 
 Claudius, whom Hamlet's scornful epithets (paddock, gib, pea- 
 cock, &c.) designate as a voluptuous vain being, whose daily 
 life is passed in scheming and carousing. No inward virtues 
 adorn the hypocritical ' laughing villain ; ' unless it be that 
 quick perception of his understanding and of his guilty con- 
 science, which makes him attentive to every danger and threat, 
 which makes him interpret every event, every word, and every 
 sigh, and which makes him gather round him with ' skilful 
 grasp the weakest spies and tools. The ghost of the fallen 
 hero now rises from the grave, and conjures the sou, if he has 
 nature in him, not to leave his murder unrevenged, not to sit in 
 inactive indifference at his corruption, or, in his own significant 
 image, not to be so dull concerning the unnatural crime, as 
 * the fat weed that rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf.' A slave 
 
552 THIBD FEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 of destiny, wandejdng in the torments of purgatoiy, Hamlet lays 
 this monstrous exhortation to heart ; revenge in that age was 
 regarded as a duty which ought to have been discharged un- 
 warned ; Hamlet, moreover, had rather to execute justice than 
 vengeance, for he was the unlawfully supplanted heir to the 
 throne and the judge of the land. Joined to thepowerful impulses 
 and grounds for vengeance both without and within, the readi- 
 ness of the means adds encouragement to the good cause. The 
 dead father is held by all in the liveliest and deepest remem- 
 brance ; ' every fool can tell,' according to the grave-digger, 
 the year and date on which he overcame old Norway ; towards 
 the new king the people prove refractory after the death of 
 Polonius, and are ready to establish another sovereign in 
 Laertes. He is therefore no adversary to be feared, unless it be 
 from the one cause that he himself fears and is cautious. But 
 the young Hamlet has all advantage over him in the favour of 
 the people, who ' dip all his faults in their affection ; ' nay, 
 even his own mother, who is attached to him by a love almost 
 extravagant, would be an ally to him in case of need rather 
 than to her new consort. These outward means, which lie in 
 the circumstances of his position, are strengthened by the 
 personal gifts of Hamlet, who in Ophelia's sight is courtier, 
 soldier, and scholar, and who is endowed with powers of mind and 
 body apparent to ourselves ; just thirty years of age, he has 
 reached a period at which physical and moral strength are most 
 fully and most equally balanced. The cause, the motives, the 
 means, and tl^e power all exist ; nothing is indeed lacking to 
 secure the full accomplishment of the required deed of ven- 
 geance but the good will to do so. This, too, Hamlet possesses. 
 He swears by Heaven to the ghost of his beloved father that he 
 will make his command his watchword, and ' from the table of 
 his memory wipe away all trivial fond records,' that ' with wings 
 as swift as meditation, or the thoughts of love,' he will swoop 
 to his revenge. 
 
 Yet in this first soliloquy it strikes us with surprise that the 
 man so apparently resolute should immediately call on his 
 heart to ' hold,' and to his sinews to ' grow not instant old, but 
 to bear him stiffly up ; ' and that, in the deepest emotion, he 
 should lament that time was ' out of joint,' and that he was 
 born ' to set it right.' It is strange that he does not at once 
 impart his secret to the friends to whom his father had appeared, 
 and only subsequently to one of them, namely, to Horatio ; that 
 
HAMLET. 553 
 
 lie chooses far-fetched means for a matter so simple, feigning 
 himself mad like Brutus, when there was no mighty tyranny 
 to overthrow ; that he fortifies himself against the doubt and 
 suspicion of those who held Mmi in fear, and that by this very 
 means he attracts observation to his actions and excites the 
 distrust of the king, whom the desponding sadness of his step- 
 son has already disquieted. Playiug the part of one mentally 
 deranged, Hamlet is now seen exciting alarm at the court, 
 putting riddles to the spies, tormenting his beloved, forgetfid 
 of his mission. Two months pass by, and he thinks not of his 
 watchword, until a declaiming player (Act ii. sc. 2), ' in a fiction, 
 in a dream of passion,' reminds him of his own part ; conscience- 
 stricken he then assails himself with violent invectives, calls 
 himself ' John a-dreams, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal,' a 
 coward who takes eve^ mortification, who is ' pigeon-livered, 
 and lacks gaU to make oppression bitter.' But even now this 
 merited self-reproach urges him not to action ; the effect of the 
 players upon his own soul suggests rather the idea of ' catching ' 
 the king's conscience in a play. By the lapse of time the 
 procrastinator is even led. to doubt whether the spirit of his 
 father, whom at the time with such proud emphasis }i& had 
 called to his friends ' an honest ghost,' may not have 
 been the devil, who ' is very potent with such spirits,' weak and 
 melancholy as his are. 
 
 The play is acted. Before there ensues any appeal to the 
 conscience of the king, the poet has made use of it to speak first 
 to the conscience of Hamlet himself, and at once to convey to 
 the spectator the meaning of his work. Scarcely has Hamlet 
 interpreted the language of the acted queen into ' wormwood ' 
 for his mother, than he himself receives the same from Gronzago, 
 who plays the part of his father, and the voice of the ghost speaks 
 to him again in the words :-^ 
 
 What we determine, oft we break. 
 
 Purpose is but the slave to memory ; ^ 
 
 Of violent birth, but poor validity : 
 
 Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree ; 
 
 But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be. 
 
 Most necessary 'tis that we forget 
 
 To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt : 
 
 What to ourselves in passion we propose, 
 
 The passion ending, doth the purpose lose. 
 
 The violence of either giief or joy 
 
 Their own enactures with themselves destroy. 
 
■354 THIRD I:ERI0D OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 The trial of the play answers. Hamlet cautiously orders 
 Horatio to observe the king, that he may himself appear 'idle.' 
 Both are now convinced of the guilt of the murderer. The 
 ;poet now shows us the king alone, trying to pray and to repent 
 (Act III. sc. 3). Almost every sentence of his soliloquy bears 
 a comparison with the state of Hamlet's mind, in whom the 
 duty of revenge exists in the same proportion as in Claudius the 
 duty of repentance. The hypocritical murderer stands waver- 
 ing between his deed and his repentance, just as Hamlet does 
 between the deed and its revenge. The king has the will to 
 pray, as Hamlet has to punish; but the impulse of their 
 nature accords not with their task ; ' the stronger guilt defeats 
 the strong intent ' of the praying man, :the extreme of con- 
 scientiousness causes the backward ebb of the avenger's passion 
 even when it has begun to flow. Thus it is with both, as 
 Claudius says, that they ' like men to double business bound, 
 stand in pause where they shall first begin, and both neglect.' 
 He knows that Heaven is rich in mercy, but he finds no means 
 of 'obtaining it ; just as Hamlet sees the path of punishment 
 prescribed to him by Heaven, and in his softness dares not tread 
 it. ' Whereto serves mercy,' asks Claudius — ^whereto serves 
 punishment, might Hamlet also ask, ' but to confront the visage 
 of offence ? ' The twofold force of prayer is 
 
 To be forestall'd, ere we come to fall, 
 Or pardon'd, being down ; 
 
 and similarly might Hamlet say immediately afterwards, when 
 Claudius lays a snare for his life, the twofold force of retribution 
 is to punish the crime accomplished and to prevent its repetition. 
 The king attempts the penitential prayer which he has at heart, 
 yet there is not that active repentance at work which would 
 lead him to renounce at once the possession of the crown and of 
 the queen ; so Hamlet attempts revenge, but conscientiousness 
 effects in him that which hardness of heart does in the king, 
 thSt he cannot bring his will to action. Repentance can do aU 
 things, says Claudius, ' yet what can it, when one cannot repent ? ' 
 So Hamlet gives all scope to revenge, but the avenger himself 
 is lacking. The king's soul, entangled in the meshes of crime, 
 strives to free itself, and becomes more and more ensnared ; 
 Hamlet's excited feelings seem impatient of restraint, while all 
 the more surely he is held captive by procrastination. 
 
 Just at the moment when these considerations are passing 
 
HAMLET. 555 
 
 througli the king's mind, Hamlet approaches him, and the best 
 opportunity is given him for the accomplishment of his revenge. 
 His temper, too, is stimulated to the deed ; it is night, the hour 
 of ghosts. But, for ever irresolute, he finds a new far-fetched 
 cause for delay. Because he is praying, he will not send the 
 murderer to heaven, who killed his father ' with all his crimes 
 broad blown ; ' he loses the convenient opportunity, to wait 
 another more fearful, more effective ; he goes away, and the 
 spared king arises to tell us — ^that he could not pray. Hamlet's 
 excited mood however continues at this time, and after the 
 agitation of the play he alarms his mother's conscience by words 
 that enter into her ears like daggers ; then in the eagerness of his 
 conversation with her, believing he hears the listening king, he 
 thinks to strike him through the arras, and kills the father of 
 his beloved ! The man who thus conscientiously hesitates to 
 avenge a murder has now unwarily become a murderer himself. 
 Hamlet himself regards the mistake not only as a punishment 
 of Polonius, but also of himself. Yet a more direct punish- 
 ment for him is the re-appearance of the ghost. The spirit 
 comes to dissuade him from the persecution of his mother, 
 which he had previously forbidden, and to admonish him again to 
 vengeance on the murderer, which he had before so imperatively 
 commanded. The conscience-stricken son knows at once that 
 the ghost is come to chide him who is " lapsed in time and 
 passion,' who, in alternate moods of over-excitement and pro- 
 crastination, has blunted the edge of his resolution. 
 
 The error in his revenge ought to be sufficient to challenge 
 Hamlet urgently at last to act in earnest ; but he falls into 
 still more striking delay. He meets young Fortinbras, who, 
 in his ready energy for action, presents a striking contrast to 
 Hamlet. He had some old offence of his father's to revenge on 
 Denmark, not indeed the murder of a relative ; he took up 
 arms contrary to the wiU of his uncle, and when the latter 
 arrests his progress his youthful energy seeks an outlet in a war 
 against the Polack for the sake of ' a little patch of ground, 
 that hath in it no profit but the name.' Hamlet is himself 
 obliged to acknowledge that a divine ambition puffs the spirit 
 of the ardent warrior, although he considers that he errs in his 
 object and exposes himself ' for an egg-shell ; ' while he himself, 
 with the strongest inducements, provided with will, power, and 
 mea;ns, remains inactive. He regards this encounter as a fresh 
 cause to urge his slumbering vengeance ; he himself perceives 
 
556 TEIEB PERIOD OF aSAKESPEAEE'S DEAMATIC POETEY. 
 
 that ' examples, gross as earth,' exhort him. He assails him- 
 self with renewed reproaches : — 
 
 What is a man, 
 If his chief good, and market of his time, 
 Be but to sleep and feed ? a beast, no more. 
 Sure, he, that made us with such large discourse, 
 Looking before, and after, gave us not 
 That capability and godlike reason 
 To fust in us unused. 
 
 He threatens his own thoughts with contempt, if, from this 
 time, they are not bloody. And yet he is even now upon the 
 point of suffering himself to be quietly sent to England, far 
 enough from the object of his vengeance. It is only through 
 an accident, which lay not in his own hands, that by an assault 
 of pirates he again speedily returns to Denmark. 
 
 Even now he follows not out his aim, although he has 
 learned that the king attempts his life. But as every moment 
 may now bring the ihtelligence from England that the 
 ambassadors have been executed in his stead, and as this 
 intelligence must lead to decisive explanations between him 
 and the king, this necessity and the fear of the king's snares 
 urge him strongly to action ; his weakness now becomes most 
 apparent ; he is sick at heart ; and weary of spirit. And so the 
 design of his uncle overtakes him sooner than his own vengeance 
 strikes his uncle, and it seems as if neither the duty of punish- 
 ment nor the condition of self-defence would ever have brought 
 him to the avenging thrust, if the agitation of the death-woimd 
 had not at length roused him against the poisoner, to whose 
 designs the life even of the queen, whose soul he had murdered, 
 is unexpectedly sacrificed. 
 
 Thus evident in itself, the main action of the play and the 
 conduct of the hero become still more evident from the un- 
 usually expressive contrast to Hamlet in which Shakespeare 
 has placed Laertes, in whose history and behaviour Hamlet 
 himself discovers the contrast to his own case. Perhaps 
 nowhere else is the design of the poet so strikingly prominent 
 in the touches of his characterisation as here. Hamlet has 
 stabbed Polonius. His son Laertes — somewhat of a hero a la 
 mode, a fencer, a knight of honour of the French school, of 
 temperament as choleric as Hamlet's is melancholy, a man 
 utterly unendowed with the splendid physical and mental gifts 
 
HAMLET. 557 
 
 of Hamlet — flees from Paris to distant Denmark to avenge the 
 death of his father. Of all the precepts of his father, one 
 above all appears to have remained with him : — 
 
 Beware 
 Of entrance to a c[uarrel ; but being in, 
 Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee. 
 
 The one thought of vengeance fills his mind, and every nerve in 
 him is strained to action, even before he knows the murderer 
 with any certainty. The king has had the body of Polonius 
 secretly interred, and by this means draws suspicion upon him- 
 self. The position and power of the supposed murderer confuse 
 not the avenger Laertes. A mere rumour, whisperers and 
 calumniators are his sources, not ' an honest ghost,' risen from 
 the earth. He has not the power nor the means which Hamlet 
 has, but those which he has he will ' husband so well, that they 
 shall go far with little.' He is not the lawful heir to the 
 throne, he is not in the sight and favour of the people, not a 
 prince of the house royal ; but he, the subject, creates ' a re- 
 bellion which looks giant-like,' and shakes the king upon his 
 throne. Pressing into the presence of the king, he curses the 
 drop of blood that's calm in him, because it proclaims shame to 
 his father and to himself as an unnatural son. He dooms his 
 allegiance to hell, he sends conscience and grace to the pro- 
 foundest pit, he dares damnation, whilst Hamlet speculates 
 doubtfully in the sunlight. He would cut the throat of his 
 father's murderer ' i' the church ' (and the king himself approves 
 of this, because ' no place, indeed, should murder sanctuarise'), 
 whilst Hamlet, with pious scruples concerning this very king, 
 passed him by as he was praying. Laertes goes so far as to 
 poison his sword, that in single combat with Hamlet he may 
 more surely obtain his end. He sullies by this his knightly 
 honour, although he treats his revenge rather as a matter of 
 honour, while for Hamlet it is a heavy matter of conscience. 
 But in the midst of this passion, strained even to unscrupulous- 
 ness, he is strictly confined to the one object of his revenge, 
 whilst, owing to Hamlet's tardy steps, the guiltless Polonius 
 falls, Ophelia becomes crazed, Eosencrantz and Giuldenstem 
 are made a sacrifice, and himself and his mother perish. The 
 king need not have addressed to Laertes those exhortations 
 (Act IV. sc. 7), which were more calculated for Hamlet: — 
 
558 THIRD FEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 That we would do, 
 We should do when we Would ; for this would changes, 
 And hath abatements and delays as many 
 As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents. 
 
 But he need just as little have warned him of the assaults of 
 Ms rage against the innocent ; the man of just passion surpasses 
 in moderation the subtle arts of the avenger, and wisdom speaks 
 from the desperate warrior, whom arrogance and success might 
 have dazzled. He will open wide his arms to the friends of his 
 father, and ' like the kind life-rend'ring pelican, repast them 
 with his blood.' Hq desires alone to meet the murderer of his 
 father, he has only this one object before him, and he expresses 
 it in the first itioment in which he appears before Claudius, in 
 the short and sharp inquiry for his father; in this one 
 endeavour not all the will of the world shall stay him. 
 
 And all this for what a father ! Of Hamlet's father we 
 hear those proud often-quoted words, the most splendid epithet 
 of a great man : — 
 
 He was a man, take him for all in all, 
 I shall not look upon his like again. 
 
 What a contrast to this is Polonius ! The exact design of this 
 contrast can never have been perceived by those who endeavoured 
 to place this character in a favourable light, an endeavour 
 which is not worth refutation. If Polonius' bad and ridiculous 
 qualities had been even partially concealed by his good ones, 
 why should Hamlet enjoin the players, when he commits them 
 to hi/m, the father of his beloved, to 'mock him not ' ? Why 
 should he say, in the presence of his daughter, that her father is 
 a fool ? Why should he call him a tedious old fool ? Why, 
 moreover, should he say over his corpse, that he was ' in all his 
 life a foolish prating knave ' ? We see him commit no especial 
 acts of knavery, but we see him in a service and employ by no 
 means over-honourable ; he has an unwearied predilection for 
 crooked ways, for aside-thrusts, and for eavesdropping, and at 
 length he falls a sacrifice to them ; he meddles with everything, 
 and gains a scent of his son's doings and actings even in Paris, 
 not so careful for the virtue as for the outward behaviour of his 
 children, neither of whom he trusts. The man hunts out 
 everything, and binds himself, ' if circumstances lead him,' to 
 find where truth is hid, ' though it were hid indeed within the 
 centre;' but he has never surmised the transactions at the 
 
HAMLET. 559' 
 
 death of the old Hamlet and the marriage of his widow ; or, if 
 he has, like a genuine courtier he has had neither feeling nor 
 opinion on the matter. It is just such company as this that a 
 king like Claudius requires ; upon state affairs he asks him 
 nothing, but he hears him greedily on domestic matters, 
 willingly accepts his empty eloquence, and excuses his confi- ■ 
 dence of opinion. Arrived at a ripe age, the schooled courtier 
 lacks not experience and ohservation, which he has carefuUy 
 gathered and loquaciously gives forth ; the self-conceit of empti- 
 ness is apparent in him, and with the ' same self-suflEiciency he 
 gives good precepts to his son, a lesson on human nature to his 
 servant, and counsels to his king. In his fancied "craftiness 
 he considers himself a man of wisdom and great circumspection, 
 and he builds with confidence upon the infallibility of his head. 
 We all know the insolence of the self-complacent positive man, 
 who, even in the face of events which give the lie to his 
 prophecies, declares that he had anticipated everything as it 
 has come to pass ; we all know the fool with a good memory 
 for wise sayings; and the eloquent man who speaks with greater 
 wisdom than he possesses, until unawares he betrays more of 
 his folly and ignorance than he wished. Such a man is Polonius. 
 It costs him nothing to tell the lie that will reflect upon him- 
 self the acuteness of having perceived Hamlet's love for 
 Ophelia before he was told of it. He then accurately sees 
 through the gradual progress of the madness of Hamlet, who is 
 perfectly in his senses. He wishes to underst?ind everything, 
 to be acquainted with everything, to have been everything: 
 a clever actor — a designation which suggest reflections similar 
 to those of Hamlet ; a madman suffering, like Hamlet, ' much 
 extremity for love,' from which we may gather the fact that he 
 was an old sinner. He seeks to stand well with aU, for, however 
 positive he may be, he yields equally readily to the opinions of 
 others ; and if people ridicule him, he affects, says Groethe, not 
 to observe it ; one would rather believe that for the most part 
 he actually does not observe it. In this manner he gets on 
 with everyone except with Hamlet ; in the presence of this 
 deeper nature, which lies quite beyond his reach, he is helpless ; 
 the simpleton then always comes to light, although he esteems 
 the prince to be a madman. Hamlet also is just as little able 
 to accommodate himself to him. He hates too thoroughly the 
 shallowness and falsehood of the character to attempt to conceal 
 his aversion, even where the most ordinary consideration 
 
560 THIBD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 would have demanded it from the lover of Ophelia towards the 
 daughter of the father, or towards the father of the daughter. 
 And this is the man to avenge whose death Laertes hazards 
 ' both the worlds,' while Hamlet forgets the hero who rises from 
 the grave for his admonition. 
 
 Thus, then, the structure of the play stands in perfect unity 
 and connection before us ; the action throughout has one point 
 in view, and the least conspicijous figures are in close and essen- 
 tial relation to the main subject. The truth-loving, moral 
 hero stands in the midst of those wandering on crooked ways of 
 hypocrisy, dissimulation, and untruth ; his sensible, conscien- 
 tious, and' circumspect nature is opposed in strong contrast to the 
 unprincipled conduct of all the others, and to the heartless or 
 thoughtless heedlessness of their actions and their consequences ; 
 the king and queen, Polonius and Ophelia, even all the subor- 
 dinate figures (with the exception of Horatio, who only observes 
 and never acts), Fortinbras, Eosencrantz, Guildenstem, and even 
 Osric, all fall more or less under this aspect ; and the character 
 of Laertes, the express contrast to Hamlet, is delineated with 
 peculiar force and delicacy ; in the attainment of his object he 
 'is more severely conscientious than Hamlet, but unscrupulous in 
 his means, and this excellently prevents the subordinate hero 
 from rising too highly in our interest. Yet, however well this 
 whole action and its inner connection is designed and accom- 
 plished, we feel in no play more than in this that which we 
 before alleged of the Merchant of Venice: that with Shake- 
 speare the action is ever secondary, that it ever holds a subordi- 
 nate place, fmd that the true point of unity in his works ever 
 leads to the source of the actions, to the actors themselves, and 
 to the hidden grounds from which their actions spring. We 
 <30uld take but little interest for its own sake in the negative 
 action of this play, in the evasion of the deed, in the. lack of 
 outward events, and in the absence of inward energy and vigour. 
 Yet we take the deepest interest in this Hamlet — proof sufficient 
 that the especial charm lies in the character. When we have 
 thoroughly penetrated it, we may then feel that we have dived 
 to the ground of the action. And not this alone ; in our ac- 
 quaintance with this source of the action we feel we have at- 
 tained at once to an incomparably richer and more fertile per- 
 ception ; we can imagine this highly endowed man under other 
 circumstances, different and yet ever the same ; we learn to 
 xegard the action as a mere outlet, as merely one outlet of a 
 
HAMLET. 561 
 
 deep original spring, from which can be traced the tide of 
 similar or different actions; and we perceive the moral deduced 
 from the story only as a lesson that may be traced to a higher, 
 more comprehensive truth. It remains with us then to examine 
 what form of character this is, what were the elements of its 
 origin, and what pursuits and peculiarities affect -this nature 
 and render it so irresolute and incapable of action. 
 
 His mother depicts Hamlet, as to his appearance, as ' fat 
 and scant of breath ; ' thus Burbage represented him, and not 
 in that common youthful elegance in which we are accustomed 
 to see him portrayed since Garrick's time, which is even more 
 repugnant to the higher conception of this character than the 
 representation of the 'smiling villain' Claudius as a gloomy, 
 thick-bearded tyrant. In accordance with this intimation of 
 his mother's, Hamlet says himself that his uncle is no more 
 like his father than he to Hercules. He lacked, therefore, says 
 Groethe, the external strength of the hero, or we might say, more 
 simply, the strength of a practical and active nature. His tem- 
 perament is quiet, calm, phlegmatic, and free from choler ; his 
 mother, in an eipressive image, compares his patient repose to 
 that of the turtle-dove sitting over her ' golden couplets.' In 
 violent passion with Laertes, Hamlet says of himself that he is 
 not ' splenetive and rash,' yet he has in him something danger- 
 ous, which the wisdom of his enemy may fear. This ' something 
 dangerous' is his sensitive excitability, which originates in a 
 heated imalgination, and which supplies this passive nature with 
 a goad for defence and a weapon for assault, but only at a 
 Aoment of extreme necessity. For this very imagination is the 
 source also of Hamlet's faintheartedness, and of his anxious 
 uneasiness and weakness ; it is a psychological circle, only too 
 often verified by human nature. From this one source there 
 springs among -whole nations, as Montesquieu has observed — 
 among the old Iberians and Indians for instance — the same 
 mixture of mildness combined with exaggerated energy under 
 provocation; the sensitiveness of their organisation, which 
 causes them to fear death ; causes them to fear a thousand things 
 still more than death, the same susceptibility leads them to flee 
 from danger, and to scorn it when compelled to face it. Thus 
 is it with Hamlet. His busy imagination suggest^ to him a 
 condition -with its fearful and remotest results ; he sees himself 
 surrounded by dangers and snares, and seeks to obviate them 
 with elaborate preparation. He believes in ghosts and there- 
 
 
 
562 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 fore sees them ; differing in this from his more rational friend 
 Horatio, who hardly believes, after he has seen it, that ' the 
 thing ' is the ghost of Hamlet ; who in its very presence calls it 
 an ' illusion,' and attempts to strike it with his partisan ; who, 
 according to his own confession, believes the traditions of Chris- 
 tian superstition only ' in part,' and according to his tone not 
 at all. When the ghost appears to Hamlet, when his ' fate cries 
 out,' in the excitement of the moment he fears not death, 
 and ' each petty artery ' in his body is ' as hardy as the Nemean 
 lion's nerve ; ' but then too, according to Horatio's expression, 
 he is ' desperate with imagination.' After the play, in the 
 ' witching time of night,' when his imagination is heated, he 
 could ' drink hot blood, and do such business as the bitter day 
 would quake to look on ; ' then it seems to him as if the soul of 
 Nero could enter his bosom; he sharpens the edge' of his revenge, 
 and when in this over-excited mood the occasion surprises him, 
 and no time is left for consideration and doubt, he shows himself 
 capable of the deed from which, in a calmer state, recollections 
 and scruples restrain him. Nor is this excitement suddenly 
 quieted by the disappointment of his mistaken vengeance ; he 
 torments his mother in the violence of his emotion more than 
 his father permitted him; he speaks bitter words over the 
 corpse of Polonius, and only subsequently weeps over it ; the 
 patience of the dove then comes sorrowfully back to him. So, 
 too, when surprised by the tidings of Ophelia's death, he hears 
 Laertes' ostentatious lament over her grave, a storm of passion 
 rises within him, and finds vent in a bm-st of exaggerated lan- 
 guage. By this excess of excitement Hamlet blunts the edge 
 of purpose and action, which is rendered dull by the habitual 
 tardiness of his nature ; he alternately touches the chords of the 
 two different moral themes of the drama, namely, that inten- 
 tions conceived in passion vanish with the emotion, and that 
 human will changes, and is influenced and enfeebled by delays. 
 These waverings 'of his nature, this alternate inertness and 
 passion, indolence and excitement, Hamlet perceives in himself, 
 with all the torments, faults, and results which belong to them ; 
 nothing is, therefore, more natural than that his soul, as soon as 
 she ' could of men distinguish her election,' should have sealed 
 the noble Horatio for herself, in whose contrary character she 
 might find support and edification. Horatio is indeed just as 
 little an energetic character as Hamlet ; such a one as Fortin- 
 bras would be too dissimilar for his friendship ; but Horatio is 
 
HAMLET. 563 
 
 a man of perfect calmness of mind, schooled to bear suffering 
 and to take with equal thanks fortune's buffets and rewards ; he 
 is a hero of endurance, one of those blessed ones on whom 
 Hamlet might look with envy. 
 
 Whose Wood ard judgment are-so well co-mingledj 
 That they are not a gripe for fortune's finger. 
 To sound what stop she please, 
 
 nor are they the resistless slaves of passion.. 
 
 This same elasticity in Hamlet's nature^ which leads him. 
 from supineness to passion, and from vehemence to apathy, 
 shows itself also in the contrast of good and bad temper, of 
 spleen and humour, and in the balance of the sanguine with the- 
 melancholy side of his temperament. The poet has placed in. 
 close context with these witty satirical- traits, which allow us to 
 perceive in Hamlet a merry and happy nature^., those of an 
 elegiac sentimental character, which exhibit him a prey to deep 
 melancholy ; these afifect hishumour, scarcely altemateljr but by 
 being blended together, and the results are those bitter sarcasms 
 which form his usual manner of expression. In prosperity the 
 cheerful side of Hamlet's nature would have been developed ; 
 his predisposition to melancholy wwuld then only have borne a 
 contemplative character ; he would perhaps have always visited 
 churchyards and solitary plSices, and have given way to tender 
 moods and emotions, but this inclination would never have 
 degenerated into a melancholy that amounts to despair.. The 
 cause of this extremity of dejection lies in the events which 
 befall him, events which- suddenly impoverish him, which rob 
 him, as Groethe says, of the true conception he had formed of 
 his parents, which unhinge his mind and roll upon him a tide 
 of affliction, sorrow, uneasiness, and dire forebodiags, which in 
 the course of their fulfilment prodlace unrestrained derangement. 
 From the unfortified manner with which he bears misfortune, 
 we should conclude that he was a man created rather for happi- 
 ness, whose distinguishing quality would then have been a witty 
 cheerfulness and lightheartedness ; this appears in him innate 
 as well as acquired. He shows himself one of those ready and 
 witty orators according to the taste of the age, more skilful in 
 playing a part in comedy than in tragedy ; the acuteness of 
 mind which enables him to assume his tragic madness would 
 under brighter circumstances have involuntarily taken a comic 
 aspect. As a child he had hung on the lips of the jester 
 
 00 2 
 
564 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Yorick ; we see him employed even now in the midst of his 
 sorrow in reading satires ; he is ready to quibble with men of 
 every degree according to their fashion ; the humorous jest, the 
 play of wit and word, has become habit and second nature to 
 him ; in the midst of his depressed condition, in his solemn 
 mourning and dejected visage, he amuses himself with the 
 absurdities of his assumed madness. Just because, these have 
 become a habit vvith him, his jests and play of words mingle 
 involuntarily with his agitated tragic moods, and the actor has 
 to guard against nothing more than laying stress upon them 
 and provoking laughter, or attempting glaring alternations of 
 mirth and melancholy. He would indeed have the merriment 
 of the pit on his side, but he would excite the sadness of the 
 more intelligent, who take no pleasure in this want of harmony, 
 but prefer , the consistent exhibition of the poet's meaning. 
 Humorous and sarcastic images, comparisons and allusions, 
 escape from Hamlet with unconscious readiness in the midst of 
 his excitement. The strangeness of this mode of expression in 
 the oath scene ought not for a moment to disturb the pervading 
 horror, nor in the churchyard scene to interfere with the tone 
 of the most touching sadness. With the deepest sorrow for his 
 father's death and his mother's fickleness mingle bitter words 
 which must penetrate the soul, although the same expressions 
 under other circumstances would only excite cheerful laughter. 
 As in Eichard II.'s sorrow and misfortune, his mirth in times 
 of prosperity could be inferred, so it is with Hamlet also. 
 Gronzago's words suit both : ' Where joy most revels, grief doth 
 most lament.' The acuteness of his wit as of his sorrow is 
 therefore with Hamlet the uniform expressioti of his character- 
 istic habit of mind, which from misfortune is led to speculate 
 upon the darkest aspect of things, while under ordinary circum- 
 stances it would have exhibited itself in sparkling repartee and 
 witty rejoinder. With regard to this two-sided disposition and 
 nature, nay, indeed, in other^essential respects also, Hamlet may 
 be regarded as a kind of counter picture to Prince Henry. To 
 the latter also the trait of despondency and melancholy was no 
 stranger ; at the sickness and death of his father it became 
 evident enough in his nature. But his fortunes and his propen- 
 sities were not favourable to this bias ; he pursues his cheerful 
 way through Ufe until he becomes aware of the solemn grandeur 
 of his vocation ; he then exhibits the calm equanimity and the 
 well-balanced qualities which fit their owner for the most ex- 
 
HAMLET. 565 
 
 alted business of life. So on the other hand a joyful temper is 
 no stranger to Hamlet ; we could imagine that similar society 
 and similar circumstances would have led this man, who was 
 equally opposed to conventionality, into similar excesses. But 
 yet his bearing would have been essentially different under a 
 brighter aspect of things. Philosophy, principles-, study, a more 
 diffident, more reserved nature, would have soon made the boisr 
 terous society of the prince a burden to him ; with his quiet 
 almost womanly way he would not have abandoned himself to 
 the prince's youthful misdemeanours ; but for the same reason 
 he never attained to his manly virtues. Our conception of 
 Hamlet, as of Prince Henry, is that on a higher scale he was 
 one of Shakespeare's humorous characters, suddenly influenced 
 by the solemn demands of the realities of life. We see in him 
 a new modification of these characters. To those who proved 
 themselves valiant and matured under such circumstances, or 
 who ripened by degrees, to Prince Henry who surpassed all 
 expectations at this moment of emergency,, is now added Hamlet, 
 who falls short of the royal hopes to which he bids fair ; who is 
 ill-prepared for the mission which falls to his lot, and who 
 perishes in it by a tragic end. 
 
 In harmony with what we have seen of Hamlet's appear- 
 ance, temperament, and. natural disposition, are the rich endow- 
 ments of mind and morals with which the poet has invested 
 him. His uncle himself designates the kindly man as of a 
 nature ' sweet and commendable ; ' all gentle virtues, all tender 
 and delicate feelings belong to him. His childlike piety is that 
 which at once strikes us most forcibly.. The reverence with 
 which he reflects on his deceased father is unbounded ; ,the 
 sorrow which he endures for him testifies to the greatest 
 warmth and sincerity of feeling ; his grief at his mother's fickle- 
 ness causes a shock to his whole moral nature ; the certainty of 
 his uncle's crime completely overwhelms him. The heaviness 
 of this sorrow may indeed partly result from the innate suscep- 
 tibility peculiar to Hamlet's nature ; he has a kind of delight 
 in dwelling upon gloomy ideas, and in revelling in thoughts of 
 suicide and death. Yet the shock to his moral sensibilities ' 
 adds essentially to the burden of his grief ; and. well may he 
 call his indignation ' virtue,' when he gives it vent in the scene 
 in which, with an ethical invective of the highest power, he urges 
 his mother to confession and repentance. In great traits: 
 he is throughout placed before us, as a moral nature endowed 
 
566 THmD PEEIOD OF 8HAKESPEASE'8 DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 with as much deptli as delicacy. He leaves the common high- 
 way of thoughtless life, as a man guided by principle. The 
 king's son has renounced all the restraints of conventionality ; 
 his intercourse is with players, he is the friend of the poor 
 Horatio, and 15he lover of Ophdia, who is far beneath him in 
 condition. The indiination to simple natural habits which is 
 here manifested would also account for his aversion to all mean 
 subterfuge and falsehood. In the churchyard he expresses his 
 sincere abhorrence of the vain fdlly of women, of politicians 
 "Who 'would circumvent Grod,' of lawyers ;and courtiers; towards 
 this kind of ' water-flies,' such as Polonius and Osric, the ' dimi- 
 nutives of nature,' as they are called in Troilus, he manifests his 
 intense antipathy or sarcastic contempt. The often-admired 
 scene in which he ridicules the young Osric, a man with all the 
 gloss of superficial culture, who, an accomplice -in Laertes' 
 scheme, challenges Hamlet to the fatal fight with 'the same 
 polite formalities as, to use Hamlet's words, 'ke did comply 
 with his dug, before he sucked it,' is a scene highly expressive 
 of Hamlet's character. It places him in glaring contrast to 
 this ' breed ' of people on whom ' the drossy age dotes,' who^get 
 ' the tune of the time and outward habit of encounter,' without 
 the reality of true culture ; who have gathered ' a kind of yesty 
 collection, which'carries. them through .and through the most 
 fan'd and wiBHOwed opinions,' until a point of trial is met, 
 where their wit vanishes and 'tthe bubbles are out.' As Hamlet 
 ■here appears opposed to the €sllse vculture of the age, he is 
 •equailly vehement against its lack "Of refinement. He will know 
 nothiifg of the brawls and revels of the :generation ; the intem- 
 perance of his uncle, the quarrels of Fortinbras, are far from 
 his nature. Thus in the task assigned to him an inner con- 
 flict perplexes him ; the strife of a higher law with the natural 
 law of vengeance, the struggle of fine moral feelings with the 
 instinct of nature. His irresolution results in nowise exclu- 
 sively from -weakness, but essentially also from ■conscientious- 
 ness and virtue ; and it is just this subtle combination which 
 renders Hamlet such an essentially tragic character. His 
 'doubts as to the certainty of the fact and the legitimacy of 
 Tevenge, the gentleness of his soul which unconsciously struggles 
 against the means of vengeance, the bent of his mind to reflect 
 upon the nature and consequences of his deed and by this means 
 to paralyse his active powers, all these scruples ' of thinking 
 
HAMLET. 567 
 
 too precisely on the event,' he himself calls, in the warmth of 
 self-blame, 
 
 A thought, which quartered, hath but one part wisdom, 
 And eyer three parts coward ; 
 
 but the poet has so well balanced the combination, that, in spite 
 of Hamlet's witness against himself, we are inclined to impute 
 the half at least to wisdom. As an excess of feeling and love 
 deprives Eomeo of reflection and thought, and thus prepares a 
 violent end to his unbridled joy, so Hamlet is robbed of his 
 power of action by an excess of conscientiousness, gentleness, 
 and sorrowing melancholy ; 
 
 For goodness, growing to a plurisy. 
 Dies in his own too-much ; 
 liere and there 
 
 The violence of either grief or joy. 
 
 Their own enactures with themselves destroy. 
 
 Eefined in morals, richly endowed with feeling, Hamlet is 
 pre-eminent also in intellectual gifbs and culture ; he possesses 
 a contemplative mind, a deep inner experience and observation, 
 and he is, according to Ophelia, ' of noble and most sovereign 
 reason; the observed of all observers.' Eegarded from this side 
 Hamlet's character is that of a man of genius ; the soliloquies 
 of this ' prince of speculative philosophy ' are masterpieces of 
 reflection, in which Shakespeare had recourse to the most pro- 
 found depths of his wisdom ; and the intricacies of his subtle 
 thoughts mock the profundity of Scandinavian mysteries. He 
 is essentially a man of letters, he •carries memorandum-books 
 with him ; allusions to his reading are ready to him ; in ad- 
 vanced years he was still at the university, and longs to return . 
 there ; not like Laertes at Paris, but at Wittenberg, a name 
 honoured by the Protestant hearts of England ; no royal ambi- 
 tion urges him to the society of his equals ; his associate is the 
 scholar Horatio„the friend of his school-days and his fellow- 
 student. We become acquainted with Hamlet as the friend and 
 judge of acting, as a poet and a player. He has seen the 
 players before and has had closer intercourse with them ; he 
 inserts a passage in the piece they are playing ; he declaims 
 before them, and gives them| instructions. His praise of the 
 fragment of Pyrrhus, sustained in the old Senecarlike style, is 
 perfectly serious ; it distinguishes him from Polonius, whom a 
 
568 THIBD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE' a DEAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 jig pleases better; this, as well as his instructions to the players, 
 exhibits him as a man of cultivated mind and taste, as a judge 
 whose single appreciation is worth more than that of all the rest of 
 the theatre. It is, therefore, natural that the idea should occur 
 to him of ' catching ' the king's conscience in .a play ; he seeks, 
 as it were, an ingenious revenge ; and to accomplish this, imder 
 the touching effect of the presence of his conscience-stricken 
 mother, had evidently a kind of theatrical charm for him. 
 When this trial of the king by means of the play succeeds, it is 
 characteristic of Hamlet that it is not the fearful evidence of 
 the crime which occupies him at first, but the pleasure in his 
 skill as actor or poet ; it is not the result so much as the art 
 which has effected it. ' Would not this,' are his first words, 
 ' get me a fellowship in a cry of players ? ' This question, 
 still more than the performance itself, would certainly appear 
 to mark his aptitude for the position. It is from this same 
 inclination of Hamlet's, as much as from, his character, that he 
 adopts the strangely indirect course of feigning himself mad, 
 and that he is able to sustain his part naturally and ingeniously. 
 He had the power of disguising himself artfully and artistically, 
 a,nd of skilfully remaining his own master behind the mask, 
 averse as he is to dissimulation in life. Immediately after the 
 departure pf the ghost, still agitated by the apparition, he 
 receives his friends with a falcon-caU as if in the most joyful 
 mood, and knows how to conceal his emotion at first as well as 
 .his secret at last. To imagine himself in the position of the 
 player^ and on all occasions to study ' the word,' is a natural 
 trait resulting from his intellectual life and pursuits. He goes 
 with a kind of joyful preparation to rouse his mother's con- 
 science by a moral lecture and a flood of impressive eloquence, 
 to speak daggers rather than to use them, while he neglects the 
 deed of vengeance, which would of itself have gained his object; 
 when Laertes bursts forth in the bombastic outpoiuring of his 
 brotherly grief, he receives it as a challenge for a war of words. 
 Hamlet is aware of the fault in himself, he recognises it as a 
 hindrance to his active emotion, and blames it in himself with 
 the same vehemence as he declaims against the conscientious- 
 ness of his cowardice and the cowardice of his conscience. The 
 soliloquy (Act ii. sc. 2) after his first interview with the 
 players is in this respect expressive even to ultra-distinctness. 
 After assailing himself with every slanderous name, in order to 
 stir up his stagnant passion, he calls himself ' unpregnant of his 
 
HAMLET. , 569 
 
 cause,' because he can — do nothing, we should expect, but he 
 merely adds, 'because he can say nothing;' for his first desire, 
 like the actor in playing a scene, would be to 
 
 drown the stage with tears, 
 ' And cleave the general ear with horrid s peech; 
 Make mad the guilty, 
 
 as he subsequently does in his interview with his mother. 
 Then follows a fresh flood of invectives ; he applies to himself 
 the deafening volleys of his eloquence ; he surprises himself in 
 the midst of his boasting, and turns upon himself fresh words 
 of scorn ; — 
 
 Why, what an ass am I ! This is most brave; 
 That I, the son of a dear father murdered, 
 Prompted to my revenge hy heaven and hell. 
 Must, like a vsrhore, unpack my heart with words, 
 And fall a cursing, like a very drab, 
 A scullion ! 
 
 He deprecates this digression, and rouses himself to action. 
 ' About,' he cries out — my hands ! we should expect it, but, 
 ' my brains ! ' are his words. And then he devises the play, 
 which is to be a fresh prelude to his vengeance. Thus, from 
 natural impulse and habit, the mind of this man of deep reflec- 
 tion is unconsciously the overruling agent in everything ; 
 thought has become with him the measure of things. Shake- 
 speare invests him with a philosophical principle, which con» 
 tains a most characteristic modification of the poet's own 
 worldly wisdom. That virtue and vice, good and bad actions, 
 acquire their real importance from the circumstances, aims, and 
 natural characters of men, that it is not the what but the how 
 that decides the value of an action, is a maxim of Shakespeflrian 
 experience, which is too frequently and too forcibly repeated in 
 word and example for the poet not to have well weighed every 
 word which he wrote in this sense. This maxim is thus modi- 
 fied in Hamlet's lips : ' There is nothing either good or bad, but 
 thinking makes it so.' 
 
 In this maxim lies the origin of all the doubts which perplex 
 Hamlet upon the duty of revenge, and which would make him 
 tremble and delay at every weighty call to action. This revenge 
 is not in itself determined as a good or a bad action on the part 
 of Hamlet ; but the circumstances render it, according to 
 Shakespeare's representation, a duty on the part of the lawful 
 
'570 THIED PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC FOETEY. 
 
 king and judge of the country, a just act of punishment for an 
 open crime, an easier task and a better cause than that of 
 Laertes. But ' thinking ' renders this very dilty a matter of 
 doubt and difficulty to Hamlet. The 'thinking too precisely 
 on the event ' excites at first the moral scruple of being unscru- 
 pulous and over-hasty, and then awakens prudence and precau- 
 tion in proceeding circumspectly to the performance of the 
 work. The phlegmatic nature of the man causes that in both, 
 conscientiousness and foresight, too much is done — for his mis- 
 sion and action nothing. His mental acuteness sees through 
 this defect in his nature, and half with envy, half with esteem, 
 he acknowledges the able qualities of Laertes and Fortinbras ; 
 his just acknowledgment of that which invests men with worth 
 and esteem causes him to reproach himself vehemently for his 
 deficiencies, even to a pitch of passionate excitement ; he urges 
 himself to a passing ardour in which he casts aside his hindering 
 considerations, but he has -once for ever lost the sure instinct of 
 action, and at last, at the moment of the deed, he makes a 
 mistake. For passing irritability can just as little as Jiesitating 
 deliberation make a man of action ; earnest persistency and 
 constancy are alone necessary, because any comprehensive action 
 of important consequences is not to be accomplished hastily, but 
 only by time. After he has erred in the murder of Polonius in 
 a manner so important in its results, Hamlet loses himself in a 
 kind of fatalism which weakens him entirely. He forms .the 
 conviction that all consideration avails nothing, that our 
 deepest plots, do pall, that we can only rough-hew our ends, that 
 providence shapes them as he will. This opinion his thoughts 
 have formed, and he conveniently, uses it to render himself stilL 
 more averse to independent activity. He forgets that it was 
 not a rough but a too ingenious and too subtle scheme of 
 revenge which had been frustrated ; more and more sluggishly 
 he lets his vocation drop. From this, his incapability for 
 action, Hamlet is convinced by self-knowledge and experience ; 
 before both, indeed, he is oppressed to the earth by the dim and 
 instinctive feeling of this peculiarity of his nature. Before the 
 call for vengeance has reached him, and after it has sounded, 
 life weighs upon him like an insufferable burden, and this urges 
 him in his reflections to the very limits of suicide. From 
 fear of a possible crime and of an unwarranted revenge his 
 thoughts pass to the certain crime of suicide, against which the 
 Everlasting has fixed his canon. 
 
HAMLET. 571 
 
 But from this deed also, which he would fain commit in 
 order that he might escape the deed required of him, the same 
 consideration of the issue restrains him ; he is not free-minded 
 enough to do violence to his conscience which prohibits suicide, 
 nor to the reflection of what may follow after death. If he 
 were sure of the eternal sleep, this would be an aim most 
 heartily to be desired. But when he thinks on possible dreams, 
 on a life in which he might be again called to action, then he 
 stands wavering between two worlds, not qualified for life nor 
 for death. The same cowardly reflection and conscientiousness 
 urge him from this point to that, and back again from that to 
 this. Thus it must be admitted that in that famed soliloquy, 
 ' to be or not to be,' this character, as every reader must feel, 
 is at its height, and the idea of the play reaches its central 
 point in that sentence in which moral and intellectual consider 
 rations, conscience and thoug'ht, are regarded as drags upon the 
 power of action : — 
 
 Thus conscience dnes make cowards of us all ; 
 And thus the native hue of resolution 
 Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; 
 And enterprises of great pith and moment, 
 With this regard, their currents turn awry, 
 An4 lose the name of action. 
 
 Shakespeare, in his perfect worldly wisdom, advocates an 
 active apprehension of life, and he was deeply conscious that 
 the one-sided fostering of head and heart crippled the effective 
 power of the man. Cutting sentences in Troilus utter this in 
 scornful words ; that subtle reasoning upon the demands of 
 action is to ' shut our Jiates and sleep ; ' that 
 
 manhood and honour 
 Should have hare-hearts, would they but fat their thoughts 
 With this cramm'd reason : 
 
 that 
 
 reason and respect 
 Make livers pale, and lustihood deject. 
 
 Here, in Hamlet, the poet has expressly undertaken the splendid 
 task of depicting the immense gap between a sense of duty and 
 its fulfilment, between willing and doing, between discernment 
 and resolve, between resolve and action. He is occupied in 
 developing the relation of a fine soul to a great character, of a 
 sensitive and intelligent nature to a practical one, of intel- 
 
572 THIRI) FERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DEAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 lectual strength to power of action. He shows us how, by the 
 one-sided training of the mind, the active side of our nature is 
 crippled and fettered ; how the finest cultivation of the heart 
 is fruitless for energy when the discipline of the will is 
 neglected ; how, being absorbed by the world within, we are 
 alienated and diverted from that, without, giving, reality to 
 shadows, and casting a cloud over the actual ; how the hand 
 which is least occupied possesses the more tender feeling, but 
 how, on the contrary, the tenderer feeling necessarily effemi- 
 nates the hand ; how hard the transition may be from > the 
 noblest principles to real action ; how the best qualities without 
 the due cultivation of the mental, social, and active powers fail 
 in perfect value, and miss their aim at last ; how, without this 
 harmony of all points of the human being, the noblest mind 
 (to use Ophelia's expression) is overthrown, a beU. out of tune, 
 though designed in the' finest mould. Thus noble in nature has 
 Shakespeare designed his Hamlet. He has endowed him with 
 all great gifts of heart and mind ; if we take hold of this side . 
 of the character we are captivated by his amiable qualities, 
 and are tempted to believe that the poet intended to magnify 
 this inner life of man above the outer one of action ; for he 
 has placed the figures of this opposite colouring, Laertes and 
 Fortinbras, very much in the background compared with 
 Hamlet. If we do not look out for the shadow-side of his hero, 
 if we do not take into consideration his tragic end, if we did 
 not remember those grand forms of Henry and Percy, we might 
 strengthen ourselves in this belief; as it is, we only perceive 
 that the poet knows how to honour one side of human nature 
 as much as the other ; we see again another and greater 
 instance of his wonderful, impartial, and many-sided interest in 
 all the qualities which belong to man.' He places Hamlet at 
 the highest point of mental gifts and moral effort, without 
 being blind to the faults or deficiencies of his qualities and 
 education, which detract so much from his worth and his 
 virtues. The delight with which he evidently dwells upon this 
 character becomes on this account all the more agreeable, 
 because it makes us sensible in the poet of the condescension 
 of a superior, and not of the sympathy of an equal. For in his 
 sight the very quality, it must be admitted, which is lacking in 
 Hamlet alone gives man his true value. Filled with the con- 
 viction that active life is the only real life, he has depicted his 
 Henry and Percy with such glad preference ; and in the same 
 
HAMLET. 573 
 
 way this poem of Hamlet is also only a eulogy and a glorifica- 
 tion of- the active nature from a picture of the contrary. With 
 a mental nature rich in fancy and full of soul, born rather for 
 feeling than acting, more for thinking than doing, more as an 
 a;-tist and scholar than as a hero, warrior, or statesman, Hamlet 
 with his superior mind has discovered the true principle of life, 
 the noblest which Shakespeare has perhaps ever pronounced, 
 and which he has pronounced alone for noble men in that 
 before-quoted passage :— .- 
 
 Rightly to be great, 
 Is hot to stir without great argument; 
 But greatly to find quarrel in a straw, 
 When honour's at the stake. 
 
 But Hamlet, a master in intelligence, can only utter this 
 principle ; he cannot carry it out, as that Henry did, who is a 
 master in life and action. He has tlie ' excitements of his 
 reason and his blood ' for a great task ; with him not alone 
 honour, but even right, law, his own safety, and his life, are at 
 stake ; but the self-created doubts of reason have destroyed in 
 him the impulse of the blood, his mind has marred his instinct, 
 the genuine spring of certain action. He faUs short of this 
 ambition and of that stimulating self-reliance, qualities be- 
 stowed on those heroes of arms as the mainspring of their 
 deeds. He accuses himself indeed, before Ophelia, of pride, 
 revenge, and ambition, but he possesses none of the three. 
 Much rather does that sigh proceed from his innermost nature, 
 when he says to Eosencrantz and Guildenstern, who in their 
 turn imagined him to be ambitious, ' I could be pounded in a 
 nut-shell, and count myself a king of infinite space.' He is, we 
 see, as far from the nature of a Hercules as from that of an 
 Alexander, who found the wotld tdo small a scope for him. The 
 deprivation of his succession to the throne provokes him not to 
 kingly ambition, nor the desire for war in a Fortinbras to that 
 fame-coveting rivalry, which made such heroic. natures of Percy 
 and Henry ; at the most, a little envy and jealousy of Laertes' 
 fencing talent is excited in him. In Hamlet a social character 
 of modern times is, as it were, depicted, one which is inclined 
 to abandon the heroic customs of the age in which fate has 
 placed him, of an age in which everything hinges upon physical 
 power and the desire for action, which nature has denied to 
 him. All the bloody unnatural events which we see before us 
 
574 THIBD PEEIOD OP 8HAKESFEAEE' 8 DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 adultery, poisoning, and revenge for bloodshed, and the warlike 
 deeds on which we cast a glance, the conahat between the old 
 Hamlet and Norway, when ' he smote the sledded Polack on the 
 ice ' — all this transports us to a rude and wild period, from which 
 Hamlet's whole nature recoils, and to which he falls a sacrifice, 
 because, by habit, character, and education, he is alienated from 
 it, and like the boundary-stone of a changing civilisation he 
 touches a world of finer feeling. His is a more tender nervous 
 frame than that of the natures which surround him ; he is 
 invested with a knowledge and a power of thought which 
 accord not with the muscular strength of the old heroic age ; 
 a sensibility and deUcaoy of feeling is his inheritance, only 
 realised centuries after the poet's life. Our modern sensibility 
 is anticipated, as it were, by two centuries in Hamlet. The 
 words, ' Alas, poor Yorick ! ' which Hamlet utters in the 
 churchyard with bitter tears, in the superabundant emotion of 
 his soul,' have become a sort of fruitful source of those tender 
 and gentle moods which in the last century spread like an 
 epidemic in England and Grermany. Sterne, prompted by 
 these words, wrote his (Yorick's) ' Sentimental Journey,' and 
 this book operated Kke the opening of a sluice, letting loose the 
 whole stream of sensibility, which at that time poured hke a 
 flood over the Germanic lands. 
 
 In this anticipation there lies on the side of the poet a true 
 greatness ; there is no doubt that in this deep sensibility, as 
 well as in the high intelligence with which he invested Hamlet, 
 very few of his contemporaries could follow him. The honoiur 
 of being in advance of the age is in most cases only equivocal. 
 A man should belong to his age, and the work which lies 
 nearest he should advance according to his ability. Antici- 
 pating time, moreover, is only too oiten the incapability of ideal- 
 istic enthusiasts to bear the actual. It is only when a man, such 
 as Shakespeare, entirely and fully belongs first to his age and its 
 cultivation and business in every essential direction, and also 
 by his power of mind anticipates the method of thought i and 
 feeling in generations to come, that we can respect this 
 advanced position as the token of a true and great superiority. 
 If on the other hand we apply this verdict to our present play, 
 if wp look upon Hamlet as holding a similar advanced position 
 in relation to his age, the view is at once changed. We have 
 shown that he may be considered as such an anticipator of his 
 time, withdrawing from the rude but vigorous habits of an 
 
HAMLET. 575 
 
 heroic age, and we shall see in Macbeth that this point of view 
 was not foreign to Shakespeare himself. But Hamlet presents 
 himself to us, not as one who satisfied the customs and demands 
 of his time, but as one who fell far short of their nearest claims, 
 in spite of his capacity for meeting their larger and more 
 remote requirements. He appears to us as an idealist, unequal 
 to the real world, and who, repelled by it, not only laments in 
 elegiac strains over its deficiencies and defects, but grows 
 embittered and sickly about it, even to the injury of his 
 naturally noble character. If Hamlet, as regards his sensibility, 
 is an anticipation of the feeble generation of the last century, 
 he is, as regards this bitterness of feeling, a type of our German 
 race at the present day. And this it is which has made Hamlet 
 the most known of all Shakespeare's plays, and the most dis- 
 cussed among us for now nearly a hundred years ; it is because 
 the conditions of the soul which are here depicted seem to us 
 the most expressive and the most living. We feel and see' our 
 own selves in him, and, in love with our own deficiencies, we 
 have long seen only the bright side of this character, until of 
 late we have had a glimpse of its shadows also. We look upon 
 the mirror of our present state as if this work had first been 
 written in our own day ; the poet, like a living man, works for 
 us and in us in the same way as he intended to do for his own 
 age. So deep and true is this poet's observation of nature, so 
 great is the similarity of nature and its effects generally and 
 individually, that the comparison between a people and an 
 individual of entirely different times, such as we here only 
 suggest, could be easily carried on much further than for the 
 sake of brevity we can allow ourselves to do. 
 
 The portrait which we Germans see before us in this mirror 
 is similar enough to alarm us. It is not I alone who have ex- 
 pressed this ; it has been remarked and experienced by thou- 
 sands. A poem by one of our present political poets begins 
 with the words, ' Hamlet is Germany.' And this declaration 
 is no ingenious play of words or confused ideas. For, just like 
 Hamlet, we have been placed, up to the present day, between an 
 approaching task of a purely practical nature and a customary 
 desuetude to work and action. Just like him we have been 
 deeply absorbed with the occupation of the mind and the 
 cultivation of the heart, even to a forgetfulness of the world 
 without ; as with him Wittenberg and its bequests have lain 
 nearer to our hearts than warlike struggles for honour and 
 
576 THIBD FEEIOB OF SHAKESPEASE' S BBAMATIC POETEY. 
 
 power ; like Hamlet our life has been filled up with poems and 
 dramas, and to act the task of the time on the stage, to amuse 
 ourselves with words and with the show of heroism, has pleased 
 us better than a composed , and steady preparation for the 
 seriousness of the ag6. Did not the spirits of our forefathers 
 approach us warningly in those early days of our political 
 elevation from the French yoke, and rejoice over our quick 
 resolve ? But we soon allowed our ardour to drop, and in 
 fleeting petty paroxysms of passion we let our wings hang weary 
 in dove-like patience. Examples, gross as earth, exhorted us 
 also and spurred us on, but we left them unheeded. Just like 
 Hamlet we lost delight in our existence, and fled from the real 
 world to the kingdom of the ideal ; we injured the sure tact of 
 instinctive life by over-exercise of the mind, by reflection, and 
 by the constant recognition of the actual in our whims and 
 fancies. Just so we grew sceptically embittered against the 
 world, life, and mankind ; endowed with such qualities for 
 esteeming human worth, we excited ourselves into misanthropy, 
 and with such a vocation for active service in the world, we 
 indulged in a passive universal sorrow {Weltschmerz). Have 
 we not all, in the soliloquies of our literature, felt proud of the 
 achievements of our mind, and found man so like a god, so 
 noble in reason, so infinite in faculties, and yet like Hamlet 
 have had no delight in him ? May not all who are enduring 
 this 'universal sorrow' and all the 'weary ones of Europe' 
 (Europamuden) discover their own striking picture in the 
 man who bore with such impatient heart 
 
 the whips and scorns of time, 
 The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
 
 the law's delay, 
 
 The insolence of office, and the spurns 
 That patient merit of the unworthy takes ? 
 
 Are their embittered feelings anything but the echo alone of 
 that sickly melancholy with which Hamlet regards the world 
 as a prison, the earth as ' an unweeded garden,' ' a steril pro- 
 montory,' air and firmament as a pestilent congregation of 
 vapours, the age as drossy and narrow, and all in it as tedious, 
 shallow, dull, and useless, uttering over it all an exclamation of 
 the profoundest disgust ? And yet more. In thus destroying 
 our souls by loathing the world, , have we not, like Hamlet, 
 wholly forgotten the near for the distant ? We have thought 
 
HAMLET. 611 
 
 ourselves iiidividu,ally obliged to bear the affliction of the 
 universe, to become its saviour and deliverer, without thinking of 
 ourselves individually. Each has uttered with Hamlet his 
 lament that the time was out of joint, and each has thought 
 himself called upon to set it right. It is hard to make the 
 dull-minded sensible of the fact, though the intelligent feels it 
 for himself, that in this sentence lay the basis of Hamlet's ruin 
 as well as of our own! For thus we too imagine that our 
 vocation in literature and politics lies in the far distance and in 
 some unknown great event ; and for this reason we delay and 
 forget to do that which falls to our lot and is our nearest task. 
 Hamlet had a near and , easy vocation to fulfil, he had to set 
 right a little world ; if this, however, were too hard for him, thfc 
 task assigned to him was, in the first place, to put himself in 
 joint and to become his own reformer. This he saw not. And 
 thousands of reformers among us are in the same case. Like , 
 Hamlet, the vexation caused by petty experiences is extended 
 by them to the whole race of mankind, and they exchange their 
 near vocation for one utterly remote ; excessive egotism, a fruit 
 fostered so easily by a purely intellectual life, makes them refer 
 all to themselves, as if each one were the champion of the 
 world, and yet notwithstanding it makes them incapable of 
 satisfying any demands. When this weakness becomes 
 conscious of itself, self-contempt rises against it, and Hamlet 
 scorns himself, that such fellows as he should crawl between 
 earth and heaven. This trait, also, has not unfirequently been 
 betrayed by the representatives of our Grerman life in literature 
 a<nd politics ; they stand in the clearest light of self-knowledge, 
 just as Hamlet does, without* being in the slightest degree thus 
 influenced to a change. And the point of highest similarity 
 between om* public character and Hamlet's is this : that how- 
 ever noble and ideal may be everything which we had exhibited 
 in word and demeanour hitherto, at the first point of transition 
 from 'principle to action our national nature suddenly appeared 
 injured and cankered. The moment of action surprised us un- 
 expectedly ;, we entered upon it in the exaggeration of passionate 
 ardour, and missed the aim which we had not wisely measured.- 
 By such conduct the unsatisfactory change in the national cha- 
 racter stepped suddenly to light. The line of conduct which 
 at the time of the first great rise to outward and inward freedom 
 had been honest, true, open, genuine, and good-natured, at the 
 period of a subsequent effort took secret paths, and appeared 
 
 p p 
 
578 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 faithless, perjured, destitute of all honour, and deprived of all 
 good. When the heroes of word w^ere called at last to that work 
 and action, about which they had so long protested, the poison 
 within burst forth in loathsome corruption, amd cruelty, revenge, 
 bloodthirstinesB, and assassination stained the German nanie, 
 while no one in the prime of mental culture and domestic 
 morality had divined in us such glaring unruliness. 
 
 Thus, too, in Hamlet, to return to him from the last point 
 of this digression, as soon as he rises to his vocation for action, 
 in the manner of one uncalled to the task, the beautiful quali- 
 ties of his character become damaged and injured, and we see 
 at last before us a man who has himself spoiled the best proper- 
 ties of his nature. He who bore the sufferings of humanity with 
 such a feeling soul, becomes in his egotism cruel and severe 
 towards those who stand nearest to his heart. He who is so 
 irritable an enemy to all dissimulation, falsehood, and cunning, 
 not venturing upon the straight path to action, himself takes 
 the crooked way of cunning circumlocution and deceiving dis- . 
 simulation. He who had weighed his task so conscientiously, 
 veers round from conscientiousness itself, or from tardiness, into 
 unconscientiousness, and converts his mildness into severity. 
 When he finds his uncle kneeling in prayer, he will not kill 
 him lest he should send the penitent to heaven ; when, according 
 to his propensity to neglect the near duty and to consider the re- 
 mote one, and incapable of his own revenge, he wishes, as it were, 
 to take upon himself the vengeance of Grod, does he not, in order 
 to find excuse for his inaction, abandon himself to a refinement 
 of wickedness and cruelty, such as before he would not have 
 endured even in thought ? He was stiU full of excitement and 
 ardour, as at Polonius' death he was in the confusion of passion, 
 but we see him presently sacrificing innocent men with cold 
 premeditation — he, who was too over-thoughtful to strike the 
 guilty. He is brought to England by Rosencrantz and Gruilden- 
 stern. They carry with them a Urias-letter for his death, 
 but they know it not. The. open, upright Hamlet opens this 
 letter, writes with feigned hand (an art he had practised in his 
 youth) their names instead of his own, and thus these, the 
 friends of the youth to whom, according to his mother's evi- 
 dence, he adhered more than to any other, fell into the same 
 pit which was dug for Hamlet, but not by them. They ' go 
 to't ? ' asks his Horatio in reproachful surprise. But he lightly 
 .disregards this emotion of conscience ; to dig a mine and pre- 
 
HAMLET^ 579 
 
 pare a trap suit his nature- better tian the direct open deed j 
 his ever ingenious head had alone tO' act, here ; to plant a counter- 
 mine is to him as easy as a clever idea ; he rejoic.es inconsider- 
 ately and maliciously in these arts, praises himself for the 
 quickness of his thought and the rapidity of its accomplishment, 
 and sophistically sees God's help in the prosperous success — he 
 who would not see the many distinct intimations which pointed 
 out to him his duty of revenge ! Thus then at last he himself 
 reaches the same point of malice and cjmning as his., uncle,, 
 whose misdeeds he iwas called upon, to revenge^ 
 
 Still iQiOre reproachable does Hamlet appear to us- in hifr. 
 relation to his beloved one. Goethe said of Hamlet's feeling, 
 for Ophelia, that it was without conspicuous passion. The poet 
 has at any rate not exhibited him to us in a position in which 
 this passion appears pre-eminent. When he casts his love in 
 the scale with that of forty thousand brothers, the exaggeration, 
 of the tone affords no standard. Beyond this passage, Shake- 
 speare has- only onee allowed him a direct opportunity, in a few. 
 aside-spoken words, to give us the key to- his feeling for Ophelia, 
 in those words whieh precede his conversation with her : 
 ' Nymph, in thy/ orisons be all. my sins remembered ! ' — ^words; 
 which we have heard uttered by famous acstors strangely enough 
 in a tone of comical or facetious address. On the other hand, 
 this very conversation affords the actor scope sufiQeient to inti- 
 mate indvrectly the nature of Hamlet's feelings for Ophelia. If 
 the actor does nat here 'tear the passion to tatters,' he will bring 
 the spectator in this scene into a heavy and profound sadness, 
 the very mood in which the conversation leaves Ophelia ; it is 
 the farewell of an unhappy heart to a connection broken by fate ;. 
 it is the serious advice of a self-interested Lover, who sends hiS: 
 beloved to a nunnery because he grudges her to another, and 
 sees the path of his own future lie in hopeless darkness^. Alb 
 ' that in his treatment of OpheUa's father, in his disregard of her. 
 brother, in his coldness and indifference towards Polonius, aye,, 
 even in her own death, may appear heartless and inconsiderate,, 
 is consistent even with a predominant passion for Ophelia in 
 this strange-natured man. His mother regarded this connec- 
 tion as serious in spite of the inequality of station between the 
 two lovers ; his oaths to Ophelia we cannot indeed consider in 
 Hamlet as incipient deception. As a son he loved his father 
 with enthusiastic reverence, without being able to do anything 
 for him for the sake of love, and his mother also, without being 
 
 pp 2 
 
580 THIED PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S BSAMATIO POETRY. 
 
 able to adhere to his father's exhortation not to torment the 
 weak and deluded woman. Thus he may also have loved 
 Ophelia with a warm heart, without contradicting the apparently 
 most contradictory quality of his nature, that cold egotism with 
 which he torments her first with his madness, then leaves her, 
 and after the unhappy death "of her father, devoid of sympathy 
 and sensible to nothing but his own misery, abandons her to 
 despair and insanity. We must seek the counterpart to these 
 traits of character in the history of the affections of equally 
 gifted beings, in whose imfortified souls we shall not unfre- 
 quently meet with this blending of the most sensitive feeling 
 and cold hard-heartedness. These very traits will afford us 
 moreover the key-note for Hamlet's intercourse with Ophelia. 
 At his first approach, inexperienced and imsuspicious, she has 
 given him her heart ; she has been free in her audience with 
 him, so that neighbours perceiving it have warned the family, 
 and the family have warned herself; his conversation with her 
 is equivocal, and not as Eomeo, Bassanio, or even Proteus have 
 spoken with their beloved ones. This has infected her imagi- 
 nation with sensual images and inspired her in her quiet 
 modesty with :amorous passions; this is apparent in the songs 
 she sings in her 'delirium and in the significant flowers she dis- 
 tributes, as cleairly as anything so hidden in its nature can and 
 may be unveiled. Further than this we would not venture to 
 go with Goethe's 'apprehension of this character. Far less can 
 we accept those other views, which returned to the rude legend 
 in ' Saxo Grammaticus,' regarding Ophelia as a fallen innocent. 
 It would not have been in accordance with the fine feeling of 
 Shakespeare to have made the brother utter those sublime 
 words over the corpse of such a fallen one, when the priest 
 would fain refuse her ' sanctified ground ' — 
 
 , A ministering angel shall my sister be, 
 When thou liest howling. 
 
 It would not have been like the poet to say expressly over her 
 
 grave : — 
 
 From her fair and unpolluted flesh 
 May violets spring ! 
 
 It would indeed have been a frivolous insult to innocence in the 
 most solemn place and moment. 
 
 The poet has scarcely brought Ophelia before us in her harm- 
 less nature, before the tragic events of her life have woimded and 
 
HAMLET. , 581 
 
 lacerated her heart ; so far as he lets us cast a glance upon this 
 part of her history, she appears perfectly unselfish, devoted, and 
 tender, even to dependence and lack of will j in her connection 
 with Hamlet she allows herself to be easily guided by her father 
 and brother ; she lends herself to the snare (this Vischer has 
 made conspicuous in his reflections upon Hamlet) placed for 
 her all-sensitive lover, who sees himself abandoned and betrayed 
 by all ; when she has seen him in his distraction she gives him 
 back his gifts, Which affects the irritable man in this condition 
 like a farewell act. Thus far she is not without guilt in the 
 fate which meets her, however much it belongs to the plan of 
 the play that her fall should strike Hamlet's conscience as that 
 of an innocent sacrifice. Of Polonius, Hamlet himself says 
 expressly that the death of the innocent is his pimishment whO' 
 let the guilty live ; a much greater punishment for him is the 
 end of Ophelia, whose father he, the lover, had killed, and thus- 
 had rent in twain every bond which linked her to the world. 
 To this death her songs incessantly relate ; her real madness 
 punishes the feigned insanity of Hamlet; which gave the first 
 shock to her mind. In the same manner Eosencrantz and 
 Gruildenstern fall victims to Hamlet's ruined; nature. If poetic 
 justice appears too severe in these destinies,, it is only that 
 avenging justice may all the more severely reeoiLupon Hamlet 
 himself. The poet has expressly placed in Hamlet's lips the 
 fearful sentence of cold egotistical ~~levity which exhibits these 
 terrible bloody results of his dread of blood in the right light ; 
 a sentence which may be also applied to the end of Paris in 
 Eomeo and Juliet. ' 'Tis dangerous,' he says at the death of 
 his friends, ' when the baser nature comes between the pass and 
 fell incensed points of mighty opposites.' In this manner does 
 the man of great genius trifle with the subordinate creature, 
 whom he regards as appointed to play only inferior paE,ts on this 
 stage of life. Thus is it then that the conscientiousness, fore- 
 sight, and consideration which restrain Hamlet from the murder 
 and from the just punishment of a single man, bury at last the 
 guilty and the guiltless in one common ruin ; his own want 
 of determination, the avenging rage of Laertes, the poisoned 
 cup of his uncle, the careless weakness of his mother, the- 
 officiousness of his friends, the inoffensive folly of Polonius, the- 
 innocence of the devoted lover, eaeh and aU these — virtue, and, 
 pardonable faults, and inexpiable mortal crimes — suffer the same 
 ruin, so that scarcely any of the living remain upon the stage. 
 
582 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 This has been declared to be a kind of barbarous, bloody tragedy, 
 worthy of a rude age, all the characters at last being thus swept 
 from the stage. - But' in so doing it was the aim of the poet to 
 use this unnecessary lAoodshed as part of the characterisation 
 as well as punishment of kis hero, who had not courage to shed 
 necessary blood. Shakespeare himsdf has said' this with distinct 
 consciousness. T&e king asks Laertes "vfhether it is ' writ in 
 his revenge, that, sweepstake, he will draw both friend and foe, 
 winner and loser ? ' The master x>i revenge, little •conscientious 
 as he is, is satisfied with the punishment of the "one guilty one. 
 But the conscienti'ous Hamlet contrives that he, as the king 
 designated it, should at -one blow actually destroy aU by his 
 clumsy revenge. With one single significant word the poet 
 evidently intimates his deep design at the end, and his reference 
 to that question of the king to Laertes. Over the heaps of 
 dead, Fortinbras exclaims, ' this quarry cries on havock ! ' a 
 word which in sporting iangua^^e signifies that game, useless 
 from its amount and quality, which is killed by unpractised 
 sportsmen ; as here by the unskilful avenger. Thus then this 
 bloody conclusion is not the consequeuce of an aesthetic fault on 
 the part of the poet, but of a moral fault on that of his Hamlet, 
 a consequence which the sense of the whole play and the design 
 of this character aim at from the first. 
 
MACBETH. 
 
 Shakespeare took the subject of Maclieth from Holinshed, who, 
 on his side, borrowed it from Bellenden's Scotch translation of 
 the 'Latin chronicle of Hector Boethius (1541). In perfect 
 contrast to the rude origin of Hamlet, our dramatist had here 
 before him an excellent and finished subject, the theatrical 
 nature of which Bueljanan had already perceived. All lay ready 
 in the material itself and required only psychol-ogical develop- 
 ment. Macbeth, the cousin of the weak King Duncan, a man 
 by nature inclined to cruelty, forms in combination with Banquo 
 (according to history as well as Shakespeare) the support of the 
 throne against internal rebels and external enemies. The 
 witches prophesy alike to the two chieftains ; Macbeth's haughty 
 and proud wife excites him to the regicidal deed, the suspicion 
 of which falls upon the sons who escape. (In the details of the 
 murder, Shakespeare has referred to an earlier page of Scottish 
 history, the murder of King Duff by Donaid.^ Envy and 
 mistrust of Banquo, who, as Shakespeare also faintly indicates 
 was his confidant, determine Macbeth t© remove him out of his 
 path, but his son Fleance escapes. The growth of Macbeth's 
 suspicion, tyranny, and thirst for blood, his mistrust of Macduff 
 the flight of that chieftain, the murder of his faaiaily, the further 
 deceptive prediction of the Witches, and the deliverance of Scot- 
 land, all is handed down to the poet in such a simple and 
 natural connection, that without alteration he could take the 
 whole plot, aye, even lengthy passages, such as the conversation 
 between Macduff and Malcolm™ 
 
 This tragedy has ever been regarded and criticised with dis- 
 tinguishing preference among Shakespeare's works ; our own 
 Schiller reproduced it, Schlegel spoke of it with enthusiasm 
 Drake called it ' the greatest effort of our author's genius and 
 the most sublime and impressive drama which the ^orld has 
 ever beheld.' It has also obtained favour above the other plays 
 
584 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 of Shakespeare in lands peopled by other than the Teutonic 
 race, either, from its felt or perceived resemblance to ancient 
 tragedy, or from its unity of design and the simple progress of 
 its development, or from its distinct characterisation, in which 
 the poet has employed less mystery than usual ; most of all, 
 indeed, from its pictorial charm and poetic colouring. If 
 perhaps no other play of Shakespeare's can vie with Hamlet 
 in philosophical insight into the nature and worth of the various 
 powers at work in man, if none can compete with Henry IV. 
 in fresh delight in a vast and active career, if none can compare 
 with Othello in profoundness of design and careful carrying 
 out of the characters, if none with Lear in the power of con- 
 tending passions, and none with Cymbeline in the importance 
 of moral principles, Macbeth, in like manner, stands forth 
 uniquely pre-eminent in the splendour of poetic and picturesque 
 diction and in the living representation of persons, times, and 
 places. Schlegel perceived the vigorous heroic age of the 
 North depicted in it with powerful touches, the generations of 
 an iron time, whose virtue is bravery. How grandly do the 
 mighty forms rise, how naturally do they move in an heroic 
 style! What a different aspect is presented by this tyrant 
 Macbeth by the side of the heroes Macduff, Banqao, and 
 Siward, compared to that of the crook-back Eichard amid a 
 crooked generation ! Locally, we are transported into the 
 Highlands of Scotland, where everything appears tinged with 
 superstition, fall of tangible intercommunion with the super 
 natural world and prognostics of the moral life by signs in the 
 animate and inanimate kingdom ; where, in conformity with 
 this, men are credulous in belief and excitable in fancy ; where 
 they speak with strong expression, with highly poetical lan- 
 guage, and with unusual imagery, such as strikes us even at the 
 present day in popular orators of the Gaelic races. This 
 mastery over the general representation of time and place is 
 rivalled by the pictures of single circumstances and situations. 
 Eeynolds justly admired that description of the martlet's 
 resort to Macbeth's dwelling as a charming image of repose, 
 following by way of contrast the lively picture of the fight. 
 More justly still has praise been always lavished on the power- 
 ful representatiofn of the horrible in that night wandering 
 of Lady Macbeth, in the banquet scene, and in the dismal 
 creation of the weird sisters. And far above all this is the 
 speaking truth of the scenes at the murder of Duncan, which 
 
MACBETH. 585 
 
 produce a powerful effect even in the most imperfect repre- 
 sentation. The fearful whispered conference, in the horrible 
 dimness of which the pair arrange and complete their atrocious 
 project; the heartrending portraiture of Macbeth's state of 
 mind at the deed itself; the uneasy half-waking condition of 
 the sacrificed attendants, one of whom dreams on of the even- 
 ing feast, the other, in paralysed consciousness, seems to antici- 
 pate the impending atrocity; lastly, the external terrors of the 
 night, presenting a foreboding contrast to the tumult of merri- 
 ment over the yawning graves ; all this is so perfectly natural, 
 and wrought to such powerful effect with so little art, that it 
 would be difficult to find its equal in the poetry of any age. 
 
 With regard to the date of Macbeth, we only know with 
 certainty that it was acted at the Globe in 1610. Dr. Forman's 
 diary mentions expressly a representation of it on the 20th 
 April of that year; It is conjectured, however, with great 
 probability, that the play was written earlier. The allusion 
 (Act IV. sc. 1) to the union of the three kingdoms of England, 
 Scotland, and Ireland (' and some I see, that two-fold balls and 
 treble sceptres carry') could have no point, unless made shortly 
 after the event ; and James I. was proclaimed King of Great 
 Britain and Ireland on the 20th October, 1 604. According to 
 this, Macbeth appeared probably about 1605. We place it, 
 however, directly after Hamlet, bepause, as Coleridge has 
 already remarked, it affords a complete contrast to this play. 
 
 In Hamlet the tragic material is peculiarly enriched in a 
 manner of which ancient tragedy would not have been sus- 
 ceptible. The piece treats of the same theme as ' Orestes.' A 
 husband and father is mtirdered by the paramour of his wanton 
 wife ; the duty of revenge is incumbent on the son. We at 
 once, however, perceive a greater Christian mildness in the 
 touches, inasmuch as no share in or foreknowledge of the 
 murder is attributed to the wife (and this is much more dis- 
 tinctly expressed in the oldest edition of 1603 than in our 
 text), and the spirit of the murdered, man especially enjoins 
 the son to attempt nothing against his mother. But apart 
 from this the greater severity of the old myth shows itself in 
 every trait. Orestes schools himself to his revenge from his 
 youth up, his sister urges him on with the same obstinacy of 
 purpose ; the task is not alone that of punishing a murderer 
 and usurper with death, but a mother ; the avenger has this 
 one aim alone, and knows no scruple; conscience is first 
 
586 THIRD FEBIOD OF SSAKESPEABE'8 DRAMATIC FOETEY. 
 
 awakened after the deed. Here, however, it is arblased in the 
 sensitive Christian heart before it, and "it weakens both resolve 
 and energy. The poet has, in Hamlet, expressly given 
 prominence to the good Catholic Christianity of the acting 
 personages, and dwelt upon legends, prayers, purgatory, and 
 religious scruples more than is his wont. The ancients 
 depicted as tragic characters those especially who broke out 
 into violent opposition to the divine law and justice, through 
 excess of courage and strength, and through an over-estimate 
 of human will and human freedom ; but in Hamlet an excess 
 of weakness is tragically depicted, and he is punished for tardi- 
 ness of action. In Macbeth, on the other band, this is 
 reversed. He is the direct opposite to Hamlet, a tragic 
 character in the full sense of the ancients, straining human 
 might and manly audacity to the utmost, whilst he rashly 
 dares fate to enter the lists against him. In that just medium 
 in which Prince Henry is represented, accompli^ments, mind, 
 youth, and piety restrain him not from action, and ambition, 
 power, happiness, and opportunity seduce him not to deeds of 
 insolence and injustice ; to this medium Hamlet and Mac- 
 beth stand in opposite extremes, and perish through their own 
 excess. In both, as it says in Macbeth, ' a ^ood and virtuous 
 nature recoils in an imperial charge,' but in each in a manner 
 wholly different ; the tragic reaction is in both ^equally terrible, 
 but the palsied effort of the one stands in strong contrast to 
 the spasmodic, action of the other. The external character of 
 both plays is in perfect accordance with this inner and funda- 
 mental difference. The slow advance of the action in Hamlet 
 affords a striking contrast to the rapid march of the catastrophe 
 in Macbeth, the dimness of the former to the strong light 
 and glowing colouring in the latter, the creeping fever of 
 passion in the one to the hasty movement in the other, where 
 the passions, as in Lear, are carried to the utmost bounds of 
 nature, and that of the stroi^est human kind. The character 
 of the uncertain, fluctuating, wavering Hamlet imparts to the 
 action in the one play the image of standing stagnant water, 
 stirred only in places by whirlpocds, while in this play a mighty 
 dangerous rushing stream roars past, in which the boldest 
 swimmer loses power and mastery. 
 
 We have already pointed out that we perceived in Hamlet 
 an intention on the part of the poet to depict, as it were, a 
 double-sided pleriod, a turning point in civilisation and develop- 
 
MACBETH. 587 
 
 ment in the relation of the hero to his fellow^men ; a man of a 
 civilised period standing in the centre of an heroic age of 
 rough manners and physical daring. Here it is reversed, and 
 this appears to us to prove that the contrast was intended ; a 
 man possessed with the old energy of the heroic age stands on 
 a similar boundary line, at which the age and society are 
 aiming at milder Christian manners, whilst Macbeth stands like 
 a man belonging to the wilder past, not exactly by nature, but 
 by his deed land its effects ; jilst as, on the other hand, it seemed 
 the task of Hamlet to maintain the usages of the olden time by 
 the exercise of his revenge. The glance cast in the play upon 
 the holy Edward of England and the divine power of healing 
 which lay in his hands, the opposite chauacter in which, com- 
 pared to the wild heathenish Macbeth, the pious English 
 Siward appears, the true champion of the sainted king, who 
 with resignation sees his son perish in the troop of Grod's 
 soldiers, the restoration of the rightful rulers of Scotland by 
 the English, who, according to the 'chronicle, first brought 
 delicacy, luxury, and greater refinement of manners to Scot- 
 land — all this indicates the sapproach of gentler times. Mac- 
 beth is unfriencfly to them and to their efieiminacy. He con- 
 temptibly "calis these English deliverers, ''epicures.' When 
 Banquo's ghost appears to him, while he is already in the 
 midst of Ms career of blood, he plainly refers to old times and 
 ways : — 
 
 Blood hath heefn shed ere now, i' the olden time, 
 Mre human statute purged the gentle weal ; 
 Ay, and since too, murders have been perfonn'd 
 Too terriWe for the ear ; the titaes have been. 
 That, when the brains were out, the man would •die, 
 And there an end ; but now, Aey rise agaia,-^ 
 
 such deeds now 'disturb the conscience which before was not so 
 tender. 
 
 The essential difference in the natures of Hamlet and 
 Macbeth is the heroic physical strength which Goethe found 
 lacking in the one, and 'which the other so fully possesses. " 
 When Macbeth appears «,t the beginning of the play, he is, in 
 all eyes, an admired general ; during the fight he had coolly 
 manifested all the qualities of a perfeict sdldier, 'valour's 
 minion,' ' Bellona's bridegroom.' As a man of action exclu- 
 sively, he is deficient in the intellectual culture which was 
 Hamlet's pride. Not that he, like Percy, resisted and strove 
 
588 THIRD FERIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DBAMATIG POETRY. 
 
 against it ; it never even approached him ; nothipg of the kind 
 is ever alluded to, not even as a contrast to those around him. 
 At the most, Macbeth's disinclination to all refined cultivation 
 shows itself in the above-mentioned contempt of ' the English 
 epicures.' It beLongs to this simple soldier nature that he does 
 not possess a trace of that histrionic art aind dissimulation 
 which necessarily residted from Hamlet's turn of mind. Even 
 where these qualities would have been helpful to him in for- 
 warding his aims or in defending him against danger, he knew 
 not how to adopt them, in spite of his willingness, and in spite 
 of his wife's good example, instructions, and impressive warn- 
 ings. At the very first prediction of the weird sisters he 
 betrays his emotion to Banquol He meets his wife with a 
 pre-occupied countenance, which she immediately enjoins him 
 to change for one of concealment. In deep thought he quits 
 the table where the king is his guest. Garrick played this 
 part so as to show that, when once excited, he could not conceal 
 the emotions of his soul, even before Duncan, least of all in the 
 moment of the promotion of the Prince of Cumberland. The 
 quality which further distinctly distinguishes Macbeth from 
 Hamlet, and which Is in close connection with his innate thirst 
 for action, is his ambition. This displays itself when he is 
 newly excited by the Northern Fates, in the letter to his wife, 
 the ' dearest partner of his greatness.' Macbeth's whole com- 
 munication with her leads us to infer long-cherished projects of 
 ambition, for his soaring aims lodge deeper in his wife's bosom 
 than even in his own. For a great object, for a certain gain in 
 this life, Macbeth is ready (and this is the boldest expression of 
 the passion in him) to ' jump the life to come,' which filled 
 Hamlet with fear and doubts. And when once this ambition is 
 set in violent motion by all the combining circumstances of 
 fortune and opportunity, we see Macbeth, the vassal, unlaw- 
 fully and bloodily taking possession of the throne of his king 
 and benefactor; whilst Hamlet, the true heir, feels neither 
 courage nor inclination to reclaim by a lawful act the throne 
 that is his by right. 
 
 However criminal and violent this passion may appear to 
 us thus developed in Macbeth, it is not in him from the outset; 
 the strongest temptations were necessary to bring it into this 
 rapid flow. As long as his ambition yet untempted slumbered 
 within him, we look upon a better nature in Macbeth, which 
 even in his extremest decline never suffers him to sink quite 
 
MACBETH. -589 
 
 below himself, nor to lose all his dignity. Before the fatal 
 resolve of the king's murder is fully ripened in his mind, good 
 and evil are weighed in equal balance within him. When his 
 mind is first overtaken with the temptation, he hesitates 
 whether to wait till the way may open to him of itself, or to 
 force the obstruction to yield ; before the good nature in the 
 ■ one scale is overburdened by the pressure of his wife's ambition 
 on the other, the equal balance of his nature is strikingly 
 indicated by the characterisation of Macbeth in the lips of this 
 very wife. Macbeth appears to us here exactly at the point 
 where his double nature separates, just as Hamlet does in his 
 first soliloquy, when he stands suspended between his high 
 resolves and the downward pressure of his sluggish tempera- 
 menL ' Thou wouldst be great,' says Lady Macbeth, — 
 
 Art not without amfcition ; tut without 
 
 The illness should attend it. "What thou would'st highly, 
 
 That would'st thou holily ; would'st not play false, 
 
 And yet would'st strongly win : thou'd'st have, great Glamis, 
 
 That which cries, ' Thtis thou must do, if thou have it : 
 
 And that which rather thou dost fear to do. 
 
 Than wishest should be undone.' , 
 
 She calls him 'too full of the milk of human kindness to catch 
 the nearest way.' This is a description which brings him in 
 his inner undisturbed self in close relation to Hamlet ; these 
 words might even be spoken of Hamlet. The poet intends to 
 intimate that he does not find a delicate mental organisation 
 inconsistent with strong physical power. He invests Macbeth 
 at the outset with the tender sentiments of Hamlet ; they dis- 
 play themselves in him by the powerful stirrings of his con- 
 science. This voice is in him no less loud, nay, perhaps it is 
 even louder than in Hamlet ; only that in the man of business 
 and action it has not the same convenient scope for its exten- 
 sion as in the other. Conscience has not alone in Macbeth, as 
 in the passive Hamlet, to reflect and to doubt, but it has to do ; 
 it has before the deed to struggle with ambition; then, vic- 
 torious in its overthrow, at the very deed itself, it rouses repent- 
 ance in him to~ a degree of fearful torture, and the man who 
 before never uttered the name of Grod, who in Ms conference 
 with the murderers all but declared himself an atheist and" 
 mocked at an hereafter, is now in religious anxiety seized with 
 a piteous melancholy, which shocks even his hardened wife, at 
 
590 THIRD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S SSAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 the idea that he could not say Amen to the prayer of Duncan's 
 attendants. Further on, this mighty voice of his conscience, 
 stifled by a po^werful will, yields to his daring, but it is still 
 active and resisting to the last moment. If Macbeth, in this 
 point, is not unlike Hamlet in the original constitution of his 
 mind, he resembles him still more in the excitability of his 
 fancy. But if Hamlet's irresolution sprang out of his con- 
 scientiousness, and his cowardice out of his imagination, there 
 is' evidence in Macbeth, on the other hand, that am innate 
 manly power and eifort can master the strongest stirrings of 
 conscience, as well as the mightiest workings of the fancy. 
 For as we have said that the voice of consciience was perhaps 
 ' louder in Macbeth than in Hamlet, so the paralysing effect of 
 imagination was without doubt stronger in him than in the 
 other. Anxious presentiments find in him a nature easily 
 alarmed. He says himself that, iji ordinary circumstances, his 
 fancy gave rise to fear and excitement. The time had been 
 when, a night-shriek would hav& cooled his senses, and a dismal 
 treatise would rouse his ' fell of hair.' His wife was aware of 
 this his peculiarity, and knew how apt it was to weaken his 
 activity and his resolve ; she waorns him, thearefore, continually 
 not to be alone, nor to indulge in dark thoughts ; ' you do un- 
 bend your noble strength,' she says to him, ' to think so brain- 
 sickly of things.' Nevertheless, in this very quality, which in 
 the energetic man is energetic and therefore indeed of a 
 different nature and effect to that in Hamlet, Macbeth possessed 
 an actual incentive to action. ' Present fears are less ' to this 
 man of action than ' horrible imaginings ; ' on the battle-field 
 he maintained a natural cheerfulness ; under the power of evil 
 forebodings he becomes weak. The mere .conception of the 
 murder makes his ' seated heart knock at his ribs,' and ' shakes 
 his single state of man ' so violently, that ' function is smothered 
 in surmises ' of the future, and nothing is present to him, ' but 
 what is not.' Thus, quite unlike Hamlet, who inactively revels 
 and delights in the appearance of the ghost, and in the torture 
 of his forebodings and fancies, Macbeth gives us the impression 
 of rushing into action to escape the agony of mental struggle 
 and terror. On his way to commit the crime, his heated 
 imagination brings a dagger before him, on which he sees 
 ' gouts of blood ' arise ; his eyes are here ' the fools o' the other 
 senses,' as his ear is afterwards, when he fancies he hears the 
 voice cry, ' Griamis hath murdered sleep ! ' But this imagination 
 
MACBETH. 591 
 
 restrains him not from murdering the servants, nor did that 
 first apparition withhold him from the murder of the king. 
 The contrast exists here also, for Macbeth's fancy does not rest 
 in doubts "and soliloquies, hut impels to action, picturing to him 
 the very weapon for his deed ; whereas in Hamlet's case, the 
 admonisher both seen and heard, the ghost of his father, 
 vanishes again from his remembrance like a delusion. That 
 they see ghosts is, with both Hamlet and Macbeth, the 
 strongest proof of the power of the imaginative faculty. We 
 need hardly tell our readers, whom we imagine to be more and 
 more initiated into the mind of our poet, that his spirit- world 
 signifies nothing but the visible embodiment of the images 
 conjured up by a lively fancy, and that their apparition only 
 takes place with those who have this excitable imagination.' 
 The cool Gertrude sees not Hamlet's ghost, the cold, sensible 
 Lady Macbeth sees not that of Banquo, the dry, ironical Lenox 
 and his companions see neither this nor the witches; these 
 appear indeed to Banquo, who is neither free from ambitious 
 ideas nor is mastered by them, but the witches address him not 
 till he speaks to them. 
 
 In the witches, Shakespeare has made use of the popular 
 belief in evil geniuses and in adverse persecutors of mankind, 
 and has produced a similar but darker race of beings, just as he 
 made use of the belief in fairies in the Midsummer Night's 
 Dream. This creation is less attractive and complete, but not 
 less masterly. The poet, in the text of the play itself, calls 
 these beings witches only derogatorily; they call themselves 
 weird sisters ; the Fates bore this denomination, and these 
 sisters remind us indeed of the Northern Fates or Valkyries. 
 They appear wild and weather-beaten in exterior and attire, 
 common in speech, ignoble half-human creatures, ugly as the 
 evil one, and in like manner old and of neither sex. They are 
 guided by more powerful masters, their work entirely springs 
 from delight in evil, and they are wholly devoid of human sym- 
 pathies. Schiller's reproduction of them is entirely opposed to 
 the poet's intention, and nothing that Schlegel has said against 
 this travesty is too harsh. The reverse of the ancient Eu- 
 menides, these weird sisters are not avengers after the deed, but 
 
 ' Shakespeare, therefore, did not mind the apparent inconsistency, in 
 Hamlet, of making the man to whom the ghost has appeared say that from 
 the bourn of that undiscovered country no traveller returns. 
 
592 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 tempters to it, the panders to iin. A definite and mechanical 
 power over man is, however, in nowise bestowed on them ; and 
 Lamb was utterly wrong in his opinion that they generated 
 deeds of blood and originated evil impulses in the soul. Thus 
 Schlegel also said that Macbeth yielded to a deep-laid hellish 
 temptation and to supernatural impulses ; but this gives 
 throughout an opposite idea of Shakespeare's meaning, if we 
 are to understand, more by it than that the soaring and ambi- 
 tious desires of Macbeth himself are of a supernatural and more 
 than ordinary strength. The poet has endowed these creatures 
 with the power to tempt and delude men, to entangle them 
 with oracles of double meaning, with delusion and deception, 
 and even to try them, as Satan in the Book of Job, with sorrow 
 and trouble, with storms and sickness ; but they have no autho- 
 rity with fatalistic power to do violence to the human will. 
 Their promises and their prophecies leave ample scope for free- 
 dom of action ; their occupations are ' deeds without a name.' 
 They are simply the embodiment of inward temptation ; they 
 come in storm and vanish in air, like corporeal impulses, which, 
 originating in the blood, cast up bubbles of sin and ambition in 
 the soul ; they are weird sisters only in the sense in which men 
 carry their own fates within their own bosoms. Macbeth, in 
 meeting them, has to struggle against no external power, but 
 only with his own nature ; they bring to light the evil side of 
 his character, which was not to be- read in his face ; he does not 
 stumble upon the plans of his royal ambition, because the 
 allurement approaches him from without ; but this temptation 
 is sensibly awakened in him, because those plans have long 
 been slumbering in his soul. Within himself dwell the spirits 
 of evil which allure him with the delusions of his aspiring 
 mind. They approach him as he stands on the highest step of 
 his fortune, his favour, and his valour. The rebellion he has 
 just crushed places him above the weak Duncan, who is power- 
 less to help himself ; the newly obtained rank of Thane of 
 Cawdor increases his influence, and suggests to him the con- 
 sideration of how far, more successfully he could have played 
 the part of traitor than the deposed chief who bore the title 
 before him ; to this is then added the opportunity of Duncan's 
 visit, and the influence of his wife. These are natural prompt- 
 ings of such weight, that altogether they form, indeed, the 
 supernatural power which Shakespeare has poetically embodied 
 according to the tradition. Thus Macbeth's genius feels itself 
 
MACBETH. 593 
 
 ' rebuked ' by Banquo, as Antony's was by Csesar ; envy and 
 jealousy against Banquo, the joint subduer of the rebellion, 
 lie thus naturally within him, and are afterwards only aroused 
 by the prophecy in favour of Banquo's descendants. His self- 
 reliance told him (the witches needed not to tell him) that he 
 had no cause to fear any of woman born, unless it be this Mac- 
 duff from whom he shrinks even before those demons have 
 warned him of him. They only rouse to watchfulness the 
 slumbering thoughts of his soul, as they say of the armed head : 
 they know his thoughts. As Macduff's death is uppermost in 
 his mind, so on their first appearance was that of Duncan ; 
 when they lay open to him the way to the throne, they did but 
 'harp' then upon his own ambition, as now upon his foreboding 
 fears of Macduff. Thus these prophetesses make Macbeth by 
 their first appearance no other than, according to his wife's 
 delineation, he is already. As in Hamlet the ghost of his 
 father, or, what is the same, that inward presentiment which 
 grows ever niore and more in the son into tangible certainty, 
 rouses up a sluggish will, so in Macbeth the witches,, or the 
 false images of his ambition, tempt an already predisposed will 
 and a character hitherto unsullied. He stands after their 
 temptation at the same cross-way of action at which his wife 
 saw him before it overtook him. He hesitates whether to call 
 this apparition good or ill, which Banquo at once is inclined to 
 regard as an ' instrument of darkness ; ' the idea of murder 
 ' unfixes ' indeed his hair ; yet he reflects that if chance will 
 have him king, chance may crown him ' without his stir,' as it 
 had made him Thane of Cawdor. He proposes at the first to 
 Banqvio that they should speak their free hearts to each other 
 upon" this apparition, as a means of jremaining guiltless. 
 
 But to this good purpose Banquo alone remained faithful, 
 and not Macbeth. The former is opposed to the latter as a 
 complemental character, and this contrast is displayed at once 
 in the relation of both to the witches' temptation. Banquo has 
 the same heroic courage, the same merit, and the same claims 
 as Macbeth; it is natural, therefore, that the same ambitious 
 thoughts should arise in the one as in the other. But in 
 Banquo they arise in a calmer nature, susceptible of the finest 
 discretion, and therefore they do not master him as they do 
 Macbeth. Where the latter receives favour, distinction, visit 
 title, and power, as a reward from his sovereign, Banquo has only 
 to thank him for an embrace, for a pressure to. his heart. And 
 
 QQ 
 
594 THIRD PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEABE' S DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 for this the modest man replies, ' There if I grow, the harvest 
 is your own.' The fruit even of this small favour he gives to 
 the king. And then quietly, in the absence of his favoured 
 rival, he extols to the king the qualities of Macbeth, while the 
 latter envies him from the very first on account of the prophecy 
 which favoured his (Banquo's) descendants in the same way as 
 it did himself personally. Equally noble as Banquo's conduct 
 is in this instance, is his calm self-possession during this very 
 prophecy. He doubts at first whether his eyes do not deceive 
 him, or whether the witches may not be something of those 
 empty bubbles which, according to tradition, the earth casts 
 up as well as the water, while Macbeth is at once entranced and 
 credulously listens to their words. The latter could not have 
 called out to them, as Banquo did, that he neither did ' beg 
 nor fear their favours nor their hate.' Macbeth has already 
 scarcely an ear for Banqno's warning that they may be the 
 ' instruments of darkness,' who told them truths to win them to 
 their harm, who sought to win them ' with honest trifles, to 
 betray them in deepest consequence.' If Banquo is of calmer 
 blood than Macbeth, he is, howevei*, not bloodless. Like Mac- 
 beth he has temptations to ' struggle against, but he withstands 
 them with more powerful sfelf-government. He has tempting 
 dreams which trouble hitn; he drives them away by prayer, 
 that they may not come again ; he does more than pray, he 
 struggles against sleep itself that he may escape them. 
 Waking, his spirit masters the ' cursed thoughts,' whilst in 
 sleep nature pays tribute to the blood by giving way to these 
 dreams. In his unrest he meets Macbeth. The guiltless man 
 confesses his dreams, the guilty denies further thought on the 
 weird sisters ; he who at first had himself wished for free inter- 
 change of thought now avoids it. That Banquo should know 
 what he knows is oppressive to Macbeth ; the unconscientious 
 man feels burdened by the proximity of the conscientious one, 
 the evil by the good, the envious by the successful. Banquo 
 might have been his good angel ; but, avoiding intercourse 
 with him, he falls under the influence of his evil genius, his 
 wife. Banquo had shared with him the temptation of warlike 
 greatness and distinction ; that of a rise in power had passed 
 him by ; the temptation of good opportunity was also spared 
 him, and, last of all, the mightiest stimulant of all, the influence 
 of an ambitious wife. 
 
 The opportimity which next presented itself to Macbeth 
 
MACBETH. 59S 
 
 was of such ja nature that it held him wavering in the balance, 
 though heavy weights were in either scale. The king passes a 
 night in his dwelling. The royal guest enters trustfully and 
 with careless pleasure heneath that roof where the wandering 
 martlet had found an undisturbed abode. He is a virtuous 
 monarch, beloved and valued by his people, he is Macbeth's 
 nearest kinsman and cousin, his prince, his panegyrist, his 
 benefactor ; he had just bestowed on him the dignity of the 
 Thane of Cawdor, the rank of the fallen rebel who with 
 hypocrisy had turned traitor to the good sovereign ; his favour, 
 so Duncan promises Macbeth, will still continue towards him ; 
 he acknowledges himself so indebted to him, that 'more is due 
 than more than aU can pay.' Even on that evening of ' unusual 
 pleasure,' with royal liberality he makes rich presents to the 
 wife and servants of his host ! But unfortunately, in presence 
 of Macbeth, he had declared his son to be his heir upon the 
 throne ; this excites in Macbeth more strongly the thought of 
 shortening the course of fate, of putting spurs ' to prick the 
 sides of his intent ' to leap over the impediment, without con- 
 sidering that such a leap was close upon a fall. He is so far 
 advanced already, that he pronounces himself ready for the 
 dreadful deed, if he could but be sure of the result. But in 
 these things he knows that an ' even-handed justice ' rules, 
 which even here ' commends the ingredients of our poisoned 
 chalice to our own lips.' Considerations of all kinds arise 
 against his crime, while every motive spurred Hamlet on to his 
 deed. Nevertheless, his ambition stiU struggles in a scarcely 
 equal strife with his conscience, and with that Hamlet-like 
 habit of ' thinking too precisely on the event.' In this struggle 
 his. wife's urgency determines him to take the evil course. And 
 this she effects essentially by the incitement of his valour and 
 by the ambitious incentive of his claim to glory and to the 
 name of manliness, an ambition which all those supernatural 
 examples and warnings could not stir up in Hamlet. 
 
 Shakespeare has taken the idea of Macbeth's wife from 
 an allusion in Holinshed's chronicles to the wife of Donald, 
 who instigates her husband to the murder of King Duff. She 
 appears, at first sight, aS' a Clytemnestra in pride, cruelty, 
 firmness, and unscrupulousness, a powerful woman, awakening 
 i«i us more fear than hate, possessing a frightfully determined 
 will and thrice-steeled resolve. The complete antitype to her 
 husband's irritable and imaginative nature, -she is calm in 
 
 a Q 2 
 
596 THIRD PEBIOD OF SSAKESPEASE'S VBJMATIC POETSY. 
 
 judgment and cold in blood. No supernatural temptation 
 approaches her, but only the substantial one in her husband's 
 letter ; no warning voice of conscience, no forebodinigs of ter- 
 rible consequences alarm herj as they do Macbeth, before the 
 deed ; while it is being perpetrated she remains circumspect, 
 deliberate, ready for dissimulation; after it she would have 
 been able speedily to forget what had happened. She feels 
 that to dwell on such' deeds, as Macbeth does, would make her 
 mad ; she therefore dissuades from it, and is composed enough 
 on her side to follow out this counsel. A will of uncommon 
 instinctive firmness renders her in a remarkable manner mis- 
 tress of herself. She knows that by dissimulation, foresight, 
 and cunning she could commit and conceal the fatal deed in 
 question ; she scorns the bare idea that she could fail ; she goes 
 through her part so perfectly that no suspicion falls on her. 
 Only in the first moment, when Duncan's arrival is mentioned 
 to her, when she sees a propitious fate in the opportunity thus 
 afforded, she betrays, in the joy of her heart, somewhat of what 
 is going on within her by exclaiming, ' Thou'rt mad to say it ! ' 
 But this she never does again. Conscious of qualities which fit 
 her for such a work, she urges her irresolute husband to the 
 fearful deed ; she forces him to ' screw his courage to the stick- 
 ing place.' Her husband contents her only when he conceived 
 the idea of creating for himself the opportunity which now 
 offers itself unexpectedly. She urges him to snatch as a prey 
 what may be the gift of destiny, and the natural eloquence and 
 persuasiveness of courage, resolve, and unity of purpose over- 
 come the silent, wavering, and thoughtful man. In this elo- 
 quence Lady Macbeth may appear to us as an incarnate devil, 
 divested of every trace of womanhood and humanity. Had she 
 so sworn as he, she says to Macbeth, she would have dashed the 
 brains out of her smiling babe, although she knew from expe- 
 rience how tender was the love of the nursing mother. Never- 
 theless, even at this most unnatural pitch of her passion and 
 cruelty, we perceive that the poet has not wholly deprived this 
 woman of the milk of human kindness. In this strain upon 
 her feelings, in this abnegation of her womanhood, she does 
 violence indeed to her nature. She calls upon hellish spirits to 
 aid her in unsexing herself, a trait otherwise foreign to her 
 whole being. These are to fill her ' top-full ' of direst cruelty, 
 and to 'stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no 
 compunctious visitings of nature' should shake her pmrpose. 
 
MACBETH. 597 
 
 Knowing her consort well, she arrogates to herself the manly 
 part, for which she endeavours to screw up her nature, that she 
 may herself carry out and perpetrate the mm'der. Macbeth, 
 she says, was only to ' look up clear and leave all the rest to 
 her.'' She makes the plans and talks of herself and him, both 
 of whom are to have a share in the work; she drugs the servants 
 and lays their daggers ready ; she finds the potion which she 
 had used to make the attendants druflk necessary to inspire 
 herself with courage and firmness. She would even give the 
 blow with her own hands, but at the moment itself her over- 
 wrought nature gives way. Those compunctious visitings of 
 nature which she had' banished from herself shake her when she 
 traces in the sleeping king a resemblance to her father, and the 
 woman must leave that business to the man, which needs more 
 than man to execute it. So, too, subsequently she is shaken 
 by the touching utterance of his remorse, although she had 
 invoked the spirits to 'stop up the access' to such feelings. 
 But when the danger of discovery alarms her, she quickly 
 recovers her composure, foresight, and fearlessness, and can 
 look down reproachfully upon the man of 'infirm purpose.' 
 She has from the beginning rather the security of a spectator 
 in the game. She loses that secm-ity the moment she attempts 
 to act in it ; she recovers it as soon as she retvurns to her first 
 position. Still she has had her part in the game, as it were, 
 even before it was designed. The dreams of ambition had 
 indeed early been dreamed by both ; the vague dreams, under 
 the influence of temptation and opportunity, had ripened in 
 her soul more rapidly into actual purpose than in his. The 
 courage necessary for these projects, and the firm resolve to 
 carry them out, rest in her boundless confidence in this strong 
 man, to whom she trusts everything, to whom she thinks all 
 greatness due, and on whose • high qualities she delights and 
 leans. This is the peculiarity of her nature and her history, 
 and it is just this which must so far reconcile us to her charac- 
 ter and which prevents her from wholly forfeiting our pity. 
 Almost every commentator has discerned in this character a 
 better side, but few have succeeded in seeking it in the right 
 place and seeing it in its proper light. Hitherto her husband 
 had been only a child of fortune and honour ; she knows she 
 may rely on him,- and that he is sufficient for all things and 
 successful in them. She is far more filled with the idea of 
 what he might and should be than he is himself.' She knows 
 
598 THmD FERIOD OF SHAKE8PEAEE' S DBAMATIC FOETEY. 
 
 him to be the worthiest to rule and she wishes to confer the 
 crown upon his merit. His manly nature is her pride and her 
 glory. When he sees only dangerous results, she, in her idea of 
 him, is sure of the happiest success ; she ' feels the future in 
 the instant,' hut in fearless expectation and unbroken splen- 
 dour. In this she is far more a dependent wife than an inde- 
 pendent masculine woman, for she wishes the golden circlet 
 rather for him than for herself. Her whole ambition is for 
 him and through him ; of herself and of elevation for herself 
 she never speaks. She lives only in him and in his greatness. 
 How triumphantly she receives him with that 'Hail' (which 
 flatters her pride so much), 'thou that shalt be king hereafter!' 
 We see in this marriage a union of esteem, aye, of deep reve- 
 rence, rather than one of sensitive affection. The poet has not 
 left this unexplained. She has had children, but has reared 
 none. This may have added another sting to Macbeth's jea- 
 lousy of Banquo ; but the most natural consequence is that the 
 pair are drawn more personally together and are more given up 
 to self-gratification. Our Eomanticists have made Lady Mac- 
 beth a heroine of virtue, and Groethe rightly condemned the 
 foolish way in which they stamped her as a loving spouse and 
 house-wife. Nevertheless, from all we have said, the connection 
 between the two may be pronounced aff^ectionate, and from 
 their mode of intercourse even ^tender. The caressing words 
 which Macbeth uses (' dearest chuck,' &c.) are not those usually 
 bestowed upon a Juno or a Clytemnestra ; the woman who, in 
 order to impel Macbeth to action and to secure safety in danger, 
 utters so many stinging and contemptuous expressions towards 
 him, uses not one word of blame or reproach to him when they 
 are left alone at the close of the banquet scene. If, however, 
 these traits do not render it evident that her womanliness was 
 only suppressed and not extinguished, the issue of events proves 
 this incontestably. When the deed is accomplished, she stands 
 at first still, while Macbeth now begins to push on with bolder 
 strides. But when none of the golden expectations are realised 
 which she expected as the result of the deed, when instead of 
 successful greatness the ruin of the land and of her consort 
 follows, her powers suddenly relax and sink. Supported by him, 
 she could have long_, and for ever withstood the emotions of 
 conscience, nature, and a harrowing imagination ; but doubting 
 him, she doubts herself also. Like ivy, she had twined her 
 fresh greenness around the branches of the kingly tree ; when 
 
MACBETH. 599 
 
 the stem totters she falls to the ground;' her iron heart, 
 dissblvfes in the fire of this affliction and this mistaken expecta- 
 tion. It has been regretted that the transition from her 
 masculine strength to her feminine weakness has not been more 
 fully, depicted by the poet. This, however, was no gradual 
 change, but a sudden overthrow. As in him she had forced 
 the man beyond his nature, so in herself she had raised the 
 woman to an heroic strength. He began, like a true man, 
 within the limits, of reasonable human ambition, and then over- 
 stepped them in that ' security,' that self-dependent daring, 
 which ruined him; she, on the contrary, began too high, 
 beyond, indeed, the sphere of her sex, and all at once she sinks 
 again to a mere woman. In the man, the boldness of crime, 
 mixed with the obdurate pride of the mightiest of his race, was 
 strong enough to increase after the first misdeed, and he endea- 
 voured to win by obstinate perseverance the success withheld 
 from him ; in her this boldness dwindles to nothing as soon as 
 the issue disappoints her. Now, while his leaves slowly wither 
 before the storm, she, who once advanced so boldly, shrinks 
 silently back, a bare and leafless branch. That counsel which 
 she urged upon Macbeth, not to be alone, sprung from the 
 deepest self-knowledge ; when she is divided from his pursuits 
 and separated from his companionship, then it is, as Malcolm 
 said, that — 
 
 the grief that does not speak 
 ' Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break. 
 
 Still even now her character and the strength of her will are 
 evident, her resistaince in suffering is now as apparent as before 
 her activity in doing. By day she continues mistress of her 
 emotions, but in the night ' her fear-infected mind to the deaf 
 pillow will discharge its secrets.' According to the poet's poetic 
 physiology and psychology, her unnaturally strained conscience 
 and power of dissimulation avenge themselves during sleep, 
 and the somnambulist, self-betraying, acts as it were all the 
 secret guilty scenes over again. Qnce she thought she could 
 with a little water clear away the witnesses of that deed, but 
 now, in the torture of her hardened heart, she complains, with 
 groans of anguish, that the smell and stain of blood will never 
 wash away. She ends her life with suicide. 
 
 This woman, then, who by her devotion and identification 
 with Macbeth is far rhore dangerous to her husband than she 
 
600 THIBV PEBIOB OF SHAKESPEASE'3 BEAMATIC POETSY. 
 
 could have been had her nature been independent and masculine, 
 employs those means to determine his fatal resolution which 
 she thinks the most effectual ; she rouses, as we before said, his 
 energy, she calls upon his ambition and touches him upon his 
 manliness. When she reproaches him with want of love, it 
 moves him not ; when she confidently promises him a certain 
 success, it rather makes him hesitate ; but when she touches him 
 upon his manliness, he is conquered at once. ' Art thou afeard,' 
 she says to him, 
 
 To be the same in thine own act and valour, 
 As thou art in desire ? Would'st thou have that 
 Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life, 
 And live a coward in thy own esteem ; 
 Letting ' / dare not ' wait upon ' I would,' 
 Like the poor cat i' the adage ? 
 
 which wished to catch the fish, but not to wet its feet. Even 
 here he answers her from the honourable position which he had 
 hitherto always maintained, urging that noble principle of 
 action which well accords in sense with that saying of Hamlet, 
 to which he should have stood firm : — 
 
 I dare do all that may become a man ; 
 Who dares do more, is none J 
 
 Sarcastically drawing him from this position, she asks, ' What 
 beagt was it then that made you break this enterprise to me ? ' 
 And while she forces him from this position, she adds : — 
 
 When you durst do it, then you were a man ; 
 And to be more than what you were, you would 
 Be so mwih more the man. 
 
 This was the spur which, as he says of his ambition, ' pricked 
 the sides of his intent,' and made him leap the bounds of 
 manhood and humanity. Again ^nd again his wife harps upon 
 this string, and, instead of a single tone, he answers with a full 
 chord. Indeed, after his first remorse is overcome, during and 
 following the murder of the king, her appeals are needed only 
 once more at the apparition of Banquo's ghost ; for immediately 
 after the miurder he out-does her designs. Even in his horror 
 after the deed she calls him ' infirm of purpose,' and says ' 'tis 
 the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil,' that trembles 
 before the sleeping or the dead ; her hands are as bloody as his, 
 
MACBETH. 601 
 
 but she would ' shame to wear a heart so white.' Immediately 
 afterwards he acts without her help ; he kills the servants, to 
 whom the murder was to be imputed, a matter she had not 
 thought of ; she thinks when she has laid the daggers beside 
 them that all is done, but he, when he sees the men and her 
 terror, grows- more clear-sighted to the danger, and is ready to 
 commit a new murder for their safety, while she is on the point 
 of fainting. He goes yet further ; the curse of the evil deed, 
 that it must for ever bring forth new evil, is being fuliilled ; 
 ' things bad begun ' he will ' make strong by ill.' He feared 
 the evil consequences, but now he creates them himself. He is 
 seized with mistrust against the man who shares with him the 
 knowledge of those predictions ; Banquo too is suspicious of 
 him, but he keeps his suspicion in his own bosom ; but what 
 enrages Macbeth most of all against him is his jealousy of the 
 succession promised to Banquo's descendants. The result of 
 the crime seems yet uncertain, if this prophecy stands good ; 
 ambition was not satisfied so long as this drawback remained*. 
 Macbeth here rouses himself to that supernatural might which 
 boldly opposes itself to fate. If he believed the sayings of the 
 weird sisters, as he had cause to do, he must believe also that 
 one which favoured Banquo. He thinks, however, he can force 
 from fate his own good fortune and can ruin Banquo's. In 
 solemn words (Act ill. sc. 1) he calls 'fate into the list to 
 champion him to the utterance.' He instigates the murderers 
 of Banquo and his son. It is very remarkable that for this 
 business he employs the very means which had wrought most 
 effectually upon himself: he appeals to the manliness of the 
 murderers. He now spares his wife the crime of being accessory 
 to Banquo's death ; she too had thought on it, but he has 
 accomplished it already, and that without her. The escape of 
 Fleance is to remind him yet again of the infallibility of the 
 prediction. But he now consoles himself with the thought 
 that this foe had 'no teeth for the present.' Thus fear of 
 Banquo and an evil conscience towards one who knew his secret 
 combined to cause his death. This fear and this conscience 
 are once more to shake his resolute manliness when the ghost 
 of Banquo appears to him. This unhinges his nature, his wife 
 silences the company, palliates and excuses his paroxysms with 
 her old presence of mind, and reminds him of his weakness 
 with the old stinging reproof: 'Are you a man?' 'Aye,' he 
 answers, ' and a bold one, that dare look on that which might 
 
602 THIED PERIOD OF SHAKESFEASE'S DEAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 appal the devil.' She continues her bitter sarcasms at his want 
 of manliness: 'these flaws, and starts, would well become a 
 woman's story at a winter's fire.' Upon this he grows so bold 
 as even to drink the, health of the just vanished Banquo, and 
 again the apparition shakes his iron nerves. He may assert, 
 ' What man dare, I dare ! ' and yet his manliness disappears at 
 this awful sight. These are the last struggles of his conscience 
 and of his fearful imaginings. But a short time ago he had 
 looked back amid the stings of remorse almost enviously upon 
 Duncan's peaceful sleep ' after life's fitful fever ; ' he now sees 
 himself ' stepp'd in so far in blood,' that 'returning were as 
 tedious as go o'er.' Hitherto he had shrunk from Banquo's 
 suspicion and pursuit ; now he keeps spies in every house, 
 threatens the escaped princes, summons the absent Macduff, 
 and orders the slaughter of his family. Hitherto the qualms 
 of conscience in the man who had murdered sleep had mani- 
 fested themselves in that he had murdered his own sleep, and 
 had lost this refreshment of nature, and had suffered from 
 terrible dreams ; now through all his cruel schemes, he 
 sleeps calmly, ' iii spite of thunder.' The time had been 
 when his lively fancy would have been excited by a ' night- 
 shriek ; ' now, ' supp'd full of horrors,' he had almost ' forgot 
 the taste of fears.' Formerly he pondered over his actions, 
 and consideration and reflection preceded and accompanied 
 his deeds ; now he has ' things in head, which must be acted, 
 ere they can be scann'd ; ' he considers himself still young 
 and umipe in deeds until he has achieved that the deed shall 
 go with the purpose, that the ' firstlings ' of his heart shall be 
 the firstlings of his hand,' that all boasting ' like a fool ' shall 
 be given up, and ' be it thought and done ' shall be his only 
 motto. This extreme thirst for action had been brought upon 
 him by the flight of Macduff. He foreboded evil from him, 
 he delayed his death, he hears from the weird sisters that 
 actual danger lies in him ; from thenceforth he determines to 
 lose no further deed by delay. In this over-straining of his 
 nature he is confirmed by the weird sisters, who now work 
 upon him under the direction of their queen. It is their aim 
 to nourish in him this hardening in sin, this dependence upon 
 human power, this contempt of divine law, which in those days 
 was called security, a word which, in that sense, our language 
 has subsequently lost. This denial of religious dependence, 
 this absence of conscientious scruples, and this boastful confi- 
 
MACBETH. 603 
 
 dence upon human strength are expressly called by the weird 
 sisters, 'mortal's chiefest enemy.' Their equivocal prophecy 
 confirms him in this security, their object being to make him 
 hasten his fate, defy death, and carry his hopes beyond all 
 moderation, mercy, and fear. When, therefore, he experiences 
 the last temptations of the devil and sees his tragic end at 
 hand, wa perceive now, just as before under his wife's insinua- 
 tions, this pride of manhood rising in him to the last. When 
 this false ' security ' is first shaken by doubts, his former fear 
 rises again, struggling with his manliness ; but he conquers it 
 again, — a coward in conscience, he is still valiant in will. 
 As Birnam wood approaches, for a moment his determination 
 fails, then, however, he rouses himself to defence with that 
 madness which his admirers calls courageous fury. When 
 Macduff says to him that he was ' from his mother's womb 
 untimely ripped,' he yields to fear^ and exclaims, ' I'll not fight 
 with thee.' But a taunt in Macduff's words, as formerly in his 
 wife's, stimulates him, and at once the hero revives, as a hero 
 to die. Grand like that Hagen in the Nibelungen Lied, he 
 compels I admiration even while increasing in cruelty ; the 
 impress of innate heroism is visible in him to the last, so that 
 the greatness of his manly strength and the might of his reso- 
 lution almost outweigh and equal the magnitude of his guUt. 
 
 To exhibit Macbeth, with his noble disposition and fine 
 nature, led to this point of security by the temptations of 
 ambition and pride, is the aim of this play. At this point 
 Macbeth appears in perfect contrast to Hamlet. The ' honest 
 ghost' of his father had required of the latter a righteous 
 deed ; a ghost returned from purgatory had from human 
 feelings called upon his human nature ; Macbeth, on the con- 
 trary, is tempted in doubtful riddles by the deceitful powers of 
 evil, by beings destitute of every human feeling, to an unjust 
 and wholly unnatural deed. Nature and reason spur Hamlet 
 on ; they restrain Macbeth. Hamlet, urged to action, lingers 
 in the hope that the result may arise of itself ; Macbeth, on 
 the contrary, who is advised to wait, snatches at the result 
 beforehand. Opportunity favours both, but one suffers it to 
 escape, the other seizes it ; and both alike are dead to con- 
 science. The one is stung by 'aU occasions,' and loads 
 himself with reproaches of cowardice, calling himself a coward, 
 a villain, and an ass ; nevertheless, he remains below himself 
 and his powers, while Macbeth is roused beyond himself by the 
 
604 THIED PEBIOD OF 8HAKESPEABE' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 demands of his wife upon his manliness. The one, once fallen 
 into inaction, sinks deeper and deeper; the other, hurried on by 
 his thirst for action, rises to greater defiance. Averse to the 
 path of blood, Hamlet remains lax and weak-hearted, while 
 Macbeth strides boldly on in open defiance of the higher 
 powers ; the one morbid in his avoidance of action, the other, 
 as we have said, in his eagerness for it. At last, having 
 reached that extreme point, Hamlet's indecision, his anguish of 
 conscience, and his moral insecurity stand entirely opposed to 
 that godless and flagitious '■security,' in which Macbeth, 
 having entirely lost his early true-hearfcedness, appears almost 
 devilish. From this point there is no further comparison 
 between the two. At this stage in his career Macbeth has 
 been often, and in detail, compared with Eichard III. By this 
 comparison of Macbeth, as he is at his end, with quite another 
 extreme of character, we arrive at the same result as by the 
 comparison of Macbeth, as he is at the outset, with Hamlet. 
 Both Macbeth and Eichard are drawn into the path of crime 
 by high-soaring ambition, as both similarly express it : 'so far 
 in blood, that sin will pluck on sin.' But Eichard, formed by 
 nature for evil, commits it with cool calculation, instigated by 
 himself, and conspiring against all around him ; Macbeth, by 
 nature mild and noble, is driven to it by the instigations of a 
 beloved wife, and by temptations and golden opportunities 
 conspiring against him. Both are traitors, usurpers, tyrants, 
 but Eichard is so through dissimulation, hypocrisy, and policy, 
 while Macbeth is nothing but a soldier ; the fall of the one is 
 caused by a deeper hypocrite, that of the other by a nobler 
 hero. ,Both are surrounded with accessories in guilt, but 
 Eichard in his contempt of men does not care for Buckingham, 
 the petty rival of a meaner race ; Macbeth, on the contrary, has 
 none of this contempt of men in him ; he recognises with in- 
 voluntary respect the loftier genius and the equal power in 
 Banquo and Macduff. Both alike stifle conscience with the 
 force of. the will, but Eichard is capable of being pleased and 
 even merry in the midst of his bloody events, while Macbeth, 
 with all his success, is not one moment happy. ' All that is 
 within him,' it was said of him, ' does condemn itself, for 
 being there.' With inward anguish he looks back at last upon 
 all his fallen hopes, upon the lack of all that should accompany 
 old age, upon the want of friends and honour ; this lack would 
 have been wholly indifferent to Eichard. Both are equally 
 
MACBETH. 605 
 
 victims to the emotions of fear and conscience in the moment 
 of final decision ; they strike the messengers of evil, they con- 
 tradict themselves in their distraction and confuse themselves 
 in their haste, but Kichard's is the behaviour of a criminal 
 seeking to escape his judge, Macbeth's that of a warrior 
 boldly fighting for honour against charmed weapons. Both 
 are alike in that flagitious security and in the valiant rage 
 with which they man themselves for a desperate cause ; 
 Ste^vens finely remarked that it is a favourite moral of 
 Shakespeare, that crime and a bad conscience make cowards 
 of the bravest : both, however, are an exception to this rule, 
 and their warlike audacity and fearlessness increase with their 
 guilt ; yet Macbeth appears the more fearlessly calm of the two 
 in meeting his last struggle, certain as he is of its evil issue. 
 
 As regards poetic justice in the fates of Duncan, Banquo, 
 and Macduff, there lies -in the nature of all these a contrast 
 to that of Macbeth, a light upon which is thrown by the 
 position which Shakespeare has assigned to Hastings with 
 regard to Eichard III. While in Macbeth extraordinary 
 might, scorn of man and Grod, s6ciu:ity, in the religious sense 
 of the word, from avenging and unearthly powers, and security, 
 in the ordinary sense, from all dangerous rivals, obtained by the 
 use of all lawful and unlawful means, are displayed, and end in 
 ruin ; while in the other characters, weakness, irresolution, 
 feebleness, the want of forethought which neglects even lawful 
 means of defence against danger, and the security of credulous- 
 ness and passiveness, are equally fatal ; the right course lies in 
 the medium, in Macduff, after experience has at length 
 schooled him, and in the prudent Malcolm, who early learned 
 its lessons. King Duncan is characterised in history as a man 
 of greater weakness than became a king ; treason was common 
 under his rule ; he was no warrior to suppress it, no physiogno- 
 mist to read it in the countenance ; he had but just gained a 
 painful experience from the treachery of the friendly Thane of 
 Cawdor, and at once, passing by the modest Banquo, he 
 elevates Macbeth to this very dignity, thus pampering his 
 ambition ; and he suffers a cruel penalty for his own fault from 
 the new thane, his own relation. The same want of foresight 
 ruins Banquo. He had been initiated into the secret of the 
 weird sisters ; pledged to openness towards Macbeth, he had 
 opportunity of convincing himself of his obduracy and secrecy ; 
 he guesses at, and strongly suspects, Macbeth's deed ; yet he 
 
606 TmRB FEEIOD OF SSAKESPEASE'S DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 does nothing against him or in self-defence ; in another 
 manner to those cowardly impersonations of fear, the doctor, 
 Seyton, Eosse, and the spying, ironical Lenox, he suppresses his 
 thoughts and wilfully shuts his eyes ; he falls, having done 
 nothing in a region full of dangers. Macduff is not quite so 
 culpable in this respect ; he is not, therefore, punished in his 
 own person, but in the fate of his family, thus becoming the 
 martyr-hero by whom Macbeth was to fall. Macduff is de- 
 scribed in the play as noble, wise, clear-sighted, and choosing 
 well his opportunity. This he proves himself. He is at first 
 honestly inclined to believe that Duncan's attendants had 
 accomplished the murder of the king; that Macbeth slays 
 them startles him, but he carefully conceals his unproved 
 suspicion. He does not, however, go to the coronation, he 
 avoids seeing Macbeth, and at length, taught by prudence, he 
 flees. Thus far circumspect in all things, he neglects to take 
 his family with him, and his wife, warned in vain by his and 
 Eosse's example, and by the caution of a third, falls a victim to 
 this same want of foresight. The stroke which now befalls his 
 house, and therefore himself, stirs up within this man the power 
 which undertakes to measure itself against Macbeth. In his 
 undisturbed natm-e, Macduff is what Macbeth once was : a 
 mixture of mildness and power; and more than Macbeth, 
 because he is without any element of ambition. When Donald- 
 bain has fled from the shock, and Malcolm accuses himself 
 before Macduff of every imaginable misdeed, not a shadow of 
 ambition to raise himself into the usurper's place steals over 
 him ; he bids farewell to Scotland and to hope. Thus noble, 
 blameless, and clement, we should think Macduff entirely want- 
 ing in that goad of sharp ambition necessary to make him a 
 victorious opponent of Macbeth, and to enable him to stand 
 his ground against that mighty and infuriated man ; the poet, 
 therefore, by the horrible extermination of his family, divests 
 him of the milk of human kindness, and makes him by this 
 means at once fitted to be the conqueror of Macbeth. This is 
 wonderfully shown by a couple of strokes in that scene between 
 Macduff and Malcolm. When he hears the dreadful news, he 
 silently draws his hat Over his brows and conceals his sorrow. 
 ' My children too ? My wife killed too ? ' are his only words, 
 and then the self-reproach : ' And I must be from thence ! ' 
 Malcolm bids him seek comfort in revenge. He heeds him 
 not. ' He has no children ! ' these words of Macduff were 
 
MACBETH. 607 
 
 inconsiderately referred by Tieek to Malcolm.' And Malone, 
 Horn, and Simrock, who indeed apply them to Macbetli, 
 endeavoured to find in them the expression of rage, because he, 
 Macduff, could not therefore sufficiently revenge himself. The 
 whole nobility of this character and its thorough contrast to 
 Macbeth would be lost by this reading. This is one of the 
 best examples to show how the clever actor will always be a 
 better interpreter of Shakespeare than the most learned com- 
 mentator. The most famous actors of Macduff in Grarrick's 
 time, Wilks and Eyan, saw in these words only the deepest 
 expression of paternal agony, out of which Macduff arises only 
 by degrees to composure and the desire for revenge. Nothing 
 can be plainer than this. ' Dispute it like a man,' says Malcolm 
 to him ; he answers : — 
 
 I shall do so ; 
 But I must also feel it as a man : 
 I cannot but remember such things were, 
 That were most precious to me. 
 
 ' Then once again he returns to his self-reproach, that they were 
 all struck for his sake, the sinful one. Malcolm reminds him 
 once more to make this ' the whetstone of his sword.' And 
 even now Macduff feels himself divided between his fatherly 
 feelings and his desire for vengeance ; he could ' play the woman 
 with his eyes, and braggart with his tongue.' At length he 
 yields to the thiM for revenge, which longs for action with the 
 impatience of Macbeth, and is not to be appeased with words 
 and delays. 
 
 Malcolm is represented in contrast to the thoughtless 
 security of all the others. The dialogue between him and 
 Macduff, which is actually at full length in the chronicle, ap- 
 peared in a remarkable manner to suit the poet and his plot. 
 
 ' It is most strange that Tieek neglected to bring forward the only thing 
 which he could say on behalf of his interpretation. Macbeth, according to 
 the words of his wife," has had children. It does not follow from this that 
 he has children, but rather that he has had them. Macbeth, therefore, had 
 experienced how painful is the loss of children, a feeling of which the words 
 bf Macduff would seem to deprive him. Did Shakespeare overlook this, as 
 Goethe thought, unconcernedly, because in this place he wanted one charac- 
 teristic trait and in the other another ? We may just as well, however, say 
 that Macduff overlooked it' in the greatness of his anguish, and that he 
 would not grant the father, who had no living children and no .present cares 
 for them, the tender paternal heart which he himself possessed. . 
 
608 THIEB PEBIOO 01 SSAKESFEARE' S DBAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 Full of suspicion, Malcolm had fled at the beginning ; Macheth 
 had ensnared and allured him, and this has made him just as 
 watchful and cautious as his father was trustfully unsuspecting. 
 Since then ' modest wisdom had plucked him from over-credu- 
 lous haste.' He arms himself with suspicion against Macduff. 
 He mistrusts the apparent want of feeling with which Macduff 
 had left his wife behind. He openly confesses his suspicion to 
 him. " Let not,' he says, ' my jealousies be your dishonours, 
 but mine own safeties.' He even goes so far, in order to try 
 Macduff, as to vilify himself and his character. We may 
 object to this as unnatural. Yet in the embittered and sus- 
 picious state of mind of the orphaned, oft-tempted, and betrayed 
 young man, it is not inconsistent that he should go so far in 
 dissimulation towards the very man whom he would most 
 gladly trust, and on whom his last hope is placed. In any case 
 this gives us a much stronger impression of the contrast aimed 
 at in the character. His enterprise against Macbeth is in the 
 same way prudent and patient ; the hewing down the boughs in 
 Birnam wood is characteristic of him ; and, like the predictions 
 in the Winter's Tale, these are also very finely grounded in the 
 circumstances and characters themselves. 
 
 Macbeth has always been a trial piece for the best stages. 
 The directors ought only to be careful in attempting any 
 abridgments and improvements. This play is most closely and 
 connectedly fashioned as a whole, and bears no omissions. 
 Schiller has left out the scene of the murder of Macduff's family. 
 What we have already said shows why this is inadmissible. An 
 instance of the horrors which Macbeth perpetrated must be 
 brought forward ; the weighty cause which planted the thirst 
 for vengeance in Macduff's soul is only comprehended when the 
 eye has seen it. Coleridge has already defended Shakespeare 
 from the reproach of unnecessary cruelty : ' Leaving out Titus, 
 which is not genuine, and the scene of the blinding of Gloster 
 (in which, also, only the ne palam coquat of Horace is violated), 
 I answer boldly. Not guilty.' Even here Shakespeare has done 
 all he could to lessen the necessary severity. On the death of 
 the child we have before remarked. He inspires us with little 
 sympathy for the mother, who considers Macduff as a traitor 
 to King Macbeth: her death takes place behind the scene. 
 Besides this scene of horror, it has also been decided to 
 cut out the comic character of the porter. Coleridge and 
 Collier are in favour of this omission, as they consider his 
 
MACBETH. 609 
 
 soliloquy to be the unauthorised interpolation of an actor. It 
 may be so. Yet at all events it is not inappropriate ; there is 
 an uncomfortable joviality, which, by way of contrast, is very 
 suitable to the circumstances, when the drunken warder, whom 
 Duncan's gifts and the festivities of the evening have left in a 
 state of excitement, calls his post ' hell's gate,' in a speech in 
 which every allusion bears a point. Grarrick has been guilty of 
 worse omissions than that of the customary omission of these 
 scenes, and of still more awkward interpolations. Nevertheless, 
 he was the first to restore the piece to the public in an adequate 
 form. Before him Davenant had arranged it as a sort of opera, 
 with a highly laughable arrangement for the witches, and with 
 the strangest additions. Grarrick was obliged in his revival of 
 the piece, in order to obtain a hearing for his new and different 
 conception of the character, to write a humorous attack on 
 himself, that he might take away the sting from the attacks of 
 others. His acting has no doubt been handed down tradition- 
 ally, as well as that of his Hamlet, which we may compare, 
 according to Lichtenberg's statement, in some degree with that 
 of the present day. When, even outside the theatre, he spoke 
 the soliloquy where imagination pictures the dagger, his audi- 
 ence were transported with his burning gaze, his inimitable 
 acting, and. expressive language. Since his time the part has 
 remained the aim of all famous actors — of Kemble, Kean, and 
 Macready. The first of these wrote a paper in illustration of 
 this character. Mrs. Pritchard performed the part of Lady 
 Macbeth with Garrick. Her conception also of this part seems 
 to have remained the standard one. She gave a fearful picture 
 of audacity in crime, of obduracy, and remorseless insensibility. 
 Her acting in the banquet scene was celebrated as the per- 
 fection of her part, as also in the scene in which she walks in 
 sleep ; her acting here was like the sudden gleam of a ilash of 
 lightning which reveals more gensibly the horrors of darkness. 
 In 1785 Mrs. Siddons played this part in London, and she too 
 was the admiration of all who saw her. She looked like a figure 
 of ancient tragedy, simple, statue-like, grand, and powerfully 
 energetic. Her acting in those words where she protests that 
 she could have dashed out the brains of her smiling babe is 
 described as violently overdrawn and distorted. It is singular 
 that this woman, who has written down her observations on the 
 character, appears to differ in her theory and practice. She 
 surmised a suppressed spark' of womanly nature in this cha- 
 
 B B 
 
610 TBIMD PEBIOD OF 8HAKE8PEAEE' 8 DEAMATIC POETBY, 
 
 racter, and went so far as even to imagine her a fair beauty, 
 with much feminine loveliness. In this she was evidently 
 nearer the mark than in her acting. She may, however, have 
 supposed the character more popular if acted as she portrayed 
 it. This manner of acting a given part at pleasure is, however, 
 allowable at the best only in parts out of which the poet himself 
 could make nothing. To attempt it with Shakespeare is ever a 
 bungling business. He has left nothing for the actor to do but 
 to comprehend him ; but he has throughout given him sufficient 
 work if he would comprehend him fully. 
 
KING LEAR 
 
 KiN& Lear cannot have been written before 1603, because in 
 that year there appeared a book by Harsnet, entitled ' Discovery 
 of Popish Impostorsj' out of which Shakespeare evidently bor- 
 rowed the names of the different devils which Edgar mentions 
 in his simulated madness. "We know fiarther that Lear was 
 acted at the Globe on December 26, 1606; it must have been 
 written between these two dates ; and being thus contempora"- 
 neous with Macbeth, we are chronologically justified in giving 
 it om- consideration here. Not long after that performance, 
 three editions in quarto appeared in one year (1 608), a proof 
 certainly that the play was a favourite, and that it was equally 
 interesting to the refined critics and frequenters of the Shake- 
 spearian theatre as to the public that had delighted in Titus 
 and TambiHlaine. 
 
 The myth of King Lear and his- daughters is related by 
 Greoffrey of Monmouth, wha places the death of this prince 800 
 years before Christ. From him it was copied by Holinshed. 
 The story had been dramatised even before Shakespeare ; a 
 piece entitled ' The True Chronicle History of King Leir and 
 his Three Daughters ' was reprinted in Ste^vens' Six Old Plays, 
 &c., having first appeared in 1594, but having been written 
 somewhat earlier. That Shakespeare may have made use cxf 
 this rough and ill-arranged play is only betrayed by a few 
 trifling points. In it the old king questions his daughters as to 
 the degree of their filial love in order to practise a fatherly 
 deception upon the youngest, to entrap her into the expected 
 declaration of affection, so that he might give her, against her 
 inclination, in marriage to a British sovereign. Deceived in 
 his expectation he deprives her of her inheritance, and she 
 becomes the wife of the King of France, who comes to England 
 disguised as a pilgrim, and falls in with, her by chance. Groneril 
 next drives the weak old king from his house, then both daugh- 
 
 B B 2 
 
612 THIBD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEASE' 8 BBAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 ters contrive a plot for his murder and for that of his faithful 
 Perillus (Kent in Shakespeare) ; they each mutually petition 
 the appointed niUrderer for the life of the other, and he spares 
 both. They flee to France ; in the disguise of sailors they 
 meet the king and Cordelia j who in the dress of peasants are 
 making an excursion to the sea ; Lear is then brought back in 
 triumph, and his wicked daughters and their husbands are 
 banished.' We see at once, from the romantic touches which 
 are here interwoven, that the piece is much less tragic than 
 Shakespeare's ; the scene is laid in Christian times ; Goneril's 
 complaint against her old, weak-minded, and guiltless father is 
 that he always scolded her when she ordered a new-fashioned 
 dress or gave a banquet ; he goes weeping away from her, and 
 comes with his finger in his eyes to Regan, who receives him 
 on her knees and with flattery, whilst in her heart she pMns his 
 murder. Can it fail to strike us that our poet, in a more 
 advanced state of theatrical taste, developed this story of filial 
 ingratitude into a much more fearful picture than the older 
 poet had done in the ruder period of the English stage ? 
 
 Shakespeare has heightened the horrors of this tragedy 
 merely by enlarging the original plot. To the story of Lear he 
 has added the episode of Grloster, which is borrowed from 
 Sidney's 'Arcadia' (II. 10); the ruin of a second faniily, the 
 snares laid by an unnatural son for a father and brother, a 
 father incensed against a guiltless son ; all these are added to 
 the injustice which Lear commits against one of his children and 
 which he suffers from the others. This episode, connected as it 
 is by similarity of purport, Shakespeare has linked and united 
 with the main action in the most spirited manner, weaving and 
 combining the double action, as it were, into a single one ; but he 
 has not done this without greatly heightening its harshness and 
 cruelty. By placing Gloster's bastard son in the service and 
 affection of the terrible sisters, he causes Groneril's attempt on 
 her husband's life and the poisoning of her sister ; he causes, 
 moreover, Cordelia's execution and her father's death. These 
 threefold and fourfold family , discords rest further on the 
 broader ground of political intrigues. The degenerate daugh- 
 ters strive by secret designs to re-unite the divided kingdom of 
 the old Lear, while, at the same time, it is threatened by 
 France from without ; the secret understanding between 
 Cordelia and the F.nglish nobility leads to the cruel blinding of 
 Gloster, and in consequence of this to the death of Cornwall. If 
 
KING LEAS. 613 
 
 this play, therefore, from the excess of mid and unnatural 
 deeds, is more bloody than any other of Shakespeare's trage- 
 dies, it becomes even more repulsive from the nature and 
 manner, the form and appearance of its horrors. Even Cole- 
 ridge, the steady upholder of Shakespeare, called the blinding 
 of Gloster, the actual tearing out of his eyes upon the stage, a 
 scene in which the tragic element is carried to the utmost 
 limits, the ne phis ultra of dramatic effect. Not only the 
 mode of Cordelia's death, but her death at all, has been con- 
 sidered unnecessarily cruel. An English baUad on the subject, 
 written probably after our play appeared, makes Cordelia die 
 a nobler death on the battle-field. At the period of the 
 Restoration the play, even with this tragjc catastrophe, would 
 no longer have been found endurable. Tate and Colman revised 
 it, and in this and other alterations for the stage Edgar was 
 made to fall in love with Cordelia, and the pleasant conclusion 
 of comedy was given to the tragedy.. Johnson and others con- 
 curred in this, and even in Garrick!s time King Lear was always 
 represented in this milder form, and the killing of Cordelia's 
 destined executioner and the frustration of his purpose by the 
 old Lear were received with the greatest applause. 
 
 Is it not a decided, proof of the barbarism of the age that a 
 piece of this kind should have been written by Shakespeare, and 
 should have found such decided approbation with his contempo- 
 raries? And is it not further an evidence that Shakespeare, 
 however highly wS may estimate him, did not wholly escape the 
 infection of this time ? At any rate, is it not an evidence that 
 he was only too ready to pander to the ■ coarse taste of the 
 period ? We believe in none of these three things. That the 
 age of Shakespeare was ; rich in manifold culture is proved by 
 its vast literature ; that this culture was stiU. defaced by many 
 remnants of barbarism^ is; undeniable from the state of manners 
 generally, and from- isolitted and; not insignificant branches of 
 that literature itself. Neverthetessj, we shoidd be wrong in 
 calling an age barbarous, in which the individual, could attain 
 to such perfection of culture as that which we admire in Shake- 
 speare. That the nerves in those days were healthier and 
 stronger, that the state of public feeling and passing events 
 was more tragic, that the estimation of blood and of Hu.man 
 life was lower, all this did not interfere with the cidture, but it 
 decidedly favoured tragic poetry. Tragedy has ever flourished 
 naturally or extraordinarily in the same proportion as public 
 
614 THIEB PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S SSAMATIC FOETEY. 
 
 events have rendered the public mind ' susceptible for it ; a 
 peaceful, tranquil, stagnant period "will never produce great 
 tragedies. But had Shakespeare, when he wrote King Lear, 
 fallen for a time at least into the comparative wildness of this 
 vigorous age ? Just as little as the man of fine feeling in our 
 own day, who, having given us proofs of the highest tenderness, 
 of the softest humanity, and of the most melting elegiac senti- 
 ment, as Shakespeare has done in Eomeo, in Hamlet, and in 
 Cymbeline — just as litHe as this man of fine feeling and delicate 
 organisation in our own day would have done, if he were to 
 Undertake, with competent poetic skill, to hold up to the wilder 
 moments of the present their own image reflected in the mirror 
 of the past. When, however, Shakespeare carried the tragic 
 element to its utmost limits in Lear, as Coleridge says is the 
 case, did he not, at any rate, do too much homage to the rude 
 taste of the ruder portion of society, inasmuch as he derogated ' 
 by this somewhat from the dignity of his art ? If he had in 
 any wise derogated from the dignity of his art, then certainly 
 he would have deserved the reproach of having unjustly pan- 
 dered to the rude taste of the masses. But have we not seen 
 Shakespeare even in , comedy using the burlesque caricatures 
 of the low popular farces, -'aiid ennobling them by the spirited 
 connection into which he brought them with the finer forms of 
 his comedies ? And may not our poet just as well have sought for 
 a means of using the horrors of the coarse tragedy in Marlowe's 
 style for a higher moral and artistic aim, making the wildness 
 and atrocity of passion, carried to the utmost bounds, serve as 
 the true aim and object of a work of art ? MuSt not a mind of 
 this magnitude have felt that the strongest poetic genius finds 
 alone the scope necessary for it in the representation of the 
 strongest passions ■? Must he not have felt that there was good 
 reason why the ancients took their subjects from the old primi- 
 tive heroic ages, where they could venture to invest the more 
 grandly-formed natures with mightier powers ? And iS it not 
 an acknowledged fact that Shakespeare attained the highest 
 excellence of his art in the delineation of this unrestrained 
 humanity, in Macbeth, in Hamlet, and especially in Lear? 
 How often has Lear been called the' grandest and noblest of all 
 his dramas ! How wa-s Schlegel amazed at ' the almost super- 
 human flight of genius' in this "workj 'where the mind loses 
 itself just as much in the contemplation of ail its heights and 
 depths, as the first impression overpowers the feelings ! ' These 
 
KING LEAS, 615 
 
 and similar confessions of admiration have been made, partly 
 without hesitating at the harsh matter, and partly in spite of 
 it; but it may be a question whether they are not merited also 
 just as much on account. of the colossal matter which, in horror 
 and savageness of the events themselves, exceeds all natural 
 greatness, and on account of the extraordinary development of 
 the plot. 
 
 The object of tragedy has, in all ages, formed a contrast to 
 that of the epos. The epic poem was intended to depict the 
 noble deeds of men who act in harmony with the beneficent 
 plans and aims of Providence, and who are the instruments of 
 fate and the favourites of the gods. Tragedy, on the other 
 hand, exhibits men everywhere at issue with fate ; proud, over- 
 bearing, overstrong natures rebelling against the restraints of 
 divine and human law, and arming thus against themselves the 
 punishment, of the gods. What we here call fate is, however, 
 no blind external force, to which man falls a sacrifice as an 
 involuntary tool ; fate in Shakespeare is nothing else than man's 
 own nature. Thus we have found it in Othello, in Hamlet, and 
 in Macbeth. The passions of these men wove the web of their 
 own fate. The higher these passions were carried, the more 
 fascinated was our interest in them ; the bolder the transgres- 
 sions to which they led, so much the grander became the ac- 
 tions, so much the more entangled became the errors, so much 
 the more hideous the horrors of the events, so much the more 
 tragic the catastrophe; on the other hand, the nobler the 
 original nature of these very passions, so much the more powerful 
 was the impression of the crimes, and so much the deeper was 
 our pity. Thus we see, throughout, that the depth of effect in 
 the dramatic representation depended on the greatness, the 
 power, the extent, and the depth of the passion depicted ; but 
 if this effect were to correspond, in this manner, with the sub- 
 ject represented, there must be pre-supposed in every case a 
 corresponding elevation of the poetic genius, requiring the 
 poet's whole descriptive power, the whole depth of his soul, and 
 the full extent of his mind. Nothing is, therefore, more natural 
 than that we should see our poet continually advancing in the 
 description of those fearfiil trials, delusions, and excesses of so 
 noble a nature as Macbeth's, and in all other similar represent- 
 ations. In Lear this advance seems ever on the increase, in 
 proportion as the theme is more comprehensive and vast. In 
 Hamlet and Macbeth, in Othello and Timon, everything turns 
 
616 THIBD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 on one single principal character. In Lear and Cymbeline, 
 Shakespeare takes a much wider subject. If in those tragedies 
 one single passion and its development were essentially treated, 
 in Lear and Cymbeline whole ages and races are, as it were, re- 
 presented. We are not here confined especially to individual 
 characters ; even in Lear this is not really the case, arid in 
 Cymbeline far less so. Twofold or still more manifold actions 
 are united ; characters equally important and fascinating move 
 in greater number, in mutual relation ; the actual matter gains 
 greatly thereby in richness, extent, and compressed fulness ; and 
 we have only separately to select the enterprises of a Kent or an 
 Oswald, to find what a mass of facts in well-connected order lies 
 almost concealed even in the subordinate parts, though at first 
 glance it may be easily overlooked in the abundance of matter. 
 Both these plays, on this account, are richer in events than all 
 others, and approach more nearly to the character of the epic 
 than even the histories did ; and they are, therefore, still more 
 opposed to the ancient drama than Shakespeare's other works. 
 This very extension of the events is the cause why these plays 
 are less rich than others in explanatory sentences, why the ac^ 
 tions themsel^^es are left to explain the essential point of the 
 whole, and why the accurate consideration of events is as im- 
 portant here as the psychological development of character. 
 
 It is interesting to observe, however, by what a fine and 
 gradual progression Shakespeare arrived at those strong, highly 
 tragic characters, endowed with such uncommon passions, and 
 how he advanced from single figures of this kind to the delinea- 
 tion of them in groups, in the two plays which are next to occupy 
 us. If we first of all look back to the earlier series of our poet's 
 tragedies, we find, in Eomeo, the most perfect of these early 
 dramas, a beautiful and vehement passion as his subject, but one 
 in nowise great nor manly ; his Richard II. was a weakling ; 
 Eichard III. only extraordinary in meanness; King John a 
 nature with little independence of character. If the poet 
 looked around in society and history for characters to supply 
 him with that fruitful natural strength out of which lofty, 
 vehement, and demoniac passions could burst forth in wanton 
 luxuriance, characters such as he required for his higher tragical 
 plots, he found them as little in the civilised present as in the 
 history of the immediate past. When no mighty wars force us 
 out of the smooth flow of our peaceful existence, we see the 
 tragic degeneration of passion only in exceptional cases, and 
 
KING LEAB. 617 
 
 those in the ruder strata of society; these cases are generally 
 reproduced only on the stage of our courts of justice ; they are 
 repulsive to us ; and the forced and unnatural effect in works 
 of art, which introduce such wildness into the tameness of 
 ordinary life, has been perceived vaguely or distinctly by every- 
 one in SchiUer's ' Eobbers.' An exception to this was strikingly 
 afforded to Shakespeare in Othello ; he pourtrayed this man of 
 a wild stock in the midst of the civilised races of Europe ; yet 
 even here the ruin which this wildness, tempered as it was, 
 caused in civil society, seems to have been more offensive to 
 most people than even the refined cruelty of lago, himself a 
 member of this society. In Caesar, on the contrary, Shake- 
 speare found a far more favourable period and scene for tragic 
 designs. An heroic people in a remote age, an age civilised 
 indeed but warlike throughout, disturbed by civil wars and state 
 revolutions, this was the soil which our poet sought, and, there- 
 fore, he twice subsequently returned to the same ground. But 
 even these periods were too civilised for the representation of 
 passion in its utmost strength, in its unbridled and imtamed 
 state. In Hamlet and Macbeth, Shakespeare for the first time 
 grasped with a master's hand the heroic and mythic period of 
 the Gallic and Teutonic nations. In like manner the ancients 
 sought their tragic fables beyond the civilised ages, in stories 
 of pre-Trojan date, and the fearful history of the houses of 
 Laius and Tantalus was the source from which ancient tragedy 
 drew its richest nourishment. Transported into such times, we 
 delight in the historical record of these heroic forms, of this 
 haughty colossal manhood, of these striving natures, of these 
 demi-gods and titans ; we find the wanton growth of impulse 
 and passion natural to these races ; we are less shocked at the 
 abundance of cruelty, because we feel ourselves involuntarily 
 attracted by the greater strength which was able in those days 
 to e.ndure heavier burdens and sufferings. Nor are we even re- 
 pelled and misled by the idea that this species of manhood was 
 in itself a myth and a fable, too far from the human nature 
 familiar to us ever to have had reality ; we know, from the well- 
 authenticated history of the Burgundian and Merovingian 
 houses, that such times and such men did exist, that family 
 horrors, as we read them in Lear, have abounded for centuries 
 even aihong Christian races, and that the crimes of Tantalus in 
 the old tragedy are not necessarily, and from their very nature, 
 myths and fables. Into such times as these Shakespeare has 
 
618 THIRD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 transported us in the most tragic of his tragedies, and in 
 nothing perhaps has the instinctive greatness and certainty of 
 his genius displayed itself more than in this the cleverest and 
 boldest of his conceptions. In Macbeth and Hamlet we have 
 shown how he first brought us, to the limits of those periods, as 
 if he intended first to accustom an art-loving and refined public 
 to this stronger food. He depicted in Hamlet a man who had 
 outgrown so rude an age, and in Macbeth one who strove against 
 the approaching improvement and amelioration of such a period 
 and retained the manners of the time. In Lear the poet places 
 us in the very centre of such an age, and brings actively before 
 us a whole race endowed with that barbaric strength of passion, 
 in which, almost without exception, the resistance of reason and 
 conscience over the emotions of passion is powerless or dead. 
 In Cymbeline he has once again represented the same heathenish 
 race, but in a more advanced period ; in that play, in perfect 
 contrast to Lear, he has portrayed those rare characters in 
 whom the heroic power of self-command and moral energy dis- 
 plays that superior strength necessary to conquer the mighty 
 passions peculiar tp such times. It was intentionally, there- 
 fore, that he depicted in Lear such fiill bursts of passion. It 
 was not by chance that he placed in this very play the barbari- 
 ties of the Duke of Cornwall, a second instance of which is 
 not to be found in the other dramas of the poet. The excessive 
 rudeness and vehemence of Kent have not been given indif- 
 ferently to every coarse fellow of every other age. The filial in- 
 gratitude in the hardened hearts of Lear's daughters, the 
 unnatural breach of the most natural family ties, have not been 
 blindly transferred at pleasure to other races. Such depraved 
 natures, without a trace of conscience, have not been given to 
 the greater number of the characters of other plays as they 
 are in this ; nay, the most abandoned individuals in his deepest 
 tragedies, Eichard and lago, are not entirely devoid of. this 
 sting of conscience. 
 
 ' Men are as the time is,' says Edmund in our play ; « to be 
 tender-minded does not become a sword.' Nor an iron age 
 either, was the poet's opinion, an age in which impulses grow 
 to ungovernable strength and crime to a gigantic enormity. 
 That in this play we are transported to such an age ought to 
 be felt by the spectator at once by the first impression on the 
 senses produced in its representation on the stage. Tieck has 
 said of this piece that the style of dress and costume was a 
 
KING LEAS. 619 
 
 matter of indifference in it ; but nothing more mistaken could 
 be said. The delusion would be at once destroyed, if, in Lear, 
 mediaeval houses, splendid furniture, and the elegant costume 
 of Spanish knighthood were brought upon the stage. If, on the 
 contrary, we have narrow chambers of rude architecture, wild 
 scenes and barren views, stout gothic coarseness and barbarous- 
 ness in form and dress, not without some mixture of oriental 
 pomp, the eye at once receives an impression of the scene, 
 which prepares us for the nature of the personages of the 
 drama. Shakespeare, in whose time the stage possessed none 
 of these advantages, found- it himself necessary to make the 
 character of the age evident to the spectator or the reader at 
 the very commencement of the piece, by bold sketches of the 
 scene placed in the lips of the actors themselves. Edmund 
 describes them to his brother by quoting a pretended predic- 
 tion which proclaims ' death, dearth, dissolutions of ancient 
 amities ; divisions in state, menaces and maledictions against 
 king and nobles ; needless diffidences, banishment of friends, 
 dissipation of cohorts, and nuptial breaches.' The old Grloster 
 had sketched this theme to him before from experiences in 
 actual life. He had found that ' love cools, friendship falls off, 
 brothers divide ; in cities, mutinies ; in countries, discord ; in 
 palaces, treason ; and the bond cracked between son and father.' 
 His own house ' comes under the prediction : there's son against 
 father ; the king falls from bias of nature ; there's father against 
 child. We have seen,' he adds, ' the best of our time : machina- 
 tions, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders.' This 
 is in fact a sketch of the age now to be depicted before us in a 
 complete picture, in which we are to be met by cruelty in its 
 most horrid form, by intrigues of the most devilish nature, by 
 ingratitude in its most glaring colour, and by rage and fury 
 that know no restraint. Special weight is laid upon the fact 
 that it is a heathenish time ; nature is the goddess of Lear as 
 well as of Edmund ; chance reigns above, power and force 
 below. The best of this race know of no inner strength, of no 
 noble will, of no calmness and self-command, and of no moral 
 principle, whereby the power of the blood can be broken, the 
 impulse of passion controlled, and immoderate desires bridled. 
 All, and especially the best, with fatalistic feeling attribute the 
 acts of men to the influence of nature and the stars ; eclipses 
 of the sun and moon bring, according to Grloster's opinion, 
 those frightful scourges of humanity ; and to the true-hearted 
 
620 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Kent the different dispositions of Lear's daughters are a proof 
 that not education, not inherited bloody but the blind stars 
 ' govern the conditions ' of men. It is only the very worst of 
 all of them, the free-thinking Edmund, who ridicules this con- 
 venient apology for our crimes and passions by imputing 'them 
 to planetary influence, because he alone is conscious of inward 
 strength of will and mind, although he turns it to profligate 
 uses. If he, as it were on principle, gives the rein to his 
 selfishness, it is, on the contrary, the rule of the race generally 
 to follow vague instincts and the bent of the inclination, and 
 to give free course to the throng of unchained passions, with- 
 out any scruple of mind or morality. It is the time of which 
 Macbeth said, 'if the death-blow were given, it were well.' 
 No sting of conscience pricks most of the evil-doers here either 
 before, or during, or after the deed ; no agonised reflection 
 upon consequences restrains from crime; here is no Hamlet, no 
 Macbeth, with excited fancy, with terrifying powers of imagina- 
 tion, with the tender yearnings of an innate moral nature. 
 These daughters of Lear, this Edmund, this Cornwall, this Os- 
 wald, frustrated in their designs, meet death without a symptom 
 of remorse. Better natures, such as Lear and Gloster, when their 
 faults bring on them natural punishments, fall from happiness 
 to despair ; the one becomes mad, and the other looks upon 
 men as the sport of the gods. Just so Macbeth also, though 
 at first willing to renounce the future when in full view of a 
 brilliant present, declares in the hour of his despair that 
 this very life he had once thought so promising is ' a walking 
 shadow, a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.' AU human 
 nature, in such a generation, goes blindly to extremes. Even 
 goodness, where it does appear, fidelity, uprightness, modesty, 
 and self-rule, are aU in the extreme. It is a humanity as yet un- 
 cultivated, knowing no religious ordinances, no moral laws, no 
 ripeness of experience ; a generation near akin to the ' bare, 
 forked animal ' of Edgar, cast rough out of nature's hand. In 
 this state of nature it is relationship that first imposes a law 
 and sets a limit. The tie of blood everywhere first quenches 
 the thirst for ruling and possessing, and destroys the selfishness 
 of the individual. But here self-love rends even these strongest 
 ties of nature. A passionate father, on the point of sacrificing 
 everything for his children, reaps apparent and real ingratitude 
 from them ; he turns his wrath and persecution against dutiful- 
 ness and truth, and bestows his benefits on flattery and false- 
 
KING LEAB. 621 
 
 hood, in consequence of which he is suhjected to the most 
 terrible ill-treatment. A tender father has begotten an adder 
 in adultery, a natural son, who strives to destroy him, and 
 through him his lawfully-born brother. Brother against brother, 
 children against parents, and parents against children, husband 
 against wife, are incensed one against the other in the selfish 
 spirit of persecution, a powerful picture of human brutality. 
 The discords in these families form in a manner the central 
 point of this tragedy, so that we are tempted to perceive at the 
 first glance the ruling idea to be the exhibition of filial ingrati- 
 tude. But the idea of this work is in truth far more com- 
 prehensive, and these family discords are rather the body than 
 the soul of the play. But they add to the horror of the matter; 
 similar things, committed by stranger against stranger, would 
 not have had the same fearful weight. These actions, accu- 
 mulated as they are in the bosom of the closest relationship, 
 represent, says Schlegel, ' a great rebellion in the moral world ; 
 the picture becomes gigantic and creates horror, such as would 
 be excited by the idea of the heavenly bodies escaping from 
 their ordained orbits.' 
 
 If we are right in saying that to depict the shock of mighty 
 passions against the natural and moral boimdaries of humanity 
 is the true task of tragedy, we may perceive that in the piece 
 before us this task appears, as it were, generalised ; that where 
 other tragedies treat of separate passions, this one exhibits 
 passion generally, so that, as every careful reader must have 
 more or less felt, it might be called the tragedy kut e^oxqv. 
 There is no other tragedy in which almost all the numerous 
 acting characters are, as in this, equally the prey of violent 
 mental emotions, vehement feelings, or insurmountable desires. 
 To make this apparent at a glance, we have only to call to 
 mind the chief characters in any striking situation. There is 
 no picture of greater or more shameless covetousness than 
 Groneril, when in the presence of her husband she enviously 
 contends with her widowed sister for the new lover, Edmund, 
 unless it be the covetousness of this Edmund himself, who, 
 after he has deprived father and brother of their possessions, 
 geeks to rob the two sons-in-law of Lear of their dominions, and 
 for this purpose secretly betroths himself to both sisters. There 
 is no picture of a fiercer temper and more quickly excited 
 thirst for vengeance than Cornwall, when he tears out the eyes 
 of a man with whom he had sought shelter, unless it be the 
 
622 THIBD PERIOD OF SBAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC FOETRY. 
 
 tiger-like fury of his wife Eegan, who goads him to the horrid 
 deed. There is no livelier image of just wrath, of the anger 
 which bursts forth in words and actions at unrighteous deeds, 
 than Kent, who defies Lear and is maddened by the insolence 
 of the steward, unless it be the involuntary febullitions of rage 
 in that servant of Cornwall, who kills his lord for tearing out 
 Grloster's eyes. There is nothing which so keenly marks the 
 sway of the passions in this whole race as the moments when 
 unnatural and monstrous actions arouse even soft and gentle 
 natures into a disturbance of their whole being ; as when the 
 good Grloster calls down vengeance on Eegan for having driven 
 her fatber out into the storm, ' when wolves would not have 
 howled for shelter in vain ; ' or when the noble Albany is 
 scarcely able to keep his hands from striking Groneril for 
 having driven her father to madness, a man whose reverence 
 even ' the head-lugged bear would lick.' But above all these 
 single instances and these separate characters the form of the 
 aged Lear, who gives the name to the tragedy, stands pre- 
 eminent. 
 
 King Lear, in the extremity of age and desolation, looks 
 back upon a time when he was ' every inch a king,' when 
 enemies fled before his sword ; and even in his madness the 
 rays of his royal and heroic mind burst forth. In peaceful 
 circumstances he wears a lordly form and a majesty of aspect 
 that well become him ; in moments of provocation, ' when he 
 stared, the subject quaked.' If his rank and position allowed 
 of no cont;radiction, still less would his temperament have 
 borne it. He was always eccentric ; he had ' ever but slenderly 
 known himself,' his daughters say, that is, he had never 
 learned to control himself ; ' the best and soundest of his time 
 had been but rash ' or passionate. This was his nature ; it 
 had become his habit through power and greatness, through 
 the prosperity which had never left him, and had never 
 permitted a thought of misfortune and misery. Such a father 
 fosters hypocrisy and flattery in his children only too commonly 
 for his own punishment ; this flattery, again, in its turn, only 
 increases still more his violence and irritability. Natural 
 selfishness, even when of a good and affectionate kind, grows 
 in such natures and degenerates under this constrained family 
 idolatry, and this, perhaps, aU the more in the present instance, 
 when the genuine filial love of the youngest daughter came 
 into collision with the pretended love of the elder sisters. If 
 
KING LEAS. 623 
 
 this haughtiness of the ruler both at home and abroad, a 
 haughtiness which had never learned to bear the truth nor to 
 suffer contradiction, except from the mouth of the fool wjttom 
 the whip could keep within bounds, if this haughtiness were a 
 natural imperfection, nourished by the habits of a long life, 
 we can imagine that these faults would be increased still more 
 by the 'unruly waywardness,' the' weakness, and sensitiveness of 
 his ' infirm years.' If we picture such a man still endowed 
 with that strength of passion which makes him not only the 
 child but the very king of that heroic age, we shall require 
 nothing further for the full understanding of his conduct in 
 the opening scene, which has so often been censured. Goethe 
 called this scene absurd; I consider it as true to nature as any 
 other that Shakespeare has written. The inquiry concerning 
 the degree of his daughters' love was found by the poet ready 
 to his hand, and he sacredly retained it according to his 
 custom ; he did not find it necessary to give it an air of 
 greater probability, as the older play did ; he left it to the 
 spectator's imaginative power to explain this singular introduc- 
 tion to the division of the inheritance, by referring it to the 
 manners of the time and to the disposition and age of the 
 king. The old king wishes to resign his rank and possessions 
 in favour of his children ; in a character such as his this act is 
 one of great renunciation and affectionate trust. For this 
 sacrifice he expected to receive beforehand expressions of grati- 
 tude ; the selfishness which accompanied his affection , produces 
 in him the desire to enjoy the filial protestations of his daugh- 
 ters, while, as Coleridge says, the rooted habit of ruling changes 
 this desire at, once into an actual demand. Thereupon, from 
 his favourite child, ' the balm of his age,' upon whose filial 
 duty he had especially reckoned, he receives in the public 
 solemn assembly a cold ' nothing' in answer to his question, 
 and ashamed and undeceived he gives vent to his 'hideous 
 rashness.' The whole ungovernable nature of a man who had 
 never learned to m£(,ster the ebullitions of his passion bursts 
 violently forth. He gives up his kingdom to the two elder 
 sisters, in order, according to the old play, with fierce obstinacy 
 to close the way to repentance and retractation ; he banishes 
 the remonstrating Kent, his most faithful servant ; he casts off 
 his child and loads her with sudden hate in the place of his old 
 love ; keen-sighted in his rage, he easily frightens away her 
 wooer, Burgundy, and endeavours to dismiss the unselfish 
 
624 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 France ; he gives her to him ' dowered with his curse,' and 
 he calls down the heavy vengeance upon himself, which is to 
 finds its fulfilment : ' So be my grave my peace, as here I give 
 her father's heart from her ! ' The storm which rages within 
 him at this moment he himself graphically describes at a later 
 period in a manner which stamps him a6 the most violent of a 
 violent race ; Cordelia's small fault, he says — 
 
 Like an engine, wrench'd my frame of nature 
 From the fix'd place ; drew from my heart all love, 
 And added to the gall. 
 
 It is a 'poor judgment ' with which, according to the declara- 
 tion of the other daughters, he has cast off the youngest, but 
 this does not make the scene absurd. It is the character of 
 rash passion to cause violent mental shocks without sufficient 
 grounds. The poet knew this well, and he has, therefore, 
 contrasted this rash passion of Lear with the just and well- 
 founded rage of the brave Kent, who, even while his life is in 
 danger, tells the king plainly of his injustice, and casts upon 
 him the heavy reproach — 
 
 Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow 
 Upon the foul disease. 
 
 This disease is now to seize the old hero ; the punishment 
 of his last folly follows close upon it, but the long-deferred 
 strokes belong to a long catalogue of faults, which reach their 
 climax in the act of the division of his kingdom. Now that 
 he has renounced his paternal authority, the long submission 
 of his elder daughters to the humours of his old age gives way 
 at once to the abnegation of all filial piety, and their former 
 hypocrisy and falsehood are changed into open ingratitude. 
 Till now, they had flattered him like dogs, they had ' said ay 
 and wo to everything he said;' too^ late he sees that from the 
 beginning this was 'no good divinity.' Now the hitherto 
 smiling countenances grow dark ; they now seek to despoil him 
 of the few possessions and outward marks of rank he had 
 retained after giving them all the rest; they now reproach 
 him to his face with his childish old age and with the 
 foolishness of his plan ; they turn the rod against their father, 
 shameless in words as they are wicked in deeds. At the first 
 moment the two sisters display no characteristic difference; 
 ' as like as a crab is to a crab,' says the fool ; on a closer 
 inspection it is surprising what a wide and clearly defined 
 
KING lEAB. • 625 
 
 contrast there is between the two. The elder, Groneril, with 
 the ' wolfish visage' and the dark 'frontlet' of ill-humour, is a 
 masculine woman, full of independent purposes and projects, 
 whilst Eegan appears more feminine, rather instigated by 
 G-oneril, more passive, and more dependent. Groneril's bound- 
 less, 'unbordered' nature, which renders her a true child of that 
 fearful age, shows itself in bloody undertakings, originating in 
 her own brain ; whilst Regan's evil nature appears rather in her 
 urging on the atrocities of others, as when Kent is set in the 
 stocks and Grioster's eyes are torn out. The worst of the two 
 is married to a noble gentleman (Albany), whom she reviles as 
 ' a moral fool,' whose mildness and repose seem to her ' milky 
 gentleness,' and whose quiet power and resolute manliness she 
 only later finds reason to discover. The better sister has the 
 worst husband in Cornwall, a man whose wrathful disposition 
 allows of no impediment and bears no remonstrance. Groneril 
 at first appears to govern her husband, who recogpiises her 
 depth of foresight, and, until he penetrates her character, 
 avoids discords with her ; she pursues her aims independently, 
 scarcely listening to him, and scarcely deigning to answer 
 him ; Eegan, on the contrary, is obsequious and dependent 
 towards the gloomy, laconic, and powerful Cornwall, who is 
 immovable and resolute in his determination. At the first 
 occasion (Act i. sc. 1) Groneril appears as the instigator and 
 Regan as her echo. She it is who afterwards begins to put 
 restraints upon the king, she first treats him disrespectfully, 
 halves and dismisses his attendants, whilst Regan avoids her 
 father with some remains of awe. But she fears her sister still 
 more than her father ; she rather suffers her father's messenger 
 to be mistreated than Groneril's servant. Her sister knows her 
 weakness ; she does not consider it sufficient to write to her, 
 she goes to her and follows her in order to be sure of her co- 
 operation in her measures. Eegan cannot hurl forth vehement 
 and hasty words like Groneril; she has -not the same fierce 
 eyes, her glance (though Lear in his madness indeed calls it a 
 squint) is more full of comfort, her nature is softer and more 
 cordial, and Lear, it seems, hardly trusts himself to penetrate 
 her character closely : when, in his delusion, he sits in judg- 
 ment upon her, he desires to have her heart anatomised. She 
 utters inoffensively harsher things to her father than Groneril 
 does, and yet her father hesitates to pronounce his curse upon 
 her as upon her sister; a curse even twice repeated against 
 
 s s 
 
626 THIED PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Goneril. The latter receives it with marble coldness, hut 
 Eegan shudders, and fears to draw upon herself the like male- 
 diction. It is not until Groneril in her presence has entirely 
 laid open her own unblushing cruelty and barbarity towards 
 their old father, that Eegan grows bolder also, and drives away 
 the king's train of knights ; she will have no one but himself. 
 When Groneril afterwards insists that the old man shall taste 
 the consequences of his obstinacy and folly, and forbids Grloster, 
 in spite of the raging storm, to harbour him, she chimes 
 in with her usual dependent weakness. After the brood of 
 serpents have got rid of the old father, there begins a domestic 
 feud between the families. -Groneril digs deeper mines, to 
 which the mistreatment of Lear has been only the prelude. 
 She wishes to seize on the whole kingdom, she betroths herself 
 to Edmimd during her husband's life, she rejoices in Corn- 
 wall's death, poisons Eegan, joins with Edmimd in ordering 
 Cordelia's execution, and finally attempts the life of her 
 husband, whom she now fears, because he had discovered with 
 horror her misdeeds. Here, again, Eegan appears throughout 
 less blameable and vile; she makes no engagement with 
 Edmund till after Cornwall's death ; she unsuspectingly 
 confides letters for Edmund to Groneril's treacherous servant ; 
 she falls a victim to her sister's poison,' being herself clear from 
 all attempts of the kind; in every respect she is more con- 
 tracted in her nature than her sister, whose ' woman's will is of 
 undistinguish'd space.' 
 
 The development of Lear's character under the persecutions 
 of these daughters is the true central point of the play, not only 
 according to the course of the original story, but also according 
 to our poet's apprehension of it ; the thoroughly passionate 
 nature of the man, who stands foremost as the peculiar repre- 
 sentative of this singular age, is here depicted in all the fulness 
 of its inordinate strength. The picture is painted in such 
 strong colours that -it scarcely requires our explanation ; we 
 will, therefore, only direct our attention to the most prominent 
 features, which display this tragic hero's want of self-govern- 
 ment, the immensity of his sufferings, and the obstinacy of his 
 actions. At the outset, when Lear perceives the first symptoms 
 of neglect, he scarcely acknowledges them to himself, and 
 imputes them to his own suspicions ; when his servants per- 
 ceive them likewise he grows irritable ; when the time-serving 
 Oswald forces them unequivocally on his notice he is at once 
 
KING LEAB. 627 
 
 transported with rage, and forgets Ms dignity so far as to strike 
 him. Unconscious of any great irritation, we may believe 
 that Lear in his earlier mood would haYe allowed many slights 
 to have passed in silence. As is usual after sudden passion, his 
 violence' is followed by calmness and. quiet. The old man is 
 reserved and thoughtful ; he begins,, indeed, to perceive the 
 folly of having resigned everything to his daughters ; he is 
 stung with remorse at having cast off Cordelia, and he longs 
 for the daughter with whom he would have been safe. The 
 fool grieves over her banishment ; this was the- first' sting of 
 repentance which affected Lear; the fool's jests upon the folly 
 of stripping himself of everything fix his thoughts too much 
 upon the seriousness of this reproach for him- to be amused by 
 its playful guise. But this contemplative mood is not long to 
 last; the growing rancour at his ill-usage was already disturb- 
 ing it, and indignation at the ingratitude of his daughters 
 destroys it altogether. Groneril, after the ill-treatment of her 
 servant,, suddenly lets fall her mask. This one-moment shatters 
 his whole physical and mental strength. In this and in the 
 first scene, wheni the whole power of Learns passionate and 
 boundless indignation is still unbroken, the actor must- put 
 forth all the bodily strength that he possesses. His first 
 mistake as to his daughter and himself, his strange reception of 
 her words, his singular inquiry after her name, all these are the 
 first symptoms of Lear's subsequent insanity, the calm' imme- 
 diately preceding the storm that bursts forth against' Groneril, 
 which only repeats the scene with Cordeliain a more exaggerated 
 form. Groneril has not yet done anything but asked himbo 
 lessen his train, and Albany assures hinaj that he is guiltless, 
 nay, 'that he even forebodes not the cause of his irritation, when 
 Lear utters the fearful qurse upon his first-born, whioh is 
 without its parallel' in (Edipus or in. any tragedy on a similar 
 subject, and he repeats it afterwards with fresh emphasis, just 
 as he once niore subsequently renews- it before Eegan. His 
 next sensation is one of mingled rage and shame that his 
 daughter's ingratitude should have thus shaken his manhood as 
 to make him weep, a remembrance which causes him deep pain 
 even in his madness ; his next thought is that he will see the 
 sister burn with hatred against her sister, that he will lay aside 
 the goodness of his nature, and violently take from Groneril her 
 share of the inheritance, that he may show himself to her ag^in 
 in his character of ruler and avenger, and, as he subsequently 
 
 9 s 2 
 
628 THIEB PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 says, ' do such things as shall be the terrors of the earth.' We 
 see from these unmeasured intentions, which, springing from 
 one imexplained cause, proceed forthwith to extremity, how 
 much mischief this mistaken man even now heaps upon 
 himself, if even his former errors had not been to blame for the 
 conduct of his daughters ; had there been indeed a spark of 
 humanity left in Groneril he would have quenched it by this 
 hasty curse. He comes in front of Grloster's castle ; he sees his 
 messenger Caius in the stocks ; at once a convulsive burst of rage 
 swells again in his bosom. He inquires for his second daughter, 
 who avoids him ; he desires to see her and her husband ; 
 Gloster excuses them on the plea of sickness, and hiuts at 
 Cornwall's ' fiery quality ; ' and this is one of the most charac- 
 teristic passages, well adapted for bringing out Lear's dispo- 
 sition, when at this mere word his rage foams and boils, not so 
 much on account of the intractableness of his children as that 
 anyone should dare to urge the excuse of a ' fiery quality ' to 
 him. At this moment he seems to have attained the utmost 
 limits of his bodily strength ; the ferment in his temper now 
 subsides, the furious outbursts grow weak. It seems as if he 
 would compel his 'rising heart ' to calmness and self-command by 
 reason and will, but in truth this same ' rising heart ' chokes his 
 breath ; his manhood is paralysed ; he cannot strain his sinews 
 any more, he can only fear that they will break ; that he has no 
 more curse for Eegan is partly owing to this exhaustion ; his 
 outbursts of wrath take the milder form of sarcasm ; he sinks 
 to softness, even to tears and entreaties. "While before Groneril he 
 had had such violent rage at his command that for very shame he 
 was angfy at his tears, he is now obliged to implore the gods to 
 ' touch him with noble anger,' and his tears flow although he 
 abjures them. Before, at his first experience of Groneril's 
 undutifulness, Lear had already called upon ■ the gods for the 
 patience which he knew he lacked, and had implored to be kept 
 from madness, which in the aged overburdened .man must be 
 the natural result of the unnatural strain upon his mind ; now 
 he feels himself approaching that fearful end. A picture of 
 dreadful sublimity and wild grandeur beyond all admiration is 
 now unrolled before us, when the helpless old man, cast out by 
 his ahildren into darkness, storm, and desolation, or driven by 
 his own unyielding obstinacy, wanders without shelter, with 
 . bare head, stripped of his last possession, transformed from a 
 king into a beggar, thrown from the lap of luxury into the 
 
KING LEAB. 629 
 
 extremity of want, and into all the imcliained horrors of nature, 
 the rising storm/ of inward misery rendering him ihsejisible and 
 dead to all around him. The scenes in which Lear on the 
 point . of madness appears in company with Edgar, who feigns 
 madness, and with the fool, who still endeavours, crushed in 
 spirit, to follow his vocation, have not their equal on the stage ; 
 and,, far from being too horribly distorted and too harsh in 
 effect, they produce throughout a deep though not painful 
 impression, if the silent acting of the persons around Lear 
 is correct, if Edgar's aside-spoken remarks are uttered in 
 suitable tones, and if the fool's last words are properly pre- 
 pared, words with which the poet indisputably intended to 
 designate the faithful dependant's breaking heart. The king's 
 madness bursts forth upon his fearful and disraal meeting with 
 the mad Edgar — a touch of nature, the truth of which is felt 
 without the help of experience, although this too might be 
 adduced. The poet has not allowed the king's disturbed 
 imagination to fix itself upon one definite idea, as is the case 
 with the insane generally. It may appear at first as if this 
 were his intention. When Lear is first on the road to madness 
 his thoughts dwell upon the ingratitude of his children, at the 
 same time the bitter feeling of necessity and poverty oppresses 
 him, and he feels remorse that in his prosperity he had thought 
 too little of the ' poor naked wretches ' who, like him now, with 
 houseless heads and unfed sides, 'bide the pelting of this 
 pitiless storm.' At this point of his reflection his madness 
 breaks out, and he suddenly sees bodily before him this 
 helpless being, the 'thing itself,' the naked man, to bring 
 himself on a level with whom he strips off his clothes. Before 
 and after the paroxysms his fancy is busy with thoughts of 
 revenge upon his daughters; the old stubbornness and old 
 passionate nature of the man still further displays themselves in 
 this condition ; he wishes to ' have a thousand with red burning 
 spits come hizzing in ' upon his daughters ; he sits in judgment 
 upon them ; he talks of bows and halberds, soldiers, press- 
 money, parole, challenges, arms, and imprisonment. Neverthe- 
 less, the poet does not allow the ravings to dwell even upon this 
 characteristic idea of vengeance. Had ways and means been 
 given to Lear's desire for revenge, the satisfaction of these 
 desires would have drawn his thoughts into another channel ; 
 in obedience to his principles he would have revenged himself 
 frantically, and thus have satisfied the viole'nce of his nature ; 
 
630 THIED PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 but as his aotive emotions must sink into passive ones, with the 
 feeling of po-weriessness and'consequent bitterness, the vehemence 
 of these emotions turns iwithin, and flatters him with at least 
 the semblance of revenge. Yet even now his susceptibility to 
 violent em.otions will not sufifer Lear to rest upon those con- 
 soling images. His satisfaction in the idea of revenge passes 
 only like a red -threM through the midst of his ravings, but he 
 continually starts away from it, he has lucid intervals, he 
 mingles reason with folly ; at one moment he is dull to the 
 reality of things around him, at another he perverts them 
 entirely ; now he is led to observations on remote matters, and 
 now to keenly suitable remarks. At times it may seem as if 
 the poet only m^ade use of Lear's wanderings, as he did of 
 Hamlet's feigned insanity, to introduce general satirical 
 allusions, as when he sees ' the great image of authority ' in the 
 dreaded dog in office, when he applauds the flourishing state of 
 sin, when he sees crime in power, punishing its own misdeeds in 
 others, <when he denouiKjes bribery, and asserts that 'none 
 offend who have 'the power to seal the accuser's lips.' But all 
 this is, however, only the strong utterance of a moral despair, 
 strikingly characteristic of the man 'Who, broken by age and 
 trouble, as well as wrecked in fortune, power, and greatness, must 
 in a moral respect also be disappointed of the world, in which he 
 has to suffer much more than he thinks he deserves. The poet 
 has placed him at the very extreme of physical, mental, and 
 moral disorder by the side of Gloster, who at this same time 
 was saved from a similar fall. G>loster's pliant and gentler 
 disposition was only bent under the equal weight of age and 
 sorrow; Lear's strained and strong nature was, on the con- 
 trary, as it were, shattered — a nature which, formed for 
 exertion, received a new degree of vigour eveo in madness 
 and in the relaxation consequent on the failure of its powers, 
 until at last repose returns with exhaustion and healing with 
 repose. 
 
 Kent and the fool adhere to Lear in his misery ; the one 
 brings about his reunion with Cordelia, the other strives by 
 jesting at first to divert his ill-humour and then to keep him 
 from madness. Bothare superior children of the age as it is 
 ■represented to us throughout the play, but still they are 
 children of the age ; opposite natures in a moral respect, when 
 compared with Edmimd and the like, yet not purely opposite as 
 regards the character common to the xace represented. They 
 
KING LEAR. 631 
 
 possess a mastery over nature and inclination; they put to 
 shame the daughters of the old king by their faithful adherende 
 and devotion ; the worthy Kent suppresses his indignation and 
 sense of injury, and continues to serve his outcast master ; the 
 fool mockingly praises him and rewards him with the offer of 
 his own cap and bells for his true service to the neglected and 
 unhappy man; he himself cleaves just as much to Lear; he 
 carries on his jester's part, with a heavy heart, care-worn, 
 suppressing his own anguish with songs and jokes. But even 
 in this mastery over self, both, however, appear as appertaining 
 to this age; by their means and their very nature they 
 unintentionally augment the inward pangs and outward woes 
 of Lear, instead of alleviating or obviating them. The fool's 
 strokes at Lear's follies are from the first beyond a joke ; 
 instead of distracting his thoughts they drive him to dwell 
 upon those which torture him ; even when driven out in the 
 night of the storm the fool carries on his biting satire ; and 
 however well his jests may serve the aesthetic purpose of not 
 allowing the spectator to dwell too painfully and continually upon 
 the violent outbursts of Lear's madness, they are, on the other 
 hand, psychologically considered, inappropriate and injudicious 
 as a remedy against this very malady. It is just the same with 
 Kent's uprightness. His just anger against Lear in the opening 
 scene shows him to be a truly faithful servant, but it only still 
 more aggravates the contradictory spirit and. the obstinacy of 
 the passionate king. The contrast which Kent affords to that 
 time-serving soul of baseness, the steward Oswald, whom no 
 insolence- and mistreatment can excite into bitterness and 
 passion, places the power, truth, and fidelity of the former in 
 the strongest light; but he shows, nevertheless, ; that he has 
 'more man than wit' in him; he appears in his genuine and 
 just wrath as unrestrained as Lear in his ungrounded fury,; and 
 he helps by his -vehemence to increase the bitter discord 
 between the latter and his daughters. With restless activity 
 he aids the king in his a,bandoned condition; he sacrifices 
 himself, and dies at last worn out with excess of true devotion ; 
 but all this, merely on account of his disguise, is ehtirely 
 unavailing for the comfort and support of the aged sovereign. 
 Thus the final deliverance and restoration of the insane and 
 wandering Lear is left to be the work of his daughter Cordelia. 
 But before we come to this point we will insert a few remarks 
 here upon the episode of Gloster, in order that in our discussion 
 
632 THIBI) FEBIOD OF SHAKESPEABE' 8 JDBAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 upon the winding up of the plot we may compare the two 
 analogous cases for the sake of greater perspicuity. 
 
 The similar discord in Grloster's family has arisen from 
 points in Grloster's character entirely opposite to those in Lear's. 
 A good, mild, unexcitable man, of easy mind and manners, lax 
 and superstitious, Grloster has created his own trouble, just as 
 Lear has drawn down his misery upon himself. He has a 
 natural son, through whom his breach of the marriage-vow is to 
 be avenged; he has indeed in addition done everything in 
 education and treatment that could provoke the bastard against 
 him. For nine years he kept him away from his house, and he 
 intends to send him away again ; he is ashamed of him, and 
 owns this to a stranger with little delicacy in Edmund's pre- 
 sence. The secret machinations of this base-born second son 
 are in the first place directed against the legitimate first-born, 
 Edgar, but they re-act upon the father, who credulously allows 
 himself to become the bastard's tool. In Edmxmd, Shakespeare 
 has repeated the main features of Eichard III. and lago ; he 
 has rather sketched them, we might say, as if he left the 
 character for granted. He has endowed him with outward 
 beauty, which (to use Bacon's words) is that with respect to his 
 wickedness which a pure garment is to ugliness ; he invests him 
 with the premeditated wickedness and bitterness of Eichard, a 
 bitterness awakened in Eichard by disgust at his natural defor- 
 mity, and in Edmund by annoyance at the defect of his birth 
 and family prejudices. Like Eichard, Edmund aspires (and 
 indeed without declaring it) after the prospect which offers 
 itself with regard to the kingdom; he brings ruin on this 
 account first into his own house, and then by his shameless 
 connection with both Lear's daughters into their two families ; 
 subsequently, with Groneril's concurrence, upon Lear and Cor- 
 delia herself. With this far-stretching ambition, Edmund 
 unites lago's cold reason and selfish calculation, his reaUstie 
 free-thinking, his indifference to any means that suit him, his 
 hypocrisy which considers lack of dissimulation as mental weak- 
 ness, and his perseverance and skill in changing the modes by 
 which he pursues his ends as opportunity serves. He first en- 
 deavours to befool his father by a dialogue between Edgar and 
 himself; then Edgar's unsuspiciousness suggests to him to let 
 him rather hear a conversation with his father ; he then uses 
 Cornwall's unexpected arrival to frighten away Edgar. As in 
 these instances he strides forward throughout with the security 
 
KING LEAS. 633 
 
 of a master-spirit, careless in his open knavery, nay, even 
 straightforward in his artful intrigues. With frightful heart- 
 lessness he afterwards betrays to Cornwall his father's connection 
 with France, in order to get the old man out of his way. He 
 then serves the British cause so well as spy and warrior that he 
 compels even Albany's praise. This success in arms, however, 
 over-elevates him ; forgetting his prudence he ventures to 
 challenge truth and justice in a battle by ordeal, and falls under 
 the avenging sword of his brother. In the .dying man one 
 spark of satisfaction is still kindled in the feeling that he was 
 yet beloved ; and some pity for Lear and Cordelia is at last 
 kindled within him, though this is only in consequence of a 
 casual mention of their names, and, as it were, in spite of his 
 nature ; he dies, like Lear's daughters, obdurate and unrepenting. 
 Such is the son by whom the old Grloster allows himself to be 
 led to rob the noble Edgar of his inheritance, just as Lear 
 deprives Cordelia of hers, and to pursue his life with cruel obsti- 
 nacy. For this purpose he confides in Edmund, as Lear does in 
 his elder daughters, and reaps the most shameless treachery for 
 his tru« adherence to Lear. We cannot justify the putting out 
 of Grioster's eyes upon the stage ; although Shakespeare, by the 
 sing;ular circumstance of making a nameless and unknown ser- 
 vant take instant vengeance on the perpetrator of the deed, has 
 given prompt satisfaction to the natural indignation consequent 
 upon such an atrocity. The blinding indeed was Shakespeare's 
 express intention, but this could certainly have been attained as 
 well if the action had been placed behind the scenes. He 
 stumbled, Grloster himself says, when he saw ; and Edgar per- 
 ceives the judgment of Providence in that ' the dark and vicious 
 place where Edmund was begot cost him his eyes.' Poor and 
 blind, Grloster now wanders about like Lear; led by the child 
 whom he had cast off, as Lear was led to his banished one ; in 
 like despair, though it takes different ways. Like Lear he be- 
 thinks himself upon poverty for the first time in his own need, 
 and preaches that community of goods which he had never 
 thought of when he possessed them. ' Heavens,' he says — 
 
 Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man, 
 That cleaves your ordinance, that will not see , 
 Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly ; 
 So distribution should undo excess, 
 And each man have enough ! 
 
634 THIRB PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Like Lear, also, he despairs of the world and records the 
 triumph of the wicked, expressing it in that fearful sentence — 
 
 As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods ; 
 They kill us for their sport ! 
 
 Even before his eyes were put out, when oppressed only by his 
 owQ and Lear's family troubles, Grioster called himself ' almost 
 mad ; ' subsequently, at the sight of Lear, he wishes for himself 
 the same fate, that ' his thoughts might be severed from his 
 griefs.' But his softer and more elastic nature prevents this ; 
 despair drives the less obdurate but equally abandoned one to 
 contemplate suicide, which never entered the thoughts of the 
 revengeful Lear ; thus he would scorn the cruelty of fate and 
 escape its arbitrary will. But from this step Edgar restrains 
 him and becomes to him in his despair a spirit-healer and a 
 ministering angel, just as Cordelia is to Lear. 
 
 We have now arrived at the splendid contrasts which 
 Shakespeare has placed, by way of atonement, in opposition to 
 the violent race with whom we have become acquainted, and 
 . by which he carries us away from these barbarous times. We 
 see Edgar, Lear's godson (the poet forgot, in this designation, 
 that these were heathen times), the innocent and pure soul, so 
 far from evil that he suspects none, stirred by no passionate 
 blood, driven by no wild desire like aU the rest ; he has inherited 
 his father's mildness, with a nature more calm and a mind far 
 more versatile. Suddenly surprised by ill-fortune, like Lear 
 and afterwards his father, believing that the latter had cruelly 
 cast him off, a guiltless outlaw, unable to escape and in danger 
 of his life, since all ports are closed and his picture has been 
 sent as a warrant for his apprehension, compelled to act the 
 part of the helpless pauper, he rapidly resolves, with foresight, 
 adroitness, and a skilful compliance with circumstances, to play 
 the part of one of those Bedlam beggars, who in wild attire and 
 with a madness half feigned were accustomed to wander over 
 England. When he first makes his appearance in this condition 
 he tells us in a confused manner how ' the foul fiend has led him 
 through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlpool, 
 over bog and quagmire ; ' how he ' hath laid knives under his 
 pillow, and halters in his pew ; set ratsbane by his porridge ; 
 made him proud of heart to ride over four-inched bridges ; ' he 
 hints that he has been tempted to suicide as his father was 
 afterwards. This trait, as well as his feigned madness, might 
 
KING LEAE. 635 
 
 induce us to believe that we have another Hamlet before us, a 
 good soul who would rather endure wrong than revenge it. 
 But this he is not. There is nothing in the healthy youth of 
 this sickly sentimental nature. As soon as he has seen Lear's 
 greater misfortune he manfully collects himself, showing him- 
 self in this the son of a new and better age, and he is ready as 
 the stronger man to bear his smaller sorrow patiently. He 
 warns himself to be ever circumspect, and to watch, the storm 
 of time like a wise pilot. A greater blow awaits him ; he 
 meets his blinded father, and becomes convinced of Edmund's 
 treachery. Even this, instead of overwhelming liim, rouses 
 him, in contrast to his easily depressed father, to fresh self- 
 command and mastery over, his gTief and misery. He had just 
 been saying that he, at the height of misery, had only hope re- 
 maining, and had not to fear the ' lamentable change from the 
 best,' when he meets a still more wretched man, his father, whose 
 misery makes him even more miserable than he was. But this 
 very moment raises him from the passive sufferer into the 
 active helper, although he can scarcely contain himself for 
 grief and pain. He is to his father, in himself alone, all that 
 Kent, the fool, and Cordelia are to Lear. AH that Kent is, for 
 he is also a disguised and faithful though disgraced attendant ; 
 all that the fool is, for he carries on his vocation, ' playing the 
 fool to sorrow,' although, more discerning than the fool, he 
 knows it to be a ' bad trade, angering itself and others ; ' all 
 that Cordelia is, for he heals the inward despair of his father, 
 like a spiritual .comforter. He is, in this age of obstinate and 
 rude characters, the versatile, Odyssean spirit which is never 
 lacking in such heroic times, at once a sufferer and a hero, 
 brave and prudent in the midst of the dangers surrounding 
 him ; he grows greater at every step. To play this character a 
 man must be ' every inch an actor.' He changes his part at 
 least six diiferent times. At first he is Edgar ; then poor Tom; 
 then, forgetting himself while his mind is occupied about his 
 father, he falls somewhat out of his assumed part ; after this he 
 describes the immeasurable depth of the pretended cliff, as if he 
 stood shuddering on the edge of it ; then he is the dweller on 
 the seashore, where Grloster imagines himself to have fallen ; 
 then, after the meeting , of his father with Lear, he is again 
 another beggar, and before the steward he becomes changed 
 into a peasant ; in the lists with Edmund he is an unknown 
 champion; and finally he is again himself. In these various 
 
636 THIBD FEBIOD OF 8HAKE8PEABE' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 characters lie is cunningly circumspect to the extreme; his 
 father, on first meeting with poor Tom, is faintly reminded of 
 his Edgar ; then, and whenever the fear of recognition appears 
 greater, his dissemhling becomes stronger. , But this dissem- 
 bling is not, therefore,, induced by a fear and excitability like 
 Hamlet's; Edgar goes from his father's corpse, from Kent's 
 death-struggle, from emotions the most violent, to do battle 
 with Edmund and comes off victorious. Endowed with such 
 self-command under sorrow, we feel that Edgar is able to per- 
 form the most important services for his father in his disguise ; 
 he sustains him physically and saves him mentally. The for- 
 saken blind man intends to throw himself from the steep cliff; 
 Edgar leads him, but he only ' trifles with his despair, to cure 
 it,' He persuades him, when he thinks to have taken the leap, 
 that a miracle has saved him, that some fiend had tempted him, 
 that he is happy because ' the clearest gods who make them 
 honours of men's impossibilities ' have preserved him. Grloster 
 reflects on this. He ' will henceforth bear affliction, till it, do 
 cry out itself, enough, enough, and die/' Lear's misery is 
 made known to him, it bows him anew to the earth, he implores 
 the gods to take his life, that his ' worser spirit ' tempt him not 
 again ' to die before they please.' ' "Well pray you, father ! ' 
 says Edgar in his new character of a poor man ' made tame by 
 fortune's blows.' Groneril's steward appears, and threatens 
 Grloster with death; the old man welcomes his end, as the boon 
 for which he had entreated the gods ; but Edgar preserves him. 
 Both are near the battle ; Lear and Cordelia are taken prisoners ; 
 Gloster, once more driven from his last hope, desires to remain 
 and wait for death. ' What, in ill thoughts again ? ' says his 
 noble son, reproachfully ; ' men must endure their going hence, 
 even as their coming hither : ripeness is all.' Again Gloster 
 acknowledges the truth of Edgar's words. Not until his son 
 makes himself known, relates his story, and implores his blessing, 
 does his stricken heart br^ak in a conflict of grief and joy. But 
 he dies resigned and smiling. Over his corpse and at the recog- 
 nition of Edgar the heart-strings of the noble Kent ' began to 
 crack,' and at the relation of these touching sorrows Albany is 
 about to give way, and a ray of human feeling pierces the soul 
 of the dying Edmund. We also, readers and spectators, go 
 away from this accumulation of woe with emotions softened and 
 satisfied. 
 
 And this state of mind is still more increased by the cha- 
 
KING LEAB. 637 
 
 raoter and fate of Cordelia. She is one of the tenderest of 
 Shakespeare's creations, hard to be understood, yet simple and 
 clear to those who feel rightly. The actress who cannot 
 entirely forget that she is acting will never be fit for this, part. 
 Mrs. Barry, who played it in Garrick's time to the admiration 
 of our Lichtenberg, was, according to that severe critic, 
 endowed with a kind of holy beauty, with a gentle innocence 
 and goodness, as little satirical as heroic. If the actress is not 
 a person of the highest general talent, it necessarily requires 
 one of such a nature that the unaffected grace and innocence 
 of Cordelia may not be ruined on the stage, by theatrical tricks. 
 The dying Lear gives us a perfect and visible picture of her 
 sweet feminine nature in those few words : ' Her voice was ever 
 soft, gentle,- and low ; an excellent thing in woman ! ' Richer 
 in love than in tongue, she possessed not the ' glib and oily art 
 to speak and purpose not ; ' what she 'well intends; she'll do't 
 before she speaks.' The ready speech and flattery of her sisters 
 would have been despised by her as superfluous ; it would have 
 been so still more from a sense of truth {silentium ambit veri- 
 tatem. Baco.) ; and most of all because she had none of that 
 craving and self-seeking which makes them so eloquent. 
 Feminine simplicity and modesty, a want or ' tardiness in 
 nature,' as her future husband calls it, helps to chain her 
 tongue in the opening scene, and makes her utter the fatal 
 word which -decides her fate. The natural shyness of such a 
 being to speak before a great assembly, and the perfect truth- 
 fulness of her soul which directs her to retain half her love for 
 her husband, combine to cause this strange reticence ; above 
 all she is actuated in her decisioti by a sickening contempt 
 and scorn of her sisters, which she cannot longer suppress. In 
 the 'milky gentleness' of , her disposition there is mingled a 
 drop of gall from her father's obstinacy ; by this delicate stroke 
 Shakespeare has linked her to the age and to the family 
 character. Inconsiderate action and a certain obstinacy are 
 undeniably exhibited at her first appearance, although they 
 spring from the noblest motives. When ter father represents 
 her in a hateful light and touches her honour, and when the 
 King of France, a'reader of character, divines her nature, this 
 warm dew, following the frost of her father's hatred, opens her 
 heart, and she gains as quickly the love of a husband as she 
 had done the curse of her father. In the progress of the story 
 she now proves how fully her intention was to fulfil her 
 
638 THIRJ) PERIOD Olf SHAKESFEAEE'S DEAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 bounden duty to that father ; she proves also how it belongs to 
 her nature to do what she intends before she speaks. Fore- 
 seeing the result, she at once, on reaching France, enters into 
 commimication with Kent, and keeps spies at the courts of her 
 sisters. She hears of their heartless acts, of her father being 
 cast out in the storm, and then all the beauty of her inmost 
 soul is revealed. In such a night, she says, ' her enemy's dog, 
 though he had bit her, would have stood against her fire ; ' she 
 is a being such as Shakespeare in his Pericles has depicted the 
 holy, pious Marina. When she received the letters informing 
 her of these indignities her tears flowed ; she tried to govern 
 her grief, but it overcame her ; she was moved, but not to rage, 
 only to patience and sorrow ; she was like sunshine and rain at 
 once ; the smiles upon her lip ' seemed not to know what 
 guests were in her eyes,' still less what guests the letters 
 brought ; in her true harmless manner she gives way entirely 
 to the feeling which overcomes her. And thus she acts even 
 in a fatal manner by now stepping forward for the restoration 
 of her father. Henceforth she has only the one thought of 
 saving him ; filial feeling breaks now as strongly forth into 
 action as at first when words were required it had seemed to 
 draw back. Hence it is that she commits a second and still 
 grea,ter imprudence than before, which makes her now a martyr 
 to her filial love as before to her love of truth. In this unsus- 
 piciousness, in this involuntary obedience to the promptings of 
 sacred feelings, she resembles Desdemona. At that time, in 
 her conviction of doing right, she had not weighed in what she 
 did ■ too little for her indeed deceived parent ; she does not 
 now weigh in what she does too much for him ; what, done 
 otherwise, might have led to another end. Ethical justice is 
 in this play especially emphasised strongly by the poet himself. 
 Where lies the justice of Cordelia's death ? Why is Edgar to 
 have a better fate, when he is just that to his father which 
 Cordelia is to Lear ? It is this very diSerence, however, in 
 the fate of the two which guides us to the meaning of the poet.' 
 It is precisely the wise and prudent forethought, evident in all 
 his actions, which places Edgar as a pure contrast to Cordelia. 
 His means stand ever in well-considered relation to his aims ; 
 it is not so with Cordelia's. She attacks England with a 
 French force in order to restore her father. The whole 
 responsibility of this step falls upon her. She has besought 
 her husband with ' important tears ' to give her this army. He 
 
KING- LEAS. 639 
 
 I 
 
 himself was not urgent with regard to this war ; he appears not 
 (and this Tieck and Steevens would not understand, although 
 the meaning is evident) with Cordelia in England ; he is occu- 
 pied with other affairs of state. Cordelia has no need to tell us 
 that ' no blown ambition incites her arms ; ' we believe it in 
 her ; but at the time when she ought to have said it to Albany 
 she omits it ; she touches only upon the one thought of her 
 filial love. When she has found her father in Dover, she 
 resigns the command of her army to her general ; this makes 
 the attack against a divided and endangered kingdom more 
 -serious. The adverse and dissimilar brothers-in-law advance 
 together to meet this danger, the noble Albany with the ter- 
 rible Edmund. But Albany also is far more circumspect than 
 Cordelia. Actually in discord with Goneril and Edmund, he 
 has, after Cornwall's death, the prospect of the sole sovereignty, 
 when Lear and Cordelia shall have been conquered and set 
 aside. Notwithstanding, he declares in the presence of his allies 
 that he separates the French invasion from Lear's cause, and 
 this Cordelia had never declared. ' The business of this war,' 
 says Albany, ' toucheth us only as France invades our land, not 
 bolds the king;' he will now favour him, and use the captives 
 according to their merits and Ms own safety. A declaration 
 similarly explicit from Cordelia to Albany might have set 
 aside the war and changed the catastrophe. But Cordelia, 
 from her peculiar .nature, neglects such an explanation. Her 
 last fault is like her first ; what is understood of itself she 
 cares not to talk of; that of which her heart is fullest she can 
 least express. So long as she lived and warred, Albany would 
 have to fear that she would subject the whole kingdom to 
 France ; this idea, however, or the possibility that a French 
 army could conquer on English ground, Shakespeare's patriotic 
 feeling never even allows him to admit. Cordelia, like Desde- 
 mona, falls a sacrifice to her own nature; but the circum- 
 stances that accompany her death are of a much more recon- 
 ciling kind. She is conquered in battle, but she has attained 
 the higher conquest, which is all she thought of; she has 
 outwardly restored and inwardly saved her father. She has 
 come with boundless thanks for Kent, who had supported her 
 father, with promises of all her treasures for the physician who 
 should heal him ; even these traits betray that her mind is 
 overflowing with the one idea of her father's restoration, which 
 leads her to forget every subordinate thought as to her own 
 
640 THIRD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPSABW 8 DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 safety. When Lear hears of her arrival, deep shame allows 
 him not to see her. The daughter stands beside him as he 
 sleeps, overflowing with filial feelings and with tender words. 
 He awakes, and glad anxiety surprises her ; now again she has 
 no words to say. The awakened Lear speaks wanderingly, yet 
 to the purpose ; ashamed in the presence of Cordelia, he feels 
 himself as if in the fires of purgatory ; when he is again master 
 of his senses he doubts anew ; he recognises her, and falls on 
 his knees before her ; he is subdued into a tender mood, which 
 in such a nature agreeably surprises us. Is there anything 
 more i;ouching in poetry or more effective on the stage than 
 this recognition ? Lichtenberg declared that the remembrance 
 of this scene, once seen, would last as long as his life. To me 
 it appears that it alone makes ample amends for all the bitter 
 subject of this tragedy ; and indeed the whole of the fourth act 
 of Lear is without its equal- in dramatic poetry. When both 
 are then brought as prisoners before Edmund, Cordelia acknow- 
 ledges that ' with best meaning they have incurred the worst ; ' 
 but she feels herself strong for her own part 'to outfrown 
 fortune's frown.' She asks her father whether they ' shall not 
 see these sisters.' This, perhaps, might have led to their 
 safety, but Lear himself, in the full happiness of having reco- 
 vered her. thirsts for the solitude of a prison as for a blessed 
 abode in paradise. The inner life in the altered man super- 
 sedes the outer. The old nature indeed is true to itself to the 
 last minute. Even now he curses his daughters, as subse- 
 quently, in a paroxysm of his former strength, he slays Corde- 
 lia's executioner. Had he lived and triumphed with Cordelia, 
 revenge might have governed him again ; it might have 
 robbed him of our sympathy, and might not have permitted 
 him to attain to that peace to which the poet intends to lead 
 him. The death of his child forcibly retains him in that peace 
 and gentleness in which he is to depart to a better life. His 
 curse had once been, ' So be my grave my peace, as here I 
 give her father's heart from her ! ' It is fulfilled when he 
 restores his heart to her. Over her corpse the recognition of 
 Kentj the death of his daughters, and the recovery of his throne 
 are but as sounds which scarcely reach his ear ; no worldly joy 
 can rebuild this ' great decay.' To Kent's contentment, and 
 we must indeed say to our own, he follows his departed child, 
 set free from « the rack of this rough world.' In his purified 
 nature he had said to the imprisoned Cordelia, ' Upon such 
 
KING LEAR. 641 
 
 sacrifices tlie gods themselves throw incense ! ' He recognised 
 in her the martyr and saviour — the precursor of a better time. 
 This was Shakespeare's meaning in her death ; if, indeed, like 
 Desdemona, she falls partly in consequence of her nature, she 
 falls at the same time a sacrifice to the errors of the age and 
 surrounding circumstances. ' Thou hast one daughter,' so it 
 says in the play, ' who redeems nature from the general curse, 
 which twain have brought her to.' As to these angel forms in 
 Shakespeare's plays, to those pure ones who fall guiltless sacri- 
 fices to fate, death is but the entrance to their proper home, 
 so to this being death for her father and the sealing of her 
 filial love with her blood is no misfortune. What Kent said at 
 the beginning he makes true of hiniself as it was of Cordelia ; 
 her life was ' held but as pawn to wage against the enemies ' of 
 her king and father ; nor did they ' fear to lose it, his safety 
 being the motive.' 
 
 The tragic end of a whole generation of a bloody race is thus 
 depicted in King Lear, Albany said to Groneril : — 
 
 If that the heavens do not their possible spirits 
 Send quickly down to tame these vile offences, 
 'Twill come : 
 
 Humanity must perforce prey on itself, 
 Like monsters of the deep. 
 
 The gods do revenge these deeds, as we see, by making the 
 monsters of the race destroy one another. Cornwall faUs by his 
 own cruelty, Lear's daughters by suicide and fratricide, Edmund 
 by the hand of his persecuted brother, and Grloster and Lear in 
 consequence of their own faults. When the last of these occurs, 
 and Lear brings Cordelia's corpse in his arms, Kent and Edgar 
 ask each other, in full consciousness of these dread judgments of 
 heaven, whether this is ' the protnised end,' or the ' image of 
 that horror.' The whole race whom we have seen in action lie 
 dead around ; only Edgar and Albany, the noble promisors of a 
 new future, survive the period of wrath, of which it is said, at 
 the conclusion of the piece, the ' young shall never spe so much ' 
 again. For the internal restoration of the whole age is also ac- 
 complished. The gods are acknowledged by G-loster ; • and Lear, 
 who had lost sight of them in that stormy night, sees them 
 again ' throwing incense ' upon the deeds of his daughter ; 
 Edgar recognises the justice of heaven as fulfilled in father and 
 brother; Kent gladly lays down his earthly life; even in 
 
 T T 
 
642 TRIED PERIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Edmund a ray of improvement shines, and Cordelia goes to her 
 death of sacrifice conquering fate. The past ages of ancient 
 and mediaeval nations have produced those great epic myths, 
 the Trojan legend' and the 'Niebelungen Lied,' which similarly 
 celebrate the downfall of barbarous races, whose place is occu- 
 pied by descendants of more advanced civilisation ; and from 
 such periods of Tantalus-like horror arise those Iphigenias and 
 Penelopes, who, like Cordelia in our present play, are the pre- 
 cursors of a better generation. With these tragic epics of old 
 can this epic tragedy alone be compared. The drama has not 
 space sufficient to depict the struggles of whole races and peo- 
 ples ; it is obliged to limit itself to the representation of a similar 
 catastrophe in families. " But in this narrower compass the 
 task of the epos has been accomplished. The poet in this work, 
 in this creation of his own, approaches the most comprehensive 
 works of epic national poetry, "the growth, as it were, of cen- 
 turies ; and Aristotle, could he have seen this, would now more 
 than ever have awarded his praise to tragedy : that with smaller 
 means it attained to the great object of the epos. Though 
 Shakespeare at this time might have read the Homeric poems, lie 
 had no idea of emulating these magnificent myths in his drama. 
 At the most his great success was the result of a vague desire 
 to strain- the theme of his tragedies higher and higher in emu- 
 lation of these poetic achievements. He imagined just as little 
 that this work would admit of so bold a comparison, as that his 
 Hamlet would be a mirror to generations of centuries to come. 
 But if the uncalculating instinct of genius ,in our poet has any- 
 where or in any wise produced greater things than bis conscious 
 and far-seeing understanding planned, it is here. With what 
 wonderful and inexplicable profoundness this instinct was- at 
 work in this greatest tragic poet, compared with the grandest 
 creations of epic poetry, we first perceive when we place Cym- 
 beline by the side of Lear. It is indeed remarkable enough 
 that at the side of those grandest heroic epics of old times, both 
 Greece and Germany possess a second epopee of a more domestic 
 character and a more conciliatory purport, the ' Odyssey' at the 
 side, of the ' Hiad,' ' Gudrun ' at the side of the ' Niebelungen.' 
 In both there is the same theme, the fidelity of a married or 
 betrothed wife, which, after many and severe trials, meets with 
 its reward. Most remarkably the very same subject is treated 
 of also in that song of Imogen (Cymbeline), which not alone in 
 
KING LEAB: 643 
 
 its whole inward bearing, but even in its outward construction, 
 appears as a companion piece to Lear, as the ' Odyssey ' to the 
 ' Iliad.' Allowing it to be mere chance which places these three 
 pair of poems- in parallel reference to each other, it is still one 
 of the most profound chances in which history has pleased to 
 sport, aad only as such it mjist. awaken our keenest interest,. 
 
 T T 2 
 
644 
 
 CYMBELINE. 
 
 Cymbeline, in its style and versification, has always been com- 
 pared with the Winter's Tale, a play to which it also closely 
 approaches in the date of its origin. Dr. Forman saw the 
 Winter's Tale performed in May, 1611, and prohably in this or 
 the preceding year Cymbeline also ; critics are agreed in 
 assigning the year 1609 as the date of its production. We also 
 have nothing to say against this date, as the mention of the 
 subjects of Troilus and Antony and a number of other remi- 
 niscences o^ the study of the ancients indicate the period when 
 the poet wrote most of his plays upon subjects of antiquity. 
 This, however, does not prevent us from considering this play 
 next after Lear, on account of its internal relation with this 
 tragedy, just as little as the somewhat similar period which 
 separates Macbeth from Hamlet did not hinder us from placing 
 these works side by side: 
 
 The subject of Cymbeline, like that of Lear, is formed by 
 the combination of two different actions, derived from widely 
 different sources, and these again appear on the more extensive 
 background of political and military events, as in Lear. We 
 have before shown a connection between the two plays with re- 
 gard to the extent of the action, the richness of the material, 
 and the epic character thus obtained. We compared the two 
 plays also with regard to their national and chronological cha- 
 racter. Cymbeline, like Lear, belongs to the heathen times of 
 the aboriginal Britons. But in this play we are not carried 
 back to the dark ages that- preceded our era, but we are trans- 
 ported to the bright period of Augustus Caesar, when Eoman 
 civilisation had already spread its improving influence as far as 
 Britain. It is not a time as that of which Gloster said the 
 best . of it was machination, hoUowness, and treachery ; but 
 
CYMBELISE. 645 
 
 Leonatus boasts in Eome of his ' accomplished countrymen ; ' 
 
 they are — 
 
 Men more order'd, than when Julius Csesar 
 
 Smil'd at their lack of skill, but found their courage 
 
 Worthy his frowning at : Their discipline 
 
 (Now mingled with their courages) will make known 
 
 To their ^approvers, they are people such 
 
 That mend upon the world. 
 
 In Lear we had throughout to do with a race in which the 
 natural growth of passion found no check, when the happiness 
 of whole families was trifled away in the light trial of a 
 moment, and nature distorted by madness and despair required 
 to be shattered before it could recover a peaceful calm; here, 
 on the contrary, in the very opening scene, which bears, even 
 in external arrangement, an evident likeness to that in Lear, 
 we are shown the noble repose of virtue, which even when 
 tempted td lawful passion makes the calmest resistance. 
 Throughout the whole play we see great trials and sorrows, 
 which disturb, indeed, even composed minds, but do not anni- 
 hilate them, whilst in Lear throughout the slightest shocks of 
 impulses and temptations meet with no resistance. The more 
 civilised age soon shows itself by its more civilised vices. 
 Hypocrisy and falsehood, which in Lear's daughters and in 
 Edmund played only a subordinate part compared to their 
 bloody ambition, here play the principal part. The virtues of 
 fidelity and truth, which in Kent were carried to a harsh 
 extreme, are here tempered with the prudence of a more refined 
 and educated race. "We find here only the remains of that 
 earlier wild age, as we there found only the beginnings of 
 this gentler one. From the beginning to the end of the play 
 we uniformly meet with this weaker degree of passion, and 
 the stronger power of prudence. At the very beginning we see 
 a daughter, who has neglected her filial duties, standing, as 
 Cordelia before Lear, in the presence of a hasty, passionate 
 father, who looks to hej- for the only comfort of his age. The 
 curse of this father falls upon her, as Lear's upon Cordelia ; her 
 lover, Leonatus, is banished, as is the case in Lear with the 
 faithful pleader for Cordelia. But the striking contrast in 
 the way in which this curse is uttered at once shows the 
 prevailing contrast of the two pieces. * Thou should'st repair 
 my youth,' says Cymbeline to his daughter, and ' thou heapest a 
 year's age on me.' (How absurd, when editors proposed by 
 
^46 THIRD FERIOD OF SSAKESPEABE' 3 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 changing a year -to many a yea/r to strengthen this character- 
 istically feeble expression, that is, to destroy the poet's inten- 
 tion !) And then follows his curse : ' Let her languish a drop of 
 blood a day ' (and this is fulfilled by her separation, trial, and 
 sorrow), and let her "' being aged, die of this folly ' (her love to 
 Posthumus), a curse to which the cursed one will gladly say 
 Amen. Thus the father's curse is here fulfilled in pure blessing, 
 as in Lear it is fulfilled in nothing but woe. Leonatus and 
 Irticfgen bear their trials well and are rewarded"; Cymbeline 
 may well submit to have a year heaped on his age for the joy of 
 becoming a 'mother' to his lost sons, while Lear loses his 
 forsaken and recovered daughter ; while in Lear the corpses of 
 •those who frantically rushed to destruction lie one over the 
 other, here happiness in various forms descends on a circle of 
 better men ; while in the one at the conclusion the horrors of 
 the judgment day seemed to break forth, in the other the piece 
 ■closes with ecstasy, peace, reconciliation, feasts, and solemn 
 thanksgivings. 
 
 In King Lear two actions are woven into one, the similar 
 nature of the two demanding such a combination and Suggesting 
 of itself one common idea. It is quite otherwise in Cymbeline. 
 The parts of Which it is composed Stand with reference to their 
 -purport in no relation to each other. Three such parts may be 
 distinguished. Holinshed afforded Shakespeare suggestions for 
 the first part, namely, the dispute about the tribute and the 
 'war between Britain and Eome^ Cymbeline, who had been 
 reigning since the 19th year of the Emperor Augustus, and his 
 two sons, Gruiderius and Arviragus, are there mentioned as 
 historical characters. No source is known for the second 
 action, the fate of 'these sons of Cymbeline ; it must have been 
 ■Shakespeare's own ingenious invention. Belatius, a courtier 
 and warrior, who has guiltlessly fallen into disgrace with 
 Cymbeline, carries off the tWo princes out of revenge into a 
 solitary wood, where we see them grow Up, where one after- 
 wards kills his step-brother Cloten, and both, while unknown 
 to their father, do him good service in the Eoman "war. The 
 third part, apparently a perfectly distinct and dififerent matter, 
 is borrowed from one of Boccaccio's tales (II. 9), and from an 
 English imitation of the same in a 'story entitled ' "Westward 
 for Smelts,' which, according to Steevens, existed in an edition 
 ■of 1603, not seen again since; in some parts Shakespeare's 
 treatment of this portion approaches nearer the Italian, in 
 
CYMBELINE. 647 
 
 others the English narrative. In this tale a hushand lays a 
 wager with a profligate upon the fidelity of his wife ; he is 
 convinced of her faithlessness by an artful device, and commis- 
 sions his servant to kill her. Yielding to her entreaties, the 
 servant sufifers her to live and pretends to his master that she is 
 slain ; she enters the service of a stranger, in male attire, and 
 subsequently meets the deceiver again (under different circum- 
 stances in all three narratives) and: clears her slandered honour. 
 This story, which had been previously dramatised in a French 
 miracle play, Shakespeare connected with Cymbeline by making 
 the slandered wife a daughter of Cymbeline, and her husband 
 an adopted son of his, whom Imogen had independently married, 
 although she was intended by her father and step-mother for 
 her half-brother, Cloten. 
 
 Thus outwardly a connection would be established between 
 these different actions ; but what inner relation could by any 
 means exist between them, what ideal unity, such as we 
 attribute to all Shakespeare's works, should link them together, 
 is hardly discoverable at a first glance. Even Coleridge missed 
 in Cymbeline, compared with Lear, a certain prominent object. 
 But this was wanting in many of Shakespeare's plays, without 
 their internal connection and unity being injured by it ; nay, it 
 even seems that in just these pieces, as, for instance, in the 
 Merchant of Venice, the exact idea and intention in which they 
 are written is all the more prominent. Thus is it also in 
 Cymbeline. We have only to examine its several parts accord- 
 ing to their internal nature and to refer to the motives, and we 
 shall see at once persons and actions forming themselves like 
 crystals into a fixed figure ; we shall catch the idea which links 
 them together, and, comparing the idea and the mode of 
 carrying it out, we shall obtain clearer elucidation of the whole, 
 and shall perceive a work of art, the compass of which widens 
 and the background deepens in such a manner that we can 
 only compare it with the most excellent of all that Shakespeare 
 has produced. Very few critics have ranked this play so high ; 
 but I know of none who have done it justice. Far from aiming 
 at new and singular views, I am always glad when my judg- 
 ment upon the separate works of our poet is in unison with 
 that which time and common consent have confirmed. But in 
 this one instance I must differ entirely from the customary 
 estimation. This play has had, so to speak, ill-luck in having 
 experienced no greater success and favour. The wager of 
 
648 THIRD FEBIOD OF SHAK&SPEABE' S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Posthuinus on the fidelity of his wife seems, like the story of 
 Helena in All's "Well that Ends W^ell, to have repelled many 
 readers, and to have made the piece distasteful. It has been 
 but seldom represented on the stage. The old commentators 
 proscribed it. Johiison declared ' the fiction foolish, the events 
 impossible, the conduct absurd, the faults of the drama too 
 evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation.' Even 
 men who have lately attempted to shield our poet from incon- ■ 
 siderate condemnation of this kind passed over this piece in 
 silence or judged it wrongly. Schlegel was satisfied to call it 
 a most extraordinary combination ; Ulrici designated it ' essen- 
 tially' as ' a comedy of intrigue,' and yet as ' a comedy of fate' 
 also ; but he utterly erre'd, according to our opinion, when he 
 attempted to trace its leading idea. The separate beauties of 
 the work force themselves indeed upon the thoughtful reader. 
 Who could deny the romantic glow of Imogen's adventurous 
 journey ? Who must not admire the charming character of this 
 being ? Who can overlook the richness of imaginative and 
 agreeable matter, or be blind to the moral grandeur with which 
 the piece is designed? The common aim and centre of all 
 these single beauties seemed alone difiicult to discern, and 
 admiration was repressed by objections and limited to separate' 
 passages, just as with Hamlet, so long as the key to the whole 
 could not be found. 
 
 Let us, then, consider once more the purport of the two 
 main actions, and the causes at work in them, in ordeir that we 
 may next examine more closely the acting personages, and 
 through them may approach the inner point of unity in our 
 drama. 
 
 When the sons of Cymbeline were yet in their infancy, 
 there dwelt at his comt a faithful and famous warrior, named 
 Belarius, who by valuable services had deserved the favour and 
 love of his prince. Suddenly Cymbeline's anger fell upon the 
 guiltless man ; calumny deprived him of the royal favour ; two 
 villains swore falsely that he had entered into a treacherous 
 league with the Eomans, and Cymbeline banishes him and robs 
 him of his possessions. The soldier, grown old in the service 
 of the world, could not quietly suffer this punishment for his 
 fidelity ; he took the unmerited disgrace as a warrant for 
 revenge, carried off the two sons of Cymbeline, with their 
 nurse, married her, and brought up the boys as his own children 
 
CYMBELim. 649 
 
 in a solitary cavern in a forest. Here the old warrior, who 
 formerly had not ' paid pious debts to heaven,' becomes a 
 gentle hermit, and endeavours in this wilderness to educate two . 
 worthy royal youths for their country. Experience had taught 
 him that ' the gates of monarch s are arched so high ' that they 
 make men impious against Grod and nature, that no one can keep 
 himself pure in the high places of life, in courts and in cities, 
 amidst the worldly impulses of usury, ambition, and false thirst 
 for glory ; that the art of the court in the world in its present 
 condition cannot easily be renounced, but for the soul's good it 
 were better to be unknown. Embittered by the corruption of 
 the world, he thinks to do the greatest service to the ungrateful 
 and weak king by keeping the boys free and far from it, 
 bringing them up in the pious worship .of nature, warning them 
 of the danger of intercourse with the world by images from 
 nature, showing them the sweetness of retired and humble life, 
 and praising the beetle as safer than the eagle. 'The boys 
 grow up in their solitude in the same simple-hearted goodness 
 as that which has kept their sister Imogen true to her pure 
 feminine nature in the midst of the dangers of the courtly 
 world ; true, simple, innocent, desj)isers of wealth, and touched 
 by no impure thoughts or desires. But as they ripen in years 
 their manly royal blood stirs within them, and urges them to 
 leave the narrow bounds of the forest for the world, for war and 
 action ; they are held in bonds like the beetle by a thread, and 
 they long to take the bold flight of the eagle; the cage 
 becomes too narrow for 'them, in which they, like the prisoned 
 bird, sing their bondage ; they fear a void old age after an 
 inactive life, in which they are not allowed, like Belarius, to 
 look back upon q, fruitful past ; they chase only what flies 
 without resistance before them; they have never known the 
 noble strife with equal foes upon which their fancy raves, they 
 have never stood the trial of their valour ; the truest instinct 
 leads them to yearn for a life of temptations and trials in spite 
 of its dangers, and it is the germ of the fairest promise of 
 wisdom in them that they feel the wisdoni of Belarius to be 
 well suited to his age, yet very unfit for their untested youth. 
 Thus inspired b)y this mixed spirit of gentleness and strength, 
 of modesty and ambition, of the loveliest candour and the most 
 obstinate daring, we find the two youths designated by their 
 foster-father as the ' sweetest companions in the world,' and in 
 
650 TBISD PEEIOV OF SHAKESPEABE' 8 DEAMATIC POETEY. 
 
 their actions they * prove themselves to be. ' They are as 
 
 gentle,' Belarius says s — 
 
 As zephyrs, blowing below the violet, 
 Not wagging his sweet head : and yet as rough, 
 Their royal blood enchaf d, as the rud'st wind, 
 That by the top doth take the mountain-pine 
 And make him stoop to the vale. 
 
 Thus in the service of the graceful Fidele they appear soft, 
 thoughtful, and tender as women : the one puts off his ' clouted 
 brogues,' not to disturb his sleep ; the other mourns so deeply 
 over his supposed death that he cannot sing^ But when the 
 alarm of war approaches they rush madly to the battle, and with 
 the help of Belarius they recover the lost fight, the three like 
 three thousand in confidence and valour. On the first impres- 
 sion they seem both alike in character ; on a closer inspection 
 it is not so. The elder', Gruiderius, the destined heir, is the 
 more manly of the two. At the very beginning he is the more 
 successful hunter. When he meets the rude Cloten without 
 knowing him, when the latter provokes him ' with language 
 that would have made him spurn the sea if it could roar so at 
 him,' and threatens his life, he kills him without hesitation, 
 confesses it (to the envy of Arviragus) to his alarmed foster- 
 father, and afterwards without fear or reflection to the royal 
 step-father himself, although warned by Belarius that this 
 acknowledgment would bring upon him torture and death. 
 Equally hasty and passionate Guiderius also shows himself 
 when he is ready to rush into battle with the Eomans, even 
 without his father's blessing. In contrast to him, Arviragus 
 appears throughout more tender and gentle, more communica- 
 tive and richer in his choice of language. Gruiderius is inclined 
 to believe of him that he plays a solemn instrument of mourn- 
 ing, idly and boy-like, witiiout a cause. When over the sup- 
 posed corpsQ of Fidele he mentions the pretty legend that 
 Eobin Redbreasts covered unburied bodies with moss and 
 flowers, Gruiderius blames him for playing ' in wench-like words 
 with that which is so serious.' 
 
 The story of the carrying off of the princes by Belarius 
 happens long before the beginning of our play ; it is slightly 
 mentioned at first, and the interlocutors find it strange and in- 
 credible that royal children should be so carelessly guarded and 
 so indolently sought after that no trace of them should be 
 found. But we now at once meet with a second incident 
 
CYMBELINE. 651 
 
 happening to the king's third child before our eyes, and are 
 thereby initiated so accurately into the circumstances and rela- 
 tions of the court, that in some degree we can comprehend how 
 this unlikely event might before have happened. We see a 
 king utterly weak, good-natured, easily excited though in- 
 dolent, almost unaccountable from a lack of all self-will ; ruled 
 and prejudiced as he once had been by slanderers against 
 Belarius, he is now just as much ruled by a hypocritical wife, 
 with whom he had shortly before been united in his second 
 marriage ; and he is just as much prejudiced by her against his 
 daughter Imogen and his foster-son Leonatus, and in favour 
 of his step-son Cloten, a creature 'too bad for bad report.' 
 This distortion of the poor king's judgment works now as it did 
 before. All around him are combined against him and his 
 misleader. As formerly the nurse allowed herself to be bribed 
 to the robbery, so now the courtiers are all at heart on the side 
 of Leonatus and Imogen, although with their lips they play 
 the parts of the grossest hypocrites towards Cloten whom they 
 utterly despise. The queen persecutes Imogen and her faithful 
 servant, even attempting poison ; but the physician, who pre- 
 tends to serve her, deceives her, making her and her means 
 harmless. There is no one who behaves honourably, to the king 
 and his new family, but the good Imogen has the pity and 
 sympathy of everyo&e. If she also had resolved to fly with 
 her Leonatus it is eyident that all means were ready and all 
 ways open to allow her disappearance to be as complete as that 
 of the king's sons before. 
 
 The hypocrisy and dissimulation of the courtiers, the web 
 of backbitings, persecutions, crafty disobedience, false trust 
 and true falsehood, which we perceive in Cymbeline's house, 
 explains itself as soon as we examine the principal characters 
 that form the circle of the court. The queen is described by 
 the courtiers as a ' crafty devil who coins plots hourly,' as ' a 
 woman that bears all down with her brain.' The deep design 
 in all her proceedings, her cool unconscionableness, reveal them- 
 selves at once when she feigns to her physician a long and con- 
 stant interest in herbs and their properties, only that she may 
 be able at last to prepare slow poisons without incurring sus- 
 picion. Her ambition and love of rule incite her to wickedness, 
 but she uses the deepest hypocrisy to conceal these her motives 
 as weU. as their results. Nevertheless, she cannot mislead the 
 happy instinct of Imogen and her physician, the unsuspecting 
 
652 THIEB FEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Pisanio is only half deceived, the weak king alone yields to the 
 most unconditional trust. She stirs up the king's wrath against 
 Posthunius and Imogen, she -acts with hypocritical friendliness 
 the part of pleader for the persecuted pair, 'tickling where she 
 wounds.' Subsequently she pretends the greatest tenderness 
 towards Imogen when the king's anger at her stubbornness is 
 greater ; but this anger also is her work. To imite her rude 
 son Cloteh to Imogen, that she may secure the throne for him 
 and dominion for herself, was but a first thought with her ; she 
 soon with feminine p'enetration perceives the firm bond between 
 Imogen and Leonatus ; she plots, therefore, against her life ; 
 she is glad to hear of her flight. To rule is her whole and sole 
 aim ; her own son is but the necessary tool for her schemes. 
 She wishes, therefore, the death of the king himself; she even 
 meditates upon a slow poison under which he was to waste 
 away, whilst she would nurse him to the last with a false ap- 
 pearance of the tenderest watchfulness and care. And yet, 
 though alive, he stood so little in her way ! She was all- 
 powerful over him in the house and state. She set him against 
 his beloved daughter, she banished his foster-son in whom he 
 might have had a support ; she ventures even to vex the king, 
 and he ' buys her injuries to be friends ; ' she it is who opposes 
 the Roman tribute, although faith and gratitude demanded it 
 of Cymbeline who was personally indebted to Csesar, and these 
 feelings induce him subsequently to pay it willingly notwith- 
 standing his victory. The king is inconsolable when, at the 
 commencement of the war, his wife falls sick, so much was hers 
 the master mind. When he discovers that she loved not him 
 but greatness, that she had had designs against his life, that 
 upon the disappearance of her son, which rendered all these 
 crimes unavailing, she had become mad and had died, he is 
 obliged to- confess that he would not have believed her crime, 
 ' had she not spoke it dying,' and, with an expression which 
 equally characterises her perfect hypocrisy and falsehood as 
 much as his touching - weakness, he says : ' it had been vicious 
 to have mistrusted her.' 
 
 To this frightful picture of clever wickedness and dissimu- 
 lation her son Cloten appears as a contrast in straightforward 
 insolence and rudeness incapable of concealment. In outward 
 form like the royal Leonatus, if we except his head, he is in- 
 wardly a perfect contrast ; compared with that masterpiece of 
 manliness he is an unfinished creature ; compared with the 
 
CYMBELINE. 653 
 
 poor foster-son, so full of innate nobility, calm consciousness, 
 and genuine self-reliance, he is a prince of the lowest and 
 meanest character, full of the brutal arrogance which even 
 in high station assumes the appearance of clownish pride; 
 a clod without a soul, whose sputtering and blustering 
 speech at once expresses the emptiness of his head and the 
 brutishness of his disposition. It was not possible to devise 
 for the sweet Imogen a greater blockhead for a wooer. How 
 often he consults his mirror, how captivated he is with himself 
 and his rank, how cleverly his mother urges him to bring his 
 beloved one pleasing serenades, yet he is obliged himself to 
 confess that he does not understand the process of love ; and we 
 are convinced of this when he coarsely attempts to bribe 
 Imogen's faithful ladies, when he addresses herself with his 
 studied speeches, and wearies the patience of this gentlest 
 creature. Too thick-headed for slandering, he discredits her 
 Leonatus that he may make her dislike him, and he is requited 
 , for his conduct by her confession that she thinks him too base 
 to be her husband's groom. From this rnoment his offended 
 pride urges him to blind revenge ; he attempts intrigues like 
 his mother, and ever equally self-conceited and awkward he 
 endeavours to gain over Pisanio ; he proposes to kill Leonatus, 
 to subject Imogen to the lowest degradation, and then to cast 
 her off. He knows that his mother governs Cymbeline, and 
 therefore he dares everything. He fears not a personal 
 encounter with Leonatus ; he is too inexperienced to have an 
 idea of danger or to have a standard of his own strength and 
 that of another ; having no judgment he has no sense of fear. 
 Besides, hatred makes him blind, his stupid conceit urges him 
 to utter impudent bravadoes, the flattery of his courtiers makes 
 him believe in his own heroism. "When he had spent whole 
 nights in play with bad companions amid cursing and swearing 
 he broke occasionally the head of a partner with the bowls,- 
 and this the com'tiers put up with without demanding satisfac- 
 tion, and if one of the company did demand it he refused it 
 ,on account of his superior rank. This nourished his rude 
 behaviour as well as his conceit ; once Posthumus himself 
 avoided his sword ; otherwise he would have met him with the 
 same fool-hardiness as that with which he met the far younger 
 Gruiderius, by whom he falls. This character has been called 
 obsolete ; I know not whether, highly coloured as it is, it be 
 not the lasting type of the man of privileges and of rank, the 
 
654 THIRB FEEIOD OF 8HAKE8FEABE' 8 DBAMATIC FOETEY. 
 
 courtier who has grown up in nothingness and has been trained 
 in self-conceit. We must seek his original among the ranks of 
 the military and the squires ; there at least Miss Seward, ac- 
 cording to one of her letters, met with it exactly. In a captain 
 of her acquaintance she found just the expressionless gloom of 
 countenance, the uncertain walk, the volleys of words, the busy 
 insignificance, the feverish outbursts rf valour, the wilful 
 moroseness, the capricious malice, and even the 'occasional 
 gleams of reason under the clouds of folly — qualities which 
 are certainly quite in the nature of this character.. 
 
 In the midst of a court thus constituted, by the side of 
 these weak, wicked, and untutored rulers, and from the throng 
 of hypocritical creatures who surround them, there rise two 
 personages upon whom the whole glory and worth of perfected 
 humanity seems to have been shed. Nowhere in any of his 
 plays has Shakespeare so forcibly displayed forms so ideal upon 
 the very threshold of the scene. The foster-son of CymbeHne, 
 Leonatus Posthumus, is the son erf one Sicilius, who had served 
 with distinction King Tenantius, Cymbeline's father. Two 
 elder brothers of Leonatus had fallen in the service of their 
 country ; the father, overwhelmed with grief, had followed 
 them ; the desolate widow bore Posthumus after his father's 
 death and died at his birth. Thus more strongly recommended 
 to the throne and the court than even Belarius by the merits 
 of his family, Leonatus is still more so from his personal im- 
 portance. He repaid his education with early ripeness, and in 
 his early youth he stands forth as a sample of perfect manhood. 
 Without seeing yet for ourselves the actions of the young man, 
 the actual proofs of his worth, in the very first scene we hear 
 from the mouths of the courtiers his almost over-estimated 
 value, and we have at any rate the speaking proof of the 
 universal esteem in which he is held — an esteem that disarms 
 envy itself. They say he was — 
 
 A sample to the youngest ; to the more mature, 
 A glass that feated them ;. and to the graver, 
 A child that guided dotards. 
 
 They describe a perfect harmony in his character, while they 
 style him without equal in inward worth and outward fairness. 
 Not alone to the susceptible Imogen did he appear to possess 
 the face of Jove, the thigh of Mars, the foot of Mercmy, and 
 ' the brawns of Hercules,' but lachimo also says that he -sat 
 ' 'mongst men like a descended god.' The same man in the 
 
CYMBELINE. 655 
 
 hour of his remorse calls him ' the best of all amongst the 
 rarest of good ones ; ' he compares his calmness to that of 
 virtue itself, and even the wicked queen seems to acknowledge 
 the wisdom which inspires him with composure and patience. 
 Thus every tongue praises this man, but that which exalts him 
 ' most is the choice of Imogen. For she is as a woman almost 
 more perfect than he as a man, although she esteems him far 
 above herself. With exquisite modesty each gives the praise 
 from self to the other ; ' I, my poor self, did exchange for 
 ' you,' says Leonatus to Imogen, ' to your so infinite loss ; ' and 
 she calls him, in presence of her father, ' a man worth any 
 woman,' who ' overbuys h&r almost the sum he pays ! ' She, no 
 less than he, appears in all eyes as the phoenix of her sex and 
 as the paragon of the age. As he is compared with the gods, 
 she is called by lachimo, that despiser of men, ' a heavenly 
 angel,' and Belarius at the first glance deems her a divinity, a 
 fairy, or an earthly paragon ; corresponding to the godlike 
 forms to which she coUipares Posthumus, she might herself be 
 called a Hebe and a Psyche combined. The impression which 
 she makes on Belarius' sons, who unite the acute perception of 
 the savage with the tender feeling and discernment of the 
 highly cultivated, is that of a being full of enchanting grace 
 and innocence. To the rude Cloten she appears to possess ' the 
 best ' of all women, and Lucius, whom she serves as a page, 
 declares that 
 
 never master had 
 
 A page so kind, so duteous, diligent, 
 
 So tender over his occasions, true, 
 
 So feat, so nurselike. » 
 
 This rare couple have married in Jupiter's temple without 
 the knowledge of Imogen's parents ; the king's daughter, in 
 the aversion of her whole nature to Cloten, bestowed herself 
 Upon the orphaned foster-brother with whom she thought to 
 adorn the throne of Britain ; she ' chose an eagle, and avoided 
 a puttock.' Like Eomeo and Juliet, like Othello and Desde- 
 mona, they had c,ontracted an independent marriage. But 
 how different are the characters of those who now take this 
 step, how different the circumstances of the case, and how 
 different the results ! From the traits of these characters, and 
 from those of the story of their love, we at once infer that these 
 far more fortified souls will steer through their venturous fate 
 quite differently to the vehement Eomeo and the dark Othello. 
 No sudden storm of passion has driven Leonatus to Imogen as 
 
636 THIBD PEBIOD OF 8HAKBSPEASE' S SBAMATIC POETEY. 
 
 Eomeo to Juliet ; they had grown up together, he ' was her 
 ' adorer ' from conviction and long intercourse, it is a love of 
 slow growth and long standing that unites thepi ; their marriage . 
 was an act of self-defence against the ambition of the step- 
 mother ; Imogen, as heiress to the throne, is bound to choose a 
 worthy consort ; an orphan in the midst of her family, robbed 
 of her brothers, she seeks discreetly a support for herself 
 and for her country ; in accepting Cloten she would have 
 done rather that which filial duty required, but not that 
 which patriotism demanded. Neither saw any reason for con- 
 cealing the marriage ; the king, heartily offended at it, banishes 
 the husband and orders his daughter to confinement. No 
 resistance, no thought of elopement, no despair, no pusillanimous 
 despondency, no execration nor impatience escape from either of 
 them; She yields to her father's anger, she bids her new-made 
 consort 'be gone,' she consents to 'abide the hourly shot of 
 angry eyes,' but her comfort is his Hfe and her fidelity ; she 
 conscientiously obeys her holy filial duty to her father, but his 
 rage can have no power against their union. Would it have 
 been more difficult for the adored Leonatus to carry off his 
 Imogen than for Belarius long ago to carry off the king's sons ? 
 He thinks not of it. With the noblest calmness of mind he 
 takes a tender but hasty farewell ; as he is departing the rude 
 Cloten meets him and insults and challenges him; he could 
 have slain him in self-defence in an honoiu-able duel ; he does 
 it not ; he does not suffer his patience to be disturbed, and 
 passes him contemptuously, having ' rather play'd than fought.' 
 In Italy he lives quietly with his friendly host in proud 
 patience ; he does nothing to reconcile or win the king ; he 
 waits till summer succeeds winter, for he is secure of the 
 indestructible honour of his wife for all future ; he looks upon 
 her as a priceless, unmerited gift of the gods, and trusts to 
 them to preserve their gift for him. She also remains in a 
 similar state of mind. However deep may be the pang of 
 separation to her, she suffers in addition the less endurable 
 pain, the wearisome urgency of her coarse wooer ; she feels no 
 bitterness, nay, she compensates for her vanished outward 
 happiness by the inward blessedness of the sweetest thoughts 
 which link her for ever to her Leonatus. 
 
 How charmingly has the poet allowed us to cast a glance 
 into thi? life of fancy and feeling ! In the moment of farewell, 
 when the greater grief makes her insensible to her father's 
 
CYMBELINE. 657 
 
 wrath, she dwells in self- forgetting sorrow upon her departing 
 
 husband ; she forgot what she had intended to say and do. 
 
 She would have given him ' a kiss, set betwixt two charming 
 
 words,' and would have made him 'swear the shes of Italy 
 
 should not betray her interest ; ' she would have told him at 
 
 what time she ' was in heaven ' praying for him ; at what hours 
 
 he ' could encounter her with orisons.' When he is gone she 
 
 sends her faithful servant after him, whom he with like 
 
 thoughtful care would have left with the deserted one ; this 
 
 servant is to hear and see the last of him, yet he could 
 
 not satisfy her ; she shows him how much farther her longing 
 
 eyes would have followed him. When he is away she is solely 
 
 occupied with him, ' her supreme crown of grief ; ' when 
 
 company is announced she excliaims, ' Who may this be ? Fye ! ' 
 
 She is happiest alone in her solitude. When his name is 
 
 mentioned, when tidings come of him, her colour changes with 
 
 glad surprise. She bears his letters next her heart. Before 
 
 she opens them she prays with touching gladness for 'good 
 
 news,' for his love, health, content, yet not content that they 
 
 are asunder. Praying, as she would have told him, she goes to 
 
 bed at midnight thinking of him and kissing his bracelet ; at 
 
 night she weeps as she remembers him ' 'twixt clock and clock.' 
 
 Imogen has often, and rightly, been considered as the most 
 
 lovely and artless of the female characters which Shakespeare 
 
 has depicted. Her appearance sheds warmth, fragrance, and 
 
 brightness over the whole drama. More true and simple than 
 
 Portia and Isabella, she is even more ideal. In harmonious 
 
 union she blends exterior grace with moral beauty, and both. 
 
 'snth fresh straightforwardness of feeling and the utmost 
 
 clearness of understanding. She is the sum and aggregate of 
 
 fair womanhood, such as at last the poet conceived it. We 
 
 may doubt whether in all poetry there is a second creature so 
 
 charmingly depicted with such perfect truth to nature. At the 
 
 same time the picture is as highly finished as is generally 
 
 possible only to the wider range of epic poetry. Imogen is, 
 
 next to Hamlet, the most fully drawn character in Shakespeare's 
 
 poetry ; the traits of her nature are almost inexhaustible ; the 
 
 poet makes amends by this perfected portrait of a woman of 
 
 this artless kind for the many sketches of similar natures in the 
 
 dramas of this period which he has merely outlined. When he 
 
 transports us into Imogen's bedchamber it is as lifelike as if we 
 
 sensibly breathed the atmosphere of it. Not only does he 
 
 V u 
 
658 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 mention and describe her outward beauty, but we see (on 
 merely reading the play) the graceful movements which so 
 well become her, we are acquainted with all her endowmentsi — 
 how ' angel-like ' she sings, how ' neat her cookery ' is, as if 
 ' Juno had been sick, and she her dieter,' how gracefully she 
 wears her garments, so that she ' made great Jvmo angry.'- But 
 her inward qualities far outweigh these outward ones. And it 
 is our main business to make this clear to pur minds, because 
 she is the chief personage of the play, the one which leads us to 
 the understanding of the whole. 
 
 The characteristic feature of this natui^e, which displays 
 itself again and again in all the strange and most various 
 situations in which the poet has placed Imogen ^ is her mental 
 freshness and healthiness. In the untroubled clearness of her 
 mind, and unspotted purity of her being, every outward 
 circumstance is reflected, unruffled and undistorted, in the 
 mirror of Imogeii's soul, and at every occasion she acts from the 
 purest instinct of a nature as sensible as it is practical. Kich 
 in feeling, she is never morbidly sentimental ; rich in fancy, 
 she is never fantastic ; full of true, painful, earnest love, she is 
 never touched by sickly passion. She is mistress of her soul 
 under the most violent emotions, self-coinmand accompanies 
 her strongest feelings, and the most discreet actions follow her 
 outbursts of vehement passion, even when bold resolutions are 
 required. We have seen how imtroubled and imhesitatingly 
 she took the great step of her marriage when she was once 
 satisfied that it was unavoidable. We have seen how prudently 
 she weighed her duty between father and husband, and with 
 what quiet composure she yielded to the necessity of separation. 
 With this same composure she bears the results of this 
 separation. Exposed to the wrath of her father, to the falseiiess 
 of her step-mother, to the urgency of the rude Cloten, she 
 endures all with the peace of mind belonging to that happy 
 female nature which can keep unpleasant thoughts at a distance, 
 and can forget the pressure of the present by glad recollections 
 of the past. Her ladies and attendants, Pisanio, and the nobles 
 of the court, lament her unhappy situation — she herself scarcely 
 ever complains of it ; not until she has fled from Cloten does 
 she perceive that his love-suit has been to her ' as fearful as a 
 siege.' No harsh word against father or mother escapes her 
 lips, nor before another even a harsh word respecting them ; 
 for her father's sake she is sorry when the unnatural mother 
 
CYMBELINE. 659 
 
 who had aimed at her own life is dead. She bears no resent- 
 ment for injuries, nor do suffering and trouble press too heavily 
 upon her. In this guileless nature evil impressions are not 
 lasting, and she does not- torment herself with too. much 
 reflection ; she is led by the most enviiable instinct ; she has 
 neither the superiority of a masculine mind like Portia, nor the 
 timidity of Cordelia, nor the thoughtless inconsiderateness of 
 Desdemona,, nor the cheerfulness of Julia. Naturally cheerful, 
 joyous, ingenuous, born to fortune, trained to endurance, she 
 has nothing of that agitated passionateness which foretells a 
 tragic lot, and which brings trouble upon itself of its- own 
 creating. At the end of the play, when, shaking ofif her long 
 sufferings and cruel deceptions, she gives herself at once to the 
 happiest feelings, we see how quickly she jests and is playful, 
 with her brothers, how brightly her eyes glance round ' the 
 counterchange severally in all,' and we feel that^thi&being^fit 
 for every situation, improved by every trial, has been wpnder- 
 fuUy gifted by nature to be equal' to every occasion. ' 
 
 Temptations are not wanting.. There are times when the 
 slanderer (lachimo) makes her doubt the constancy of her 
 Posthumus, and when the tempter attacks her own honour. It 
 is not easy to awaken her suspicion against Posthumus. Upon 
 lachimo's first hints she thinks of sickness ; :, not until he is 
 very explicit does she believe herself forgotten ; then, sunk in 
 silent grief, she refuses to hear more. lachimo urges her to 
 take revenge, without saying what rev6nge he meant; but 
 towards Posthumus Imogen could haVe • no revenge. Not 
 indeed, that her dovelike disposition felt no emotions of anger ; 
 when she suspects Pisanio of murder she calls down upon him 
 all the curses. which the 'madded Hecuba gave the Grreeks,' and 
 adds her own to boot; but for Posthumus she had none., 
 When, after this, laehimo explains Ms plan of vengeance she 
 quickly comprehends his intention, and recovers at once from 
 the confusion of her thoughts; her first word is to recall 
 Pisanio, whom lachimo for his own ends had sent away ; she 
 begins with the rarest tact, and with the firmness of innocence 
 to take measures for her own defence before she allows her 
 angry heart to relieve itself by words of repulse and abhorrence. 
 And again, when lachimo pretends that his real attempt was 
 but feigned to try her, she believes him, him whom Posthumus 
 had recommended to her as a man of honour, upon his sole 
 word ; without any remains of anger she takes the sting from 
 
 tr Ti 2 
 
660 THIBD FEBIOD OF SHAKESPEASE' S DEAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 her heai^t, and quickly recoTOrs her composure and courtesy 
 towards her guest and the friend of her husband. A deep 
 insight into human nature is not common to women of this 
 character ; Imogen knows the queen, the deep dissembler, who 
 is daily with her, and that for ever, once she has seen through 
 her; but with the stranger she persists in her unsuspicion. 
 She is somewhat slow in believing evil of Posthumus, but she is 
 quick in believing good of him ; she feels no offence at the 
 trial, even when she thought it designed by Posthumus, but she 
 does not, indeed, reflect at all about it ; she believed him for 
 one moment unfaithful ; now that she knows that he is true to 
 her all is right again, and she sees no further gi-ound for 
 speculations. 
 
 We see that the trial of her fidelity rebounds powerlessly 
 from her ; the ramparts of her honour are 'easily defended ; as 
 she, thus far, would not have thought such an attack possible, it 
 must henceforth seem impossible to the tempter himself. But 
 the poet depicts a lasting siege of the forsaken being, and he 
 shows us at the same time the palladium that makes her im- 
 pregnable. We see her again in the evening after lachimo's 
 visit reading till midnight, intending to rise again at. four 
 o'clock in the morning. She read the tale of Philomel as far ,, 
 as the passage where she yields to the seducer Tereus. This 
 story and the day's experience rest obscurely in her mind when 
 she utters her short prayer, commending herself to the protec- 
 tion of the gods, beseeching them to guard her ' from fairies, and 
 the tempters of the night.' She then sleeps calmly ; her fancy 
 is not excited ; her healthy blood is not easily stirred by sensual 
 emotions ; she had often shrunk with ' rosy prudency ' even 
 from the lawful caresses of her beloved one. Pisanio esteems it 
 as honourable in her that she undergoes 
 
 More goddess-Kke than wife-like, such assaults 
 As would take in some virtue. 
 
 But she herself never would have had a thought that it was 
 meritorious to ward off these assaults. And least of all if it 
 were the question of Cloten's assaults. And yet it is this man 
 whose ' siege ' at length forces her out of the calmness of her 
 passive resistance, and drives her to a positive sally. Yet this 
 is not by any attempt upon her fidelity. Only when he dares 
 in her presence to abuse Posthumus with coarse words, of 
 shame, the gall which is not wanting in her composition 
 
CYMBEZmE. 661 
 
 is stirred up, she loses patience and composure, forgets 
 her feminine grace, and bitterly repulses him with harsh 
 reviUngs ; for she cannot feign peace and friendship when once 
 revolt sits in her heart. By this one act of self-forgetfulness 
 she calls down upon herself new and severer trials. Cloten now 
 forges plots against her honour and against the life of her Pos- 
 thumus. She receives a deceptive- hint to meet her home- ' 
 returning husband in Wales. After these outbursts of passion, 
 after this open rupture with Cloten, she suddenly, in her excited 
 longing, forgets all consideraticm for her parents, and prepares, 
 without any reflection, to leave the court ; her impatient ques- 
 tions concerning the one object of her thoughts succeed each 
 other rapidly, each one more pressing than the other, and the- 
 last ever the most urgent; her joy, her transport, her careless- 
 ness of the consequences of this desired meeting are equally 
 great. If we could not before discover the depth of her love in 
 her tranquil composure, we cannot now fail- to recognise it in' 
 the excess of her agitated longing. We might be doubtfut 
 whether we had the same calm peaceful being before us, if the 
 prudence and forethought with- which she- prepares for the- 
 secret journey did not prove to us that she is even now the same 
 discreet being as before. 
 
 From the height of the glad hope of meeting Leonatus 
 again she is to fall into the depth of anguish. She is to hear- 
 that her husband thinks her faithless, and has ordered- her ser- 
 vant to kill her. When she reads this order ' the paper cuts- 
 her throat.' But she does not stand dumb and confounded, as 
 Desdemona before OtheUo ; she soon finds touching complaints 
 and asseverations, which convince Pisanio of her innocence. 
 She recollects lachimo's slanders, and she now believes them 
 true. To think that he may have slandered her also to 
 Posthumus, as he had slandered Posthumus to herj goes far be- 
 yond her apprehension of the greatness of human wickedness. 
 She can only explain the inhuman command of her husband by 
 thinking he has become untrue to her ; obedient even to death 
 she offers herself -willingly like "■ a lamb to the butcher,' When- 
 Pisanio pities her, and gives hra- hope that all- may have arisen 
 from misunderstanding and slander, her oppressed soul quickly 
 revives. Her reason kno-ws of nothing to justify the cruelty, 
 her heart vaguely wards off despair. Even now she feels no 
 emotion of revenge or hatred ; she has- but the one thought of 
 seeing him again and saving him, for she believes in- his repent- 
 
662 THIBD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEAEE' S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 ance. The good soul feels only pity for the persecutor, the 
 injured only sorrow for the injurer. She reflects that in such 
 evils ' the traitor stands in worse case of woe ' than those that 
 are betrayed, that remorse will seize hinpi when he is ' disedged 
 by her that he now tires on ; ' that ' his memory Will then be 
 panged by her ' who for his sake had ' put into contempt the 
 suits of princely fellows,' and that he will hereafter find that 
 this was no act of common passage but a strain of rareness. 
 The reader will feel with what exquisite art the poet, under 
 given circumstances and states of feeling, clothes a fault into 
 the most attractive virtue ^ how, in this moment when Imogen 
 expostulates with the beloved ofifender, there lies the utmost 
 sweetness in this self-praise, because of the wounded and purest 
 self-reliance, the injured yet deepest sensibility, the disdained 
 yet most devoted love which is ej^pressed in it. 
 
 In this state of despair she is ever alike collected and 
 courageous, ready to seize on every means for bringing about a 
 reunion with him, even adventuring 'peril to her modesty, 
 though not death on it ! ' On Pisanio's advice she is ready to 
 seek her husband in Eome, to leave the court, her parents, and 
 England, and in male attire to enter the service of Lucius. The 
 poet makes her assume the dress of a page, like Julia, Portia, 
 Viola, Eosalind, and Jessica, a favourite effect on the stage at 
 that tirtte, invited by the custom of boys acting the female parts. 
 In this in^ance the disguise is especially-charming, because 
 Imogen is quite incapable of laying aside her feminine nature 
 with her feminine attire. Pisanio tells her that she must give 
 up ' fear and niceness, ithe handmaids of all women, or, more 
 truly, woman its :pretty self.' In these words the feminine 
 nature of Imogen is entirely described. And this same charming 
 nature she must now exchange for 'a waggi&h courage;' she 
 must be ' ready in gibes, quick-answered, saucy, and as quarrel- 
 lous as the weasel,' as aU. those KosaUnds are. She undertakes 
 this, but she cannot carry it out. It is weU for her that in her 
 assumed manhood she only meets with her virgin-like brothers 
 in their cave, and the ' holy ' Lucius ; otherwise her modesty and 
 delicacy would have soon betrayed her sex. Suddenly at last in 
 the wide circle of the camp, when she sees her Posthumus again, 
 in the unconscious pressure of feeling she forgets the man's part 
 she had undertaken and inconsiderately betrays herself. 
 
 How enchanting is she in her brothers' cave, when she un- 
 expectedly meets these ' kind creatures,' who are kindred to ,her 
 
CYMBELnm. 663 
 
 in nature even more than in Mood I Idylls so charming as 
 these scenes are can scarcely have been written again ; these 
 scenes, said Schlegel, could inspire a w6rn-oiit imagination anew 
 with poetry. She enters the empty cave, confused and ex- 
 hausted, she eats, she prays for the provider and intends to 
 leave money for her meat, when she is surprised by the , hermits, 
 who receive her with their natural delight in all human beings, 
 who are soon enchanted with the attraction of her appearance, 
 and take a still warmer interest in her when with careful ob-, 
 servation they have remarked how 'grief and patience are 
 rooted ' in her soul. But she on her side also feels herself no 
 less powerfully attracted. Among such good creatures her grief 
 would soon have been assuaged, aye, perhaps she might have 
 forgotten her journey to Lucius and to Posthumus I Not that 
 any feminine feeling had drawn her to the amiable youths. 
 The poet has taken great care not to let us imagine this. The 
 brothers indeed soon have an instinctive feeling that this beau- 
 tiful boy has more of woman's nature in him than man's ; when 
 from a natural impidse she relieves them of all domestic matters, 
 when she entreats them to go hunting, on the plea that their 
 daily custom shall not be interrupted, they say that she must 
 be their housewife, and GKiiderius declares that ' were she a 
 woman, he should woo her hand.' But she, as a woman, does 
 not respond to this. She has alt at once found here what she 
 had never dreamt of in the world— creatures who in their 
 untainted innocence even surpassed her Posthumus ; how 
 natural that on this occasion the remembrance of Posthumus, 
 without her expressing it, is no longer so clear as it was, that 
 she reflects on his falsity, that she imagines the possibility, that 
 the wish arises in her heart, of living a life of innocence here 
 with these innocent beings, among whom she had found a sub- 
 stitute for her uncertain, aye, lost support ! But, nevertheless, 
 her fidelity to Posthumus could not even here be tempted ! As 
 a woman, as Imogen, to leave him and belong to another is a 
 thought that even now never enters her pure, faithful soul. 
 ' Pardon me,' in these meaning woi-ds as ingenuous as they are 
 innocent, the slumbering, nascent wish is clothed : — 
 
 Pardon me, gods I ' ' 
 
 I'd change my sex to be companion with them, 
 Since Leonatus' false. 
 
 This wish to stay with the dwellers in the cave, preserving 
 
664 THIBD FEEIOD OF SHAKE8PEAEE' S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 intact Iter sacred duty towards Posthumus, has its source in yet 
 another feature in Imogen's character, connected with her 
 healthy simplicity, and with her natural view of a world abound- 
 ing with all that is unnatural. She had remained true, simple, 
 and innocent at the court, in the midst of intrigues and base- 
 ness. She could thus maintain herself only by virtue of that 
 womanly property of not allowing herself to be influenced by 
 hateful external things. But in the secret depths of her soul 
 another impulse was also at work, an influence which alienates 
 her from all the splendour of high life, although this had been 
 represented to her as the real essence of life, and all beyond the 
 court had been designated as savage. When Posthumus is 
 banished she wishes herself ' a neatherd's daughter,' and him 
 the ' neighbour shepherd's son ; ' she would have thought it • 
 happiness if she had been ' thief-stolen as her two brothers ' 
 were ; she feels miserable with her longings amid the splendour 
 of rank ; those seemed to her blessed who, ' how mean soe'er, 
 could have their honest wills.' Here in he/ brothers' cave she 
 now meets with beings who prove to her that she has all, along 
 been deceived, that her inward impulse would have guided her 
 better, that 
 
 The imperious seas breeds monsters : for the dish, 
 
 Poor tributary rivers as sweet fish. 
 
 Here in the cave shd remembers the sentence that expresses 
 her own innermost opinion : ' Man and man should be brothers; 
 but clay and clay differs in dignity, whose dust is both alike ! ' 
 She fosters this opinion not only from an innate inclination for 
 a quiet life, such as is more suitable to women, not only from 
 the sorrowful experience which she has had of courtly life, but 
 she fosters it also because she would far rather abandon the 
 throne than her Posthumus. It is for this reason that the 
 wish escapes her here in the cave that, these youths could be 
 her brothers ; then had ' her prize been less, and so more equal 
 ballasting to her Posthumus.' As the royal blood in these 
 brothers longed with the might of natural desire to escape out 
 of lowliness and solitude into the life of the world, so her 
 woman's blood, on the Contrary, as naturally longed to escape 
 out of the intrigues of the world, so well known to her, into 
 retirement and peace. 
 
 Thus, through that wish of Imogen's to remain in the cave, 
 we obtain a glimpse at the more remote background of her 
 nature ; but we must not in so doing forget the nearer motive ; 
 
CYMBELim. 665 
 
 the pang caused by Posthumus' unfaithfulness and cruelty had 
 gnawed at her heart, and she reflected involuntarily on the 
 chance that she might have lost him for ever. Grief and 
 patience, as the brothers perceived, 'mingled their spurs 
 together ' in her ; she belongs to him still, if he will belong to 
 her; she estranges hersel^f from him in thought, in case he 
 should remain faithless ; the same healthy nature influences 
 her even after the worst experience ; her heart might perhaps 
 break under the certainty of his faithlessness, but she would 
 not die of a broken heart on this account, nor even for his 
 death. The poet shows her to us awakening out of her swoon 
 beside the corpse of Cloten, which she imagines to be that of 
 Posthumus. She turns away from the sight with horror, and 
 thinks she is still dreaming. Trembling with fear of the con- 
 firmation of that which her eyes have seen, she prays with 
 averted eyes for mercy, if there be ' a drop of pity left iu 
 heaven.' Sh« turns back again, and her dream will not vanish. 
 Then her' grief breaks forth, and her suspicion and execrations 
 fall on Pisanio, who had given her the dangerous drink. Yet 
 even now, after the extremity of horror which she believed she . 
 had seen, her pain is arrested and moderated, as if repressed 
 by something ; it is pain for one who has proved untrue ; this 
 sting remains ; and the poet has not forgotten, even in the 
 pathos of this most agonising condition, not wholly to oblite- 
 rate the pain of this old wound by the pain of the new one. 
 Thus Imogen even now resolves, with the same strength' of her 
 good nature, to mourn over and bury the corpse of her hus- 
 band, and then to yield herself persev&ringly to her strange 
 fate. And at last, when she is brought prisoner . into her 
 father's presence, among so many witnesses, the oppressed mind 
 of the sufferer is sufficiently unburdened, and her eyes, resting 
 upon father and brothers, are suflBciently clear and observant 
 'for her to perceive among the prisoners her tempter lachimo, 
 with the ring of Posthumus on his finger, and thereby to find 
 the clue for unravelling, the strange threads of her destiny. 
 
 These threads were first entangled by Posthumus' romantic 
 wager upon Imogen's fidelity. This is the point which robbed 
 the play of the favour of all sensitive readers. How was it 
 possible that the poet could make such an indelicate situation 
 the turning point of so ' great a poem ? How indeed was it 
 possible, and how could it be consistent with psychological 
 truth, that this wager should be laid upon a woman of so 
 
666 THIEB PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 lovely and tender a nature, and by a man who was declared' to 
 be the 'glass' and 'sample' to his generation? To these 
 questions we have, in the first place, to repeat an answer 
 already often given : Shakespeare found this incident in the 
 story itself, and he conscientiously retained it as a poetic 
 symbol. Whether it was probable or not, he did all he could 
 to make it possible and true. Leonatus had been in France on 
 a previous occasion, and had there already had a similar dis- 
 pute respecting his Imogen. At that time he was younger, 
 more presumptuous, more impetuous, more contentious than 
 now. He then extolled his beloved before the French ladies ; 
 he was ready to maintain his opinion by the ordeal of the 
 sword, according to knightly custom ; the matter, however, 
 was amicably adjusted. The banished Posthumus accidentally 
 meets the Frenchman, who at that time had acted as mediator, 
 at the house of his host Philario, in Eome. The evening 
 befof e his arrival these men had disputed with some strangers 
 at a banquet on a very similar subject, the superiority of their 
 countrywomen ; the conversation thus falls easily upon the 
 earlier dispute, which Posthumus, though now grown calmer in 
 his judgment, does not regard as so light a matter as the 
 Frenchman. A taunt of lachimo's levelled at his beloved 
 irritates Posthumus for a moinent, but he recovers his manly 
 composure until he learns more and more the Italian's 
 character. lachimo is a courtier and a worldling, whom 
 Shakespeare endows with the affected language of his ' water- 
 flies,' Osric, and such like ; in the novel his character is rather 
 that of a profligate of Borgia's time than of a Koman in the 
 days of the emperors. His name sounds almost Uke a diminu- 
 tive of lago, and, he resembles him in his way of thinking of 
 men. He has no idea of greatness and virtue, and no faith in 
 them. When Posthumus is mentioned he has a number of 
 instances ready to explain his high reputation, only in order to 
 avoid acknowledging his, real excellence, of which he has him- 
 self no idea. Harshly to disparage or slander individuals, to 
 speak contemptuously of human nature generally, is not so 
 much his nature, but it has become his habit ; he esteems the 
 female sex like a freebooter whom success has always attended. 
 He is annoyed by the high reputation of Posthumus and his 
 boundless estimation of Imogen ; still more by the confidence 
 with which he rests upon her virtue and fidelity. He offers 
 his wager, and lays it rather against this confidence than 
 
' CYMBELINE. 667 
 
 against Imogen's reputation ; 'he would attempt this, he pro- 
 tests, against any lady in the world. UnbeUef in morals and 
 propriety generates this mode of thinking in the low-minded 
 man, and petty venomous envy induces him to offer the wager ; 
 but in Posthumus, on the contrary, it is his strong conviction 
 of virtue and his faith in human nature which make hiin first 
 calmly and then angrily oppose lachitaao's principles and 
 assertions ; it is the deep indignation of his moral nature 
 which inclines him to accept the offered wager. Excitable 
 indeed in nothing else, he is so just on this one point ; and we 
 think any resolute man who had retained a moral and virtuous 
 state would similarly express his impatience agaiiist loquacious 
 vice. To the Frenchman this would have been but a blade of 
 straw, for which he felt no inducement to fight ; but to 
 Posthumus it is a great point of honour to defend insulted 
 humanity. Not that he enters with Quixotic zeal into this 
 knight-errantry; not that easily kindled he presses for the 
 wager ; for a while he intentionally avoids it, although he does 
 not conceal from lachimo that his presumption deserves not 
 only repulse but chastisement. Not until the Italian actually 
 taints the snow-white swan of Posthumus, and taunts him as 
 though he must have cause to fear if ,he gave way, not until 
 then does he wager upon his wife, whose fidelity he could trust 
 for even more than this; she is to do her part to retrieve the 
 honour of her sex, and then (this is the intention with which 
 he accepts the wager) he will add to her repulse the deserved 
 castigation, and punish lachimo with the sword for his ill 
 opinion and his presumption. In this moral anger Posthumus 
 is no less the same rare being as in the rest of his conduct. 
 His irritation on such noble grounds shows his previous calm- 
 ness and discretion for the first time in its right light, and this 
 his ever-tested moderation reminds us to consider again and 
 again the reason which drives him exceptionally to exaspera- 
 tion in a transaction so indelicate. Let us remember that the 
 equally calm and even calmer Imogen, who is as rarely or more 
 rarely excited, is driven by the same occasion to the same 
 indignation, when the abject Cloten sets himself above her 
 Posthumus and attempts to disparage him as lachimo has 
 attempted to defame Imogen. Let us remember that this 
 abnegation of ' a lady's manners,' her burst of indignation, and 
 her flight, show no less self-forgetfulness in the womap than the 
 wager does in the man. For that a self-forgetfulness lies in 
 
668 THIRD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'8 DBAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 both cases in both steps we will not deny ; the poet himself, 
 beautiful and excusable as are the inducements in both 
 instances, would neither deny nor conceal this, since he has so 
 severely punished the rashness on both sides. 
 
 In this punishment the faults of both co-operate; the 
 wager of Posthumus is not alone to be blamed for the whole 
 chain of their trials. Had Imogen, wearied out with Cloten's 
 ' siege,' not at once set out to Wales upon the deceptive invita- 
 tion, Pisanio must have announced his bloody commission on 
 the spot ; the verification of her alleged death (her disappear- 
 ance) would have been wanting, Posthumus would have had 
 time for remorse ere it was too late, and all would have un- 
 ravelled itself in a milder form. But Imogen herself assists in 
 the apparent execution of the revenge which Posthumus, upon 
 lachimo's report, decreed against her, and which afterwards re- 
 acts so heavily upon himself. The artful Italian returns to 
 Eome and enjoys a false triumph over the unsuspecting Briton. 
 Base as he is, we must however beware of making him still 
 baser. Want of faith in human goodness is not innate in him, 
 but acquired from his never having met with virtuous men. A 
 mere glance at Imogen shows him what he had never seen ; he 
 feels at once that here weapons of no common kind would be 
 required. Eepulsed by her, and ashamed, he feels neither 
 hatred nor ill-will against her, but admiration alone. If it 
 were not for the stings of a base ambition to maintain the 
 glory of being irresistible, if half his fortune and his life had 
 not been at stake, he might indeed have forborne the deception 
 which he now plays upon Posthumus. He utters the horrible 
 slander against Imogen, yet not for the pleasure of slandering 
 her ; he speaks ambiguously, he neither lies unnecessarily nor 
 degrades her unnecessarily. When he has attained his object 
 — his own safety — the experience he has gained affects him, 
 the virtue he has seen and tested awakens his conscience, the 
 shame of his guilt oppresses him and makes him a coward in 
 the fight with Britain, the speedy confession of his sin shows 
 him crushed with remorse and worthy of pardon. But at the 
 time when he came to Posthumus with the report of his suc- 
 ' cess, the latter was more easily convinced the cooler and calmer 
 lachimo appeared. There was no room for doubt after the 
 proofs adduced ; even the impartial Philario considers lachimo 
 as victor. There now follows in Posthumus the fearful outburst 
 of despair, the dark glimpse into his lost life of promise. 
 
CYMBELINE. 669 
 
 Jealousy and -wounded honour shake his manhood even to 
 ungovernable fury, and give rise to the most inconsiderate pro- 
 jects of revenge. He here almost resembles Othello. As in 
 him, so in Posthumus' nature there is none of that superficial, 
 social cheerfulness which is mixed with happy and sanguine 
 light-mindedness; serious by nature,, he was continually in- 
 clined to melancholy, even without cause. Like Othello he 
 had to look up to his beloved, and thought himself despised 
 for his inferior birth. In both, notwithstanding their imposing 
 calmness, there ;is a vein of passion upon which lago and 
 lachimo speculate. Like Othello with the handkerchief 
 Posthumus has apparent proof at hand in the bracelet. Like 
 him he is seized with a paroxysm of misanthropy and con- 
 tempt ; like him his harmonious nature is thrown into a state 
 of chaos, in which he appears far more unfortunate than guilty. 
 Like Othello he loses himself in sensual hateful ideas, con- 
 juring up a repulsive voluptuous picture of the rapid conquest 
 of the ' yellow lachimo ' over a being whom he had thought 
 ' as chaste as unsunned snow.' His hatred falls upon the whole 
 female sex ; everything ' that tends to vice in man ' seems to 
 him ' the woman's part,' every crime and sin to be inhe- 
 rited from , her. Like Othello he condemns the criminal 
 to be the sacrifice for his stained honour, while his moral 
 nature is ever in the same state of indignation that we before 
 observed. How much gentler, under similar circumstances, is 
 his wife, his Imogen, to him I When she thinks him faithless 
 she loses not her faith in the whole male sex, she only says that 
 his falsity will ' lay the leavpn on all proper men ! ' She is 
 reminded of revenge, but by others, not by herself, and she 
 cannot comprehend the thought. She has only pity and no 
 hatred for him ; and even if her heart has somewhat cooled, 
 she never could have wholly lost her faith in him ; she would 
 never have been capable of planning any evil against him. 
 
 This, however, does not place him below her. In the man, 
 who can and will be nothing by halves, the difference of sex 
 necessitates this fearful reaction after an experience which un- 
 settles his trust in the world and in everything. As soon as he 
 has given his faithful Pisanio the order for her death his reflec- 
 tion returns. He now lainents the fidelity which had so rapidly 
 executed his command. Othello killed Desdemona to prevent 
 her from sinning further ; in 'this lies the delicate distinction 
 between him and the more human, more gentle Leonatus. The 
 
670 THISD PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DSAMATIC POETEY. 
 
 latter curses his act, because, had the victim lived, she would 
 have had time for repentance ! Faith in her virtue was only 
 stifled for a moment in him, but was not dead. He is now 
 seized with remorse, which urges him' to take vengeance on 
 himself. The same indignation which had roused him against 
 lachimO, against Imogen, and against Pisanio, arms him now 
 against himself ; and it is this severity against himself that must 
 atone for the moral irritation which induced him to lay the 
 wager and to impose the penalty on Imogen. Not in the reck- 
 lessness of his first fury does he lay hands on himself like 
 Othello, but in calm composure he inflicts upon himself a noble 
 penance. He follows the Eoman army to Britain, but not to 
 fight against his country which he has robbed of so good a 
 queen, but to die fighting for it. And to die unknown, ua- 
 lamented, in the mean disguise of a peasant, uninfluenced by 
 the impulse of any empty subordinate aim. He will ' shame 
 the guise of the world and begin the fashion, less without and 
 more within.' The poet imparts to this ideal of a grand manly 
 character the same distinguishing feature which he had given to 
 his Henry V. — he treats his virtue, like that of Henry V., as a 
 rare jewel, setting it in the simplest ornament. The moral of 
 this play is. the proof of that of the other ; it testifies to the 
 poet's reverential estimation of men who are despisers of show 
 and are secretly noble. Posthumus silently conceals his great 
 services on the battle-field, and unenvyingly ascribes' them to 
 Belarius and his sons ; determined that all punishment shall 
 fall on himself alone, he passes without a word over his greatest 
 achievement, his having with heroic self-conquest spared the life 
 of the malicious lachimo, the origin of his misery, who lies van- 
 quished at his feet. This noblest act of his favourite Shake- , 
 speare has silently placed in a stage direction ! But his desire 
 to die is not granted to him ; he therefore mingles with the 
 vanquished and goes voluntarily into prison. Not contented 
 with the repentance which merely grieves for the misdeed, he 
 is ever ready to die cheerfully and implores from the gods ' the 
 penitent instrument ' — death. Even after the propitious vision 
 this one longing remains in him as strong as ever. Nor must 
 we imagine this calmness, this sparing of lachimo, this self- 
 punishment, to be only the valueless effect of an apathy which 
 had taken possession of him. When lachimo confesses his 
 guilt, his indignation bursts forth again so fiercely that he 
 knows neither himself nor anyone ; he utters the most fearful 
 
OYMBELINE. 671 
 
 imprecations against himself and Pisanio, aye, even in his con- 
 vulsive rage he strikes the unrecognised Imogen and again 
 thrusts her from him. At last, his sufiferings ended, the 
 recovered one lies on his breast, to 'hang there like fruit till the 
 tree die ! ' That both of them lose the throne by the discovery 
 of Imogen's brothers is their most refined justification before 
 the world. Thus their love is proved to be entirely pure, and 
 free from all outward secondary views. Her wish for a life of 
 retirement is granted, and his similar aim after sterling good- 
 ness without show thus stands the final trial. ' Imogen,' says 
 Cymbeline, pityingly, ' by thy brothers' return thou hast lost a 
 kingdom ! ' ' No,' she replies, ' I have got two worlds by it ! ' 
 
 Hitherto, accoi?ding to our first intention, we have closely 
 examined the two actions of the play and the prominent 
 characters ; but the point of view from which the poetic painter 
 'has taken his ';^icture has not yet been indicated, the master- 
 key is still wanting which can lay open to us at once the various 
 component parts, as well as the way to one innermost centre, 
 from which the plan of the whole structure can be easily 
 recognised as one of artistic harmony. 
 
 From our explanation of the subject it will easily be perceived 
 that it treats uniformly throughout two opposite ideas or moral 
 qualities, namely, truth in word and in deed (fidelity), and untruth 
 and faithlessness, falseness in deed or perfidy, falseness in word or 
 slander. All the actions and characters of the play combine to 
 exemplify these ideas, and this is really as apparent as the leading 
 thought in the most intelligible of Shakespeare's dramas can ever 
 be. At the very outset we are introduced into the world of false- 
 hood, the court, and in contrast to this afterwards appears the 
 idyllic innocence of the sylvan solitude. The political action, 
 the background on which the two main actions rest, may be 
 reconciled with the point t)f view we have specified. ' Bound to 
 fidelity towards Eome, Cymbeline is led to rebellion by his 
 false wife, and repents when he is his own master. The man 
 who in his very weakness is not false is ensnared by the queen, 
 that mistress of all deceitful arts, in a thickly woven net of 
 falsehood and fatal intrigue, and is threatened with the loss of 
 children and kingdom. False slanderers have once stamped 
 the faithful Belarius to CymbeHne as a traitor ; outlawed and 
 banished, but faithful even in his revenge, he carries off the 
 king's sons from the soil of the false world, and brings them ud 
 to be true, upright men, incapable of a lie even in the face of 
 
672 THIBB PERIOD OF SHAKESPEAEE' S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 dangex. The falseness of the queen ensnares also Posthumus 
 and Imogen. Fidelity and truth, and the soundness, and sim- 
 plicity of character united with these qualities, are their main 
 characteristics. How sensitively Imogen expresses her sense of 
 truth when she speaks of having been misdirected by beggars ! 
 And there too, when she tells Lucius a false name for her dead 
 lord, and offers with touching simplicity a prayer to the gods for 
 their pardon of the harmless deceit. And Posthumus on his 
 side, when in the most terrible distraction of mind he assails 
 himself, calling himself Imogen's murderer, he corrects the 
 inaccuracy of his words, -conscientiously true, even in the midst 
 of his rage ; — 
 
 ' i Villain-like I lie ; 
 
 That caused a lesser villain than myself, 
 
 A sacrilegious thief, to do it. 
 
 As regards the fidelity of both, the main purport of the play 
 turns upon it and upon the calumny which makes each doubt 
 the fidelity of the other, and upon the noble endurance of their 
 own fidelity towards the beloved one, even though supposed to 
 be faithless or dead. Between these two characters move the 
 subordinate figures, who make still clearer the clear reference 
 of even the lesser parts of the action. Cloten, who is too 
 awkward for lies and slanders, and too stupid for the intrigues 
 of falsehood ; the courtiers, who make such vehement ' asides ;' 
 the physician, who uses salutary falsehood towards the poisoner ; 
 and Pisanio, who, as the servant of two masters, so pru- 
 dently weighs duties of fidelity between the two when at 
 variance. 
 
 Fidelity is the true cardinal virtue of an heroic age ; it is 
 this which in the national epic poetry of ancient times places 
 those songs of fidelity, the ' Odyssey ' and ' Gudrun,' in such 
 natural juxtaposition to the warlike sagas of the ' Iliad.' and the 
 ' Niebelungen.' This connection is entirely founded upon the 
 nature of such times, and so far the remarkable concordance of 
 theme in bhese poems is no mere blind coincidence. In times 
 when everything depends upon the estimation of great military 
 power and great possessions, upon the thirst for glory and the 
 desire for property, when house and dominion, possessions and 
 existence, are ever insecure, there is nothing nobler and nothing 
 more valuable than a true and tried friend, than a true and 
 trusty servant, than a true and constant wife. No charac- 
 teristic, therefore, of such an age is more natural than the 
 
CYMBELim. 673 
 
 proverbial friendships of Greek antiquity, the tales of the true 
 vassals in Grerman heroic poetry, and the poems on the fidelity 
 of Penelope and Grudrun. Whether Shakespeare knew this, or 
 •whether the dim gropings of genius and an instinctive feeling 
 of the nature of heroic times dictated it, it is equally remarkable 
 that he should have depicted it with such distinctness both in 
 Ijear and Cymbeline, as if both these poems, or their sources, 
 sprung direct from the traditions of those ages. In Lear the 
 faithful attachment of the aged Kent is as beautiful as the 
 friendship of Achilles to Patrocles in the ' Iliad.' In Cymbeline 
 the ugly story of the w^ger is removed to the heroic times of 
 the middle ages ; and though the colouring and character of 
 such a period, as well as in the Roman plays, is handled with 
 little of the historical aptitude attainable in our own days, yet 
 the poet (and this was more essential) has clothed the doubtful 
 matter of the tale with such genuine and pure simplicity that 
 his Imogen may rank as an equal third among those old inodels 
 of feminine fidelity. 
 
 Shakespeare's song of fidelity belongs consequently to the 
 period in which the virtue which it extols reaches its highest 
 rank, in which it attains its greatest worth, owing to the 
 continued trials, temptations, and dangers to which it is 
 exposed, and in which it is often in the peculiar position of 
 being obliged, as it were, to maintain itself by its very 
 opposite. If Penelope would continue honourably true to her 
 consort she must keep back her suitors with falsehood and 
 deception ; if Grudrun would keep faith with her betrothed she 
 must deceive her new wooer with false promises. Even this 
 characteristic feature is not omitted in Shakespeare's drama, 
 lii Lear he has made the true-hearted Kent carry out his 
 virtue with a tragic consistency. Here in Cymbeline he has 
 sketched in Pisanio a very different picture of a fidelity just as 
 instinctive, but far more circumspect. ' Sly and constant,' as 
 the queen calls him, and as he himself wishes to be, Pisanio 
 unites the cunning of the serpent with the harmlessness of the 
 dove. His singular position is throughout that he is truest 
 where he is most untrue. The queen and Cloten wish to turn him 
 from his fidelity ; he deceives them, and confesses to himself 
 that to. be true to them ' were to prove false to him that is 
 most true.' He is commanded by Posthumus, on his allegiance, 
 to slay Imogen. ' Upon my love, and truth, and vows ? ' he 
 exclaims ; ' if it be so to do good service,- never let me be 
 
674 THIBD PEEIOD OF 8BAKE8PEABE' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 counted serviceable ! ' He divines at once that slander has 
 caused Imogen to be suspected ; nevertheless, through sleepless 
 nights, unresolved, he wavers sorrowfully between his duties. 
 To serve his master with true obedience is more to him than 
 life ; yet he cannot kill the guiltless. He makes use of the 
 order to etatrap Imogen to Wales; there, owing to circum- 
 stances, he has better opportunity for executing his cruel 
 commission, or in other case he can make her disappearance 
 serve to deceive his master into her alleged death. ' He who 
 dissembles,' says Bacon in one of his maxims, ' deprives himself 
 of one of the most principal instruments for action, which is 
 Trust and Belief; ' but Pisanio, on the contrary, by dissimu- 
 lation maintains his trust as an instrument for just action. As 
 soon as he has gained a glimpse into Imogen's mind he is 
 convinced that Posthimius has been deceived by slander. 
 
 Whose edge is sharper than the sword ; whose tongue 
 Outvenoms all the worms of Nile ; whose breath 
 Bides on the posting winds, and doth belie 
 All corners of the world. 
 
 He now does that which Posthumus in his remorse recjuired of 
 him: — 
 
 Every good servant does not all commands ; 
 
 No bond, but to do just ones ! 
 
 Thus he deceives his lord, and in this again he is honest in 
 that in which he is false, and 'not true, to be true;' just as 
 the physician says of himself that he is ' the truer, so to be false 
 with the queen.' In the self-satisfaction and security with 
 which Pisanio practises these deceptions, only that he may 
 venture to be true where justice and a higher duty demand it, 
 he does not err ; he is heedless of the danger which threatens 
 him at court ; he silently endures the abhorrence of the mis- 
 taken Imogeii and the execrations of Posthumus ; he is 
 rewarded by his good conscience for having done the right. 
 
 If we closely examine this position of Pisanio, the ingenious 
 pvirport of the play becomes more and more extended ; it gains 
 in universal significance and moral depth, beyond perhaps auy 
 other of Shakespeare's works ; and if Lear may be regarded as 
 a representation of passion generally, Cymbeline may be called 
 a representation of the common course of the world in which 
 man with his powers and impulses is placed. It is a charac- 
 
CYMBELmS. 67 51 
 
 teristic of Shakespeare's ideas and- empirical system of morals, 
 and an ordinary tenet in his worldly wisdom, that cases and 
 circumstances not mifrequently occur to men, in which virtue 
 becomes vice and vice virtue — as Pisanio here, in all his truth, 
 cannot avoid repaying false actions with falsehood, and punish- 
 itig false judgment with untruth, maintaining in this very 
 falsity the highest fidelity. Our poet's conviction has been 
 throughout that no outward law can embody the rule of moral 
 action in strict and ever available precepts, but that there is an 
 inner law and feeling which ought to guide us according to 
 case and circumstance in adding or taking away from the letter 
 of duty ; that self-reliance and self-consciousness should be 
 purified and developed within us in order that we may be ever 
 a living law and a true judge for ourselves in the doubtful 
 perplexities of the moment. To that ■simple-natured Pisanio 
 there was no sin in a harmless concealment, a healthful dissi- 
 mulation, a necessary falsehood, and a necessary deception, 
 compelled by the pressure of circumstances and the condition of 
 the world around him. It is not possible to remain good, true, 
 and faithful among the wicked and the false, without involving 
 personal ruin; this experience Pisanio drew with simple tact 
 from his intercourse with men and his knowledge of <;hem. To 
 remain pure and inoffensive as a hermit in a bad world would 
 only be possible by separating from the world and living as a 
 hermit. In this situation the poet has shown us the two sons 
 of Cymbeline. But even these are driven by the impetus of 
 human nature into the dangers and temptations of life ; they 
 love not ' the passive virtue, which procures innocence, but not 
 merit ' (Bacon) ; they risk the paternal blessing in this impulse 
 for action, and their first collision with the world would have 
 brought them into the most dangerous complications had not 
 Providence favourably interposed. The poet has shown us, 
 therefore, more perfect characters, who remained uninjured in 
 the midst of the whirlpool of the world. We have seen how 
 the moral purity of Imogen and Posthumus was regarded as 
 blameless both at home and abroad. Yet even these perfect 
 beings were to be defiled with the rancour of the world, their 
 virtue was to be tempted .and calumniated, their prudence 
 shaken, their internal peace was to be destroyed with their 
 external prosperity ; even they were to discover that it is not 
 possible to keep unspotted in the world. Even if in these 
 exceptions of humanity such an inner power were imaginable 
 
676 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 as would render them in themselves secure from all temptation 
 to evil, yet the world without would expose them to it. The 
 slanderer forces himself on Posthumus ; he represents to him as 
 false that on which he had placed his highest confidence, he 
 robs him of his good and trustful nature ; Posthumus now errs 
 with the best intentions, exercising an over-hasty and incon-. 
 siderate justice, which, as he subsequently says, had it been 
 employed against his own faults, he had 'never lived to put on' 
 this revenge. Imogen was deprived of her beloved, her patience 
 was irritated, her longing desires overstrained ; she flees iii the 
 hope of seeing her husband, and of saving him when she believes 
 him faithless ; both are excusable, even praiseworthy inten- 
 tions, but they render deceptions, disguises, evasions, lies, and 
 endangered modesty unavoidable ; characteristically enough 
 she is obliged to conceal and preserve her fidelity under the 
 false, but characteristic, name of Fidele. Imogen's spotless 
 nature struggles against all this, but the pressure of circmn^ 
 stances forces it upon her. The poison of the world breathes 
 on these purest mirrors of virtue ; suspicion and mistrust, so 
 contrary to their nature, seize them, trials befall them, and 
 temptations in their worst form, armed with misfortune and 
 despair, beset them, but they maintain inviolate their fidelity, 
 against which all these strokes are aimed. And this it is, and 
 this alone, which at last overcomes misfortune and wickedness : 
 that we do not shape our own course after that of the world, 
 that we do not let the vices of others tempt us to our own nor 
 believe them excusable. 'By constancy,' says Bacon, ' fate and 
 fortune, return like Proteus to their former being.' Faithless- 
 ness, in revenge for faithlfessness, as recommended by lachimo 
 to Imogen, would have for ever destroyed the love and happi- 
 ness of both ; the true constancy of both, in spite of the supposed 
 felsehood of each, surmounted the wicked report and even the 
 incurable evil — ^^the supposed death. And this, constancy 
 under such heavy trials acquires a difierent purity and a 
 different splendour after the sorrow and defilement than before 
 it. For the events of our play preach this lesson also loudly 
 and distinctly : that virtue when tried, even if it has wavered, 
 has a much higher value than that which is unshaken and 
 untempted. This wisdom slumbers in the craving for the 
 world exhibited by Cymbeline's boys ; it lies deeply buried in 
 the much-attacked wager of Posthumus ; for a man would only 
 stake upon such a trial the dearest being whom he possessed, 
 
CYMBELINE> 677 
 
 and the tried one would only standi the test like Imogen, when 
 it lies in the innermost conviction of both that genuine virtue- 
 ought not to shrink from any trial, not even from the most 
 painful. This lesson is taught also in the , position which 
 Shakespeare has given to Cymheline, whose name stands not 
 by mere chance as the title of the drama. In the midst of all 
 these tempting and tempted agents stands the weak king, 
 without self-reliance, the image of a subordinate character, the 
 sport, of every good or bad influence, tossed about by every 
 temptation or suggestion, bent by evexj wind, but not like the 
 tree at the same time strengthened. He is a mere cipher, 
 receiving value only from the higher or lower figm'e placed 
 before it ; we canncJt impute the evil to him, to which he has 
 been ^instigated by those whom he esteems wise and good, any 
 more than the good which happens without his choice and 
 without his interference. If we consider, also, the contrast in 
 which the poet has placed this character to that of the tried 
 sufferers, our play becomes, as it were, a poetic theodicy ; it 
 justifies the impulse to evil which lies within us, and the 
 struggle with external evil imposed upon us, by rendering 
 perceptible in those opposite examples that goodness which 
 ha,s not overcome in the struggle with- evil is worthless, and 
 that there can be no virtue without vice. The poet has 
 brought down the gods themselves to the complaining shadows 
 of Posthumus' parents and to the couch of the sleeping 
 sufferer, in order to explain to them this meaning of our play, 
 and to announce expressly to them that which Posthumus had 
 already learnt by his own penetration and others by experience : 
 that the gods decree evil for the trial of the good ; that ' some 
 falls are means the happier to arise ; ' that ' fortune brings in 
 some boats that are not steered;' that God. loves him best 
 whom he crosses, 'to make his gift, the more delayed, de- 
 lighted;' that consequently only tried virtue, ripened by its 
 contact with evil, is worthy of love ; that the dearest of 
 the world's sons are not exempt' from its shocks and blows, 
 'but by resisting its temptations they strengthen their inner 
 worth. Shakespeare here allows the rules of the world to mix 
 personally in the drama, as is usual in the epos, where the 
 actors are in harmony with the divinity and his laws. This 
 epic character and the happy termination of the epos were 
 necessarily given to this drama also. For the personages 
 who here act and err are friends and favourites of the gods. 
 
678 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 because even that which in calm certainty or uncertain passion 
 they do, contrary to the maxims of morality, is done from 
 moral motives or in moral indignation ; so that the drama 
 with a tragic ending would have been an impeachment of the 
 world's government. Hence I do not think that Shakespeare 
 would have admitted the introduction of Jupiter to be a 
 blunder, as Ulrici calls it, or that he needs Tieck's apology, 
 that this scene was a fragment of a youthful attempt at this 
 play. Far rather does it appear to me thett the introduction 
 of the divinity in this dramatised epos testifies to the same 
 deep and remarkable instinct with which Shakespeare entered 
 into the nature of poetry and its various styles and require- 
 ments — an instinct of which the preparation of the historical 
 ground in the last two plays was another proof. The poet 
 used the advantage afforded him by this introduction of Provi- 
 dence in a bodily form to carry on the history in some points 
 by means of unexpected incidents ; the miraculous power thus 
 introduced neutralises the wonder of the incident, which 
 Shakespeare otherwise nowhere permits himself to employ. 
 This machinery of Providence, however, in nowise impedes the 
 free movement of the actors. And that which might appear 
 arbitrary in the combination of the outward events is more 
 than counterbalanced by the inimitable unravelling of the 
 wonderfully intricate knots at the conclusion of the play. This 
 even found favour with Johnson ; it is so rich in distinctness 
 that the poet seems to applaud himself for it, when he makes 
 Cymbeline say : — 
 
 This fierce abridgment, 
 
 Hath to it circumstantial branches, which 
 
 Distinction should be rich in. 
 
 A single passage will show this — ^that one, for instance, in 
 which Imogen, leaning upon Posthumus, ' like harmless light- 
 ning .throws her eye' on him, her brothers, and her father, 
 ' hitting each object with a joy, the counterchahge severally in 
 all.' This passage imparts life and satisfaction to the scene 
 'when represented, and when read it makes us thoroughly 
 understand the necessity of seeing Shakespeare represented, 
 and is a complete commentary upon it. 
 
■ TEOILUS AND CEESSIDA. 
 
 In the tragedies last discussed we have seen Shakespeare's 
 genius at its highest point. When in our introductory remarks 
 we placed Shakespeare as the tragic poet of modern times in 
 the same rank that Homer occupied among the epic poets of 
 antiquity, we felt that this high appreciation was justified 
 by the grandeur of these very works, quite apart from Shake- 
 speare's historical position as regards modem dramatic poetry. 
 By leading us back in these plays to a race ,of men among 
 whom passion has not been extinguished by refinement and 
 over-refinement, Shakespeare has given to tragedy, in spite of 
 its ideal character, somewhat of the naive and original nature 
 which is the essential property of the popular unartificial epos ; 
 by collecting his materials from all the periods and provinces 
 of history, and maintaining in each, as far as possible, its 
 nature and character, he has linked with this first attainment a 
 second utterly denied to this very epos ; by raising its designs 
 higher, by extending them further, and by grounding them 
 deeper, he so widened the poetic limits of tragedy that he 
 rendered it possible for this branch of art to venture upon the 
 fullest subject, for the treatment of which the wide range of the 
 epos had formerly been considered indispensable. In this 
 sense Shakespeare might have ventured to rank himself with 
 the father of poetry, with whom we have placed him in 
 comparison, if he could, like us, have reviewed historically the 
 relation of his modern tragedy to the old epos. 
 
 It seems to us not altogether impossible that Shakespeare's 
 consciousness of power actually incited him to place himself 
 immediately by the side of Homer in one of his works, and 
 indeed to contrast himself with him. Homer's ' Iliad ' was 
 translated by Chapman about 1598, and was pubKshed in 
 separate parts. We have already taken occasion to mention 
 this work with praise. With respect to a true rendering of the 
 
680 THIRD FERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 original, it would have almost the same importance at that day 
 as Voss's translation had in ours. With the same unlimited 
 love and devotion as Voss, Chapman, contrary to the general 
 opinion of these days, elevated the Greek bard far above all 
 poets ; he maintained of him, contrary to the old proverb, 
 that he 'never slept,' that he was entirely harmonious and 
 uniform throughout, that he neither deserved nor suited praise 
 mingled with blame. Even our own Groethe in his youth did 
 not appreciate the grandeur of Homer, being spoiled and 
 attracted by the lighter reading of Virgil ; may not a similar 
 reason have repelled Shakespeare also, to whom Chapman's 
 translation could have been as little unknown as Voss's was to our 
 Goethe and Schiller ? And in Shakespeare's case the Virgilian 
 ideal could not so easily be supplanted by the translation of 
 Homer as in that of our own great poets, either as regards the 
 essential merits or the material import of the poetry. For 
 even so faithful a translation as Chapman's could not keep 
 close to the strict form of the Greek epic ; the period itself was 
 not capable of being as suscepitible to the great simplicity of 
 the Homeric poems as our own age. Chapman himself thought 
 at times that he could improve upon the old poet by the 
 insertion of a phrase or a conceit, and found it necessary to 
 defend his naive images here and there by imputing them to 
 irony, which was utterly foreign to Homer. The nature of the 
 poetry, the form of the transposition, and the character of the 
 English language did not allow Chapman the victorious 
 truthfulness of Voss's translation ; still more, however, the 
 subject was an impediment in permitting Homer at that time 
 to have the same imposing effect even upon a Shakespeare 
 which he produced upon our German poets. From the nature 
 of our German people our sympathies will ever more incline us 
 to Greek art ■ and culture than to Eomaii ; in England the 
 reverse is the case, and it was so then. At that time the people 
 learned from the stage the origin of the Britons from Trojan 
 blood; this was readily believed at a time when critical 
 doubts were little esteemed ; even our poet himself was pleased 
 with the idea of the common origin of the Britons and Eomans 
 from the one Trojan source — those two nations whose history 
 and political nature bear so striking a resemblance to each other. 
 Shakespeare himself, even though the form of the Homeric poem 
 may have attracted him, would always have been provoked by its 
 subject-matter to take the adverse side ; we have often alleged 
 
TSOILUS AND CBE8SIDA. 681 
 
 how early he adopted the Virgilian view in the Trojan legend, 
 and how deeply Trojan sympathies were rooted in him. If it 
 be thought that the translation of Homer incited him to any 
 poetic, perhaps, indeed, any rival work (and this would have been 
 as natural as that our own Goethe should be spurred by Homer 
 to rival him in epic pieces), he would not, like Goethe, have 
 been tempted to follow in his track, but rather to' take an 
 opposite one. And we may well believe that this was really 
 his intention in Troilus and Cressida. 
 
 It is not of course possible actually to prove this. It might 
 indeed be disputed whether Shakespeare was acquainted with 
 Chapman's translation at all. We think, however, the sum of 
 our observations will incline to this conjecture, although we 
 shall carefully avoid asserting it otherwise than as a con- 
 jecture. 
 
 Shakespeare's Troilus was printed in 1609, even before it 
 was acted ; this alone is indeed proof sufficient that it was not 
 written much earlier. An older piece about Troilus and 
 Cressida, which was written by Chettle and Decker about 1599, 
 is lost ; probably Shakespeare made use of this work for his 
 comedy ; indeed Dyce even supposes that in parts, especially 
 near the end, this previous work of inferior poets is still 
 apparent in our poet's play. The subject was much in favour 
 in that lascivious age. We know of three ballads in the 
 sixteenth century which treated this same matter, one of which 
 has been preserved and has been published by Halliwell. The 
 common source of all these poems and plays is Chaucer's 
 Troilus and Cressida, a poem in seven-lined stanzas, and one of 
 the most popular stories down to the time of Elizabeth. The 
 faithfulness of Troilus, the unfaithfulness of Cressida, appear, 
 according to Chaucer's intimation, to have become proverbial 
 as early as his time, and the name of Pandarus has ever been 
 retained in the English language as the designation of a bawd. 
 Chaucer found the complete sketch of his story in the old 
 Trojan romances ; but he names as his source a Latin original 
 by one LoUius ; its position with regard to it we know not ; it 
 is more certain that the 'Filostrato' of Boccaccio influenced his 
 performance. Completely in the style of this Italian narrative, 
 Chaucer's poem carries the simple story of Troilus' love 
 through five long cantos, with such a mixture of earnest pathos 
 and naifve humour that we can hardly tell whether he means 
 his ' little tragedy ' in jest or earnest. Troilus appears in it at 
 
682 THIBD PEEIOB OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 first as a despiser of love, and then falls desperately in love 
 with Cressida, whom Chaucer represents as an honourable and 
 virtuous widow, and whose name is venerated among the 
 people ; Pandarus acts as the go-between in their affairs, 
 dexterous, busy, teasing, much in the character of a pander, 
 although the story (we doubt also here whether in earnest or 
 irony) makes Troilus solemnly declare that he considers the 
 uncle's services nothing else than goodness, pity, and friend- 
 ship. Cressida's departure from Troy, and her abandonment 
 of Troilus immediately afterwards, seem to Chaucer rather a 
 theme for sorrow than a matter of wantonness ; he endeaTours 
 to excuse her faithlessness on the grounds of her helplessness, 
 and the danger to which Troy was exposed ; he says he need 
 not blame her further, as her name is so notorious already that 
 this is punishment sufficient for her guilt. 
 
 If Shakespeare had wished to handle this subject, as 
 . Chaucer did, for its own sake, he had in Troilus the choice of 
 depicting wasted fidelity tragically, or of giving the matter a 
 comic aspect by making his foolish confidence the main point 
 of his character, and by so representing Cressida from the first 
 that he would have no occasion to wonder, like Chaucer, at her 
 sudden faithlessness, or rather at his own inadequate chg,rac- 
 terisation, establishing the connection between the two upon 
 the shallow and artificial mediation of Pandarus. ■ Shakespeare 
 conceived the subject in his play from this comic view, and in 
 his masterly manner he stamped upon the various circumstances 
 the impress of great psychological knowledge, which they 
 entirely lack in Chaucer. The manager of the contract 
 appears here far more distinctly than in Chaucer to be a 
 practised master in the business. Worthless himself, and 
 therefore willingly occupied for others, polite and cringing, 
 foolish, like a mem^aer of Polonius' family, inquisitive, chatter- 
 ing, an adept in double meanings, habituated to lies, bragging, 
 and perjury, he understands thoroughly how to rouse and goad 
 the passions by turns with praise and jealousy, fanning the 
 flame even when already burning clear enough, making the fool 
 more foolish, and the wanton still more wanton. He does too 
 much for the crafty woman ; he is too noisily officious for her ; 
 for the impatient Troilus he can hardly do enough. This youth 
 of three and twenty, with the first down on his chin^ is endowed 
 by Shakespeare with the fanciful first love of boyhood, in 
 which ardent sensuality and the madness of desire are hidden 
 
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 683 
 
 under boldness of spirit and romantic courage. He idealises 
 not only the beauty of his chosen one but her manners also ; he 
 will stake his life that there is no spot in her heart, and he 
 finds the alluring coquette ' stubborn chaste against all suit ; ' 
 he even idealises the pressing pander as a ' tetchy ' man, who 
 must ' be woo'd to woo.' In his choice he makes use of no 
 trial or consideration. The best of tempers, honourable and 
 straightforward, he speaks of himself, as indeed he is, 
 
 as true as truth's simplicity, 
 And simpler than the infancy of truth. 
 
 Open and free in heart and hand, he gives what he has and 
 shows what he thinks. To persist in his love with an ' eternal 
 and fixed soul, ' to be a pattern, a proverbial word for fidelity, 
 this is his ambition ; the moral of all his wit is ' plain and 
 true ; ' that shall be his glory ; that is, as he says, taking all 
 together — his ' vice ! ' To this, noble youth Pandarus now 
 leads the artful woman, whom only the crafty Ulysses can see 
 through at a glance. Ulysses observes in a moment what the 
 poor Troilus had never discovered : — 
 
 There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, 
 I Nay, her foot speais ; her wanton spirits- look out 
 At every joint and motive of her body. 
 these encounterers, so glib of tongue, 
 That wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts 
 To every reader; 
 
 except alone to the good Troilus. The poet has endeavoured 
 at first to deceive the reader as well as honest Troilus as to 
 Cressida's character, or to keep him uncertain. She appears at 
 first in company with her uncle', she displays a light but not 
 unequal wit, she is, however, without depth, an ad^t at double 
 entendre, and indelicate in her expressions. She betrays 
 almost at once that she could say more in praise of Troilus than 
 Pandarus does, that she, however, ' holds off,' in order to attract 
 them more methodically, because she knows ' men prize the 
 thing ungain'd more than it is.' In her intercourse with 
 Troilus she maintains her reserve in practice as before in 
 theory, confessing and yielding, and varying the plan of her 
 coquettish allurements, although she is not to appear so much a 
 coquette by profession as by nature, the prey of the first, as 
 afterwards of the second opportimity, when the pander in 
 consequence has so easy a part to play. She was ' won at the 
 
684 THIRD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEASE' S BBAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 first glance,' she tells Troilus, but confesses that it was ' hard 
 to seem won.' She had held back, although she wished that 
 ' women had men's privilege of speaking first.' She acknowledges 
 that she loves him, ' but not so much but she might master 
 it ! ' And yet this is a lie, for her 
 
 thoughts were like unbridled children, grown 
 Too headstrong for their mother ! 
 
 Thus she trifles with him, and in every concession she plants a 
 sting ; sjie tempts him by an ambiguous expression to kiss her, 
 and then declares she had not meant it. She plays the same 
 game subsequently with Diomedes, promises, draws back, gives 
 him Troilus' sleeve, takes it away again, and all this to 
 sharpen him like a whetstone ; Diomedes, understanding all 
 these arts and jests, declines them, and by this manner also 
 attains his end. With Troilus they are better adapted, 
 although superfluous. She wins him merely by her suspicious 
 anger as to his challenging her truth ; the very sign of an evil 
 conscience in her he takes for delicate sensitiveness. She en- 
 chants him when she assures him that in simplicity ' she'll war 
 with him.' She swears also "to be unceasingly true to him, but 
 she does so with ominous and equivocal expressions: 'Time, 
 force, and death,' she says. 
 
 Do to this body what extremes you can ; 
 But the strong base and building of my love 
 Is as the very centre of the earth, 
 Drawing all things to it ! 
 
 With the same suspicious expression Pandarus praises the 
 innate constancy of all her kindred : ' They are burs, they'll 
 stick where they are thrown ;' that is, to one as well as to 
 another. 
 
 This humorous treatment justifies what we have said; 
 Shakespeare has taken hold of the love story of Troilus and 
 Cressida from its comic side. But he has not, therefore, 
 treated it for its own sake. He has connected it, as Thersites 
 (Act V. sc. 4) remarks in the play itself, with a second action, 
 with the proud withdrawal of Achilles and Ajax; and this 
 second action so far surpasses the story of Troilus in import- 
 ance, length, and force of handling, that the latter only 
 appears like an episode in comparison. Everyone will perceive 
 that the prologue, which names the scene of the Trojan War 
 
TBOILUS'AND CBESSIDA. 685 
 
 as the piece, is ifar more descriptive of its purport than the 
 epilogue spoken by Pandarus, which from its lesson upon pan- 
 dering relates only to Troilus and Cressida, and which Steevens 
 therefore considers to be only the idle addition of an actor. 
 But even looking away from this second part of the play, we 
 must perceive with regard to the story of Troilus itself that it 
 is of little worth in itself. It is very remarkable, but every 
 reader will confess that this piece creates throughout no real 
 effect on the mind. No one on reading the play will readily 
 feel any sympathy or love for any character, any preference for 
 any part, any pity for any suffering, any joy at any success ; 
 not even in the affair between Troilus and Cressida, which 
 speaks to the heart more than any other incident in the piece. 
 The wanton portions will not charm, the elegiac will not move ; 
 the character of Troilus just as he is, were he placed in other 
 society, would attract our interest in no slight degree ; and we 
 might almost lament that a character drawn in so masterly a 
 manner is not designed with the intention of making it inter- 
 esting in and for itself; but in such a connection this is not 
 possible. His farewell to Cressida, sustained in the truest lan- 
 guage of emotion, would touch us to the utmost if we could 
 imagine it separated from the circumstances that belong to it ; 
 here, however, where throughout a concealed intention lurks in 
 the background, we cannot venture to resign ourselves to 
 psychical impressions. We feel throughout the play a wider 
 bearing, a more remote object, and this alone prevents the 
 immediate effect of the subject represented from appearing. 
 The understanding is required to seek out this further aim of 
 our comedy, and the sympathy of the heart is cooled. Here, 
 as in Aristophanes, the action turns not upon" the emotions of 
 the soul, but upon the views of the understanding, and accord- 
 ingly the personages acting occupy the mind as symbols rather 
 than the heart. The comedy becomes a parody, we doubt if it 
 is not even a satire, and it betrays an intention to rise above 
 the earlier comic plays of the poet, in the same way as the 
 later tragedies rose above the earlier. The editors of the first 
 edition (in 1609) appeared desirous of indicating this higher 
 value of the play. In, a prefatory address to the reader, which 
 is only to be found in some copies distributed before the repre- 
 sentation of the play, great praise is bestowed upon all Shake- 
 speare's comedies ; but this very piece is distinguished above 
 them all as superior in wit and intrinsic excellence. ' It 
 
686 THIBD PEBIOD OF 8HAKESPEASE' 8 BEAMATW POETRY. 
 
 deserves such a labour,' it says, ' as well as the best comedy in 
 Terence and Plautus; and believe this (it is prophetically 
 added), that when the poet is gone and his comedies out of sale, 
 you will scramble for them and set up a new English inqui- 
 sition.' 
 
 The aim of this dramatic farce was a parody of ' the crown 
 of all heroic tales,' the Trojan myth ; upon this point everyone 
 seems agreed. The question is, however, to what tradition 
 this parodied representation relates, whether to Homer, or the 
 travesties of the middle ages, which treated the story from the 
 Trojan point of view ? Shakespeare had undoubtedly before 
 him all that had reached England concerning the latter; 
 Lydgate's 'history, sege, arid destruccyon of Troy,' 1513, a 
 free rhythmical translation of the well-known Gruido of Colonna, 
 and besides this Caxton's translation of the ' recueil des histoires 
 de Troyes,' by Eaoul le Fevre, chaplain to PhiKp of Burgundy 
 (1471 and later), which was widely spread and was very popular 
 in England down to the eighteenth century. From these 
 romanticised stories of Troy, Shakespeare took his designation of 
 places, the names of the gates, the transference of the epithet 
 Ilium to Priam's castle, &c. From thence he drew the charac- 
 ters of Margarelon and the sagittary or centaur (Act v. sc. 5) ; 
 from thence the connection between Achilles and Polyxena, the 
 relationship between Ajax and the Trojans, the description of 
 Calchas as a deserter from the Trojans, which Chaucer has also; 
 the circumstances of Hector's death are here related by Troilus, 
 and only referred to Hector by Shakespeare. The travesty of 
 the ancient heroic age into the chivalry of the middle ages lay 
 in these sources, and Shakespeare transferred it to his comedy. 
 From his adopting this mode of treatment, Coleridge was ' half 
 inclined to believe that Shakespeare's main object was to trans- 
 late the heroes of Paganism into the not less nide but more 
 intellectually vigorous warriors of Christian chivalry, to sub- 
 stantiate the graceful outlines of Homer into the flesh and 
 blood of the romantic drama, and to give a grand history piece 
 in the robust style of Albert Diirer.' Schlegel, in sharing this 
 view, deprecated our fear that Shakespeare had intended to 
 commit a crime against the venerable Homer ; inasmuch as it 
 was not the ' Iliad ' that he had in view, but only those popular 
 chivalric romances of the Trojan War which proceeded from 
 Dares Phrygius. 
 - We may, however, reasonably doubt whether that which 
 
TS0ILU8 MfD CBESSWA. 687 
 
 Coleridge assumed to be the object of this play may not rather 
 have been merely a means to that very object which Schlegel 
 denies — of practising, not a crime, but a wanton satire against 
 Homer. Taking Schlegel's words literally, it is not to be 
 denied that Shakespeare had Homer before him ; that is, that 
 he made use of him as well as of Caxton. It is remarkable 
 that Shakespeare has in this play avoided confining himself 
 closely to all his sources equally. In language or speeches 
 there is hardly aiiy distinct reference to Homer, or to the 
 works on Troy, or even to Chaucer, ready as it lay to hand. 
 The conference of the Trojan chiefs concerning the restoration 
 of Helen alone reminds us in its main features of a similar 
 'Parliament' in Caxton, and the jests of Pandarus (Act iv. 
 sc. 2) faintly resemble an analogous passage in Chaucer. 
 Otherwise all the more important actions follow accurately no 
 single source ; the separate features of the story and of the 
 characters are disconnected, and are borrowed indifferently, if 
 not intentionally, sometimes from one, sometimes from another. 
 If we can cite certain passages for which our comedy has to 
 thank Chaucer and Caxton, we can adduce others also which 
 could be only derived from Homer himself. Almost all the 
 promineiit incidents in the ' Iliad ' are alluded to in some way, 
 either hinted at, imitated, or detailed. At the very beginning 
 there is the duel between Paris and Menelaus, the review of 
 the heroes from the tower. Hector's farewell, the conference of 
 the G-recian princes concerning the prolongation of the war, 
 that of the Trojans about giving up Helen, the character of 
 Thersites the re viler, the duel between Hector and Ajax, an 
 allusion to the arrival of the pew confederate Ehesus (Act ii. 
 sc. 3), to the pursuit of ^neas by Diomedes (Act iv. sc. 1), 
 and even perhaps to that meeting of Diomedes with Grlaucus, 
 which is here transferred to ^neas. By far the greater 
 number of these incidents are not in the Trojan books. The 
 mention of the faction among the gods (Act iii. sc. 3) in 
 favour or disfavour of men can only be referred to Homer. 
 What in our estimation entirely decides this question is that 
 the action, passing over the early events of the war, begins in 
 the middle ; that the external purport of the play begins with 
 the withdrawal of Achilles and ends with Hector's death, a 
 limit at wljiich Shakespeare could alone have arrived by reading 
 the ' Iliad.' In his contemporary plays Shakespeare speaks in 
 Antony of the sevenfold shield of Ajax ; he makes Coriolanus 
 
688 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 call his spear his ash ; these are undoubtedly Homeric reminis- 
 cences. But far more than these exterior indications does the 
 conception of the main characters prove Shakespeare's acquaint- 
 ance with Homer. It would not be difl&cult to show that he 
 has conceived the characters of Menelaus and Ajax very simi- 
 larly to those in Chapman's version of Homer, whilst Ajax, for 
 example, appears very different in the Trojan romances. The 
 character of the reviler Thersites does not appear in Caxton; it 
 was indeed known in England since 1537 by a rude burlesque 
 interlude of that name, but he does not appear here as the 
 caricature of the Homeric Thersites, such as Shakespeare repre- 
 sents him. It was the pride of Chapman that he wished to 
 surpass the old translators of Homer in exact discrimination of 
 the characters which were endowed by the poet with such 
 different attributes ; this attempt Shakespeare seemed to strive 
 to carry still further, and indeed to surpass, by his skilful mode 
 of individualising, by which he gave greater distinctness to the 
 different classes of character in Homer, carrying this to the 
 very limits, and sometimes even beyond the limits, which 
 divided the characters from caricatures. In this task of thus 
 stripping these personages of their ancient nobility, Shake- 
 speare found himself obliged to display, as if by way of amends, 
 a greater freshness of poetic splendour.; and as his strength 
 could not manifest itself here in the development of great 
 characters and great mental concussions, it was obliged to show 
 itself in that part of the poem which addresses itself to the 
 understanding, by that sententious wisdom. which, in fulness of 
 imagery, depth of thought, and abundance of tested maxims of 
 experience, is unequalled in any other of Shakespeare's works, 
 and forms indeed a noble contrast to the burlesque action. If 
 Shakespeare was willing, either in jest or earnest, to contrast 
 his own play with the Trojan books of Caxton and Lydgate, he 
 did them an honour beyond their deserls in this effort, in 
 which the poet might have ventured to contend with Homer, 
 whose Nestor and Ulysses he destroyed on one side and formed 
 anew on the other, thus giving him, as it were, a poetical repa- 
 ration which excused the license he had taken. 
 
 But was such a license really aimed at ? Had Shakespeare 
 (taking Schlegel's words, before alluded to, metaphorically), 
 while he had Homer before his eyes as his source, had he him 
 also in his mind, when he made a parody of his tragi-comedy ? 
 I think these are scarcely to be separated, although no .crime, 
 
TSOILUS AND CSE8SIJDA. 689 
 
 not even an injurious license, was practised thereby. As to 
 clothing and form, it could not have been Shakespeare's inten- 
 tion to travesty Homer ; that had been done in the old books 
 on Troy. To wish to oppose him from a party view of the 
 matter would at least have been nothing new. Shakespeare 
 had essentially to do ^vith the matter of this great poetic 
 theme, and this led him back first to the origin and foundation 
 of the Trojan story ; here was its weak side, that on which he 
 could treat it humorously. For this end all elaborations of the 
 story were, truly speaking, equal ; but Shakespeare must have 
 felt that he was most sharply opposed to Homer on account 
 merely of the genuine nature of the source. He therefore sur- 
 veyed all these different sources from one point of view ; he 
 took matter from them all, ever according to his intention ; he 
 took the travestied form, which suited his object best, out of 
 the books of Troy ; the episodical matter, which he wanted 
 especially for his parody, from Chaucer ; but in the main 
 action, and in the limits in which he kept it, his drama adheres 
 to the Homeric epos. 
 
 If we pass to the examination of the actions and personages 
 of our comedy, we may be induced at the first glance to believe 
 that Shakespeare gave to the reviler Thersites the part of the 
 chorus, which expresses the actual meaning of the piece most 
 distinctly. His abusive tongue destroys the object,. indeed, by 
 plunging in the deepest mire both the action and the actors. 
 ' All the argument,' he says, ' is a cuckold and a whore.' In 
 the course of things there is nothing but ' patch ery, jugglery, 
 and knavery ! ' 'A good quarrel, to draw emulous factions, and 
 bleed to death upon ! Now the dry serpigo on the subject I 
 and war and lechery confound aU ! ' This is, in a few words, 
 the opinion of Thersites. All the actors are in his sight 
 ' nothing but lechery, all incontinent varlets.' Even Achilles 
 has become idle and inactive, because Queen Hecuba allures 
 him with her daughter ; the uncle Pandarus and the father 
 Calchas make the same use of Cressida ; thus, too, if we are to 
 believe Thersites, Agamemnon is a lover of quails (loose 
 women), and Patroclus is as fond of them as a parrot of 
 almonds ; so Troilus wrestles with the victorious Diomedes for 
 a Cressida, and Paris with Menelaus for a Helen. In his con- 
 tempt for this originator of the campaign, Thersites uses even 
 stronger and more venomous words to express his contempt for 
 the whole affair ; he would not mind being the most con- 
 
 TT 
 
690 THIRD PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEABE' 8 DBAMA.TIC POETRY. 
 
 temptible of creatures, ' the louse of a lazar,' but ' to be 
 Menelaus, he •would conspire against destiny.' Next to him he 
 hates Achilles and Ajax the most, because they possess that 
 which most provokes his envy. His biting spirit makes him 
 feel more nearly allied to the faction of the wits, and therefore 
 he spares NestOr and Ulysses ; but he de ply abhors those 
 strong ones who quarrel about him, who make him their 
 buifoon, and then reward him with blows for abusing his free- 
 dom. It gratifies him to mock this rude brutality ; he calls 
 them the ' draught-oxen ' of the crafty Ulysses and Nestor ; of 
 so little wit that they could not ' deliver a fly from a spider, 
 without drawing their massy irons and cutting the web ; ' if 
 Hector were to knock out either of their brains, it were ' as 
 good crack a fusty nut with no kernel.' Envy and jealousy fill 
 him with the poison and obscenity with which he besmears 
 everything ; he calls upon ' the devil, envy,' to say Amen to 
 the curses which he utters upon all. Anger makes him like 
 the ' porcupine,' which turns its quill against everybody ; envy, 
 like the ' unsalted leaven,' which makes all the dough mouldy, 
 which places him on the lowest scale among the envy-divided 
 Greeks. But for this very reason his voice is not the decisive 
 one, which could lead us to the poet's true meaning. We can 
 only take this view of the action before Troy, when, placing 
 ourselves on a level with Thersites, we give our vote for 
 cowardice which mocks at bravery, for envy which depreciates 
 greatness, for ugliness which robs everything of the splendour 
 of beauty, for flat prose which ridicules every ideal motive, for 
 downright badness which sees everything in its worst aspect. 
 In him we hear the sarcastic spirit, which regards everything 
 as utterly bad, and will neither see nor acknowledge the exist- 
 ence of what is good, noble, or beautiful. But on this bad 
 principle, this principle of absolute meanness, Shakespeare has 
 not designed his merry, humorous play. 
 
 The question concerning the origin and object of the Trojan 
 struggle has been brought under discussion by our poet in 
 higher circles and has been treated far more fundamentally and 
 poetically than by Thersites. That this origin was a main 
 point with him is shown by his placing in the foreground the 
 relation of Troilus and Diomedes to the abandoned Cressida, 
 as a corresponding one to the similar and previously well-known 
 relation of Paris and Menelaus to Helen. A stolen wife was 
 the cause of the earliest national war between two quarters of 
 
TE0ILV8 AND CRESSIDA. 691 
 
 the world. Two owners strive for her, as Dipmiedes. sg^ys to 
 Paris, both alike foolishly ; the one seeks her, 
 
 Not making any scruple of her soilure, 
 
 With such a hell of pain and world- of charge ; 
 
 the other defends her. 
 
 Not palating the taste of her dishonour, 
 With such a costly loss of wealth and friends. 
 
 The noble Hector feels the ignominy of the matter, when in, 
 such eloquent words he defends the right of marriage, and 
 Ulysses, also, when his gall overflows on the subject of the dis- 
 grace, for which ' they lose their heads to gild the horns ' of 
 Menelaus. But, at the same time, the action has in the eyes 
 of Hector as well as of Ulysses another, a better, and a poetic 
 side, in reference to which the poet clothes his verse with 
 dignity and seriousness. In the assembly of the Trojans (Act ii. 
 sc. 2) Helenus and Hector ' discuss the restoration of Helen. 
 The latter, confessing his fear of evil consequences, calls 
 ' modest doubt the beacon of the wise,' and surety ' the wound 
 of peace ; ' the former reminds him to listen to the grounds of 
 reason. The wanton and interested alone, Paris and Troilus, 
 will not hear of reason. Hector suggests that the cause of the 
 war, Helen; is not worth contending about. Troilus rejoins, 
 ' What is aught, but as 'tis valued ? ' Hector more justly re- 
 plies ; — 
 
 Value dwells not in particular wiU j 
 
 It holds his estimate and dignity 
 
 As well wherein 'tis precious of itself' 
 
 As in the prizer ; 'tis mad idolatry, 
 
 To make the service greater than the god. 
 
 Troilus, however, reminds him of the beauty of Helen, of the 
 value the Greeks set upon her, of the Trojans' own declaration, 
 that she was ' inestimable,' and of the national honouri which 
 was mixed up with the affair. And Hector, although the pro- 
 phetess Cassandra has justified his fear of the result, although 
 he has himself declared the chief reason for Helen's restora- 
 tion to be the holy right of marriage, although he has truly 
 said that to persist in doing wrong makes it much more heavy, 
 although he sees that the youthful and superficial defenders of 
 the war are only influenced by lust or revenge, yet, at the re- 
 proof of Troilus, he himself gives up the cause of reason ; he 
 acknowledges that the general honour and dignity of Troy are at 
 
 T T.2 
 
692 THIBS PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEAEE' S DBAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 stake, that Helen's is a cause that spurs them on lo great and 
 valiant deeds. Thus Shakespeare recognises the chivalric 
 object of the strife, the romantic and poetic side of the action 
 before Troy among the Trojan party, but no moral principle 
 and right. Consequently the viplent Troilus, who is here 
 prominently placed as a counterpart to Paris, meets his tragi- 
 comic- end, and Hector falls a victim to his ambition for glory. 
 This thread runs through the whole character of Hector. We 
 see at the beginning the otherwise patient and tranquil man 
 full of ambitious wrath, because his glory has undergone a 
 slight faU by means of Ajax. On this account he is armed 
 before sunrise, he strikes his servants, he scolds Andromache ; 
 at the end of the piece we find him again just the sarnie. To 
 make amends for that blot on his fame he sends his challenge 
 to the Greeks. He pays at length no further attention to the 
 prophecies of Cassandra, to the entreaties of his wife and his ■ 
 father ; with death before his eyes he esteems his honour above 
 his Ufe. 
 
 The wiser Grrecian princes regard the matter from a similar 
 point of view as the Trojans. Ulysses even judges the object 
 of the war more severely than Hector. Nevertheless, he exhorts 
 to continue the long and unfavourable struggle on the same 
 ground of glory. The noblest undertakings, he declares, do 
 not equal the projects formed ; the gods protract the end, to 
 ' find persistive constancy in men ; ' this constancy is shown 
 best in misfortune, when 
 
 Distinction, with a broad and powerful fen, 
 Puffing at all, winnows the light away. 
 
 On the smooth sea the shallow boat sails beside ' the strong- 
 ribbed bark,' but it perishes in the storm, whilst the other, un- 
 injured, cuts its way through the ' liquid mountains.' Herein, 
 however, appears the poet's preference for Troy, that he makes 
 the counsellors within the city unanimous at a similar exhorta- 
 tion to warlike deeds, whereas the Grreeks are divided into 
 parties, in which ambition, descending to petty envy, is warped 
 from its chief aim. Viewed in a moral and just sense, the 
 cause of the Greeks is not better than that of the Trojans ; on 
 the side of honour it is worse. Shakespeare has allowed the 
 Homeric Achilles, who purchased lasting fame with a short life, 
 to degenerate from a hero into a vain, morbidly proud, and 
 effeminate mocker. Not on account of any dispute with 
 
TROILVS AND CBES8WA. 6S3 
 
 Agamemnon, but for tlie sake, of the promised Polyxena, he 
 withdraws from the fight and from glory ; he has no sympathy 
 with the common honour, like Hector ; he abandons the glory 
 and honour of Greece to follow this love ; he cares for nothing 
 in the world but what affects him personally ; he rouses him- 
 self, therefore, first after the death of Patroelus (this trait also 
 Shakespeare takes from Homer), and even then only for a 
 victory which brings him more ignominy than honour. The 
 weak Ajax imitates him in haughtiness and inactivity, and with- 
 draws, as Achilles had done, in the decisive moniient, after 
 having won a little honour.. Ulysses takes all possible pains to 
 arouse in both the public spirit, the ambition, and the thirst 
 for glory which overflowed in Hector and Troilus. The finest 
 speeches in the play, as well as the intrigues which lengthen 
 out the action, have reference to this intention. To this we- 
 may trace that eloquent speech on the destroyed discipline and 
 deference to rank (Act t. sc. 3), and on the fever af envy which- 
 caused those divisions and weakness in the camp,, wherein lay 
 the strength of Troy. There is reference to it in the pro>- 
 posal to appoint Ajax for the single combat with Hector, and- 
 thereby to rouse Achilles. There is reference to it in the oft 
 recurring eulogy of the ascendency of mental over, bodily 
 strength. There is reference to it- in; the shameless flattery 
 with which they bait the stupid Ajax and feed -his hungry, 
 envious amaibition.. There- is- reference t'oitcinthe noble lesson 
 (Act in. so-. 3) impressed upon AchiUes, and which was the 
 purport of Ulyssea' first speech j that steadfastness, alone keeps 
 honour bright. All this has littlfe effect;; the two strong 
 armed heroes have too^ little feeling, for honour and glory. 
 Hector and Troilus have too mueh ; these Mtfer mean well and 
 do ill, the former meain ill and do well., or rather they escape 
 harm. On the side of the Greeks, Hector and Ulysses fare the 
 best, because they possess at least public spirit and policy. 
 Yet this also is only ordinary cunning, which displays profoimd 
 wisdom in the mysteries of state policy when the question 
 concerns mere espionage, a wisdom wMch ini consequence 
 attains its ends only in an equivocal manner. 
 
 By this absence of a moral cause in both Greeks aoid Ttojans, 
 by this want of publicrspirited honour, especially among the 
 Greeks universally, Shakespeare has cast a deep gloom over the 
 whole action and story, and this gloom is rendered only the 
 more striking and apparent by the gleams of noble principles 
 
6&4 THIBD PEBIOD OF BHAKE8PEABE' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 and wise reflections that fall upon it. Even in the description 
 of the characters and in the bearing of the style throughout 
 the intention has been to 'disfigure. In this play, according to 
 Tyrwhitt, there are more bombastic expressions than in six 
 others ; the revilings of TherMtes are so richly adorned with 
 the eloquence of abuse and rudeness, the bloodthirsty im- 
 patience of Ajax before th« duel is so full of exaggerated bom- 
 bast, that this alone would betray the intention to degrade the 
 whole subject by a caricatured representation. The challenge 
 of Hector, delivered by ^Eneas in the style of Amadis, is so 
 extravagant that Agamemnon himself doubts whether it be in 
 earnest or mockery. As to the characters, even those least 
 defaced, as Hector and Agamemnon, are not free from a ludi- 
 crous air. AH these grand personages throughout are deprived 
 of the serioug aspect and the solemn bearing which distin- 
 guish 'them in Homer; they do not always exchange the 
 buskin for the sock, but they repeatedly alternate them; they 
 (wear their every-day dress instead of that of festal pomp. The 
 comic 'distortion of these characters is almost wholly attained 
 by the one means, that they are more individualised than in 
 the ancient epos ; this alone would have destroyed the grandeur 
 of the Homeric poem and its personages ; it is the introduction 
 'of the particular where we expected or were accustomed to the 
 general, and this is universally known to produce a comic 
 -effect. Shakespeare has only to show us Patroclus imitating 
 did Nestor, coughing and spitting, shaking in and out the rivets 
 of his gorget with a ' palsy-fumbling,' in ^order to render despi- 
 cable and ridiculous the venerable picture of the ' faint defects 
 of age,' which even Homer does not conceal. The poet himself 
 has correctly described his own mode of procedure in that of 
 those mockers, Patroclus and Achilles ; sometimes they act 
 Agamemnon's greatness in an exaggerated manner, sometimes 
 Nestor's infirmities so strikingly, ' as like as Vulcan and his 
 wife ; ' all the ' abilities, gifts, natures, shapes, achievements, 
 and, plots ' of the princes serve ' as stuff for these two to make 
 paradoxes.' And in this similar treatment our comic poet 
 keeps so strictly within the line of truth, that even there, where 
 he caricatures most, the striking resemblance to the Homeric 
 characters is not to be denied, and the carrying out of these 
 distinctive features corresponds closely to the outlines given by 
 the ancient poet. We do not go so far as Godwin, who calls 
 the Homeric Thersites a mere schoolboy's sketch compared to 
 
TR0ILV8 AND CBESSWA. 695 
 
 Shakespeare's ; but it is true that it is the image of Thersites 
 in a concave mirror. The heroic stratagems of Ulysses are 
 changed into very petty artifices, and his instinctive into con- 
 scious wisdom ; but yet his character is hardly so much lowered 
 as the sycophant son of Sisyphus in the tragedy of Euripides. 
 We will not throughout maintain with Drake that the Homeric 
 characters are here ' laid naked to the very heart, and so keenly 
 individualised that we become more intimately acquainted with 
 them than from Homer himself;' but it is true that in single 
 instances we stumble, as it were, upon a psychological com- 
 mentary. The hand is masterly with which, in. the delineation 
 of Ajax, physical strength is exhibited strengthened at the 
 expense of mental power ; the abundance of similes and images 
 with which the rare but simple nature is described is inex- 
 haustible ; the discernment is wonderful with which all animal 
 qualities are gathered together to form this man, at once both 
 more and less than human ; Mars' idiot, a purblind Argus, and 
 a gouty Briareus. 
 
 If it be doubted whether, in this polemic comedy, more has 
 been accomplished than to give vent to a Virgilian sympathy, 
 or to a humorous freedom with regard to Homer and the other 
 Trojan legends, or whether there may be a deeper meaning in 
 this negation of the Homeric point of view, in this removal of 
 all grandeur from the myth, we can at least gather from the 
 whole performance this proximate truth, that the noblest 
 poetry without a strong moral principle is not what it is capable 
 of being and what it ought to be. The collected works of 
 Shakespeare, as we have now learned to know them, show us that 
 in his aesthetic system such a proposition would have ranked 
 in the first place. And when we remember that even in the 
 Grrecian times Plato himself, from his philosophical and reli- 
 gious point of view, found matter for censure morally with 
 regard to Homer, we shall not wonder if Shakespeare, from his 
 poetic starting point, arrived at similar though difierent objec- 
 tions to the Trojan traditions. The points of view from which 
 Aristophanes, with such reverential awe, considered the old 
 poet, and that too on account of his moral and practical im- 
 portance, lay too remote from Shakespeare for us to demand 
 them from him. As the Trojan history lay before him, formed 
 out of so many component parts, it seemed to him to be want- 
 ing in the higher moral, and thus at the same time in the con- 
 necting link with which he ever sought to unite his poetry 
 
696 TBIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 directly with life. And 'this he showed in an exaggerated 
 manner in his comic play, where he so parodied the same 
 action that, joining throughout the commonest traditions, he 
 heaped together all their darker parts, and deprived the actors 
 of every honourable and virtuous motive. By this means he 
 naturally makes his own drama still more deficient in that 
 connecting moral element. Certainly he would not have 
 wished to reckon this play among those which hold up a 
 mirror to the age, since it is not even calculated to prodiice 
 the simplest psychical effect. , The piece, therefore, by its half- 
 satirical character, loses the common aim of the drama, if this 
 were indeed at all intended ; it is, however, not impossible 
 that the comedy was never originally designed with this aim, 
 was not indeed intended for representation. In this case this 
 would be no reproach to the piece, so long as the new and 
 unusual aim of the satirical or humorous drama were more 
 certainly and acutely reached. But we doubt if anyone will 
 allow this to be the case. If a humorous and ironical parody 
 of the Trojan war — that is, .of the facts in themselves — were 
 aimed at, we must acknowledge that Cervantes grasped his 
 object more successfully when he directed his humorous 
 romance against knight-errantry, a decaying institution, which 
 yet, out of all time and place, continued in the advancing age ; 
 whereas Shakespeare brought forward a long-forgotten state of 
 things, which at that time did not even survive in the minds 
 of the learned. But if the object aimed at were rather to 
 satirise the poetic representations of this war, the defects of 
 the play will become evident by another comparison. Aristo- 
 phanes raised in this way his comedy into a satire ; but then 
 he renounced from the beginning the beaten path of the 
 drama; he avoided all subjects which could give groimds for 
 conjecturing an imitation of the usual circumstances of life ; 
 he elevated his actions into bold allegories, and never left the 
 spectator divided between the course of one action which 
 excited the feelings and another parallel action which chal- 
 lenged the intellectual and reflective powers. It is this 
 division which injures the Shakespearian piece, in which we 
 are not, it is true, attracted by the subject represented (the 
 loves of Troilus and Cressida) for its own sake ; but still we 
 are not free, on the other side, to acquire a clear conception of 
 the satirical intention. In a similar manner (as may have 
 been aimed at here also) Aristophanes represented also literary 
 
TROILUS AND CSESSIDA. 697 
 
 personages and events from the same moral point of view ; but 
 he has not taken them out of reinote ages, he has directed his 
 sallies against the living, against poets as well as statesmen ; 
 and this should ever be the object of satire, because we war not 
 against the defenceless and the dead. But it may have been 
 that the revived Homer at that day was considered a living 
 author, and we will suppose that this very revival may have 
 tempted ' Shakespeare to expose the weaki^pss of the ancient, 
 far-famed poetry. But even then the ground was not fairly 
 won, and the scene of action was not clear and smooth. While 
 he mixed together all the old sources of Trojan story, he threw 
 down his glove before the most different combatants, before all 
 who stood in the most different relation to the one cause which 
 was the object of his attack. If it were, as Schlegel was of 
 opinion, the chivalric books on Troy which he attacked, these 
 were objects too insignificant, and even then too obsolete for 
 Shakespeare's assaults ; if it were Homer, then these assaults 
 themselves would necessarily appear to us, in the present day, 
 obsolete. A fiction so unconscious and innocent as the 
 Homeric is must ever remain, like everything childlike, unfit 
 for satire ; the morals and opinions of such an age can be 
 judged by no other pre-suppositions and conditions than those 
 of the age itself, and Shakespeare had not the means nor the 
 knowledge required for this. Shakespeare has founded his own 
 poems in part upon a basis which, morally considered, was here 
 and there still worse than the actual basis of the Trojan story 
 (which even Homer has nowhere placed in a brilliant light) ; 
 and in simplifying, in separating, and ennobling his materials, 
 he has not on the whole done otherwise than is thelre done ; we 
 might, therefore, indeed doubt whether, reviewed even from 
 his own position, his attacks, if they refer to Homer and Homer 
 alone, are just and right. It is, however, doubtful if any 
 serious attack were intended ; that is, we hesitate whether a 
 humorous or satirical design lay at the bottom of the play, 
 whether he may have written in jest or mockery, whether in jest 
 or mockery of the facts or of their poetic forms, or whether all 
 or which of these forms was the point aimed at. This uncer- 
 tain character of the drama and the (doubtful connection of the 
 poet with doubtful sources are the causes of our quitting this 
 play with greater dissatisfaction than any other of Shakespeare's. 
 The warmest admirers of Shakespeare are undecided about it, and 
 even Coleridge declared that he scarcely knew what to say of it. 
 
• JULIUS C^SAE. 
 
 If our poet's pure susceptibility for the comprehension of the 
 Homeric works was disturbed by youthful impressions and 
 school prejudices, and rendered impossible by imperfect- know- 
 ledge and inadequate translations, his acquaintance with the 
 Eoman people and their political life and his free use of 
 Plutarch in the three Eoman histories are on the other hand all 
 the more remarkable. In these the national spirit so congenial 
 with the Eoman history and the clear historic mind of the poet 
 met each other half-way ; and Shakespeare wrote these plays, in 
 which his contemporaries saw the Eomans 'with the half-sword' 
 truthfully represented in costume and spirit, with the same 
 delight as in the last century we admired the colouring of the 
 age in Groethe's ' Grotz.' Even in our own day we must acknow- 
 ledge the truth of the poet's conception,' which is even not dis- 
 turbed by the oft-repeated objection that Shakespeare has made 
 English citizens and artisans of the Eoman populace ; for the 
 masses when set in motion are everywhere alike, especially in 
 two nations politically so similarly constituted, so that this 
 blame is rather to be considered as praise. We cannot indeed 
 in quite i a literal sense coincide with those admirers who, on 
 the other side, have said that in these plays the character, the 
 fate, the patriotism, the renown, the real disposition, and the 
 public life of the eternal city are revived before us ; but it is 
 nevertheless true that the exact delineation and lively elabora- 
 tion of the little that Shakespeare has been able to glean from 
 Plutarch, characteristic of Eoman life, are worth more than the 
 closest description of the time derived from the severest anti- 
 quarian study. 
 
 Let us remember with what freedom and individuality 
 Shakespeare has made use of his several authorities. When he 
 had an older drama before him, he discarded for the most part 
 the whole form, and retained only the story and the name. 
 
JULIUS CMSAB. 699 
 
 Was it a poor novel of Italian origin, he could seldom use the 
 web of the action without first unweaving it, nor a character 
 without creating it entirely afresh. We need only recollect the 
 shallow narratives out of which he fashioned All's Well that 
 Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Cymbeline, and the Merchant 
 of Venice, to perceive with what a bold and regardless manner 
 he treated the motives of the actions and- the actions them- 
 selves. Nay, even in the chroni-cles of his English histories, 
 however conscientiously he observed the historical tradition, he 
 was obliged, in order to put life into them, to lengthen them 
 considerably, and to introduce iato them fictitious matter, and 
 not unfrequently even to invent the explanatory motives of the 
 actions. An entirely different and 'startling relation exists 
 between our poet and his Plutarch, whom he had read in 
 Thomas North's translation (1579). The simple, plain, and 
 yet not unimaginative apprehension and representation of 
 human affairs in this historian addressed itself so clearly 
 both to his head and heart, that he here set bounds to his 
 freedom, wholly renounced his arbitrary power, and closely 
 followed the historical text. We doubt whether we shall find 
 Shakespeare greater when he invented everything regardless of 
 its sources, or here where he took all as he found it ; whether 
 we shall most admire in the one case his free power of creation, 
 or in the other his submission and self-denial. Far from all 
 pride of authorship and all pursuit after originality, he appears 
 here by the side of a classic biographer, never attempting to 
 strive with Nature, but rather reverentially to preserve her 
 uninjured in the genuine form which he found before him. If 
 the sense of truth and the modesty which we have found to be 
 peculiar to the character of this poet shine forth anywhere it is 
 surely here. v 
 
 With regard first of all to Julius Csesar, the component 
 parts of our drama are borrowed from the biographies of Brutus 
 and Caesar in such a manner that not only the historical action 
 in its ordinary course, but also single characteristic traits in 
 incidents and speeches, nay, even single expressions and words, 
 are taken from Plutarch, even such as are not anecdotal or of an 
 epigrammatic nature, and which anyone unacquainted with 
 Plutarch would consider in form and manner to be quite 
 Shakespearian, being not unfrequently quoted as his peculiar 
 property, and as evidencing the poet's deep knowledge of 
 human nature. From the triumph over Pompey — or rather 
 
700 THIED^FEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 over his sons — the silencing of the two tribunes, and the crown 
 offered at the Lupercalean feast, until Caesar's murder, and from 
 thence to the battle of Philippi and the closing words of Antony, 
 which are in part exactly as they were delivered, all in this 
 play is essentially Plutarch. The omens of Caesar's death, the 
 warnings of the augur and of Artemidorus, the absence of the 
 heart in the animal sacrificed, Calphurnia's dream, the peculiar 
 traits of Caesar's character, his superstition regarding the touch 
 of barren women in the course, and his remarks about thin 
 people like Cassius ; all the circumstances about the conspiracy 
 where no oath was taken, the character of Ligarius, the with- 
 drawal of Cicero, the whole relatipn of Portia to Brutus, her 
 temptation, her words, his reply, her subsequent anxiety and 
 death ; the circumstances of Caesar's death, the very arts and 
 means of Decius Brutus to induce him to leave home, all the 
 minutest particulars of his murder, the behaviour of Antony 
 and its result, the murder of the poet Cinna ; further on, the 
 contention between the republican friends respecting Lucius 
 Pella and the refusal of the money, the dissension of the two 
 concerning the decisive battle, their conversation about suicide, 
 the appearance of Brutus' evil genius, the mistakes in the battle, 
 its double issue, its repetition, the suicide of both friends and 
 Cassius' death by the same sword with which he killed Caesar — 
 all is taken from Plutarch's narrative, from which the poet had 
 only to omit whatever destroyed the unity of the action. The 
 characterisation of Brutus and Cassius is in general true to 
 Plutarch's description of them ; the political naoral of this whole 
 historical drama is simply conceived and expressed, and is after- 
 wards continued in Antony and Cleopatra. 
 
 This fidelity of Shakespeare to his source justifies us in 
 saying that he has but copied the historical text. It is at the 
 same time wonderful with what hidden and almost undiscemible 
 power he has converted the text into a drama, and made one of 
 the most effective plays possible. Nowhere else has Shakespeare 
 executed his task with such simple skill, combining his depend- 
 ence on history with the greatest freedom of a poetic plan, and 
 making the truest history at once the freest drama. The parts 
 seem to be only put together with the utmost ease, a few links 
 taken out of the great chain of historical events, and the 
 remainder united into a closer and more compact unity ; but 
 let anyone, following this model work, attempt to take any other 
 subject out of Plutarch, and to arrange even a dramatic sketch 
 
JULIUS CJESAS. 701 
 
 from it, and he will become fully aware of the difficulty of this 
 apparently most easy task. He will become aware what it is to 
 concentrate his mind strictly upon one theme (as is here the 
 case), to refer persons and actions to one idea, to seek' this idea 
 out of the most general truths laid down in history, to employ, 
 moreover, for the dramatic representation of this idea, none but 
 the actual historical personages, and so at length to arrange this 
 for the stage with practised skill or innate ability, that with an 
 apparently artless transcript of history such an ingenious 
 independent theatrical effect can be obtained as that which 
 this play has at no time failed to produce. Indeed, Leonard 
 Digges infOTms xis with what applause Julius Csesar was acted in 
 Shakespeare's time, whilst the tedious 'Catiline' and 'Sejanus,' 
 which Ben Jonson had worked at with such diligence and 
 labour, were coldly received. Immediately on its appear- 
 ance the play roused the emulation of aU the theatres; the 
 renowned poets Munday, Drayton, Webster, and Middleton 
 wrote a rival piece, ' Caesar's Fall,' in 1602, Lord Stirling a 
 'Julius Csesar' in 1604, and a 'Caesar and Pompey' appeared in 
 1607. At the period of the Eestoration, Caesar was one of the 
 few works of Shakespeare that were sought out, represented, and 
 criticised. In our own day, in Germany, we have seen it per- 
 formed, seldom well, but always with applause. Separate 
 scenes, like that between Casca and Cassius during the storm, 
 produce an effect which can scarcely be imagined from merely 
 reading them ; the speech of Antony, heightened by the effect 
 of external arrangement and the artifices of conversation, by 
 proper pauses and interruptions, even with inferior acting, 
 carries away the spectator as well as the populace represented ; 
 the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius is a trial piece for great 
 actors, which, according to Leonard Digges, created even in his 
 time the most rapturous applause ; and even the last act, which 
 has been often objected to, is capable of exciting the liveliest 
 emotion wheti well managed and acted with spirit. 
 
 The question as to the time of the origin of Julius Caesar 
 has only lately been correctly answered. In a poem by Drayton, 
 ' Mortimeriados ' (1596), which in 1603 appeared in a new form 
 under the title of ' The Barons' War,' there is a stanza in the 
 third book of this edition which is very like the concluding 
 words of Antony, and is not to be found in the first edition of 
 the poem. The whole impression is, it must be admitted, that 
 Drayton and not Shakespeare is to be considered the plagiarist^ 
 
702 THIRD PEBIOD OF SSAKESPEASE'S DEAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 and this because the passage is so entirely identical with the 
 feeling of the piece that it could not have been borrowed by 
 Shakespeare from another. Hence it appears that the play was 
 composed before 1603, about the same time as Hamlet. Not 
 alone is this confirmed by the freqjient external references to 
 Cffisar which we find in Hamlet, but still more by the inner 
 relations of the two plays. These are so remarkable that, if 
 preponderating reasons had not determined us not to separate 
 the three Eoman plays, we must have discussed Csesar, for the 
 sake of its internal relationship, close by the side of Hamlet and 
 Macbeth, because it was conceived and written in the same 
 train of thought as these two pieces. If we enter at once upon 
 the connection of these two works with each other, we shall 
 reach the object of our considerations upon Caesar in the 
 shortest way. 
 
 In Hamlet the impassioned wavering hero looked with 
 envy on the Eoman character of Horatio, who, while he suffered 
 everything, seemed to sufiier nothing, who was the slave of no 
 passion, taking with equal thanks the buffets and rewards 
 of fortune, his ' blood and judgment well co-mingled.' If we 
 transport this character from Christian times into heathen ages, 
 and from Denmark into the excited public life of Eome, we 
 have the main features of Brutus, who forms the chief character 
 in Julius Csesar. Of a phlegmatic temperament, calm and 
 serious, indifferent to amusement and pleasure, unmoved by 
 passion, 'a lamb that carries anger as the flint bears fire,' 
 Brutus is born to be a stoic, and practises the principles of 
 that school which prescribes the passive use of life and enjoins 
 the power of endurance. Of him, as of Horatio, it is said that 
 none knew better how to endure than he, and Messala and Cassius 
 acknowledge this with admiration. He possesses all th^ virtues 
 which constitute a noble nature ; he has strengthened in him- 
 self all the virtues which practical life ripens and brings to 
 perfection ; he has won for his own all the virtues which arise 
 out of strength of will and the dominion of the mind over the 
 passions. In his relations to his wife and servant he is tender 
 and mild, amiable and full of kindly coiisideration ; in all his 
 relations to society and to the state he is unselfish, armed with 
 probity, incapable of flattery, unbiassed by party spirit, per- 
 fectly upright and careful for the common weal ; in his relation 
 to himself, in his condemnation of passion, he is discreet and 
 circumspect, never rash in action or decision, but his resolution 
 
JULIUS CMSAE. 703 
 
 once taken he is invincible in spirit and action, firm and steady 
 in carrying out his plans, and a stern ruler over inward 
 emotions.' Standing between the unmanly irresolute Hamlet 
 and the manly overstrained Macbeth, the elements are 
 
 So mixed in him, that nature might stand up, 
 And say to all the world, This was a man! 
 
 That man, whose nature Macbeth also originally possessed, that 
 man, who does nothing more and nothing less than what 
 becomes a man, and who proves his manhood above all by 
 mastery over himself. Shakespeare has developed this distinc- 
 tive feature in Brutus by great examples. He has endowed 
 him with a nature as profound and with feelings as powerful 
 and as excitable as Hamlet and Macbeth ; but the poet has 
 concealed the uncommon intensity of these emotions under the 
 veil of heroic calmness, and behind the ' accepted character of 
 the determined politician. "We scarcely perceive the uneasi- 
 ness which disturbs him within, in those passages where, at the 
 beginning of the conspiracy and towards t^e conclusion -of it, 
 he envies the careless sleep of his boy Lucius. Little adapted 
 for dissimulation, he tells the conspirators to perform their 
 parts steadily like clever actors, and he sets them a good 
 example. When they think their plans are betrayed by 
 Popilius Lena, Cassius is about to kill himself ; but Brutus 
 calmly looks the suspected person in the face, and observes that 
 he is not dangerous. He conceals the project from his wife 
 until he has heroic proof of her discretion. The early death of 
 this beloved wife overwhelms him with 'grief and blood ill- 
 tempered,' and makes him more ready to quarrel with Cassius 
 than is his nature, but immediately afterwards he is able to 
 conceal Portia's death from Messala, that the tidings may not 
 shake his courage. Over the body of Cassius nature demands 
 her rights, but he puts off the debt of tears until another time, 
 that' his personal anguish may not endanger the public cause. 
 All these striking features" of a sharply-drawn character are 
 without display and are almost silently 'indicated in the piece ; 
 no more laconic characterisation has Shakespeare ever made use 
 of than in this laconic Roman, who performs the greatest deeds 
 with the utmost simplicity, and uses the fewest words over the 
 grandest actions. 
 
 The play under consideration is a most striking variation on 
 the theme of Hamlet and Macbethj and gives us a new and 
 
*!04i THIRD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DBAMATIC POE^BY. 
 
 remarkable proof of the depth and niany-sidedness with which' 
 Shakespeare thought out and elaborated any problem he had 
 once seized upon. A deed of as great, nay, greater weight than 
 that demanded of Hamlet or planned by Macbeth is imposed 
 on this pattern of a man — namely, the murder of a hero, who 
 had increased the greatness of Eome as much as he had endan- 
 gered her freedom. The deed required of him is of a nature 
 doubtful in itself; it is not one decidedly right or decidedly 
 wrong, like that to which Hamlet was called and to which 
 Macbeth was tempted. The imcertainty, the doubt, the dis- 
 cord, lay in the other instances in the men themselves, here it 
 lies in the thing itself, and is, only from thence transferred to 
 an even, clear, and right-judging mind. Hamlet was urged to 
 a just revenge, he was called to punish a wrong committed, he 
 ventured not to take the first and only step, he scarcely desired 
 the end, and the means still less. Macbeth feels himself 
 tempted to murder and treachery, to the performance of a 
 wrong yet not committed, he shudders at both end and means, 
 but as soon as he is resolved he takes with the first step all the 
 ensuing ones, as soon as he is determined as to the end he 
 adopts the means also, grasping even more than is necessary. 
 Brutus is persuaded by his friends to take part in a murder and 
 conspiracy, as he himself calls it : for the restoration of freedom 
 his task is to prevent an injustice as yet only apprehended on 
 Caesar's part ; he desires the end, but only the means most 
 necessary for attaining it ; he takes the first step, but not the 
 second and third ; whereas he should either not have taken the 
 first, or he should also have taken the others. With him it is 
 not a disturbance of nature in consequence of an unequal tem- 
 perament, and thus, resulting from this, a sin of omission, as 
 with Hamlet ; it is not a disorderly, exaggerated discord, and 
 after its removal a crime, as with Macbeth ; but after the quiet 
 manly consideration of an equivocal task, it is a deed unre- 
 pented but atoned for, which from the end in view and the 
 means used was a fault, an error, and as such was revenged 
 upon his own head. 
 
 If in Hamlet the aim of the poet was to treat the relation of 
 the intellectual to the active nature in a thoroughly human 
 sense, in the history of Julius Caesar the tendency is rather 
 political : to depict the collision of moral against political 
 duties. The struggle between the humanity of a noble and 
 gentle nature and the political principles of an energetic 
 
JULIUS CMSAR. 705 
 
 character, between personal feelings and public duty, this is the 
 soul of this play and the most interesting point of the situation 
 in which Brutus is placed. Considered in himself, Brutus is of 
 much too moral and too pure a nature to be fit for the hard and 
 often dirty work of politics, like the gross degenerate Faulcon- 
 bridge or the sharp Cassius. At the first hint, when Cassius 
 initiates him into his ideas of a conspiracy, he feels that he is 
 drawn into a foreign element. ' Into what dangers,' he asks, 
 
 would you lead me, Cassiua, 
 That you would have me seek into myself 
 For that which is not in me ? 
 
 His own inward voice calls him not to this deed. It is true the 
 necessities of the time weigh upon him and prepare for him 
 heavy sorrows ; the rising ambition of Caesar has made him 
 reflective, thoughtful, and sorrowful, but as ever he has kept the 
 emotions of his soul concealed ; to combat these sufferings, or 
 the cause of them, the strong sufferer is not disposed. When 
 he assures Cassius that he would not 
 
 repute himself a son of Rome, 
 Under these hard conditions as this time 
 Is like to lay upon us, 
 
 he probably thinks only of voluntary banishment. But this 
 man, in himself little created for politics, is yet placed p.nder a 
 constitution that allows no rest from politics, and he is brought 
 up in principles which necessitate active life. He possesses, 
 like Hamlet, a cultivated mind, and according to Plutarch, as 
 well as Shakespeare, he carries books about with him even in 
 the camp ; he is a lean thinker, as Caesar in Plutarch describes 
 not only Cassius but Brutus also ; but, according to his own 
 testimony, which Shakespeare found in Plutarch, he could not 
 endure 'the Ciceros, men whose cultivation advantaged nothing, 
 whose finest principles were never living ones ; and Shakespeare 
 has represented him quite in this spirit. Next to his human 
 duties, consonant with the ideas of all a,ntiquity, stand his 
 political duties, next to the virtue of the individual stands in 
 equal rank the honour of the patriot. Consequently, im- 
 mediately after those defensive words to Cassius, there-foUows 
 the declaration : — 
 
 What is it that you would impart to me ? 
 If it be aught toward the general good, 
 z z 
 
706 THIBD FEBIOD OP SHAKE8PEABE' 8 DBAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 Set honour in the one eye and death i' the other, 
 An4 I will look on both indifferently : 
 For, let the gods so speed me, as I love 
 The name of honour more than I fear death. 
 
 To these his political principles Cassius now applies himself in 
 order to draw him into a conspiracy against Cgesar. From this 
 moment his anxiety as to the condition of the time and state 
 rises to a great internal struggle. He eats, he sleeps, he speaks 
 no more ; imaginations and cares torment him day and night ; 
 as he says. 
 
 Between the acting of a dreadful thing, 
 
 And the first motion, all the interim is 
 
 Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream : 
 
 The genius and the mortal instruments 
 
 Are then in council ; and the state of man, 
 
 Like to a little kingdom, suffers then 
 
 The nature of an insurrection. 
 
 We have seen Macbeth shaken by a similar revolution, by 
 similar phantasms and fearfial dreams, and he drove them away 
 as soon as possible ; we have seen Hattilet disturbed and ruined 
 by them ; in Brutus none but the actor can show them to us, 
 and he only very faintly ; they are repressed by a strong mental 
 power, which calmly weighs the principles of action in the dis- 
 puted point, and decides witb stern composure accordingly. 
 When Brutus exclaims against the ' dangerous brow of conspi- 
 racy,' we see his whole nature opposed to it, but after he has 
 once acknoWled^ged it as necessary, he teaches the practice of its 
 dangerous arts. He would gladly slay Caesar's spirit and ' not 
 dism'ember Ceesar,' but as his ruling ambition is contrary to the 
 cause of freedom, his republican principles permit no hesitation. 
 When pity for Cfeesar is placed in the scale with pity for his 
 country, there is not a doubt which has the preponderance. 
 When the human relation between him and Caesar is opposed 
 to the relation towards his country in which he is placed by the 
 republican spirit inherited from Junius Brutus, it is irremedi- 
 able but that the restoration of public freedom must be his first 
 duty. The purest motives decide the inward struggle in favour 
 of patriotism ; even his bitterest foes acknowledge this. Caesar 
 must fall as a sacrifice to his country, its weal, and its freedom ; 
 necessity not hatred, justice not personal feeling, arm those 
 hands against him, which Brutus, after the deed, would chide if 
 he could. No impure motive, such as Cicero's ambition, is to 
 
JULIUS CMSAB. 707 
 
 be permitted. No unnecessary crime is to degrade the one un- 
 avoidable deed, the ' even virtue of their enterprise,' which 
 Brutus is to accomplish as a sacrificer, a ' purger,' and not as a 
 murderer. In the moment of its consummation, the coldly 
 resolute man is so sure of his good reasons that he thinks even 
 the son of Caesar would be satisfied with them. In presence of 
 the Eoman populace, with the same security and calmness, he 
 calls down upon himself his own fate : ' that, as he slew his best 
 lover for the good of Eome, he has the same dagger for himself, 
 when it shaU please his country to need his death.' 
 
 Now in this inward struggle, and in the decision which 
 Brutus arrived at, there lies a double error, which may be 
 viewed both from a moral and a political side. Brutus appears 
 in Shakespeare, and even in Plutarch, united in a closer friend- 
 ship with Caesar than history proves to have been the case. His 
 brother-in-law Cassius says to him : — 
 
 "When thou didst hate him worse, thou lov'dst him better 
 Than ever thou lov'dst Cassius. 
 
 His enemy Antony calls him ' Caesar's angel.' The poet has in 
 a wonderful manner put in the mouth of the falling Caesar, at 
 sight of Brutus, the Latin words, M tu. Brute ? to give greater 
 emphasis to the painful surprise of his fatherly friend, who would 
 never have expected to have seen Brutus among the number of 
 his murderers. Was it really suitable to the personal relations 
 of this feeling and noble man that he should imagine Caesar's 
 death to be the only means for restoring the freedom of the 
 state ? Do not the words of Antony fall upon him with fearful 
 weight, that 
 
 when the noble Csesar saw him stab, 
 Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms. 
 Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart ? 
 
 Must he not have been struck dumb when the same Antony 
 cast this reproach in his face, that while exclaiming ' Hail 
 Caesar ! ' and flattering him to his face, they had maliciously 
 killed him? The stain of assassination adheres to Brutus 
 a crime which no political duty, no opposite duty whatever, can 
 outweigh. This stain cleaves closer to the ' lover ' of Cjesar 
 than to Caesar's personal enemy' Cassius, and to him, therefore, 
 to Caesar's good angel, the spirit of the murdered man subse- 
 quently appears as Ms evil and revenge-announcing genius. If 
 
 z z 2 
 
708 THIRD PERIOD OF : SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 from political groimds, the deed of Brutus is nobler, it is in a 
 
 human respect more unnatural than that of Cassius, in whom it 
 
 is represented as less noble but more natural. Shakespeare has 
 
 not allowed considerations such as these to escape from the 
 
 laconic Brutus, but they are contained emphatically in the 
 
 things themselves, especially in the contrast of Antony. What 
 
 is this voluptuary, this man of loose morals, this epicurean, this 
 
 racer and gambler, of whom it is presumed that at the best he 
 
 will ' take thought and die for Caesar,' perhaps also laugh at his 
 
 death if he escapes, what is Ae compared to Brutus? In spirit 
 
 and capacity, indeed, he is much more than the unsuspecting 
 
 Brutus imagines, but in a moral point of view he is only an 
 
 abandoned and unprincipled man. So far as we see him act in 
 
 this play, his flattery of the murderers to their faces places him 
 
 on an equality with them in their flattery of Cs6sar ; we cannot 
 
 blame the art with which he yields to circumstances, compassing 
 
 his worst ends with the air of the utmost honour, stirring up the 
 
 people by his eloquence in spite of the order that he should say 
 
 nothing against the murderers ; we cannot blame the cunning 
 
 with which, pretending to be a plain, blunt man, he applauds 
 
 the honourable republicans, whom he at the same time stamps 
 
 as traitors, while he mockingly extols the superiority of the 
 
 orator Brutus, having already annihilated his speech and his 
 
 deed ; we cannot, we say, blame this art and cunning any more 
 
 than the hypocritical artifices of those who allured Caesar into 
 
 the net. But how low does this man sink when contrasted with 
 
 Brutus' unselfishness, patriotism, mild forbearance, and saving 
 
 of blood, we see the triumvir subsequently indifferent to the 
 
 fate of his political enemies, altering to the prejudice of the 
 
 people that will of Caesar's with which he had roused them to 
 
 revolt, using Lepidus as a beast of burden, and himself silently 
 
 submitting to the young Octavius ? And yet we must confess 
 
 that even this wretch, on the score of humanity, recommends 
 
 himself to us beside the corpse of Caesar more than even the 
 
 noble Brutus. Like Brutus he was the friend of Caesar ; to him 
 
 also Caesar had been just and faithful ; his death touches him 
 
 truly and sincerely ; he testifies to this when he is alone, and 
 
 when he is with the servant of Octavius ; he ventures even to 
 
 show his sorrow to the murderers ; his heart is truly ' in the 
 
 coffin there, with Csesar,' and only to this real and undissembled 
 
 sorrow the great effects of his artful speech are due. However 
 
 great, from a political point of view, Brutus' patriotism and 
 
JULIUS PMSAB. 709 
 
 upright intentions may appear in spite of Ms murderous act, 
 equally estimable, in a moral sense, is the sincere fidelity of 
 Antony towards his deceased friend, who can help him no 
 further, in spite of his faithless projects against the conspirators, 
 whom it is dsingerous to oppose. The contrast which Shake- 
 speare has instituted between Antony and Brutus is one of 
 cutting acuteness, and there is even a double edge given to it, 
 with regard to the political error of the action itself. When 
 Brutus, after conquering his inward reluctance, decides for 
 Caesar's death, he tells us the grounds of this decision in a 
 soliloquy (Act ii. sc. 1) which in its whole tone bears a great 
 resemblance with the chief monologue in Hamlet. To speak 
 the tru,th, he knows not when Caesar's ' affections swayed more 
 than his reason.' He sees him standing only at the point which 
 separates ambition from moderation, half striving, half forced 
 to make that power, which circumstances have actually given 
 him, lawful and hereditary. But because he sees the boldest 
 ambition lurk behind .Caesar's hesitation, because he fears ' the 
 abuse of greatness, when it disjoins remorse from power,' he 
 would prevent these things. He must confess that ' the quarrel 
 will bear no colour for the thing he now is,' he will, therefore, 
 ' fashion it thus : — 
 
 that what he is, augmented, 
 "Would run to these and these extremities ; 
 
 and therefore as ' a serpent's egg^ he must be killed ' in the 
 shell.' But this, indeed, for a man as upright and conscientious 
 as Brutus, must be considered as looking too deeply into an 
 uncommitted fault ; in the great end, to which he aspires he is 
 impelled by an inherited ambition as refined and as popular as 
 Csesar's aspirations after dominion ; and remorse is in him just 
 as much disjoined from power as he fears may be the case with 
 Caesar.' No man is constituted a judge over thoughts. If it 
 
 ^ It is not uninteresting to see how Shakespeare's great contemporary 
 Bacon agreed with him concerning similar conflicting duties. In his Essay 
 de auffmmtis seieretiarum, he introduces the feast at which, in the absence of 
 Brutus and Oaesius, the question concerning the policy of the killing of a 
 tyrant is discussed. Some of the guests declared for it because ' Servitude 
 was the extreme of evils '; others on the contrary, because ' Tyranny was 
 better than a civil war ' ; others declared that it was unworthy of the wise 
 to rush into danger like fools. Amongst such disputed questions, he con- 
 tinues, this is the most frequent : whether for the good of one's country, or 
 ' for a great deal of good to ensue,' it is allowable to depart from justice. 
 
710 THIRD PESIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 is lawful to condemn on suspicion and presumption, then the 
 people too were right in tearing the poet Cinna to pieces on a 
 presumption. Had Brutus waited- for these 'extremities,' it is 
 possible that fate might have touched Caesar, that an involun- 
 tary revolution and not a planned conspiracy, not the conspiracy 
 of a friend, might have overthrown him. Brutus might have 
 been mistaken in Caesar. This is indeed a mere possibility not 
 to be proved ; but that he erred in Antony is certain, and this 
 certainty makes the possibility of the other error the more pro- 
 bable. He considers Antony as a harmless voluptuary, as 
 ' Caesar's arm,' which could do nothing ' when Caesax's head were 
 off ; ' he knows that they shall ' have him weU. to friend.' In 
 all these opinions about Antony he is entirely deceived, although 
 he had been thoroughly warned by Cassius ; and yet he decreed 
 Caesar's death upon a suspicion. He solemnly promised Eome 
 that, if the restoration of the republic were to foUow, she should 
 have her wish from Brutus' own hand. Uncertain whether this 
 good' would follow the restoration, he commits a certain crime ; 
 a necessary part of this crime — the removal of Antony — he 
 leaves undone ; and the consequence is that through this very 
 Antony the intended restoration is frustrated. In silence, before 
 the battle of Philippi, he must hear from Antony the moral 
 reproach of assassination ; he must hear from Cassius the blame 
 of having unseasonably spared the man whose tongue had other- 
 wise not thus offended. 
 
 We have shown that the nature of Brutus in itself would 
 never have iinpelled him to such a deed of violence; it was 
 too gentle and magnanimous. But in these very qualities was 
 that love of honour rooted, which led him to listen to the call 
 of patriotism that urged hini on; in them was rooted the 
 tractability, the want of obstinacy and selfishness, which ren- 
 dered him accessible to counsel and reminder from without ; and 
 finally that unsuspiciousness which induced him to leave those 
 counsels untested. He yielded too quickly to the inan who 
 spoke from personal hatred to Caesar; he accepted too trustingly 
 the call of men who used him as a covering for their own 
 moral nakedness ; he jead too credulously the papers they 
 
 This question Jason of Thessalia determined : ' We may do a little wrong 
 that a great right may follow.' But the reply to this is good : ' Thou 
 hast a guarantee for present right, but no warrant for the future. Men 
 must pursue things which are just in present, and leave the future to the 
 divine Providence.' 
 
JULIVS CS8AB. 711 
 
 threw in his way as the voice of the Eoman people. This eall 
 of his country stirred him as strongly as Lady Macbeth's taunt 
 of manhood had stung Macbeth. The calm man, like that 
 impassionate one, accepted his task ; not that like Macbeth he 
 plunged into it madly, but he made a wrong choice between the 
 impulses of his nature within and the call of honour without. 
 He sinks under this error without acknowledging it. As this 
 could not be expressed in any reflection of the man who had 
 once fallen into the error, the poet has made it evident by 
 a parallel which indicates a wonderful depth of thought. In 
 the episode concerning Portia, Shakespeare has closely copied 
 Plutarch, almost without adding or omitting anything. And 
 yet by the mere introduction of this there is a wonderfijl light 
 cast on the matter, and its reflection reveals Brutus' concealed 
 internal sensations after; the deed. Portia is represented by 
 the poet as the feminine, tender counterpart of Brutus. Alto- 
 gether womanly in her care and watchfulness over her husband, 
 as Gate's daughter and as Brutus' wife she feels a call to 
 share the political plans of her consort, just as he, the descen- 
 dant of the ancient Brutus, thjnks he must not deny himself 
 to the cause of freedom. By a self-inflicted wound she proves 
 her vocation, her courage, her ability to be silent and to bear, 
 and her proof succeeds. She now presses into the counsels of 
 her husband, takes her share in his grief and in his secret, and 
 becomes a passive conspirator. But no sooner is this accom- 
 plished than her suppressed womanhood comes to light, as the 
 subjugated hmnanity in Brutus had done when he would not 
 have Antony slain. She overrated her woman's strength when 
 she forced herself into the conspiracy, as he in his sphere over- 
 rated his powers when he placed himself at the head of the 
 conspirators. On the first failure of her expectations, Portia's 
 heart breaks and she commits suicide. As quickly mastered 
 by anxiety, Brutus flies from Eome with Cassius after Antony's 
 success, both of them like ' madmen ; ' this separation drives 
 Portia to despair, and her death re-acts upon Brutus' inward 
 agitation, which in his usual manner he conceals to the last. 
 The gloom which overwhelms him from this time forth re-acts 
 again upon the evil issue of his cause ; it betrays itself first of 
 all in the severe manner with which he reprimands Cassius. 
 The discord between the leaders cannot be hidden from the 
 lookers-on and pannot havQ an encouraging effect ; to spare his 
 broken-hearted friend, Cassius too q^uickly abandons his opposi- 
 
712 THIEB PEEIOD OF SSAKESPEJME'8 DRAMATIC FOETSY. 
 
 tion to the plan of b,attle, and the consequences are fatal. 
 Powerfully as Brutus commands himself in the hour that de- 
 cides their fate', different as he is to Macheth in controlling his 
 passions and his inward agitation, yet, like him, he is dis- 
 tracted, absent, peevish, and forgetful. His evil genius 
 appears to him, not torturing and tormenting him as Richard's 
 did, only paralysing his courage in the passing moment of its 
 apparition, but returning again and announcing his last hour. 
 Antony was right in supposing that both ■ the republican 
 leaders feigned courage but did not possess it. The mistakes 
 which caused the loss of the battle, historical as they are, seem 
 used by the ppet to show the analogy between the crime and 
 its punishment. Mistrust of good success had too quickly 
 driven Cassius to self-destruction. ' Mistrust, melancholy's . 
 child, showed to the apt thoughts of men the things that are 
 not ; error, soon conceived, never comes to a happy birth, but 
 kills the mother that engendered it.' These are words which 
 may apply also to the mistrustful error which showed Brutus 
 things in reference to Caesar that were not. By joining the 
 conspiracy the honourable man took a step for the sake of 
 honour and patriotism which his moral principles would have 
 forbidden ; and with this his end fully corresponded. His 
 philosophy taught him to bear the issue patiently, but when 
 Cassius held before him the ignominy of being led in triiunph 
 by the conqueror, his feeling of honour led him to turn away 
 from his moral principles at the instigation of this same 
 Cassius, who first stimulated his' feeling of honour against 
 CsBsar; he resorts with passive courage to self-destruction, 
 which he had once esteemed cowardly. 
 
 Shakespeare has scarcely created anything more splendid 
 than the relation in which he has placed Cassius to Brutus. 
 Closely as he has followed Plutarch, the poet has, by slight 
 ,alterations, skilfully placed this character, even more than the 
 historian has doncj in the sharpest contrast to Brutus — the 
 clever, politic revolutionist opposed to the man of noble soul 
 and moral nature. Eoman state policy and a mode of reason- 
 ing peculiar to antiquity are displayed in every feature of this 
 contrast of Cassius to Brutus, as well as in the delineation of 
 the character itself; the nature and spirit of antiquity 
 operated with exquisite freshness and readiness upon the un- 
 burdened brain of the^ poet, unfettered by the schools. It has 
 never been sufficiently considered what it was in those times 
 
JULIUS CMSAR. 713 
 
 to enter with this free intelligence into the republican mind of 
 the old world, to handle the political characters, life, and 
 public spirit of a remote age, learned from Plutarch alone, 
 with the same thorough knowledge with which Shakespeare 
 had handled his popular English historical plays and the 
 events of common private life. "We grant that the richness of 
 iniages in political matters does not stream forth as abun- 
 dantly as in other things, and that this has had an effect on 
 the very simple but noble and dignified bearing of this play, 
 yet every single word shows on all material points a thorough 
 understanding of the historical and political circumstances 
 treated of, and it would be difficult to point out a single mis- 
 apprehension with respect to the general truths which are to be 
 drawn from the Eoman history of that day. It has been said 
 that Shakespeare, from studying Plutarch, entered even too 
 deeply into the free . political principles of the old world, and 
 that he adopted liberal opinions and pure democratic ideas, 
 not in harmony with those expressed in his earlier English 
 historical plays. This is not the case. Into the one he has 
 introduced the monarchical features of the history, as into the 
 other the republican, preserving the spirit of each time and of 
 each nationality ; and in Julius Caesar, even, he takes his stand 
 between monarchy and republicanism as they struggled to- 
 gether at that time with nearly equal strength, and he has 
 done this with the same admirable impartiality that every- 
 where distinguishes him. If it be thought singular that a poet 
 under such absolute sovereigns as Elizabeth and James I., in 
 whose immediate service he was, should attain to such political 
 independence, to such freedom of ideas, to such warm sym- 
 pathy with the falling Roman republic and its representatives, 
 we must recollect that precisely at that time, in the closest 
 proximity to England, among a people connected with that 
 country by speech and origin, there arose after long struggling 
 a young republic, supported by England against Spain, their 
 common foe ; that there republican ideas and statesmen had 
 formed themselves by slow degrees, and that as a natural result 
 these had produced in England the first minds who could com- 
 prehend free political institutions. 
 
 According to Plutarch public opinion thus distinguished 
 between Brutus and Cassius : — that it was said that Brutus 
 hated tyranny, Cassius tyrants; yet, adds the historian, the 
 latter was inspired with a universal hatred of tyranny also. 
 
714 TSIRD PEEIOB OF 8HAKESFEAME' S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 Thus has Shakespeare represented him. His Cassius is imbued 
 ■with a thorough love of freedom and equality ; he groans 
 under the prospect of a monarchical" time more than the 
 others ; he does not bear this burden with thoughtful patience 
 like BrutuSj but his ingenious mind ' strives with natural 
 opposition to throw it off; he seeks for men of the old time ; 
 the new, who are like timid sheep before the wolf, are an 
 abhorrence to him. His principles of freedom are not crossed 
 by moral maxims, which might, lead him astray in his political 
 attempts; altogether a pure political character, he esteems 
 nothing so highly as his country and its freedom and honour. 
 These principles, if they were not rooted in the temperament, 
 spirit, and character of Cassius, would at all events have been 
 more powerfully supported by them than the same principles 
 would have been by Brutus' more humane, more feeling 
 nature. Of a choleric disposition, no laugher, no lover of 
 music, no gambler, no light chatterer over drink, he. is never 
 distracted from his purpose by any lesser matter, but is ever 
 deep in the consideration of serious things ; he is a lean 
 thinker, a great observer, looking closely into men and their 
 doings ; and as such he is feared by Csesar, and he proves him- 
 self such by the side of Brutus. He has nothing of the 
 attractiveness of urbane natures like Csesar and Brutus ; sure 
 and firm, no backbiter, not one who sells his love, he is a 
 trusty friend, but his hypochondriacal humour and his morose 
 irritability attract no one to seek his society. In this irritable 
 and bitter state of mind he often contrasts himself with 
 Brutus. He speaks of the ' rash humour which his mother 
 gave him ' as contrasted with his gentle friend ; he confesses 
 that he strives to obtain by art the equanimity which he does 
 not possess by nature ; he imputes the blame, which proceeds 
 from Brutus' impartiality, to want of love, from which in his 
 own case it would have proceeded, for he sees no ill in a friend 
 and no good in an enemy. On hearing of Portia's death, after 
 his quarrel with Brutus, he exclaims : ' How scap'd I killing, 
 when I crossed you so?' for with him, such irritation in 
 the midst of so much sorrow would have taken away all self- 
 command. He is oppressed by ill-humour and weariness of 
 life, while Brutus is armed with patience. And whilst the 
 latter at first considers self-murder as the refuge of the coward, 
 Cassius sees in it just that which ' makes the weak most strong,' 
 because at any time, 
 
JULIUS C^SAR. 715 
 
 life, being weary of these worldly bars, 
 Never lacks power to dismiss itself. 
 
 Even on this old subject of dispute, Shakespeare testifies to his 
 wonderful impartiality ; he places in the lips of these contrasted 
 characters these opposite notions respecting suicide, its origin, 
 and its justification, not deciding in favour of either, because 
 this different mode of thinking belongs to different men, and 
 because no general law can be made concerning an act which 
 the opinions and circumstances of the time may place in such a 
 different light. In Hamlet and Cymbeline the poet respected 
 the Christian view, and here with ' equal warmth he makes 
 Cassius~ utter the opinion of antiquity (Jj xaXas ^■^v fj xaXoos 
 Ts6i-r]Ksvat rbv sisyv^ 'xprj. Soph. Ajax) : ' he would as lief not 
 be, as live to be in awe of such as he himself.' This love oL 
 equality, estimable and noble in its soiu'ce, is mixed in Cassius 
 with unworthy matter ; but he is of a kind fitter for a conspi- 
 rator, because he turns his over-strained principles into over- 
 strained purposes.! With his hatred of tyrants there is mixed 
 the envy of Caesar belonging to the more meanly endowed man ; 
 he remembers that he had once saved the life of the emperor in 
 a swimming match, that he had seen him sick and subject to 
 human infirmities, and now he is to bow before this man as 
 before a god, he is to see him ' bestride the narrow world, like a 
 Colossus,' while ' petty men walk under his huge legs ' He 
 seems inclined to measure rank by bodily strength rather than 
 by power of mind; it amazes him that Gsesar should ' get the 
 start of the majestic world,' which he would fain award to his 
 own art of swimming ; with the disparaging feeling of medi- 
 ocrity towards real greatness he weighs only the similar meat 
 upon which both feed, and compares their names, not their 
 merits and endowments ; and in this disparaging feeling lies the 
 sharpest goad which generally urges on the most dangerous con- 
 spirators. For this reason Cffisar keenly watches his hungry 
 look, and the disposition which is never ' at heart's ease,' when 
 it ' beholds a greater ' than itself. For this reason also Cassius 
 is the natural originator of the conspiracy, and in all its plans 
 and in all their councils he shows himself a greater master of 
 the art than Brutus. Even in gaining over the members he 
 betrays that knowledge of human nature which Caesar praised in 
 him. He lures the noble Brutus with the common weal and the 
 call of family honour. The bitter Casca, who conceals his dis- 
 content under the garb of sarcasm, who, wholly dependent on 
 
716 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 others, serves Csesar almost with the zeal of Antony and hangs 
 upon his words like oracles, and yet, led by Cassius, is ready to 
 go as far as anyone in the cause of freedom, this Casca he lays 
 hold of by his weak side on the night of the storm. In this 
 night and its horrors he first feigns to see an image of Csesar, 
 who 
 
 thunders, lightens, opens gmves, and roars, 
 As doth the lion in the Capitol. 
 
 When he perceives that Casca's superstition is touched, he refers 
 it to the work they ' have m, hand,' which ' like the complexion 
 of the element,' is most bloody, fiery, and terrible. He advises 
 that Cicero should be drawn into their party, and in order to 
 have one more name of repute among them, he is disinclined to 
 share the hesitation of Brutus. Throughout with eagle eye he 
 sees the right means for attaining his ends, and would seize 
 them undeterred by scruples of morality ; less irreproachable as 
 a man than Brutus, he is as a statesman far more excellent. 
 Full of circumspection, he is ftdl of suspicion of his adversary ; 
 he is very far from that too great confidence in a good cause 
 which is the ruin of Brutus. He possesses the necessary acute- 
 ness of judgment and action, available only in times "of revolu- 
 tion ; he knows that it is useless mixing in politics, far less in 
 revolutions, unless one is prepared to exchange the tender 
 morality of domestic life for a ruder kind ; he would treat 
 tyranny according to its own baseness ; he would carry on 
 matters according to the utmost requirements of his own cause, 
 but not with the utmost forbearance towards the enemy ; he 
 would not use unnecessary harshness, but he would omit none 
 that was necessarjr ; he would think just as iU of the tyrant as 
 the tyrant would of his adversary ; he would, as far as in him 
 lay, turn against him his cunning, his cruelty, and his power ; 
 he would go with the flood at the right time, and not, like 
 Brutus, when it was too late. The difference, therefore, between 
 his nature and the character of Brutus comes out on every 
 occasion : Brutus appears throughout just as humanely noble as 
 Cassius is politically superior ; each lacks what is best in the 
 other, and the possession of which would make each perfect. 
 Antony, according to Cassius' opinion, ought to fall; even 
 humanly considered Brutus practised towards him an act less 
 ungrateful than to Csesar ; politically, his death was an actual 
 necessity, which might have changed the whole issue -of their 
 
JULIUS CJESAS. 717 
 
 undertaking. Brutus tries to gain over Antony by presenting 
 the nobler side of their act : Cassius, once he had agreed to spare 
 him, attempts the same by means of dignities and honours. 
 Brutus permits him to speak publicly in Caesar's honour, which 
 Plutarch also calls his second fault ; Cassius addresses him with 
 those bitter words of warning : ' You know not what you do.' 
 Brutus has condemned Pella for taking bribes, and is in the 
 right; Cassius took his part without exculpating him; 'it is 
 not meet,' he says, ' in such a time, that every nice offence 
 should bear his comment,' and he is no less in the right. 
 Brutus condemns Cassius himself for * selling oflBces to unde- 
 servers,' — he can and will ' raise no money by vile means ; ' a 
 golden resolution, but one which will not raise the gold indis- 
 pensable for the work in hand. Brutus loves not Cassius' faults, 
 but at such times it is certainly best to shut our eyes to the 
 faults of the friend whom we need. Brutus quits an advanta- 
 geous post to advance to Philippi ; the older soldier Cassius 
 dissuades it, and only consents to it when influenced to trust all 
 to the hazard of one battle. His judgment enables him to fore- 
 see the evil consequences ; and when the flight of the eagles 
 predicts the same results he becomes superstitious, and under 
 the pressure of circumstances abandons his Epicurean principles, 
 as Brutus by his self-destruction renounces those of the Stoa. 
 In all these instances Cassius gives way to Brutus when he 
 ought not, just as Brutus in the one first instance had given 
 way to Cassius, when, according to his nature, he ought not to 
 have done so. On this most delicate point Cassius, who usually 
 yielded to no influence, is untrue to himself, as Brutus was in 
 the one chief act ; and just this one point, which is derogatory 
 to Brutus on the score of humanity, raises Cassius in our estima- 
 tion on this very score. The nobility of Brutus' nature so far 
 prevails over this advocate for equality that he bows before the 
 virtue and absence of all ambition in the other, and confesses 
 his own inferiority, which he would never have owned before the 
 imperious Caesar ; so that, in this unusually sharp contrast, the 
 'less noble character of Cassius is embellished at this point, just 
 as the finer character of Brutus is debased by that deed ; and 
 Cassius, at the same time, on account of this delicate deference 
 and respect for Brutus, becomes untrue to his political energy, 
 and is obliged to act contrary to his own judgment. The union 
 of two such dissimilar beings revenges itself on both ; Brutus, 
 by his political weakness, ruins the conspirators, who sought in 
 
718 THIRD PERIOD Off SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 him a cloak for their moral weakness ; they ruined him by sedu- 
 cing him to commit the first deed, contrary to his nature. 
 They perish, mistaken in their ends or in their means, or in 
 both. But that we may not infer from this that those who do 
 not act, who hold back in circumstances of difficulty, are there- 
 fore the better, Shakespeare exhibits in the background the 
 nearly silent figure of Cicero as a contrast. The excellence of 
 his characterisation lies not "in the fact that Shakespeare makes 
 him speak Greek, but that he makes him speak Greek on such 
 an entirely popular occasion, and so speak that those who 
 understood smiled at each other and shook their heads like 
 time-servers. ' He will never follow anything that other men 
 begin,' says Brutus ; yet he begins nothing himself. Neverthe- 
 less, with all his inactivity, he escapes ruin just as little as 
 those active ones, but his death is inglorious. The deed of the 
 others, on the contraa-y (thus Shakespeare praises it in his play, 
 and his play through it), will ' in ages hence be acted over in 
 states unborn and accents yet unknown;,' and the ' knot of men ' 
 win be extolled, who gave their country liberty. And to this 
 glorious remembrance this his play has certainly not a little 
 contributed ; and we believe not the less by the perfect im- 
 partiality with which it estimates the deed, by the strictly 
 historical justice which the poet has observed respecting it, 
 similar to that observed by Brutus in his speech concerning 
 Csesar, in which he ' extenuated not his glory^ wherein he was 
 worthy : nor his offences enforced, for which he suffered death.' 
 If Brutus erred more than Oassius in the means he employed 
 in their undertaking, they both erred equally in the final aim 
 of it. The restoration of the republic was no longer possible ; 
 the people had become unfit for freedom. Shakespeare has not 
 subjected this historical view to any discussion unsuitable to a 
 drama ; but he found it in Plutarch, and with thorough under- 
 standing adopted it with artistic representation for his work of 
 art. Fortune, cha,nce, Providence, says Plutarch, was against 
 the republicans : it appeared as if the realm could no longer be 
 governed by a plurality, but necessarily demanded one monarch. 
 The gods had, therefore, given the people Csesar as a mild 
 physician, who was best fitted to restore them; this showed 
 itself when, immediately after his death, they lamented him and 
 would never forgive his murderers, as Shakespeare expresses it : 
 when it pleased them to need the death of Brutus. The poet 
 has described this people exactly according to Plutarch's view of 
 
JULIUS CM8AS. 719 
 
 them. First they shouted after Pompey, and when Caesar came 
 in triumph over Pompey's corpse they shouted after Cssar. 
 Brutus kills Caesar, and they shout after him also. They want 
 immediately to raise statues to him, they wish to crown 
 ' Caesar's better parts ' in Brutus — ' Let him be Caesar ! ' So 
 incapable were they of separating the idea of a conqueror from 
 a ruler. As soon as Antony advances, they begin to consider 
 ' whether a worse may not come in Caesar's place ; ' that another 
 must come in his place seems to be no longer a question. 
 With such a people Brutus' noble thought of restoration was 
 but a lovely dream, and Antony understood them better when 
 he exclaimed over the body of Caesar : — 
 
 What a fall was there, my countrymen ! 
 Then I, and you, and all of us fell down. 
 
 Had the spirit of freedom still existed in the people it would 
 have been possible, according to Brutus' suggestion, to kill 
 ' Caesar's spirit, and not dismember Caesar ; ' as that was want- 
 ing, even his death could not restore freedom. Hence Csesar's 
 spirit is mighty after his death, and turns the swords of the 
 republicans against themselves. What Shakespeare passed over 
 in silence is that these republicans themselves were only the 
 remains of Pompey's party, and had already served another 
 ruler. What he did not forget to depict is that in Casca, 
 Decius Brutus, and others, monarchical feelings themselves 
 moved these conspirators, as they did Antony, to form a sort of 
 court around Caesar. 
 
 The character of Cassar in our play has been much blamed. 
 He is declared to be unlike the idea conceived of him from his 
 ' Commentaries ; ' it is said that he does nothing, and only utters 
 a few pompous, thrasonical, grandiloquent words; and it has 
 been asked whether this be the' Caesar that 'did awe the world ? ' 
 The poet, if he intended to make the attempt of the republicans 
 his main theme, could not have ventured to create too great an 
 interest in Csesar ; it was necessary to keep him in the back- 
 gi-ound, and to present that view of him which gave a reason 
 for the conspiracy. According even to Plutarch, whose bio- 
 graphy of Caesar is acknowledged to be very imperfect, Caesar's 
 character altered much for the worse shortly before his death, 
 and Shakespeare has represented him according to this sugges- 
 tion. With what reverence Shakespeare viewed his character 
 as a whole, we learn from several passages of his works, and 
 
720 THIED PERIOD OF SSAKESFEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRl. 
 
 even in this play from the way in which he allows his memory 
 to be respected as soon as he is dead. In the descriptions of 
 Cassius we look back upon the time when the great man was 
 natural, simple, undissembling, popular, and on an equal footing 
 with others. Now he is spoiled by victory, success, power, and 
 by the republican courtiers who surround him. He stands close 
 on the borders between usurpation and discretion ; he is master 
 in reality, and is on the point of assuming the name and the 
 right ; he desires heirs to the throne ; he hesitates to accept 
 the. crown which he would gladly possess; he is ambitious and 
 fears he may have betrayed this in his paroxysms of epilepsy ; 
 he exclaims against flatterers and cringers, and yet both please 
 him. AU around him treat him as a master, his wife, as a 
 prince, the senate allow themselves to be called his senate ; he 
 assumes the appearance of a king even in his house, even with 
 his wife he uses the language of a man who knows himself 
 secure of power, and he maintains everywhere the proud strict 
 bearing of a soldier, which is represented even in his statues. 
 If one of the changes at which Plutarch hints lay in this pride 
 and haughtiness, another lay in his .superstition. In the 
 suspicion and apprehension before the final step, he was seized, 
 contrary to his usual nature and habit, with misgivings and 
 superstitious fears, which affected likewise the hitherto free- 
 minded Calphurnia. These conflicting feelings divide him, his 
 forebodings excite him, his pride and his defiance of danger 
 struggle against them, and restore his former confidence, 
 which was natural to him and which causes his ruin, just 
 as a like confidence, springing from another source, ruined 
 Brutus. The actor must make his high-sounding language 
 appear as the result of this discord of feeling. Sometimes they 
 are only incidental words intended to characterise the hero in 
 the shortest way. Grenerally they appear in the cases where 
 Csesar has to combat with his superstition, where he uses efibrt 
 to take a higher stand in his words than at the moment he 
 actually feels. ' He speaks so much of having no fear, that by 
 this very thing he betrays his fear. Even in the places where 
 his words sound most boastful, where he compares himself with 
 the north star, there is more arrogance and iU-concealed pride 
 at work than real boastfulness. It is intended there with a few 
 words to show him at that point when his behaviour could most 
 excite those free spirits against him. It was fuUy intended 
 that he should take but a small part in the action ; we must 
 
JULIUS CMSAB. 721 
 
 not, therefore, say with Scottowe tfiat he was merely brought 
 on the stage to be killed. The poet has handled this historical 
 piece like his English historical plays. He had in his eye the 
 whole context of the Eoman civil wars for this single drama, not 
 as yet thinking of its continuation in Ant6ny and Cleopatra. 
 He casts a glance back upon the fall of Pompey, and makes it 
 evident that Csesar falls for the same reason as that for which 
 he had made Pompey fall. In the triumph over him, men's 
 minds rise up at first against Csesar, the conspirators assemble 
 in Pompey's porch, and Csesar is slain in front of his statue. As 
 his death arose out of the civil war, so civil war recommences at 
 his death, and just as Antony predicts : — 
 
 Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge, 
 With AtS by his side, come hot from hell, 
 Shall in these confines, with a monarch's voice, 
 Cry Savock, and let slip the dogs of war. 
 
 In this symbolic sense Csesar, after his death, has. a share in the 
 action of the play, which does not bear his name without a 
 reason. That curse of Antony's, too, falls back upon himself in 
 Antony and Cleopatra, because he had destroyed those who had 
 spared him and offered him friendship, and even there the 
 manes of Pompey interfere with continuous power, giving this 
 history also the background of remoter histories, to which this 
 drama is but an episode. 
 
 3a 
 
ANTONY AND OLEOPATEA. 
 
 'A BOOKE called Antony and Cleopatra' was entered in the 
 Stationers' Company, in London, in 1608, as destined for publi- 
 cation, by Edward Blount; As it was entered at the same time 
 ,as the book Pericles, and as Shakespeare's play of that name 
 was really printed in the following year, though by a different 
 publisher, it is most likely that by the ' booke of Antony and 
 Cleopatra' the piece before us was meant. Its origin, therefore, 
 may be dated at 1607-8. Intimations in both of the matter 
 treated of in the other, single peculiarities of style, and, perhaps 
 still more, the poet's frame of mind at the time of its composi- 
 tion, place the piece close to Troilus and Cressida, which would 
 confirm this date. 
 
 Shakespeare's close adherence to Plutarch's account of the 
 life of Antony is the same in this play as in that of Julius 
 Caesar. The genius of the poet felt itself here also congenial 
 with the history, because it was akin to nature ; quite unlike 
 his precursors, such as Samuel Daniel ('Cleopatra,' 1594) or his 
 followers, or May and Dryden (' All for Love'), who handled the 
 same' materials, he did not transplant the personal relations of 
 the chief characters out of history into the free realm of art, but 
 here also he adhered closely to the historical world, and with a 
 comprehensive glance surveyed the varied , multiplicity of the 
 historical events as a finished work of art. He passed over only 
 such incidents as the Parthian war, which had but slight 
 reference to the central point of Antony's history, but he re- 
 tained entire every relation between him and the other Eoman 
 magnates. Antony's character, we can scarcely say, is actually 
 different from the portrait drawn of him by Plutarch, but it is 
 so altered by its position that the poet was .at liberty to take it 
 from his own point of view. Where there was an opportunity 
 for psychical development, as in the reconciliation scene between 
 Octavius and Antony, and in the description of Antony's despair 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOPATBA. 723 
 
 in the fourth act, Shakespeare enlarged the meagre historical 
 notices with all poetic freedom and extension. For the most 
 part, however, as in Julius Caesar, he found his materials all 
 ready, even to the details. Antony's last days, his twice 
 repeated challenge to Octavius, his success in Alexandria and 
 the passing over of the fleet ; his suspicion of treachery in Cleo- 
 patra, her alleged death, Eros' self-destruction, Antony's death 
 and last words, Enobarbus' defection, the desertion of Alexas 
 and Dercetes, the embassies of Euphronius and Thyreus, the 
 favour accorded to the latter by Cleopatra, her capture, Dola- 
 bella's emotion, the treacheries of Seleucus, the death of the 
 queen and her attendants, all this is only history scenically 
 represented. 
 
 Equal to Julius Caesar in historical truth, this play is on 
 the other hand not arranged with the same attention to dra- 
 matic clearness and unity as that is ; other faults also seem to 
 disturb somewhat the pure enjoyment of this drama. Coleridge 
 indeed placed Antony in the highest class of Shakespeare's 
 writings. He considered this play as a powerful rival to Lear 
 and air the best dramas of our poet ; he saw in it a gigantic 
 power in its ripest prime, and contrasted it with Eomeo and 
 Julietj because here the love of lust and passion is. depicted, as 
 there that of inclination and instinct. Among the historical 
 plays of Shakespeare he declared it to be by far the moat re- 
 markable. This judgment, however, will not have found muqh 
 support ; we will try to place it in a more just and striking 
 light. It is true this play* is full and rich ; we can scarcely 
 name another like it in these respects. The diction is very 
 forced, often short and obscure ; the crowd of matter creates 
 a crowd of ideas ; important affairs are disposed of in a few 
 sentences, great events recorded in a few words, historical 
 names and references presumed to be known are left unex- 
 "plained in the play itself. By this in single instances it has 
 suffered considerably in clearness. On the whole the progress 
 is not more entangled than in Julius Caesar, but it is more 
 detailed, and, therefore, more difficult to comprehend. A 
 wanton multiplicity of incidents and personages pass before our 
 eyes ; political and warlike occurrences run parallel with the 
 most intimate affairs of domestic life and of the affections ; the 
 interest is fettered to the passion of a single pair, and yet the 
 scene of it is the wide world from Parthia to Cape Misenum. 
 For the historical character this is indeed highly expressive 
 
 3 A 2 
 
724 THIRD FEJSIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S SBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 and striking, but it does no little damage to tHe dramatic 
 clearness. Therefore it is that, perhaps, no play of Shake- 
 speare's is so difficult to retain in the memory as this. With 
 this one other cause is combined, or, at least, it co-operates 
 with it, why this drama is seldom brought on the stage, and is 
 little admired in representation. By the too numerous and 
 discordant interruptions, that psychicar continuity is destroyed 
 which is necessary to the development of such a remarkable 
 connection of the innermost affections as that between Antony 
 and Cleopatra. Let the reader think over the purport of the 
 various historical plays of our poet ; he will nowhere find the 
 external actual material of history impregnated with a sensible 
 or sensual connection of so much importance. Let him look 
 over the purely psychological dramas, and nowhere will he find 
 a connection of the affections so incessantly crossed by external 
 ■public affairs of such an opposite nature. This contrast is closely 
 and profoundly connected with the plan and idea of the play. 
 If Goethe understood the matter rightly when he said, - Here 
 everything declares with a thousand tongues that enjoyment 
 and activity exclude one another,' we then perceive that the poet 
 felt it incumbent on him to show the contradiction between 
 the excited, busy, historical world, and the calm, sensual life 
 of enjoyment. The way in which he understood, and, as it 
 were, explained the given history, deserves the highest praise 
 of Coleridge and all others ; it is a master-work full of deep 
 thought, from which every writer of history may learn to extract 
 the spirit out of chronicles. But whether the theme, sestheti- 
 cally considered, might not have been better carried out, whether 
 large dramatic 'groups might not have been cut out of the com- 
 plete history, which would have better satisfied the Aristotelian 
 requirement of being easily surveyed as a whole, whether many 
 of the inferior characters unnecessary to the aim of the play 
 might not have been omitted, and all the acting personages 
 thus concentrated upon the main point of the piece after 
 Shakespeare's usual method — this remains a subject of doubt 
 much easier for us to express than it could have been for the 
 poet to remove. If, then, we are willing to subscribe to Cole- 
 ridge's opinion concerning the apprehension of the historical 
 matter and the description of character in the chief personages, 
 we shall find it harder in an aesthetic view to rank this drama 
 so high as he does. For there arises an ethical objection also, 
 which will make most readers opponents to this piece and to 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOPATBA. 725 
 
 Coleridge's opinion of it. There is no great and noUe character 
 among the personages ; no really elevating feature in the ac- 
 tions of this drama, either in its politics or its love affairs. This 
 play seems to evince to us how much we should lose in Shake- 
 speare if, with his ever great knowledge ,of men and nature, 
 there did not go hand in hand on one side that sesthetio excel- 
 lence (the ideal concentration of the actors and actions), and 
 on the other side that ethical excellence (the ideal elevation 
 of the representation of manhood). The poet had to represent 
 a debased period in Antony and Cleopatra ; he did this in obe- 
 dience to historical truth ; but this ought not to have prevented 
 him from casting a glance at a better state of human nature, 
 which might comfort and elevate us amid so niuch degradation. 
 If we recall to mind the historical plays in which Shakespeare 
 had to depict for the most part degenerate and ruined raceSj 
 we shall recollect that in Eichard II. there was not wanting a 
 Gaunt and a Carlisle to make amends, and even in Eichard III. 
 the few strokes that described the sons of Edward are an agree- 
 able compensation for the universal wickedness. Here, how- 
 ever, there is nothing of the kind, and we may even say the 
 opportunity for such a counterbalance has been obviously 
 neglected. It would surely have been easy, in the character of 
 Octavia at least, to keep in view before us some higher human 
 nature, which by a few traits only might have exhibited her to 
 us in action, such as she now is merely spoken of in words. 
 
 We will introduce an observation here which will set this 
 singular defect in Antony and Cleopatra in a still more remark- 
 able light. It would appear as if^ Shakespeare, about the time 
 between 1607—10, had had, we will not say a period, but inter- 
 vals in which he wrote his poetry in a manner altogether more 
 careless, whether we consider it from an sesthetic or from an 
 ethical point of view. What might have been the cause of this 
 we can scarcely guess. It is possible that his disgust to 
 theatrical matters in general seized him more strongly about 
 this period ; it may also be possible that the traces of bodily 
 exhaustion had already appeared in him, and that this may 
 have been the cause of his withdrawal and the first intimation 
 of his early death. Whether this be so, or whatever may have 
 been the cause of the careless treatment of some of the works 
 of this period, the thing itself seems incontestable. 
 
 We have seen how Shakespeare failed in Troilus, and that 
 the play was not satisfactory either in dramatic treatment or as 
 
726 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 a critical satire. We will now explain why all moral nobleness 
 is wanting in Antony and Cleopatra, notwithstanding that the 
 poet has placed the pair, who gave the name to the play, in 
 the best light that was possible. In both pieces it is uncom- 
 monly difficult to separate irony from seriousness, appearance 
 from reality. If we examine the characters of Cressida and 
 Cleopatra, we shalU fancy the poet wished to recur to the time 
 of his earlier state of morals. Even in Coriolanus there is not 
 a single character in which we can take pure pleasure. Timon 
 also is, artistically considered, a negligent and unfinished work. 
 The group would be increased by one play more (which would 
 more than any other testify to the temporary indifference of 
 the poet to his fame), if we were to admit that Shakespeare 
 applied himself about this date for the first time to Pericles, 
 which, at all events, was at this time brought by him upon the 
 stage in a new form. The courtesan household here and in 
 Timon, together with the similar matter in Troilus and in 
 Antony, constitutes a strange whole, which, in a moral point of 
 view, is quite analogous to the aesthetic carelessness in the 
 treatment of all these plays. It is here that our Eomanticists 
 ought to have sought for facts when they spoke of a bitterness 
 and acerbity in the character of our poet. But even then they 
 ought to have limited this observation to a passing discord in 
 his temper. For quickly must the man have recollected his 
 own doctrine in Troilus, that ' perseverance alone keeps honour 
 bright,' and that time would wrap even his works in the mantle 
 of forgetfulness if he did not always keep pace with his better 
 performances. He created, contemporaneously with these 
 plays, his Posthumus and his Imogen, the most moral of all 
 his creations, and soon after we see him in the Winter's Tale 
 labouring with the same severe morality as in Othello, and in 
 the Tempest with the . same cheerful serenity of mind that 
 delights us so much in his happiest pieces. It was but a few 
 passing clouds that cast a fleeting shadow over the ever brilliant 
 sky of his poetry. 
 
 As regards what is morally repulsive in Antony and Cleo- 
 patra, it is only fair to confess that if an error has been com- 
 mitted it is evidently in the choice of the subject ; and that the 
 poet, being unwilling to alter historical truth, has done aU he 
 could, nay, perhaps too much, to ennoble the matter, and to 
 make it worthy of a place in the realm of poetry. It is so 
 much the more necessary to give emphasis to this remark, 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 727 
 
 because, from the point of view from which we considered this 
 group, of plays, we might be led to do injustice to the poet. 
 We might imagine he had put the characters of Antony and 
 Cleopatra in a better light than he ought to have done, and 
 clothed the voluptuaries with a certain lofty splendour, as if 
 betraying a preference for them. But what he did in this 
 respect was done undoubtedly for aesthetic purposes, and not 
 from lightness of morality. If Shakespeare had taken Antony 
 exactly as he found him in Plutarch, he would never have been 
 able to give him. a tragic character, he could never have 
 excited an interest in him precisely in his relations with Cleo- 
 patra. A man who had grown up in the wUd companionship 
 of a Curio and a Clodius, who had gone through the high school 
 of debauchery in Grreece and Asia, who had shocked everybody 
 in Eome under Csesar's dictatorship by his vulgar conduct, who 
 had made himself popular among the soldiers by drinking and 
 encouraging their low amours, a man upon whom the hatred of 
 the proscriptions under the rule of the triumvirate especially 
 fell, who displayed a cannibal pleasure over Cicero's bloody head 
 and hand, who afterwards renewed in the East the wanton life 
 of his youth, and robbed in grand style to maintain the vilest 
 brood of parasites and jugglers — such a man, depicted finally as 
 the prey of an old and artful courtesan, could not possibly have 
 been made an object of dramatic interest. It is wonderful 
 how Shakespeare preserved the historical features of Antony's 
 character so as on the one side not to make him unrecognisable, 
 and yet how he contrived on the other hand to render him an 
 attractive personage. 
 
 We are inclined to designate the ennobling transformation 
 which the poet undertook by one word ; he refined the rough 
 features of Mark Antony into the character of an Alcibiades. 
 He passes silently over the youth of his hero, be took from him 
 his tendency to cruelty, covered the misdeeds of the triumvirate 
 with a veil, showed only the best side of his rapacity and lavish 
 prodigality, spoke loudly of his warlike past, his victory over 
 Brutus and Cassius, his heroic endurance of hunger and want 
 after his defeat at Modena, and strove especially to make his 
 hero interesting on the score of brilliant natural gifts. It is not 
 to be disputed that Shajsespeare, by these touches, brought out 
 the most attractive side of Antony. Even in the voluptuary 
 and the profligate there is an alluring charm in the ready 
 versatility, the natural superiority, the variety of talent, the 
 
728 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 abundance of resoutces, and in the natural aptness to fill any 
 part. Antony was indeed a man thus variously endowed. The 
 most contradictory features characterise him in Plutarch as weU 
 as in Shakespeare. He is accustomed by turns to luxury and 
 privation, to excess and want, to effeminacy and endurance, to 
 epicurean extravagance and stoic forbearance ; he is a soldier 
 and a glutton ; magnanimous over the corpse of Brutus, bar- 
 barous over that of Cicero ; an image of rare unsteadiness and 
 rare fidelity ; generous towards Enobarbus, pettily revengful 
 towards Thyreus ; open and almost without any suspiciousness 
 towards Cleopatra, a deep deceiver and spy towards Brutus ; 
 not free from great and petty ambition (with respect to Caesar 
 and to Ventidius), and yet a seller of honour out of vile lust ; 
 the most agreeable of buffoons and jesters, and at the same time 
 able to bear a joke, and to hear the whole truth, even the harsh 
 truth, from dependants; decayed by effeminacy, though per- 
 sonally brave ; at one time, as at Mutina, rising in misfortune ; 
 at another, as at the end of his career, quickly sinking under, 
 it; sometimes Ijke a Koman gladiator, at others an oriental 
 despot ; sometimes disposed to rank himself with the common 
 soldiers, at others tickled with the fancy to play the Persian 
 king, or the hero Hercules, or the god Bacchus ; such a man, 
 however much he may be an image of fickleness, is also an 
 image of a genial disposition, in which natural abilities and capa^ 
 city must make amends for a lower degree of freedom of will. 
 
 We defer, until further on, to show how the opinion upon 
 Antony's character in Shakespeare's sense is to be established. 
 There is more of Proteus in it than in Prince Henry, more 
 enigma and dissimulation (because it is natural and involuntary 
 dissimulation) than in Hamlet. It is a nature easily known in 
 itself, but very difficult to fathom in the mainspring of its 
 being. The poet has treated it in such fall detail, he has 
 brought it into such a great variety of situations, he has thought 
 it out more deeply than most of his characters; but, at the 
 same time, he has given so little immediate information towards 
 the comprehension of , the character, that it must chiefly be 
 known by the facts, which is always the more difficult way. 
 Viewed from his many different sides, Shakespeare has caused 
 this many-sided being to make the most varied impression on 
 the most different men, an impression expressed in the most 
 opposite manner in words and works ; the impression the poet 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOPATBA. , 729 
 
 himself conceived of him he has left us to guess. We will, 
 therefore, first clear our way throitgh the facts. 
 
 It is sufficiently evident how well fitted was a man so gifted 
 as Antony to be placed in the great conflict between activity 
 and enjoyment, between the government of the world, and the 
 being governed by a common, but powerful passion. If the 
 active power conquers in such a nature, in such a position, the 
 result will be an Alexandrian gift of political organisation, 
 impulsion, and new creation in aU the ramifications of life, a 
 ready understanding and furtherance of the most manifold 
 arrangements of all practical and theoretical matters. If such 
 a nature turns to laxness and repose, there will then be the 
 most extraordinary waste of external and internal riches on the 
 meanest gratifications ; a master of enjoyment will be formed ; 
 because that many-sidedness will now be displayed in the art of 
 varying pleasures and spicing them with ever new ingenuity. 
 Now, with regard to the active pow;er of Antony, we have 
 already seen, in Julius Csesar, the proofs of his diplomatic skill, 
 demagogic eloquence, and warlike readiness. In this sphere of 
 life, however, he was placed beside a man, the yoimg Octavius, 
 who even then treated him, the elder in politics and war, with 
 haughtiness ; in whose vicinity his genius (that is, the practical, 
 actively disposed part of his genius) felt itself oppressed, and 
 before whom his courage, his nobility, his magnanimity, bowed, 
 although unwillingly. An inward misgiving warned the more 
 profound Julius Csesar against Cassius ; it needed a soothsayer 
 to warn this superficial being against Octavius ; as Csesar in his 
 pride disclaims fear, so Antony pays no attention to the loud 
 yy voice within him, when his presumption and self-conceit return, 
 as soon as he is absent from Octavius. With regard, on the 
 other side, to the repose and love of enjoyment in Antony, 
 we find him, at the very beginning of our play, at the court of 
 Cleopatra entangled in voluptuousness and luxury, and we have 
 an opportunity of observing how he moves in this sphere. We 
 see him placed beside a woman who, in contrast to the sober 
 commimion of rule with Octavius, offered him an intoxication 
 of delight, who rivalled him in the rarest attractions and per- 
 fections, in whose society his genius (of course that part of his 
 genius devoted to enjoyment) felt itself stimulated and shook 
 its wings. If originally Antony's activity and laxness, 'his 
 taints and honours,' as Msecenas said at his death, ' waged equal 
 
730 THIRD PEBIOD OF 8HAKESFEAEE' 8 DRAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 ■with him,' this connection alone would have given preponder- 
 ance to the had side. 
 
 We will leave it undetermined whether Shakespeare himself 
 asserted this original balance of opposite gifts in Antony ; from 
 his words it might seem that he did ; from the facts the pre- 
 ponderance , seems everywhere on the weak side. From the 
 beginning, even in Julius Caesar, we see him everywhere need- 
 ing a prop; a supporter, never able to stand alone. At first 
 he is quite dependent on Csesar. As soon as Caesar has fallen 
 he sends for Octavius, who has already arrived unsummoned. 
 Immediately he becomes dependent on him. His wifq Fulvia 
 managed him arbitrarily ; she appears to him ' a great spirit.' 
 After her death, by the rising of Lucius Pompeius he is un- 
 willingly drawn back into the political whirlpool ; before he has 
 decided he tries to unite himself with Pompey ; at the same 
 time he tears himself away from Egypt, to try and join Octavius 
 once more ; he catches at the sister of his enemy as at a new 
 staff, only to procure peace and repose, and scope for enjoyment. 
 His imitation of Hercules or Bacchus refers to this trait ; he 
 leans against a tutelar god, who, according to Shakespeare and 
 to Plutarch, turns from him when he is to perish. With a 
 nature thus eVer needing support, he encounters this paragon of 
 female weakness, Cleopatra, like ivy leaning on ivy. He knows 
 her nature, and is aware that it can yield him no support, but 
 he is soon so entwined by the parasitical plant — his senses, his 
 inclinations, his humours are so entangled — that he, who should 
 sustain the world as ' a triple pillar,' loses his own strength, 
 nay, even the inclination to seek z.firm support, and soon sinks 
 together with the creeping plant upon the ground, and with the 
 woman he becomes a woman. 
 
 Never were a pair of human beings more wonderfully 
 formed for each other than these. In outward form they 
 appear as miracles, even to the unprejudiced. Not alone doe^ 
 the enraptured Cleopatra find that nature created her master- 
 piece in Antony, and that to imagine him was ' nature's piece 
 'gainst fancy,' but even the displeased Philo calls him a Mars ; 
 and she, again, is compared by Enobarbus with the picture of 
 ' that Venvis, where we see the fancy outwork nature.' To both, 
 likewise, there is ascribed, besides this beauty of form, that of 
 movement ; the utmost loveliness and grace distinguish them ; 
 everything is charming and becoming in both ; she discovers 
 that the violence of sadness and mirth, and the mingling of both, 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOPATEA. 731 
 
 become him as ' no man else ; ' and he ' that to chide, to laugh, 
 to weep, — everything becomes her.' Enobarbus declared that 
 ' vilest things become themselves in her ; the holy priests bless 
 her when she is riggish.' Anyone who finds it difficult to 
 understand Shakespeare's sonnets to his black and ugly beauty 
 should compare this picture of the brown ' gipsy,' for which 
 the former might have sat. What enhances the rare charms of 
 both is that age could not wither them : she says of herself 
 that she is 
 
 •with Phcebus' amorous pinches black, 
 And wrinkled deep in time : 
 
 in hvm white hairs are mixed with his brown ones ; but even 
 these setting suns have warmth for one another. Nay, even 
 because this is a last love, it makes those who are cooling more 
 glowing, and the faithless more faithful, and Antony enthusias- 
 tically hopes, when about to die, that they shall be an admired 
 pair of lovers in Elysium, that ' with their sprightly port they 
 shall make ghosts gaze ; that Dido and her ^neas shall want 
 troops, and all the haunt be theirs.' Thus a perpetual charm 
 for the eye, they were as attractive also for the ear. Shake- 
 speare makes Cleopatra say of Antony, that ' his voice was 
 propertied as all the tuned spheres ; ' Plutarch says the same of 
 Cleopatra. But all that nature had made thus attractive to 
 the senses was increased by art and expenditure in every con- 
 ceivable mode of fascination. He laid the riches of the East 
 at her feet, she expended her wealth with frantic extravagance 
 in festivities for him. When she first met him on the Cydnus, 
 lying in a splendid barge surrounded by Cupids and Nereids, 
 dressed with excessive pomp, or when she feasted and sported 
 with him, laughed him into patience or out of patience, 
 changed clothes with him and wandered all night through the 
 streets, or when she merrily angled with him and quickly 
 varied her amusement, whilst music gave a charm to conversa- 
 tion, through aU we see that variety and change were provided 
 for every sense, and everything combined to enichant. In this 
 art of enjoyment the spirit of both is ever fresh and young ; 
 Cleopatra's especially is inexhaustible in invention, alternation, 
 and diversion : ' custom cannot stale her infinite variety ; ' 
 endless as her passion for pleasure were the means she found to 
 gratify it. If she could still charm ' where most she satisfied,' 
 what must her attractions have been when the first favour was 
 
732 THIRD FEEIOD OF 8HAKE8PEAEE'S DBAMATIC JPOETBY. 
 
 still withheld ! Long after she was quite sure of him, the 
 artful courtesan spiced her multiform flatteries with acrimony, 
 reproaches, aud mockery, with the sting of jealousy, so that 
 even her well-schooled attendants were alarmed at her bold 
 game, and earnestly implored her ' to cross him in nothing.' 
 This she knew was ' the way to lose him ; ' she did not need 
 the instructions of Antony's male flatterers, who mixed their 
 praise with freedom and blame in order to avoid inspiring 
 satiety and disgust. And so she held back at the beginning of 
 their intimacy ; there was a time when he must implore to 
 be allowed to stay with her, when she threw out the bait, 
 i3ut when he had, as it were, to beg permission to bite at it. 
 When these seeming barriers were thrown down, both rushed 
 together in rapture, as she says : — 
 
 Eternity was in our lips and eyes ; 
 
 Bliss, in our brows' bent ; none our parts so poor, 
 
 But was a race of heaven ! ' 
 
 , Henceforth they testified to the world that in the art of the 
 enjoyment of life and love none ' stood up so peerless ' as they ; 
 and Antony utters the resolve that henceforth ' not a minute 
 of their lives should stretch without some pleasure,' and to this 
 is added the characteristic principle which is the soul of this 
 life : ' the earth alike feeds beast as man ; ' the ' nobleness of 
 life,' the difference between beast and man, is this very 
 superiority in the delights of love ! 
 
 At the commencement of our play, Antony is balancing 
 between his political vocation and his joy in Egypt ; but his 
 inclination is already perfectly decided. It is a torment to 
 him to hear of Eome, he neglects the messages of Oetavius ; for 
 all that he cares ' Eome may in Tiber melt, and the wide 
 arch of the rang'd empire may fall ; -^ here is Ms space.' 
 But he neglected the messengers of Oetavius only from a 
 passing emotion of shame, because Cleopatra taunted him with 
 his subjection to Oetavius ; he then makes amends for his fault 
 in diplomatic style without derogating from his 'dignity. • The 
 news from Eome arouses him. His wife Fulvia had taken the 
 heroic step of stirring up a war against Oetavius to force him 
 out of his Eastern bondage ; she played ^he man whilst he 
 played the woman ; in Asia, Parthia was lost through his 
 indolence ; a new rival for the world's dominion was rising up 
 in Sextus Pompeius. Antony hears this heavy news with 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOFATEA. • 733 
 
 composure and tranquillity ; he still has feelings of shame and 
 honour, and an abhorrence of disgrace ; he still retains enough 
 ambition to assert himself in the triumvirate with Octayius 
 against the new rival ; he rouses himself to break Cleopatra's 
 chains, that he may not be quite lost in the delirium of love. 
 The poet makes him waver still more ; he adds to his former 
 indecision the news of Fulvia's death. This opens to him 
 a prospect of remaining with Cleopaitra in peace, and certainly 
 he had desired this death ; now, on the contrary, amid so many 
 great recollections, he longs for her back again, although he 
 permits the hard Enobarbus to speak lightly and with congra- 
 tulations of her death. His resolution remains firm to quit the 
 enchantress, that greater mischief may not spring from his 
 indolence; he wishes he had never seen her. His friend 
 Enobarbus is in the same state of irresolution as himself ; he 
 thinks it a pity to cast the women here in Egypt away for 
 nothing ; ' though between them and a great cause they should 
 be esteemed nothing.' Antony arms himself against Cleopatra's, 
 attacks and her artifices ; he calmly explains his afifairs to her ; 
 he shows that he also has not forgotten his old art of per- 
 suasion, he uses the death of Fulvia to make his going away , 
 easier and less suspicious. The call of honour and manly re- 
 solution so far triumphs that he actually goes, to the astonish- 
 ment of Pompey, who had expected that his voluptuous life 
 would be his ruin. And Antony reaUy was so entangled 
 already, that he departs with -the promise to make all his plans 
 dependent upon her ; she is to decide ^for peace or war. He 
 seiids a message to assure her that he will lay the whole of the 
 East at her feet ; and whilst the statesmanlike Octavius receives 
 news every hour concerning the state of the political world, 
 Antony establishes a chain of daily messages to Cleopatra in 
 Egypt. The impression is that he goes away only to pacify the 
 storm of disturbances, and to make way for the peaceful enjoy- 
 ment of his pleasures in the East ; as if his inroad into the 
 world of action were only to ensure for him the world of 
 enjoyment. And this is confirmed by the whole course of his 
 affairs in the West. 
 
 The scene of his conference with Octavius (Act. ii. sc. 2) 
 is excellently managed. It is a counterpart to the meeting of 
 the quarrelling BrUtus and Cassius ; we there have the conver- 
 sation between two friends, who are indeed divided by difiference 
 of disposition, but only temporarily by temper and misunder- 
 
734 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 standing ; here we have another conference between cold and 
 adverse diplomatists, who are for ever divided by a deep 
 diversity of nature ; and one of whom is oppressed, to his own 
 evil consciousness, by the superiority of the other. Plutarch's 
 declaration that Antony's genius always bowed to that of 
 Ootavius could not be evidenced more finely than it is here. 
 The attempt of the former to assert his dignity and equality is 
 evident throughout, yet he entirely submits in the material 
 points of the transaction ; he confesses the point in dispute and 
 ' plays the penitent,' although in a reserved manner ; by this 
 confession he will do no prejudice to his 'greatness,' and he 
 calls his confessions by the more honourable name of ' honesty ; ' 
 gladly and without objection he falls in with the highly critical 
 offer of Octavius' sister in marriage. In all this he is not pre- 
 meditatedly false and deceitful, any more than when in the 
 presence of Brutus he stood with deep emotion over Csesar's 
 corpse; then he acted with involuntary tact, cleverly an,d 
 boldly, according to the state of things ; here, in presence of 
 his all-powerful rival, he acts also, but not with tact, not 
 cleverly, not boldly, but over-mastered by yielding weakness. 
 And here there was no honourable motive for his acting a part, 
 as his undissembled love for Csesar had impelled him then — 
 here there was only a longing to return to his coquettish friend 
 in Egypt. His blunt follower Enobarbus, whose plain truths 
 Antony bears in private but will not listen to before others, 
 who follows everywhere the deep dissembler, the hypocrite dis- 
 guised even to himself, this man discovers immediately that 
 this peace is only patched up for a time, until the two triumvirs 
 have got rid of Pompey-; he perceives as clearly that Antony 
 has only married Octavia for the sake of his interest, that this 
 marriage will not loosen his connection with Cleopatra, but will 
 be ' the very strangler of his amity ' with the Caesarian family. 
 Antony himself makes the blunt confession that he only con- 
 cluded this marriage for the sake of peace and tranquillity ; his 
 pleasure lies in Egypt. He had snatched himself thence in an 
 effervescence of honourable feeling; but it was only an 
 apparent victory over his passion. The relapse is all the more 
 shocking, and the dissolution of his remaining strength the 
 more certain and paralysing now that an evil conscience 
 reproaches him for the flagitious conduct with which he breaks 
 the ties of friendship and marriage, formed under the mask of 
 repentance and honour. 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOPATEA. 135 
 
 He picks a quarrel with Octavius ; he sends his sister, whose 
 heart is painfully divided between husband and brother, coldly 
 and heartlessly to Eome ; deludes her with intentional false- 
 hood, and dismisses her with the venomous words, ' Let your 
 best love draw to that point which seeks best to preserve it.' 
 Not to him, therefore, who hastens, as soon as she has left him, 
 back to Egypt ! With extraordinary thoughtlessness he makes 
 himself guilty of deceit, perjury, and adultery, thus offending 
 his powerful rival ; nay, he even attacks the honour of the 
 state and of the gods. He places his children with Cleopatra 
 as monarchs in Egypt, and bestows upon them the kingdoms of 
 the East ; sitting publicly beside Cleopatra, in the habiliments 
 of the goddess Isis, criminally sporting with everything sacred. 
 
 Here then is the tragic turning point of his fortune ; here 
 vengeance overtakes him. The very means by which he hoped 
 to secure peace caused discord and led to his fall. Warned in 
 vain by Octavius, he made ' the cement ' of their new love ' the 
 ram to batter the fortress of it.' A double profligacy, a moral 
 and a political one, lay at this turning point in this political 
 marriage and its results, and it drew down upon Antony his 
 fate. The political profligacy belongs to the intellectual idea 
 of the play, and consequently a greater emphasis is laid upon 
 it. If Antony (and it is his rival who makes this remark) in- 
 curred moral responsibility alone, if he ' only filled his vacancy 
 with his voluptuousness,' the natural consequences would ' call 
 on him for it ; ' but to ' ,confound such time ' and his high call- 
 ing makes him deserve 
 
 to be chid 
 As we rate boys ; who, being mature in knowledge, 
 Pawn their experience to their present pleasure, 
 And so rebel to judgment. 
 
 In these words the emphasis is laid chiefly on Antony's political 
 sins, and the contrast aimed at between the active life of the 
 world and the corrupt seeking for enjoyment is brought out 
 strongly. The relation of the idea of the play to that of Julius 
 CaBsar shows this still more clearly. In Brutus public interests 
 stood before his private ones, and this only too much; in 
 Antony, on the contrary, his public honour vanishes before his 
 private pleasures ; he gives himself entirely up to dependence 
 on Cleopatra, and not himself alone, but that part of the world 
 which fell to his share ; his sword becomes weak through his 
 
736 THIRD PEBIOD OF 8HAKESPEAEE' 8 DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 voluptuousness, and he imprecates curses and ruin on Eome, as 
 Cleopatra does on Egypt, if only his love may prosper. It 
 pleased him to play the part of Hercules, -but he plays it only 
 in his connection with Omphale. In Brutus there was the 
 noble struggle between the highest political and moral duties ; 
 but here (and this is the original fault in the subject) the 
 struggle is between political duty and immoral passion, two 
 powers too dissimilar in themselves, the worst of which entirely 
 conquers. The poet makes political ruin follow closely on 
 Antony's political crime; immediately, stroke upon stroke. 
 Octavius gets rid of Lepidus and Pompey, and suddenly appears 
 as an all-powerful adversary before the helpless Antony, who 
 has no one to fight on his side but the coquettish woman. She 
 ' takes,' as Enobarbus says, ' from his heart, from his brain, and 
 from his time, what should not then be spared; ' crime and pre- 
 sumption ruin his understanding ; his want of understanding 
 ruins his fortune ; he offers single combat and a battle on land 
 to Octavius at Pharsalia, which Octavius prudently, declines ; 
 and he foolishly accepts Octavius' challenge to a sea-fight, in 
 which his talents did not. lie, and from which all skilful war- 
 riors endeavour to dissuade him : all but Cleopatra, who flees 
 while the fight is still undecided, and whom he ' like a doting 
 mallard' follows. Experience, manhood, honour, never were 
 so shamefully violated as here ; ' the greater cantle of the world 
 is lost, with very ignorance ;' kingdoms and provinces are 
 'kissed away!' Thus the warriors think, who desert from 
 Antoiiy. He himself is so altered by shame that he fancies 
 the very earth is ashamed to bear him. 
 
 And yet, in this degradation, he thinks a tear of Cleopatra's 
 ' rates all that is won and lost ; ' a kiss would repay him for 
 everything. He now would be content if Octavius would ' let 
 him breathe a private man in Athens.' But his enjoyment and 
 repose are to be embittered not only in the disputes of the 
 world, but in their very spring. Military glory and dominion 
 were lost in the battle of Actium ; in Egypt the last traces of 
 equanimity and the shadow of his fortune with Cleopatra are to 
 disappear. We return, therefore, in the last two acts, exclu- 
 sively to the personal relations between these two, in which, 
 imder all the varnish of happiness, there was from the beginning 
 a dark tinge of dissatisfaction, through all their harmony a 
 creeping discord, through all their love mistrust and suspicion, 
 in all their idleness ' sweating labour,' and in all their enjoy- 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOPATBA. 737 
 
 ments a root of discontent. And this for the simple reason 
 that in spite of all the ornament of exterior grace and the evi- 
 dent arts of pleasing, that inner adornment and worth of cha- 
 racter was lacking, on which alone true love, true fidelity, and 
 true happiness can be founded. Great princes before Antony 
 had trembled, ' kissing ' the charming hand of Cleopatra ; 
 Csesar had been in her toils ; Pompey had looked into her eyes. 
 Antony knew this. She had angled for him with cunning 
 skill in her declining days ; he knew her to be artful beyond 
 men's thoughts, and called her his ' serpent ; ' but he had 
 allowed her to enchant him, and to vanquish him, well knowing 
 that he too was a conqxxeror in that warfare. So she knows him 
 too to be infirm of purpose, and a deep dissembler ; she knows 
 he did not' love Fulvia, and, therefore, does not trust in his love 
 for herself ; she wished to separate him from his lawful spouse, 
 and when the first is dead he takes a second. If on one side 
 he is ' painted like a Mars ' to her, ' t' other way he's a Grorgon.' 
 Thus they both know each other to be unworthy of confidence, 
 and yet they trust each other and then find reason for upbraid- 
 ings ; they know of each other that faithlessness and changeable- 
 ness are natural to them, but they entangle each other more 
 and more with the tendrils of their passion, in order that, though 
 faithless to others, they may be the more true to one another ; 
 in the hour of trial, however, they have no faith in each other. 
 The very trouble which they take to fix what they know to be 
 untrue incites them mutually to raise their fidelity even to 
 passionateness and frightful jealousy, in which they again 
 nourish suspicion against each other's truth. The poet has 
 woven a wonderful psychological web out of this rare and yet 
 most natural contradiction, and there is great art and know- 
 ledge in the manner in which he displays how the passion of 
 both increases by this ever-recurring mistrust ; how they en- 
 noble an ignoble connection by this straining and strengthen- 
 ing of their fidelity, how their personal nobleness sometimes 
 rises and sometimes sinks by it, and how, when they make the 
 greatest sacrifice in their unblessed union, it drags them down 
 to destruction. Cleopatra's mistrust of Antony is greatest when 
 he is successful ; his of her when she is in misfortune. In the 
 scenes of the first act she employs all her arts and all the con- 
 trivances of her jealousy to keep him, but she yields willingly 
 as soon as she perceives that he is bent on going. If her be- 
 haviour in these scenes was far from noble, it becomes utterly 
 
 3 B 
 
738 THIBD mniOD OF SHAKESIEAEE'S DBAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 degraded on the news of Antony's re-marriage. She has none 
 of the man's power to bear ill news calmly, and to separate the 
 messenger from his message ; she curses the bringer of the 
 news ; she strikes him, tears his hair, and even threatens his 
 life. Although everything became her, this rage does not ; the 
 goddess is suddenly changed into a fury, and does not become 
 calm again until she discovers from the description of the 
 modest, holy, widowed Octavia that she is no object of jealousy. 
 The companion scene to this is given by Antony when he sur- 
 prises Cleopatra in bestowing a calculated slight mark of favour 
 upon the ambassador of Octavius, who promises her a favourable 
 hearing if she will kill or dismiss Antony. Octavius hoped 
 thus to destroy his adversary, for he did not build much upon 
 the constancy of women in good fortune, much less in trouble. 
 This same opinion might have frightfully excited Antony's 
 jealousy and suspicion. At the very moment when she is about 
 to secure favour for him and for herself from the conqueror he 
 furiously accuses her of unchastity. In this scene his conduct 
 and all that was royal in him sinks, into baseness, and the 
 Grorgon in his nature appears. As he here ruins by his jealousy 
 a prospect of deliverance, which she in her own battle-field 
 might perhaps have won for both, she by her jealousy had pre- 
 viously lost the battle of Actium, which, perhaps, if left to him- 
 self, he might have won ; to which, according to Plutarch, 
 jealousy had driven her, in order that a reconciliation with 
 Octavia might be prevented. The fate and Hfe of both is at 
 last decided by an involuntary repetition of Cleopatra's blame- 
 able flight at sea near Actium. The last, event was caused by 
 the state of distraction to which misfortune had brought them 
 both. Antony had lost his head at Actium; here far more. 
 He again challenges Octavius to fight with him, being foolish 
 enough to think he would resign his better fortune to make a 
 show with a gladiator. He flogs Octavius' ambassador. He 
 dares, in desperation, a final battle, and incites his people with 
 a night of revelling, thinking to animate them by a touching 
 address which only weakens them. He is brave and cast down 
 by turns, as his fading fortunes inspire hope or fear. He wins 
 an unexpected victory by land, and here Shakespeare invests 
 him with the ostentation which Plutarch makes, as it were, 
 the central point of his character. The striking contrast to 
 Macbetli is evident ; Macbeth, in misfortune, growing poor in 
 words as his deeds increase, while Antony perishes uttering 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOFATBA. 739 
 
 high-sounding words. During the last flickerings of fortune 
 he hears that his fleet has deserted ; the effect of that first 
 disgrace at Actium is repeated here. Without inquiry he 
 ascribes it to Cleopatra's treachery, and thinks of revenge and 
 death for her, supposing she has sold him to Octavius. The 
 fury of jealousy possesses him again, and, like his god Hercules, 
 he feels upon him ' the shirt of Nessus.' He rages as if he were 
 Othello and had a Desdemona for his wife, although shortly 
 before he had shown how well he knows her. Cleopatra escapes 
 from his wrath, and in order to bring him to himself feigns 
 herself dead. She too, who was once all caution, prudence, and 
 discretion, now loses her senses. Too late she recollects that 
 her plan was too severe, and she forebodes the consequences. 
 After his first outbreak of jealousy she had pacified him with a 
 word, because the weakling could not for a moment bear the 
 thought of a separation from her : now the report of her death 
 drove the desperate man after her, to earn forgiveness with 
 tears. Not so quickly does she resolve to follow him when he 
 is really dead. She has still plans of deliverance ; she still 
 hides some of her treasures from Csesar, and boldly lies to his 
 face while concealing them ; it is not till she becomes certain 
 that she is destined to adorn his triumph that she puts herself 
 to death. The death of both is, according to the opinion of 
 their enemies, the best in them. Nevertheless, we cannot dwell 
 upon it with elevated feelings. The fate of Brutus has reveng- 
 ingly befallen Antony ; he utters many lofty words about his 
 design, a Roman vanquished by a Eoman ; his page is to slay 
 him like Brutus, and the boy prefers falling on his own sword, 
 without one word, thus showing himself 'thrice nobler' than 
 he who now must kill himself, and strikes with no certain aim , 
 In like manner Iras precedes her mistress, setting the example 
 of self-destruction, an action by which Cleopatra also finds her- 
 self shamed. Her death, like her love, her jealousy, her life, is 
 notoriously studied, calculated, prepared, planned; even the 
 separation from life made an enjoyment; painlessly the asp 
 sucks her breast, as a babe 'that sucks the nurse asleep.' 
 Charmian emulates her in this ' noble weakness,' when she, 
 already poisoned, tremblingly stood trimming up the diadem 
 on her dead mistress. 
 
 In this our exposition of the issue of the pair, according 
 to the play, everyone must be aware that the strictest justice 
 is satisfied in the events. According to the expressions it 
 
 3 B 2 
 
740 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 might indeed appear as if too much light were east upon 
 Antony; as if th^ sesthetic ofcject of elevating somewhat the 
 principal character had led to a conflict with the ethical truth. 
 "We might imagine that Shakespeare, in laying the foundation 
 of this character, had, contrary to his usual view of life, laid too 
 much stress upon the passive being and natural disposition of 
 man, instead of on activity, on the man in motion, and on the 
 use of innate gifts, since it sometimes seems as if Antony's 
 hereditary good qualities were to be reckoned as meritorious 
 virtues, while his evil ones on the contrary were designated as 
 pardonable weaknesses. It is necessary, therefore, for us to 
 observe in whose mouth the various opinions concerning him 
 are placed. We shall certainly not listen to Cleopatra, when 
 she sees him stride over land and sea like a god, when she 
 praises his power, his goodness, an,d above all his bounty, and 
 when she says that of him which is the most evident untruth, 
 that his delights in which he perished like dolphins showed 
 their backs above the element they lived in. The weak 
 Lepidus, who made the best of everything, says of him that 
 ' there are not evils enough to darken all his goodness.' At his 
 death, at the moment when even his conqueror Octavius is 
 touched, the noble enemies Maecenas and Agrippa express this 
 mild judgment : — 
 
 His taints and honours 
 Waged equal with him. A rarer spirit never 
 Did steer humanity : but you, gods, will give us 
 ^ome faults to make us men. 
 
 Antony's sub-officers, among them Ventidius, designate the 
 weaknesses of his petty ambition, and spare him. Others of his 
 soldiers, like Philo, mention unreservedly the disgraceful situa- 
 tion of the triumvir, -who has become the fool and the paramour 
 of the gipsy. Pompey expects and wishes that 
 
 Sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour, 
 Even till a Lethe'd dulness. 
 
 One of his dependants, Canidius, deserts him early ; the other, 
 Enobarbus, does not leave him until his tutelar god has for- 
 saken him ; the third, Eros, is true to him until death. Thus 
 this man of many sides and many meanings makes a different 
 impression upon everyone ; it may be asked on whom he 
 makes the most correct one. His enemy Octavius, who knows 
 him best, does not judge him worst. He speaks of him as ' the 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOPATBA. 741 
 
 abstract of all faults that all men follow ; he accepts unwillingly 
 but yieldingly that praise of Antony, that everything becomes 
 him. ; that man's ' composure must be rare indeed ' whom the 
 low pleasures to which he was addicted could not blemish. He 
 glances disapprovingly but forbearingly at the moral shadows 
 that fall upon him. But he finds his whole conduct unpardon- 
 able when he looks upon his political vocation. If this lays 
 open to us the main point of view in reference to Antony, in so 
 far as we see him in relation to his position in the world, 
 Antony himself, on the other hand, furnishes in a remarkable 
 manner the ultimatimi concerning his personality, his character 
 in itself ; and in this we must recognise the poet's own judg- 
 ment upon him. And this was surprisingly well comprehended 
 in a nature not inaccessible to truth, which assumed involun- 
 tarily a dissembling exterior, and consequently appeared 
 different to different people ; a nature which equally involun- 
 tarily received gliijapses of knowledge from without, and unin- 
 tentionally displayed the result of this self-knowledge in various 
 situations. In the first scene (Act i.) in his intoxication he 
 uttered the opinion that refinenaent in the pleasures of love 
 made the sole difference between man and beast ; in the second 
 scene, when he has come to himself and has been ' eared ' by bad 
 news from Rome, he utters on the contrary what strongly con- 
 demns his pleasures : ' we bring forth weeds when oul- quiet 
 winds lie still-.' When he has trifled away his fortune, and lost 
 all the healthy tact and instinct of action which was once 
 peculiar to him, he indicates in his rage against Cleopatra his 
 wretched fall by these bitter words : — 
 
 When we in our viciousness grow hard, 
 
 (0 misery on 't) the wise gods seal our eyes ; 
 
 In our own filth drop our clear judgments ; make us 
 
 Adore our errors ; laugh at us, while we strut 
 
 To our confusion. 
 
 And at last, just before his death,' looking upon his situation, 
 he compares it with the evening clouds, which deceive the eye 
 first with one shape, then another, and then vanish into nothing. 
 And by nothing more striking than this poetical image could 
 the poet, in fuU accordance with Plutarch, comprise his judg- 
 ment respecting the whole life of this man, who astonished and 
 deceived the world with his splendid nothingness, with his 
 seeming greatness and seeming nobleness, in a thousand chang- 
 ing forms. 
 
742 THIBD PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEAHE' S DSAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 History came to the help of Shakespeare, inasmuch as it im- 
 posed upon him, in the domain of the busy world, no over pre- 
 ponderating character which, as a contrast, would have pressed 
 too strongly on the effeminate Antony, His Octavius, therefore, 
 is as skilfully made use of in an sesthetical point of view, as he 
 is delineated with historical truth. Schlegel has justly extolled 
 Shakespeare for having even in Julius Gsesar perfectly seen 
 through this character, without suffering himself to be led 
 astray by the fortune and the glory of Augustus. "We are not 
 likely to be too enthusiastically biassed in favour of the activity 
 of political life by this grave diplomatist and his conquest over 
 his pleasure-seeking opponent, on whom his fantastic heroism 
 and his excessive passionateness cast a poetic brilliancy. 
 Octavius owes his success more to Antony's luxuriousness, idle- 
 ness, and frenzy , than to his own merits. Shakespeare makes 
 Octavius himself acknowledge the intellectual superiority of 
 Antony, when he says ' his thoughts did kindle mine.' But the 
 use he made of his gifts shows advantageously in contrast to 
 Antony. Protected by colder blood from the spur of volup- 
 tuousness, he has also with well-principled sobriety defended ■ 
 himself from being overtaken by wine, this washing of the 
 bi'ain by which ' it grows fouler.' These peculiarities of dis- 
 position and habit give him a natural superiority over Antony. 
 Where the latter is genial and wanton, Octavius is full of petty 
 carefulness ; where the one idly, voluptuously, and madly puts 
 off, neglects, and forgets every public duty, the other is all coij- 
 scientiousness, economy, activity, and thoughtful quickness, 
 and is prompted at least as much by the common interests of 
 the state as by personal ambition. He complains of Antony's 
 levity, because it is incomprehensible to him, and contrary to his 
 nature, although he might rejoice at it as being advantageous 
 to himself. So long as he needs him to set against Pompey 
 he is considerate towards him, and seriously tries to conciliate 
 and to attach him to himself. "When discord threatens he 
 cimningly and carefully avoids exposing himself to any re- 
 proaches ; he could prove by his letters with what difficulty he 
 had been drawn into the new war, how mildly and calmly he 
 had written. But as soon as Antony gives him threefold cause 
 of offence, insulting his family, disgracing the state, and ruining 
 entirely his renown, he sees that the aim of his autocratic 
 ambition is reached ; he now sacrifices his sister to his political 
 objects, displays an unexampled activity, sets aside Pompey and 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 743 
 
 Lepidus, startles with his haste the hitherto more hasty Antony, 
 suffers not himself to be led astray by false honour to accept his 
 adventurous challenges, but follows up the beaten track of 
 fortune with discreet circumspection, although with a full 
 determination to destroy Antony and to humble Cleopatra as 
 much as possible. 
 
 The ways and means by which the private affairs of the - 
 lovers are united with public matters and history, and by which 
 the play is made into a story, are as simple as they are masterly. 
 By its connection and close relations with the East, by the 
 contagion of the frugal West with Asiatic luxury, the Eoman 
 state perished, as well as its triumvir Antony. Shakespeare 
 has shown this dangerous influence in the case of the upright 
 Enobarbus. This nature is that of a soldier of the old Eoman 
 times : hard, bold, dryly humorous, without ceremony or com- 
 pliment, upright and true towards friend and foe, as well 
 towards the pirate Menas as towards the enchantress Cleopatra 
 and his commander Antony. His sound knowledge of human 
 nature is suflScient to enable him to see through the whole 
 inner web of his enigmatical master, but he is helpless in the 
 presence of the artful Cleopatra. The witchery of her character 
 lays hold of him, as far as his nature permits, as it does after- 
 wards of Doiabella. He thinks her passion for Antony is 
 composed of the finest elements of purest love ; he is deceived 
 by the pains she takes to retain the inconstant one ; when she 
 assures Thyreus that her ' honour was not yielded, but conquered 
 merely,' this seems to him so earnest and true that he questions 
 his lord about it. Even to this plain, blunt nature the Eastern 
 manners are as dangerous as to the better adapted Antony ; in 
 the society of eunuchs, of servants obedient to a glance, like 
 Alexas, of those frivolous women Iras and Charmian, who 
 thoroughly understaiid their vocation, even the roughest are 
 injured. The rude soldier feels himself comfortable on the soft 
 Egyptian couch ; he also is soon, like his master, sorely 
 divided in the choice between women and business, between 
 resting and going ; if love has no charms for him, the wines of 
 Egypt have the more. This better Eoman nature is struggling 
 with the inward weakness that has ' come over him when 
 Antony's good fortune is waning. He finds that ' loyalty well 
 held to fools makes faith mere folly,' yet fidelity triumphs at 
 last over prudence; he intends to conquer the conqueror of 
 his master with honourable endurance, and to ' earn a place in 
 
744 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 the story.' But then Antony's misfortunes corrupt even this 
 honest servant. Antony sends his treasures after him, when 
 he had abandoned him. This magnanimity wounds the true 
 heart, that had but lately left the long trodden path of honour ; 
 he now feels with shame that in the book of history he can 
 only rank in register as a ' master-leaver ' and a fugitive, and 
 he kills himself. 
 
 To this example of the decline of Eome's ancient virtue is 
 
 added the insurrection of Sextus Pompeius, through whom this 
 
 piece is connected, by a fine thread, with Julius Csesar. During 
 
 the contentions of Caesar's two heirs, the people's love woke 
 
 again for the dead Pompey, and was transferred to his son ; the 
 
 malcontents assemble round Sextus, who once again raised the 
 
 standard of the republic, where ' they would have one man but 
 
 a man.' But what manner of men arise here for the good 
 
 cause in the places of Brutus and Cassius ? The young Pompey, 
 
 a frank but thoughtless soul, the image of political levity, 
 
 opposed to the moderate Octavius, fights for the cause of 
 
 freedom in company with pirates, foolishly brave, without 
 
 friends. He cannot wait for the consequences of the discord 
 
 between Octavius and Antony ; he knows that his insurrection 
 
 even re-unites them ; but wantonly and vainly he thinks all the 
 
 better of himself because he is able to force Antony out of 
 
 Egypt. This confidence rests on the predictions of hope, on 
 
 the command of the sea, on the love of the people, on all the 
 
 most deceitful things in the world. In the first words we hear 
 
 him utter he shows himself less pious than . the pirates, in the 
 
 last action in which we see him, less impious than they. Menas 
 
 advises him, according to historical tradition, to kill the 
 
 triumvirs on board his ship at a banquet. . He would have 
 
 been glad had Menas done this without asking him ; but, being 
 
 asked, he will not break his honour for his advantage. Menas 
 
 opposes him, as Brutus opposed Cassius, with the reproach that 
 
 he did not like th« means necessary to the end. But what a 
 
 falling off from such men as those — from those republicans to 
 
 these ! As Pompey understands the cause of freedom, he is 
 
 satisfied, not that one man should be as good as another, but 
 
 that he himself should be equal to the mightiest. And while 
 
 he looks with half-envious glances at Antofly's pleasures in the 
 
 East, while he entertains the men who agree to give him a 
 
 small part of their dominion, he shows what an adept he is in 
 
 the revels and debaucheries that are bringing Eome to ruin. 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 745 
 
 There is nothing more admirable thaij th^ historical symbolism 
 of this banquet scene. First of all the weak ' triple pillar ' of 
 the world, Lepidus, is carried off; they have made him drink 
 ' alms-drink,' that is, the share of wine which one man drinks 
 instead of another to relieve him, respecting which Warburton 
 found a striking satire on his being taken into the triumvirate 
 in order to divert envy from the others. At the same time 
 Antony and Enobarbus intoxicate their senses with wine, per- 
 forming Egyptian Bacchanals. And on the other side Pompey 
 trifles away his fortune in an honest cheerful mood. Between 
 them stands Octavius, observant, without interrupting the 
 merriment. Even he splits his words, but his mind is clear, 
 and his senses sober, and he moralises thus : ' Our graver 
 business frowns at this levity.' 
 
COEIOLANUS. 
 
 We have no certain external means of settling the date of 
 Coriolanus, but the style, and a few expressions and passages 
 which recall contemporary plays, allow of a few conjectures, and 
 these almost all combine to place the piece about the year 1610. 
 Fondness for the Roman state, whose mighty career Shake- 
 speare 'contemplate's in this play with the proud satisfaction of 
 one belonging to it, seems to have induced the poet, after the 
 completion of Antony and Cleopatra, to take up once more the 
 better days of the first military greatness of this people, and 
 to treat a more noble subject out of its history. As in 
 Antony he had represented the imperial time and its de- 
 generacy, and in Csesar the struggle of the republic with 
 monarchy, in Coriolanus he brings before us the struggle be- 
 tween the aristocratic and the democratic elements within the 
 republic. The play is filled with the striving of the two 
 powers, tribunes and consuls, plebeians and patricians, senate 
 and people ; the complaints and reproaches customary between 
 ruler and subjects, between official and privileged persons and 
 those who bear the burde"n and perform the labours, are evenly 
 balanced against each other. The opposition between these 
 two powers is everywhere exhibited as founded on their nature ; 
 the implacable enmity between them is shown as a necessary 
 result of the imprudence, unreasonableness, and harshness of 
 their contrast. The inconstancy in the people is contrasted 
 with the obstinacy, the one-sidedness, and the scorn in the 
 representative of aristocracy ; the dishonesty on the one side is 
 opposed to the boundless ambition on the other, proud con- 
 tempt to envious hatred, deep desire of revenge to the pass- 
 ing intoxication of retaliation, the lingering grudge to the 
 superficial repentance. The incompatibility of the higher and 
 stronger nature with the weaker and lower is described ; for 
 this is inevitable, unless on one side wise modesty condescends, 
 
COSIOLANUS. 747 
 
 and on the other grateful respect for merit elevates. The con- 
 trasts and contentions of these two political states and powers 
 are so thoroughly treated of in our play,' that this very struggle 
 of the aristocratic and democratic principles has usually been 
 considered as the spirit of it, as if the leading thought of the 
 poet had been a purely political one. But it always seemed to 
 us that these three Eoman plays were so highly and generally 
 estimated, just on account of the elevation of history to pure 
 drama, the union of the political idea with a moral one, and 
 the mixture of historical with psychological excellence. We 
 are inclined to believe that those political relations are inherent 
 in the subject, and form with it that general foundation on 
 which the actual centre of the piece must first be sought. The 
 internal connection of the three plays and their themes with 
 one another will quickly place this in a clear light. In Julius 
 Csesar the political subject was the struggle of the republic 
 with monarchy ; within this gene'ral subject of the great 
 historical action we were, however, attracted by the sharp dis- 
 cord between a political and a moral duty, which affects the 
 hero of the play and which is the kernel of the real dramatic 
 action. In Antony and Cleopatra the historical theme is the 
 struggle of the active Eoman spirit against the influx of 
 oriental effeminacy, and here, we may say, the political and the 
 moral centre coincided ; Antony's individual hesitation between 
 his active vQcation in the world and his pursuit of sensual en- 
 joyment is the first great symptom of the like state of the 
 times. In Coriolanus the political basis is the struggle 
 between the aristocratic and democratic elements ; in this 
 struggle the hero finds himself placed in a situation where he 
 has to choose between his patriotism and his private feelings of 
 hatred. Brutus renounced his friendship with Csesar, the 
 supposed enemy of his country, out of greater devotion to his 
 country, being as noble in policy as he was mistaken in morals ; 
 Antony renounced friendships that were useful to his country, 
 and formed others that were injurious, being both in policy and 
 morals equally easy and negligent ; Coriolanus renounced an 
 enmity with the enemy of his people, to the ruin of his country, 
 being politically and morally hardened in selfishness. The sort 
 of characters which have to decide in these situations, and the 
 prominent qualities in them, by means of which they decide in 
 this way or in that, this is everywhere the actual centre 
 towards which the poet worked, and his leading thought here, 
 
748 THIBB PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 as we everywhere demonstrate, is of a moral psychological 
 nature. Brutus' really* difficult choice is decided by . the 
 fundamental firmness and uprightness of a truly manly mind ; 
 Antony's choice, which ought to be no choice, is, in strong con- 
 trast to Brutus, decided by the unmanly weakness and meapness 
 of an effeminate voluptuary ; Coriolanus, again, in double con- 
 trast to both, is, guided by thfe lofty pride and high ambition of 
 a manly character, in which an excess of selfishness unnaturally 
 tends to unbending obstinacy which blunts itself. In Brutus, 
 the noblest citizen contended with the noblest man ; in Antony, 
 the sensualist celebrated his triumph over the citizen summoned 
 to action ; in Coriolanus, the sensitive man and the good citizen 
 is subdued by a heroism exaggerated by pride. A heroism, we 
 say, because indeed the physical qualities and characteristics of 
 Coriolanus surpass, as in heroic times, ordinary human great- 
 ness; an exaggerated heroism, we added, because, compared 
 with similar descriptions of similar relations in the heroic ages, 
 this stands prominent in the might of passion. Homer's en- 
 raged Meleager and AchiUes, in like scorn and obstinacy, soften 
 when they see fire carried into the friendly city or ships; 
 Coriolanus is ready to throw the fire-brand with his own hand 
 into his native city. 
 
 Even if we give up our usual plan of seeking in every one 
 of Shakespeare's dramas a fundamental moral view, it is by no 
 means unimportant, in forming a judgment on this play, 
 whether we take the political or the psychological idea as the 
 basis for our consideration. If we take the political struggle 
 between the two orders to be the main point, we shall readily 
 arrive at wrong conclusions. To instance only one. We see 
 Coriolanus, as the chief representative of the aristocracy, in 
 strong opposition to the people and the tribunes ; hence we 
 naturally take up the view expressed by Hazlitt, that Shake- 
 speare had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question, to the 
 aristocratieal principle, inasmuch as he does not dwell on the 
 truths he tells of the nobles in the same proportion as he does 
 on those he tells of the people. Hazlitt has added excellent 
 grounds for proving even the naturalness and need of this 
 inclination in the poet. He showed that the poetic imagination 
 is an exaggerating, exclusive, aristocratic faculty, that the 
 principle of poetry is everywhere an anti-levelling principle, 
 that the lion which attacks a flock of sheep is a far more poeti- 
 
COJRIOLANUS. 749 
 
 cal- object than the flock, that we feel more admiration for the 
 proud, arbitrary man than for the humble crowd that bow 
 before him, for the oppressor rather than for the oppressed. 
 All this is very true, and seems to gain more force by its appli- 
 cation to Coriolanus. But Shakespeare's poetry is always so 
 closely connected with morality, his imaginative power is so 
 linked with sound reason, his ideal is so full of actual truth, 
 that his poetry seemed to us always distinguished from all other 
 poetry exactly by this : that there is nothing exclusive in it, 
 that candour and impartiality are the most prominent marks of 
 the poet and his poetry, that if imagination even with him 
 strives sometimes after effect, exists by contrasts, and admits no 
 middle course, yet in the very placing, describing, and colour- 
 ing of the highest poetical contrasts, there appears ever for the 
 moral judgment that golden mean of impartiality which is the 
 precious prerogative of the truly wise. Shakespeare has de- 
 picted the man of freedom, Brutus, nay, even the harder 
 master-spirit of the revolution, Cassius, far nobler and with 
 much more love than the man of the aristocracy, Coriolanus. 
 It will be allowed that, from the example of Brutus, many 
 more would be won over to the cause of the people than would 
 be won over to aristocratic ptinciples by Coriolanus. If we 
 regard Coriolanus not merely in reference to the many, but if 
 we weigh his character in itself and with itself, we must confess, 
 ' after the closest consideration, that personified aristocracy is 
 here represented in its noblest and in its worst side, with that 
 impartiality which Shakespeare's nature could scarcely avoid. 
 It may be replied, the people are not so depicted. Yet even 
 on the nobles as a body our poet has just as little thrown a 
 favourable light at last ; for it lies in the nature of things 
 that a multitude can never be compared with one man who is 
 to be the subject of poetical representation, and who, on that 
 very account, must stand alone, one single man distinguished 
 from the many. But it may be said, the representatives of the 
 people, the tribunes also, are not thus impartially depicted. 
 Yet where would have been the poetic harmony, if Shakespeare 
 had made these prominent ? where the truth, if lie had given 
 dignity and energy to a new power created in a tumult ? where 
 our sympathy in his hero, if he had placed a Marcus Brutus in 
 opposition to him in the tribunate? In proportion as he had 
 raised our interest in the tribunes, he would have withdrawn it 
 
750 miED FERIOB OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 from Coriolanus, who had akeady enough to do to bear his own 
 burden of declension. 
 
 If we observe closely, we cannot even find that the people 
 are here represented as so very bad. We must distinguish 
 between the way in which they really act and the way in which 
 the mockers and despisers of the people represent them ; we 
 may then soon find that the populace in Julius Csesar appear 
 much worse than in Coriolanus. Great attention is here paid 
 to the^ character of the age. In Antony, where the people had 
 ceased to be of any importance, they no longer appear ; in 
 Csesar, where their degeneracy ruined the republic, they are 
 shown in all their wea;kness ; in Coriolanus, where they can 
 oppose but not stop the progress of Rome's political career, 
 they' appear equally endowed with good and bad qualities. We 
 must allow that the populace' are not flattered. The multitude 
 are not alone blamed by Coriolanus as inconstant and variable, 
 but they make him conscious of their changeableness by their 
 behaviour concerning his election. Not alone does Menenius 
 say that their imprudence 'transports them by calamity 
 thither where more attends them,' but we find them actually 
 on this road, and their leaders surpass them in popular .frenzy ; 
 what is inconvenient is not believed and is concealed from the 
 people, and the messenger is flogged who brings the unwelcome 
 truth. It is true they are not alone reproached by words with 
 unjustly ascribing to the government what is perhaps the 
 decree of Providence, that they curse the justice that overtakes 
 the criminal, and persecute the great with hatred ; we see them 
 ourselves in action, now loving and now hating without a 
 reason, and, as it always happens in stirring times, scattering 
 abroad the exciting commonplaces which have much show and 
 little truth. Coriolanus despises all the deed and capacity of 
 the people, which ' where it should find lions, finds hares,' but 
 the poet has actually shown us their cowardice and their love 
 of plunder. On the other hand, we must not be, like 
 Coriolanus, unreasonable, and overlook the fact that Shake- 
 speare has introduced some better and braver among the people, 
 who, when the general calls for volunteers, all shout and follow 
 him, to his great joy and admiration. We must not omit to 
 observe that the whole mass of the people acknowledge the 
 merit of Coriolanus, that the zeal to admire and applaud the 
 conqueror is universal, that his party among the people seems 
 very great, that even the inflamed and excited people acknow- 
 
COBIOLANUS. 751 
 
 ledge that he is not avaricious, that he is not more proud 
 
 than brave; that, with regard to his haughtiness, they take 
 
 into consideration the power of his nature, and acknowledge that 
 
 his merit surpasses their power to recompense. Menenius 
 
 imagined that if the nobles did not keep them in awe they 
 
 would destroy themselves, yet they acknowledge readily the 
 
 wisdom of his fable, before which their wisdom yields. The 
 
 friends of Coriolanus expected that the people, when left to 
 
 themselves on his banishment, would fall into confusion, but, to 
 
 their surprise, peace and union prevail. If fickleness be the 
 
 attribute of the populace in all ages, there is an advantage 
 
 even in this fault, which is totally opposed to the stiff obstinacy 
 
 of the aristocrat ; the populace become, through, this quality, 
 
 a manageable mass, which a wise man, like Menenius, can 
 
 easily guide ; if it be easily inflamed, it is also easily calmed 
 
 again, and this quality of ready forgiveness Menenius himself 
 
 praises in the people. Their hostility against Coriolanus is 
 
 excusable on account of his indifference and haughty contempt, 
 
 and on account of the scorn and enmity with which the proud 
 
 man intentionally challenges their hatred. 
 
 Here, in fact, the good and bad qualities of the multitude 
 are weighed truly, and even with moderation. If, however, we 
 would find out the poet's estimation of democratic and aristo- 
 cratic principles, we must, as we intimated above, compare the 
 highest representative of both principles, Coriolanus, with 
 Brutus and Cassius ; not the populace with Coriolanus, who is 
 intended by the poet, expressly and in accordance with history, 
 to tower, like a hero, above them. We might "compare this 
 character with Marlowe's transcendent heroes, if Shakespeare's 
 exaggeration were intended for genuine nature, and our admira- 
 tion claimed in good faith, as is the case in similar descriptions 
 ■ of the old school of poetry ; whereas with him, on the contrary, 
 this outdoing of- nature breaks to pieces of itself as something 
 unnatural, and leaves in the observer a very mixed feeling. 
 The poet has taken pains to make the exceptional pride and 
 greatness of bis hero jpossihle. He has given him a mother 
 glowing with patriotism, early left a widow, who has centred all 
 her pride, her strength, and her love on making her only and 
 early distinguished son the chief hero and ruler of his country. 
 This Volumnia is a grand but not an attractive woman, who 
 considers her masculine disposition as an honourable charac- 
 teristic, and who says, had she been the Wife of Hercules, she 
 
752 THIED PERIOD OF 8HAKESPEAEE' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 would have undertaken six of his labours for him. She has 
 ' like a hen clucked him to the wars ;' if she had been his wife, 
 she would ' freelier rejoice in that absence wherein he won 
 honom-,' than at home where he 'woidd show most love;' she 
 knows his wounds by heart, and, old as she is, she is enthusiastic 
 in proudly imagining his warlike exploits and his return with 
 ' bloody brows.' She tells him, with the utmost satisfaction, 
 that no son has so much to thank his mother for as he has. 
 Never had he been an hour out of her sight. She trained him 
 in and for dangers and ambition ; she taught him early that 
 misfortune tries courage; had she a dozen sons, she would 
 rather that ' eleven should die nobly for their country, than one 
 voluptuously surfeit out of action.' She can boast that Corio- 
 lanus has ' sucked his valiantness from her,' and she looks with 
 pride on the realisation of her boldest imaginings. This pride 
 her son has inherited from her, although she denies it, and in a 
 certain degree is justified in denying it. Hers was pride in 
 h^r son ; his, pride in himself ; idolised by her, and by the 
 friends of the family, Coriolanus' innate and cherished selfish- 
 ness, through the delicate flattery of his well-meaning fosterer 
 and friends, became great and aspiring haughtiness. Even his 
 contempt for the people was first instilled into him by his 
 mother ; he was their enemy in his earliest youth, before he 
 had ever come into collision with them. Volumnia educated 
 her son in the conviction that man was ' no better than picture- 
 like, if renown made it not stir ;' in contrast to Antony, there- 
 fore, Coriolanus is instinctively brought up to the activity of 
 public and military life ; he 
 
 rewards 
 His deeds with doing them, and is content 
 To spend the time to end it ; 
 
 it seems to him a thing not to be thought of, that he would sit' 
 in the sun and have 'his head scratched' when the alarum was 
 struck. He has been trained from childhood to an elevation 
 above the ordinary and the vulgar; he has, says Volumnia, 
 ' affected the fine strains of honour, to imitate the graces of the 
 gods.' These overstrained demands on himself and others, 
 springing from pride and begetting a greater pride, made him 
 in time unfit for everything And ruinous to himself, because 
 with them every good and every bad quality rose to a height 
 that could not, as it were, support itself ; he strove for a degree 
 
COBIOLJNUS. 753 
 
 of merit ' that stifled itself by its own excess.' No idle dream 
 of honour impels him to seek for renown ; he wishes to be, not 
 to seein, the first. In this sense he is an aristocrat in the 
 simplest and noblest meaning of the word ; with him the liame 
 and the rank are nothing, but everything consistent with true 
 pride lies in real merit. It would not satisfy him, like Caesar, 
 to be the first in the smallest place in the world, but rather to 
 be the second in the greatest ; he wishes to be, not the first in 
 rank, but the greatest in deeds in the whole earth. 
 
 "What induced Shakespeare to endow the hero of this play 
 'with this superhuman, demi-godlike greatness ? History im- 
 posed upon the poet a catastrophe of the rarest kind. Corio- 
 lanus, after his banishment, fights against his country, for which, 
 before, he would have striven in the hardest battles without 
 requiring any reward ; he enters into a league with his bitterest 
 ■enemy from a cold, unfeeling thirst for vengeance ; then, at the 
 certain peril of Ms life, he suddenly abandons this revenge at 
 the entreaty of his mother. These contradictions, Shakespeare ^ 
 thought, could only be imputed to a man who, from nature and 
 education, had carried his virtues and his faults to extremes, 
 which rendered natural the change of his different qualities 
 into their opposites. This is managed with an art and a 
 delicacy which can scarcely be suspected in the apparently 
 ■coarse strokes of this delineation. 
 
 First, his unmeasured thirst for glory, which in an heroic 
 age can only seek its satisfaction in the praise bestowed on the 
 highest valour. If valour be ' the chiefest virtue,' it is said of 
 him that he is then 'singly counterpoised in the world.' 
 Coriolanus so considered valour. Nowhere is his whole being so 
 ■over-excited as in battle ; not his blows only, but his voice and 
 his looks are dreadful. He suffers none to approach him in 
 this point, unless it be old Titus Lartius, who, fighting on 
 crutches, cannot hurt his glory. , Thet^ is but one who rivals 
 him in valour, TuUus Aufidius ; towards him his ambition rises 
 into envy. If he were ' anything but what he is,' Coriolanus 
 would wish to be Aufidius. He confesses that he ' sins in envy- 
 ing his nobility.' He says : — 
 
 Were half to half the world by the ears, and he 
 Upon my party, I'd revolt, to make 
 Only my -wars with him ! 
 
 In this declaration, how delicately is a very characteristic stain 
 
 3c 
 
754 THIBD FEBIOD OF SHAKESPEASE' 8 BBAMATIG POETRY. 
 
 cast on the valour of Coriolanus ! He betrays by these words 
 that his personal renown is of more value to him than his party, 
 his cause, his country ; he would fight as a hireling against 
 Aufidius, no matter on which side ! This is not the only point 
 in which Goriolanus' thirst for glory appears in a doubtful 
 light. We may observe it heroically rise to a really noble con- 
 tempt of his adversary and of danger, and then again see it 
 silently veiled, aimed with cold and artful calculation, not 
 despising small means any more than great ones. Wounded, he 
 meets Aufidius, he conceals his wounds in order to represent 
 himself as fully equal to cope with him ; the blood that masks 
 him, he says, is Volscian blood, the blood of Aufidius' slain 
 countrymen. Thus madly brave, he, the wounded man, stirs 
 up the power and revenge of his strong enemy to the utmost. 
 To this is added the other characteristic point, that in the cam- 
 paign he ranks himself below Cominius, sure of renown, which 
 always attends him, but clearly foreseeing that the errors that 
 may be committed will be charged upon Cominius, and only 
 'tend to increase his glory. 
 
 Next to his military virtues we will examine his political 
 qualities. That a man of his disposition and education must 
 be an aristocrat on principle, if not so by birth, is very evident. 
 He dislikes the representation of the people by the tribunate : 
 he opposes every innovation which interferes with the sole rule 
 of the senate ; he is jealous against any concession as a proof of 
 weakness, and as a wanton encouragement of rebellion ; he is 
 convinced that where two powers rule togethet, unless one has 
 the upper hand, confusion will introduce discord between them, 
 and one will overturn the other. But with these strict aristo- 
 cratic principles he would have ruled like a wise statesman, if 
 regard had been had to his nature and he had been left in 
 peace. The poet has endowed him with that knowledge of 
 state affairs and those high political views which , seem pecu- 
 liar to aristocratic bodies, in addition to the blamelessness of 
 his private character. He possesses the first quality of a 
 statesman — disinterestedness ; even the populace allow that he 
 is not greedy of gain ; in the war he will not take a greater 
 share of booty than any of the others. He would not distribute 
 com gratis among the rebellious crowd, but neither would he 
 oppress the people ; so long as he was not offended, he would 
 be towards the people, as Menenius says, ' a bear that lives like 
 a lamb.' He is, moreover, free from all petty and punishable 
 
C0EI0LANU8. 755 
 
 ambition. Dictatory as he is, h^ would never aim at tyrannical 
 power; the scandal-loving tribunes themselves' could not hope 
 to have such a report of him as this believed. As he would not 
 descend from the aristocratic sphere, so neither would he ■ step 
 beyond it. Jealous as he is of true honour and true pre- 
 eminence, the posts of external honour are indifferent to him. 
 He does not smooth the road to honour like those who flatter 
 the people ; he strives to advance the labours of actual merit. 
 He does not covet the consulate, any more than the chief 
 command of the army. But here prudence may be mixed with 
 modesty, and modesty with pretension. He feels that he 
 deserves the consulate, but he is not willing to use the usual 
 means of suing for it ; he will rather be the slave of the people 
 in his own way than rule over them in theirs. But as, through 
 the entreaties of his mother and his friends, he has once been 
 induced to try for the consulate, he is bent upon obtaining it 
 as a point of honour, as the reward of his deservings. If on 
 these points his aristocratic feelings are free from egotism and 
 a petty love of place, they are also free from petty conservatism,, 
 the usual principle of this class of politicians. He is not afraid 
 of revolutions and cutting remedies, when in his wrath he has- 
 te pursue a party aim ; but even in calmness and in the leisure 
 of consideration he would not hesitate to apply ' a dangerous 
 physic' against an infirmity of the state, which will cause 
 death without it. He utters in the calmest manner the excel- 
 lent maxim, adverse to the petty principles of conservatism : — 
 
 What custom wills, in all things should we do't, 
 The dust of antique time would lie unswept, 
 And mountainous error be too highly heaped 
 For truth to over-peer. 
 
 With such principles, Coriolanus would have been a distin- 
 guished statesman if he had einployed the charm of his supe- 
 riority to lead the people gently to goodness. Thus his mother 
 teaches him. In war, she says, he is content to unite prudence 
 and policy with honour, but he should also do so in peace. She 
 can endure his absolute disposition, in which to her ' he can 
 never be too noble;' but when extremities speak, 'when fortune 
 and friends are at stake, he should tame his proud heart, and 
 let the mouth only speak.' ' She has,' she says, ' a heart as 
 little apt as his to be counselled, but yet a brain that leads her 
 use of anger to better vantage.' This he should learn. He does, 
 
 3 c2 
 
756 THIBD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEABE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 indeed, indifferently understand it, under new conditions, when 
 the unsociability of his nature has not yet brought him into 
 difficulties, and when great aims make him prudent and dis- 
 creet. "When he has to propitiate the people of Antium he is 
 at once loved and prized by them all. The senators stand 
 bare-headed before him ; Aufidius shares his power with him, 
 and submits to his authority ; the soldiers follow him in battle, 
 as boys pursue butterflies ; he is their god ! But all these 
 qualities suddenly disappear when he is angry, and when he 
 experiences contradiction, especially from those whom he 
 despises. When the people rebel in the famine he will heap 
 up mountains of their bodies; when, at his election to the 
 consulate, he has to suffer for his changeableness and the malice 
 of the tribunes, he resents the peremptory shall of the popular 
 leaders, while his absolute will never endured the smallest 
 contradiction. Now he will violently rob the people of their 
 votes, and he rises in rebellion against those whom he calls 
 rebels; then he allows himself to call the people Hydra, 
 cannibals, dogs, thus betraying his real feelings towards them, 
 and justifying those harsh assertions of aristocratic obstinacy 
 and blindness ; that his party and station ' may disdain the 
 people with cause, and the people, on the contrary, insult them 
 without all reason.' All moderation and reasonableness, every 
 wise judgment on the populace and mankind, every reflection 
 that the state, in fact, only consists of the people, and that 
 those through whom all the objects of the state must be 
 worked out should not be lowered and degraded, but elevated, 
 all the discretion and wisdom which make great public qualities 
 only really great through the use made of them, all is entirely 
 cancelled in the obstinate Coriolanus. 
 
 If Coriolanus' warlike ambition and aristocratic presumption 
 of ruling were rooted in the great, proud, exaggerated claims 
 which he makes on himself, in the high opinion he had of 
 himself, and in the great merit which he knew he possessed, 
 the passionateness by which he is hurried along was so likewise. 
 Brought up with haughty manners, accustomed to no contra- 
 diction, he can endure none ; yet he himself seeks his glory in 
 contradiction. Those wlio in this way are spoiled by fortune, 
 who appear everywhere as conquerors, who rule over all, are 
 usually least able to rule themselves, and to be master of their 
 fortune. To oppose Coriolanus is the way to irritate him; 
 ■when thus irritated he cannot recover himself; when angry he 
 
COBIOLANUS. 757 
 
 forgets ' that ever he heard the name of death ; ' when moved 
 he ' will not spare to gird the gods, and to bemock the modest 
 moon.' When the tribunes compass his ruin, they endeavour 
 to rouse him to fury, and to make not only his tongue, but his 
 heart speak. In the excellent scene of his banishment (Act ill. 
 so. 3), the outbreak that they desired takes place in a great 
 and violent degree. It is a master-stroke of character that 
 Coriolanus, ever one and the same, always strained to the 
 utmost even in his calmer moments, does not exaggerate any- 
 thing in himself in this outbreak of fury, that his excitement 
 cannot force any of his principles, any of his antipathies, beyond 
 what they are ; he can say that, were he ' as patient as the 
 midnight sleep,' his opinions would be the same as he now 
 utters in his rage. On the contrary, when his irritation and 
 excitability are driven to the uttermost by his banishment, 
 there follows the remarkable change from his vehemence into 
 the opposite mood. He becomes then outwardly calm and still, 
 whilst within him the dangerous resolves of his repressed anger 
 ripen. While his mother in her feminine irritability gives 
 vent to her hatred as long as the pain is new, ' Juno-like ' in 
 her anger, so that they say she is meid, while even the gentle 
 Virgilia feels the sting of indignation, he behaves with cool 
 composure ; he gives his mother back her precepts ; he tells her 
 that , 
 
 fortune's blows 
 
 ,When most struck home, being gentle wounded, craves 
 
 A noble cunning. 
 
 Presently the mother grows calm, and makes a distinction 
 between her country and the rabble, both of which he is striv- 
 ing to destroy together, nay, in the very moment of discom- 
 posure, she seems to dread the desperate resolve of Coriolanus 
 from his apparent serenity; she begs him to take Cominius 
 with him for a while. But he evades him and departs in silent 
 wrath : — 
 
 Like to a lonely dragon, that his fen 
 Makes feared, and talked of more than seen. 
 
 Just as here his passion, when at its height, glides into 
 apparent calmness, so his pride, the soul and centre of his 
 character, subsides into apparent modesty. The ideas of highest 
 honour implanted in him gave him betimes the greatest self- 
 reliance; his valour and success raised this feeling to the 
 
758 THIBJ) PESIOD OF SHAKESPEABE' 8 DEAMATIO FOETRY. 
 
 I extremity of pride and haughtiness. 'Tickled with good 
 success, such a nature disdains his own shadow;' must not 
 Coriolanus despise all around him ? When the nobles forsake 
 him, iand refuse to listen to his call to powerful resistance, 
 his equals in rank are also obliged to hear his tone of con- 
 temptuous pride : they must ' vail their own ignorance ' if the 
 tribunes are to maintain their power ; they are in that case 
 plebeians, and the others senators. The people are certainly to 
 feel his haughtiness much more strongly. He is not content 
 with showing them his contempt, but he challenges their 
 hatred ; and even impartial persons distinctly perceive that he 
 intentionally draWs down upon himself the displeasure of the 
 people as others flatter them for their love. The extremity of 
 his pride is seen when he casts back upon his condemners the 
 sentence of banishment, 'I banish you,' as if the one condemned 
 weighed more than all the condemners in the world. And yet 
 it may be asked whether this monstrous insolence indicates the 
 actual pitch of Coriolanus' pride more than that modesty with 
 which he contemns and rejects all reward, all praise, and all 
 flattery. That his modesty has its origin partly in sincere 
 endeavoTurs after self-approval, and that, therefore, he will not 
 have his mother's praise, although ' she has a charter to extol 
 her blood,' this shows that his self-reliance is noble in principle 
 and his pride justified in a great degree by his merits and his 
 actions. Nevertheless, this feature bears also the stamp of 
 excessive pride ; there is mixed up with it that highest arro- 
 gance which thinks itself superior to all praise, with which he 
 avoids all acclamation and every laudatory report, with which 
 the man begs not to hear ' his nothings monstered,' while he 
 believed as much as any in the gigantic greatness of his im- 
 portance. 
 
 This peculiarity in Coriolanus of being rmable to listen to 
 flattery is connected with another, that of being still less able 
 to express it. He is true and plain ; he has been ' bred i' the 
 wars, and is ill schooled in boulted language ; ' ' meal and bran 
 together he throws out without distinction ; ' he speaks the truth 
 in spite of every danger ; he can also listen to the truth, if it be 
 without degradation and abuse ; what he thinks, he utters, and 
 what he says, he does ; promise-breakers are hateful to him. 
 He strives, therefore, to avoid applying for the consulship in the 
 customary manner by humbly suing the people ; he would not, 
 they say, ' flatter Neptune for his trident,' how then should he 
 
COBIOLANUS. 759 
 
 flatter the people ! And when the entreaties of his family and 
 friends have induced him to play this unnatural part, he wears 
 the 'humble weeds with a proud heart,' apes mockingly the 
 popular arts, and tells the citizens that he received his wounds 
 when ' their brethren roared and ran away.' When his mother, 
 afterwards, with her powerful entreaties and representations, 
 persuades him again to act the part of prudent dissimulation, 
 the suppressed rage in his heart bursts forth at once in spite of 
 all his solemn promises and resolutions. And yet afterwards 
 among the Antiates, when his plans of revenge and wrath 
 against the Bomans demand it, this extraordinary man can 
 suddenly use the arts he never would condescend to employ ; he 
 can do violence to his nature, flatter the furtherers of his plans, 
 and act towards his enemies out of thirst for vengeance as he 
 never could towards his friends out of public-spiritedness and 
 patriotism. 
 
 The untractableness of his disposition, the inflexibility of 
 his character, and the stubbornness of his will, which display 
 themselves in his proud demeanour, are, like this pride itself, 
 partly founded in his nature and partly in the principles of his 
 exaggerated aspirations. Seriousness, severity, unsociableness 
 we must acknowledge to be in his disposition; the people 
 themselves and Aufidius excuse much of his pride on account 
 of the unconquerable power of his natural disposition. The 
 habits of the soldier helped to condense these qualities into a 
 rigid, repelling unapproachableness ; 'Aufidius says of his nature 
 that he could not move ' from the casque to the cushion,' that 
 he was ' no other than one thing,' one-sided and obstinate, as 
 Plutarch also characterises him. The gloomy and never 
 sociable man had never even shown friendliness to his mother ; 
 he slights his nearest friends, not merely when he is the ally of 
 Aufidius ; even before this time he accepts their idolatry 
 coolly, and joins them without having nauch consideration for 
 them, only honouring himself, hardened by the selfishness of 
 talent and the pride of merit. Plutarch says of him, that he 
 had beconie so morose and intolerant that he would yield to no 
 living creature, which made him unfit for intercourse with any- 
 one ; a rigid man by nature, who never gave way on any pre- 
 tence, as if to lord it over everyone and to submit to none 
 were a proof of manliness, and not rather of sickly weakness ; 
 as if to force through everything, and to have the upper hand 
 everywhere, were a sign of magnanimity. Shakespeare had this 
 
760 THIED PERIOD OF SHJKESPEASE'8 SRAMATIO POETRY. 
 
 idea perfectly in his mind. In the last sentence it is intimated, 
 as Shakespeare has closely observed and carried out, that 
 Coriolauus had cultivated these natural dispositions even on 
 principle from the feeling of self-sufficiency. To tower above 
 all in acts, in power, and in unbending will, to appear, as was 
 said of him, like an oak, like a rock, to be shaken by no wind, 
 is evidently the most significant mark of his aspiring pride. 
 He could not have comprehended the lesson which Plutarch ex- 
 tracts from his example, that the Muse has imparted nothing 
 finer to mankind than the taming of nature by moderation and 
 wisdom ; he could thus have no idea of the mitigation of man- 
 ners by education, and not even of giving way to the softer 
 emotions of his own nature; he would have been afraid of 
 betraying a weakness unbecoming his manhood. When these 
 notions of proud, manly heroism are put to the highest trial, 
 they find also their boldest expression. When mother, wife, 
 and son stand up between him and his revenge, and 'great 
 nature cries Deny not,' he prepares with a shudder to do the 
 last violence to nature ; ' Out affection ! ' he exclaims — 
 
 All bond and pri-vilege of nature, break ! 
 
 Let it be virtuous to be obstinate. — 
 
 . . . • . . Let the Volsces 
 
 Plough Rome, and harrow Italy ; I'll never 
 
 Be such a gosling to obey instinct ; but stand 
 
 As if a man were author of himself, 
 
 And knew no other kin. 
 
 His proud self-will drives him to the assumption of a god-like 
 power of self-determination, staking his will against every 
 natural impulse and feeling. But under this violent strain 
 nature gives way; stifled instinct revenges itself, and while 
 abjuring all natural emotions he feels he is not of stronger 
 earth than other men. And the man who made it his pride to 
 outdo humanity pleases us best when he condescends to be 
 human. 
 
 This change does not take place in him by virtue of an 
 arbitrary machinery. We may, on other occasions also, observe 
 in him the traces of this suppressed humanity, and on these 
 occasions we like him best. The son is said to be altogether 
 like his father ; we may, therefore, apply to him the incident 
 related of the boy : how ' he ran after a butterfly, and when he 
 caught it, he let it go again ; then after it again, and over and 
 
COBIOLANUS. 761 
 
 over he comes, and up again ; catcheQ it again, and tore it to 
 pieces.' Seldom is so much said in a short example. It exactly 
 justifies Menenius' description of Coriolanus, ' a bear that lives 
 like a lamb,' good-hearted when quiet, when excited, furious. 
 Shakespeare did not omit to copy from Plutarch the anecdote 
 (Act I. sc. 9) of his meeting in Corioli with one who had 
 formerly shown him hospitality, and begging for his freedom, 
 though in the fury of the battle he had not minded him ; it 
 testifies to the same sort of character. We would not, as others 
 have done, call these mere fits of feeling in a god of stone, and 
 deny to Coriolanus any enduring feeling ; these features betray 
 a fund of real good-nature in his character, and a share of the 
 inalienable requirements of the heart, which in his overstrained 
 notions of noble manhood he has only attempted to extinguish. 
 This is seen in his domestic affections, the last vulnerable spot 
 in the homy hide of his selfishness. Like Othello he is attached 
 to a wife, whom from her very intercourse (Valeria) we know to 
 be domestic, not remarkably intellectual, not to be seduced 
 from her work, silent, reserved, but of the utmost feminine 
 sweetness. The poet has given her a quiet but powerful in- 
 fluence over Coriolanus ; to her alone he is gentle and tender ; 
 ' my gracious silence ' he calls her when she greets his triumph 
 with tears ; and when she comes with Volumnia to petition 
 against the siege of Eome, he is first moved by ' those doves' 
 eyes, which can make gods forsworn,' and he addresses her in 
 words of real feeling. Filial piety goes hand in hand with this 
 conjugal love. It is said among the people that his love for 
 his mother is equal to his pride, and that both are dearer to 
 him than his country. According to a practice already 
 familiar to' us, the poet has prepared us for the decisive scene, 
 where maternal influence prevails, by an example preceding it, 
 so that one may explain the other. He shows her to us first 
 persuading him to present himself repentant before the tri- 
 bunes. This is a harder ta^k than the later one, where she 
 attunes him to human feeling, whereas here she impels him to 
 act contrary to his nature, to renounce his intention, to humble 
 his spirit. He agrees to do what she asks for her sake, but for 
 his own he would rather be ground to dust than do it; he. 
 paints the scene in self-deSpising language; overcome with 
 shame he recalls Ms promise, but his mother pledges her honour 
 for its performance. ' To beg of thee,' she says, ' it is more my 
 dishonour than thou of them ; ' this compels him to make the 
 
762 TEIUB PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 effort, which fails. The skill displayed in this scene is as great 
 as in the subsequent one, the real task which history placed 
 before the poet. After the first proof of Volumnia's power over 
 her son it is easy to comprehend the second. In the first the 
 consulship only was in question, here the fate of Eome ; there 
 his outward honour, here his true glory; if he overthrows 
 Eome, his mother tells him, his name will be ' dogged with 
 curses,' and the chronicle will add : — 
 
 The man was noble, 
 , But with his last attempt he wip'd it out, 
 ...... His name remains 
 
 To the ensuing age, abhorred. 
 
 On the first occasion she pledged her honour ; here, with Vir- 
 gilia, she pledges her life : he shall not assault his country 
 without treading on their bodies. There the mother's am- 
 bition spoke, here her love for her country, which outweighs 
 even the enthusiastic love of the mother ; she rises to a mag- 
 nanimous heroism on the grand occasion which restores to him 
 bis human feelings. The appearance of his friend Menenius 
 had given Coriolanus the first shock. The sight of his mother 
 on her knees before him shows him how unnatural is his posi- 
 tion towards his country. His boy's droll remark completes 
 the shock ; his own blood threatens to rise up against him in 
 defence of his country. 
 
 We will take one more comprehensive retrospect. The 
 mother had instilled into Coriolanus his bravery and desire of 
 glory ; these had led to pride ; his pride had grown to excess, 
 to a more than human strength of will and action. But the 
 extreme in his nature, we have said, passed everywhere over 
 into its opposite, his honourable bravery into a jealousy that 
 took away the honourable aim which his deeds should ever have 
 had ; his valuable political gifts were put to the most hurtful 
 use ; his fury and passion were changed into forced calmness, 
 pride into modesty, truth and uprightness into dissimulation, 
 unbending rigidity into softness of feeling and even fickleness. 
 Coriolanus enters the house of Aufidius with reflections on the 
 changes of the world ; how friendship breaks out into enmity 
 for a doit, and hatred into friendship for some trick not worth an 
 egg ; so is it with him, he says himself, with him who had always 
 so deeply despised the populace for their fickleness ! On two 
 great occasions in his history we see him fall from want of self- 
 
COmOLANUS. 763 
 
 government, from overstrained passion and irritability, once on 
 the occasion of his banishment, and again at his death. On both 
 occasions a single word, the opprobrious epithet of traitor, brings 
 on the fatal outbreak of his fury. This shows in a very re- 
 markable manner the fine turning-point by which he missed 
 the result of all his strivings. If this name were rightly 
 bestowed on him, then no reproach could be thought of which 
 would so immediately shatter the noble work of Volumnia, and 
 overturn the object of all the proud endeavours of Coriolanus 
 as this. If he were a traitor, then .his glory was turned into 
 shame, his bravery misapplied, his pride dishonoured, his civic 
 virtue changed into selfishness, his truth and fidelity into their 
 reverse, his most honourable efforts covered with the' coarsest 
 stains. And it cannot be denied that he became a traitor to 
 Eome after he first heard this word of reproach, and he was one 
 to the' Antiates when he heard it the second time. This 
 mother, the giver and the shaper of his life, had brought 
 him into both situations; she, therefore, meets her punish- 
 ment with him. The first time, in a movement of motherly 
 weakness, she had tempted him, contrary to a right instinct, 
 into a false path, and thereby drawn down upon him the un- 
 merited reproach of being a traitor, which he then hastened to 
 deserve ; this fault she and he also repaired, when, in a noble 
 spirit of patriotism, she allured him back from his mistaken 
 search after vengeance into the path of humanity, which he 
 trod with death before his eyes. The name of traitor suits him 
 now, indeed, but rather to his glory than to his disgrace, and 
 his death atones for his life. 
 
 We perceive, from the treatment of this character, that the 
 poet elaborated it not so much with love as with great interest; 
 it is not exactly a pleasant, but a powerful impression which 
 we carry away from the consideration of the play and of the 
 character, which in fact fills up the whole of it. To explain 
 this we must remember that, not only earlier, but at that time, 
 Shakespeare's warmest sympathies rested on that imobtrusiye 
 greatness and on that plain, unexaggerated nature which he 
 has depicted in Prince Henry and in Posthumus. As he had 
 before contrasted his Percy with this form of character, he now 
 did the same with Coriolanus, but far more remotely. And we 
 may imagine that just this sharp contrast and its representation 
 must have had a great cha,rm for the poet, who with the most 
 unbiassed mind perceived and acknowledged the peculiar alloy 
 
764 THmS PERIOD OF SHAKESFEABE' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 in every great character. But what a large and comprehensive 
 mind is this, that with so much love now sketches the charac- 
 ters of a Brutus and a Posthumus, their severe virtue and 
 calm composure ; then represents the expressive pride of this 
 hero, Coriolanus, in the most accurate and full development of 
 a heart that discloses little ; and then, again, contrasts with 
 this overstrained nature the weak characters of Antony and 
 Timon, which lie in quite a different sphere, and which again 
 he described with such mastery and penetration as might seem 
 to betray in the poet himself a preference for these forms of 
 human nature. 
 
 A few words must suffice to show the contrasts in which 
 the other personages of the play stand towards this chief colossal 
 figure. 
 
 His adversary, TuUus Aufidius, emulates him in the strife 
 for superiority, but it is in him of a far less noble kind. He 
 abhors nothing so much as Coriolanus' glory ; as he is forced to 
 yield to him in every encounter, he gives up the hope of con- 
 quering with the same weapons ;' his emulation loses its 
 honourable character ; he is ready to use any means to ruin 
 Coriolanus : — 
 
 Nor sleep, nor sanctuary, 
 Being naked, sick : nor fane, nor capitol, 
 The prayers of priests, nor times of sacrifice 
 
 shall protect him. A like selfishness to that of Coriolanus 
 appears here, but in a petty and degraded form. The fit of 
 magnanimity in TuUus, when Coriolanus claims his hospitality, 
 is a counterpart to the softer emotions of the Eoman ; but the 
 vow that he will now contend with him in love, as he did before 
 in hate, is worthless. His renouncing a share of his power to 
 the new general is a similar trait to Coriolanus' indifference to 
 posts of honour ; but as in the latter the claim to merited 
 honours slumbers beneath his modesty, in Aufidius regret and 
 longing for the recovery of the honour he had possessed soon 
 break out, and with them the old rivalry. He possesses the art 
 of patient dissimulation, which Volumnia in vain wished for 
 in her son ; he is, therefore, a dangerous friend for the man 
 who cannot even tame l^is pride before his benefactor. Corio- 
 lanus consequently falls a sacrifice to TuUus' unworthy strata- 
 gem. The Volscian is irritated against Coriolanus because of 
 his defeat, as Coriolanus is against Eome by his banishment; the 
 
COBIOLANUS. 765 
 
 courage and disposition of both are poisoned, but the prevailiijig 
 difference, which raises Coriolanus high above the other, is that 
 he is of a nobler nature, that in his bitterness of feeling he is 
 seized by an unnatural enmity against his country, but he re- 
 turns to his better nature ; whereas TuUus is naturally malicious, 
 and is flattered by the need of his enemy thus fleeing to him 
 for protection ; he forms an unnatural friendship with him, and 
 then returns to his deceitful spite in the conspiracy against 
 Coriolanus. 
 
 The Boman enemies and friends of Coriolanus present other 
 contrasts. Cominius appears as the modest man opposed to the 
 proud one, as a character unenvying and free from ambition con- 
 trasted to that thirsting for fame, as one who readily acknowledges 
 the worth of the other, and cheerfully gives way to his superior 
 , merits. The tribunes, in their mean, intolerant, strutting pride 
 of ofiice, are striking contrasts to his grand pride of action. 
 As upstarts they set up as high pretensions as Coriolanus with- 
 out his capacity ; they are as violent and obstinate as he is with- 
 out his merit ; they show themselves in the settling of small 
 matters as impatient and violent as he does in great things 
 and from great motives ; they place their petty ambition on 
 the obeisance of the populace, whilst their eyes could not even 
 reach to the height of his ambitious projects ; opposed to his 
 valour is their unwarlike disposition ; opposed to his open- 
 ness and straightforwardness are their dexterous intrigues, 
 and their lying in wait for the expression of his pride 
 and fury, which will be his ruin ; opposed to his bold abuse 
 of the people is the aptness with which they lead the popu- 
 lace as they please, and know how to keep themselves free 
 from blame. ' 
 
 The most striking personage next to Coriolanus is Menenius 
 Agrippa. Except the well-known fable of the belly and the 
 members, Shakespeare found nothing further concerning him 
 in his English Plutarch than the remark that he was the 
 pleasantest old man in the senate. From this hint he has 
 formed the lively character, to whom he awards the benevolent 
 office, beside the rugged demi-god, of being contented to be a 
 man amongst men. In all his individual qualities this contrast 
 is carried out, although it seems as if unintentional. He has 
 none of Coriolanus' thirst for fame ; he rather rejoices in the 
 fame of his friend ; he idolises him, and 'it gives him an estate 
 of seven years' health ' when Coriolanus condescends to write to 
 
766 THIRD FEBIOD OF SHAXE8PEABE' S DSAMATIO POETBY. 
 
 him ; he calls himself ' the book of his good acts, whence men 
 have read his fame unparalleled, haply amplified.' Even with 
 the will to speak the truth of his hero he involuntarily over- 
 steps its bounds. It is easy to him to be his unselfish admirer, 
 because his own talents lie in quite another direction. Age has 
 broken his warlike strength, though his brave mind still looks out 
 here and there, when in extremity he calls the nobles to help 
 Coriolanus, and says he could himself ' take up a brace of the 
 best of the plebeians.' But his true strength lies rather in 
 mental superiority ; his excellence is that of a clever orator. 
 Shakespeare has given him the propitiatory office of a mediator, 
 in contrast to Coriolanus' blunt party spirit, but he has wisely 
 avoided giving him any power to act, because that would have 
 thrown Coriolanus too much into the shade. Instead of energy 
 and wisdom, he has given him zeal, and the experience belong- 
 ing to age, figurative oratory, and prudent wholesome sense ; 
 his wit and skill in persuasion he mostly uses with those who 
 have none of their own. He is as expert in the office of me- 
 diator as Coriolanus, is inexpert. He is the satyr in contrast 
 to the god. Instead of making lofty pretensions, he has a 
 respect for human weakness ; compared with that overstrained 
 nature he is indolent and easy, and where the other is rigid and 
 unbending, Menenius is yielding, good-humoured, sociable, and 
 friendly ; instead of gloomy seriousness, he indulges in a broad, 
 pleasant humour. He is a good sleeper, he likes his wine un- 
 mixed ; behind his back they say of him that he is ' something 
 imperfect in favouring the first complaint.' There is not in him 
 a vein of Coriolanus' pride, only a little conceit in his gift of 
 speaking, which seldom fails to succeed with the >people, and 
 which, in a case of extreme difficulty, he hopes to turn to good 
 account with Coriolanus ; and his vanity feels itself wounded 
 when the shallow tribunes think they ' know ' him because he 
 is open and honest. If his pride is little compared to the over- 
 grown haughtiness of Coriolanus, Menenius' passionateness is in 
 the same proportion. He can be hasty, and rage out with the 
 good-nature of choleric old age and on trifling occasions ; but 
 in great matters, where Coriolanus loses his temper, he is 
 patient, calm, full of the greatest discretion, and perfectly 
 master of himself. He scarcely yields to Coriolanus in upright- 
 ness and truth, but he expresses himself in a smooth manner, 
 and people endure his satire, when it is as sharply and con- 
 temptuously uttered as in his fable, better than Coriolanus* 
 
COBIOLANUS. 767 
 
 boasting and arrogance. On a proper occasion he does not 
 mind reviling the tribunes for their likeness to asses, and saying 
 that their eloquence is ' not worth the wagging of their beards ; ' 
 but another time he can patiently endure that they should be 
 called honourable persons. With these qualities he is a born 
 mediator. He wishes at any cost to avoid a breach between, 
 the nobles and the people. When Coriolanus urges the annul- 
 ling of the tribunate he speaks for its preservation ; he makes 
 the concessions to which the other objected as weak and im- 
 politic. When the tribunes and Coriolanus press for violent 
 remedies for the ' violent disease ' he would patch up the 
 mischief ' with cloth of any colour ; ' when they interfere with 
 his art of smoothing and settling he does not lose his patience. 
 He manages the furious Coriolanus according to his nature, 
 sparing while he blames him, cursing his unkindness, and ex- 
 cusing and praising him in a breath. With Coriolanus he takes 
 the part of the people, on account of their placability, and 
 with the people, that of Coriolanus. He helps Volumnia to 
 soften the rigid man, he acts honourably as his advocate with 
 the people, and says for him all that he ought to have said for 
 hinaself ; and after the happy results of his oratory, which the 
 poet exhibits at the beginning according to history, he gives a 
 second instance of the way to manage the people properly with- 
 out any prejudicial concession. When Coriolanus is banished 
 he is civil and pliant towards the tribunes ; when the exile ad- 
 vances towards Eome he is maliciously cheerful, and in return 
 for this he has to suffer the malice of the Volscian guards when 
 his eloquence has failed to persuade Coriolanus. In these last 
 scenes the weaknesses of old age show themselves more plainly, 
 and in the midst of them his nobler nature appears more dis- 
 tinctly. This is excellently depicted, and will give the actor 
 enough to do. . The struggle in Coriolanus between proud in- 
 difference and a heart breaking under the effect of his friends' 
 first entreaties, in Menenius between confidence and renewed 
 disappointment, and beneath the cloak of playfulness the in- 
 ward struggle between friend and country, and the resolve of 
 the cheerful old man to end like a Eoman, — these are con- 
 trasts and contradictions which it requires the utmost art to 
 reconcile. , 
 
 Shakespeare has followed Plutarch as faithfully in Corio- 
 lanus as in Ceesar and Antony, The character was handed down 
 to him just as he has copied it. In his address to TuUus, when he 
 
768 THIBD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 applies to him for refuge, and in Ms speech to Volumnia, the 
 passages from Plutarch are only as it were transformed into 
 verse. The poet even retains all the faults of the historian. 
 Plutarch makes Coriolanus canvass the people for the consul- 
 ship, although the senate, at that time, chose both the consuls. 
 The poet also sufiered himself to be led into other mistakes by 
 Plutarch of which the biographer was innocent. Plutarch says 
 of Coriolanus, he was a soldier, even to Cato's wish ; Shake- 
 speare makes Titus Lartius utter this expression, as if Cato had 
 lived before his time. The poet has likewise alluded to Galen 
 and to the Eoman theatres in this piece, just as in Lear he 
 mentioned Nero and the Bethlem-beggars 800 years before 
 Christ ; in Henry VI., Machiavelli ; in Hamlet, Wittenberg ; 
 in Troilus, the wrestler Milo and Aristotle ; in the Winter's 
 Tale, the oracle of Delphi contemporary with Julio Eomano. 
 We have already intimated that we must not attribute the 
 anachronisms altogether to Shakespeare's ignorance. Not that 
 we should deny the possibility of his ignorance in some cases. 
 He must have known the time when Cato lived, from Plutarch's 
 Csesar. But it is possible that as he found several republican 
 Brutuses, so he may have concluded there were several severe 
 Catos. It is certain that he was not so early schooled in Eutro- 
 pius as we are, nor had he any chronological dictionary to refer 
 to in order to set himself right in his dates. Nevertheless, we 
 ought to consider how valuable to the poet was the brevity and 
 suggestiveness of such an intimation as he puts in the mouth 
 of Titus Lartius ; it is doubtful whether, if the mistake had 
 been pointed out to him, he would have corrected it, seeing it 
 was so serviceable ; nay, it is doubtful whether it was a mistake 
 at all, and not rather a license like Groethe's when he made 
 Faust mention Luther. There is a passage in Lear which 
 ought to make us cautious — a passage where the observance of 
 chronology constitutes a much greater license than the neglect 
 of it to which we have alluded — a passage which looks like a 
 capital stroke of satire addressed to all self-opiniated and 
 pedantic censors (a set of people not lacking even at the poet's 
 iirde) ; the passage where the poet says, ' This prophecy 
 Merlin shall make ; for I live before his time.^ 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 We have no more certain indication of the date of Timon of 
 Athens than of Coriolanus, but it is without doubt one of the 
 poet's latest works. It is probable that it was written not long 
 after Antony and Cleopatra, since there is a passage in Plu- 
 tarch's life of Antony which may have given the poet the idea 
 of this work. After the battle of Actium, Antony retired for a 
 while from Alexandria, and dwelt alone on the sea-shore, 
 resolved, as he said, to imitate Timon, since he, like him, had 
 experienced the ingratitude and infidelity of friends, and 
 therefore hated and mistrusted all men. To this intimation is 
 annexed a short account of Timon, his friendly relations with 
 Alcibiades, his intercourse with Apemantus, his fig-tree, and 
 two inscriptions upon him. What other materials the poet 
 may have had besides these scanty suggestions we know not 
 with any certainty. Painter's collection of tales (Palace of 
 Pleasure), with which he was acquainted, contributed somewhat 
 (I. 28). Probably the subject had been already dramatically 
 treated. A very stupid play about Timon has been preserved 
 and published by Dyce in the writings of the Shakespeare 
 Society; but Shakespeare could have made little or no use of it. 
 Still he may have seen it, and borrowed some passages, such as 
 the idea of the farewell banquet and the character of the 
 faithful steward. We may infer that he was indirectly ac- 
 quainted with Lucian's Timon ; the digging up of the gold, the 
 parasites' pursuit of him, and his driving them away with 
 stones and blows, the portioning off his servant, and even some 
 resemblance in the imagery and speeches, leave scarcely any 
 doubt of this. But the use of Eoman names seems to prove 
 that he did not borrow directly from Lucian, as Shakespeare 
 would in that case have avoided them. 
 
 The impression made on most readers by Timon is that of 
 great inequality. The versification is loose, and either un- 
 
 3d 
 
770 THIRD FEBIOD OF SHAKESPEABE' S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 usually irregular or corrupted. Some portions of the piece 
 are worked out with love, others appear to have been most 
 carelessly treated. The inany indifferent personages with no 
 distinctly marked characters make the scfenes here and there 
 disconnected. The intensity and depth of feeling with which 
 the subject, as a whole, is carried out cannot be denied; but 
 compared with this earnestness, the burlesque scenes, where the 
 borrowing servants of Timon are turned off, are too sharply 
 contrasted. The composition is arranged with the old atten- 
 tion to unity of idea, but in some points it is loose and, as it 
 were, unfinished. With the story of Timon there is united a 
 second actiop between Alcibiades and the senate. This is 
 carried on in exact parallel, and in the same sense as the main 
 action ; but it does not hang well together in all its parts. In 
 Act V. sc. 3 it is intimated that Alcibiades has undertaken the 
 war against Athens partly on Timon's account, but nothing 
 further is said of this in the play. The reason of his rebellion 
 is given in Act ill. sc. 5. He there pleads in vain for a friend 
 who has been condemned to death for killing a man in a duel. 
 The poet handles with his usual triumphant impartiality the 
 question of duelling, and places the views of justice, order, and 
 age in opposition to those of honour, passion, and youth, with 
 the same decided indecision as that in which he has left the 
 question of self-murder an open matter. But the discussion 
 concerns some one entirely unknown ; we learn nothing what- 
 ever of the man's person or home. Singularly enough, all 
 , commentators pass over this circumstance without remark, 
 although no similar disconnected scene is to be found in the 
 whole of Shakespeare. How these irregularities are to be 
 accounted for is a matter of dispute. Coleridge thought that 
 the original text of Shakespeare had been spoiled by actors. 
 Knight considered the piece to be a revision of an older play, 
 of which portions only were retained, so that Timon was to be 
 looked upon as a companion piece to Pericles. Delius regards 
 the play as an unfinished work, the outlines of which were left 
 incomplete for representation. We, on our side, however, con- 
 tent ourselves with the opinion we expressed in our remarks 
 upon Antony, where we attributed the carelessness in a number 
 of plays of this date to one common, though unfathomable, 
 cause — the state of the poet's mind. We must, however, add 
 that some of the peculiarities in this or other works of the same 
 date may arise also from the subject itself. Timon is a play 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. Ill 
 
 with scarcely any real story. Shakespeare was led in his judi- 
 cious manner by two mere hints to display the relation of 
 Timon to Aleibiades and Apemantus ; nevertheless, we can 
 easily imagine that among these ancient materials, where he 
 did not feel himself quite at home, he would not hazard too 
 much in his inventions, that he would be timorous in the crea- 
 tion of entirely new persons, and that hence we may explain 
 the many nameless figures which here, as in Antony and 
 Coriolanus, are sometimes obliged to carry on the action. 
 
 With whit caution we strive to discuss these and the like 
 questions in Shakespeare's works we will prove by an expression 
 of Coleridge's which has direct reference to the intrinsic matter 
 of this play. His admiration of separate portions of this bitter 
 satire was boundless ; but he considered the work on the whole 
 as a painful and disagreeable conception, because it presented 
 an unfavourable picture of human nature, very different from 
 what he was convinced was the poet's real opinion of the 
 character of his fellow-creatures. He imagined, therefore, that 
 he had taken up the subject under a temporary feeling of 
 vexation and disappointment. This idea corresponds exactly 
 with our view of the plays of this period. But we have already 
 warned our readers in Antony not to attribute to the poet that 
 which necessarily results from the matter. The subject itself 
 is misanthropy as a consequence of human wickedness. Perhaps 
 the choice of such a subject indicates a mind out of tune ; but 
 we find no traces of it in the carrying out of the plan when 
 once formed. We should be more disposed to fear that in 
 Antony Shakespeare- had judged the. baseness of his hero too 
 leniently than that here he had too strongly condemned the 
 baseness of mankind in general. There, indeed, we see no 
 better specimens of humanity, but here they are not all tho- 
 roughly unfavourable. Timon's love for mankind at the begin- 
 ning, as well as his hatred of them later, is so mixed up with 
 noble qualities that the most beneficial effects result from both. 
 When his fortune crurnbles away and his friends forsake him, 
 his servants, though they have nothing more to hope from him, 
 yet, having become acquainted with him in the days of his 
 philanthropy, cling to him with sympathy ; they are scattered, 
 but determine to remain ' fellows still,' and the faithful com- 
 rades meet and share their- money, so that at the same time the 
 curse of misanthropy and the blessing of philanthropy proceed 
 from this house. When Timon afterwards in his retreat digs 
 
 3 B 2 
 
772 THIRI) PERIOD OF SHAXESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 up a fresh treasure, and being beset with thieves for the sake of 
 the money, describes to them, with the exaggeration of hatred, 
 all the elements and heavenly bodies as thieves, curses them 
 and wishes them success at the same time, bids them ' love not 
 themselves, but rob one another,' since they can steal nothing, 
 'but thieves do lose it,' this frenzy fills one of the thieves 
 with such remorse that he is inclined to relinquish his 'profes-. 
 sion.' Even Timon's misanthropy scatters good seed and brings 
 forth moderation out of excess. To these individual features, 
 which compensate for the; unfavourable representation of 
 humanity, we may add the declarations of the servants of those 
 usurers and of Timon's creditors, who are ashamed of their 
 masters and their commissions ; the poet seems everywhere to 
 have wished to show a grain of incorruption in the lower 
 classes, which was wholly stifled in the upper. The perfection 
 of this contrast is the faithful steward, who manages Timon's 
 affairs with honesty, strives with fidelity and prudence to rein 
 in his prodigality, and patiently, with silent sorrow, bears to be 
 blamed and refused a hearing. Timon's goodness attaches this 
 servant to him so strongly that at last, in his poverty, he is 
 ready to share his last penny with his master, and thereby 
 revives a spark of human kindness in the hardened heart of the 
 sworn misanthrope!. The comforting assurance that no good 
 seed is ever lost, even though it may spring up as a weed, is 
 expressed in all these contrasts, which, it seems to us, are full 
 of compensation for the melancholy purport of this tragedy, be- 
 traying in the poet an abundance of inward tenderness and an 
 unshaken discretion and certainty in his view of the arrange- 
 ments of Providence, which so often seem perplexed and cause 
 perplexity in us. » 
 
 Shakespeare characterises the intention .of his drama at the 
 very beginning, where he makes the poet describe his poem to 
 Timon. ' I have,' he says, 
 
 in this rough work, shaped out a man, 
 Whom this heneath world doth embrace and hug 
 
 With amplest entertainment 
 
 I have upon a high and pleasant hill, 
 Feigned Fortune to be thron'd ; The base o' the mount 
 . Is ranked with all deserts, all kinds of natures, 
 That labour on the bosom of this sphere 
 To propagate their states : amongst them all, 
 One do I personate of Lord Timon's frame, 
 Whom Fortune with her iyory hand wafts to her ; 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 773 
 
 Whose present grace to present slaves and servants 
 
 Translates his rivals 
 
 All those which were his fellows hut of late, 
 Follow his strides, his lohhies fill with tendance, 
 Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear, 
 
 And make sacred even his stirrup 
 
 When Fortune, 
 
 Spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants. 
 
 Which laboured after him to the mountain's top, 
 
 let him slip down, 
 
 Not one accompanying his declining foot. 
 
 The way in which Shakespeare has produced this picture 
 from the scanty anecdotes of Plutarch is not less astonishing 
 than the similar one in the closely allied story of the Merchant 
 of Venice. Here as there the poet shows the omnipotence of 
 gold. There, among the different effects which this touchstone 
 of the heart produces in different men, he has shown us the 
 usurer hardened to stone by avarice and greed; here on the 
 contrary he depicts the prodigal, whose fault on his change of 
 fortune so poisons the innate goodness of his heart that he be- 
 comes as hardened in disposition as the other was miserly. 
 The two plays, viewed in connection, express more plainly than 
 apart the truth which Shakespeare so often picturesquely and 
 eloquently instilled, that all extremes are hurtful. Timon's 
 unjust censurer makes him the one just reproach, that he had 
 never known ' the middle of humanity ' but only ' the extremity 
 of both ends; ' his chief fault is that he does too much good ; his 
 prodigality is not greater than the superabundance of his love 
 and beneficence, and when these are repaid with ingratitude, 
 they are turned into an excess of misanthropy ; in each case 
 there is an entire absence of discrimination, examination, 
 choice, and exception among the objects of his benefits, his 
 love, and his hatred. This eccentricity of character is natural 
 to the prodigal ; a certain shallowness of mind will be always 
 inseparable from this quality when it governs a man ; whether 
 Shakespeare besides this quality could have given to his Timon 
 the depth of a true tragic character, which may force from us a 
 serious interest in his person and in his fate, is a question on 
 the answer to which our estimation of the play will essentially 
 depend. Goe1;he said he could call Moliere's ' Misanthrope ' 
 tragic, whereas Shakespeare's Timon was only a subject for 
 comedy. It may be asked whether this is one of Goethe's 
 frequent whims about Shakespeare, or whether it is an opinion 
 arising from correct observation. 
 
774 THIRD FEBIOD OF 8HAKESPEABE' 8 BEAMATIG POETRY. 
 
 The displays of Timon's prodigality certainly in themselves 
 touch us but superficially. We see this man in his hall of 
 audience, like a prince, surrounded by characters and minds of 
 all classes and conditions ; the smooth and slippery as well as 
 the serious and honest do homage to hvm, the flatterer and 
 censor by profession ; near and intimate friends surround him ; 
 professors and artists are among his acquaintance ; the state is 
 indebted to him for military service, the senate as a body and 
 as individuals owe him money. We see at once what collects 
 this crowd. A courteous porter stands at his door, -who invites 
 every passer-by to enter ; within a costly banquet is prepared, 
 with delicacies to suit every taste, to which even the beggar 
 Apemantus is welcome if he chooses ; the guests receive, 
 besides the repast, valuable presents of horses and jewels ; it is 
 true they also offer gifts to Timon, but these are only to ex- 
 cite his lavishness; he gives sevenfold the value of what he 
 receives beyond all customary recompense. He gives, how- 
 ever, without reflecting on his means, and without considering 
 the characters of the recipients ; once indeed he endows an 
 honourable dependant and advances a good man, but he pro- 
 motes just as willingly a bad one; he gives jewels that are 
 unpaid for to people who tease him for arrears ; a true friend 
 in need, he helps his friend out of prison, and excuses the five 
 borrowed talents when the borrower had become a great heir, 
 and this man afterwards refuses, in his benefactor's need, even 
 to lend the gift to him. To make presents and to give have 
 become a habit of his royal disposition ; 'he could,' he says, 
 ' deal kingdomas to his friends, and ne'er be weary.' When his 
 steward warns him he will not listen, when he urges he sends 
 him away ; ' his promises % so beyond his state ' that he gives 
 great gifts out of an empty coffer, ♦ what he speaks is all in 
 debt, he owes for evary word.' This thoughtless generosity 
 seems to the good steward, when in sad amazement he looks 
 into Timon's heart, to be ^ a monument and wonder of good 
 deeds evilly bestowed;' he laments that <the bounty that 
 makes gods does still mar men ; ' when he looks upon the 
 matter reasonably, he cannot but blame it as senseless that 
 this man will neither know how to maintain the expense nor to 
 leave it off ; ' that he will not hear till he feel.' The folly of 
 this wilful blindness increases, when we see how every warning 
 is disregarded, undfer whatever form it may present itself. His 
 parasitical poet preknts it to him in the garb of flattery; 
 
TIMOIS OF ATHENS. IIS 
 
 Timon pays no attention : Apemantus expresses it in a blunt 
 exaggerated manner, this he calls ' railing on society ; ' the 
 steward gives it him by his accounts, these he will not look at. 
 Even when his creditors force the subject upon him, the steward 
 can only obtain a hearing 'by , speaking with tears to Timon's 
 heart which is never closed, and by seeking a striking word to 
 touch his spirit with sudden truth : — 
 
 The world is but a word ; 
 
 Were it all yours to give it in a breath, 
 
 How quickly were it gone ! 
 
 Even then it is tedious to Timon that he should ' sermon ' 
 him ; he is not accustomed to listen to disagreeable truths ; the 
 delicate poison of flattery has spoiled him. A man of such 
 refined habits as he is would not be pleased with coarse flattery 
 to his face any more than Antony; he can listen to the 
 reproaches of Apemantus without turning him out as a trouble- 
 some guest : when the jeweller utters an extravagant compli- 
 ment, he rejects it as mockery; from his guests he requires 
 that they should lay aside all, ceremony ; he will have them as 
 friends, and not as people of ' faint deeds and hollow welcomes,' 
 for whom ' ceremony was devised at first.' They, indeed, prove 
 themselves by their ready submission to be no other than such 
 people, and their society and the gradual habit of their tone 
 have given Timon something of the same shallowness. On his 
 first appearance he is quite the spoiled favourite of an effe- 
 minate and • immoral city ; a Mseoenas, if not a prince in his 
 deportment, noble, condescending,, full of amiable consideration, 
 refined in speech, brief, plain, select, but never deep. Amid 
 the charms of cheerful society and the habits of enjoyment his 
 mind is lowered and his consideration wasted, like Antony's. 
 No lofty calling summons him, to action, as is the case with 
 Antony ; his military services to Athens are considered as an 
 excess of. merit not required in a man of his quality and in a 
 private station. But even within his private sphere we no- 
 where see, at first, any trace of deep intellectual culture ; he 
 takes a superficial interest in the arts ; there is little wit in his 
 ordering of his feasts either in his friendly or in his misanthro- 
 pical mood.; he is an amiable, ordinary mortal and man of the 
 world, who Kves for the present moment ; when misfortune 
 approaches he does not reflect on his own fault, but makes 
 human nature the object of his deepest hatred ; his mind offers 
 
776 THIRD PEHIOS OF 8HAKESPEABE'S DSAMATIG POETBl. 
 
 no refuge into which he naay retire ; he sinks, unresistingly, 
 from one extreme to the other. Still it is not to he denied 
 that trouble in him, as in Eichard II., discovers depth of feel- 
 ing and of spirit which had not been guessed at before. A 
 man of inaction, not naturally and by birth like Antonio (the 
 Merchant of Venice), but by the habit of a life of ease, he has 
 allowed his intellectual as well as his mental qualities to 
 slumber. ' He was as unwilling to be the slave of his wealth 
 as the other ; but Antonio, at once frugal and generous, did not 
 seek for the liberal use of his wealth any more than for his one 
 tried friend ; Timon on the contrary sent out his money before 
 him, and wanted it to do all for him, all that it could do best 
 and could do least ; in his misfortunes he made use of it to 
 send evil into the world he hated ; in his prosperity to buy 
 him friends, the greatest need of his nature, while it could" only 
 buy flatterers for him. To gain friends by intellectual qualities 
 and endowments, to choose disinterested friends, he did not 
 understand. But what makes amends for this is that he chose 
 them with his heart, and that he gained them as much by his 
 affectionate nature as by his liberality. If, up to this point, 
 Timon appears to be a very superficial character, fit only for an 
 ordinary domestic play of a trivial character, Shakespeare has 
 at this finest place given him all the depth which makes him 
 belong to the higher world of poetry. This depth lies in the 
 close connection between Timon's liberal hand and his heart. 
 The ancients used to unite the ideas of external and intrinsic 
 liberality; in the middle ages the word ^ Milde' in German 
 (mildness) combined the idea of philanthropy, liberality, and 
 beneficence as if these were inseparable qualities, as indeed 
 they will always prove if but one of them is unfeigned and un- 
 dissembled. With ' mildness ' in this sense the inconceivable 
 acuteness of Shakespeare's knowledge of mankind has endowed 
 Timon, , His wealth is throughout that of a good and noble 
 disposition. Lavish of love, of untiring and ceaseless kindness, 
 lavish of confidence even to credulity, lavish in his outward 
 manners even to the mo$t friendly sociability with the meanest 
 persons, he is at the same time lavish of his money ; he is a 
 prodigal with his heart as well as with his fortune ; he is the 
 very soul of human kindness, of unassuming and attractive 
 manners, and with regard to his possessions he is disinterested, 
 self-sacrificing, and unselfish to a fault. For. he allows the sun 
 of his liberality and kindness to shine upon the evil and the 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. Ill 
 
 good ; in the midst of the most corrupted city he retains the 
 most unsuspecting faith in Inankind ; when misfortune over- 
 takes him he has the consciousness that he has been urged by 
 mean prodigality, that he ' had given imprudently and not un- 
 worthily. Even his enemies call honesty his fault ; the honest 
 faithful servants of this rich household do honour to the master 
 as well as to themselves. Though some vanity and ostentation 
 may have insinuated themselves into Timon's benevolence, yet 
 he gave and helped from principle and a sense of duty ; ' we are 
 born,' he said, 'to do benefits.' Though flattery may have 
 blunted his powers of discrimination, yet he sought not 
 flatterers by his liberality, but true friends, and he thought he 
 possessed true friends. He placed the social virtues of kind- 
 ness and friendship at the summit of his ideal, and would with 
 Aristotle have pronounced that man foolish who could call a 
 hermit happy ; but he overlooked the fact that real friendship 
 with the many is not possible. Venus and Cupid have no 
 power over him ; ' their selfish joys may be more easily bought 
 with the gold of the voluptuary than the fidelity of friends. 
 He looks 'Upon his own property as belonging to his friends, 
 and theirs, with the noblest self-deception, as at his service ; 
 when they express a wish that he may at some time have need 
 of them he is affected even to tears ; he wishes to be poorer, 
 that he may come nearer to them : ' what need we have any 
 friends,' he says, ' if we should never have need of them ? ' 
 Liberal himself, he thinks others the same : he is convinced 
 that his prosperity can never change so long as he has friends, 
 that he has only to ' broach the vessels of his love,' in order to 
 see their wealth flow out to him. When the hour of need 
 comes, he takes his wants as blessings, because by these he can 
 now try friends. His words to FlaviuS show that he thinks he 
 has spent his money well — words which most strikingly ex- 
 press the thorough nature of his liberality : — 
 
 You shall perceive how you 
 
 Mistake my fortunes ; I am wealthy in my friends. 
 
 Even when the first attempt to procure help from the senators 
 has failed his confidence is not yet shaken; he still dis- 
 
 ' Many foolish alterations have been made in Timon. Shadwell gave 
 him a mistress who would not desert him, a complete disfigurement of the 
 character. Cumberland gave him a daughter whose fortunes he ruined 
 with his own, a degree of levity which destroys the worth of his character. 
 
778 THIRD PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 tinguislies between these cold-blooded hereditary usurers and 
 his nearer friends. 
 
 The thoughtless giver now attains the experience which he 
 could not have believed possible ; the. false friends disperse in 
 his hour of need ;' those whom his feasts had attracted are 
 repelled by his fasts. The sharp noses of the senatorial usurers 
 first scent out his approaching bankruptcy, and they shake 
 their heads when he requests a loan, Ventidius, whom he had 
 ransomed, having now become rich, refuses to lend what he had 
 received as a present. LucuUus impudently excuses himself, 
 and tries ta corrupt Timon's servant,' who indignantly tosses 
 back the money offered him. Lucius, to whom Timon has 
 been as a father, whose estate has been supported by him, who 
 ' ne'er drinks but Timon's silver treads upon his lip,' declares 
 that unfortimately he has just given away all he can spare. 
 Sempronius, who ' was the first man that e'er received gift 
 from him,' on whom he had chiefly reckoned, pretends to be 
 offended because he was not first applied to. Flaminius calls 
 the first of the three the ' disease of a friend, and not himself.' 
 The strangers call the second an ungrateful monster ; Timon's 
 servant says of the third that he is ' a goodly villain,' politic 
 enough to cross the devil. These scenes, which Knight will not 
 allow to be Shakespeare's, are evidently, from want of material, 
 somewhat flat and burlesque, and better suited to comedy. But 
 they help to show how frightfully the harvest of ingratitude 
 was to overwhelm the liberal sower. The blackest of crimes, 
 that which, places man below the beasts, is committed towards 
 him whose generosity resembled that of the gods ; it overtakes 
 him from those who had first sucked him dry, and whose 
 gluttony is made by their ingratitude worse than robbery ; it 
 overtakes him, the unsuspecting one, who had never known 
 that prudence rules the consciences of men, who had heard and 
 spoken of bad men without ever having known them ; it over- 
 takes him through friends whom he unreservedly trusted; 
 it overtakes him so suddenly that ' one winter's brush has 
 shaken the leaves from their boughs, and left him open, bare 
 for every storm that blows.' Is it wondbrful that he cannot 
 find words strong enough to express the monstrous mass of in- 
 gratitude he has experienced, that the image of man's un- 
 thankfulness possesses him like a fixed idea ? He has bartered 
 friendship for falsehood, society for abandonment, prodigality 
 for avarice; he has found a curse in the midst of blessing. 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 11Q 
 
 misery in the midst of happiness; the shipwreck of all his 
 noble feelings reverses his whole nature. With a mind un- 
 fortified and of little strength he cannot overcome the injuries 
 of fate ; his spirit is drowned and lost in misfortune, which 
 he has never been inured to bear ; the mere ihan of the world, 
 whose mind has hitherto been only seen with a smooth surface, 
 is now roused by the storm of passion, which reverses all things. 
 We have before us the most lively image of the transition from 
 one extreme to another ; the want of moderation peculiar to 
 him in one instance is evident here in the other. In this point 
 of view Coleridge styled Timon the Lear, of domestic and 
 ordinary life. He who but now was surrounded and worshipped 
 by all is forsaken and despised ; the social man flies from man- 
 kind, whom he has found to be worse than wolves, to the 
 animals in the solitude of the forest ; he who had lived in 
 abundance, among the most refined pleasuires, now leads a for- 
 lorn life in the wilderness ; the Maecenas becomes an anchorite, 
 the epicurean a cynic, the rich man becomes a poor castaway, 
 and that from principle and from his own oath, which he will 
 not break, even when chance heaps new treasures upon him ; 
 he, who was once ever friendly and kind, now arms his tongue 
 with frightful oaths and curses ; the philanthropist is become a 
 man-hater. Now he understands all the truths which formerly , 
 he would not listen to ; now he sees dogs and flatterers every- 
 where, when formerly he had seen none but friends ; now he has 
 learned mistrust, and can teach that which his credulous heart 
 had once never known. This expansive nature has been brought 
 by this change to an uncommon intensity. When he reflects 
 on the exaltation of one creature above another, the rich above 
 the poor — when he speculates upon the universal obliquity of 
 nature, in which nothing is ' level but direct villainy,' where 
 the lower flatter the higher — when his thoughts dwell on the 
 unnaturalness of ingratitude or the almighty power of gold, 
 his soliloquies are uttered with an earnestness which presents 
 the most striking contrast to his former trivial conversation. 
 When he invokes all the diseases of beasts and men to consume 
 his friends, fire and ruin on house and city, plagues on the 
 whole circle of the earth — when he vomits forth hatred against 
 the whole human ra,ee, and wishes that his hate may grow as he 
 grows in age, this is done in the boldest invectives ever ex- 
 pressed in poetry. When he strives to give actual effects to 
 his rage and his imprecations, he does it with an obstinacy of 
 
780 THIBB FEEIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S DRAMATIC POETSY. 
 
 purpose, with a principle of condensed hatred of his kind, 
 which lays open to us the depth of character in the now one- 
 sided man, as his prodigality and philanthropy had formerly 
 shown the shallowness of his many-sided nature. Mankind 
 henceforth are only instruments or objects of his hatred. After 
 he has, in digging for roots, found a new treasure, the society 
 which he hates seeks him out anew in his solitude. He makes 
 a distinction between his visitors. The old flatterers and 
 censors, Apemantus and the artists, whom he now knew to be 
 pernicious, he drives away with blows and stones; to the 
 senate and the city he offers his tree that they may hang them- 
 selves on It ; others he supplies with gold, to corrupt humanity 
 yet more. He makes his treasures the instrument of his present 
 hatred, as they had been of his former love ; they are to sow 
 destructive discord among men until they perish. He furnishes 
 Alcibiades with gold for the army he is leading to thie destruc- 
 tion of Athens ; he wishes him, who was the best of his friends, 
 success in the siege, and confusion after he has conquered. 
 Besides civil war, he invokes evil diseases on his hated native 
 city ; he gives the courtesans of Alcibades gold that they may 
 live six months without following their trade, that they may 
 adorn and strengthen themselves to be more pernicious. He 
 gives to the thieves his gold, and his instructions to steal after 
 the example of all nature animate and inanimate. He shares 
 his gold with his faithful Flavius, but only on the condition 
 that he too shall be a man-hater. Even after his death the in- 
 scription on his tomb shall announce to mankind his hatred and 
 his curse. 
 
 - In the extremity of his obdurate and immoderate hatred, 
 the humane poet has not forgotten the original nature of the 
 man, nor neglected to make the traces of his former goodness 
 discernible through all his fury and curses. This, too, con- 
 tributes not a little to keep in view in this play a better human 
 nature. When Alcibiades first disturbs his repose, he pours out 
 his fury upon him in all its strength. Immediately afterwards 
 there flows from his lips, which he desired only to open for 
 cursing, an involuntary prayer for blessing. He wishes that 
 bounteous 'nature out of lier fertile and conceptious womb' 
 may rather engender, unheard-of monsters than bring forth 
 ' ingrateful man ; ' he bids her ' dry up her unctuous morsels, 
 vines, and marrows,' and refuse to nourish the ingrates she had 
 borne. Apemantus torments him, and against him Timon 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 781 
 
 rises with all the self-consciousness of his nobler nature ; but 
 even in discourse with him a kinder expression insinuates itself, 
 proving that he thought better of women than men, not having 
 had such evil experiences of them. The thieves come ; he is 
 kinder towards them, because, at least, they do not seem differ- 
 ent to what they are. Even with them, as we said above, his 
 curse works a blessing. His steward's fidelity staggers him 
 completely. He is forced to recognise one upright man, who 
 demands exemption from his systematic hatred; he acknow- 
 ledges for once that he has gone to an immoderate excess ; he 
 confesses his ' exceptless rashness,' and prays the ' perpetual 
 sober' gods to forgive him. But the weak man is unable to 
 remain in this wholesome state of mind, which inight have 
 saved him ; an obstinate consistency has taken hold of him, 
 and at the same moment that he sees and confesses the fault of 
 ' exceptless ' condemnation of humanity, he strengthens his 
 resolution to avoid all exception but this one. He returns to 
 his obdurate hatred, in which, however, such a nature as his 
 could not long abide. ' Philanthropy,' says Ulrici, ' was his 
 element ; misanthropy suffocated him ; he could not breathe in 
 it long.' It is usually understood that he dies of a broken 
 heart ; to us the intention of suicide seems evident in his last 
 words. The two inscriptions which Shakespeare found in 
 Plutarch he has condensed into one at the close of the play. 
 The best he has put into the mouth of Alcibiades, who answers 
 the hate-expressing inscription with one of philanthropic pur- 
 port: ' Thou has taught Neptune to weep on thy low grave on 
 faults forgiven.' 
 
 Diogenes, in Lily's ' Alexander and Campaspe,' sat to the poet 
 for Timon's contrast, the cynic Apemantus ; the quick striking 
 epigrammatic answers to questions, which seem to be inserted 
 here and there too much for the sake of eliciting witty replies, 
 are quite on this model. The description of this antique fool 
 is so perfect in its way that it is supposed Shakespeare must 
 have seen the short sketch of a cynic which in Lucian's 'Public 
 Sale of Philosophers ' is put into the mouth of Diogenes. It is 
 there said that in order to belong to this sect a man must be 
 bold and shameless, revile everyone from the king to the 
 beggar ; thus he will draw aU eyes upon him and appear manly. 
 His speech must be barbarous, his voice dissonant, and exactly 
 like a dog's ; his face rigid, his expression the same, and alto- 
 gether he must be brutish and rough. Shame, equity, and 
 
782 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 moderation must be dispensed with, and blushes must be wholly 
 banished from his countenance. He must haunt the most 
 frequented places, but keep by himself in them, and insist on 
 being without company, and hold no intercourse with friend or 
 foe. All this is easy of attainment ; it requires no education, 
 no knowledge and such stuff, and yet this is the shortest road 
 to fame. It would be as easy to suppose this to be the charac- 
 terisation of Apemantus, as Apemantus a copy drawn from this 
 description. If Shakespeare did not know Lucian's works, the way 
 in which he has caught the spirit of antiquity is the more admi- 
 rable. The poet contrasts in Timon and Apemantus the cyrenaic 
 and cynic systems, which divided antiquity between them; and he 
 allows it evidently and strongly to be felt that both, by repre- 
 senting happiness as the aim of human endeavours, set up a 
 false standard, and that the being intent upon extreme prin- 
 ciples will not, after all, lead to this false aim. The open and 
 refined nature of Timon, who seeks happiness in nourishing and 
 fostering, and in accumulating and satisfying the wants of men, 
 who considers culture and improvement, which are the distin- 
 guishing privilege of our race, to be inseparably connected with 
 this, who sees in sociability the best means for this refinement 
 of all external and internal gifts and enjoyments, is contrasted 
 with this proletary of antiquity, this cynic philosopher at the 
 opposite extreme of Eousseau's ' Theory of Nature.' Confused 
 by the caprice of his principles, he is extreme in frugality ; 
 born poor and needy, he makes th^ abnegation of all things his 
 system ; the renunciation of everything that makes man human, 
 the degradation of human nature to brutish, the most entire 
 self-denial, the avoidance of society and social meetings, these 
 are the principles of his wisdom. In his one-sidedness, that 
 poorest of all humours, he is opposed to all humanity ; wine 
 and the marrow of the earth have not made his spirit indolent, 
 but water has drowned it from his youth. He despises art and 
 artists, all enjoyment, dancing, and pomp are madness in his 
 eyes. Compared with the sensitiveness of Timon's soft heart, 
 his is quite stiff and frozen. Born in poverty, he was destined 
 to labour, to activity, and business more than Timon, who made 
 his money work for him ; but if it were a fault in the latter that 
 he imitated the gods in his enjoyment and bestowal of good 
 things, the indolence and inactivity of Apemantus are much 
 more culpable and contemptible. Timon would have helped 
 him daily out of his beggary, if this, according to the uncor- 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 783 
 
 rupted opinion of our forefathers, had been considered as a dis- 
 grace by him ; but he was proud of it, gloried in not being a 
 prodigal like Timon, though abstinence was not meritorious in 
 his case ; in the literal sense of the words he made a virtue of 
 necessity. If the beggarly pride of this man contrasts with 
 Timon's modesty to the immeasurable advantage of the latter, 
 much more does Timon's disinterestedness shine by comparison 
 with the selfishness' of Apemantus, whose prayer is only for 
 himself, notwithstanding his pretence of self-abhorrence. For 
 all this self- degrading, this intentional impoverishment and 
 isolation, is only, according to that suggestion of Lucian's, an 
 affectation of originality and a real vanity to attract the eyes of 
 mankind. Compared with this innate vanity how pardonable 
 is that of the prodigal, generated and nourished by the thanks, 
 the admiration, and the love of hundreds of hypocritical flat- 
 terers! If Apemantus were no flatterer except to misery, if he 
 spoke truths and cutting truths to everyone, why should his 
 straightforwardness be judged better than Timon's genial and 
 considerate love of society, since the cynic's candour had its 
 origin in nothing but his beggarly pride and vanity ? He stood 
 on the lowest step, where there was none beneath for a flatterer 
 to stand upon, from whence he, therefore refused to flatter those 
 above him ; his plain speaking flowed from the malice of a 
 venomous, envious, and violent nature ; by an instinctive acute- 
 ness it spied out every bad quality and experience, and refused 
 to see the good ; unlike Timon's endeavour to show love and 
 kindness to all, he indulged in a habit of blame and slander ; 
 his abuse had no other aim than to enrage men, ' the office of 
 a knave or a fool.' Contrary to the proverb, anger was in him 
 lasting and stinging ; misanthropy, which in Timon arose out 
 of the shattering of his faith . in human nature, was in him a 
 profession, the effect of innate inhumanity and of his vain and 
 malicious' disposition. If Timon carried his love and trust to 
 excess, so did this man his hatred and mistrust. How clearly 
 shines the uncorrupted nature of that most spoilt of mortals, 
 still holding his belief in human virtue ; how bright the splen- 
 dour of his friendship mania, compared with the suspicious 
 disposition of this egotist, who believes in no integrity, who 
 wonders that men dare trust themselves with men, who im- 
 plores the gods to preserve him from the folly of trusting any- 
 one ! He who possesses nothing has attained to the hard- 
 heartednesB of the miser, who pretends to possess nothing. 
 
784 THIRD PERIOD OF SSAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 This completes the contrast between Apemantus and Timon. 
 In the scene in which he finally appears in contrast to the 
 latter, the poet has deeply and excellently shown the superiority 
 of the noble to the base nature, in spite of the errors with 
 which the latter can truly reproach the former. How great 
 Timon appears in comparison with the cynic, who now pretends 
 more love for him since he has become like him, although he 
 can scarce conceal his rage and envy, because Timon is' usurp- 
 ing his trade and ' affecting his manners.' ' Were I like thee,' 
 Timon says to him, ' I'd throw away myself.' He grants him 
 his ' beastly ambition,' and wish to give the world to the beasts, 
 and remain a beast with the beasts, and he only proves to him 
 that among the beasts he would be as utterly worthless as 
 among ruen, that the order and inequality of power and endow- 
 ments, which is so hateful to him in human society, would be 
 found there likewise. For in this communistic nature, which 
 would have all equals, the strength of resolution and endeavour 
 is still more wasted than in that spoiled child Timon. 
 ' Thou'dst courtier be again wert thou not beggar,' Apemantus 
 says to him. The power of self-denial which Timon displays 
 on discovering the treasure is quite beyond his comprehension. 
 Neither can he comprehend Timon's change to misanthropy, 
 because there is in him none of the philanthropy which was 
 Timon's nature ; he would have comprehended if the man whom 
 he had known but as a flattered superior had fallen into the 
 other extreme of the humble flatterer. He speaks from his 
 own feelings, and hence it is that we feel the justice of the 
 hypothetical characterisation which Timon flings at him. 
 ' Thou wert bred a dog! ' he says : — 
 
 Had'st thou been like us. .... . 
 
 Thou would'st have plunged thyself 
 
 In general riot ; melted down thy youth 
 In different beds of lust ; and never learn'd 
 
 The icy precepts of respect 
 
 . . . But myself, 
 
 Who had the world as my confectionary ; 
 
 I, to bear this, 
 
 That never knew but better, is some burden : 
 
 Thy nature did commence in sufferance, time 
 
 Hath made thee hard in 't. Why should 'st thou hate men ? 
 
 They never flatter'd thee : What hast thou given ? 
 
 If thou had'st not been bom. the worst of men, 
 
 Thou had'st been a knave and flatterer, 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 785 
 
 Among his many groundless revilings, Apemantus utters to 
 Timon two cutting and opprobrious truths ; both recoil upon 
 himself with stronger meaning : — 
 
 Best state, contentless, 
 Hath a distracted and most wretched being, 
 Worse than the worst, oontenti 
 
 This content Timon had possessed in his prosperity, only it 
 could not stand by him in the overthrow of his fortunes ; but 
 the morose censurer Apemantus had never possessed it ; yet — 
 and this is the error of both these systems of life — it is not con- 
 nected either with the fortune of .possession or abnegation. 
 Again Apemantus says to him, ' The middle of humanity thou 
 never knewest, but the extremity of both ends.' To this Timon 
 might have answered that Apemantus also had never known 
 this middle, but only the extremity of one end. 
 
 Between these two eccentric beings Alcibiades is placed as 
 the man of practical Ufe, which generally blunts extremes. 
 He is by no means shown in a very favourable light, lest he 
 should prejudice the chief character. Shakespeare represents 
 him without any ideality, as a man of coarse texture, who is in 
 no way enthusiastic about the extreme ends of things ; a com- 
 plete soldier, who carries about with him the pleasures of peace- 
 ful life ; who knows how to be poor and to be rich ; not the 
 worst of Timon's friends, who, needy himself, yet willingly 
 offers him money for his support, and, though reviled by him, 
 €spouses his cause as his own. Prodigal of his bloodj rich only 
 in wounds, he has driven back the enemies of Athens, whilst 
 the senators counted their money and lent on usury. He is 
 repaid with the same ingratitude ■ as Timon experienced from 
 his friends ; exactly like Timon's friends, they refused him the 
 smallest favour, notwithstanding his great services, and his pas- 
 sionate entreaties are met with a sentence of banishment, as 
 Timon was forsaken and cast off by his friends. The man of 
 action becomes ' worse than mad ' on this maltreatment ; his 
 principles, which he had shown in his defence of his friend the 
 duellist, will not suffer him to bear contumelious treatment 
 with patience. For this injustice received he- takes up arms 
 in rebellion against the state, whilst Timon casts forth his 
 hatred upon the whole human race, too wide a mark to be 
 reached. Timon's hatred would have been confined to passive- 
 ness had not the treasure he found given him the means of 
 
 3 B 
 
786 THIBD FEEIOJ) OF SHAKE8PEABE' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 fighting mankind with gold ; Alcibiades avenges his mortifica- 
 tion on the thankless city by arms. Where Timon nourishes 
 universal hatred Alcibiades punishes with severity, but with' 
 discrimination. On hearing that the walls which he is about 
 to overthrow were not built by those who have injured him he 
 desists from the attempt. ' AH have not offended,' they tell 
 him. They off'er him decimation ' if his revenges hunger for 
 that fdod which nature loaths.' The warrior throws down his 
 glove to certify that he will only punish his enemies; recon- 
 ciliation quickly follows his substantial revenge and active 
 hatred, whilst Timon, in his enmity against humanity, does not 
 think decimation satisfaction enough. This limitless fury 
 necessarily recoils fatally on the impotent hater. Fate had 
 restored to him in a wonderful manner the means of taking the 
 sweetest revenge on his false friends. He despised in obstinate 
 bitterness what prodigal chance had freely given into his prodi- 
 gal hands, and died desolate, a subject, of malicious joy per- 
 haps to his pretendied friends, while the poor Alcibiades, with 
 unpaid soldiers, preserving moderation in his aims and in his 
 passions, punishes ingratitude, spares the penitent, and triumphs 
 over all. 
 
THE TEMPEST. 
 
 ' Theee can be little doubt,' says Hazlitt in the introduction to 
 his remarks on the Tempest, ' that Shakespeare was the most 
 universal genius that ever lived. Either for tragedy^ comedy, 
 history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, scene 
 individable or poem tmlimited, he is the only man. He has 
 hot only the same absolute command over our laughter and our 
 tears, all the resources of passion, of wit, of thought, of obser- 
 vation, but he has the most unbounded range of fanciful in- 
 vention, whether terrible or playful, the same insight into the 
 world of imagination that he has into the world of reality, and 
 over all there presides the same truth of character and nature, 
 and the same spirit of humanity.' The pertinence of these 
 observations becomes especially evident when we, as now, step 
 from the antique plays into this fanciful world of mediseval 
 superstition, out of the sober historic matter of Eoman 
 history into the airy kingdom of elemental spirits. A greater 
 contrast cannot be imagined; and yet this play and the 
 Winter's Tale lie close beside two of those historical plays, and 
 the poet is quite as much at home in these opposite spheres as 
 if he had never quitted them. In the historical plays he occu- 
 pied the realistic, political, historical mind of the English 
 people ; in these he addressed the. credulous imaginativeness of 
 the existing generation from two opposite sides and out of two 
 equally productive sources. This was the time of a general 
 belief throughout Europe in witchcraft and magic ; in England 
 an interest in such things, even among men of the educated 
 classes, was kept alive by a succession of works upon magic, 
 witchcraft, and the spirit world ; and King James, in his 
 ' Demonology '(1603), having ranged himself among the writers 
 on these subjects, may well have given food and fashion, to a 
 desire for knowledge in this direction. In conjunction with 
 
 3e2 
 
788 THIRD PESIOJ) OF SHAKE8PEABE' 8 DRAMATIC FQETRY. 
 
 these wonders of the unseen world, the populace were attracted 
 by the accounts and evidences of. so many real wonders in the 
 newly discovered quarter of the glohe; Shakespeare, in this 
 play, hints satirically at those marvels of nature in distant 
 countries which were helieved in England on the' evidence of 
 lying travellers, and at the eagerness with -nfhich they rushed 
 to see the singular forms of new animals that were exhibited to 
 the curious. Shakespeare himself speculated, as it were, in his 
 Tempest on this spirit of the time. He gives us a venerable 
 miagician and his spirit world, a distant island with an extra- 
 ordinary monster, adventures of travel, shipwreck, and storm, 
 all in one piece ; seamen, the sea smell, Eobinson Crusoe-like 
 solitude, foreign nature, and air surround us sensibly in all 
 parts of this drama. To . make the play more 'attractive, the 
 poet connected with it an event that had very recently engaged 
 all the London world. In the year 1609 Sir George Somers 
 sailed with nine ships for Virginia; a storm dispersed the 
 vessels, part of them reached Virginia, part returned to England 
 in 1610, and brought the news of the probable wreck of the 
 Admiral's ship (the Sea Venture), which, however, had reached 
 the Bermudas. In the year 1610 there appeared a small 
 pamphlet, called ' The Discovery of the Bermudas or Devil's 
 Island,' in which there was a description of the storm which 
 had driven the Admiral's ship out of its course. The ship had 
 sprung a leak ; the sailors, exhausted with working the pumps, 
 had fallen asleep, having already taken leave of one another, 
 when Somers saw land, and the vessel was luckily jammed in 
 between two rocks ; they foimd the island uninhabited, the air 
 mild, the land remarkably fruitful ; these islands had hitherto 
 been thought enchanted, and, on account of their storms, 
 which Shakespeare also alludes to, Sir Walter Ealeigh (1596) 
 had given them a bad name. We perceive sufficiently from 
 these notices that Shakespeare borrowed some of the incidents 
 in his Tempest from these reports, and it is probable enough 
 that they gave rise to the whole composition. We know, except 
 this, no other origin for the Tempest, ' The beautiful ' Sydea ' 
 of our Jacob Ayrer is probably founded on an English play 
 from which Shakespeare may have taken his idea of the con- 
 nection between Prospero and Alonzo, Miranda and Ferdinand ; 
 but beyond this the pieces have no resemblance with each other. 
 But Shakespeare needed nothing more to aid his invention in 
 .the composition of the play, which contains very little action. 
 
THE TEMPEST. 789 
 
 and in which (as Schlegel says") the di.nouement is evident from 
 the very beginning. 
 
 The date of the Tempest is decided by its undeniable 
 connection with Jourdan's pamphlet, and besides by the notice 
 but lately discovered, that according to the extracts from the 
 accounts of the Court Festivities (published by Cunningham in 
 the writings of the Shakespeare Society) it was acted before the' 
 king at Whitehall, November 1, 1611. These dates quite set 
 aside Hunter's assumption (' Disquisition on the Tempest ') that 
 this piece was one of the earlier works , of our poet, and even 
 that it was the ' Love's Labour Won ' mentioned by Meres. 
 
 The Tempest is one of those plays which, like the Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream, may be ranged under that branch of the 
 drama which includes operas, pastorals, and masques, and it 
 is, therefore, explicable that when, on the revival of the theatre 
 at the Eestoration, the first curiosity of the public had been 
 satiated with the older pieces of Shakespeare's time, and 
 Davenant found it necessary to resort to spectacles and music to 
 tickle the senses and please a perverted taste, this play, like 
 Macbeth, was turned by Dryden and Davenant into a kind of 
 opera aiming at strong effect, and later by Shadwell into a 
 regular opera. Like all Shakespeare's plays of this kind, the 
 action and characteristics are very^ simple ; our remarks on the 
 Tempest, therefore, may be very short. 
 
 We have alleged above that Timon and the Tempest'appear 
 ' especially prominent in the group "of plays which are most 
 deeply agitated by the overruling idea of the works of the third 
 period-^-the representation of the unnatural rupture of natural 
 ties by oppression, falsehood, and ingratitude. It treats of the 
 rebellion of kindred, of the usurpation of one brother against 
 another, of the ungrateful brother against the beneficent one. 
 Duke Prospero of Milan, absorbed in. his studies, has committed 
 the government of his states to his brother Antonio, ' whom 
 next to his child, of all the world ' he loves best. His confi- 
 dence created in Antonio falsehood as boundless as the trust 
 reposed in him, the habit of power and dominion led to 
 ambition, and out of ambition grew treachery. He arranged 
 everything in the state to further the objects of his ambition 
 filled all offices with his creatures, made a league with Prospero's 
 enemy the King of Naples, made free Milan tributary to him 
 obtained the help of the king's brother Sebastian, and then 
 overthrew his own brother, and exposed him with his infant 
 
790 THIRD PEBIOD OF SHAKE3PEAIIE' S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 heiress id perish on the sea. In addition to this unnatural 
 conduct towards his brother, his prince, his niece, and his 
 country, we see Antonio in the course of the play project an- 
 other deed of unnatural treachery against his auxiliaries and his 
 new liege lord. To escape the tribute he urges Alonzo's brother 
 to murder the king, the similar crime which he had committed 
 against Prospero. Both Antonio and Sebastian we find are 
 cruel, seizing the unsuitable moment of misfortune to make 
 bitter reproaches to Alonzo, like incarnate mockers, as Coleridge 
 says, 'who indulge in scorn and contemptuous expressions, as a 
 mode of getting rid of their own uneasy feelings of inferiority 
 to the good.' Antonio is the worse sinner of the two, who, as 
 Prospero says at the end, had entertained ambition against his 
 own flesh and blood, and 'had expelled remorse and nature.' 
 He says of himself : — 
 
 Twenty consoienees 
 That stand 'twixt me and Mflan, candied be they 
 And melt, ere they molest ! 
 
 Compared to him, intriguer as he is, Sebastian is like ' standing 
 water,' which Antonio ' will teach how to flow,' that he may 
 
 not as 
 
 Ebbing men indeed, 
 Most often do, so near the bottom run 
 By their own fear, or sloth. 
 
 When their projects fail, and the fruit of their previous crimes 
 is destroyed, Antonio stands petrified;, Sebastian, who was at 
 first troubled with remorse and stings of conscience, breathes 
 again ; Alonzo, after the first stroke, when he imagined his son 
 to be lost, becomes silent, stupid, and repentant. He had gone 
 to Tunis with his fleet, where he had given his daughter in 
 marriage, against all advice, even against her own inclination ; 
 he has unnaturally sacrificed his own child by a political union ; 
 as a punishment for this, according to the view of Antonio and 
 Sebastian, he is overtaken by the tempest, which, by the destruc- 
 tion of his son and heir, also revenges on him his crime against 
 Milan. When he receives from Ariel the wonderful announce- 
 ment that they are considered usurpers in the uninhabited 
 island, and that perdition hangs over their heads, from which 
 'nothing but heart's sorrow, and a clear life ensuing' can 
 deliver them, Antonio and Sebastian want to ' fight with the 
 fiend ; ' Alonzo alone is ripened by sorrow, and maintains his 
 
THE TEMPEST. 791 
 
 change of mind, when he desire^ the marriage of his son with 
 the heiress of Milan, and penitently kneels before Miranda, now 
 his daughter. 
 
 Prospero had been the innocent cause of his own ruin. In 
 Milan he had entirely devoted himself to the liberal arts, wrapt 
 in secret studies, dedicated to retirement and to the bettering 
 of his mind. By this renunciation and neglect of worldly 
 things he had aroused the evil nature of his brother, so 
 
 that now he was 
 The ivy which had hid the princely trunk, 
 And suck'd the verdure out ou't. 
 
 His proneness to intellectual things had cost him a throne, the 
 fruit of his twelve years of study in solitude is to win it back 
 for him. Gronzalo, one of the ministers of the King of Naples, 
 a talkative but eloquent old man, the excellent comforter of his 
 unfortunate master, had become the preserver of the ejected 
 Prospero ; he had furnished him in the ship with necessaries, 
 and, what was far more, with his books of magic ; true to his 
 lord, as well as to the higher duties of hiunanity. Prospero 
 holds him, therefore, in sacred remembrance as a man of un- 
 bounded honour. Cast upon an uninhabited island, his only 
 refuge from despair was his little daughter, ' for whom hence- 
 forth alone he liv'd.' By practising his secret arts he had 
 deprived her of the succession; he had kept iip, on her account, 
 some interest in the world, and was now about to employ the 
 mighty development of his magic, not for his own restoration, 
 but for hers. Before this comes to pass, before fortune puts his 
 enemies in his power, he has had an opportunity on his island to 
 make up, as it were, for the active duty which he had neglected ; 
 he maintains a double control over Caliban, the only dweller on 
 the island, and over the host of spirits, whom he constrains to 
 serve him. In this respect Prospero is, in some sense, a usurper ; 
 Caliban, who considered himself lord of the island, accuses him 
 directly of this ; and the lordship over the spirit world, accord- 
 ing to the ideas of the time, was sinful presumption and un- 
 natural ambition. Having been overtaken by misfortune in 
 Milan, while studying these magic arts, he will now use his skill 
 in them to recover the possession of that which those studies had 
 cost him, and to use them beneficially until the time for this 
 arrives ; then he will break his magic wand, and think only of 
 his end. But in his new kingdom Prospero seems now for the 
 
792 TEIEB FEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 first time to learn discipline and the art of government. Ex- 
 perience had taught him.. He keeps all around him in strict 
 subjection, his commands are dictatorial, and demand blind 
 obedience and instant service. Not the monster Caliban alone 
 fears his wrath; even his spirits serve him trembling; he uses; 
 hlarsh words to his favourite Ariel on the least opposition to his 
 behests ; he can even appear full of severity towards Ferdinand 
 and Miranda. His misfortuiies have made him careful and 
 prudent, indignant and' severe ; but this severity does not de- 
 tract from his goodness, his resentment does not disincline him 
 to reconciliation, his desire (for retribution and his anger at the 
 uflnaturar conduct of the princes do not prejudice his noble 
 nature, nor lead him to abuse his power. Herein especially lies 
 the silent charm of this character (and to feel thoroughly tlie 
 difference between poetry and poetry we must compare this 
 with the Magicians of Green and Marlowe, with Bacon and 
 Faust), that in spite of the mysterious omnipot'Cnce, the emi- 
 nence with which this power invests him, he appears, by his mild 
 and merciful use of it, only an ordinary well-intentioned man ; 
 a man in whom judgment has to struggle with passion, whose 
 better nature takes part against his wrath, and whose virtue 
 conquers his revenge ; a man whose moral excellence is more 
 powerful than his magic. He might have repaid usurpation 
 with greater usurpation, he might have executed the murderous 
 designs of Antonio and Sebastian against Alonzo upon them- 
 selves, but he is in all respects the humane reverse of his 
 inhuman enemies. He is satisfied when they are penitent, and 
 will not repay unnatural conduct with the like ; for malevolence 
 he returns benevolence ; he does not forget thanks for the long 
 past service of Gonzalo, which he rewards with deeds and words ; 
 and even here a contrast appears to lie, for far removed as he 
 is from all abuse of power, he is so also with regard to paternal 
 authority, and he exercises none of the compulsion towards his 
 Miranda which Alonzo uses towards his Glaribel. 
 
 The desire to unite his daughter with Ferdinand, and to 
 make this marriage the instrument and aim of all his revenge, 
 shows Prospero's kind but not weak nature to the best advantage ; 
 he does not, with excess of magnanimity, choose his brother's 
 son, who is also with the fleet, though not brought forward 
 either by Prosper© or the poet ; he chooses the son of Alonzo, 
 who, as his enemy, has behaved towards him less unnaturally ; 
 Milan is thus, as Gonzalo gladly remarks, placed upon an equal 
 
THE TEMPEST. 793 
 
 footing with Naples. The rapid development of an involun- 
 tary love of paradisiacal innocence in Ferdinand and Miranda, 
 a love so consistent with the plans of Prospero, is quite in con- 
 cordance with the nature of the circumstances. Miranda is one 
 of those exquisite feminine creations of the poet, whose excel- 
 lence does not depend on peculiar prominent qiialities, but on 
 that tranquil harmony and purity which we feel to be so agree- 
 able and desirable in women ; like Cordelia, Ophelia, or Perdita, 
 she is one of those quiet natures whose mental worth is closed 
 as within a bud, whose depth of character is hidden, like the 
 fire of the diamond, until the occasion comes which strips off 
 the concealing husk, and reveals the richness and splendour of 
 the inner life. Eeared in solitude she is like a blank leaf as 
 regards all social gifts and conventional accomplishments ; she 
 is quiet, and of few words; but her fancy is full of inward 
 Ufe and playfulness, and her pure soul uninjured by intercourse 
 with naankind. She could acquire few faults and few virtues, 
 as opportunity for both was wanting. Thus the poet endowed 
 her with modesty and pity, virtues which may be acquired in, 
 solitude without man, and form a soil in which every other 
 virtue may be planted. Her father had often hinted to her 
 that she is greater than she imagines ; she had neither curiosity 
 to learn this, nor longing to be so. She only knows that she is 
 the daughter of the poor Prospero, so that when he reveals her 
 parent's princely rank, she involuntarily asks, ' Sir, are not you. 
 my father ? ' Satisfied of this, she fancies herself, for a moment, 
 in that better situation, and asks : — 
 
 What foul play had we, that we came from, thence, 
 Or blessed was't we did ? 
 
 but her next thought is pity for the care she must have caused 
 to her banished father. Her distinguishing virtue, as Prospero 
 intimates, is pity ; we perceive it at the very beginning during 
 the tempest, when she suffers, like a woman, with the sufferers : 
 this makes her so desirous to see the sympathetic Gonzalo. It 
 is very charming the way in which the poet has given several 
 times to her silent glances the expression of pity, and that ex- 
 pression only. Prospero soothes her during the tempest by 
 saying , ' There's no harm done ; ' and in answer to her incredu- 
 lous look, he repeats ' no harm ! ' Immediately after, he con- 
 tinues : — 
 
7'94 TBOmD FEBIOD OF. SHAKESPEASE' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 I have with such provision in mine art, 
 So safely ordered, that there is no soul, — 
 
 again her troubled look, 
 
 No, not so much perdition as an hair 
 Betid. 
 
 And the same is implied in Prospero's words at the end of the 
 first act. ' Speak not for him ! ' thus answering an imploring 
 look of Miranda who had not spoken. 
 
 Thus she encounters Ferdinand, and it is not suprisiug that, 
 at the first moment, they exchange glances. The king's son 
 imagines himself the only soul saved ; his father, Ariel tells him, 
 is dead ; he wanders about, needing help. Prospero harshly 
 upbraids him with wishing to usurp the sovereignty of the island, 
 then makes him feel his power and omniscience, checks his 
 longing, and ' binds up his spirits as in a dream.' Thus on 
 account of his beauty and his piteous condition he becomes 
 immediately an object of attraction to Miranda ; he is the first 
 man she has ever seen, except Prospero ; her father's unfriendly 
 treatment of him wakes up her pity more strongly — the pity 
 for a guiltless one ; for she is sure 
 
 There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple. 
 
 She will be surety for him ; her good heart generates her trust 
 and pity, and both her love, which she cannot hide for a 
 moment. How natural that this encounter with d being created 
 (as he thought, who knew woman well) ' of every creature's best,' 
 should suddenly , extinguish in him every earlier impression, 
 should take prisoner the heart of the orphaned, the captive 
 Ferdinand ! The difficulties which the father purposely raises 
 between this 
 
 fair encounter 
 Of two most rare aifections, 
 
 lest too light winning 
 Make the prize light, 
 
 ripen in a few short hours into the purest attachment. He 
 imposes menial work on Ferdinand, to try whether he loves ; 
 Ferdinand endures it for Miranda's sake ; she offers to bear his 
 burden for him. He, tells his daughter that Ferdinand is but 
 a Caliban in comparison with other men, but he cannot mislead 
 her modest inclination. He hears how she listens in silent 
 
THE TEMPEST. 795 
 
 ecstaoy to the assurances of Ferdinand's love, and calls herself ' a 
 fool to weep at what she's glad of,' tears which, caused by that 
 feature of modesty in her, arise partly out of the consciousness 
 of her unworthiness. The father listens while she artlessly 
 reveals her feelings, tells her name, contrary to his command, 
 and gives her love, in opposition to his wish. By means of this 
 inimitably tender thread, Shakespeare has imperceptibly con- 
 nected this episode with the main idea of the play ; the father 
 'loses his daughter,' she begins with disobedience to him, she 
 falls away, and breaks the bands of nature and of blood, but only 
 in that case which nature and religion have hallowed, in that 
 the daughter is to leave father and mother. Prospero, therefore, 
 blesses the hasty bond, but with a second trial whether Ferdi- 
 nand's love be pure and true, and with a solemn injunction to 
 respect her innocence. Is this necessary with so ethereal a 
 creature as Miranda ? is it not an ungenial shadow on a picture 
 so tender ? Yet Miranda, notwithstanding her artless childhood, 
 has received from her father, who trained her for the world, 
 and from a rough attempt of Caliban's, some idea of lawless and 
 faithless love ; we see this from expressions which we should 
 scarcely have expected from her lips. Her father had imparted 
 to her moral training and accomplishments, but in the wilder- 
 ness his last thought had been the conventionalities of refined 
 society; he might well imagine the dangers of youth and 
 solitude in the tehder meetings of the pair. The masque teaches 
 us that Cupid's arrows had been turned away from them, and 
 there is a delicate meaning in their being discovered in the cave 
 innocently playing at chess. 
 
 Being both wise and good, Prospero uses his paternal 
 authority with love and severity ; in like manner, also, he uses 
 Ms power over the spirits. While other poets, in those days, 
 employed their magic dramas to give pleasure to the spectators 
 by a variety of artful tricks, how sensibly Shakespeare (without 
 neglecting the opportunity of introducing a pretty device) used 
 his magic merely as a symbol of the most natural relations, as if 
 witchcraft in poetry were to him as inadmissible as it was 
 thought in real life ! When Ferdinand is separated from his 
 companions by the magic arts of Ariel, it may also have been 
 simply because he was the first to leap out of the ship, and 
 being stronger than the rest, as we hear, may have sought to 
 save himself by swimming ; when Ariel kept the other princes 
 separate from the crew, it may be because the former sprang 
 
796 THIRD jPEEIOD OF. SHAKESPEABE'S DEAMATIC FOETBY. 
 
 overboard, but the latter did not; when Ariel bewitches the 
 sailors with sleep, he says himself that their weariness had done 
 half the work for him; when the princes are led astray by 
 deceptive apparitions, and cast into despair, it may be that 
 
 their great guilt, 
 Like poison given to work a great time after, 
 Now 'gins to bite their spirits. 
 
 Thns we might strike the magic out of the play, and nature 
 would remain. With the same delicate symbolism are the 
 wonderfully fantastic images of the spirit world connected with 
 the inner meaning of the play ; and this seems to us even to 
 surpass the skill with which a firm character, consistency, and 
 necessity are given to this ideal world — Nature, as it were, ele- 
 vated above herself, the actual brought into the region of the 
 possible, and reason never oiSfended by the appearance of the 
 supernatural. The spirits which the poet has subjected to 
 Prospero's authority are those which, according to popular 
 belief, rule the four elements ; by their aid he darkens the sun, 
 lashes the sea into storms, raises tempests, and opens graves. 
 Sylphs, which melt into thin air, perform the masque at his com- 
 mand ; sea-nymphs and water-spirits > sing the chorus in Ariel's 
 song of consolation before Ferdinand ; goblins, spirits of earth, 
 he calls those whose business it is to torture Caliban with cramps 
 and convulsions, in the form of hedgehogs and apes. If these 
 separate functions of the subordinate spirits do not appear quite 
 sharply defined in the play, it is the more evident that Shake- 
 speare intended to give to Prospero's favourite messenger Ariel 
 the united power of all these elemental spirits. At one time 
 he appears as a sea-nymph, swimming and careering on the sea ; 
 then as a fire-spirit, who sets the ship on fire and climbs like 
 licking flames up the mast ; then as a spirit of earth, busied for 
 Prospero in the frozen veins of the earth ; his ruling nature, 
 however, as his name intimates, is that of a sylph, a spirit of the 
 air. In this character he is called a bird and appears in the 
 form of a harpy, he flies and rides on the winds and ' curled 
 clouds,' fetches dew at night from the spirit land Bermuda, 
 vanishes invisible, and takes every visible form, deceives, leads 
 astray, scatters, jeers, and frightens men by all sorts of appari" 
 tions, sounds, and deceptions. Grace, tenderness, speed, and 
 especially freedom and lightness, the properties of his elementj 
 are peculiar to him. He was formerly in the service of the witch 
 
THE TEMPEST. 797 
 
 Sycorax, for whose ' earthy and abhorred commands ' he was too 
 delicate ; he slighted her behests, and she confined him, ' by 
 help of her more potent ministers,' in a cloven pine, a torment 
 ' to lay upon the damned,' which the witch could not again undo ; 
 but after twelve years' painful imprisonment Prosperb's magic 
 power set him free. For this benefit, the restoration to freedom, 
 the highest Ariel knew, he gave to Prospero a service more 
 suitable to his gentle nature ; whilst the other spirits hate the 
 magician, yet are compelled to serve him, Ariel obeys him 
 thankfully and truly, without lies, without mistakes, without a 
 murmur ; for this, his perfect freedom, Ms all, is promised him 
 within a certain time, and of this time, for good service, one 
 year is abated. But even to wait this abridged time is painful 
 to him; it is exquisitely conceived, and very beautiful, what a 
 peculiarly melancholic character the poet has cast over the being 
 and relations of this creature, divided as he is between a superior 
 nature and the aspirings of higher feelings. Having the four 
 elements combined in his composition, Ariel is by nature a spirit 
 of a higher order ; by his service and intercourse with a noble 
 and beneficent man he has risen to half-human sympathies, 
 although, according to the popular belief, these beings are indif- 
 ferent, adverse, and vexatious towards the hxunan creature. He 
 can sympathise with the tormented consciences of the princes, 
 whose nature he does not share ; and although hp ' is nothing 
 but air,' he has imbibed somewhat of the loftier feelings of love 
 :and grfititude, albeit contrary to his nature. His lord will miss 
 him when he has given him his freedom ; but he, the airy 
 'Creature, will feel no longing after his dear master, whom he 
 only seems to love for the sake of his promised freedom. He 
 asks for more, for speedier freedom, and Prospero must once in 
 a month recount to the quickly forgetting spirit the benefit 
 he has received of his hands ; then the variable servant struggles 
 with his fiuctuating nature, and is again all obedience, fidelity, 
 and promptness. It is an unnatural dominion, an unnatural 
 bond between man and spirit, where corresponding nature and 
 uniting sympathies are wanting ; and yet this is the evident 
 bearing of the circumstance on the action of the piece : this 
 unnatmral bond is made possible and tenable by suavity of 
 manners, dignity, benefit, and gratitude, whereas among men 
 who are endowed with moral sense and reason the strongest ties 
 of nature, those between brother and brother, are unnaturally 
 broken. 
 
798 THmS PERIOD bV SHAKESPEABE'S BBAMATIC POETBV. 
 
 With the same intrinsic bearing on the intention of the 
 play the much and deservedly admired character of Caliban is 
 introduced. Even Dryden wondered at the profound truth of 
 this creature, for which no type is found in nature. Schlegel 
 declared the delineation of him to be made with inconceivable 
 consistency and depth, not being offensive to the feelings, 
 although so hateful, because the honour of humanity is not 
 offended by it ; and this creation was always the one which 
 suggested itself when Shakespeare was commended for making 
 the supematiural np,tural, the wonderful ordinary, inasmuch as in 
 it he not only showed human nature as it is in actual occurrences, 
 but also as it ivould be under temptations to which it caimot 
 be exposed. Caliban is the very opposite to Ariel ; opposite to 
 the graceful creature both externally and internally, a tortoise 
 in the mud, as the other was a bird in the air, an embryonic 
 being defiled, as it were, by his earthy origin from the womb of 
 savage nature. His mother was the witch Sycorax, who banished 
 from Argier for ' mischiefs manifold,' grown into ' a hoop with 
 age and envy,' had fled into this island. The devil was his 
 father ; the fruit of abominable parents, a prey to brutish im- 
 pulses, reared in solitude, he was called by Schlegel, with a 
 perfect delineation, half demon and beast, half goblin and savage. 
 A foul bulk, resisting all active employment, a mere animal, 
 having no sense but for good food, for flattery and stroking, for 
 corporeal attractions and for the aerial music of the spirits, and 
 for dreams which he pines for when awake ; for the rest he is all 
 wickedness and falsehood, cowardly too, and bom to be a slave 
 although he murmurs at subjection. Prospero foimdhim on tbe 
 island ' gabbling like a thing most brutish,' not knowing his own 
 meaning ; he treated him with humane care, took pains to tame 
 him, gave him the elements of knowledge, and taught him to- 
 speak. But this humanity was thrown away upon him, educa- 
 tion did not suit his nature ; he used liis speech only to curse 
 his benefactor, he remained insensible to kindness, and could 
 only be restrained by fear and chastisement ; he learned, as a 
 brute, to keep company with men, but not to love them ; his 
 vile race 
 
 Had that in't which good natures 
 Could not abide to be with. 
 
 Prospero obtained the mastery over him, and, as Caliban com- 
 plains, took the island from him, as that was the only way to 
 
THE TEMPEST. 799 
 
 escape his violence ; he justified the usurpation by endeavour- 
 ing to humanise him. But he missed his aim, like those Eng- 
 lish colonists in America, who in the most human manner 
 laboured after the civilisation of the Indians — tribes which were 
 felt by Brainerd and the like to be inexpressibly indolent and 
 dull, devoid of gratitude as well as of generosity, benevolence, 
 and goodness — a nature irreconcilable with genuine human 
 natmre. The beastly creature preferred the company of beastly 
 men to that of his benefactor ; he stumbles on the drunkard, 
 who had debased himself to a condition of greater irrationality 
 than the other was born to ; the gift of his bottle attracts him 
 more than Prospero's lessons, he takes the burly Stephano for 
 his king, and joins with him in a conspiracy against Prospero, 
 which is a burlesque imitation of the conspiracy of the princes. 
 Not like Ariel with forgetful gratitude, but with hardened 
 clumsy ingratitude and hatred, he conspires against his bene- 
 factor, not feeling the value of the benefit ; he takes the 
 stranger for his lord, kissing his feet, claiming and renouncing 
 the sovereignty at the same moment, as Antonio had done with 
 Alonzo. We may forgive this wild creature, who had less to 
 attract him to men than Ariel ; but how can we forgive Antonio 
 an Sebastian ! And yet even this monster acknowledges at 
 last the folly of his behavioiu:, and promises ameiidment. What 
 a light is by this reflected on Antonio, who remains hardened 
 in sullen spite to the last ! 
 
 It is not impossible that Shakespeare in this play, and 
 especially in regard to this Caliban (whose name is a mere 
 anagram of Cannibal), meant to answer the great question of the 
 day concerning the justifiableness of European usurpation over 
 the wild aborigines of the new world ; he felt a warm interest 
 in English colonisation, in the creation of new nations, that 
 marked the reign of James; Southampton was a prominent 
 character in the Virginia Company, and shared with Sandys and 
 Wyatt the merit of first founding the political freedom of the 
 colonists. If it were indeed the poet's intention to give this 
 historical background to the story of Antonio's usurpation, it 
 is a further evidence of his wide views of history and of his 
 unbiassed mind, entirely free as it was from all false sentiment- 
 ality. He shows the scrupulous philosophers, who doubted the 
 lawfulness of colonisation, the evils of policy and morality at 
 home, where deeds quite as unnatural are practised as could 
 have been accomplished there. He perceived that what hap- 
 
800 THIRD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 pened in the new world at that time was necessary, that with 
 the extension of mankind superiority of spiritual and moral 
 power would ever inundate the realms of rudeness and barbarism, 
 streaming, as it were, into an empty space. Shakespeare has still 
 further displayed the pure healthiness of his political and 
 historical wisdom in a scene of this play, in composing which 
 he has evidently had before him a chapter of Montaigne's ' Essays ' 
 (I. 10) in Florio's translation (1603). He lets old Gronzalo, 
 not in earnest, but in playful conversation, describe the system 
 of the communists, socialists, and peace-congresses, and he makes 
 Alonzp give his opinion upon it. We will only quote the pas- 
 sage ; it were a pity to add a single word : — 
 
 Gon. V theJJOinmonwealth I would hy contraries 
 Execute all things ; for no kind of traffic 
 Would I admit ; no name of magistrate ; 
 Letters should not be known ; no use of service, 
 Of riches, or of poverty ; no contracts, 
 Successions, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none : 
 No use of metal, com, or wine, or oil : 
 No occupation ; all men idle, all ; 
 And women too ; but innocent and pure : 
 No sovereignty ; — 
 
 Seb, And yet he would be king on't. 
 
 .Anf. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets 
 The beginning. 
 
 Qon. All things in common nature should produce • • 
 Without sweat or endeavour : treason, felony, 
 Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine, 
 Would I not have ; but nature should bring forth, 
 Of its own kind, all foizon, all abundance, 
 To feed my innocent people. 
 
 Seb. No marrying 'mong his subjects ? 
 
 Ant. None, man ; all idle ; vvhores and knaves. 
 
 Gon. I would with such perfection govern, sir. 
 To excel the golden age. 
 
 Almi. Pr'y thee, no more : thou dost talk nothing to me ! 
 
THE WINTEE'S TALE. 
 
 According to a notice discovered by Malone, the Winter's Tale' 
 was first licensed for representation by Sir Greorge Buck, who 
 entered upon his office of Master of the Eevels in October, 1610 ; 
 on the 15th of May, 1611, Dr, Forman saw the play at the 
 Grlobe ; it must, therefore, have been . produced between these 
 dates, at the same time as the Tempest. It was acted at White- 
 hall on the 5 th November, 1611, fom- days after the Tempest. 
 In the story from which Shakespeare took the matter oi the 
 Winter's Tale, the exposure of Perdita on the sea is very like 
 the exposure of Miranda and her father, described in the 
 Tempest; the dramatist made an alteration in this part, to 
 avoid repetition ; CoUier takes this as a proof that the Tempest 
 was written first, but it can only indicate that the plan of both 
 pieces was sketched at about the same time. The contem- 
 poraneous appearance of the two is further confirmed by a 
 sarcasm of Ben Jonson's (in his 'Bartholomew Fair,' 1614), 
 which alludes to both.' 
 
 Shakespeare's source for the Winter's Tale is Grreene's 
 'History of Dorastus and Faunia,' which appeared first in 1588, 
 under the title 'Pandosto,' but our poet used a later edition, 
 probably that of 1609. Shakespeare in many passages 
 borrowed words and whole speeches from this narrative; he 
 changed the names of the personages, but kept, on the whole, 
 close to the story, though altering and enlarging it on some 
 essential points. In Grreene's narrative, the adventures of 
 Dorastus and Faunia (Florizel and Perdita) are the main 
 object, to which the earlier part only serves as an introduction. 
 
 ' The often quoted passage in the Induction is as follows : — ' If there be 
 never a Servant-mohster i' the fayre, who can helpe it, he sayes ; nor a nest 
 of Antiques ? He is loth to make nature afraid in his playes, like those that 
 beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries.' 
 
 3f 
 
802 THIED FEEIOD OF SHAKESPEASB'S DBAMATIG POETSY. 
 
 The King of Bohemia (Pandosto) is here the jealous husband ; 
 the King of Sicily (Egistus) is the visitor, whose royal hostess 
 (Bellaria) is commanded by her spouse to do him aU honour. 
 Her new-born child is cast into the sea and abandoned to the 
 winds and waves by the jealous King of Bohemia, whose son 
 dies, as in Shakespeare, according to the oracle, which is similar 
 in purport here to that in the Winter's Tale ; but the queen is 
 really, and not merely apparently, taken from her husband by 
 death. In Grreerfe's narrative the real matter only now begins, 
 Dorastus is designed by his father for a Danish princess,, but he 
 is cold, to all love. To be revenged for this, Cupid leads him, 
 when engaged in hawking, to Faunia. The love of these two is 
 only described by Shakespeare in its progress ; in the other its 
 origin is fully dwelt upon, in the manner of the Italian pastorals. ; 
 the struggle between passion and the claims of rank is the main 
 point ; the triumph of love is the aim of the narrative. The 
 pair escape on board a ship before the king knows of the engage- 
 ment. Capnio, a servant of the prince's, answering to Shaken 
 ■ peare's Autolycus, barings on board the shepherd, who is to dis- 
 cover the love affair, and to show Faunia's trinkets to the king ; 
 a storm, not Camillo as in Shakespeare, -drives the fugitives to 
 Bohemia. Here Faunia's father falls in love with her, a 
 situation only slightly hinted at in Shakespeare. When all is 
 explained, Pandosto (Leontes), overcome with melancholy on 
 account of this love for his daughter and his former jealousy, is 
 driven to self-destruction. 
 
 Shakespeare has treated this narrative in the way he has 
 usually dealt with his bad originals — he has done away with 
 some indelicacy in the matter, and some unnatural things in 
 the form ; he has given a better foundation to the characters 
 and course of events ; but to impart an intrinsic value to the 
 subject as a whole, to bring a double action into unity, and to 
 give to the play the character of a regular drama by mere 
 arrangements of matter and alteration of motive was not 
 possible. The wildness of the fiction, the improbability and 
 contingency of the events, the gap in the time which divides 
 the two actions between two generations, could not be repaired 
 by any art. Shakespeare, therefore, began upon his theme in 
 quite an opposite direction. He increased still more the mar- 
 vellous and miraculous in the given subject, he disregarded 
 moi'e and more the requirements of the real and probable, and 
 treated time, place, and circumstances with the utmost arbi- 
 
THE WmmSS TALE. 803 
 
 trariness. He added the character of Antigonus and his death 
 by the bear, Paulina and her second marriage in old age, the 
 pretended death and the long forbearance and preservation of 
 Hermione, Autolycus and his cunning tricks, and he increased 
 thereby the improbable circumstances and strange incidents. 
 He overleaped all limits, mixing up together Eussian empefors 
 and the Delphic oracle and Julio Romano, chivaky and heathen- 
 dom, ancient forms of religion and Whitsuntide pastorals. 
 Grreene had already taught him to pay no attention to proba- 
 bility with regard to place, since in his narrative- reference had 
 already been made to the sea-shore in Bohemia and to the 
 Island of Delphos. Added to this, there are mistakes in the 
 style of those of Cervantes, where the thefij of Sancho Panza's 
 ass is forgotten. Prince Florizel, who (in Ast it. se. 3) appears 
 in shepherd's clothes, exfehanges immediately afterwards his 
 court garments with Autolycus in the same scene ; the old 
 shepherd (Act ill. sc. 3) knows at once, whence does not 
 appear, that the slaughtered Antigonufe was an old man. Ben 
 Jonson and Dryden have made all this of far too much conse- 
 quence, even while laughing at it. Pope has even doubted the 
 'genuineness of the play. The scenic: effect, the excellent cha- 
 racterisation of certain personages, and the beauty of the lan- 
 guage of the play were acknowledged, but the poet was 
 continually upbraided for those very marvels which, in our 
 opinion, he only intended as such. Three times in the play, 
 and once for all in the title, he dwelt as emphatically as possible 
 on the fictitious character of the play, which is wholly founded 
 on the incredible and improbable. If we will dispute with him, 
 it must be on the one point only — whether fictions be admissible 
 on the stage or not. We must not criticise mistakes here and 
 •there, which, if that admissibility be allowed, may well have 
 been purposed by the poet. Shakespeare could have answered 
 -the question as to the fitness of this, style by pointing to the 
 stage, where this play always met with success, both in G-arrick's 
 unsuitable abridgment (under the title of 'Plorizel and 
 Perdita '), and later in Mrs. Siddons' time in its proper form. 
 He would have granted that a dramatised fiction is still only a 
 fiction, and as such is not a piece that will ever be ranked 
 among the highest kinds of dramatic art. He would allow 
 that the liberties taken had already unfitted the play for so 
 high a place. While Shakespeare has at other times permitted 
 in his dramas the existence of a two-fold action, connected by a 
 
 3 F 2 
 
804 THIRD PESIOD OF SHAKESPEASE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 common idea, it was not necessary, in the instance before us, to 
 sever the wasp-like body of Greene's story, nor could he have 
 entirely concentrated the two actions ; he could but connect 
 them indistinctly by a leading idea in both, although the 
 manner in which he has outwardly connected them is a delicate 
 and spirited piece of art, uniting, as he has done, tragedy and 
 comedy, making the one elevate the other, and thus enriching 
 the stage with a tragi-comic pastoral, a combination wholly 
 unknown even to the good Polonius. The poet, perhaps, would 
 have moreover confessed, with reference to the censures respect- 
 ing this play, that this very union of tragedy and comedy, of 
 the grave character in the first part with the light machinery 
 of the second, is out of true proportion. Notwithstanding, 
 much has been done even in this point to remove the reproach 
 of superficial treatment. Shakespeare, in conformity with the 
 character of the tale, has, as in Greene's narrative, made use of 
 the dominion of fate in his drama; the Delphic oracle decides 
 the tragic catastrophe of the first part, and prepares for the 
 happy conclusion in the second. That which seems accidental 
 in the occurrences, such as the wonderful finding of Perdita in 
 her infancy by the shepherd, and when grown up by Florizel, is 
 attributed to the arrangement of Providence, and thus falls 
 in more naturally with the pragmatically ordered portions of 
 the action. But even this machinery of Providence is limited, 
 as in Cymbeline, to such occurrences as the above, where men, 
 properly speaking, have no part. Everywhere else we might 
 strike out the direct interference of fate, and the events would 
 remain explicable according to nature. In Greene's story, the 
 boy Mamillius dies, in accordance with the oracle : in Shake- 
 speare's, he dies not only for that reason, but because the early 
 ripe child, too tender a vessel for his high thoughts, takes the 
 ignominy of his mother too much to heart. Greene makes 
 Hermione die, that Leontes may have no other heirs ; Shake- 
 peare keeps the guiltless wife alive, and her part is so contrived 
 that the prediction of the oracle can be fulfilled by her resigna- 
 tion. According to Greene, the winds and the waves carry the 
 child, exposed to their fury, to the country of the king, whom 
 Leontes believes to be its father ; according to Shakespeare, 
 Antigonus, believing in Hermione's guilt, takes it there in- 
 tentionally. According to Greene, it is a storm that drives 
 Florizel and Perdita to her father's kingdom ; according to 
 Shakespeare, they go thither by the advice of Camillo. And 
 
THE WINTEB'8 TALE. 80S 
 
 SO we find throughout that the poet, in spite of his intention to 
 represent a fiction, has everywhere avoided any ugeless display 
 of arbitrary power. 
 
 According- to what we have said above, we have to describe 
 not only two actions, but two pieces in one. The subject of 
 the first — the tragic portion — is the jealousy of Leontes. 
 Coleridge thought fit to read this play in immediate con- 
 nection with Othello, whose jealousy is in every respect the 
 reverse o-f that of Leontes. It is so in fact, although we under- 
 stand the contrast differently to Coleridge. The jealousy of 
 Leontes, and of Othello also, is not founded on the sensitive 
 faculty alone; in Othello it is deeply connected with his 
 feelings of honour ; in Leontes with tyranny, as Shakespeare 
 says. We should define it more clearly if we were to say with 
 wilfulness. Shakespeare has in both instances shown us the 
 origin of this passion out of a mere nothing, and its frightful 
 consequences ; the destruction of the whole happiness of life in 
 ' the one, and the happiness of half a life in the other, from the 
 madness of a moment. Th& pervading^ difference is that Othello, 
 little disposed to jealousy by nature, is made susceptible of it 
 by circumstances and situations, he is driven to it by a cunning 
 whisperer and deceiver ; whereas Leontes, by nature prone to 
 it, has no outward circumstances to induce it, and is his own 
 siiggester. The difference of situation in the two is striking ; 
 Othello is led to doubt the friend of whom he is jealous by 
 facts not to be denied j he is made to perceive that in his wife 
 her own father had reasons for being deceived ; the Mob^ is 
 doubtful of himself and of his own qualities, and he conceives^-, 
 mistrust of himself and of the world, which was rooted in his 
 whole situation ; all this heaped together the smouldering fire 
 of his jealousy, which thfe false lago blew into ar flame. But 
 Leontes' situation is quite different ; he has no causes of 
 jealousy against his wife, none against his friend; the resem- 
 blance to himself of his eldest and of his new-bom child is a 
 fact that he must himself acknowledge as against his suspicion; 
 his self-reliance, his royal rank prevent in him the all-pervading 
 feeling of Othello, who thinks himself despised ; all those 
 around him, the courtiers, Camillo, Antigonus, Paulina, loudly 
 and firmly testify against his delusion ; but there is that 
 within himself more dangerous than the slanderer at Othello's 
 side. After his conscience has been once infected, after Her- 
 mione's friendly invitation and its rejoinder have aroused his 
 
806 THIBD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEAEE'S BEAMATIC POETEY. 
 
 suspicion, he is the slave, not of love, not of passion, not of 
 feeling, but of his own imagination ; dwelling on his own 
 imaginings, he gives way. to the most extraordinary brooding 
 over improbable and impossible things, until he is satisfied 
 of the infallibility of his convictions, and confirmed in the 
 obstinacy which characterises the weak judgment of all wilful 
 persons. This obstinacy, this hard-headedness, embitters his 
 disposition, and far from feeling, like Othello, pain for his loss, 
 Leontes indulges in hatred and persecution, and increases both 
 through his dread of intrigues, which exist only in his own 
 imagination. The contrast between this wilfulness, this pre- 
 sumed certainty and superior judgment, and the unsuspecting 
 short-sightedness of Othello is perfect, and masterly in both is 
 the progress of the delusion, built on quite different foundations. 
 In contrast with the -taciturn Othello, Leontes, in keeping with 
 his moody and sug)ici0us nature, is a greati talker, in whom 
 thoughts and quick fancies throng, mingle, and pass rapidly 
 from one object to another. 
 
 The idea of his wife's faithlessness arises in Leontes from 
 the quick result of her entreaty to Polixenes to prolong his 
 stay a little. The contingent motives to suspicion are by far 
 not so important as those which Othello thought he had. She 
 tells him he asks coldly.; she proves to him that she under- 
 stands how to entreat better ; she speaks to their guest with 
 open, innocent heartiness, and gives her hand to him in the 
 same spirit. This actually is the whole ^ound for Leontes' 
 jealousy. He now remembers that Hermione had once made 
 him wait months for her consent ; he examines with suspicion 
 the features of his son. iHe sees. her hold up her mouth to kiss 
 Polixenes, he sees them exchange meaning smiles in his very 
 presence. He is convinced it is not an approaching trans- 
 gression, but a .crime of long standing ; he knows it, he is 
 certain of it ; it is a fact to him that no woman can be kept 
 from unfaithfulness. ■'Contempt and clamour,' he fears, 'will 
 be his knell.' For such determined people nothing is worse 
 than contradiction ; it only makes them more clear-sighted and 
 more obstinate. When Camillo positively and with reproaches 
 refuses to agree to his accusations of Hermione, he insists that 
 they have whispered together, leaned cheek to cheek, kissed 
 ' with inside lip,' stopped ' the career of laughter with a 
 , sigh — a note infallible of breaking honesty.' ' ,Is this nothing ? ' 
 he says : — 
 
THE WmTEffS TALE. 807 
 
 Why then the world, and all that's in 't,. is nothing ; 
 The covering sky is nothing ; Bohemia nothing. 
 
 When Camillo makes question of it, he bids him ' go rot ; ' 
 rather than allow it possible that he should be mistaken, rather 
 than have his belief, his phantom disturbed, he will pronounce 
 the old, honoured, experienced, noble Camillo, who had been as 
 a father confessor to him, to be blihd, deaf, indiscreet, cowardly, 
 dishonourable, time-serving, his well-meaning courtiers to be 
 cold and indifferent, and he will fly into a rage with Antigonus 
 for not believing him. Camillo promises to poison Polixenes, 
 inducing him by this deception to promise that he will continue 
 to be friendly to his guest, and attempt nothing against the 
 honour of Hermione. The weak Leontes' breaks one promise 
 before he has crossed the threshold, the other when Camillo has 
 fled with Polixenes. For now a greater suspicion seizes him, 
 that they are all conspiring against him and aiming at his life^ 
 he now passes sleepless nights, fear still fiu-ther poisons his dis- 
 position, and he tries the queen for her life, not regarding her 
 approaching delivery. What is still worse, this flight has in- 
 creased ten-fold his blind wilfulness; the over-cunning one sighs 
 for 'lesser knowledge;' his keenness has succeeded, and he 
 laments it. Hermione's noble presence makes no alteration in 
 his impressions ; he insists that his child is a bastard : — 
 
 If I mistake 
 In those foundations which I build upon, 
 The centre is not big enough to bear 
 A school-boy's top. 
 
 The qiieen is delivered ; unfortunately the over-hasty Paulina 
 brings the child into the presence of Leontes with angry re- 
 proaches; in his rage at this he wishes to have the child 
 burnt; he then desires Antigonus to expose it. His obstinacy 
 and wilfulness go hand in hand with this hard-heartedness and 
 tyranny; these gross mistakes in judgment are followed by the 
 last and greatest mistakes of his obstinacy. He has sent mes- 
 sengers to the oracle in order to satisfy the incredulity of the 
 people ; for himself he needs no oracle. He will observe right 
 aod justice towards his wife, for he is perfectly satisfied that 
 he is right. The oracle is read in open court, and, contrary to 
 oracular decrees in general, it plainly and clearly testifies to 
 Hermione's innocence. And now his wilfulness goes so far as to 
 tax even the oracle with falsehood. He is immediately over- 
 
808 THIBIl PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 taken by the death of his son,, as the first actual fulfilment of 
 the Delphic sentence, and now his obstinacy begins to yield. 
 — — (Shakespeare has given Leontes a wife and a monitress who 
 are both better fitted to guide him to the false origin of his 
 delusion than Desdemona and Emilia were with respect to 
 Othello. Hermione is soft as ' childhood and grace ; ' she is 
 also full of dignity and majesty. She unites to Desdemona's 
 goodness a discretion, thoughtfulness, and eloquence which the 
 other did not possess. Desdemona consented unreflectingly to 
 a secret marriage wi'th the Moor, to whom she had offered her- 
 self; Hermione, on the legitimate proposal of Leontes, .had 
 
 required^3^emOT^^£,^gg^gjatofei^g;j^^ 
 irtrfSr^^rt^^^ reflection, this resoKSSSIIerreflection, 
 tKiTstrong feeling of honour and duty, and the consciousness of 
 moral nobility, penetrate the whole character of Hermione, arid 
 render it a strong contrast to Desdemona's. WTirn nhr brrrniiinir" 
 
 a3Ee.oLife^''§W^Ei?3Sa„.^.iS^fel^^^ lik^ Desde- 
 
 mona, utter in her confusion things that may seem to criminate 
 herself; her husband shrinks from uttering the word that 
 would brand her whole life and chara,9ter-; but she does not, 
 like Desdemona, shrink from it, because she is too conscious of 
 her purity to fear that she could stain herself by it ; notwith- 
 standing her mental agitation, her answers are calm, even 
 proud ; she is sorrowfully firm in her resignation. She, like 
 Desdemona, keeps back her tears, but not like her from surprise 
 and offence ; tHey are contrary to her pious, resigned character, 
 which makes her look upon this unexpected occurrence as sent 
 for her good. She even bids her women spare their tears until 
 they find she has deserved her imprisonment. To speak before 
 the court of justice as Hermione did would have been hard for 
 Desdemona ; it was not her way to look her situation in the 
 face ; frightful presentiments arise in the depths of her soul, 
 but she banishes them from her thoughts. Hermione, on the 
 contrary, prepares for the worst, reconciles herself to the idea of 
 losing her life, which, like her sorrow after the experience she has 
 just had^ she esteems but lightly ; yet she, the Russian emperor's 
 daughter, defends her honour with persuasive eloquence, lest 
 her disgrace should descend upon her child. This outward 
 honour would have been the last thing the sensitive Desdemona 
 would have thought about ; she had enjoyed too early and too 
 bright a happiness, and she could not calmly have resigned both 
 happiness and life. But then she had not witnessed the exposure 
 
THE WINTER'S TALK 809 
 
 of her child ; she had not had time to reflect on the lost love of 
 her husband ; she had not been separated, as one infected, 
 from her other child, and robbed of all regard. This had 
 roused in Hermione the self-respect belonging to a woman, to 
 the daughtej^ of the emperor, and made her hear the accusation 
 with dignity and magnanimity, and submit with patience to 
 her fate. This calm and noble bearing, which would have shaken 
 Othello in his delusion, made no impression upon her husband. 
 ~~~~6n the contrary, the violent reproaches with which Paulina 
 on the other side overwhelms him make a bad impression on 
 Leontes. Nothing excites our angej^ more than the obstinate 
 delusion of a reasonable creature, the wilful blindness of caprice. 
 Hence the propriety of Kent's outburst before Lear, of Emilia 
 against Othello, of this Paulina against Leontes. They express 
 our own feelings. This wife of Antigonus is a masculine 
 woman, who sometimes snatches the reins out of the hands of 
 her husband, who lets her run on because he knows she will not 
 stumble. Her warnings and reproaches to the king and his 
 silent courtiers are not amiable, when she advises them, as they 
 value their eyes, to lay no hands upon her ; yet what she says 
 to him is true, that she is ' as honest as he is mad.' She is 
 harsh and blunt in speech, but brave in action ; we like her 
 from the moment that she uses all the privileges of her sex fof 
 her noble mistress, risks all favour, and despises all danger. 
 She may, however, justly be blamed for stirring up the king by 
 her rage to murder his child, which her husband, Antigonus, in 
 his weakness, swears to expose ; through this she loses her hus- 
 band, and he loses his life. When the queen has fainted on 
 hearing the news of Mamillius' death, Paulina intentionally 
 drives the king to despair, in the extremest outburst of her 
 anger, by the announcement of her death. This is the moment 
 when the tragedy is finished, and when the first ray gleams out 
 of the darkness, promising the dawn of a better fate. In this 
 change from tragedy to comedy there is a transition, a blending 
 in the poetic colouring, as if the poet had studied the painter's art. 
 The moment that Leontes, with the reckless obstinacy of a 
 truly tragic character, pours contempt upon the oracle, this 
 nature changes in him suddenly, and turns to its opposite. In 
 the disposition of his head and heart, this character combined 
 excitability and exaggeration with weakness, and this made 
 the revolution in his nature possible. When at the highest 
 pitch of his fury he commands that the child should be 
 
810 THIEB FEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 burnt, and then, yielding to the entreaties of those around him, 
 allows it to be only exposed to perish, his over-excited rage 
 gives way ; he feels this to be the case himself when he says : — 
 
 I am a feather for each wind that blows. 
 
 The first stroke, which confirms the truth of the oracle, shakes 
 him in a moment ; he quickly repents of the blasphemy ; he 
 rapidly glances at all the circumstances as they are ; Camillo 
 comes out cleared from his suspicions; he confesses in open 
 court his attempt on the life of Polixenes, and when Paulina 
 declares him to be a tyrant forsaken by the gods, and given up 
 to despair, he does not think she speaks too strongly. He is 
 reconciled afterwards with Polixenes ; he recalls .Camillo ; once 
 a day he will visit the grave of his wife, and shed tears there 
 ' so long as nature will bear up with the exercise.' At first he 
 felt that his fancied conjugal disgrace would bring him to his 
 grave, but soon after he made a characteristic remark, which 
 proved he did not belong to those tragic natures easily broken 
 
 down by misfortunes : — 
 
 . Should all despair 
 That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind 
 Would hang themselves. 
 
 He found, however, in the very universality of the evil, comfort 
 to keep him from despair. He retains this tough nature after 
 the death of his wife and son, and under the decree of the 
 oracle, which deprived him of all hope of heirs. Camillo 
 declared of him, at a later period, that ' no sorrow ever lived 
 so long ' as that of Leontes, ' it would have killed itself sooner;' 
 but in this self-tormenting nature, sorrow maintains itself as 
 life does. Paulina keeps alive his repentance, and induces him 
 to remain unmarried, helping him later to overcome a transient 
 temptation when Perdita reminds him of Hermione. Paulina, 
 too, whose tragic vein displays itself in the vehemence with 
 which she stirs up the dangerous humour of the king, changes 
 at the same moment that the king does. When he is cut to the 
 heart by her fierce invectives, she suddenly perceives that she 
 ' has shown too much the rashness of a woman.' With this 
 confession she leaves it off. She looks upon herself henceforth 
 as a priestess, as the fulfiUer of the oracular decree. Hermione 
 is saved ; Paulina only feigns that she is dead ; the queen has 
 the pious resignation, which we have already observed to be a 
 fundamental principle in her, to keep apart from her husband 
 
THE WINTERS TALE. 811 
 
 for sixteen years, that there might be no temptation to 
 challenge the fate which denied an heir to Leontes, until the 
 child, which he exposed to perish, were found again. This renun- 
 ciation in all three — in Leontes, Hermione, and Paulina — dis- 
 arms the anger of the gods, and keeps alive the hope of the 
 child's recovery. ^ 
 
 While thus among the chief personages, at the moment of 
 the catastrophe, the poet has intermingled with the tragic 
 element a happier disposition of things, which suddenly scatters 
 the gathering storm , of fate, he has also represented this 
 same change in outward circumstances and in the character of 
 the events in the last scene ,of the third act, which comprises the 
 close of the tragedy and the commencement of the comedy. 
 The scene changes from the halls of the royal city, stained with 
 deeds offensive to the gods, to the sea-shore of Bohemia. Anti- 
 gonus, a contrast to Camillo, executes the cruel command of 
 the king. He does what he never should have done, in obe- 
 dience to the oath which . he never should have sworn, when 
 dreams have made the hitherto sensible man superstitious and 
 suspicious concerning Hermione, a suspicion which would 
 never have reached his Paulina, even in a dream. He lays 
 down the little lost one (Perdita) in the wild place as a storm 
 is coming on, and for this act he and all his instruments perish. 
 While Antigonus is slain by a bear, and his ship wrecked in 
 the storm, the babe, rocked to sleep by the tempest, is found, 
 as the storm dies away, by the honest shepherd who is to bring 
 her up ; the grave tragic personages, who were the sole actors 
 in the first part, wherein scarce a jest or a pun is to be found, 
 are now exchanged for idyllic, innocent, merry beings, who 
 predominate in the second part. Here, where the good and bad 
 incidents meet, the tone of the story changes : with better deeds 
 comes better fortune. The two shepherds in their simplicity 
 say to each other : — 
 
 Thoumeet'st with things dying ; I with things new born ; 
 
 and at the close : — 
 
 'T is a luclfy day ; and we'll do good deeds on't. 
 
 We pass over a period of sixteen years, and find Perdita 
 grown up. How changed the scene is ! A sheep-shearing, 
 with shepherds, guests of high and low degree, princes and 
 patrons; a fair, a dance of shepherds, songs, flowers, and 
 
812 THIBD PERIOD OF SHAKESPEAEE'.S DEAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 wreaths ; a pleasant autumn day full of life and joy, and then, 
 in the midst of all, an event that threatens another tragedy* 
 But how different are the persons who act in this scene! 
 Perdita is grown up an innocent shepherdess. 
 
 Pure as the fann'd snow, 
 That's bolted by the northern blast twice o'er, 
 
 lovely and gentle, whom all that she wears becomes, who, if 
 she founded sects, would have all mankind her proselytes. 
 The most precious mental qualities unite in her in a rare com- 
 bination. She is modest and retiring, she cares little, although 
 a wealthy shepherd's daughter, for dress and ornaments, and at 
 the feast which they are celebrating she cannot play the hostess 
 without blushing. The unsophisticated child of nature, she 
 cannot endure false colours in men, nor even in flowers. She 
 loves not ■' piedness ' ia flowers, nor even improved trees ; and 
 though she cannot answer the objections which Polixenes 
 raises against this taste, she adheres to it like a woman, and 
 for what Shakespeare calls ' women's reasons.' For herself she 
 has no desire to leave her garden of nature for the artificial 
 world, although the love of Florizel offers her the smiling 
 prospect of it, and although she herself feels that she could 
 adorn her place there as well as here. For all she does 
 ' smacks of something greater ; ' when she has ' most goddess- 
 like pranked up' herself in gay attire like Flora, the royal 
 blood within her stirs, and she feels ' her robe does change her 
 disposition,' and that she speaks more loftily. Yet she does 
 not let her modest mind dwell lightly on this prospect ; her 
 heart forebodes an evil end to their love ; she timidly foresees 
 that his love or her life must end, but, wrapped in the happy 
 present, she looks with calm resignation towards the future. 
 The poet has endowed her with the resigned nature of her 
 mother Hermibne, and . the strength with which this resigna- 
 tion arms her will prove itself in the hour of trial. Florizel's 
 good falcon, an ominous bird, had led him first to her father's 
 ground. He, on his side, has inherited from his father a mode 
 of thought which the king once declared, when he was in Sicily, 
 but had forgotten in his old age, that to be 
 
 Clerklike, experienced, no less adorns 
 ■ Our gentry, than our parents' noble names, 
 In whose Succession we are gentle. 
 
 He wooes the shepherd's child with purest intentions, swears to 
 her a faithful oath that- he will abandon power, knowledge. 
 
THE WINTERS TALE. 813 
 
 beauty, even his inheritance, to helong to her; and he, too, 
 proves how sacred he esteems his oath. Here, then, lies the 
 delicate point that unites the second part of the Winter's Tale 
 with the first. Here is a love incompatible from a parental 
 and conventional point of view, as in the first part there was a 
 suspected love inadmissible on conjugal and moral grounds. 
 Polixenes does not condemn, like Leontes, blindly and inconsi- 
 derately ; he goes and convinces himself, and tries the intentions 
 of the delinquents. He finds them blameless — ^the maiden 
 even bewitching, only that the son fails somewhat in respect of 
 filial piety in spite of the thrice repeated well-meant warning 
 of his father. Hereupon the father, like Leontes, is over-hasty 
 in his rage. He will not endure the sight of his son ; he 
 threatens the lives of the shepherd and his daughter ; he recalls 
 the sentence, but holds them responsible for the breaking off of 
 the connection, and by this constrains them to flee. The slight 
 reference and resemblance to the previous action is evident here 
 also, Leontes had sinned against Plorizel's father; there- 
 fore Heaven left him without an heir. Polixenes threatens 
 to sin against Leontes' daughter, and therefore Heaven 
 threatens that he shall likewise lose his heir. And this 
 through the virtue of the children, which procures a better fate 
 for all. The most extraordinary features of character are here 
 indicated by a few strokes. Perdita, convinced from the first 
 that there could not be a happy ending to her love, was not 
 much shocked by the burst of rage in the father at first So 
 friendly ; her self-respect is touched : — 
 
 Once or twice 
 She was about to speak, and tell him plainly, 
 The self-same sun, that shines upon his court, 
 Hides not his visage from the cottage, 
 
 but she refrained, for, being now awakened from this dream of 
 hers, she'll ' queen it no inch further, but milk her ewes and 
 weep.' These traits show us how admirably Shakespeare has 
 bestowed on the kingly shepherdess-daughter, not the external 
 manners of rank belonging to her mother, but her mother's 
 nature. Proud and self-respecting like her, she is called upon 
 to defend herself publicly ; she has the same desire to speak, 
 but nob the same cultivated gift of eloquence ; and closely 
 united with her self-respect, she has, like Hermione, a power of 
 self-denial and pious resignation to fate. She has also th^ 
 
814 THIEB FEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DEAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 same power of bearing misfortune with firmness. Florizel will 
 not give her up. He is driven to the most desperate resolves, 
 ready to be with Perdita — 
 
 the slaves of chance, and flies ; 
 
 Of every wind that blows ; 
 
 for he calls this despair honesty. Camillo, the medicine of 
 both houses, preserver of both parents and children (whose 
 union with the other preserver, Paulina, has therefore a suit- 
 able sense, notwithstanding her age, which is unsuitable for 
 marriage), Camillo turns him aside from this despondency into 
 ' a course more promising,' and induces him to go to Sicily. 
 Otherwise he predicts the alteration of their love by affliction. 
 This Perdita quickly contradicts : — 
 
 Affliction may subdue the cheek, 
 But not take in the mind, 
 
 Camillo is astonished at the remark, but Florizel bears testi- 
 mqny to it, and then Camillo, with admiration, says that ' she 
 seems a mistress to most that teach.' Then appears her exqui- 
 site modesty, which even sorrow could not change, as she 
 answers : — 
 
 Your pardon, sir, for this ; 
 I'll blush you thanks. 
 
 We see at once that these are not the colours and scenes, 
 the personages and circumstances, of tragedy. But the instru- 
 ments which fate employs to unfold the hitherto complicated 
 plot display the comic character more distinctly still. The 
 shepherds, father and son, speak for themselves; Autolycus, 
 who by his tricks brings both these persons, together with their 
 secret, on board the vessel which is escaping, becomes thereby 
 the cause of the happy ending ; he is (the gods being propi- 
 tious) the comic representative of fate, as Antigonus in the 
 first part was the tragic. According to his name a son of 
 Mercury, a pick-pocket like him, the very pattern of rogues, 
 like the hero of a Spanish Picaro romance, he is an entirely 
 new character in the whole range of Shakespeare's personages. 
 Driven about among mankind in all directions by fate, he at 
 one time served Prince Florizel; then, whipped out of the court, 
 he became ' ape bearer,' bailiff, strolling player ; then he mar- 
 ried a tinker's wife ; now he is a pedlar, of the best humour, of 
 great impertinence, one who knows men well, a denier of the 
 
THE WMTEB'S TALE. ' 815 
 
 life to come, with an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, 
 accustomed to play all parts, and therefore one of those master- 
 themes for the actor which Shakespeare so loved to delineate. 
 Hardened as he is in knavery, he retained his adherence to 
 Florizel. Influenced by this, and by a spice of knavery towards 
 the king, he conceals the prince's flight ; he then brings the 
 shepherds on board, that they may not obstruct his escape. 
 The rest of his tricks, by favour of the propitious stars, turns 
 out for the best ; he does 'good against his will.' The mistaken 
 honesty of Antigonus had led him to death ; the deceit of 
 Autolycus conducts the complicated destinies of both the royal 
 houses to a happy development, and the cheat himself to a 
 fortunate end. The gallows were his due, but, as everything 
 turns out well and happily, his fate is a better one than he 
 deserves. 
 
 Shakespeare has written little that can compare with the 
 fourth act of the Winter's Tale for variety, liveliness, and 
 beauty. But the fifth act rises still higher in the magic scene 
 of the re- animation of Hermione, and the description of the 
 ■ recognition that precedes it. The poet has wisely placed this 
 event behind the scenes, otherwise the play would have been 
 too full of powerful scenes. ' The dignity of this act,' it is said, 
 ' was worth the audience of kings and princes ; but the actors 
 too, who should play these scenes worthily, ought to be kings.' 
 The mere relation of this meeting is in itself a rare master- 
 piece of prose description. 
 
 To those who read these two last plays, the Winter's Tale 
 and the Tempest, in succession, it must appear incontestable 
 that Shakespeare in the free handling of this tale, as is dis- 
 tinctly intimated in the prologue to the fourth act, which we 
 have already quoted, wished purposely to brave the narrow- 
 minded upholders of the unities of time and place. It was, 
 therefore, undoubtedly on purpose also that he elaborated 
 these two plays contemporaneously; for in the Tempest he 
 observed the unities with even greater strictness than they are 
 preserved in the classic tragedies. The scene lies throughout 
 in front of Prospero's cell or in its immediate vicinity ; the 
 time is Hmited to three or four hours. As in the Winter's Tale 
 the character of the tale is three times put prominently forward, 
 so in the Tempest this period is three times forcibly enunciated, 
 and Steevens thought it very probable th^t Shakespeare wished 
 to prove once for all that even the unities were no difiSculty to 
 
816 THISD PEEIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S DBAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 him. And he showed this in a piece of an entirely romantic 
 cast, as rich in wonders as the Winter's Tale. But in the very 
 plays where Shakespeare observed this regularity, or approached 
 it, the unnatural efifect of it becomes most striking. This has 
 been already remarked by others in the Tempest. The un- 
 natural hm-rying on of the action is, immediately observable 
 when the poet does not allow us to have the power of imagining 
 a more lengthened period, such as the nature of the incidents 
 may require. Time is wanting for the change of feelings which 
 Miranda must experience, if we circumscribe their beginning 
 and ending within the limits of three hours. This is mUch 
 more evident when we examine other plays from this point of 
 view. If, for example, we strike out one or two speeches in the 
 last four acts of Othello, we may limit the progress of Othello's 
 jealousy, and the events connected with it, to two days and 
 nights. But how unnatural would it be that a passion of such 
 strength' and greatness should arise, grow, and end in twenty^- 
 four hours ! Such a procrustean treatment of the action might 
 well appear to Shakespeare a deadly sin against poetry ; he did 
 not consider the lengthening of the time a fault, because it was 
 a necessity, to which the rule of unity only illusively gave way. 
 How little he cared for the illusion in this respect he has shown, 
 not in Othello, but in a great many of his other plays, most 
 markedly. In spite of an apparently connected and short 
 period in the action, he has very often freely scattered indica- 
 tions (as in Othello the hints about the correspondence between 
 lago and Boderigo) by which the action, though it passes 
 quickly before the eye, is extended for the ear and for the 
 imagination to the time which it would naturally require. He 
 has introduced a greater depth of time behind the narrow 
 dramatic foreground, so that, like space in perspective, time 
 here extends to the background according to the requirements 
 of the action. These, are not the only means to which the 
 genius of Shakespeare has resorted in order to give his scenic 
 representations the utmost possible fulness compatible with the 
 narrow space allotted to the drama. He tried by expedients of 
 another kind also to attain this same end ; and among them, 
 some not less strikingly opposed to other rules of prosaic reason 
 than the above. To give only one instance. It often happens 
 that the scenes represented on the stage, and the description of 
 them given in words and speeches afterwards, do not entirely 
 agree ; a contrast to the epos, where they generally correspond 
 
THE WINTERS TALE. 817 
 
 word for word. The most striking example of this is in Cym- 
 beline, where lachimo relates his wager with Posthtimus with 
 circumstances quite different to the scenic representation of it. 
 It would be foolish to say these discrepancies of time and 
 matter were inadvertencies ; the player who acted the character 
 of lachimo must have remarked the variation, and it is not to 
 be supposed that he would have failed to point it out to the 
 poet composing for him, who nevertheless would hot have 
 altered it. For these variations are of the greatest use to the 
 poet, limited as he is in time and place, because they enable 
 him to complete what has been seen by what is heard ; as in 
 Cymbeline we gain a better insight into the circumstances 
 which made this singular wager possible. 
 
 3a 
 
HENRY VIII. 
 
 In the series of Shakespeare's later works we have met with 
 several observations which seem to betray to us that there were 
 moments in his later years when his mental interest in his own 
 writings declined, perhaps in consequence of physical debility. 
 The unrefreshing chatacter of the ethical subjects of some of 
 the dramas of this latter period, the tardy revision of such a 
 worthless play as Pericles, the aesthetic defects in Antony, the 
 unfinished form of Timon, the mistake as to material and aim 
 in Troilus, all this might indeed prepare us for the time when 
 the poet, having so early discontinued his activity as an actor, 
 would also renounce his vocation as a poet. It has been lately 
 conjectured that we may lay hold, as it were, of this very 
 moment in the production of the historical play of Henry "V'lII., 
 in which Shakespeare, it is supposed, at the very close of his 
 dramatic career, left his old companions a mere sketch to be 
 carried out in the dramatic celebration of a court festivity, an 
 end which this same historical play must have served even in 
 the last century. The drama, overloaded with pomp and show, 
 is a masque written for some occasion, like the Tempest and 
 the Midsummer Night's Dream, It was formerly believed to 
 have originated on the occasion of the coronation of King 
 James and his Queen Anne (July 24, 4603). The latter opinion 
 to which we refer (' Grentleman's Magazine' 34, ]15 ef seq.) 
 supposes that the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth (February, 
 1612) was the cause which may have induced Burbadge's com- 
 pany to obtain Shakespeare's groundwork for the play, which 
 they elaborated into this masque, a form for which the poet 
 himself would hardly have designed his historical drama. If 
 the play really came from Shakespeare's hand at this period of 
 his closing dramatic career, it would be a strange sport of 
 fate that this last of his productions should soon, like a sad and 
 
HENSY Vm. 819 
 
 farewell celebration of this event, cause a tragic holocaust. 
 When on June 29, 1613 (according to a notice by Sir Henry 
 Wotton), the play was represented by Burbadge's company under 
 the title of ' AU is True,' a title to which the epilogue alludes, 
 the theatre caught fire from the discharge of some small cannons, 
 and the Globe, for so many years the scene of the poet's fame, 
 was burnt to the ground. 
 
 A long time ago, Eoderick, in Edward's ' Canons of Criticism,' 
 hesitated at some peculiarities in the versification of Henry 
 VIII., but never since then has the genuineness of the play been 
 doubted, and at the most the prologue and epilogue were all 
 that were denied as the work of the poet's ■ pen. Indeed, the 
 strictly logical design of the four main characters suffered no 
 doubt to arise, as no other poet of the time could have sketched 
 their psychological outline with such sharpness, however much 
 assistance the historical sources (Cavendish's ' Life of Wolsey,' 
 as copied in the chronicles), and two previous dramatic works 
 upon Wolsey by Chettle and his companions, might have 
 afforded. In the first place, in the character of the Duke of 
 Buckingham, we look once again upon the age of the -great 
 armed nobility, with their pretensions and rebellions, which 
 were the soul of the history under the houses of York and 
 Lancaster, although in our present play the physiognomy of the 
 age appears wholly changed, compared to the character of that 
 earlier epoch. The noise of arms has ceased, the prominent 
 personages are men of education, mind, and well- won merit ; 
 the duke himself has kept up with the change of the time ; he 
 is not merely an ambitious man of the sword ; he is learned, 
 wise in council, rich in mind, and a fascinating orator. Never- 
 theless, we see him standing in the midst of a humber of other 
 nobles, partly related to him, Norfolk, Surrey, Abergavenny, 
 who conspire to n^aintain the old authority of the nobles, to 
 whom the greatness of the upgtart Wolsey is a thorn in their 
 eye, who regard it as insufferable that ' a beggar's book out- 
 worths a noble's blood,' that the scarlet robe should assume the 
 importance of their rank, and that difference in persons should 
 be at an end. In proud passion, in the restless_ haste of per- 
 sonal contempt, Buckingham seeks to lay a snare for the 
 cardinal, and falls himself into the net. He imputed to the 
 priest grasping and treasonous plans ; he pried too artfully 
 and overshot his mark ; but he himself was not unversed in 
 bold, ambitious projects, which his clever adversary knew how 
 
 3 a 2 
 
820 miRD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEABE' 8 SSAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 to turn against him as crimes. He was the next heir to the 
 throne in the Beaufort branch of the Lancastrian house if the 
 king died without issue. As the son of that Buckingham who 
 assisted Kichard III. to the throne, and afterwards rebelled 
 against him, he delighted in these remembrances of the history 
 of his house ; he plays wantonly with his aspiring thoughts, 
 and speculates upon the lack of a male heir, which caused 
 Henry so much doubt and jealousy ; he gains the love of the 
 commonalty, he listens readily to the prophecies of silly 
 prophets, who flatter his dreams of greatness ; he expresses 
 himself imprudently once when threatened with imprisonment : — 
 
 If I for this had been committed, 
 
 As, to the Tower, I thought — I would have played 
 
 The part my father meant to act upon 
 
 The usurper Richard ; who, being at Salisbury, 
 
 Made suit to come in his presence ; which if granted, 
 
 As he made semblance of his duty, would 
 
 Have put his knife into him. 
 
 This is stated by his surveyor, bribed by Wolsey, and it brings 
 the man to the scaffold, who erred rather from foolish indis- 
 cretion than from actual criminal intentions. When he is 
 fallen, he collects himsejf after his sentence ; he dies composed 
 and noble, forgiving, without hatred, already ' half in heaven,' 
 completely devoid of all pride of rank in that moment 
 which so impressively calls to remembrance the vanity of such 
 distinctions. 
 
 In contrast to him stands Wolsey, who, born in a lower 
 rank, had by his own mental power raised himself to the 
 highest positions in the church and state, to the place nearest 
 the king and the Pope. King Henry had indeed inherited his 
 love for this man from his father ; he regarded him as one who 
 could not err, and for such a one the cardinal knew how to 
 make himself pass ; he overloa,ded him with benefits and 
 advantages, raised him to the first dignity in the kingdom, and 
 permitted him proudly and imperiously to overlook the highest 
 nobility of the land. Fortune, favour, and merit combined to 
 raise the immoderate ambition of this ' great child of honour,f 
 to advance his pride beyond measure, to quench in him every 
 appearance of restraint and humility, to feed his covetousness 
 and love of pomp, and to spread around him royal splendour. 
 Ambition urges him to strive after ever greater dignities, 
 and greater positions again stir up his ambition into a brighter 
 
HENBY Vin. 821 
 
 flame. The means to his ends become indifferent to him ; he 
 has never known truth ; dissimulation is his slave, behind 
 whiph he conceals the malice of his heart ; munificence without 
 bounds, advancement and favour, chain his servants inviolably 
 to him ; bribery gains over to him the confidants of his 
 enemies, whom he pursues with all the cunning of revenge. 
 Half fox, half wolf, he swallows greedily the treasures of the 
 land, oppresses the commons with enormous taxes, and, when 
 the people rebel, he assumes the appearance of having himself 
 diminished them. With cold arrogance he disregards the 
 blame urged against him^ on this occasion, and treats it as the 
 envious rancour of the weak and the malicious, who cannot 
 measure his merits. He makes a systematic opposition against 
 the nobles. No peer is uninjured by him; he ruins the class 
 in the mass, when by arbitrary designation of the persons who 
 are to accompany the king to the festive meeting with the King 
 of France, "and by the immense splendour which they were to 
 display there, he consumes the fortunes of many families. And 
 when the powerful Buckingham is aimed at, he surrounds him 
 with spies and hirelings, and plans his future fall, while he 
 removes his nearest and most powerful relatives to positions 
 remote from the court. Thus striding with proud head over 
 the highest of the land, he attempts it even with the king. 
 He had become accustomed to rank himself with princes ; 
 his servants were audacious enough to declare that their master 
 would sooner be waited on than any other subject, if not than 
 the king; he made use of the formula '■Ego et rex meus,' 
 when he wrote to foreign courts. To occupy the papal chair, 
 to obtain a rank even superior to his king's, this is the ultimate 
 end of his ambition. He has seized upon the higher ecclesias- 
 tical positions in the land ; he next strives without the king's 
 knowledge to become the papal legate ; it is the Pope himself 
 who stirs up his ambition. To obtain the papacy he impru- 
 dently accumulates upon himself the treasures of the country. 
 For this object he tries to bring his king into alliance with 
 France. He has in vain sought the archbishopric of Toledo 
 from the emperor, he must thus rest on his adversary France. 
 To this end that resplendent feast at the meeting of the two 
 kings must be kept in the vale of Arde, and Buckingham and 
 the opponents to this alHance must be put out of the way. 
 This is not yet the extreme point to which his revenge against 
 the emperor and his wish to unite with France drive him. 
 
822 TmRD PEBIOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S BSAMATIC POETBY. 
 
 He undertakes to ruin the queen herself; she is the emperor's 
 aunt, and his enemy moreover already from her character. 
 She has lived twenty years with the king in the happiest con- 
 cord, but he, taking a wide range as ever, by means of a 
 French ecclesiastic throws out scruples as to the lawfulness of 
 the marriage, and what these cannot effect, the king's 
 sensuality accomplishes. The separation is effected in order 
 that the king, according to the cardinal's intention, may marry 
 the Duchess of Alenpon, the French king's sister. If all these 
 aims had been obtained, if Henry VIII, had' entered into so 
 close a connection with France, if Wolsey had ascended the 
 papal, chair, we may readily believe that he would have played 
 the part towards Henry VIII. which Thomas h Becket in the 
 see of Canterbury acted towards his king, or that under the 
 peaceful influence of this' pov^erful man, who even in his pre- 
 sent position fettered the kingdom by his secret dealings, 
 Catholicism would, have been anew established in England. 
 But the cardinal had estirhated everything except the king's 
 sensual passion. The scruple concerning the legitimacy of his 
 marriage had no sooner been instilled into him, and the pros- 
 pect of a new marriage presented to him, than he quickly cast 
 his eyes on the beautiful Anne Bullen. His conscience now be- 
 came urgent, the cardinal's delay was insupportable to him, 
 the hesitation of _the papal church irritating ; and this is, thus 
 Wolsey subsequently perceives too late, ' theweight that pulled 
 him down.' When having ventured beyond his depth in a sea 
 of glory, when his high-blown pride has broken under him, 
 and he has sunk, he returns to the true value of the man 
 within him ; he acknowledges that too much honour is a heavy 
 burden for a man who aspires to Heaven, and he warns Crom- 
 well of the sin of ambition, by which the angels fell. He casts 
 off at once the burden of the world and of sin, he recovers the 
 strength of his soul in poverty, and true happiness in misery, 
 and in an edifying return to true self-knowledge, which the 
 poet, resting on the testimony of history (Campian, ' Hist, of 
 Ireland ') bestows upon him, according to which this man of 
 duplicity, severity, and malice was never happy but in his fall, 
 he gains more honour in the hour of his death than by all the 
 pomp of his life. 
 
 In the King Henry VIII. the poet had to paint a portrait 
 which must be flattered and must yet; b^ like ; he must not 
 shake the moral respect or excite the kingly jealousy of 
 
BENSY VUI. 823 
 
 James I., and yet he would not be untrue to histoiy, which 
 presented to his view a repulsive despotic character, not even 
 indemnified by the fearful magnitude of the crime of a 
 Eichard III. Shakespeare portrayed him, without misrepre- 
 senting or disguising his cruelty, his sensuality, his eapriee^ Ms 
 semi-refinement united with natural coarseness, but he kept 
 them in the background ; and there is great field for an actor 
 between the vague generality with which this portrait is 
 sketched, and the few features of complete individual pecu- 
 liarity which the poet has admitted ; and indeed the character 
 of Henry VIII., originally played by Lowin,, and from his con- 
 ception of it transmitted through Davenant to Betterton, has 
 ' always been a favourite part for the English actor.. His de- 
 pendence upon flatterers, together with his j,ealous desire tO' rule 
 alone ; the ease with which he is deceived, together- with his 
 resentful bitterness when he. sees himself deluded, and his 
 deceitful dissimulation in suppressing, malice and revenge ; his 
 caprice, together with his impetuosity, his unwieldy clumsy 
 appearance, together with a^ certain mental, refinement ; his 
 lack of feeling, together with isolated traits of good-nature ; 
 his sensuality under the transparent mask, of religion and con- 
 science ; his manner, condescending even to vulgarity ; all these 
 are so many delicate contrasts, in which the player has to hit 
 the fine line of contact. Held in magic fetters by so great a 
 man as Wolsey, surrounded throughout by devoted instruments, 
 and humoured in every wish and every caprice by the most 
 yielding and devoted wife, the king aj^ears as one of the 
 
 princes who 
 
 kiss obedience,. 
 So much they love it, hut to stubborn spirits- 
 They swell, and grow as terrible as storms,. 
 
 and who are implacable when crossed ; he is jealous, even to 
 bloody severity, of every threatened self-exaltation in a Subject, 
 as in Buckingham. He is the slave of his nature, and of all the 
 passion and self-will which belong to it. This is indeed most 
 generally the source of all tyranny ; in Henry VIII. it is at the 
 same time the source of his homely, condescending manner. He 
 does not like to be troubled by any restraint ; a ceremonious 
 company of nobles, if it be more than a game with his brother- 
 in-law, would not please him ; his ostentatious cardinal would 
 be offensive to him, if his assemblies were less worldly ; his 
 companions are for the most part upstarts out of the lower 
 
824 THIRD PEBIOD OF 8HAKE8FEAEE' 8 DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 classes, scholars rather than soldiers, because he was himself 
 trained more in learning than in arms, and was more adroit at 
 a pastoral masque than at a tournament. Throughout, there- 
 fore, the king is peaceful, citiaen-like, and familiar ; he has no 
 hesitation in taking a Cranmer for the godfather of his daughter, 
 all the less so, because it is a mark of disdain towards his dis- 
 tinguished adversaries. For whenever this natural bias for the 
 equalisation of men and the disregard of rank concurs with his 
 provoked self-will and hostile opposition, we observe that the 
 highest authority on earth, the papacy, stands for nothing with 
 him ; when it concerns his blind passion, he regards the love of 
 a blameless wife as little as her royal descent, in order to unite 
 himself to a woman of a lower order. 
 
 The two female characters between whom Henry is placed 
 betray the same masterly manner of dramatic delineation, 
 although one is a mere sketch. Katharine is a touching model 
 of womanly virtue and gentleness, of conjugal devotion and love, 
 and of Christian patience in defenceless suffering. She is sur- 
 rounded by the most virtuous company ; her enemy is compelled 
 to praise in her a ' disposition gentle ' and a ' wisdom o'ertop- 
 ping woman's power.' She has never done evil, which must 
 seek concealment ; she was incapable of calumny and injury. 
 Only when a natural instinct provokes her against an artful 
 intriguer, to whom, while led away by his ambition, virtue is a 
 folly, and when she has to take poor subjects under her pro- 
 tection against oppression, then only does her virtue impart to 
 her a sting, which, however, never transgresses the limits of 
 womanly refinement. She loves her husband 'with that ex- 
 cellence that angels love good men with ; ' almost bigoted in 
 her love, she dreams of no joy beyond his pleasure ; he himself 
 testifies to her that she was never opposed to his wishes, that 
 she was of wife-like government, commanding in obeying ; all 
 his caprices she bore with the most saint-Uke patience. To see 
 herself divorced from him after twenty years o|' happiness is a 
 load of sorrow which only the noblest of women can bear with 
 dignity and resignation ; to descend from the high position of 
 queen is moreover painful to the royal Spaniard. But she is 
 ready to lead a life of seclusion in homely simplicity, and to 
 bless her faithless, cruel husband even to the hour of her death. 
 Her soul had remained beautiful upon the throne, in her out- 
 ward degradation it was more beautiful still ; she goes to the 
 grave reconciled with her true. enemy and destroyer. Johnson' 
 
HENRY VIU. 825 
 
 has ranked her death scene as above any scene in any other 
 poet; so much was he impressed with its profound effect, 
 unaided by romantic contrivance, and apart from all unnatural 
 bursts of poetic lamentation and the ebullitions of stormy 
 sorrow. One womanly weakness the poet (in obedience to 
 history) has imputed to her even to the brink of the grave : 
 even in the hour of death, and after she has indeed seen Heaven 
 open, she clings to the royal honour which belongs to her. 
 The poet indicates in Anne Bullen the counterpart to this 
 weakness. He has portrayed this 'fresh-fish,' the rising 
 •queen, only from a distance, he has rather declared than ex- 
 hibited her beauty, her loveliness, and chastity, her complete- 
 ness in mind and feature ; he does not attempt to enlist us 
 excessively in her favour, when he exhibits her so merry in the 
 society of a Sands ; moreover, all place greater stress upon the 
 blessing which is to descend from her than upon herself. The 
 introductory scene makes us believe that she is as free from 
 ambitious views as she asserts ; her conversation indeed with 
 the court lady convinces us as little as the former that she 
 could not reconcile herself to splendid honours when they were 
 laid upon her. We see her not as queen, but we see her self- 
 love flattered so far that we can well divine that, raised out of 
 her lowly ppsition, she would play the part of queen as well as 
 Katharine did that of a domestic woman. 
 
 No one in this short explanation of the main characters of 
 Henry VIII. will mistake the certain hand of our poet. It is 
 otherwise when we approach closer to the development of the 
 action and attentively consider the poetic diction. The im- 
 pression of the whole becomes then at once strange and unre- 
 freshing ; the mere external threads seem to be lacking which 
 ought to link the actions to each other ; the interest of the 
 feelings becomes strangely divided, it is continually drawn into 
 new directions, and is nowhere satisfied. At first it clings to 
 Buckingham and his designs against Wolsey; but with the 
 second act he leaves the stage; then Wolsey attracts our 
 attention in an increased degree, and he too disappears in the 
 third act ,• in the meanwhile our sympathies are more and more 
 strongly drawn to Katharine, who then likewise leaves the stage 
 in the fourth act ; and after we have been thus shattered 
 through four acts by circumstances of a purely tragic character, 
 the fifth act closes with a merry festivity, for which we are in 
 . nowise prepared, crowning the king's base passion with victory. 
 
826 THIBD PERIOD OF SHAXESFEAEE' S DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 in which we could take no warm interest. In the course of the 
 play, the marriage of the king and Anne BuUen is only casually 
 linked with the person of the cardinal, who seemed outwardly 
 as if he ought to form the connecting central point of the action, 
 and the enmity between Cranmer and Grardiner is not at all 
 related to this ; both circumstances again apparently stand in 
 no relati6n to each other. The birth and christening of Eliza- 
 beth follow at the conclusion as a new by-work, linked to the 
 preceding merely by a natural but not aesthetic sequence, and 
 connected with the character of Cranmer only by the christen- 
 ing spoons which the godfather has to give to the infant. And 
 in this same way, as we stimible at the loose development of the 
 action, we become doubtful also of the poetic diction, as soon 
 as we compare it with any other of Shakespeare's plays. The 
 English critic before quoted perceived only in single scenes 
 (Act I. sc, 1, 2 ; Act ii. sc. 3, 4 ; Act in. sc. 2 ; Act v. sc. 1, 2) 
 that freshness of life and nature, that perfect freedom from all 
 the conventional language of the stage or of books, those con- 
 cise expressions, that bold and rapid turn of thought, that im- 
 patient activity of mind and imagination, which so perceptibly 
 distinguish Shakespeare's language ; and even in these scenes 
 we fancy we can feel a certain gloss of varnish, weakening these 
 peculiarities of Shakespeare's diction ; in the remaining parts, 
 where whole scenes appear as unnecessary stop-gaps, there often 
 prevails a languid expression of shallow conversation, which 
 seems in scarcely one trait to remind of Shakespeare, though all 
 the more frequently of Beaumont's and Fletcher's style of 
 writing. Fletcher's rhythmic nianner is strikingly conspicuous 
 throughout in these very passages of the play ; verses with 
 double endings are much more constant in the whole play than 
 in almost any other of Shakespeare's works ; in the parts that 
 appear genuine they stand in the proportion of two weak to 
 seven strong endings, but in the less genuine the proportion is 
 of one to two, or two to three ; the spondaic double endings, so 
 characteristic of Fletcher's versification, are met with in many 
 passages consecutively. All these peculiarities determined our 
 English critic in the supposition that theplay had been consigned 
 by Shakespeare in a mere sketch to Fletcher, whose influence in 
 the completion of the work would at once explain the want of 
 moral and aesthetic consistency and coherence in the drama. 
 It is striking, and it seems to us of a deciding importance. 
 
HENRY Vm.. 827 
 
 tliat this result of philological inquiry fully accords with the 
 result of the utterly opposite sesthetical test of the unity of idea 
 in this historical play. Formerly, indeed, I believed that the 
 key to the play might be. found in Cranmer's prophetic speech 
 at the christening of Elizabeth, which in broad touches predicts 
 the blessed fruits of the queen's future government : the esta- 
 blishment of peace, the security of Protestantism, and the con- 
 sideration of merit before birth and blood ; and I have thought 
 that the essential idea of the drama might be referred to the 
 glorification of the house of Tudor by an historical abstraction 
 of the main merit and value of the rule of this house, I was 
 induced to admit that the real action, the victory of 
 Protestantismj which the poet had for this aim placed as the 
 central point of his play of Henry VIII., he could not have 
 ventured to represent on the stage in any deep view or detailed 
 treatment ; that this might have compelled ^him (and this 
 history moreover justified) to make the casual outward causes 
 which have had this great result for England the subject of 
 representation in his drama, which in many passages, it seems 
 unintentionally, hints at the experience that great results often 
 arise from the smallest and most unexpected causes. But in 
 this attempt to obtain for the play a unity of idea as its founda- 
 tion, I have not been able to conceal from myself that, even 
 supposing the justice of such an interpretation, the whole play 
 would evaporate into a formal dramatic spiritualising of the 
 subject. The action represented would in this case be only the 
 symbolic precursor to the real aim of the piece, which would 
 not lie in the central point of the play, but in its conclusion, in 
 that prophesying of a period and a condition, lying far behind 
 the present, in which the scene is placed, — in a speech for 
 which, and for the cause of which, few indeed of the facts of the 
 play had prepared in any tangible manner. It seems, therefore, 
 in every way more just simply to confess the lack of dramatic 
 unity and of an ethical focus in the play, and to explain it in 
 the manner of the considerations we have just alleged. 
 
 There are not a few Englishmen who have maintained the 
 co-operation of Shakespeare and Fletcher upon another work 
 
828 TmUD PEBIOB OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRA1)IAT1C POETRY. 
 
 also. We mentioned before a small series of doubtful dramas 
 which were printed partly under Shakespeare's name, and which, 
 in Germany especially, were considered to be youthful works, it 
 not, indeed, masterpieces from our poet's pen. This doubt has 
 been long ago laid aside in England. With regard alone to 
 the ' Two Noble Kinsmen,* which appeared in 1634, under the 
 joint names of Shakespeare and Fletcher, men such as Spalding, 
 Coleridge, Dyce, and Ingleby are of opinion that no incon- 
 siderable part of the play could have been composed by no 
 other than by Shakespeare alone. According to Dyce's (' Works 
 of Beaumont and Fletcher,' 1, Ixxx. et seq.) view of the matter, 
 Shakespeare's share in the play to a certain extent might be 
 readily allowed and yet again wholly denied. Nothing is more 
 probable than that Shakespeare, being in the pay of his 
 theatre, was compelled to appropriate foreign plays for repre- 
 sentation by a remodelling of even a lighter kind than we 
 perceive in Titus and Pericles. Nothing would be more possible 
 than that he may have adapted in this manner (according to 
 Dyce's opinion) an older play of the same purport as that of 
 the ' Two Noble Kinsmen,' which was performed in 1594 at the 
 Newington Theatre, and that subsequently Fletcher, making 
 use of Shakespeare's additions, may have remodelled this same 
 older piece into the form in which it stands in the editions of 
 his works. But that Shakespeare ever could have taken a 
 hearty interest in this subject is to be denied with the^ greatest 
 certainty from one single consideration ; for never have his 
 sound ethics had to do with such conventional points of honour 
 in the style of the dramatic Eomanticists of Spain as those 
 upon which the relation between Palamon and Arcitas, the two 
 noble cousins (the central point of the whole play), tm-ns. And ' 
 grounds just as decisive might readily withhold us from even 
 attempting to divine Shakespeare's outward share in this work, 
 the labour of so many hands. His pen has generally been 
 perceived most distinctly in such scenes as consist essentially 
 in narrative and description ; even Dyce, among the passages 
 which appeared to him to be indisputably Shakespearian, has 
 selected one which is purely descriptive, for the sake of descrip- 
 tion itself;- but in Shakespeare's whole dramas, with scarcely 
 the exception of one single instance, this very manner of de- 
 scription is never and nowhere to be found. We are, therefore, 
 of Staunton's opinion, who is as little inclined to impute to 
 
HENBY Vm. 829 
 
 Shakespeare a share in this as in any other of the plays falsely 
 awarded to him. It seems a settled matter that the great man 
 ■wrote no more for the stage after his return to Stratford in 
 1612. With the Winter's Tale and the Tempest he closed his 
 great career, and buried fathom-deep, like Prospero, his poetic 
 wand. Happy the successor who may one day again dig up 
 this treasure ! 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Now that we have studied Shakespeare's works in succession, 
 and scanned the separate featui-es one by one, it remains for us 
 to take a retrospective view, and to contemplate as a whole the 
 portrait of the poet and his poetry. 
 
 The points of view from which this many-sided poet, his gifts, 
 his character and his art, may be studied are countless ; endless 
 is the material out of which the threads of such a universal ex- 
 amination may be spun. These threads are even immeasurable 
 in extent if we consider alone all the striking things which 
 have been already said by intelligent judges of Shakespeare. 
 In this matter it is difficult to be both new and brief. But the 
 more difficult ,it is, so much the more is it incumbent upon us 
 to limit ourselves to a few well-chosen and profitable points of 
 consideration. 
 
 The points of view from which we intend to make our ob- 
 servations have been already mentioned in the introduction to 
 this work. We there decided that, both from an artistic and a 
 moral point of view, the highest honour that could be conferred 
 upon a poet was the prerogative of Shakespeare. 
 
 Firstly, That in the range of modem dramatic poetry he 
 occupies the place of the revealing genius of this branch of art 
 and of its laws, as Homer does in the history of epic poetry ; 
 and 
 
 Secondly, That, as the rarest judge of men and human 
 affairs, he is a teacher of indisputable authority, and the most 
 worthy to be chosen as a guide through the world and through 
 life. 
 
 These two positions are the basis of the following remarks, 
 and we shall endeavoiu: continually to return to them. 
 
 High as the recognition -of Shakespeare's poetic genius has 
 
HIS SENSE OF BEAUTY. 831 
 
 lately risen, it will yet appear extremely paradoxical to many 
 if by the side of Homer, whose fame has now for nearly 3,000 
 years survived all changes of taste, we rank a poet scarcely 
 known to the races of the Latin tongue, to half the civilised 
 world, concerning whom opinion in the course of three centuries 
 has so greatly changed, and even now is so divided among the 
 English themselves. As in Johnson's time the opinion was 
 held that Shakespeare often did not know his own intention, 
 and that he owed his greatest beauties to mere lucky hits, so 
 in the present day Birch and Courtenay, undeterred by the in- 
 dication of deep contrivance in his dramas, deny all fixed plan 
 in Shakespeare's works, and have even doubted if he ever 
 designedly made his personages speak in accordance with their 
 characters. They have solemnly protested against the worship 
 of his genius, and thought it blasphemy in Coleridge to call 
 him superhuman. Tastelessness, or want of the sense of 
 beauty ; wregularity, or want of a spirit of arrangement ; the 
 reaUstic drawing from nature in his works, or the want of 
 miistic ideality, were formerly and are still the standing ob- 
 jections urged against Shakespeare, as if deficiency in these 
 necessary qualities, without which a real disciple of art cannot 
 be imagined, were a matter of course in a poet, who, as an 
 actor, lived for the multitude and for their vulgar fancies, and 
 wrote in a rude and uncultivated age. We will go over all 
 these points in succession, since, if a defence be not required, 
 an explanation is at least necessary. 
 
 First, as concerns our poet's sense of beauty, we will not 
 deny that we ourselves have found marks of a perverted and 
 uncultivated taste in his indelicacies, in his laboured play upon 
 words, and odd conceits, or in the cutting off of heads and 
 putting out of eyes on the stage, or in his strange anachronisms ; 
 also in the number and style of metaphorical images which 
 characterise Shakespeare's poetical conversations. One general 
 remark in reference to these must precede all other explana- 
 tions. These censures universally refer only to isolated scenes, 
 or to the ' outward parts ' of style and diction, and though we 
 have neither concealed nor excused errors of this kind, yet, 
 looking upon them as exceptions and trifles, we have upon 
 principle not laid more stress upon them than was due with 
 reference to so great a whole. All beauty depends upon 
 symmetry and proportion. An overgrowth, which sucks out the 
 strength of a flowering plant and destroys its shape, may be in 
 
832 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 the oak the harmless sport of exuberance, and even an orna- 
 ment to its. form ; bushes which would be a wilderness in a 
 garden may enhance the beauty of the grander scenes of 
 nature. Irregularity, when isolated and taken out of its place, 
 will always be ugly, while in its proper connection it may add 
 to the charm by variety. Those good men of Polonius' school, 
 who cannot see beyond their beards,-who never get beyond such 
 particular details as 'that is a foolish figure;' 'that's an ill phrase, 
 a vile phrase ; ' ' that's good, this is too long ; ' such as these 
 Hamlet sends ' to the barber's with their beards ' and their art 
 criticisms ; they are out of place with such a poet as Shakespeare. 
 All the experience we have gained warns us against following 
 their steps. The whole history of Shakespearian criticism for 
 the last century 4s nothing but the discovery of the mistakes 
 of those who for a century before thought to have discov-ered the 
 faults of the poet. . If for the next century we would only see 
 Shakespeare acted, instead of reading him alone as we have 
 hitherto done, perhaps all that appeared to us unsuitable would 
 stand forth, if not as beauties of art, yet as truths of nature. 
 For numbers of the etrors of taste in Shakespeare have turned 
 out to be striking touches of character; the aesthetic de- 
 formities imputed to Shakespeare's poetry proved the moral' 
 deformities of certain of his characters, and what had been 
 denounced as a fault was found to be an excellence. 
 
 Thus it is almost everywhere with those obscenities and naive 
 expressions, with that forced wit and those conceits, and that 
 enigmatical depth of speech and expression. In single in- 
 stances among his early works many disfigurements of this 
 kind cannot perhaps be justified. But we must not suffer our- 
 selves to be disgusted with the poet on this account any more 
 than with Homer for the naive epithets at which 'the refined 
 age smiles. To lay aside the exterior garb of the time in 
 speech and manners is beyond any man's power. We know 
 with what coarseness, not long before Shakespeare, the most 
 learned priests entered into controversy, and the greatest man 
 of the age exchanged writings with the English king ! We 
 know that noble ladies of those times far exceeded in inde- 
 cency of language what the poet puts into the mouth of his 
 boldest characters. We know that burlesque wit was then 
 common property and the general taste of society in popular 
 literature. We know that those conceits were naturalised, 
 through the master of Italian art, in the highest court circles 
 
mS SENSE OF BEAVTY. 833 
 
 and among the learned. It is, therefore, wo wonder that in 
 Shakespeare's Italianising period we can collect a number of these 
 strange conceits ; it is rather a wqnder that he was the first to 
 give a shock to this affectation of poetical diction by the use 
 of a healthy popular language ; and this very naturalness of 
 expression has not a little contributed to raise the poetic 
 estimsttion of Shakespeare among the Teutonic nations with 
 their increasing feeling for nature and beauty. It was a 
 wonder that Shakespeare was so soon able so far to rise above 
 the indecencies of his dramatic contemporaries and the bad 
 taste of the Italian court style, that in his works the mean and 
 absurd is never inserted for its own sake, that in his riper 
 plays the freedoms and follies of language are confined to the 
 tongues and circumstances to which they are natural. It is 
 only a certain class of women in whom he permits great 
 freedom of speech, and Johnson never said anything more 
 Tmtrue than that ' neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have 
 much delicacy, nor are sufiiciently distinguishable from his 
 clowns by any appearance of refined manners.' It is only a 
 certain class of men who indulge in witticisms and puns ; and 
 if it has been said of the poet, that a quibble was a will o' the 
 wisp, which always led him into the marsh, it is true of his 
 witlings, but not of himself, nor of any of those who with him 
 •call those people fools who 'defy the matter for a tricksy 
 word.' No indelicate expressions, no trifling witticisms, can be 
 pointed out in Antonio and Posthumus, Brutus and Cassius, 
 Coriolanus and Othello, or any of his earnest and active heroes ; 
 the witty among them condescend sometimes to the wanton 
 conversation of their more daring friends, others are so inac- 
 cessible to it that even a third person dare not attempt it in 
 their presence. And just so the conceits, the obscurities, and 
 extravagances of language are always in characteristic places. 
 Where confused thoughts oppose, cross, and perplex each other, 
 it is because the thinking powers of the speaker are them- 
 selves lame or dull; where the meaning struggles for 
 expression, it is because the speaker hovers over the abyss of 
 mental excitement, in which the plummet of reason can 
 find no firm ground ; where the verse is heavy and the figure 
 grand, the sense will be weighty, and rarely is it that, as 
 in the descriptive poems, great words are wasted on small 
 thoughts, deep thought on shallow subjects, swelling figures on 
 mean things, or that the harmony between matter and expres- 
 
 3 II 
 
834 SHAKMSPEAE'e. 
 
 sion is injured. The accomplished actor ■would be able to avail 
 himself of all these peculiarities of manner, for the purposes of 
 characterisation, to a much greater extent than would be 
 thought possible by the reader ; we can only suggest this mode 
 of consideration ; to carry it out in detail would be the task 
 of an intelligent commentator, and it is essentially the task 
 of the actor. This way of accounting for these peculiarities 
 must be the apology for them, even when they are, in them- 
 selves, repulsive to taste ; for where the choice lies between 
 taste and truth, Homer would not have hesitated any more than 
 Shakespeare. Those, however, who from a childish nicety 
 would find fault with the truth of nature, the poet would have 
 set to rights as Bacon did the fastidious persons who turned 
 away from what was naked and ugly in natural science: 
 testifying that the sun of art shines on the cloaca as well as the 
 palace without being soiled by it, that what is worthy of ex- 
 istence may also be worthy of art, and that the stage is not an 
 empty show-place for human pride, but a market for the com- 
 merce of life as it is. 
 
 The few blemishes, belonging to the poetic style of the 
 times, which adhere to Shakespeare, vanish into nothing in the 
 whole healthy body, that arose in its own strength out of this 
 diseased state; "it is the same with those remains of stage cus- 
 toms, which bear witness to the cruel and bloodthirsty mind of 
 the age. We have neither denied nor palliated these harsh 
 passages ; we may wish them away in some places, and must 
 without hesitation omit them on the stage, but we have not 
 been able to conceal from ourselves that it was an advantage to 
 Shakespeare, as it was to Homer, to work for a public of iron 
 nerves. We have shown that this very peculiarity also is made 
 subservient to the poet's art of characterisation, and that such 
 passages are not found in plays that represent peaceful and 
 cheerful circumstances. We refer to the remark that even in 
 this respect Shakespeare far outstepped his contemporaries and 
 his early works, as Groethe and Schiller did theirs ; from Titus 
 Andr,onicus, where he indulged in this practice, to Lear, in 
 which he only used it freely for the grandest ends, what an ad- 
 vance is made ! In our remarks upon Lear we have already 
 attempted to explain that Shakespeare, in this and similar 
 horrible subjects, did not descend to the taste of the people, 
 but that he took hold of his generation by their weakness and 
 strength, and elevated them to the great schemes of his art. 
 If we would take in at a glance his position with respect to 
 
mS SENSE OF BEAUTY. 835 
 
 the audience for which he Wrote, we must compare it with that 
 in which Lope de Vega, a great popular favourite, stood in re- 
 ference to his public, in a similarly flourishing period of the 
 Spanish theatre. There indeed the theatre was a sort of coterie, 
 thoroughly unlike the free competition and artistic rivalry of 
 the more refined London stage. There the theatre of the small 
 new metropolis did not rise above that of a provincial town ; 
 the populace and the women governed the stage, rough artisans 
 settled the applause and the disapprobation, and ruled art as 
 the gallery of the Parliament rules politics. But such was not 
 the public to which the prologue in Henry VIIL appeals ; such 
 a public he despised, and chastised with hard strokes. Lope de 
 Vega, on the contrary, was an orator for such hearers; he 
 imputed it to this very tribunal that he had returned to the 
 rude fashion of magic pieces, and to barbarisms, which he 
 himself caljed monsters ; he confessed that he had written in 
 contempt of the classics and of reason. But never would 
 Shakespeare have made such a confession : he lived for the 
 patrons of art of his acquaintance ; he wrote for great actors ; 
 emulating nature he grasped the loftiest conceptions of art, and 
 promised to his verse immortality and future fame. 
 
 Among Shakespeare's faults of taste have been placed also 
 his mistakes in the delineation of different ages. Even here 
 he is judged by isolated instances. It is true he has put the 
 names of Eoman gods in the mouths of the Druids of Britain, 
 and given to the Romans bells ; he has intermixed the features 
 of the heroic and feudal ages, and described battles with 
 cannon in King John's time, because the people desired to see 
 the English army on the stage as it was in their own day. Thus 
 far he conformed to the views of the people. This did not 
 necessarily represent his own view ; he comprehended the re- 
 quirements of dramatic effect, which even Groethe and Schiller 
 durst not disregard. He gave to the times he depicted the 
 features of that actually present, by which alone the matter 
 could reach the heart. But however severely we may criticise 
 these single, errors, none of them can be compared in bad 
 taste with Eaphael making Apollo play the fiddle on Par- 
 nassus, and yet Eaphael is the painter of the finest taste in the 
 world ! But, what is more, these mistakes are never in essen- 
 tials ; Shakespeare has never given to other times and places 
 the intellectual features of his own time, and thereby rendered 
 their nature unrecognisable ; he has never done like Lope and 
 
 3 H 2 
 
836 SHAKESPEABE. 
 
 Calderon, who modernised all past times aiifl made every people 
 Spanish; he has never, ilike Corneille and Eacine,. travestied 
 antiquity and the middle ages in their Grallic classicism ; he 
 has never intrinsically missed the spirit of the time as was done 
 by that master of historic , accommodation, our own Goethe, in 
 the Achilleis. On the contrary, there was first manifested in 
 this first of the pure Teutonic , poets of modern times that 
 many-sidedness and susceptibility which are peculiar fco the 
 Crerman race, and that objectivity which in apprehending times 
 and subjects artistically always yields them their rights ; a gift 
 which Handel, at a later period, in his oratorios, was again the 
 first to preserve, and which descended from him into our poetry, 
 through Klopstock, Herder, and Goethe. In his English and 
 Eoman, his mediaeval and heroic pieces, Shakespeare has always 
 preserved the intrinsic character of the times, as truly as that 
 of those individuals of his own age and nation whose thoughts 
 he thinks and whose language he speaks. And this is all the 
 more remarkable, the stronger the individualism of the poet, 
 Tvhom we recognise, as we do Handel, in every single passage, 
 and who, nevertheless, in the main entirely disappears before 
 "the subject he is treating. 
 
 Finally, many complaints have been made of Shakespeare's 
 "use of metaphorical images, of their impropriety, their con- 
 fusion, or their excessive accumulation. It may be said the 
 •excuse of the object of characterisation is not applicable here ; 
 they are characteristic of Shakespeare, not of his personages. 
 It is more correct to say that this is the characteristic of all 
 poetry : it is the only means poetry possesses of transforming 
 the thought, the instrument of the understanding, into an 
 image, and of making it the instrument of the imagination. 
 Aristotle has styled metaphor the chief ornament of composi- 
 tion and the unteachable work of poetic genius, and to try 
 the taste of our poet by this test is truly not a demand that 
 need be avoided. We ourselves have mentioned some false 
 metaphors in Shakespeare's early works (in Henry VI.) ;. in 
 his later pieces we should seek for them in vain. The man 
 who expresses himself by the mouth of his Lavatch as so easily 
 affected by every ' stinking metaphor,' need not fear in this 
 respect the finest nose. We have only to prove this by calcu- 
 lating, and we shall find a hundred fragrant flowers of metaphor 
 jfor one scentless flower ; a thousand for one narcotic. The 
 compZicaiiow and joining together of contradictory metaphors 
 
HIS SENSE OF BEAUTY. 837 
 
 has also been found fault with. But the cases will be rare in 
 which Shakespeare has repeated that fault in Hamlet's soliloquy, 
 if it be a fault, where in one sentence he speaks of a sea of 
 troubles against which one takes up arms ; yet even by such 
 disparate images the meaning is not confused, but rather made 
 clearer. For thought and image are usually so completely in 
 harmony and so remarkably interwoven in Shakespeare, that, 
 by dropping the image, the significance of the thought would 
 also be lost. Dryden remarks that by melting many of his 
 metaphors, silver would remain in the crucible ; but we think, 
 on the other hand, the gold would have evaporated. With 
 more plausibility the accumulation of the metaphors might be 
 objected to. No rule is more correct than the old one of 
 Aristotle, that in the use of metaphorical language moderation 
 is to be observed, that there should not be too many enigmas, and 
 that the weight of the single images should not oppress nor 
 destroy the sense of the whole. But the question is here 
 whether we as critics have the greater taste, or Shakespeare as a 
 poet. We are too much accustomed to a low strain of dramatic 
 eloquence by the rhymed prose of the French drama, and even 
 of our greatest Grerman poets. An expression such as that of 
 Goethe's, which we find in Tasso, 'We have nothing with 
 which we may compare it,' would have been regarded by 
 Shakespeare as a declaration of poetic bankruptcy. We cannot 
 agree with Dryden, who, comparing our poet with the simple 
 dialogue of the ancients, thought his compositions savoured too 
 much of the buskin. Among the ancients the buskin in itself, 
 the mask, the heroic characters, the whole matter and its repre- 
 sentation, and the pompous style of the chorus, raised the 
 spectators far above the level of common nature, and if the 
 ground of reality were not to be entirely lost, it was necessary 
 to keep the dialogue as simple as possible. ^ But in Shake- 
 speare^ who had not the old mythic heroes for subjects, who 
 made a law for himself never to forsake actual nature in his 
 subjects and characters — in Shakespeare it was a master-stroke 
 of poetical instinct that he elevated his, style, not indeed to 
 the poetic brilliancy of the ode, but yet above the calm flow of 
 the epos, and that in the choicest language he reminded his 
 hearers every minute that his play represented reality, but was 
 not reality. 
 
 If, however, we would truly make proof of the poet's taste, 
 we' must penetrate through all this exterior, which we may call 
 
838 SHAKESPEAEE. 
 
 the clothing or body of art, to its real soul. Then, even if we 
 cling to single passages, we shall still meet everywhere with a 
 degree of aesthetic and moral refinement, to which, in the more 
 polished times after Shakespeare, but very few poets attained. 
 Hear him, as a critic, pronoimce those rules of art in Hamlet, 
 and tell us who could have thought on the subject with more 
 refinement I Consider him as a lyric poet in the three forms 
 he has introduced in Borneo, and show us a piece more spirited 
 and tasteful in this style ! Try his knowledge of human nature 
 in the progress he has made in the estimate of women, and 
 show us one to be compared with him in delicate knowledge of 
 the sex ! Advance from thence to his delineation of the manly 
 character, and count among the most delicately organised, even 
 amongst women, those who could but imitate, or even find out 
 the delicate line of distinction between false and true heroism 
 in Coriolanus ! Try the characters, the actions, the sentences, 
 the whole range of thought in his works ; in this grand code of 
 life, pictures^ and wisdom nothing is trivial, scarcely anything 
 is to be called antiquated in the lapse of these 300 years ; — and 
 endeavour to conceive the purport of this sentence ! -Or trace 
 the peculiar dramatic activity of his mind. Name to us the 
 poet who approached and managed his sources with such fine 
 feeling as Shakespeare has ! Compare with the painful im- 
 certainty with which Goethe was often conscious . of having 
 mischosen his materials, the bold security with which 
 Shakespeare seizes the most intricate and manages the 
 most intractable matter, the bold security with which he 
 ventured and accomplishes what no other would have b^gun, 
 and elicits beauties out of materials that in other hands would 
 be revolting ! Observe the happy instinct with which, as if he 
 had been schooled by a Lessing, he avoided in his dramas all 
 the descriptive matter with which a Calderon systematically 
 disfigured, his works, whilst the isolated description of Queen 
 Mab makes us immediately sensible how foreign to Shakespeare 
 is this kind of poetic ornament ! Or observe his use of the 
 marvellous, and show us the modern poet who, with such 
 artistic skill as he, clothed such deep symbolism, in such a 
 plastic form ! Whoever has weighed these separate sides will 
 see the folly of supposing that the man who appears so refined 
 in everything great and real should have missed the little and 
 the external like an idiot, and not rather have despised them 
 as a genius ; and he will cast back the reproach of being para- 
 
ma ALLEGED INATTENTION TO RULES. 839 
 
 doxical on the petty critics, who destroy our enjoyment of the 
 poet by their trivial censures. All the objections we have men- 
 tioned vanish however into insignificance when, for the sake of 
 arriving at a right judgment of Shakespeare's taste, we examine 
 the whole structure and organisation of his works of art. On 
 this point, and on the higher question concerning Shakespeare's 
 art-ideal, we must refer the question to his sense of beauty, if 
 we would have it effectually answered. 
 
 One reproach, which affects not single parts alone, but the 
 whole of Shakespeare's art, and which if well-founded would be 
 more dangerous to our parallel between Shakespeare and 
 Homer, is the assumed carelessness of the dramatist to laws 
 and rules. If it be impossible to be a true artist without 
 taste, it is still less possible without attention to laws to be the 
 revealing, i.e., the law-giving genius of any particular province 
 of art, such as we claim Shakespeare to be. 
 
 Our whole consideration of Shakespeare has been designed 
 throughout to prove unity and regularity of art arrangement in 
 the separate plays. We began by asserting that our poet com- 
 plied in a new manner with the artistic demand of the oldest 
 esthetics, that his art agreed perfectly with that essential law 
 of Aristotle, which all ages, and lastly our great Grerman poets 
 in rare harmony, have acknowledged to be ever binding, that it 
 only claims spiritualisation and enlargement of this law, such 
 as is suitable to the changed nature of the times and the 
 materials for poetry. We will now endeavour to collect together 
 the results of this examination, to prove that these have not 
 been vague assertions. 
 
 The most obvious difference between the ancient and the 
 modern drama is its less and greater extension. The poly- 
 mythic dramas of antiquity met with no cultivation : tragedy 
 received its purest form in the hands of the poets, who limited 
 it to one single action, and this again to its main point, th» 
 catastrophe. This manner of proceeding we explained on 
 formal and material grounds. The ancient drama arose beside 
 the perfect Homeric epos ; it would have been difficult to rival 
 this in the richness of extended actions ; the opposite of this 
 action, condensed as much as possible, was therefore aimed at. 
 The materials with which ancient poetry wrought, still further 
 
840 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 required this method. The history of the world was still young- 
 and brief, the heroic myths were soon exhausted ; tragic writers, 
 therefore, were obliged to handle the same materials ; it was 
 impossible for them to please by novelty of subject; their 
 merit lay in perfecting the form; this led to limiting the 
 action to one chief point, and to striving to manifest their art 
 by drawing their utinost from this one dramatic moment. It 
 was thus that ancient tragedy received" its narrow, uniform, 
 stereotyped form. But what still better explains the limitation 
 of the action within these narrow bounds was the great sim- 
 plicity of the men of heroic times, represented in their 
 tragedies, whose nature, more physically strong than spiritually 
 rich, did not require a deep fulness of characterisation. As 
 soon as the sphere of history became enlarged, as soon as a war 
 like the Peloponnesian and the opposition of schools of philo- 
 sophy unfolded the many styles of human character, there arose 
 in the tragedies of Euripides, and still more in the comedies, 
 which took the existing world for their subject, the need of 
 more action, motive, and character, and consequently of greater 
 expansion. 
 
 All this, which caused the simple form of the old drama, 
 turned completely round in modern times, and naturally 
 produced the very opposite effect. Two thousand years lie be- 
 tween Shakespeare and the flourishing period of the ancient 
 tragedy. In this interval Christianity laid open unknown 
 depths of mind ; the Teutonic race in their dispersion filled 
 wide spaces of the earth, the crusades opened the way to the 
 East, later voyages of discovery revealed the West and the 
 whole form of the, globe, new spheres of knowledge presented 
 themselves, whole nations and periods of time arose and passed 
 away, a thousand forms of public and private, of religious and 
 political life had come and gone, the circle of views, ideas, ex- 
 periences, and interests was immensely enlarged, the mind 
 thereby was made deeper and more expanded, wants increased, 
 passions became multiplied and refined, the conflict of humaa 
 endeavours more numerous and intricate, the resources of the 
 mind immeasurable, and all. this in a manner totally foreign to 
 the childish times of antiquity. This abundance of external 
 and internal material streamed into the sphere of art on all 
 sides ; poetry could not resist it without injury and even ruin. 
 The epos of the middle ages strove to seize on this albundance 
 of matter for itself. But it was far from having the advantages 
 
SIS ALLEGED INATTENTION TO RULES. 841 
 
 of the Homeric poem, whose historic ground was the well- 
 known Trojan war, the shattering of a world, but a small and 
 comprehensive one. The epos of the Germans and French on 
 the contrary, being undertaken in uncivilised times, and with 
 immense matter, remained unformed and undeveloped. Poetry 
 first received a more artistic form in Italy, when music, paint- 
 ing, and architecture arose ; at this time the drama was 
 recognised throughout Europe as the poetic form most suitable 
 to modern times and races ; the epos no longer found rhapso- 
 dists and hearers, for amid the more active pursuits of life men 
 required to be attracted to art by stronger allurements. As 
 the drama occupied the ;plaoe of the epic poem, and did not 
 merely, like the ancient drama, stand side by side with it, it 
 inherited, with the office of replacing it, the task of showing 
 itself capable of managing, like the epopee, any matter how- 
 ever extended. The materials presented to it were not common 
 property, like the many well-known myths of antiquity, handed 
 down in a reidy-made poetical form ; but they were those ru- 
 diments of the religious dramas, those mysteries founded on 
 vast actions, those romances and ballads which called forth 
 those epic dramas in the style of Pericles, they were those 
 historical subjects which even before Shakespeare's time de- 
 manded a whole cycle of pieces for the mastering of the huge 
 material. To avoid this mass of material never entered the 
 mind of either Hans Sachs, Lope de Vega, or Marlowe. Each 
 of these in his own way amplified the drama in accordance 
 with his comprehensive matter into more comprehensive forms. 
 The things of the world had become complicated and manifold , 
 the variety of men, their nature, their passions, their situations, 
 their mutually contending powers, would not submit, when 
 dramatically represented, to be limited to a simple catastrophe j 
 a wider horizon must be drawn, the actions must be represented 
 throughout their c6urse, the motives of action must be more 
 deeply searched for ; art received the office of confining the 
 utmost fulness of matter within a corresponding form, the 
 extension of which, according to Aristotle's law, must however 
 not exclude an easy survey. 
 
 The economy of the Greek drama was by no means the only 
 result of the application of Aristotle's law. Aristotle himself 
 was very far from setting up the form and extent of the dramas 
 of his day as a rule for all time. He declared distinctly, that 
 the compass of the drama must be regulated by habit and taste. 
 
842 " SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 It even appears that the shortness of the ancient tragedy was 
 not in his opinion its advantage. He knew well that the rich- 
 ness of episodes gave rather a superiority to the epos, and that 
 it was the fault of the uniform and monotonous structure of 
 the tragedy if it wearied or failed. He, therefore, enjoined for 
 the^ drama, not the compass then in use, but the natural 
 extent prescribed by the action itself. ' The space,' he says, 
 ' in which, in a string of events, the change from fortune to 
 misfortune or the reverse can, by necessity or probability, take 
 place, this space gives the proper limit to the drama.' If in 
 this sentence the practice of modern play-writers receives 
 its justification, still more does it in what follows. ' As 
 concerns the natural limit of the action, the more ex- 
 tended will prove always the more beautiful, so long as 
 it is easily surveyed.' Shakespeare's practice is exactly cor- 
 respondent to this rule. In Antony alone he seems to have 
 transgressed this law of an easy survey. Whoever knows 
 Shakespeare's plays by their performance will make this com- 
 plaint of no other. But with this rule before his eyes, Shake- 
 speare always went to the very verge of these limits. He chose 
 his matter as rich and full as possible, he extended its form ac- 
 cording to its requirements, but no further ; it will never be 
 found in any of his dramas that the thought is exhausted 
 before the end, that there is any superfluous expansion in the 
 form, or any needless abundance in the matter ; it has never 
 yet been shown that even a Schiller or a Goethe could have 
 given his plays a more compressed form without injuring the 
 purport. For the task of arranging the most extensive 
 materials possible in the most extended form, without over- 
 stepping its fair proportions, is one which no one has accom- 
 plished as Shakespeare has done.' Therein lies a great part of 
 his aesthetic greatness. No poet in the same space has repre- 
 sented so much with so little : none has so widely expanded 
 this space -within the given poetical form. In this Shakespeare 
 did not suffer himself to be perplexed by the example of the 
 ancient tragedy. He felt that the peculiar poetic material of 
 the new world would perish in these old forms, and therefore it 
 was better to mould them afresh. He knew with certainty 
 (and no sesthetics will ever get further) that the task of the 
 poet was to represent the very substance of his times, to reflect 
 the age in his poetry, and to give it form and stamp ; he created^ 
 therefore, for the enlarged sphere of life, an enlarged sphere 
 
ms ALLEGED INATTENTION TO EULES. 843 
 
 of art ; he sought for this purpose, not a ready-made rule, but 
 the inner law of the given matter, a spirit in the things, which 
 in the formation of the work of art fashioned itself like a 
 crystal into beautiful shapes. For there is no higher worth in 
 a poetical work than the agreement of the form with the 
 nature of the subject represented, according to its own indwell- 
 ing laws, not according to external rule. If we judge Shake- 
 speare or Homer by the supposition of such a conventional 
 rule, we may equally deny them- taste and law; measured, 
 however, by the higher standard, Shakespeare's conformity 
 to an inner law oustrips all those regular dramatists, who 
 learned from Aristotle, not the spirit of regularity, but me- 
 chanical imitation. 
 
 The most essential law which Aristotle has prescribed to 
 the drama is unity of action. As to the famous unity of time 
 and place, the first is not mentioned at all, the latter only as a 
 custom. Indeed, they are by no means observed throughout the 
 ancient dramas. We know that in Ajax, and in the Eumenides, 
 the place changes, that the limitation of time to one day has 
 been overstepped by Sophocles, by Euripides, and also by 
 ^schylus, whose Agamemnon returns from Troy with tele- 
 graphic speed, But above all it is in the comedies of Aristo- 
 phanes that free play has been made with time and place, not- 
 withstanding the presence of the chorus, which has often been 
 considered the cause of tmity of time and place. Its use in 
 ancient tragedy is rather to be explained simply by the limita- 
 tion of the dramatic action to the catastrophe ; it belongs to 
 the very idea of a catastrophe that it is limited to a definite 
 and short time. The modern drama, on the other hand^ which 
 describes the complete course of the action, could not without a 
 striking departure from nature be limited to one place and to a 
 short time : this must have been made very evident in our 
 closing iremarks on the Winter's. Tale^ Those who require 
 unity of time in the drama must also for the sake of consis- 
 tency require the natural size in painting. But as little as re- 
 ducing the size destroys the illusion in painting, does lengthen- 
 ing the time in the drama,. Even the oldest of critics, such as 
 Gildon, have allowed this,- and Johnson has strongly defended 
 Shakespeare's procedure in this respect. Yet these men were 
 terrified then at their own boldness. They ventured not to 
 take the side of their feelings against their understanding ; they 
 had not moreover the opportunity of comparing and measuring 
 
844 8HAKESFEABE. 
 
 the worth of the irregular plays of Shakespeare, and that of the 
 curtailed dramas of the French Aristotelian school, by thei/r 
 effect and fate in the history of literature : the one appearing as 
 show-pieces for the moment, but the others receiving an histo- 
 rical development, which seems to be rather at its beginning* 
 than at its end. For us, who in the present day can take a wider 
 survey of this, the question of place and time is wholly obsolete.' 
 The unity of action, on the other hand, is an ever-binding 
 law. The action of a drama, according to Aristotle, should be 
 one and undivided, so that none of its parts could be transposed 
 or omitted without injuring or destroying the whole ; for that 
 which by its presence or absence conduces nothing to the illus- 
 tration of the whole is no (necessary) part of that whole. This 
 law is so natural, that even the commonest stage pieces adhere 
 to it ; their regularity arises out of timid habit, and bears the 
 character of triviality and poverty. Where the drama, in its 
 beginnings especially, attempted more, it has in this respect 
 sinned more.. Numberless pieces of Shakespeare's Spanish and 
 English contemporaries do not stand before this law. In the 
 first part of Shakespeare's Henry VI. we ' pointed out one of 
 those plays, which Aristotle calls episodical, and which he 
 places in the lowest rank ; in Pericles one, where the false 
 unity of person stands in the stead of unity' of action; in the 
 last two parts of Henry VI., plays where unity cannot be 
 reduced to Aristotle's rule. In his riper works, on the contrary, 
 where the action is only one, the whole arrangement is in 
 unity, according to the directions of Aristotle ; we can remove 
 small portions, as in an organic body, without injury, but cannot 
 take away large members without disfiguring the whole. And 
 not in this unity only, but also in the entirety of the action, its 
 progress and management, Shakespeare has hit upon the right 
 method in his practice, as Aristotle, with fortunate judgment, 
 has in his criticism. Aristotle's maxims respecting the compli- 
 cation and extrication of the action are as finely applicable to 
 the richest composition of Shakespeare as to the simplest plays 
 
 ^ We should not have brought forward this question again here, had 
 not the discovery of a law, said to have heen observed by Shakespeare in 
 reference to the unity of time, been announced with great stress in a paper 
 in BlaehwoocCs Magawne, and in an essay by N. J. Halpin on the 
 dramatic unities of Shakespeare. The matter follows entirely the direction 
 of our closing remarks on the Winter's Tale, and we lay no greater weight 
 on it than is laid there. 
 
HIS ALLEGED INATTENTION TO EULES. 845 
 
 of antiquity. Everything that happens within or beyond the 
 tragedy, until the approach of the change of fortune, is compli- 
 cation ; all that comes after this middle point is the solution, 
 the denouement. Among the ancients the catastrophe is the 
 middle point, the chief matter; the conclusion is commonly 
 given in narration, the complicating circumstance lies very 
 much behind the scene. The opposite practice of the modern 
 drama, which places all the antecedents of the action within the 
 play, increases considerably the difficulty of the author's theme, 
 which requires that the line of the action should be drawn, as 
 it were, in the form of a regular arch ; that its rise and fall, its 
 complication and development, should stand in symmetrical 
 proportion ; that the catastrophe, the moment when the change 
 of fortune happens, should be at once the centre and zenith of 
 the action. If we apply this touch-stone, the most delicate 
 scale of taste and regularity, to Shakespeare, and at the same 
 time to the greatest dramatists of later times, we shall see at 
 on'ce how much the regular and cultivated might have learned 
 from the so-called irregular barbarian. In OtheUo the words 
 which express that his happiness is at its height (excellent wretch, 
 •&C., Act III. sc. 3) stand in the exact centre of the piece. In 
 JBamlet the turning point of character coincides with the death 
 of Polonius, which happens in the middle of the piece. In 
 Macbeth the death of Banquo is the turning point of his 
 -fortune, when his fatal 'security' manifests itself; the ghost 
 appears to Macbeth exactly in the middle of the piece. In 
 Lear everything is at its height on the ontbreak of his despair, 
 in the centre of the drama. So in King John, at the murder 
 of Arthur ; in Eichard II., at his despair of himself. At such 
 moments, in these and other plays, even the passages may be 
 - alleged where, as if in order to indicate the very centre of the 
 -piece, the catastrophe is pointed out in express words. Who- 
 ever will follow out the examination of the different plays, in 
 accordance with these suggestions, will find everywhere the cir- 
 cular line of. the action drawn with an enviable certainty, and 
 this observation will perhaps surprise even the most careful reader 
 by revealing hidden beauties and artistic symmetry of design. 
 Nevertheless, we have found, contrary to this law of the 
 unity of action, a number of Shakespeare's plays containing a 
 two-fold action ; so that in them there is either no unity of 
 action, or another law of unity must be found than Aristotle's. 
 "We have already pointed out this other law in individual pieces ; 
 
846 SHAKESFEABE. 
 
 we will in this place, without losing ourselves in sesthetic 
 theories, try to explain why Shakespeare did not so much for- 
 sake as enlarge the Aristotelian law of unity, and why it was 
 necessary either to forsake or enlarge it. 
 
 The danger of the ancient drama was its uniformity ; of that 
 Aristotle was himself conscious. He therefore gave a preference 
 to complicated myths ; he wished that the properties of the 
 different kinds of tragedy, which he instanced (the complicated 
 and the simple, the pathetic and the ethic), should be always 
 combined as much as possible : and in this desire also he wrote 
 the law more for the modem drama than for the ancient. The 
 simple, pathetic, or ethic drama, where, as in Ajax and Philoc- 
 tetes, there is rather the development of a character than of an 
 action, could not please so much as the complicated myth, in 
 which the main ingredients were sudden changes of fortune, 
 recognitions and discoveries, the external complications of 
 events rather than the internall passions and g^ilt of the 
 characters — ingredients which Aristotle considered, therefore, 
 to be integral parts of tragedy. This kind received thereby 
 somewhat of the character of intrigue pieces, in which naturally 
 the chief weight lies upon the action. Hence it is that 
 Aristotle calls the putting together of the action the most im- 
 portant point in tragedy. ' For,' says he, ^ tragedy is not an 
 imitation of men, but of actions and of life, of happiness and 
 misfortune. For even the happiness lies in the actions ; and 
 the aim of tragedy is an action, not a particular condition of 
 men. These receive their particular condition by their charac- 
 ter, but their good fortune, or the reverse, by their actions. 
 They do not, therefore, act to exhibit their characters, but they 
 develop their characters only by their actions. So that action 
 and plot is the aim of tragedy. And the aim is the chief in 
 everything. Without action there could be no tragedy, but 
 without characters there could. And the tragedies of most 
 moderns a/re without characters. The chief thing, therefore, 
 and, as it were, the soul of tragedy, is .the action, the second the 
 characters. It is the same in painting. For if a man pro- 
 duced a daub with the most splendid colouring, he would not 
 please so much as he who drew a picture with only white 
 chalk.' 
 
 These propositions go directly to the root of the difference 
 between the old and the new drama, and penetrate to its inmost 
 foundations. 
 
iff/S ALLEGED INATTENTION TO RULES. 847 
 
 In the wholly different circumstances of civilisation in 
 modem times, we consider the separation of action and cha- 
 racter in life itself as impossible as in art would be the assertion 
 that a tragedy could exist without characters, but not without 
 action. The threads out of which actions are formed, amid the 
 working together of nature and disposition, instinct and senti- 
 ment, unknown impulse and known intention, actions which 
 react upon changes in the actor's modes of thought and feeling, 
 which again call forth other changed actions — these threads, 
 like warp and woof, run so closely into one web, that we cannot 
 say of any one thing, it is the chief, that we cannot take out 
 one part without the rest falling to pieces. Character and 
 action, as in nature, penetrate each other so completely in 
 Shakespeare's art, which is so true to nature, that between the 
 value and importance of both there is in all his plays the 
 closest connection. If the characters are rough, as in the 
 Taming of the Shrew, or superficial, as in the Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, so will the actions be harsh in one instance and 
 marrowless in the other. The deeds in Lear are not more 
 cruel than the characters are wild, the misunderstandings 
 - between Othello and Desdemona not more unhappy than their 
 ignorance of themselves. How little character and action can 
 be separated is best 'proved when we reverse the maxim that 
 tragedy is possible without characters, but not without action ; 
 it is then alike true and false as before. In every dramatic 
 action there must appear a sort of characterisation, however 
 weak ; and again, no character could be dramatically developed 
 ■without action. There may be a disproportion between a lively 
 action and feeble characters which carry it on, or between 
 strongly-drawn characters and a meaner action which takes 
 place amongst them. If we were obliged to choose between 
 the two disproportions, we should undoubtedly, nowadays, 
 choose differently from Aristotle, and, perhaps, the north 
 differently from the south. The comparison Aristotle bor- 
 rowed from painting does not fit the point; the contra- 
 position which he should have chosen is this — whether a suc- 
 cession of characteristic portraits without action would please 
 better than an historical picture, an action without expression 
 in the actors. To apply this to the drama, the question is, 
 which would deserve the preference — a character piece with 
 little action, like Lessing's ' Nathan,' or the best intrigue piece 
 of the Spanish stage without miich distinction in the form of 
 
848 SHAKESPEABE. 
 
 character ? The Teutonic taste would unhesitatingly choose the 
 first. If, then, we were obUged to admit a separation between 
 character and action, we should rather call character the most 
 important to the drama, because it is the source of action. 
 However, we will as little call Aristotle's aesthetic view a 
 mistake, as Shakespeare's opposite practice. There is truth 
 and right judgment on both sides when we take into considera- 
 tion the nature of the times. Among the ancients the descrip- 
 tion of characters was iii fact the least essential. The heroes 
 of old tragedy act without much intellectual impulse, and 
 Tfithout a conscious aim ; they execute flagitious deeds without 
 reflection, and if, after the deed, the Erinnys awakes the 
 conscience, even then there is little consciousness perceptible in 
 them ; a determinate aim and principle of action from innate 
 disposition of mind had no place among those races of man- 
 kind. Hence they could introduce masks on the stage, by 
 means of which one main expression governed >the countenance 
 of the actor, either because it was intended in a grand style of 
 art to prevent the one chief impression from being disturbed 
 by petty passing emotions, ty the light play of passion, or by 
 individual features, or because the inner nature of man did not 
 yet lie so open as that one could know its deeper recesses. We 
 moderns, however, who through long descended tradition and 
 extended intercourse have gradually become cognisant of the 
 great outlines of human nature, are disposed to penetrate into 
 the secret emotions of the heart, and into the more delicate 
 distinctions of character; we spy, therefore, into the hidden 
 play of passion, and desire to search out its expression even in 
 concealment ; we abandon the grand harmonious plastic effect 
 of the old drama, where the form and features of the actor 
 received, by means of mask and buskin, a conformity of style, 
 as it were, with the architecture, and with it made one common 
 impression of typical solidity. This effect, then, we abandon 
 for the sake of surpassing the old drama in psychological fulness 
 and depth, in multiplicity and variety of action and character. 
 With us, among whom intention influences our earliest actions, 
 among whom the natural force of inclination is governed by 
 intellectual cultivation, among whom the machinery is prepared 
 from the first that sets every deed in motion by mental levers, 
 among whom great passions must overcome the pressure of 
 conventionality, among whom the origin of an action is more 
 remarkable than the action itself, and the ongin of a character 
 
HIS ALLEGED INATTENTION TO RULES. 849 
 
 more remarkable than all — with us no one would have 
 ventured to make the catastrophe the chief point of a dramatic 
 action, nor the action itself the chief thing in the drama, but if 
 we must separate them the character must have this place. 
 The origin, the growth of characters and actions, of actions by 
 characters, has therefore become, with Shakespeare, the essential 
 task. Hence with him the character easily appears pre- 
 ponderant over the action. We have found this particularly 
 striking wherever Shakespeare has to handle traditional fictions 
 of the most extravagant kind. 
 
 The ancients possessed those beautiful myths,- which Aris- 
 totle recoinmended them- to respect in their main substance, 
 but they did not adhere to the finest of them in their tragedies 
 so faithfully as Shakespeare did to the strange traditions in the 
 Merchant of Venice and Cymbeline. Thus far the action seems 
 to have been to him the chief inviolable thing ; but we have 
 sho-vm (p.- 234) that he rather treated it as an arbitrary, 
 worthless symbol, while he drew the character and its motives 
 of action so entirely out of his own mind, with such firmness, 
 truth, and consistency, that it is evident how much more 
 important he considered the cause of the action to be than the 
 action itself. Let us test the matter in another way. The 
 story of an old tragedy, Iphigenia in Aulis and Tauris for 
 example, related for its own sake, without characteristic or 
 motive, is beautiful- and valuable only on account of the 
 ingenious contrast- of the two sacrifices ;• but Shakespeare's 
 fictions are often strange in themselves, and receive their value 
 only from their characteristic foundation. 
 
 Hence, then, a Shakespearian theory, of poetry in contrast, 
 but not in contradiction, to the Aristotelian would consider — 
 if there must be a separation — character to be the most 
 important part of the drama, and action to be only secondary. 
 And hence it is that Shakespeare's characters have always been 
 his greatest glory. If on other points there are discordant 
 opinions, all agree to praise him on this. His mastery of 
 character and motives not only at all times attracted the best 
 actors, but soon also the dullest censors, and transformed 
 pedants into enthusiasts. Pope called it a sort of injury to 
 designate Shakespeare's characters by so inapplicable a name 
 as copies of nature ; the critics, emulating each other in bold 
 comparisons, called the poet the instrument, the rival, the 
 completer, the outdoer of nature ; and indeed it would have 
 
 3 I 
 
850 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 been injustice to compare his characters with those of any other 
 poet but Horner alone. For only of his can we assert wha^ is 
 universally true of Shakespeare's, that they are not gathered 
 out of a casual contact with a narrow circle of society^ but 
 sought for and obtained out of the whole of humanity ; that 
 they are *not borrqwed from other poetry, that they do not 
 belong to the family of poetical but real beings, that they are 
 not designs from pictures, not even designs from nature, but 
 nature itself. Every individual of these characters stands, 
 intellectually, as firmly circumscribed as the- figures of Homer 
 are plastically modelled ; all surplus and deficiency are so 
 avoided that addition or onjission is equally impossible without 
 changing the efiect, and with it the character ; the intricate 
 blending pf characters with th.eir passions and impulses is so 
 perfect that a separation is impossible without destruction, so 
 that Voltaire and Eymer could piake actions and characters 
 ludicrous merply by the petty artifice of concealing the motive. 
 Every feature, however undesigned it might appear, harmonises 
 with wonderful truth with the whole picture of the single 
 characters ; every speech is in unison with the whole being. 
 Scarcely have we once dared to point out a passage which 
 seemed out of tune with the rest; to point out even this 
 exception was only possible because the truest and liveliest 
 delineation is so completely the rule. Here is no stage lan- 
 guage or manners, no standing parts, nothing thfit can be called 
 ideal or favourite stage chailacters, no heroes pf theatre or 
 romance ; in this active world there is nothing fantastic, nothing 
 unsound, iiothing exaggerated nor empty ; neither the poet nor 
 the actor speaks in them, but creative nature alone, which 
 seems to dwell in and to animate these dead images. These 
 forms change, as they do in life, from the deepest to the 
 shallowest, from the most deformed to the most noble, in many- 
 coloured variety ; ,a prodigal dispenses these riches, but the 
 impression is that he is as inexhaustible as Nature herself. And 
 as it is in nature, not one of these figures resembles another 
 in features ; there are groups which have a family likeness, but 
 ' not two individuals resembling one another ; they become 
 known tons one after the other fragmentarily, as we experience 
 with living acquaintances ; they make here and there different 
 impressions on different people, and are interpreted by each 
 according to his own feelings. In Antony we saw plaialy that 
 the poet makes this man to be differently judged of by different 
 
HIS ALLEGED mATTENTION TO EULES. 851 
 
 natures even in the play itself. Hence it would be an idle 
 undertaking to endeavour, in the explanation of Shakespeare's 
 characters, to balance the different opinions of men, or arbi- 
 trarily to insist upon our own ; each can only announce his own 
 view, and must then learn whose opinion stands best the test of 
 time and of the experience of life. For returning to these 
 characters at another time, our own greater ripeness and 
 enlarged experience will lay open to us ever new features in 
 them, of which we ourselves were not previously aware. Even 
 the deepest among them cannot be quite exhausted but by men 
 who have made analogous experiences in their own lives. Who- 
 ever has not been wrecked on the shore of life with ' principles 
 and ideals, whoever has not bled with inward sorrow, has not sup- 
 pressed holy feelings,' and stumbled over the enigmas of the 
 world, will only half understand Hamlet; whoever has not 
 experienced the disparagement of merit will not comprehend 
 Othello and lago ; whoever has lived through these days of 
 constant collision between human and political duties will com- 
 prehend Brutus quite differently than before.. And whoever 
 has felt these experiences most deeply, whoever has borne the 
 sharpest pains of consciousness, will understand Shakespeare's 
 characters like one of the initiated ; to such an one they will 
 be ever new, ever more admirable, ever mors intense in their 
 significance ; like the remarkable men of history and real life, 
 he will make out of them a school of life> having, nothing 
 of the danger of almost all modern poetry, which is apt to 
 lead us astray, and to give us heroes of romance instead of 
 true men. 
 
 But although Shakespeare's characters are true pictures of 
 nature, they are not nature only without the assistance of art. 
 They are neither mere abstractions and ideals, nor common 
 chance personifications, such as life brings indifferently before 
 us, but they stand in the free, true, real artistic medium between 
 both. People have often opposed them to the typical charac- 
 ters of the Greek drama, as delineations of perfect individuality ; 
 but the contradictory opinions in this respect suffice to prove 
 that this definition needs an essential amplification. If Pope, 
 for example, said that Shakespeare's characters were individuals 
 like those in real life, Johnson, on the contrary, remarked that 
 the characters of other poets are individuals, but that Shake- 
 speare's commonly represent classes. Again, if Ulrici called them 
 mere Englishmen of the sixteenth century, we have imagined 
 
 .S I 2 
 
852 SHAKESFEAEE. 
 
 we could distinguish among them Romans, even of different 
 ages. If, on the contrary, a third person found these Romans 
 not individually Eomish enough, another replied, very justly, 
 the first object of the poet was to depict men. These con- 
 trarieties show clearly that truth lies in the middle course. If 
 instead of comparing Shakespeare's characters with the sketches 
 of the old dramatists, we compare them more correctly with the 
 finished portraits of Homer, we shall at once perceive the 
 relation between them. Homer's characters are no more merely 
 typical than Shakespeare's are merely individual. The Homeric 
 are individuals, only that these natures of a heroic age Inust 
 be in every respect more simple and devoid of all mental 
 resources, and that the epos will not bear the familiar style 
 of the drama ; the Shakespearian are typical characters, only 
 that the lively manner of dramatic representation, and the 
 intellectual nature of modern times, necessitated greater in- 
 dividualisation. Shakespeare has never drawn anything special 
 without generalising it at the same time ; he has never repre- 
 sented anything typical without furnishing it with the special 
 features of the individual. If we mean by special characters 
 only the ideal masks of the Greeks, or the abstract personifica- 
 tions of passion into which the French re-modelled them, or 
 the superficial figures of the Spanish comedy, then Shakespeare 
 has created nothing but individuals ; if we mean by individuals 
 chance personifications of common life, such as the humorous 
 romances of the English described later, then he has only 
 depicted typical characters. The paradox is true ; when a 
 character with him is most a portrait, then it is at the same 
 time most the representation of a whole class of men. Nowhere 
 are the peculiarities so numerous as in Falstaff, Othello, and 
 Hamlet, and yet these are essentially typical characters; indeed 
 Hamlet has been called, with at least partial truth, the type of 
 men in general. This artistic blending of the general and the 
 particular lies in this, that Shakespeare has nowhere depicted 
 men of exceptional natures and properties belonging to any 
 fixed time or place ; his characters are above all men stirred by 
 the emotions and passions common to human nature in all ages; 
 ahd consequently they, as well as the Homeric characters, can 
 be comprehended by all time, however strange the English 
 colouring of the sixteenth century and that of the heroic 
 ages of Greece may make them to us. Individual as they are, yet 
 are ijiey always artistically generalised, even if only by elevating 
 
HIS ALLEGED INATTENTION TO RULES. 853 
 
 them; Shakespeare's representations of the passionate, the 
 prodigal, the hypocrite, are not portraits of this or that indi- 
 vidual, but examples of these passions, elevated out of particular 
 into general truth, of which in real life we may find a thousand 
 diminished copies, but never the original in the exact propor- 
 tions given by the poet. Let us compare in Aristotle's ethics the 
 complete abstract pattern of intemperance and high-mindedness 
 with the character of Lear and Coriolanus (in the latter of 
 whom we have only to 'observe the exaggeration of high- 
 mindedness into haughtiness), and we shall be surprised to find 
 how completely the abstract ideal image, the spirit of the ' 
 character, is merely embodied by Shakespeare without acci- 
 dental ingredient, although all seems only the purest reality. 
 So entirely is every part, every peculiarity, referred to the 
 general idea of the character, to a ruliag motive ; so entirely 
 is every manifestation by word or deed related to a mental 
 principle in the agent, to an' animating power, to. a specially 
 developed organ, a predominant quaJity, which stands out as the 
 main impulse, the nature, the law, the essence, the idea of the 
 character ; so entirely is everything unessential and accidental, 
 everything which is not in close connection with that chief 
 property, excluded. The characters move as in reality, but we 
 recognise the elements of their jcomposition in distinct gepara-- 
 tion ; they are full of life as in nature, but mentally transparent, 
 and they have been excellently compared to clocks in glass 
 cases, where the mechanism which sets them in motion is visible. 
 After this digression concerning Shakespeare's characters, 
 we resume the thread of our remarks.. Whilst Aristotle re- 
 garded the action as the most important thing in the drama, 
 and accordingly declared unity of action to be the chief law of 
 dramatic economy, Shakespeare, on thfl' other hand, considered 
 the main point to be character and action united, or character 
 alone ; consequently, if he would agree with Aristotle in spirit 
 and sense, he must place Ms main law, unity of character, 
 either on an equality with or in the stead of the law of unity 
 of action. This he has done. Unity of character is, as. we 
 lately remarked, the essence, the idea of character. The same 
 idea, then, which in a Shakespearian play penetrates the chief 
 character, rules also the whole action; the same thing which gives 
 unity to the character gives it also to the play. Shakespeare 
 reached this enlarged law, the unity of idea, through the nature of 
 the thing itself. When he penetrated to the root of a given action, 
 
854 8HAKESPEABE. 
 
 to its intrinsic necessity, to its main condition, to its starting 
 point, he always found these resting in the nature of the acting 
 character ; this he laid hold of, and from the point of unity he 
 remodelled the fiction he had adopted with a wonderful poetic 
 instinct, thus grasping at once the living principle of the 
 character, the action, and the drama. Beyond this there was 
 nothing more to do ; no future genius will ever be able to dis- 
 cover a deeper law of dramatic composition, as little as any 
 epic poet will ever be able to surpass in structure the works of. 
 Homer. With this idea, with this germ, which encloses within 
 it the dramatic action, Shakespeare acted like a wise gardener, 
 of whom it is hard to say whether his art is experience of 
 nature, or his natural treatment art. He puts these germs, each 
 after its own kind, in the soil that suits thpm iDest, gives them, 
 with respect to sun and "Wind, the most favourable situation, 
 plants in their vicinity the things that hurt them least, and 
 which improve and adorn the view, shuns no toil, and spares 
 no pruning, delights in *tlie natural fruit, and yet gladly 
 ' marries the gentler scion "to the wild stock.' This is what all 
 our separate deductions'have pointed out : that the structure of 
 every Shakespearian drama is carried out in a' strict proportion 
 with as much instinctive- feeling as artistic insight ; that there 
 exists a harmonious relation between the whole and its parts, 
 between the situation and the requireinents of the historical 
 soil, between both of these and the action, between the whole 
 and the characters, their motives and their passions. F'urther, 
 that the characters are so arranged and chosen that one serves 
 as a foil to another, thereby depicting their motives more 
 distinctly, and thereby again placing the action and the idea of 
 the piece in a stronger light. By this arrangement and rela- 
 tion of all the parts to one intellectual centre, everything 
 extraneous, arbitrary, : and unessential falls away from the ac- 
 tion ; everything' episodical, and eipparently distant, and foreign 
 is brought together and united, so that the junction of all pe- 
 culiarities, however far 'apart they may have lain, makes at last 
 a connected and concordant whole ; the most violent deviations 
 from the main road always lead eventually to the same goal; even 
 in the contrasts there appears similarity, and in the varieties uni- 
 son ; and the iSaost anomalous parts, even the comic interludes in 
 the serious dramas, aim at one and the same effect. Starting from 
 this unity of idea, Shakespeare may have allowed himself to de- 
 viate from the lawof unity of action and to combine several actions. 
 
SIS ALLEGED INATTENTION TO BULES. 855 
 
 Nevertheless, we admire more than many other creations of Ti- 
 tian's art those pictures of his in which the chief action is ac- 
 companied by a second which stands in a symbolic relation, in 
 unity of spirit with the first ; the outward eye must wander, 
 but -the inward will be fixed in a far higher sense on the one 
 soul of the picture. Nothing is more false than the uniting of 
 two heterogeneous actions, such as we see in the plays of the 
 Ben Jonson School ; they are repugnant to the feelings before 
 we know why ; we watch, as it were, for the progress of a 
 melody, which is suddenly crossed by another quite incongruous 
 with it. But Shakespeare's method of harmonising a second 
 action with the first, of developing in his double actions 
 different but equally essential parts of one ideaj together or in 
 opposition, so that their inner eonnectiota constitutes their 
 unity, this is a great and astonishing enrichment of art. This 
 method serves at the same time to complete the illusion of the 
 work of art. For the more the single parts in the drama seem 
 'disparate, the more will that variety and freedom of movement 
 be attained which conceal the artist's intention. The work of 
 art is like an animated organism ; no machinery reveals the 
 creative artist ; the body of action appeals, as it were, in an 
 entirely arbitrary motion, and its law lites" hid within like an 
 invisible soul. 
 
 Only the artistic ability with which thS arranging hand in 
 Shakespeare's compositions is concealed can explain why it 
 remained so long undiscovered, and that it required a master 
 like Groethe to show its inner conformity to rute; Even after 
 it was shown there was a disinclination to believe it, because 
 this new view militated so strongly against the ruling prejudice. 
 Hazlitt was on the track of this regularity in Cymbeline, but 
 he seemed to shrink from the conviction that the poet had in- 
 tentionally created the concordance of the action's in his dramas, 
 and imagined rather that he had produced them, unconsciously 
 merely from the force of natural association of feelings. People 
 were so fettered by the idea of Shakespeare's natural genius, that 
 Ben Jonson's impartial testimony to the assistance of art in his 
 works received as little attention as Groethe's intimation and 
 Coleridge's assertion that the poet's judgment and regularity 
 .were as great as his unconscious productiveness. The question 
 whether Shakespeare's works are rather the results of the hap- 
 piest instinct, or of a wonderful power of conscious intellect, is 
 so closely connected with the maintaining of his assumed irregu- 
 
856 8HAKESFEASE. 
 
 larity, that we must dedicate a few words to it in this place. 
 It is true that the first impression of Shakespeare's works, on the 
 youthful reader especially, who does not immediately perceive 
 the deep traces of mind, is that of an entirely instinctive pro- 
 duction. Shakespeare Was a sensualist of a thoroughly intuitive 
 nature. He was, perhaps, even more than Goethe, ' devoted to 
 the holy spirit of the senses,' and averse to one-sided abstrac- 
 tioii and philosophic speculation. Nature and humanity were 
 his book of revdation, and experience the source of his wisdom. 
 His sense must have 'been the soundest that ever man possessed; 
 his eye a smooth mirror, his ear an echo, which repeated all 
 sounds and images with the utmost fidelity. When he speaks 
 of music, of pictures, of inanimate nature, he is as perfectly at 
 home in these regions as in 'history and social life. With this 
 healthy keenness of sense he must have united a desire of know- 
 ledge to which nothing was indifferent, a watchfulness that 
 nothing could escape, an openness of feeling that left nothing 
 untouched, a memory which retained every impression, and was 
 ready for use on all subjects, -far off or near. And with the 
 same soundness with which all objects were received by his 
 senses, they were transmitted by these -to his creative genius. 
 He was in the happy case of the popular poet of the earliest 
 times, his memory was not overloaded, his senses were not 
 weakened by much knowledge, his mind was uninjured by 
 learning, everything in him arose, at first hand, from nature 
 and experience. For this reason every sensation is so prompt, 
 every thought so striking, every image so descriptive ; for this 
 reason his sayings are like swords, which cut the knots of in- 
 tricate truths ; they, are like the words &f Solomon upon the 
 most pungent problems, not only poetical, but practical solu- 
 tions of questions. Dr. Hales, in a learned session at Eton, 
 once formally weighed his sentences with those of the ancients, 
 and found them even more substantial than theirs. Shake- 
 speare, like his Perdita, might consider himself lucky in being 
 devoid of learning, at least of overburdensome learning, since 
 even without it he was a master for most teachers. If then 
 what he adopted and received was in this way so lively and 
 ready, we should be inclined to conclude that his power of pro- 
 duction also was as ready and as little disturbed by conscious- 
 ness and planned labour as the poems of a Homer. But there 
 lies a great difference in the nature of the materials, in the 
 nature of the times, and in the natiure of the different forms of 
 
HIS ALLEGED INATTENTION TO SVL'ES. 857 
 
 pdetry. Shakespeare's materials were, like the time and like 
 himian nature, penetrated with intellectual elements, which 
 could not be understood without conscious power of mind. The 
 mysteries of mind are not self-evident and recognised ; they 
 require a knowledge of the inner life, and a constant exercise of 
 ' the mental eye. The Homeric poems were originally rhap- 
 sodies, which required the arranging hand of later times to give 
 them with conscious intention that unity which in the ' Odyssey,' 
 as in Shakespeare's poems, is rather to be called a unity of idea 
 than of action ; the drama, on the contrary, is the work of one 
 head, which must apply the arranging hand himself. In this 
 species, moreover, there lies everything that makes unconscious 
 production almost impossible. Let it be granted that Shake- 
 speare wrote his first works from the mere impulse of poetic 
 instinct, that he never even doubted after their creation, nor 
 even examined whether they were good or not, yet the circum- 
 stance alone of his dramas being represented led necessarily, in 
 the course of time, to consciousness. The actors worked with 
 him and he with them, their whole business being to account 
 to themselves for every line of their parts ; and Shakespeare 
 himself prescribed to them to play their parts with constant 
 consideration of the preceding and of the whole. Could it be 
 conceived that his creative eye alone had not only penetrated, 
 but formed the matter ; could it even be thought possible, 
 which is far more incredible, that the combination of the parts, 
 the parallelism of the characters, the convergence of the 
 episodes, the form and structure of the artistic work, had suc- 
 ceeded without his will or knowledge, as it were in his sleep, 
 that he was altogether the unconscious vessel of pure revelation ; 
 yet the consideration and conversation about the play thus pro- 
 duced must have more ai;d more awakened consciousness and 
 introduced reflection into the poet's work ; he must have had 
 to learn the technicality of art, the neglect of which was so 
 severely revenged on Groethe, even if, Hke Groethe, he had 
 struggled against it. We think, however, that a consciousness 
 in his work was by nature neither remote from nor foreign to 
 the mind of Shakespeare. Just ^ read the passages in Timon, 
 and in the Midsummer Night's Dream, where he speaks of the 
 nature of poets and poetry, and say, was he a poet to whom art 
 was a mystery, and its technicality a sealed letter ? He pro- 
 duced in the same way as his Posthumus, of whom he hiniself 
 says, when the latter is describing his wife as a work of art, his 
 
858 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 tongue made the picture, and then put a mind in it. Thus he 
 did himself, and this in a wonderful medium between a strong 
 creative impulse and conscious meditation, with th^ rarest 
 union of judgment and instinct of nature and mind. And what 
 is most astonishing is, not that what he had perceived obtained 
 with him a most sensible and reasonable utterance, without 
 passing through reflection and consciousness, but that this ut- 
 terance maintained itself in all its power and freshness, in spite 
 of this process (Burchgang) ; that the keenness of perception, 
 as well as the ease of the mental elaboration, permits none of 
 the tedium of labour to be visible. The ripening and the birth 
 took place rapidly, without the waiting for the nine months of 
 the human embryonic life, much less for the nine years of the 
 Horatian file. This working together of instinct and mind in 
 Shakespeare is not exactly wonderful in itself, but only so from 
 this power and strength ; in a less degree it takes place in all 
 continued occixpation among men of a healthy nature; and 
 those are the most luminous moments of success in any work 
 when the thinking mind is in unison with the instinctive feel- 
 ing of the acting man. In this unison genius really displays 
 itself, not in the sole rule of an irregular instinct or in the 
 state of a pretended inspiration. For genius does not manifest 
 itself in the predominance of any single power, nor is it in 
 itself a definite faculty, but it is the harmonious combination, 
 the imited totality, of all human faculties. And if in Shake- 
 speare's works we admire his imaginative power as well as his 
 understanding, both these combined with his sense of beauty, 
 and all of them not without his moral sense; and if we attribute 
 aU together to his genius, we must comprehend under this head 
 the union of all these faculties, and not consider it as an 
 isolated power, which excludes judgment and reflection, and 
 whose works do not submit to plan and rule. Much rather is 
 the idea of rule essentially inherent to that of genius, and that 
 whole conception of a genius acting without law is the inven- 
 tion of pedants, which has had the sad effect of begetting that 
 mass of false geniuses, who are morally without law, and aesthe- 
 tically work without law, as if to entitle themselves to the name,, 
 according to this convenient definition. If we call Shake- 
 speare's intuition that of a genius, because his outer and inner 
 sense perceived objects most truly, and penetrated beyond their 
 casual excrescences and deficiencies to their essence, their 
 inner truth, that is to say, their law, so on the other hand his 
 
HIS ALLEGED INATTENTION TO BVLES. 859 
 
 poetry is that of a' genius, because while he reproduced his 
 objects in artistic representation, he also developed the repre- 
 sented matter in the same way from elementary conditions, 
 from its laws and germs, and because every particular thing is 
 placed as of itself in correct relation tb this law, and takes its 
 proper position. So surely as in his observations he referred 
 from given effects to the necessary causes, as surely did he ad- 
 vance in his production^ from the cause he had discovered to 
 all its ramifications, but always in the regular order of cause 
 and effect, as if Nature had entrusted to him the secret of her 
 organisation and her working powers. But this highest regu- 
 larity which governs Shakespeare's plays was not to be divined 
 and could not be acquired by the slight juggle of a dreamy 
 fancy. It presupposes a conscious penetration into the depths 
 of human nature, a candid spirit, which disposes of all the 
 faculties of the inner life, which knows and understands the 
 motions of the human heart, which has pondered deeply and 
 comprehensively upon the domain of human powers and pas- 
 sions ; without this contemplative meditation such regularity 
 is not possible, nor such an embodiment of the spiritual, such 
 a spiritualisation of the sensual, as characterises Shakespeare's 
 and all true poetry. The knightly romances of the middle 
 ages show plainly enough what can be accomplished by mere 
 divination in psychological problems ; they are, therefore, 
 worthless and formless. The poets of these tales were wanting 
 in genius, in that unfallen spirit (ungefallene Geisf) which 
 contains within it the original harmony with man's true nature, 
 which consequently knows how to recognise and describe the 
 operations of the soul and the passions, and which, while de- 
 scribing them, necessarily comprehends in itself the law-giving 
 and regulating power, and can dispense with conventional, 
 external rules, which are, as Lessing says, like a crutch for the 
 healthy and sound. These conventional rules may be learned, 
 but the law of genius is born with it. The rules of the French 
 drama may be acquired ; they enable even moderate talents to 
 produce works of understanding, but true genius can neither 
 imitate nor be imitated. He. would be very much mistaken 
 who thought he could write works like Shakespeare's because 
 he knew the laws of their production. For even the judgment 
 that made theSe works so regular is only one of the faculties 
 that altogether constitute genius. Shakespeare lies equally 
 removed from those of his dramatic countrymen who composed 
 
860 SffAKESPEABE. 
 
 irregular works with merely natural talfent, and from those 
 Frenchmen who with intellectual dexterity wrought according 
 to an arbitrary rule ; these separate ways seldom lead beyond 
 the point where true art only begins. When a regularly formed 
 work of art has been accomplished consciously, as it was by 
 Lessing, it is further requisite that this regularity should be as 
 much as possible concealed, that the intellectual contents should 
 be wrapped up -in sensible forms. If we ascribe the regularity 
 of a work of art chiefly to conscious treatment, still that specific 
 faculty oi poetic genius, of representing everything plastically, 
 in sensible representation with living imagery, is an essentially 
 natui'al gift, an involuntary want and an instinctive force and 
 impulse of the poet's mind. By means of this gift the work of 
 art bears the stamp of that unstudied ease which gives it the 
 appearance of artlessness ; the intentional vanishes at the first 
 impression, as, on the contrary, on closer inspection, the ap- 
 parently unintentional vanishes before the underlying regu- 
 larity. As in genius itself the opposition between spirit and 
 nature is removed, so in its works the real appearance, and the 
 ideal truth, image, and thought, the spiritual contents and the 
 sentient form, are reconciled and adjusted. 
 
 But passing from the regularity in Shakespeare's works to 
 the consideration of their conformity to art, where in these 
 works so admired for their truth to nature, where is the ideality 
 which constitutes the true poet, the elevation above the horizon 
 of reality, which we require in the true work of art ? 
 
 It is essentially the casualties and deficiencies of the real 
 world, its imperfections and deformities, which have generated 
 in the human mind the need of art ; on the ground of this 
 need, art received its law and vocation to free us from all the 
 baseness, unmeaningness, and ugliness which cleave to actual 
 life, to elevate us to the serene height of a fairer existence, 
 and, imitating nature, to ennoble it. This law was not at all 
 unfamiliar to the people of Shakespeare's time. His contem- 
 porary Bacon gave to poetry this great vocation : as the world 
 of the senses is of lower value than the human soul, so poetry 
 must grant to men what history denies ; it must satisfy the 
 mind with the appearance of things, as the satisfying reality 
 is not to be had, and thus prove that the human soul , delights 
 
ms IDEAL OF AST. 861 
 
 in a more perfect order and a nobler greatness than are to be 
 found in nature. Shakespeare himself appears to have attained 
 to the same views. He is everywhere of Aristotle's opinion, 
 that art consists in the imitation of nature, or, as he would 
 have said, in the emulative imitation of nature. Thus we 
 have seen, in Antony, that he knew the two-fold instance of 
 nature outdoing all the ideal of art, and of art triumphantly 
 defying nature. For he would have shared Goethe's opinion, 
 that the ideal' of art coincides with the ideas and types of 
 nature ; he would not, like Schiller, besides and beyond this 
 ideal developed out of nature, have admitted another trans- 
 cendental ideal lying beyond the world of the senses. 
 
 But if Shakespeare theoretically held this correct view of 
 art, how does his practice agree with it ? Have we not our- 
 selves said that the interest in moral and psychological truth 
 is always higher with him than the interest in outer sesthetic 
 beauty ? Did we not thereby place ourselves in the ranks of 
 those who admire nothing in Shakespeare but nature, reality — - 
 the realistic principle ? Did he not, in this striving after truth 
 to nature, often sink to tjie level of the Dutch painting, 
 entirely forgetting that province of art which lies in develop- 
 ing the beautiful and the nobte out of the deformed and the 
 mean ? Did he not in representing the bad, which is discordant 
 and ugly in itself, far overstep the line of beauty ? Is not the 
 combination of the noble with the mean, the mixing of jest and 
 earnest, alone suflBcient to characterise the^ common reality of 
 nature in his plays ? And did he not too much betray in all 
 this the age. when to expose the nakedness of nature, even to its 
 utmost ugliness, was the universal business- of popular poetry, 
 of that clownish literatura of burlesques and satires peculiar to 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth' centuries, and in higher regions 
 even the business of a Machiavelli and a Spinoza ? 
 
 In what then is it (we repeat the question) in which the 
 ideal vein of the poet could manifest itself? 
 
 We would answer this question otherwise than some have 
 done; Ulrici for example, who considered that Shakespeare's 
 only method of giving his works an ideal stamp lay in the unity 
 of idea in the composition. We believe the ideal vein of a 
 great poet betrays itself as little in single expedients as his 
 vein of genius in the predominance of a single faculty ; we 
 would reply, this ideal vein manifests itself in nothing less than 
 everything, 
 
862 SHAKESPEASE. 
 
 It shows itself first in the diction, as we have previously re- 
 marked, in the use of metaphorical language, and in the nature 
 and object of this. In the double nature of metaphors, in 
 this combination of similar objects, in the blending of the two- 
 fold in one, there lies of itself a more powerful and elevated 
 expression, such as is suitable to the- description of mighty pas- 
 sions ; the figurative impulse of poetic fancy finds utterance in 
 them, because they contain, within the smallest medium of 
 poetry, that embodiment of the spiritual, which is on a large 
 scale the highest aim of all art. 
 
 In the second place, the representation essentially contri- 
 butes to the ideal effect of a Shakespearian drama ; by means 
 of this we first perceive the. whole power of the poet. However 
 natiural the scenic representation of a play may be, ,it will 
 always raise the spectator above the prose of reality. For no 
 other a.rt works with such united powers and means on human 
 fancy. All other arts take away somewhat from the life of the 
 object represented in their attempt to imitate life. Painting 
 takes away the full form, sculpture the colour, both the 
 motion ; the epps changes acts into words, music changes 
 words into tones, it is the- drama only that uses all the means 
 at once — form, (folour, tone, word, look, motion, and action ; 
 it gives the full effect of what is represented, and takes away 
 only the narrow boundaries of time and space. The result of 
 this effect can only be laboriously supplied in reading by 
 recollection and imaginaition ; we remain with feelings, con- 
 siderations, and doubts, suspended at isolated parts, and with 
 difficulty arrive at the total impression of the whole we have 
 read, much less to an idea of the impression which a repre- 
 sentation is able to produce. In representation, on the 
 contrary, single impressions do not take root, they pass away 
 before they can become fixed ; the few inequalities, which 
 arrest us in reading, do no harm to the force and beauty of the 
 body of the drama when in full movement. During the per- 
 formance we are not, as in reading, forced to dwell upon the 
 words, but on that which the play represents, the action. It is 
 just this which brings out the ideal effect. For in the man in 
 action all his combined powers are called into play, deeds claim 
 the man's whole being, and bring his best or strongest parts to 
 their height ; his sensitiveness and thought, his will, and all 
 the energy and properties of his nature, converge as in a point 
 to the aim of his action, the man moves in his entirety, and this 
 
HIS IDEAL OF AST. 863 
 
 is of itself a poetical movement, one which every deed even ip 
 real life bears within itself. The more naturally this is repre- 
 sented by the performer, the greater will be the charm of the 
 performance, the more strongly will the force and depth of 
 ' the effect, as well as the ideal splendour of the drama, stand 
 out, and for this no degree of thought and explanation can 
 compensate. , . 
 
 The ideal in Shakespeare's dramas shows itself further, it is 
 true, in that point also which Ulrici laid stress iipon, in the 
 unity of composition, in the close relation of all parts and 
 episodes, of all characters and actions, to the one fundamental 
 idea of the poet's plan ; a' quality on which especially the 
 spiritualisation of the matter rests, which is the essential mark 
 of the ideal nature of a poetic work, 
 
 This ideality shows itself also in the high moral spirit 
 which, in Shakespeare's plays, controls |he complications of fate 
 and the issues of human actions,, in that spirit which develops 
 before us that higher order which Ba^ion required in poetry, 
 indicating the eternal and uncorrUpted justice in human things, 
 the finger of God, which our dull eyes do not perceive in 
 reality. 
 
 Shakespeare's idealising spiril shows itself also, where it 
 will be most disputed, in his characters. Here the poet indeed 
 clings most firmly to reality, because here the motives of the 
 action were to be grounded, their roots to be planted ; and this 
 he thought he could not make true enough to nature, because 
 with the truth of the motive the value of the work of art 
 stands and falls. But however much Shakespeare's characters 
 appear to be simply natural, we have shown above that as soon 
 as we place them beside life, their ideal pharacter, their typical 
 greatness, the normal idea of the given form of character, 
 comes to view ; they may appear merely as simple copies from 
 originals, even of a subordinate or dQubtful nature, yet they 
 are always, according to the Aristotelian law, embellished, or at 
 least placed in a strong or favourable light. If we examine his 
 tragic figures, in which the Aristotelian requirement of mixed 
 characters excludes all ideal perfection, in which the inner dis- 
 cord, the turning away from the good and beautiful, is the 
 theme to be represented, we shall still discover even in the self- 
 destroying passion a greatness, and in the aberration a human 
 nobility, which compels our admiration. In the worst of his 
 villains there is still a power of self-command, or an intellectual 
 
864 8HAKE8FEABE. 
 
 superiority, or a steady consistency and a grandeur in misfor- 
 tune, which gives, even to the vicious, a better or at least a 
 stro"ng and uncommon side. If we look at his burlesque 
 characters, which appear compotinded of folly and caricature, 
 they are always given as shadows to bring the fairer side of 
 human n,ature into the light; but even, considered in them- 
 selves they affordj like the best genre pictures, an artistic 
 satisfaction, not only by the reflection of the pleasant humour 
 with which the poet depicts them, but also by the inner self- 
 satisfaction and happy determination in these figui'es, which 
 affect us agreeably wherever we meet them. 
 
 But let us leave our comparison of Shakespeare's characters 
 with life, and compare them with the best that the dramatic 
 art of modern times has produced, and then We shall see with 
 astonishment not cmly What a quintessence of nature, but even 
 of ideal beauty, dWells in these foi'ms. Ask the actor, and he 
 will tell you that in every drama of the modern poets there are 
 weak parts, which a good performer dislikes to take ; Shake- 
 speare has hardly any such. Compare any of his unimportant 
 characters — that picture, for example, of weakness, unfaithful- 
 ness, and varying inclination, Proteus — with Goethe's Clavigo, 
 Weislingen, or F'erdinand,'and'even the weakling becomes a 
 strong character ; place Antony beside these, and the effemi- 
 nate man becomes a hero. In all' poetry this can only be 
 compared with the characters of Homer, with whom even Paris 
 is a hero. But if we turn to his most ideal characters, .to his 
 Henry and Posthumus, in whom, not without conflict, the 
 highest degree of human virtue and intellectual excellence is 
 attained, they are not, indeed, like those heroes of the French 
 stage, or the flowery creations of Schiller's, images of merely 
 fancied existence, they are realistic ideals, but on that very 
 account truly ideal characters, consistent with truth, whose 
 rare erainence in Shakespeare's group of characters is raised, 
 even by the rareness of their number, into a far higher light 
 than the excellence of those empty personifications of abstract 
 ideals. Yet even these do not represent the highest of Shake- 
 speare's characters : these must be sought among his women. 
 No poet has at once so truly depicted and so highly exalted the 
 female sex as Shakespeare. Nowhere has he condescended to 
 represent those female characters which were the favourites of 
 our greatest modern poets, those beings midway between 
 criminals and martyrs, between courtesans and goddesses; 
 
ma IDEAL OF AST. 865 
 
 nowhere has he multiplied the immoral among the sex with 
 that predilection, nor surrounded their weakness with that 
 attraction which is prevalent amongst us.' He has never 
 repeated his Cleopatra and Cressida, and even ib once repre- 
 senting them he has not clothed the charming temptress with 
 tempting charms. Where he has depicted women who from 
 an easy intellectual adroitness distinguish themselves by a free 
 arid fearless tongue, he has surrounded these Eosalinds and 
 Portias with a wall of unapproachable chastity. He leads 
 them, disguised in male attire, into ticklish and trying situa- 
 tions and into rude contacts, and even then the freest among 
 them come out of these situations with perfect innocence and 
 purity. It is in the naive female characters of his third period, 
 those which would have been as difficult for Groethe to design 
 as Goethe's females of the naive cast were for Schiller, that the 
 beauty of the feminine, nay, even of the human ideal of that 
 period is most perfect. In them is seen that completeness of 
 nature by which we understand that which makes us men so 
 much oftener look up admiringly towards women than ever we 
 could feel ourselves tempted to look down upon them. No 
 single prevailing quality disturbs the balance of their nature ; 
 the qualities of spirit and soul mingle together in perfect 
 harmony; the original indivisibility of nature, her highest idea, 
 appears in its completeness, — the concord of head and heart, of 
 inclination and wi],l; the unconsciousness of themselves and 
 their prerogatives, the certainty with which they are wholly 
 and ever what they are ; the self-reliance with which they 
 permit nothing from without to trouble their course ; the 
 unconcern with which, disturbed by no considerations, they 
 give way to their feelings ; the way in which they are entirely 
 occupied with the subjects that for the moment affect them, — 
 this admirable totality gives to these creatures their endless 
 charm. Compare these beings, who are untouched by all the 
 feminine tricks of coquetry and affectation, and all the little 
 devices of vanity, with the vague characters of Schiller, with 
 the vapid figures of even Groethe, in both of whom the pressure 
 of conventional life stifles the germ of fresh nature which 
 springs forth in healthy strength in all Shakespeare's women, 
 and then learn what is true ideality, whether of art or of moral 
 life. 
 
 In all this, however, the final verdict respecting the ideality 
 of Shakespeare's dramas has not yet been pronounced. That 
 
 3k 
 
866 8HAKE8PEAEE. 
 
 can, unquestionably, only be felt and observed in the whole, 
 not in this or that isolated part. The single character can 
 properly only be a means to the aim of the whole, and the ideal 
 may be so far latent within it, without this being prejudicial 
 to the work of art. In the statues of antiquity the ideal lies 
 in the single form, because this form is at once the complete 
 work of art. In a compound work of poetry we seek the 
 artistic hand first in the symmetry and combination of the 
 whole, and in the definite bearing of its contents. We cannot 
 blame the distorted, the mean, and the bad in separate parts, 
 when they serve to place the higher, healthier, and better in a 
 fairer light. The poet ,can show us in his characters a declen- 
 sion from the line of beauty, truth, and goodness, an overstep- 
 ping or a falling short of it, provided he himself with his 
 arranging hand keeps closely to this intellectual direction, to 
 this line, provided he measures by this line the value of the 
 characters, their fates, and the origin and issue of the action. 
 The ideal, the necessary, the moral, and the true may even 
 appear only in the results of what happens, and may in proper 
 tragedy be always of a negative kind ; yet the poet has already 
 fulfilled his task in that poetic-moral background, that ideal 
 heaven over his real world. The ideal, then, rests finally, not 
 or not only in the quality of the characters, and not in the 
 nature of the action, but where also the unity of Shakespeare's 
 dramas lies — in the idea. 
 
 But however true all this, which we have endeavoured to 
 clear up, may be, yet something remains behind in our feelings 
 which refuses to be satisfied with what we have said. The 
 realistic elenient in Shakespeare is so evident, when we com- 
 pare him with the Greek drama, that no protest, however 
 striking, can remove the impression of this sharp contrast. 
 Such general impressions have indeed extradrdinarily deceived 
 even the great masters of art. Goethe had long seen an un- 
 natural ideality in Homer,'until he found it disappear more 
 and more before the wonderfully real truth of the poet; 
 Schiller, on the contrary, at first saw notjiing but realism in 
 Shakespeare, and felt repelled by his harsh truth ; but after- 
 wards he became more and more persuaded of his ideality, 
 which seemed to bring him near, in his view, to the old drama. 
 The mass of real matter is so great in Shakespeare that it is 
 difficult to penetrate to his spirit, which essentially requires the 
 representation by great actors under intelligent direction to bring 
 
HIS WEAL OF AST. 867 
 
 it to light ; this is it which in this question will always lead to 
 great errors of judgment. But even if we constrain ourselves 
 to see ancient tragedy in the most realistic, and Shakespeare in 
 the most idealisiic light, still we shall always find it very 
 difficult to compare our dramatist with Homer in regard to 
 the equal balance of real and ideal elements^-a merit in 
 the epic poet which our Goethe and Schiller never ceased' to 
 admire. 
 
 When the ideal of modern art is in question we shall 
 always be tempted to injustice, if we do not carefully weigh 
 the different conditions under which ancient and modern times 
 fostered the arts. Ancient art, arising out of a pure, uncorrupt 
 primitive existence, and among men. in intimate communion 
 with nature, carried out, as it were, in those wonderful forms- of 
 Grrecian sculpture, the creations of nature, elevating and ampli- 
 fying her when she had reached the. limit of her forinations. 
 That race of men succeeded in discovering the laws of perfect 
 beauty at once in nature and in the human mind, and-in 
 stamping them upon physically dead, but spiritually ever 
 living forms. The best which this art accomplished, and 
 which dramatic poetry side by side with it produced, has the 
 advantage of a sort of necessity, tsruth, and beauty for which 
 every art in modern times has striven in vain, since we have 
 for ever outstepped the youth of the world and its easy condi-s 
 tions of existence, and entered a life, rendered hard by a thou- 
 sand cares for subsistence, and by painful struggles with mate- 
 rial obstructions and mental difficulties. We return to the 
 poems of such periods for the same reasons that incline us also 
 to their history. It is easier to enjoy Athens' greatness under 
 Pericles than the Periclean age of England under Elizabeth, 
 only because the greatness of tlie first is more simple ; if both 
 poets are equally familiar to us, we more readily pass from 
 Shakespeare to the Orestes of ^pchylus than the- reverse, 
 because it is easier and pleasanter to linger in the lighter, 
 youthful, innocent conditions of art as of life than in the more 
 complicated ones. , We put forward these propositions not in 
 any degree to embitter our admiration for modern aTt — encum- 
 bered with difficulties as it is, the mere conquest of which is a 
 high merit — but only to intimate that our pleasure in it has not 
 for a moment made us partial or forgetful of our admiration of 
 ancient art, which will ever remain the purest source of all art- 
 culture so long as the taste and civilisation of the world do not 
 
 3 K 2 ■ 
 
868 SHAKESPEABK 
 
 go wholly astray. But since in modern times human nature is 
 immensely dilated, society enlarged in all directions, and reli- 
 gious, literary, and political culture has laid open immeasurable 
 spaces and depths, it was no longer enough to reflect in art a 
 merely approximate national culture, narrow, easily compre- 
 hended, working only in one direction, and soon reaching a 
 certain height; it was necessary to master the whole wide world 
 and its history, all its external and internal matter; and to 
 hold up tfie mirror to nature is, perhaps, a more difficult 
 task for art nowadays than it. was in ancient times to emulate 
 her noblest works. 
 
 Nevertheless, in antiquity also the real truth of nature, the 
 reflected image of life, was always (at least in that branch of 
 art which received ' the highest finish in Homer's epos) the 
 first condition of poetry; in this requirement Homer would 
 agree with Shakespeare, and with Lope de Vega, and with the 
 most genuine realistic poet of modern times, our own Groethe. 
 The only difference is that in those times life in itself east a 
 fairer image upon the mirror. The heroic world, the great 
 subject of Grreek poetry, is cognisant only of men who rest 
 upon themselves alone, who, imconfined by political and con- 
 ventional bonds, are a law to themselves ; such an age is itself 
 poetic from the youthfulness and simplicity of manners. In 
 modern times, and in our northern climate especially, the 
 human body and frame lost their original beauty by outward 
 covering and the inward disguise of hypocrisy, and by manifold 
 deviations from pure nature ; the wants of life among us furrow 
 the form and features, and efface the fair type of nature ; they 
 favour on the other hand the development of the individual, 
 they elaborate the mind and its resources in a more complete 
 manner, and generate energy of character. Hence it is that all 
 ideal of art among the Teutonic races, besides its contrast to 
 ancient art, bears another special stamp quite distinct from the 
 Southern Eomanic art even of modern times, such as is quite 
 characteristic of Shakespeare's drama. Southern art, whether 
 music, painting, or poetry, has ever preferred beauty of outward 
 form, the appearances that touch and please the senses, smooth- 
 ness of melody, soothing sounds in verse, and regular forms ; 
 Northern art, on the contrary, was forced by the deficiencies 
 of external nature to cultivate the inner and spiritual, the sig- 
 nificant in import, the heart in musical composition, sound 
 sense in versification, and truth in psychological expression. In 
 
ms IDEAL OF AST. 869 
 
 these qualities Northern music and painting surpassed the South, 
 and a master like Titian reconciled in this respect North and 
 South, while Handel, like Shakespeare, first became great when 
 he gave up the Italian for the German taste. This direction 
 of art rendered unavoidable the introduction of all moral and 
 spiritual elements, of which numberless Spanish and Italian 
 poems have a very moderate share ; and this combination com- 
 pensates to all Northern art, by an intrinsic worth, for the loss 
 ■ of that external attractiveness of which it deprives it ; this it is 
 which determines the balance between a Shakespeare and an 
 Ariosto- so decidedly in favour of the first. The notions of 
 beauty demand, according to this, an essential discrimination. 
 In nature we may find a woman beautiful, although she may 
 possess no regular beauty of feature ; the play of soul, the 
 appearance of inward beauty, makes amends for, nay, even sur- 
 passes, the cold beauty of form in which no mind shines through. 
 So a tree bursting into blossom is indisputably a charming sight 
 to everyone, although not even to be represented pictorially. 
 The soul, the life of the tree manifests itself at its highest 
 point in the moment of blossom, in the first appearance of 
 fruit, and this living natural bea'uty delights us more than 
 beauty of art. More at least for the moment, although hardly 
 for a continuance. For to the essence of this living beauty of 
 nature, transitoriness necessarily belongs. We could no more 
 endure the long continuance of the loveliest play of soul in the 
 human countenance^ from the overstrained attention necessary, 
 than we could the brilliant abundance of full bloom in a tree. 
 But beauty of feature in itself, the beauty of a finely-grown 
 tree in its unpretending form, wins us exactly by its continuance 
 and uniform aspect, and is therefojre artistically purer and more 
 valuable. In the longer epic, therefo^re, we (?oi4d not bear the 
 imitation of that living and intelle,etug,l beauty; it requires 
 plastic beauty and a severe well-sustained style ; in the drama, 
 on the other hand, which passes before us transiently, in the 
 short time occupied by the representation, in whi^h, according 
 to its idealistic nature, the spiritual is designed to be jnani- 
 fested, imitating life by life and not in dead letter or form — 
 in the drama that inner spiritual, that living beauty is quite 
 in its proper place. And this is the reason why Shakespeare's 
 interest in moral and psychological truth is always greater than 
 his interest in exterior sesthetic beauty, why his poetic ideas 
 were always of a moral psychological nature, why his art ideal 
 
870 8HAKESPEABE. 
 
 is essentially of a spiritual nature. Through this art ideal, in 
 which truth, goodness, and beauty go hand in hand, Shakespeare 
 belongs wholly to the Teutonic race and the Northern style of 
 taste. But, leaving off the comparison of Shakespeare with the 
 ancient poets, the place which he fills within the region of 
 Northern artistic taste, with regard to his ideality, is most dis- 
 cernible when we examine him in general beside the art pro- 
 ductions of modern -times. 
 
 It Bcright have been expected that the more the purely 
 poetic circumstances of antiquity were lost in the intricate 
 relations of modern titnes, the more must the latter have felt 
 the need of elevating ^themselves by their art productions out 
 , of prosaioi reality. This need the middle ages seem indeed to 
 have felt. The chivsdriG epic poetry ,of romances moves wholly 
 in ideal, supernatural spheres, and the allegories and idylls, 
 which succeedted! to these, retained this idealistic character in 
 another -way. The remoteness of these poems from the actual 
 world, and from every-day humanity, is universal. The won- 
 derful and fantastic, the siipernatural in all forms, giants, ■ 
 knights-errant, magicians, martyrs, performers of miracles, 
 saints, -confessors of all kinds, are the known subjects of these 
 works. 'In these wholly ideal matters reality was introduced 
 in a way which art' ought to have utterly avoided. Into 
 these romantic poems of the middle ages there entered the well- 
 known nbtions and representations of a peculiar kind of honour, 
 love, and truth, a peculiar feudal service and love service, which 
 rested *wholly on the conventional customs of courtly chivalry, 
 on the arbitrary tempers and incidental manners of the time, 
 even on 'that which art should strip from reality in order to 
 arrive 'iX general truth. This strange mixing of the marvellous 
 and the conventional, with everything flat and stationary which 
 cleaves to it, has been retained by the whole of the South, even 
 after the close of the middle ages, by the Italian epic poets no 
 less than by the dramatists of Spain. The Spanish drama 
 turns entirely upon an excitable and punctilious feeling of 
 honour, and its whimsical conflicts with love and loyalty, or it 
 took up the extravagant material of the romances of chivalry, 
 overloaded itself with improbabilities, impossibilities, and con- 
 fusion, and became, as Cervantes said, a mirror, not of life, but 
 of adventures. This is true even of the religious drama in Spain, 
 in which the marvellous found uncontrolled entrance, which 
 prolonged the childhood of the stage, even after it had reached 
 
HIS IDEAL OF AST. 8Y1 
 
 its maturity, and even in later times led the profound genius of 
 a Calderon into errors. 
 
 Against this art character of the middle ages among the 
 Eomanic races of the South, the taste and disposition of the 
 Teutonic stock of the North in modern timres reacted, after 
 the humanistic and reformatory movements in the Netherlands, 
 Grermany, and England. This time offers as strong a contrast 
 to the middle ages in art as in religion and politics. To .com- 
 bine thi? art, under the designation of romantic, with the 
 •mediseval Southern art, in contradistinction to the ancient, is as 
 as immense a fault as it would be to unite the plastic art of 
 Greece with the old symbolic art of the East. With the same 
 right with which we sometimes call Shakespeare a romantic 
 poet, because he has dramatised some tales of chivalry, we 
 might call Homer so also, because of the adventures in his 
 ' Odyssey.' Modern art, which in opposition to the Eomanic 
 ought to be designated as Teutonicj Northern, Prcrtestant, 
 exhibits rather its distinctive, sharply-defined, and essential 
 character in this, that it equally avoided the degeneracy of 
 romantic art in both directions, in the supernatural and the 
 conventional elements of chivalry ; and that it returned, as a 
 natural reaction, to the principle of truth to nature^ whidh Was 
 entirely neglected in the middle ages. This reaction, as is the 
 case with all reactions, overdid itself in two directions. The 
 rude literature of the sixteenth century, the genre painting of 
 the Netherlands, and similar branches of art, fell back from the 
 supernatural even below nature ; the anti-conventional striving 
 of Shakespeare's and G-oethe's contemporaries degenerated into 
 rudeness and free thinking ; the vague characters of moral 
 poetry changed into the eccentric ones of the original English 
 novels ; extra vaga:nt adventures took the place of common 
 domestic prose in the tales and plays of ordinary life. Art, 
 which had strayed among formless ideals, had to be .bTought 
 back to what was comprehensible in natiure in order to recover 
 a sure standard of judgment ; perfect truth was now considered 
 all-important; the least and lowest was not considered un- 
 worthy of artistic treatment, and mere technical facility of 
 imitation became the test of talent. In this way modern art 
 arrived at the opposite extreme of naked truth to nature in 
 contrast to the supernatural, and in the stead of knightly 
 customs it placed the conventionalities of the citizen life of the 
 Teutonic middle classes. 
 
872 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 This then is Shakespeare's artistic greatness, that standing 
 at the boundary line which divides two periods, at the point of 
 transition from mediaeval to modern, from Southern to Northern 
 art, he kept the medium between these two extremes, excluded 
 both the extravagant and the conventional, the vague and the 
 narrow, the supernatural and the vulgar, the hyper-real and the 
 hyper-ideal, and returned to the normal point of all art, where 
 • reality and ideality closely blend. The romantic taste found 
 its latest refuge in the Spanish drama; the same year (1588) 
 that Lope de Vega began ihis ample career in this direction, 
 Shakespeare arose in England, and gave another aim to dramatic 
 art. Protestantism gave him the freedom necessary to over- 
 come the pressure of religious ordinances and despotism ; he 
 was able to banish mysteries and moralities, the whole religious 
 circle of romantic poetry, miracles and mirg,cle-workers, out of 
 the realms of art ; with intentional indifference he kept aloof 
 from all false religious heroism, as well as all idyllic quietism. 
 Where he used the marvellous he did so in a purely symbolic 
 sense, and founded it upon truth and nature. He did riot revel 
 wildly with the strange materials of the Spanish plays of 
 chivalry and magic, but he rested on history and the ground of 
 real life, far from the careless genius of Lope, with whose 
 creative impulse he united the prudence of an instinctively 
 philosophic spirit. If the romantic art differs essentially from 
 ancient art by singularity of motive, by close intricacies in 
 facts, by conventionalities which cover the simple truth of 
 nature with their capriciousness, Shakespeare in all these 
 respects comes essentially near to the art of antiquity. In his 
 plays there are neither miracles nor whimsical motives. He 
 knew nothing of the conventionalities of the Spanish drama ; 
 all the interest in his plays is of a general human value. 
 Where, as in King John, loyalty is the subject, it is mingledr-with 
 all the truly human emotions and duties of patriotism and 
 morals. Where he depicts fidelity, it is not of that conventional 
 kind dependent on office, situation, and political relations, but 
 free, resting on duty and inclination. Love with him has 
 nothing to do with a traditional devotedness to woman, and 
 does not lead to continual conflicts with regard to differences of 
 station ; when in his plays persons of unequal rank fall in love 
 with each other, natural right always takes precedence of con- 
 ventional prejudices; and those who object to such unions as 
 Polixenes and Bertram, do so rather from general human 
 
HIS WEAL OF ART. 873 
 
 motives than from consideration of their high position. Thus 
 far he seldom interferes with modern points of honour; the 
 idea of honour with him is identified with that of merit, 
 glory, valour, and manly worth. When Henry V. receives the 
 dauphin's balls, he is too full of true self-respect to consider it 
 an affront; he arms himself to punish the overweening 
 audacity of his rival, not to avenge his own insulted honour. 
 When Posthumus sees Imogen's honour aspersed, he wants her 
 to defend it herself by deeds, and then he will punish lachimo 
 in a duel, and not by a kind of ordeal will he obtain an 
 imaginary satisfaction , for his injured honour. Shakespeare 
 everywhere avows the pure human principles of antiquity, 
 and puts morally the truly human and natural in the place 
 of the mistaken ethical notions of the time, just as Eestheti- 
 cally he introduced it in the place of the supernatural and 
 conventional of romantic art. And just sp he avoids, on 
 the other hand, the vulgar and conventional of Northern genre 
 poetry. He has only once (in the Merry Wives of Windsor) 
 descended to the representation of ordinary domestic life, of 
 the world of niediocrity, and even this once he has given a 
 counterbalance to this sphere of life in the adventurous nature 
 of his hero. He has nowhere entered upon a delineation of 
 originals and humourists delighting in unusual freaks and 
 whims, as was begun by the Ben Jonson schoal, and carried on 
 in the humorous novels of the English; Ais. caricatured oddities, 
 his pedants and buUies, are public property. iHe has nowhere 
 depicted the dramatic burlesque, low vulgar nature for its own 
 sake, like Holberg, but only in contrast to other characters. 
 This is the case even in the description of his Launce or the 
 Carrier in Henry IV., where he has descended lowest, we will 
 even allow lower than would be advisable in any other artist. 
 
 Thus viewed in complete contrast to the extremes of 
 Southern Eomanic and Northern Teutonic art, Shakespeare, in 
 a moral sense, always holds the just medium between the super- 
 natural and the unnatural of life, occupying the place of real 
 inartificial humanity, and in an aesthetic sense, the medium 
 between extravagance and chance, the place of general truth. 
 In an ethical point of view we have already seen him taking 
 the lead in the direction of Teutonic art, which does not 
 credulously acquiesce in the customs of the age and the 
 manners of the day, but rather strives after an original purity 
 of life, and endeavours to restore the true nature of human 
 
874 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 relations, which is lost amid the arbitrary laws of conven- 
 tion. Schiller's declaration, that poets are the guardians of 
 (pure) nature, or the searchers for it if lost, is the peculiar 
 manifesto of modern Teutonic art ; it is only true of the 
 ancient and modern poetry of a Homer or a Shakespeare ; 
 the romantic poets of the middle ages were, in this sense, 
 neither guardians nor searchers of nature. In an aesthetic point 
 of view, on the other hand, we see Shakespeare everywhere, with 
 his generalising views, putting forward those subjects to which 
 a general truth is inherent ; it did not satisfy him that his 
 poetry possessed a substantial matter, with which its outward 
 form was in harmony ; it was essential to him that this matter 
 should be purely human, true, and necessary. With this matter 
 of general value, as independent as possible of time, place, and 
 taste, purified from everything accidental and arbitrary, Shake- 
 speare's poetry possesses the True ; with his inimitable gift of 
 description and representation, of making truth sensible and 
 comprehensible, and clothing it with the appearance of reality, 
 it possesses the Beautiful^ which we cannot imagine apart from 
 the appearance ; so far is the true identical with the beautiful, 
 the idea with the ideal. The poet who gives form and appear- 
 ance to the abstract and true, and he who, on the other hand, 
 spiritualises common reality, animates matter, generalises the 
 particular, and makes the incidental obedient to laws, both of 
 these meet in the same operation, in the representation of the 
 beautiful, in the union of the real and the ideal. 
 
 Thus then Shakespeare, viewed in reference to this com- 
 bining of real and ideal elements, appears so many-sided that 
 we should in vain attempt to exhaust his poetic merits by any 
 exclusive description. Goethe has said that all synonymes, 
 with which we distinguish art character, Hellenic and Eomanic, 
 antique and modern. Southern and Northern, objective and sub- 
 jective, naive and sentimental, natural and artificial, &e., lead 
 back to the question as to the supefiority of realistic or ideal 
 treatment. And in Tact we may demonstrate in Shakespeare 
 that he combines in himself these two fundamental qualities, 
 and therefore cannot be characterised exclusively by any of the 
 other designations. There are in genfe'ral very few poets that 
 can be distinguished altogether by one of these contrasts ; the 
 balance will always lean to one side, as in Shakespeare it is 
 always undeniably in favour of the realistic ; but in no other 
 than in him is the weight and the counterpoise so great that 
 
ms IDEAL OF AET. 875 
 
 in the gravity of the one the other inay be easily overlooked. 
 Eegarded from diiferent sides he is sometimes the one, some- 
 times the other, but in reality neither, because he is both at 
 once. Compared with the romantic poets of the middle ages 
 he is antique, compared with the ancients he is modem ; com- 
 pared with French dramatists he is the poet of nature, and 
 with his English contemporaries he is the poet of civilisation ; 
 compared with the Spaniards he is realistic, and with the 
 English humourists he is ideal. At one time his poetry appears 
 to us to have flowed forth involuntarily like the popular songs, 
 at another time to be art poetry composed with full conscious- 
 ness. If Schiller declared the sign of the poet of nature to be 
 that his work succeeded as by a lucky hit, not requiring ame- 
 lioration, then Shakespeare seems to be of this class ; but when 
 we see how happily he improved his successful hit in Hamlet, 
 we acknowledge him to be an artist who handles his subjects 
 as an intelligent critic. According to Schiller the natural 
 (naive) poet is .more rarely mistaken in his matter than the 
 sentimental. Shakespeare seldom erred in this, but when he 
 did his mistake was changed into a Aast'er-stroke ; he pos- 
 sessed that compact nature which Groethe envied, always setting 
 the right before him and seizing the right means. If we con- 
 sider how Shakespeare takes all his materials from the world 
 and from experience, we shall find him a poet of nature ; but 
 if we observe, on the other hand, how he gives the precious 
 blood of his own breast for the nourishment of his children, 
 he is a sentimental poet. If common matter (always following 
 Schiller's distinctions) is dangerous to the natural poet, spiritual 
 enthusiasm to the sentimental, then Shakespeare has avoided 
 both dangers ; in the former, spirit is often wanting, in the 
 latter, subject ; laxness is the usual fault of the natural poet, 
 exaggeration of the sentimental poet : who would accuse 
 Shakespeare of either ? He unites the virtues and avoids the 
 faults of both styles. If poetry is with the poet of nature a 
 happy possession, with the sentimental it is a meritorious ac- 
 quisition, it is in Shakespeare a possession continually increased 
 by new acquisition. Schiller calls the drama the representative 
 form of all art poetry. This form almost exclusively occupied 
 our poet, who was almost exclusively the poet of nature. Even 
 the results prove that Shakespeare combined both styles ; 
 masterpieces of the natural style, says Schiller, will be fol- 
 lowed by imitations, which are flat copies of vulgar nature; 
 
876 SHAKEaPEARE. 
 
 the masterpieces of the sentimental style will call forth fantastic 
 productions : in England and Germany Shakespeare has, at all 
 times, been followed by both of them. He appears everywhere 
 happily placed between these various sides of poetic nature, 
 not actually belonging to either. The great grasp of his mind 
 shows him to be a poet peculiarly belonging to modern times ; 
 but if we regard the purity, naturalness, and simplicity of his 
 art, he is like a poet of antiquity. He has given proofs that 
 in the lyric and didactic styles, in which the moderns dis- 
 tinguished themselves, he was a match for them, but he con- 
 centrated himself on the highest object of poetry, on actions, 
 like the ancients. But if we look beyond the poetry to the 
 poet, no modern poet appears to have possessed a higher sub- 
 jectivity than Shakespeare ; yet in his poetry he is as objective, 
 and as completely resigns his personality as the ancients did. He 
 has a wealth of feelings and thoughts such as the most accom- 
 plished poet of later times could not show, but the way in 
 which he avoids displaying the treasures of his wisdom is quite 
 an ancient mode of self-denial ; he felt the truth and beauty of 
 things without boasting of the beauty and truth of his feelings ; 
 he sought to recognise what was great, never to appear great 
 himself. Like the ancients he kept himself free from all patho- 
 logical sympathies, from poetical partiality for certain favourite 
 figures and objects ; consequently he took up willingly, as the 
 old dramatists did, materials that had already been used, to 
 which he merely put the finishing touches, as the master-hand , 
 does to the rough-hewn statue. Thus he succeeded in gathering 
 out of the shapeless materials of modern times and Northern 
 races effects which Groethe would willingly have proved to be 
 unattainable. Art with him does not look as if it were, what 
 Goethe declared it to be in the North, a mere hot-house plant ; 
 it appears, in his hands, of natural growth and flourishing in 
 tropical abundance. Goethe feigned himself inclined to declare 
 all modern art worthless; but the worth of Shakespeare's poetry 
 stood so gigantically before him that it made him despond. 
 And, in fact, Shakespeare is not merely the combination of our 
 two greatest poets, but he even surpasses them when combined, 
 not only in matter, but in artistic nature. The extent of his 
 matter is so immense that the poetic experience of the two 
 Germans united, notwithstanding the superior culture of the 
 age, is not to be compared with it. We shall find Shakespeare 
 not only more intuitive and realistic than Schiller, but even 
 
HIS AGE. 877 
 
 than G-oethe, if we consider his successful command of the world 
 of history ; we shall find him not only more ideal than Goethe, , 
 but even than Schiller, if ■we take into consideration his much 
 deeper spiritualisation, and his poetic comprehension of history, 
 or when we fall back upon his moral philosophy and his human 
 ideal. Let us finally try in Shakespeare this union of real and 
 ideal nature, wherein Schiller recognised the highest pitch to 
 which human nature can attain, by what follows. In ahnost all 
 ages and countries the twin poets are found together, each of 
 whom has a prevalent share in one of the opposite elements of 
 art, the sensual and spiritual, the real and ideal ; in Germany 
 alone we had in the last century Haller and Hagedom, Klop- 
 stock and Wieland, Lessing and Herder, in this contrast, and 
 finally Schiller and Goethe in full conscioijsness of it ; but 
 Shakespeare combined these two qualities so completely that 
 it is only in his imitators that his double nature separates; he 
 himself has neither in his age, nor in his country, found any 
 contrast in either direction. 
 
 After these considerations it will appear less and less 
 strange that we give to Shakespeare, in the history' of the 
 modern drama, the same place that Hottier holds in the history 
 • of the epos, that we look upon him as the sublime spring from 
 which all the streams of dramatic poetry ought to be der:|ved, 
 without vainly endeavouring to carry their flow higher than the 
 fountain-head. It remains for us to show, by a few remarks, 
 that Shakespeare, in the times he lived in, and the country 
 and locality in which he wrote, was not without a singularly 
 favourable union of circumstances, which make this prominent 
 position still more explicable. The times, very far from being 
 a' hindrance to a great poet, were actually, from lucky local 
 and national conditions, the most propitious that modern times 
 could offer. In a few instances they might be prejudicial to 
 Shakespeare's poetry, but on the whole he had cause to bless 
 his happy star. For all the conditions for making great tiroies, 
 and begetting and nourishing great men, lay around him, and 
 no one will pass over this lightly who knows that even genius 
 is not elevated above the conditions of the age, and that even 
 the best seed requires good ground to grow in. i 
 
 Everything seemed to combine to make England in the 
 time of Elizabeth the chief inheritor of the treasures of 
 
878 SHAKEBPEARE. 
 
 cultivation that Europe had won in the rich times of ics 
 regeneration in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These 
 times ,and their performances were the wondrous antetype of all 
 that our striving and fermenting present exhibits as its own 
 property. With us everything thrives that can be accomplished 
 without great men, without distinguished talents, and without 
 a thoroughly penetrative culture and intellectual concentration, 
 that can be done by the working together of many moderate 
 powers, or that can be effected by the exercise of a one-sided 
 mind ; all that depends on technical readiness and mechanical 
 skill. Everything that advances the externals of life, the 
 comfort of existence, the facility of intercourse, the increase of 
 wants, and the possibility of satisfying them ; larger and larger 
 circles of society are formed, who are to share in possession, in 
 rights, in all that which people call fortune and civilisation. 
 But when the question is of leading minds, who in state affairs 
 can recognise the present necessity, and by satisfying it guide 
 aright the bewildered instinct, who in the church by the 
 weight of great characters seize the inimical powers of the 
 mind by their roots and only attempt to expel them, who in 
 art and literature are inspired to hold up a noble pattern which 
 may allure disordered souls and vulgar passions to worthy aims, 
 who in war display, surpassing talents, winning the admiration 
 of men — then we find ourselves, amid the many contending ^ 
 powers of the age, iii an immense and fearful desert. How 
 different was the frame of those times, which knew nothing of 
 the comforts of external life, nothing of the little arts with 
 which people develop little gifts in little coteries, in order 
 contentedly to carry off a little renown — those times in which 
 there was needed great merit, shining gifts, useful inventions, 
 and fruitful discoveries, if a man would overcome the diiEculties 
 of intercourse and the adverseness of time and place, in which 
 men, therefore, were thrown back on themselves, obliged to 
 draw all their strength from within, and, standing alone, to 
 exert themselves for achievements which no other could accom- 
 plish in their stead ! Hence arose, in remarkable abundance in 
 all parts of the world, those great characters and creative 
 geniuses, swelling with individual strength, whose outbursts of 
 spirit now testified to 'a youthfulness and luxuriance of 
 resources, now to a sincerity, modesty, and depth of unosten- 
 tatious culture, which merits the admiration of all time. 
 When, amid the stream of men of learning in Italy, antiquity 
 
HIS AGE. 879 
 
 was revived so that the spirit of Plato walked abroad and 
 inspired new scholars ; when in the Netherlands humanistic 
 learning struck its roots, and th6 great work of school reform 
 began ; when Germany was shaken out of sleep by her reformer, 
 who gave a shock to the might of Eome, and purified religion 
 and morals ; when the bold navigators of Genoa and Portugal 
 opened the way to the Indies, and cast a light upon the extent 
 of earth ; when the Spanish conquerors, as if in. sport, laid 
 new kingdoms at the feet of their sovereigns ; when Charles V. 
 and Philip II. united the civilised and uncivilised world ; when 
 Machiavelli created anew history and state policy, "and poli- 
 ticians arose in his school who laid open to the human mind a 
 long disused region of activity ; when Copernicus and Galileo 
 penetrated into the mysteries of the heavens ; when Italy 
 snatched from Greece the monopoly of the plastic arts, and 
 Palestrina became a reformer in music, and Ariosto gave to his 
 generation a new conception of poetry ; in all this we behold a 
 primitive world of creative power, in which the eminence of 
 one genius disappears, or becomes common amid the abundance 
 of the like all round him. These were the times of which 
 Bacon proudly said their symbol was, in .opposition to the 
 known sayings of the ancients, the plus ultra, the imitabile 
 fubnen, and, what surpasses all admiration, eyen the vmitaMle 
 ccelwm, since ships, like the heavenjy bodies, compassed the 
 earth, and even traversed more intricate pathways. 
 
 But the immense excitement of the 150 years from the fall 
 of Constantinople to Shakespeare's prime, proved in its fruits 
 and results of essential advantage to the Teutonic races, to 
 their states, and their intellectual progress — races which, in 
 contrast to the middle ages, were to give laws and form to this 
 later era. Italy had at that time exhausted all the luxury of 
 her inward powers, and Spain all the exuberance of her outward 
 strength, and neither had arrived at a true national prosperity ; 
 in Italy the burden of ecclesiastical and secular despotism had 
 crushed all efforts of mind without profit to people or state ; 
 in Spain, on the other hand, it had crushed those olf national 
 power without advantage to mental culture. But in the 
 northern Teutonic lands all the fruitful results of this period 
 crowded together, and here, under the influence of free religion, 
 free political schemes were developed, and a civilisation which 
 promised long continuance. Again in the circle of those 
 Teiitonic lands everything seemed to turn in favour of England 
 
880 SHAKESPEAEE. 
 
 alone. Grermany was too exclusively occupied •with the work 
 of religion for state and art and knowledge not to suffer from 
 it; the Netherlands were involved in too unequal "a struggle 
 for the full ripeness of the state not to be somewhat delayed. 
 But in England all that former times had prepared in scattered 
 places and peoples appeared to be united under Elizabeth. 
 Whilst in Italy and Grermany the growth of literature and 
 political power, the works of peace and war, were at variance, 
 and the one excluded the other, in England they were linked 
 together. It was for this that Bacon extolled the happiness of 
 Elizabeth in the same sense as in the play of Henry VIII., as a 
 princess under whose rule the prosperity of the country appeared 
 all the more brilliant in contrast to the misery and misfortune 
 of its neighbours, under whom the blessings of peace and the 
 honours of war 'were united ; when England stood like the wall 
 of Europe against the ascendency of Spain, when English 
 armies 'were victorious in Ireland and fought in Belgium, 
 France, and Scotland, when fleets waged war on the coasts of 
 Spain, and voyages were undertaken round the world, to India, 
 and to the North- West passage. Elizabeth gathered around her 
 men such as England, according to Bacon's testimony, had not 
 before produced ; she maintained her own position in such 
 society, not with that facility, says Bacon, with which in the 
 barbarous ages men were as easy to rule as herds of cattle, but 
 with the highest gifts of mind and character, without which in 
 this highly cultivated age it was impossible to become dis- 
 tinguished. Among these men was Bacon himself, who, through 
 the confused chaos of medieeval alcheruy, designed the method 
 which in our oy^n day has been carried out in natural science ; 
 among them too were Spenser and Sidney, who enchanted with 
 their language and poetry, a Raleigh, who carried off the palm 
 both in arms and learning, a statesman like Burleigh, a 
 historian like Camden, a merchant like Grresham, naval heroes 
 like Howard and Drake, not to speak of many of a second rank. 
 In many of these minds, as in our Shakespeare, we perceive 
 the delight they felt in belonging to so exciting a period, 
 which suffered no stagnation of life, and to so happy a state, in 
 which no public disgrace crippled individuals, and no religious 
 despotism oppressed their minds. The conflict with scholastic 
 philosophy and religious fanaticism was not iiideed over, yet 
 Shakespeare as well as Bacon came at a precious moment 
 of mental freedom, after the struggle with Catholicism and 
 
HIS AGE. 881 
 
 its issue, and before that with the fanaticism of the other 
 party — ^the Puritans; and he could raise his head free from 
 the prejudices which 300 years have not healed. Shake- 
 speare could thus in his poetry^ even at that time, give to the 
 age that which we first received from the great work of our 
 German poets of the last century — ^the basis of a natural mode 
 of feeling, thought, and life, upon which art prospers in its 
 purest form. In many respects the age itself was in this 
 beneficial to the poet. It maintained a happy mediuni between 
 crudeness and vitiated taste ; life was not insipid and cotourless 
 as it is nowadays ; men still ventured to appear what they 
 were ; there was still poetry in reality.. Our German poets, in 
 an age of rouge and powder, of hoops and wigs, of stiff manners, 
 rigid proprieties, narrow society, and cold impulses, had inde- 
 scribable trouble in struggling out of this dulness and deformity, 
 which they had first to conquer in themselves before they could 
 discern and contend for -viiiat was better. In Shakespeare's 
 time nature had not yet became extinct; the age was just 
 halting on the threshold of these distorted views of false 
 civilisation ; and if our poet had indeed to combat against the 
 first approaches of the disease, he was yet entirely sound and 
 free from it himself. He had the immense advantage of being 
 one with his age and not at variance with it ; when he sought 
 materials for his poetry he need not, like our painters, dive 
 into past worlds, restore lost creeds, worship fallen gods, and 
 imitate foreign works of art — from his national soil he drew 
 the power which makes his poetry unrivalled. The poets of 
 the middle ages lived in too strong a hierarchical rule to be able 
 with their limited knowledge of history to succeed in placing 
 their own minds on the same level mth the spirit of the age ; 
 hence in those times they grappled with ideas too great for 
 them, which they could not bring into form, and the feeling of 
 inability is stamped on all mediaeval poetry. It was quite 
 otherwise in the little insular England, where the dawning 
 self-reliance of the people of itself drew the poet to live in and 
 with and for his nation, and to reflect the image of the age in 
 his works. It is the reverse in the present day, when the 
 acquaintance of every art and nation has conquered all time 
 and space for the poet, and has brought the materials of all 
 ages into too close contact with him for him to link his poems 
 and aspirations so intimately with a national life. And the 
 > result was this, that often our best German poems found only a 
 
 3l 
 
882 8BAKESFEABE. 
 
 small number of readers, because the tenor of the age and the 
 people was no longer identical with the poet, because he willingly 
 renounced them. But it was not so with Shakespeare and his 
 countryman Bacon ; with viUiog modesty they regarded them- 
 selves only as a part in the great whole of their highly ad- 
 vanced age, and in his proudest pontroversy with the errors of 
 the time. Bacon declared that his works were rather the fruit 
 of his age than of his genius. 
 
 This freshness of the intellectual instinct aniong the Teutonic 
 races in the age generally, this prime of the national life of 
 England in partierdar, explains to us, therefore, how at a time 
 when there was no poet in the other Teutonic families, and when 
 in England itself an unpopular Italian ' poetry was in vogue, 
 Shakespeare was able for the first tinie to raise the Teutonic 
 taste and to ennoble a national branch of art. That the distinct 
 transition from the Southern taste in poetry to the Teutonic took 
 place precisely in England is as little a njatter of chance • as 
 that it was precisely in the drama that England afforded such 
 important services. The English people are a combination of 
 French Normans and German Saxons, the language itself is 
 compounded from both elements ; in the niiddle ages its entire 
 poetry went hand in hand with Italian art ; since Shakespeare 
 it follows the Teutonic taste of modern times. How. Shake- 
 speare, in his lyrical and descriptive poems, did homage to the 
 formal mannerism of the Italian poetry, how in his early dramas 
 he adhered to it, and subsequently relinquished it, we have 
 before amply pointed out. The assurance with which he gave 
 up that false mannerism, and thereby marked the great turning- 
 point in the direction of taste from the Italian to the more 
 modern style, is only to be compared with the decision with 
 which, in the great confusion of styles, amid the continuance of 
 epos in Italy, the prevalence of pastoral poetry throughout 
 Europe, the taste for frivolous tales and the imitation of the 
 classics emanating from France, he seized the drama as the 
 only style suited to the spirit of the age, and without wavering 
 irresolutely here and there, as Groethe, he suffered the bias of 
 the time to determine his direction and career, and the splen- 
 dour of the Atalantan apple could not allure him from it. We 
 call the drama the normal species of poetry for this later age, 
 not only because, as we before said, something to elevate and 
 attract the senses was necessary for a public who could no 
 longer listen to rhapsodies nor be satisfied with mere hearing. 
 
ms AGE. 883 
 
 but especially because the stage was the only place where all 
 
 ranks were gathered round art, because this species alone took 
 
 poetry from the learned and aristocratic circles, and placed it 
 
 before the most widespread public, where greatness better thrives, 
 
 and because it restored poetry to the whole people ; this is the 
 
 decisive token in any matter of its suitability to the spirit of 
 
 the age. To have perceived this is a merit which indeed Hans 
 
 Sachs and Lope de Vega, the one before, the other contemporary 
 
 with Shakespeare, may claim ; but to have jnade laws for the 
 
 drama and to have given it a higher value is Shakespeare's own 
 
 greatness. The age favoured him in this from another side 
 
 also. He appeared at that auspicious moment in which the 
 
 drama had in England already obtained acoeptance and love, 
 
 when the sympathy of the people was most alive, and when, on 
 
 the other hand, the public were not yet corrupted and excited 
 
 by over-sensibility, and when the opera, whicA deteriorated the 
 
 drama, was not yet in existence. He took that, in hand which 
 
 most actively engaged the spirit of the people, and he carried it 
 
 through progressive steps to a consummation beyond which 
 
 there was nothing possible but retrogression. 
 
 Thus favoured by the age, the drama, as we before said, with 
 regard to locality also, was in it^ right place in England, where 
 it could spring into life complete like an armed Pallas ; the 
 advantage of concentration, which England at that time drew 
 from the general circumstances of the period, -was brought to 
 bear in a remarkable manner upon thisbranch of art. France and 
 Italy in their chivalric epic poems had exhausted their national 
 poetic powers ; France had furnished the matter for these epics ; 
 Italy had added in the sixteenth century the finished form. 
 When in poetry the transition froaa .the epos to the drama 
 took place, Italy made only feeble attempts in the sixteenth 
 century to revive the Latin comedy ; France, following in the 
 footsteps of the classics, created an artificial tragedy, which 
 Italy subsequently imitated. Both countries have had a national 
 epos, which led in Italy to the revival of the old rhapsodists, 
 but they have had no popular drama of great perfection. Spain 
 and England, on the other; hand, have no independent epos, 
 but only chivalric romances borrowed from France and Italy. 
 Their romances and ballads never formed themselves into larger 
 epopees, they remained separate, and appear as the first 
 ' rhapsodical opening of the drama ; in Spain, in a great mea- 
 sure, they gave the drama its matter and even its colouring. 
 
 3 I, 2 
 
884 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 In both countries, as an equivalent for the lacking epos, a 
 popular stage was formed, such as other nations of modern 
 times have never possessed. Between these two countries Grer- 
 many held a middle course. It had a popular epos, but/ it remained 
 uncultivated ; it had a drama, but it was only developed slowly, 
 by fits and starts, amid interruptions, and with no concentration 
 as to time and place, and therefore it never attained to the 
 brilliant perfection of the Spanish and English theatres. The 
 sixteenth century witnessed a certain degree of theatrical pro- 
 gress in Niiremberg, the seventeenth in Silesia, the eighteenth 
 throughout- Germany ;' the formation of the stage extends here 
 over three centuries ; in Spain on the contrary the popular cul- 
 tivation of the drama is concentrated within one century, and 
 in England, circling round Shakespeare, within even fifty years. 
 In Grermany it sought doubtfully after a place of nurture and 
 found none ; in Spain it left' the provincial cities for the little 
 Madrid, only lately chosen as the capital ; in England it was 
 concentrated within the one great capital^ where it' had to fight 
 for its existence in that hard contest which called forth its 
 highest powers. Judge then how natural it was that England, 
 if not the birthplace of the drama, should be that of dramatic 
 legislature. Yet even this instance of favourable concentration 
 is not the last. Both in philosophy and poetry everything con- 
 spired, as it were, throughout this prosperous period, in favour 
 of two great minds, Shakespeare and Bacon ; all competitors 
 vanished from their side, and they could give forth Mws for 
 art and science which it' is incurabent^even upon present ages 
 to fulfil. As the revived philosophy, which in the former cen- 
 tury in Grermany was divided among many, but in England at 
 that time was the possession of a single man, so poetry also 
 found one exclusive heir, compared with whom those later bom 
 could claim but little. 
 
 That Shakespeare's appearance upon a soil so admirably 
 prepa,red was neither marvellous nor accidental is evidenced even 
 by the corresponding appearance of such a contemporary as 
 Bacon. Scarcely can anything be said of Shakespeare's position 
 generally with regard to mediaeval poetry which does not also 
 bear upon the position of the renovator Bacon with regard to 
 mediaeval philosophy. Neither knew nor mentioned the other, 
 although Bacon was almost called upon to have done so in his 
 remarks upon the theatre of his day. It may be presumed that 
 Shakespeare liked Bacon but little, if he knew his writings and 
 
HIS AGE. 885 
 
 life, that he liked not his ostentation, which, without on the 
 whole interfering with his modesty, recurred too often in many 
 instances ; that he liked not the fault-finding which his ill- 
 health might have caused, nor the narrow-mindedness with 
 which he pronounced the histrionic art to be infamous, although 
 he allowed that the ancients regarded the drama as a school for 
 virtue ; nor the theoretic precepts of worldly wisdom which he 
 gave forth; nor, lastly, the practical career which he lived. 
 Before his mind, however, if he had fathomed it, he must have 
 bent in reverence. For just as Shakespeare was an interpreter 
 of the secrets of history and of human nature. Bacon was an 
 interpreter of lifeless nature. Just as Shakespeare went from 
 instance to instance in his judgment of moral actions, and never 
 founded a law on single experience, so did Bacon in natural 
 science avoid leaping from one experience of the senses to 
 general principles.; he spoke of this with blame as anticipating 
 nature ; and Shakespeare, in the same way,, would have called 
 the conventionalities in the poetry of the Southern races an 
 anticipation of human nature. In the scholastic science of the 
 middle ages, as in the chivalric poetry of the romantic period, 
 approbation and not truth was sought for, and with one accord 
 Shakespeare's poetry and Bacon's science were equally opposed 
 to this. As Shakespeare balanced the one-sided errors of the 
 imagination by reason, reality, and nature, so Bacon led philo- 
 sophy away from the one-sided errors of reason to expeauence ; 
 both, with one stroke, renovated the two branches of science 
 and poetry by .this renewed bond with nature; both, disre- 
 garding all by-ways, staked, everything upon this ' victory in 
 the race between art and natureJ Just as Bacon with his new 
 philosophy is linked with the natural science of Grreece and Rome, 
 and then with the latter pejiod of philosophy in western Europe, 
 so Shakespeare's drama stands in relation to the comedies of 
 Plautus and to the stage of his own day ; between the two 
 there lay a vast wilderness of time, as unfruitful for the drama 
 as for philosophy. But while they thus led back to nature. 
 Bacon was yet as little of an empiric, in the common sense, as 
 Shakespeare was a poet of na,ture. Bacon prophesied that if 
 hereafter his commendation of experience should prevail, great 
 danger to science would arise from the other extreme, and 
 Shakespeare even in his own day could perceive the same with 
 respect to his poetry ; Bacon, therefore, insisted on the closest 
 union between experience and reason, just as Shakespeare 
 
886 SHAKESPEABE. 
 
 effected that between reality and imagination. While they 
 thus bid adieu to the formalities of ancient art and science, 
 Shakespeare to conceits and taffeta-phrases, Bacon to logic and 
 syllogisms, yet at times it occurred that the one fell back into 
 the subtleties of the old school, and the other into the con- 
 strained wit of the Italian style. Bacon felt himself quite an 
 original in that which was his peculiar merit, and so was 
 Shakespeare : the one in the method of science he ■ had laid 
 down, and in his suggestions for its execution, the other in the 
 poetical works he had executed, and in the suggestions of their 
 new law. Bacon, looking back to the waymarks he had left for 
 others, said with pride that his words required a century for 
 their demonstration iand several for their execution ; and so too 
 it has demanded two centuries to understand Shakespeare, but 
 very little has ever been executed in his sense. And at the 
 same time we have mentioned what deep modesty was inter- 
 woven in both with their self-relianee, so that the words 
 which Bacon liked to qudfce hold good for the two works : — 
 'The kingdom of Grod cometh not with observation.' Both 
 reached this height from the one starting-point, that Shake- 
 speare despised the million, and Bacon feared with Phocion 
 the applause 'of the multitude. Both are alike in the rare 
 impartiality with which they avoided everything one-sided ; 
 in Bacon we find, indeed, youthful exercises in which he 
 endeavoured in severe contrasts to contemplate a series of 
 things from two points of view. Both, therefore, have an 
 equal hatred of sects and parties; Bacon of sophists and 
 dogmatic philosophers, Shakespeare of Puritans and zealots. 
 Both, therefore, are equally free from prejudices, and from 
 astrological superstition in dreams and omens. Bacon says of 
 the alchemists and magicians in natural science that they 
 stand in similar relation to true knowledge as the deeds of 
 Amadis to those of Csesar, and so does Shakespeare's true 
 poetry stand in relation to the fantastic romance of Amadis. 
 Just as Bacon banished religion from science, so did Shake- 
 speare from art ; and when the former complained that the 
 teachers of religion were against natural philosophy, they were 
 equally against the stage. From Bacon's example it seems 
 clear that Shakespeare left religious matters unnoticed on the 
 same grounds as himself, and took the path of morality in 
 worldly things ; in both this has been equally misconstrued, 
 and Le Maistre has proved Bacon's lack of Christianity, as Birch 
 
mS AGE. 887 
 
 has done that of Shakespeare. Shakespeare would, perhaps, have 
 looked down just as contemptuously on the ancients and their 
 arts as Bacon did on their philosophy and natural science, and 
 both on the same grounds ; they boasted of the greater age of 
 the world, of more enlarged knowledge of heaven, earth, and 
 mankind. Neither stooped before authorities, and an injustice 
 similar to that which Bacon committed against Aristotle, 
 Shakespeare perhaps has done to Homer. In both a similar 
 combination of different mental powers was at work ; and as 
 Shakespeare was often involuntarily philpsophical in his prp- 
 foundness, Bacon was not seldom surprised into the imagina- 
 tion of the poet. Just as Bacon, although he declared know- 
 ledge in itself to be much more valuable than the use of 
 invention, insisted throughout generally and dispassionately 
 upon the practical use of philosopiy, so Shaktis^eare's poetry, 
 independent as was his sense of art, aimed throughout at 
 bearing upon the moral life. Bacon himself was of the same 
 opinion ; he was not far from declaring history to be the best 
 teacher of politics, and poetry the best instructor in morals. 
 Both were alike deeply moved ty the picture of a ruling 
 Nemesis, whom they saw, grand and powerful, striding through 
 history and life, dragging the mightiest aM most prosperous as 
 a sacrifice to her altar, as the victims of their own inward 
 nature and destiny. In Baton's works we find a multitude 
 of moral sayings and maxims of experience, from which the 
 most striking mottoes might be drawn for every Shakespearian 
 play, aye, for every one of his prindipal characters (we have 
 already brought forward not a few proofs of this), testifying to 
 a remarkable harmony in their mutual comprehension of human 
 nature. Both, in their systems of morality rendering homage 
 to Aristotle, whose ethics Shakespeare, from a passage in 
 Troilus, may have read, arrived at the same end as he did — 
 that virtue lies in a jtist tiledium between two extremes. 
 Shakespeare would Itave also agreed with hvm in this, that 
 Bacon declared excess to be /the fault of youth, as defect is of 
 age ; ' he accounted ' defect the worst, because excess contains 
 some sparks of magnaniinity, and, like a bird, claims kindred of 
 the heavens, while defect, only like a base worm, crawls upon 
 the earth.' In these maximis lie at once, as it were, the whole 
 theory of Shakespeare's dramatic forms and of his moral 
 philosophy. 
 
888 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 From our last position we pass on to a few discussions upon 
 the moral, spirit of Shakespeare's works. Upon this point, 
 also, so many objections have been raised, that it might appear 
 more paradoxical to regard the poet as a moral guide than as 
 a poeticaJ law-giver. Not to mention how often, in this 
 respect also, single expressions and speeches have been the 
 stumbling-block, Johnson has reproached our dramatist in the 
 severest manner with the fault, 'to which may be imputed 
 most ,of the evil in books or in men : ' that he has sacrificed 
 virtue to ijonvenience, that he seems to write without any 
 moral purpose, that he makes no just distribution of good or 
 evil, and carries ,his persons indifferently through right and 
 wrong- Nor are these wholly obsolete views. As late as 1848 
 a work appeared by Birch upon Shakespeare's religion and 
 philosophy^ inveighing against ' that - German mysticism ' 
 which sets up Shakespeare as an article of faith, while he 
 rather ought with one consent to be called graceless and faith- 
 less ; a book in which it is endeavoured to be proved that 
 Shakespeare surpassed Marlowe and Greene in free-thinking, 
 atheism, and profanity, and had learned Lucretian frivolity 
 and a derision of religion from Boccaccio and the like. In 
 plain words, the poet is hare made responsible for the language 
 of his characters. Because Aaron denies God and Autolycus 
 immortality, Shakespeare denies them also ; because Henry "V. 
 addresses to Falstaff the words of Christ : ' I know thee not ! ' 
 Shakespeare is , a blasphemer ; and when Timon in his frantic 
 misanthrophy exclaims, ' Spare not the babe— think it a bas- 
 tard ! ' Shakespeare has alluded to Herod's murder of the 
 infants and has called Christ a bastard ! We may decide for 
 ourselves whether, stupidity or the perfidy of priest-like zeal 
 dictated this book, which would have been too bad even for 
 Puritanical times ; for Gosson and his like are here surpassed. 
 
 Blindness such as this corrects itself. We do not therefore 
 direct these remarks to oppose it, but only to add to the im- 
 portance of our testimony, so that even these zealots, in spite 
 of their blindness, must bear witness to the moral spirit of 
 Shakespeare's works. Even Birch himself cannot help acknow- 
 ledging that there lies within our poet a deep benevolence and 
 that natural love which in healthy natures outweighs other 
 passions ; that just so, countless times in his characters, he 
 brings out this natural goodness of the human heart in contrast 
 to its natural evil ; that he builds a system of morality upon 
 
THE MOBAL SPIRIT OF HIS WORKS. 889 
 
 nature and reason, a system independent of religious considera- 
 tions, because he believed the laws of morality to be written 
 plainly enough on the tablet of the human heart. And just so 
 did Johnson confess that a system of social duty may be 
 selected from Shakespeare ; but he thought that its principles 
 only occasionally escaped him. Had he conscientiously ex- 
 amined the matter, it would have happened to him with 
 respect to morals, even more than with respect to aesthetics, as 
 before with Alcibiades, who, when he had penetrated through 
 the ugly exterior of his Socrates, and had raised the veil from 
 his inner life, discovered a fulness of unsuspected beauty. 
 
 It is true Shakespeare never aims at preaching m.orals by 
 express and direct precept. He does it for the most part indi- 
 rectly by the mouth of the least prejudiced, by the spectators 
 rather than by the actors in his plays. And this moreover 
 only in tragedy, where dazzling passions vacillate between vice 
 and virtue, and where it was necessary to prevent a misconcep- 
 tion ; in comedy, where he endeavoured rather to amuse than 
 to exert the mind, it would have been prejudicial to the design 
 of his art had he added severe lectures to the picture of folly, 
 which is in itself represented in a ridiculous aspect. If Shake- 
 speare thus, talking Johnson's words literally, seems to write 
 with no moral aim, this very appearance is the triumph of his 
 art. For art is not intended to proclaim moral truth by direct 
 teaching, but by living, acting impulses, by illustration and 
 example. This touching of the heart is far more adapted than 
 the cold language to the head to teach us to feel delight aind 
 disgust in right and wrong, and to develop in tis that true self- 
 love which strives to make the good and the beautiful its own. 
 There is no more fruitless branch in all Literature than moral 
 philosophy ; except perhaps those dramatic moralities into 
 whose frigid defects poetry will always sink whenever it aims 
 at direct moral teaching, and degrades itself as the medium of 
 this. For it follows upon this that all action, the true object 
 of art, disappears, and that in all characters and speeches we 
 look for examples and traits of morality such as men like Birch 
 desire, who lament the decline of the mysteries and moralities 
 under Shakespeare's worldly art. This method of morality was 
 far from Shakespeare's object ; yet morality was as much his 
 object as poetry itself. If they had told him of the new 
 theories, which would emancipate poetry from morality, he 
 would not have understood them, because his poetry was 
 
890 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 designed to represent the substance of active life, because, this 
 substance being of a wholly naoral nature, morality is conse- 
 quently utterly inseparable from true poetry.. If they had 
 pointed out to him the manner of Southern poetry, which 
 aspired after formal and outward beauty, he would have turned 
 away from this attractive shallowness, as he indeed involuntarily 
 did even in his descriptive poems. If they had held before him 
 the modem poems, which Groethe styled the ' literature of de- 
 spondency,' in which vice celebrates its triumphs, he would have 
 cast them from him with aesthetic as well as moral abhorrence 
 — he, who called evil a ' deformity' and virtue ' beauty.' Shake- 
 speare's poetry is moral, his poetic impulse, therefore, is insepa- 
 rably int6rwoven with his ethical feelings, because he took life 
 as a whole, and was himself a whole man, in whom the moral, 
 Besthetic, and intellectual qualities were separated by no specu- 
 lative analysis ; and his art is therefore so great because, out 
 of this whole, he absorbed into himself more of the moral ele- 
 ment of life than any other has done, not even excepting the 
 ancients. To knit poetry to life by this moral cement, to 
 sacrifice the outer beauty to the higher morality when the 
 mirror was to be held up to life, to exhihit to the age in this 
 mirror no sesthetic flattering picture, but a moral picture of 
 unvarnished truth — this is throughout the express aim of 
 Shakespeare's poetry ; and he followed it with such deep earn- 
 estness, that to this we must look for the reason why his poetry 
 had so wholly different an influence to that of our own Schiller 
 and Groethe, which excited rather to poetry and to poetry alone 
 than to a hearty sympathy with the world. 
 
 The relation of Shakespeare's poetry to morality and to 
 moral influence upon men is most perfect ; in this respect, from 
 Aristotle to Schiller, nothing higher has been asked of poetry 
 than that which Shakespeare rendered. If Bacon felt the lack 
 of a science of human passions, he rightly thought that his- 
 torians and poets supplied this science, and he might well have 
 searched for this science before all in his neighbour Shake- 
 speare ; for no other poetry has taught as his has done, by 
 reminders and warnings, that the taming of the passions is the 
 aim of human civilisation. If it would not cripple its own 
 effect upon this aim, it might not venture to teach express 
 morals ; for the mere knowledge of good and evil has little in- 
 fluence upon human passions. One noble impulse does more 
 towards the ennobling of men than a hundred good precepts. 
 
THE MORAL SPIRIT OF HIS WORKS. 891 
 
 and a bad passion is best subdued by the excitement of a better. 
 If the most desirable end in the moral perfection of men be 
 this — ^that impulse and passion within us should not be aban- 
 doned to the blind constraint of nature, but also not to the 
 severe direction of imperative law, that the sharp contrast be- 
 tween an iron duty done for duty's sake and the sweet incen- 
 tives of nature should be softened, that the oppression of the 
 senses by excessive mental control and the loss of inward freedom 
 by the blind dominion of inclination should be equally checked, 
 that passion should be moderated by reason ; and, on the other 
 hand, that that recognised as reasonable should be elevated 
 into an impulse, so that the power of passion should remain, 
 not unemployed, but harmless, that thus the man should arrive 
 at that completeness in which reason and passion, sense and 
 mind, should be united in the well-regulated inner precincts of 
 the soul .in one allied, never-conflicting activity — ^then will 
 poetry ever be the most effective guide to this end ; for ' serious 
 maxims frighten a man away from that which he endures in 
 sport,' and therefore Schiller exhorted the poet thus to lay 
 hold of men's minds. If art is to reach this end, it matters 
 not that this ideal combination of those powers, which are 
 generally at variance within us, should be represented as com- 
 plete in the characters, but only that, in the course and issue of 
 the actions represented, this balance should always stand out 
 as the healthful aim of human efforts ; in other words, that the 
 poet in the background of his work should keep his own mind 
 fixed upon their union. Of no poet perhaps can this high 
 praise be pronounced with such certainty as of Shakespeare, 
 He battled, like Goethe, for nature, for the natural rights of the 
 heart, against the pedantry, of propriety, and Puritanical aus- 
 terity, and mental error ; he battled, on the other hand, like 
 Schiller, for freedom of niind, for moderation and discipline, 
 against the common enemy of man, the excess of the passions ; 
 nowhere has he depicted, like Schiller, the heroes of a super- 
 human sense of duty, but equally nowhere has he wantonly 
 speculated upon the sensuality and levity of men. No man 
 has been so well acquainted with human passions, has repre- 
 sented them so apparently without expedient and effort, has 
 known so thoroughly how to awaken and check them in the 
 spectator, has so taught by the mastering of the passions repre- 
 , sented to master those of life. Successfully to depict a strong 
 passion demands experience and knowledge of the passion 
 
892 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 itself. But to combine with this possession that high self-com- 
 mand and inward balance which maintains itself free from 
 real influence in the delineation, this it is which alone is the 
 token of an ideal mind created for poetry. Never do we find 
 in Shakespeare that his hand is affected by the passion of 
 which he writes, a thing so common among many modern 
 poets, who are only the product of their own passions. And 
 when he gives the rein to the wildest passion, it is a grand and 
 beautiful sight to see how he himself is not carried away by it, 
 and how, knowing its breed and race, he masters it to the yoke 
 of his art, makes the unbridled still wilder by call and whip, 
 and at the same time understands how to tame and guide it by 
 a glance. He is never Icarus with him for whom he forges the 
 wings ; he is never Phaeton with him to whom he lends the 
 steed ; but towards his unruly children he is ever Phoebus in 
 love and Jupiter in punishment. 
 
 Possessing this property of perfect self-comrnand, our poet 
 never falls into the fault .of even our great modern poets, of 
 investing passion or weakness with attractions which might 
 captivate us and lead us morally astiay ; far rather it was his 
 natural talent, as it was his aim, in accordance with Aristotle's 
 law, to make his dramas tend to the purification of the passions. 
 According to Aristotle's well^-known precept, the action of the 
 tragedy ought to be of that nature that it should excite fear 
 and sympathy, and by this means should purify these and similar 
 emotions of the mind. This law Shakespeare satisfied in a 
 manner utterly removed from all trivialities, in a manner never 
 to be surpassed. He would have deprecated the idea of com- 
 paring, as Bacon did, the poet's. control of passion and the emo- 
 tions of terror in the tragedy with the administration of reward 
 and punishment in the state ; his aim was never, in this clumsy 
 manner, to excite the fear of the spectator, and his disgust at 
 the excess qf passion, essentially by emphasising the outward 
 misfortunes which this excess involves ; the nobler fear which 
 he aimed at is awakened in the spectator long before the issue, 
 even throughout the giddy path of senseless passion, throughout 
 the objective development of the blindly excited powers of our 
 mind. This suspense of fear is intended to heighten our feelings 
 and tender sensibility as to the choice of the right way ; we are 
 intended as spectators to learn from the drama to note more 
 quickly, more sensitively, the beginning of the false way ; that 
 we may walk more circumspectly in our own drama of life ; the 
 
THE MOSAL SPISIT OF HIS WORKS. 893 
 
 passion thus expending itself before us is designed like an 
 alarum at once to awaken watchfulness of our own souls. And 
 thus, when the poet claims our compassion, he does not aim 
 merely at an impulse of tender emotion and sympathy with 
 those who suffer under the punishment of their self-created fate ; 
 much rather does he intend to unite with the fear of the danger- 
 ous course of passion, at once that sympathy with the bold, the 
 great, and the estimable in this course, with all that which Bacon 
 discovered in the strong outburst of passion to be kindred with 
 Heaven. That this excitement of fear and sympathy would 
 operate indeed for the purifying of our passions is certainly 
 indisputable. The objectivity with which the picture of human 
 passion is placed before us in the drama, which leads us to con- 
 template the latent and dark powers within us, and brings them 
 actively and intelligently before our mindSj must necessarily 
 produce an elevation of our consciousness as well as of our self- 
 reliance, and with this a raising and pmrifying of the soul is 
 necessarily Mnked, provided we-are at all susceptible of impres- 
 sion of so noble a kind. Only see any Shakespea'rian drama 
 even tolerably represented, and upon every sound mind it will 
 make thisr highest impression of a?work of art, that aimed at by 
 the Aristotelian law, and which Schiller has so well developed 
 in carrying out that law ; it transports us to that intermediate 
 state between doing and suffering,- in which, unconstrained, we 
 are affected by both; in which we maintain the freedom of 
 determining for ourselves as we will, in which we are not weak- 
 ened as by pleasures of the senses nor overstrained as by those 
 of the mind, but feel ourselves entirely masters of our own 
 powers, and able to pass from it to every work equally skilful, 
 with a lofty equanimity of mind. In such a' frame of mind will 
 every riper drama of Shakespeare's'leave us; and the strongest 
 of his works wiU affect the strongest men tfhe most. Looking 
 down from the watch-tower of his art, life appears more easy 
 and capable of conquest ; and if the great truth of his delinea- 
 tions shows us the actual world not in poetic sunshine, but 
 overcast with manifold clouds, the poet has also given us the 
 means and the position by which we may find new beauties and 
 charms even in these stormy elements of life. 
 
 If there be this moral influence in Shakespeare's poetry, if 
 it be so imbued with morality that a kind of system of worldly 
 wisdom can be drawn from it, it may be asked, how, amid 
 the numberless, endlessly contradictory, characteristic expres- 
 
894 SHAKESPEABE. 
 
 sions of his figures, can his own opinion be with certainty 
 discovered ? 
 
 We might reply that the opinions which are most frequently 
 on the lips of his purer characters, and are repeated at every 
 opportunity, point out the basis of the poet's mode of thought, 
 and because they are so predominant in his mind they must be 
 niost his own. But in saying this we should not go far enough. 
 It is indeed difficult to reach the very root of his more important 
 characters on account of their combination of qualities, but 
 much more difficult to fathom himself, who, as it were, is again 
 combined out of all these characters united. It is more essen- 
 tial for us to consider the ideal characters which Shakespeare, 
 has sustained in a medium between the strong tragic and weak 
 comic figures of his pieces ; and the suggestions we have given 
 w;ith respect to Henry, Posthumus, Orlando, and the like, must 
 not be lost sight of in this investigation, But the main path 
 lies in the consideration of the dramatic styles and their relation 
 to each other, and then' in the moral justipe which is dis- 
 played in the development of the actions. We have, in Shak©- 
 speaire, not a teacher before us who endeavoured simply to solve 
 the enigmas of the world, but the world itsejf with its riddles 
 is reflected to our view ; all chance, however, is removed ; the 
 moving spring of the actions, aiid the necessity of the fate which 
 they evolve, are discovered to us ; we must watch the mechanism 
 thus displayed ; and, pondering upon it, we learn to understand 
 the mind of the n^aster-regulator. 
 
 The ancients, ^ho represented in .their tragedies only the 
 hero world and in their comedies t'he real and the present, 
 obtained by this contrast a very pure division of the forms of the 
 drama. Thejr tragedy contains no sort of conaic element. The 
 exclusion of the serious from comedy showed itself on the other 
 hand mo(re ini,practiQable, because art everywhere requires to be 
 raised above the vulgar. Even in Aristophanes a sublime lyric 
 and the solemn seriousness of political precept appear amid the 
 comip action ; bi^t it was the comedies of Menander which first 
 blended the cheerful with the serious emotions of life. These 
 becan^e ift the hands of Terence and Plautus the school of the 
 new drama. For this in truth developed itself rather out of the 
 burlesque comedies of the people than out of the mysteries, and 
 
THE DIFFERENT BSANCHES OF THE DEAMA. 895 
 
 the comedies of Plautus helped throughout in its formation. 
 Tragedy and its development came chronologically after comedy ; 
 it thus sprung up from the ground of comedy, from actual life, 
 and not as among the ancients side by side with an heroic epos. 
 Eeal life, with all its Vicissitudes of good and ill, joy and sorrow 
 jest and earnest, was introduced into the drama of every kind ; 
 the names became confused ; in Spain everything was uniformly 
 called comedy ; in England the distinction of tragedy, comedy, 
 and history was customary, according as the issue was good or 
 bad, the story true or invented. Sbakespeare must soon have 
 perceived that these distinctions were neither real nor in ac- 
 cordance with the rules of art ; in I,ove's Labour's Lost he 
 ridiculed the depiding mark of tl^e issue, and through Polonius 
 the attempts to define the dififerent styles by their matter. His 
 view appeared to be that every subject requires its own form, 
 and evfery piece so far forms with hin^ a style of its own ; there- 
 fore is it that he has so often disregarded the line of demarca- 
 tion between comedy, pastoral, masques, and histories. Whilst 
 he thus took life alone as a guide, gave to every event ;ts own 
 right and law, and suffered the matter itself to dictate the 
 course, the form, and the tone, he was niet throughout by one 
 radical difference between the luxuriant and stunted growth of 
 passion and active power in men, and this led him universally 
 to adhere to the traditional notions of pomedy and tragedy. 
 But between the two he admitted a middle kind of spectacle 
 {das Schauspiel), a special form of the drama, known to every 
 age and people, but for which the German tongue alone has a 
 distinct appellation. These prinpipa| styleg he blended together 
 ■ according to necessity ; and this procedure was itself a neces- 
 sity resulting from the laws of his art, For if moral ideas are 
 to be the leading points of the drama, and these can only be 
 rendered perceptible to the senses by characters and their c6n- 
 trasts, it follows that these very contrasts will lead in tragedy 
 to comic elements, and in coiriedy to tragic ones. Shakespeare 
 too admitted this combination of jest and earnest in consequence 
 of his pure human nature, which took equal interest in every- 
 thing, and which, in the very exclusion of one-sided barriers, 
 saw perfection in the utmost possible variety. He admitted this 
 combination moreover in consequence of his genuine Teutonic 
 nature ; for our race, unlike the ancients and those of Southern 
 birth, has rarely loved the sudden change in scenic representa- 
 tions of allowing the amusement of burlesque and masque to 
 
896 SHAKESPEASS. 
 
 succeed tragic convulsions ; we like not this obliterating of the 
 one glaring impression by another, but rather the blending 
 together of the tones. In this method it matters Only that this 
 change of means, effects, and tones should be in reality blended, 
 and that no ill-timed discords should disturb the harmony of 
 the drama. In this respect Johnson has already vindicated the 
 conduct of our poet with intelligence , and skill. He met the 
 objection against thisi blending, nartiely, that the action would 
 be robbed of the power of motion by the interruption of passion, 
 simply by this, that he appealed to daily experience to testify 
 how groundless the objection was. Clumsy actors can certainly 
 so abuse the gravediggers in Hamlet, and the fool in Lear, as to 
 destroy the tragic impression. The intelligent, on the contrary, 
 will draw precious advantage fromf these paarts, softening the 
 impression of horror, and resolving the discord of the comic 
 contrast into a refreshing harmony. We have pointed out in 
 detail whereirt the grdund lies that the coiriic characters' and 
 episodes in the serious drama and the reverse have nowhere in 
 Shakespeare anything disturbing and inharmonious : because 
 they always stand in close relation to the idea of the piece, 
 because they are brought forward ss Contrasts or as faiht reflec- 
 tions of the ruling passion, because as foil, counterpart, or 
 distorted image, they serve for shadingf.and colouring- the main 
 picture. Shakespeare took this ;^ractice from' the first most 
 popular and unconscious beginnings of comedy. Even in its 
 crudest commencement the popular com«dy had, with a happy 
 instinct, assigned here and there to the fool the part? of the 
 comic chorus. Thus in the Spanish drataia the parodying of 
 the main action was quite in vogue ; and the Crrazioso has 
 throughout the talent and the task given him to penetrate, like 
 Shakespeare's clowns, unconcernedly in his simplicity, all that 
 which the .principal characters in their passionate excitement 
 neither see, hear, nor feel. No one who knows this will there- 
 fore find anything extravagant or imaginary in our explanation 
 of these comic episodes in Shakespeare. Moreover, we repeat 
 that in this practice of combination Shakespeare maintains 
 throughout a moderation full of tact. In tragedy and tragic 
 history Shakespeare never introduced comic episodes, but only 
 single characters in passing scenes, and even these of late in less 
 number ; burlesque parodies of serious actions only appear in 
 comedy ; and the combination of tragic and comic situations 
 only in those plays which we designate as Schawpiele, and in 
 
THE DIFFERENT BRANCHES OF THE DRAMA. 897 
 
 such comedies as verge closely on the seriousness of the 
 Sohauspiel. 
 
 We have already before shown ho-w simple the classifica- 
 tion of Shakespeare's dramatic style is, and how it at once leads 
 to his fundamental views concejming moral things. We there 
 said that the poet sees man at his height when he has attained 
 to that even balance of nature upon Which is founded the man's 
 noble feeling of his worth and vocation, that true self-love 
 which is ttife root of all good. Such characters, we remarked, 
 he introduces in dramas {Schauspiele) which possess the serious 
 turn of the tragedy and the cheerful conclusion of the comedy. 
 This kind of drama was known even by, Aristotle. He spoke of 
 it contemptuously, as we also in the preS^ent day are wont to 
 do, because indeed too often by the over-honest and upright 
 justness With which it leads the good to happiness" and the bad 
 to harm, it favours the weaknesses of those weak ones to please 
 whom even Shakespeare's Eomeo has been converted into a 
 drama of this kind. Aristotle and Shakespeare have no name 
 for this form of drama ; the one calls it tragedy, and designates 
 it as belonging to the tendency of the comedy ; the other calls 
 it comedy, but the characters and arrangement are tragic, and 
 the catastrophe threatens to become so also. The Tempest, the 
 Merchant of Venice, Henry IV. and V., Cymbeline, Measure for 
 Measure, all belong to this class, and a series of comedies besides 
 in their serious parts, comedies in which not tragic events and 
 'characters terminate tragically, nor the ridiculous ridiculously, 
 hut the serious seriously. It is certainly not, as Aristotle 
 remarked, the enjoyment belonging to the tragedy or comedy 
 which this style aims at ; but this does- not prevent this species 
 of drama from being regarded among us as a middle style whose 
 title is in nowise to be denied. Who would not regard even 
 Goethe's 'Iphigenia,' Schiller's 'Tell,' the 'Orestiads,' or Cymbe- 
 line as most legitimate works of art. This style is certainly 
 more easily liable than others to degenerate, but e^en this can- 
 ,not exclude it from its right of competition. Fronl the exact 
 distribution of justice, the way is readily opened for too strong a 
 contrast between good and evil ; this form of drama is that in 
 which the mis^re of citizen life has liked best to insinuate itself ; 
 it changes easily to the pathetic, in which the innocent suffers 
 without the support of mental power, or it sets up pictures of 
 infallible virtue, in which we perceive an adherence to duty in 
 action which seems to spring from insensibility. These faults 
 
 3 M 
 
898 SHAKESPEABE. 
 
 and platitudes do not, however, necessarily belong to this form 
 of drama ; Shakespeare at least is entirely a stranger to them. 
 He has not placed his Henry and Posthumus in such a pure 
 moral atmosphere that others cannot hreathe in it, nor on a 
 height whose distance discourages us ; he has depicted their 
 moral nature in conflict, victory, and defeat, so that thei:^ 
 weakness brings them ne£|,r to us, and their strength draws us 
 up to them ; they show us not only, as the tragic characters do, 
 that right action is /possible, but also actual. 
 
 Between the erring natures of tragedy and comedy a middle 
 class of being appears here, characters out of the tragic sphere, 
 with strong passions, but endowed with that inner self-command 
 which softens the severe collisions of tragedy, which gives not up 
 to passion, which overcomes errors within and without, and dis- 
 arms the threatenings of fate. It is extraordinarily ingenious 
 how Shakespeare has exhibited his characters of this stamp, his 
 Henry in covenant with the Deity, his Posthumus under the 
 protection of the gods, at any rate in the manner in which he 
 has arranged it that the saving hand of a genius watches over 
 them, as Portia over Antonio, the Duke over Angelo, Helena 
 over Bertram ; they bear in themselves the natural attractions 
 which gain such clear-seeing protecting angels for friends, 
 whilst the tragic characters are abandoned by God, by their 
 fellow-creatjires, and by themselves. If yre were to designate 
 the task of art to-be that of leading to that purity and harmony 
 of nature, the just limitatipn of the strong inipulses in men, we 
 may say that tragedy and comedy, in the delineation of the con- 
 trary, do this rather in a negative, and the drama {das Schaus- 
 piel) more in a positive planner ; and we see not why this should 
 not be just as admissible. In this latter form it only matters that 
 when lower types of character are employed it should approach 
 nearer to comedy, and when higher characters are introduced it 
 should rank closer to tragedy. Shakespeare has maintained this 
 line of distinction with irreproachable nicety and assurance. 
 
 In the tragic characters, on the contrary, that happy equi- 
 poise of human nature and of its fundamental impulses is, 
 disturbed and broken ; the just self-love of the man rises into 
 egotism, ambition, and all those uncontrolled passions which 
 lead to an unhappy end. Wherever tragedy has most surely 
 grasped its aim, it has always depicted an overbearing race of 
 men, who set themselves up in bold defiance of the powers of 
 heaven, exaggerate reliance upon human strength, and sufifer 
 
THE DIFFEEENT BBANCHE8 OF THE SBAMA. 899 
 
 themselves in the fearful consequences of passion to be hurried 
 on to a disregard of divine and human laws ; men who demand 
 more scope for their pretensions in society than is compatible 
 with the rights of others, and who therefore are wrecked by the 
 force of natural reaction, thus preparing their outward fate by 
 their inward nature. These titanic natures belong especially 
 to the heroic ages of the world, to the period anterior to poli- 
 tical civilisation, and therefore Shakespeare also transported 
 thither his most tragic plays, ; the rest of his tragedies- Me 
 almost all in the times of civil wars, when, for the moment at 
 least, social barriers are loosened, and original pow;er and un- 
 fettered passion obtain freer play. Amongst the ancients also 
 those are the mightiest tragic characters which have, as it were, 
 outgrown the human standard and provoke the jealousy of the 
 gods. Yet with them the instances are not rare in which the 
 tragic hero does not really overstep tbe bounds of morality, in 
 which the catastrophe grows out of the intricacies of events 
 and the action is woven like an intrigue of fate, in which gr-eat, 
 patriotic, and moral duties struggle in the man with, equally 
 legitimate impulses. An action of this kind Shakespeare has 
 only once depicted in Julius Csesar ; they are most fascinating, 
 but as rare in the nature of things as in the group of Shake- 
 speare's plays. The far more usual round of tragic events is, 
 as with him, to be sought for in a man's own breast. The dis- 
 union and the conflict between the good and evil nature, the 
 blind impulse of passion and the stubborn strength of the will 
 thus incited by it, these are the powers at work in the tragedies 
 of our poet and in those of real life itself. It was just on this 
 point that tragedy attracted our own Schiller the most : be- 
 cause it depicts this inner struggle of the reason with that 
 sensual part of man by which we alone arrive at a consciousness 
 of our moral nature. In all Shakespeare's tragedies the subject 
 is I ever the degenerating of a more or less noble nature under 
 the preponderance of a great passion ; the consequences of these 
 excesses bring sorrow on the hero, and in this pathos his better 
 contrary nature rises, too late yet to ward off the ruin, but not 
 too late to atone for the past by a purification of his nature ; 
 often, too, so that a spiritual power rises in the tragic character, 
 not in opposition to but in connection with the ruling passion, 
 and by its self-revenging consequence, by a strength of cha- 
 racter which bends not before misfortune, inspires us even with 
 esteem for the erring one. In the most various gradations 
 
 3 M 2 
 
900 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Shakespeare has carried out this tragic course. In Lear the 
 whole judgment is overwhelmed by intemperate passion ; it re- 
 turns in his affliction, and the nature is purified at the last. The 
 intemperance of weakness works in Richard II., just as in Lear 
 that of strength. Coriolanus' self-recollection is overthrown by 
 his pride ; aroused by his noble nature he chooses voluntary 
 suiFering, and thus atones for his error by a heroic conquest 
 of his scarcely conquerable nature. In Othello moderation is 
 overlooked in one false step, which revenges itself by fearful 
 ■ results, but in his misfortune the Moor rises full of honour 
 even in his error, and atones for it by his self-punishment. In 
 Brutus the choice lies between duty and duty ; sorrow for mis- 
 taken aims i*!, therefore, easily endured by the steadfast nature. 
 Timon's reason, wasted in merry living, is awakened at the 
 outburst of self-created misfortune. In Macbeth the fall of his 
 noble natlH'e is followed by pangs of conscience ; his power of 
 defiance then rises, and the violence of his spirit affects us even 
 in its wildness. It is the same with Richard III., whose better 
 nature we must look for in Henry VI., where he performed self- 
 sacrificing deeds for his house. The utterly different characters 
 of King John and Antony are the least tragic ones, because in 
 both' the better nature is most feebly aroused. The most re- 
 markable play, however, in a tragic point of view, regarded 
 from this side also, is Hamlet, because the common subject of 
 tragedy, such as we have just pointed out, is here exactly 
 reversed in a manner equally bold and deep ; the poet shows 
 that preponderance of the mental powers is as false as that of 
 the sensual. In Hamlet the mind is watchful against the in- 
 centives to vengeance and ambition ; the sensual physical 
 impulse is represented here as duty, conscience and mind by 
 their union with inactivity are exhibited as error ; it is this 
 which gives vent to Hamlet's vein of evil, and carries him, most 
 significantly, rather from suffering into error than from error 
 into suffering ; and we feel satisfied when at last passion gains 
 power in him and the mind is utterly relaxed. In all these 
 characters, from Coriolanus down to Richard, there is originally 
 a good disposition; the youthful excess, the striving of passion, 
 inclines them to what is dangerous and demon-like. Aristotle's « 
 law of mixed character is fulfilled, although in a wholly dif- 
 ferent manner. According to Aristotle, the tragic turn of 
 fortune ought not to be the consequence of wickedness, but that 
 of one false step on the part of a man who possesses no great 
 
THE DIFFEBENT BRANCHES OF THE DRAMA. 901 
 
 moral nor civil excellence, who is thriving and respectable, and 
 has more of a noble than a base natiu:e. Shakespeare has never 
 suffered himself to be fettered in this way. He has invested 
 his tragic heroes, when in high positions, often with great 
 moral excellences, and has entangled them often in great 
 crimes. The ancients avoided the representation of great con- 
 scious guilt, and wisely, because those mental levers and expe- 
 dients, necessary to the refinements of crime, were less known ; 
 but for us, the aberration of a nature originally noble, the rapid 
 descent from virtue to vice in Shakespeare's plays, has just for 
 this reason an engrossing interest, because his art is equal 
 to the task of fully developing sUch an inward course. The 
 representation of real crimes is a perilous rock for poetry, 
 because the wholly base and the wholly *eak are not capable 
 of an aesthetic charm. But Shakespeare has skilfully avoided 
 this rock also. His base characters are all strong, his weak 
 ones are all never really base. Even where weakness and crime 
 are most closely united, as in Antony, an original power yet 
 shines through, and the extreme art with which Shakespeare 
 keeps within this limit evidences in no small degree the pro- 
 found instinct of art which qualified this man to be the law- 
 giver of the new drama. 
 
 Comedy with Shakespeare is, incontrast.to tragedy, directed 
 against the weaknesses of men ; passion, natural affection, in- 
 stead of degenerating in youthful, luxuriancy, become worn out 
 and blighted under the power of seif-lave and vain imagination. 
 While in the one is depicted the inflexibility of strong natures, 
 which strive even against overwhelming circumstances and 
 powers, in the other, on the .contrary, at^least in the comedy of 
 intrigue, the circumstances and outward events are sometimes 
 the lever of the whole action, and a poetical charm is sought 
 for in mistakes, recognitions, and improbabilities, instead of in 
 the development of deep characters. This form, the pride of the 
 Spanish stage, is scarcely to be found in Shakespeare. The 
 theme of his comedy, which with him essentially is only a comic 
 representation of character {Character-Lustspiel), is the little- 
 ness of a narrow nature, poverty of mind and passion, and not 
 rarely, in direct contrast to his tragedy, the preponderance of 
 the erring mental element over the natural passions. The 
 comic epopee and the humorous romance (' Eeineke Fuchs,' ' Don 
 Quixote,' and others) are always, when they are most successful, 
 opposed to the one-sided prominence of mind, to everything 
 
902 SHAKESPEABE. 
 
 fantastic and whimsical ; the comedy might scarcely venture 
 so much as these narrative works, since, heing a visible repre- 
 sentation, it might not deviate so far from the grounds of 
 reality. Nevertheless, Shakespeare's comedy, in its characteristic 
 tendency, is decidedly enough 'placed as if in the most direct 
 contrast to his tragedy. If selfishness and egotism give the 
 reins to passion, self-love appears, on the other hand, vain and 
 self-sufficient as it is, not so much in crime as in folly, not so 
 much by errors of impulse as of the head, by whims and fancies 
 prejudicial to the healthy nature, by false steps, not of passion, 
 but of reason, not of morality, but of intelligence ; the comic 
 challenges our better knowledge, the tragic our better con- 
 science. This skilful contrast is but to be seen in Angelo. In 
 him at first constrained powers of reason had smothered passion, 
 and so far he is rather a comic character, which by an easy 
 turn could be brought to a comic end ; as soon as passion pre- 
 vails over his mind he becomes a tragic character. In Orsino 
 the inind is feeble in imagination, so that no genuine passion can 
 gain ground ; so to excess is Malvolio. In Love's Labour's Lost 
 the mind dares to crush nature, in Benedick vanity presumes 
 to resist the female sex, in Falstaff it leads him to consider 
 hipaself an object of love ; in all the caricatures of Shakespeare 
 the vain effort is predoniinant of making show pass for reality. 
 In conformity with this purport of comedy, the scene must lie, 
 not in heroic warlike times, nor in vast political relations, but 
 in the domestic circle, rather in the present relations of polished 
 and conventional society, where the mutual dependence of men 
 checks the growth of wild passion and refines the affections. 
 The deeper side of life is out of place here, where the laughing 
 exterior and superficial emotions of men are more concerned. 
 Aristotle therefore assigned to tragedy noble men as to rank 
 and character, and to comedy inferior ones ; Shakespeare's age 
 demanded princes for tragedy, peasantry for pastoral plays, and 
 the middle class of citizens for comedy. These outward dis- 
 tinctions Shakespeare disregarded, but all 'the characters in his 
 comedies, as we have before pointed out, belong to a middle 
 staim/p. That they may not prove dull and flat, that this nar- 
 rower scale of humanity may not become indifferent to us, the 
 poet has carefully employed two effectual expedients. He has 
 contented himself but rarely with the pure sphere of the comic, 
 lie has carried his comedy to the very verge of the serious 
 drama {Schauspiel), or even of tragedy, and has interspersed it 
 
TEE DIFFESENT BRANCHES OF THE DRAMA. 903 
 
 with circiimstances of the most valuahle kind. If Groethe, from 
 a many-sided nature, consented reluctantly to the direct course 
 of the tragedy,' Shakespeare, from that completeness of nature 
 which shrinks from a one-sided cbnteiliplation of life, yielded 
 yet more unwillingly to the one-sided development of any strict 
 form. The other expedient is that he places burlesque figures 
 side by side with the nobler characters of his comedy, by which 
 means they are brought closer to us. Without the introduction 
 of Armado and Malvolio, Orsinb and Navarre would commend 
 themselves less to our notice. Those characters are genre 
 pictures, but there is in them a high dfegrfee of truth, so 
 that they are attractive in the midst of their ugliness, like the 
 comic masks of the ancients. They are, therefore, in nowise 
 without an interest of their oWn ; Shakespeare extracted a fas- 
 cination even from them. The dull contentment, the self-suffi- 
 ciency, the self-complacency, of persons inwardly and outwardly 
 poor, who are not even artificially infected with the dangerous 
 aspirations of the higher classes, this is in itself poetical, and 
 acquires in Shakespeare's comedy a still stronger interest by 
 the contrast with the loftier meditations and efforts of their in- 
 tellectual companions, which in reality lie parallel in internal 
 folly with the exterioi; of those very caricatures. For whilst 
 the more refined personages err with more conscious mind, and 
 at last stand ashamed, with disappointed expectations, before 
 the ruin of their vain pretensions and fancies, the people of 
 this class, like the clowns in the Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 are raised in the self-satisfaction and assurance of their aotions 
 above all disappointment in success, and are therefore insensible 
 to the mischievous joy of others; with them nothing fails i 
 neither their aims nor their humour. Just in this, however, 
 lies the true ground of the comic, and it is for this reason that, 
 in spite of all our present retinetaent, the comic power of these 
 characters survives all changes of taste; these types of folly 
 and absurdity are completely dyed with the comic coleurs of 
 nature, indelible for all ages. In the delineation of this world 
 of beings Shakespeare appears in all his amiability. These 
 harmless weaknesses excite his mirth and the child-like humour 
 of his kindly heart. With forbearing mildness he passes by 
 these bubbles of folly; his comedy is rarely a bird of prey, 
 pouncing on the ridiculous and tearing its victim to pieces, 
 but it is here like the lark, which sings in harmless joy in the 
 serene firmament. The cold reason and the cold heart, which 
 
904 SHAKESPEAEE. 
 
 belong to sarcasm and satire, are utterly wanting in Shake- 
 speare. Only when absurdity becomes dangerous does his merry 
 humour find its limit. When he considers the manifold im- 
 perfections of the age, the obnoxious immoralities of the multi- 
 tude, the laxity of court manners, the unnatural fashions and 
 dress, the Puritanical wolf in sheep's clothing, he lays aside his 
 tolerant many-sidedness, and cuts deeply to remove the corrupt 
 evil from the body of the age. This predominant mildness was 
 the fruit of his healthy nature, which never suffered itself to 
 become embittered by the evils of the world. If it has been 
 complained that Shakespeare's art lacked that inward cheerful- 
 ness which can free the mind from the burden of reality, the 
 ground for this complaint lies essentially in the form of the 
 tragedy, which by the weak in general is not endured. No one 
 would accuse his comedies of a want of cheerfulness. They 
 possess it to such an extent that even the pedants of the 
 former century over-estimated them on account of it. Johnson 
 considered that Shakespeare had a predilection for comedy ; 
 that in tragedy he often wrote with much trouble and little 
 success, but that in comedy he seemed to write without labour 
 that w;hich no labour co^ld improve. He considered that in 
 tragedy he was always ' struggling after some occasion to be 
 comic, but that in comedy he seemed to repose, to luxuriate, 
 as in a mode of thinking cong^nial to his nature;' that tragedy 
 with him seemed to be skill, but .comedy instiuct. This is in 
 nowise so. Much rather do his comedies give by far the most 
 imperfect idea of Shakespeare's poetic, aye, even perhaps of his 
 comic power, for some of the comic characters in his tragedies 
 throw such light on events by their brilliant and deep wit that 
 they far surpass the figures in his comedies. But then Shake- 
 speare much more rarely indeed seeks occasion in his tragedies 
 to descend to comedy, than he does in comedy to rise to the 
 seriousness of tragedy. And in general no one would wish to 
 exchange the shallowness of his comedies with the depth of his 
 tragedies. Moreover, in these different views there lies only 
 an evidence of the poet's versatile ability for all things. He 
 has equal sympathy with jest and earnest, he hates with his 
 Eosalind those who are in extremity of either laughing or 
 melancholy, he has a tear of feeling for the dark, and the 
 gladdest laugh for the bright side of the world, and he controls 
 with equal power our emotions of joy and sorrow. 
 
 If from the forms of character which are peculiar to the 
 
THE DIFFERENT BSANCHE3 OF THE DBAMA. 905 
 
 drama (JSchauspiel), to the comedy, and to the tragedy, we 
 gain an essential step in arriving at Shakespeare's opinion with 
 respect to the course of human action, we shall still approach 
 nearer to this by considering the issue of the plays, or the ad- 
 ministration of the so-called poetic, but much rather moral 
 justice. The comedy affords us less insight into this, on account 
 indeed of the lesser importance of its contents. Yet even 
 here the natural law is strictly adhered to, that as in tragedy 
 the moral, so here the rational, shall triumph in the issue, 
 not folly in the one and vice in the other ; the issue of an 
 unaccountable folly may be harmless; with regard to the 
 accountable and obnoxious it will always prove confounding ; 
 the catastrophe passes not from happiness to misfortune, but 
 from vanity to disappointment ; the judgment receives satis- 
 faction by the adjusting of the perverted. If in the tragedy 
 fear and sympathetic pity hold us in suspense, in the comedy, 
 on the contrary, we are swayed alternately by the hope of the 
 return of the actors from their erring ways, and by sympa- 
 thetic joy at the appearance of this return. This joy we 
 should certainly truly feel with the characters which attract 
 our interest, for example, with Orsino and Benedick, but in 
 the deceit of mischievous folly it turns to the side of those 
 who would have been deceived. Thus as in comedy the de- 
 mands of the understanding are satisfied, so in tragedy are 
 those of moral justice. From the chronicles of history Shake- 
 speare conveyed into his poetry the idea and image of a just- 
 ruling Nemesis, so familiar in his age ; Bacon, who only at 
 times saw this Nemesis prominently distinguished in history, 
 demanded straightway of poetry that she should in this take 
 the place of history, that in her kingdom the images of things 
 should conform themselves to the will of the mind, and not, as 
 in reality, that the mind should accommodate itself to the 
 things. And no demand is more just than this. For if the 
 encroachments of passion are glorified in poetry, if unmerited 
 sufferings remain tmexpiated, if the moral comes not forth vic- 
 torious out of the ruin of vice, and the face of eternal justice 
 remains veiled, then the work of art excites only pain and 
 vexation instead of satisfaction, whether it be a Klinger, who 
 with his rude bizarterie theoretically as well as practically 
 fights for the triumph of crime, or a Schiller, who in a strange 
 blunder assigns the lot of annihilation to the beautiful on earth. 
 How far removed was Shakespeare from the bewildered nature 
 
906 SHAKESPEABE. 
 
 of so many of our contemporaries, who, in this annihilation of 
 the beautifal reflect their own deformity! Not indeed that 
 with a pedantic distribution of an accurately definite justice he 
 degraded virtue and vice to a calculation of loss and gain ; if 
 poetic justice is thus to be understood, that for a fixed crime a 
 fixed punishment is as'siglied, and for this or that virtue a 
 reward, then we have ourselves shown that Shakespeare admi- 
 nistered it not; Only with him throughout do the fates of 
 his characters exactly acdord with their nature and their actions. 
 Bacon was struck by the wonderful instances in experience in 
 which God's justice is ef en here made manifest ; whoever has 
 the opportunity of looking at once into the inner and outer life 
 of men will indeed not tilrifrequently detect the track of this 
 Nemesis ; this exceptional appearance in the actual world is the 
 rule in Shakespeare's poetical one. It is not the stars which 
 with him determine the fate of men, but their works ; justice 
 lies throughout just at the point wh^re it is most fruitful for 
 the poetic representation ; that the cause of the descending fate 
 is prepared by the man hirdself, that the end lies in the begin- 
 ning, that the cup mixed by himse^lf is placed at the lips of the 
 evil-doer, and even here retribution happens for that which is 
 here done. Sdartely ever does the poet, as is the case with our 
 great German dramatists, hold out fair hopes of justice to 
 come ; at the inost only in his subordinate figures ; with the 
 main characters throughout their own nature proves even here 
 their own judgment. In certain mysterious instances Shake- 
 speare has not deprived us of that consolation of religion ; in 
 CymbeHne most expressly the inexplicable severity of Provi- 
 dence is shown to be protecting love ; we are reconciled with 
 the lot of the innocent victims in some of his tragedies by faith 
 in a future compensation ; but wherever the poet had to develop 
 a complete ' life, we shall find he has himself administered 
 complete justice. Kightly to understand this, we must try to 
 apprehend throughout his vast mind, which was so far from 
 narrow pedantry. Often has he taken punishment for granted 
 and left it unnoticed, often has he placed it far below the 
 surface, but the reader who once knows him will not misunder- 
 stand this. That bastard John, in Much Ado about Nothing, 
 escapes by flight ; the fate of Aufidius and Volumnia is left in 
 obscurity ; but who could err in the explanation of this ? No 
 sudden punishment meets Henry IV. for his usurpation ; but it 
 agrees well with the nature of this character that the Nemesis 
 
THE DIFFEBENT BRANCHES OF THE DRAMA. 907 
 
 strikes him not with the sword, but makes him empty hy 
 degrees the cup of sickness and remorse. Yet this woiild not 
 be the complaint against Shakespeare, that he inflicts too little 
 and too gentle punishment, but that it is too hard and too 
 equal. It is not alone criminals who go to ruin with him, 
 but those also who committed only pardonable faults, and 
 others whose whole offence was that they came into dangerous 
 collision with dangerous natures. Shakespeare has certainly 
 taken the liberty on some few occasions of practising an 
 injustice, though only in the case of subordinate characters, 
 which may tend to the exercise of a justice all the more severe 
 on the principal characters. He has besides permitted Banquo, 
 Duncan, Hastings", and Cordelia to perish, only for the sake of 
 the error of imprudence. Yet from Shakespeare's moral sys- 
 tem, tending as it does to an active use of life, that lesson 
 would result which Bacon enforced with so much emphasis, 
 that men naust expand their thoughts and look circumspectly 
 around them if they would truly advance their happiness, that, 
 as it says in Troilus, 
 
 omission to do what is necessary, 
 Seals a commission to a blanli of danger. 
 
 But then this unhappy nature, this indolent imprudence, meet 
 in Shakespeare with misfortune certainly, but not with punish- 
 ment ; honour may be closely allied with misfortune ; and this 
 procedure of the poet expresses stronger than everything his 
 aversion of the theory which places happiness as the aim of 
 life. Death befalls those careless ones ; but if the basest 
 criminal meets in Shakespeare with nothing worse, must not 
 this be an unjust awarding of the issue ? But then death is 
 to the poet just the means to a determined end ; we must not 
 look at what the issue is, but how it is, and what the circum- 
 stances are which accompany it. As in Shakespeare actions 
 would be measured according to circumstances, so their end is 
 in propoj-tion to the strivings of the actors, and to the inner 
 consciousness of .the error. Here lies the plain secret of Shake- 
 speare's poetical justice. Death indeed in Lear befalls the 
 multitude without distinction,' but Cordelia dies in the glory of 
 a blessed deliverer, Lear in expiation, Glo'ster smiling, Kent 
 with joy, the others lie caught in their own snares, robbed of 
 their aims, the worldly souls forfeiting the world, which was 
 
908 ' SHAKESPEARE. ' 
 
 all to them. How differently does Macbeth' fall by the hand 
 of a hero whom he had always feared, and Eichard by the 
 snares of a sycophant whom he had al'ways despised ! It does 
 not then depend on the very letter of the issue, but on the 
 manner in which the issue is endured, whether men meet 
 death cursed or blessed, thwarted in their base aims or attain- 
 ing lofty ones, with noble consciousness or with stinging con- 
 science, in heavenly sereneness or in hellish despair. Thus 
 regarded, the tragic issues follow not one line,- but graduate 
 from Eichard to Cordelia in the richest diversity. And the 
 sublime moral lesson which lies in the exercise of this justice 
 is this — that death is in itself no evil, that life is in itself no 
 blessing, that outward prosperity is no happiness, but that 
 inner consciousness alone ; that the greatest' reward of virtue is 
 virtue itself, and th6 greatest punishment of vice is vice itself. 
 Therefore the truly noble, such as Posthumus and Imogen, 
 reap no outward happiness as a reward at last; it is rather 
 taken from them ; and Henry V. yields his honours from 
 himself to God ; all their reward is the voice within, and the 
 self-consciousness of having maintained the dignity of man. 
 
 If now, provided with this clue, which we have drawn from 
 the nature of the dramatic forms and of Shakespeare's moral 
 justice, we inquire finally respecting that which Johnson and 
 Pope designated his moral system, we would premise that in 
 doing so a proper and complete system of ethics must be out 
 of the question. We only bring prominently forward a few 
 great and highly simple points of view, which obtrude them- 
 selves in the actions represented just as often as in express 
 precepts in his works, as the poet's fundamental opinion c6n- 
 cerning the things of ■ life. Upon these perhaps a complete 
 system of morals might be constructed, but our intention has 
 nowhere been to spin out the threads to the vast extent that the 
 material in Shakespeare's works would permit, for this would 
 be an endless task. We desire to impute nothing to the poet 
 which does not seem to ourselves to lie in him ; not that we 
 have imagined that he has actually considered every smallest 
 thought which we have sought to consider after him, only that 
 we hope he would acknowledge, if he lived, that he might have 
 thought the thoughts which we have appended here and there 
 
THE FSINCIPLES OF HIS MOBAL VIEWS. 909 
 
 to his own, according to the characteristics of his mind and to 
 the desig-n of his works. And so we are satisfied in this subject 
 also to set forth those characteristics of Us moral views which 
 .seem to us indisputably his property, and that too of his con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Pope has strikingly designated Shakespeare's moral system 
 as one of an entirely worldly character, which the poet places 
 in opposition to the notions obtained from revelation, and 
 which he considers sufficient to take the place of these. He felt 
 that he does not exempt men from the fear of the consequences 
 of immorality, but that he insists upon this strongly ; and that, 
 whilst he sets aside religious c6nsiderations, he has extolled 
 the love of humanity more than any other writer. This is so 
 just that even a Birch must acknowledge it. The unhesitating 
 security with which Shakespeare took this purely human course 
 is, in the age in which he lived, most admirable. His poetic 
 contemporaries around him lapsed into free-thinking, and at 
 last in devout repentance laid aside their art with their morals ; 
 on the other side the zealots raged against the stage ; through 
 all this he passed unbiassed, bolcily turning his back against the 
 enemies to enlightened progress, wholly untouched by the breath 
 of senseless frivolity. Many grounds may be found for Shake- 
 speare's conduct in not only not seeking a reference to religion 
 in his works, but in systematically a-voiding it even when 
 opportunity offered. Like Bacon he would fain avoid every 
 stumbling-stone ; he considered the stage moreover as no sub- 
 stitute for the pulpit ; had he done so, the clergy of that day 
 and of the present would have blamed him still more harshly, 
 though now they rage against him that he did not do so. Much 
 more deeply, however, may another impression in this respect 
 have decidedly influenced his mind. Shortly before Shakespeare's 
 time England had gone through those fearful persecutions of 
 CathoHcs and Protestants, those executions for the sake of the 
 faith, the destruction and purification of opinions ; aU round 
 him the enmity of a sectarian spirit prevailed ; he saw the 
 ascetic moroseness of the Puritans and their fanaticism on the 
 increase, and he said, as if in prophecy (Timon, Act iii. sc. 3), 
 that they bore their ' virtuou^ copies to be wicked, like those 
 that, under hot ardent zeal, would set whole realms on fire.' 
 This state of things alienated all men from the ascetic exagge- 
 rations of religion, and urged others into scepticism ; the same 
 experiences which after the English Eeformation made Cher- 
 
910 SHAKESPEAEE. 
 
 burg a free-thinker urged Bacon and Eialeigh also at this time 
 to deistical, or, as the zealots say, to atheistical views. And thus 
 Shakespeare, startled by these same experiences, liked best, 
 when he needed moral advice, to dive into the revelation which 
 God has written in the human heart. All, therefore, which 
 religion enjoins as to faith and opinion he wholly discarded 
 from his works, as he had only to do with action ; but in action 
 the religious and divine in man is nothing else than the moral. 
 In the sense in which Schiller praises Christianity, that it sets 
 aside rigid law and places free inclination in its stead, Shake- 
 speare's moral system is a Christian one. It is not so in the 
 strict sense in which it is written that unto Mm that smiteth 
 thee on the one cheek offer also the other, but it is so in that 
 in which, making allowance for the changing circumstances of 
 life, the Gospel teadie's — ' Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless 
 as doves ; ' and the Apostle-^' He that giveth in marriage doeth 
 well ; but he that giveth not in marriage doeth better.' Shake- 
 speare's ethics are essentially humaii, and he can in this respect 
 be placed on a level with the ancients, whom we read with 
 humanistic aims. If Bacon thought truly that man can draw 
 some notions of good and evil from the ' light of nature,' from 
 the law of conscience, which is a sure spark, and remnant of the 
 original purity of man, Shakespeare would, as Pope justly said, 
 have held these notions as suflScient to regulate us honourably 
 in this life.' This 'deity in our bosom' Shakespeare has 
 bestowed with intentional distinctness even upon his most 
 abandoned villains, and that too when they deny it ; to nourish 
 this spark and not to quench it is the loud sermon of all his 
 works. 
 
 Shakespeare's moral view starts from the simple point that 
 man is bt)rn with powers of activity which he is to use, and 
 with powers of self-determination and self-government which 
 are to guide aright this use of the powers of action. Whence 
 we are and whither we go, these are the questions which the 
 poet, as well as the historian^ yields to philosophy and religion. 
 
 ^ Sofort nun wende dich naoh innen, 
 Das Centrum flndest du da drinnen, 
 Woran kein Edler zweifeln mag. 
 Wirst keine Kegel da vermissen, 
 Denn das selbstandige Gewissen 
 1st Sonue deinem Sittentag. 
 
 Goethe. 
 
THE PSmOIPLES OF SIS MOSAL VIEWS. 911 
 
 'Men must endure their going hence even as their coming 
 hither; ripeness is all.' 'Why am I? make that demand to 
 the Creator; it suffices me thoi; art.' These two sentences 
 accurately designate this point of view. In this ,whence and 
 whither the man is passiye, but in the pourse of life he is 
 active; and here lies his tangible vocation, without having 
 satisfied which he cannot he matured for a higher degree of 
 existence. Shakespeare reflected upon the powers at work in 
 nature and mankind, and saw clearly the aim of the immense 
 motion lying in the motion itself. This led him to those 
 maxims he so much enforped : that nature only lends man his 
 talents and gives them not, only bestows them in order that he 
 may use them and render them back again. In his moral 
 system, therefore, everything bears upon the incentive to acti- 
 vity ; life appeared to him'too short to waste it in speculations 
 and inaction ; in Hamlet especially this lesson is taught with 
 the severest emphasis. The most versatile endowments are in 
 this man a useless disordered mass because the electric spark 
 of energy is not struck into them, because with careful deli- 
 beration and overstrained sensibility he has smothered the 
 instinct of active power, that first-born of human gifts; the 
 speculative inquirer, who makes the thought and not the act 
 the measure of things, becomes thus at variance with the 
 guiding stars of nature, with conscience and reason itself; they • 
 suffer from excess pf use, as his power of action does from the 
 defect of it ; in the verdict upon his actions, to which these 
 inner powers are called, conscience and reason err with him in 
 the examination and trial of his case, and a false judgment 
 checks and misleads his will ; the most impressive warning 
 which Shakespeare could cast against the sophistry of the sceptic, 
 that by freshness of action he might bring him back to sound- 
 ness of mind. Just in the same sense does the poet in his 
 comedies also call us away from ascetic mortifications, from 
 vain studies, from all the quietism of contemplation, from the 
 empty pastime of puns and wit ; in Eichard II. from the pro- 
 pensity to idleness and play, in Timon from idle luxury and 
 idle charity, from all this he calls us back to action, since it 
 becomes the gods alone to be mere spectators'in this life ; above 
 all he punishes in Antony the sinful waste of great and distin- 
 guished powers. In all the four plays which we have here 
 especially denoted the poet has iii the same sense and manner 
 most expressly laid down his opinion as to the superiority of 
 the active nature. These energetic men, Fortinbras, Eoling- 
 
912 SSAKESPEAEE. 
 
 broke, Alcibiades, and Octavius, are here given parts contrasting 
 with those of the different inactive characters ; it is not that 
 their characters gain for them all their happiness and success, 
 perchance through a great superiority of nature, but in spite of 
 their itiferior talents, their energy In itself stands out above the 
 inactivity of the. others, no matter how beautiful the source 
 out of which this pasSiveness flows, nor how base that from 
 which this activity protjeieds. Thus Heaven assists not the pious 
 but indolent Eichard II., in spite of his religious trust, but it 
 helps the pious Helena, who helps herself. In the same spirit 
 the excess of love, with all its sweetness,- is despised when it 
 draws the man away from "his strength, bfecause ' he wears his 
 honour in a box unseen, that spends his manly marrow ' in the 
 arms of love. 
 
 And just so, because work is not a curse, but a blessing, the 
 poet's feeling goes against the tranquilUty of the idyl ; the sons 
 of Cymbeline, who live in the most charming innocence, ques- 
 tion with a true human instinct whether repose is the best life. 
 Far rather is Shakespeare on the contrary an' eloquent com- 
 mender of want and hardness, which he esteems as the ' mother 
 of hardiness,' the test of the soul,- and out of which he would 
 have us draw the spirit of good: Therefore he held nothing 
 more unmanly than tq despond in misfortune and to leave the 
 helm amid storm and broken masts. Therefore in war lay the 
 delights of his strong nature ; genuine ambition is no sin in 
 Henry V., proud war makes ' ambition virtue ; ' the danger of 
 resting in idleness renders war desirable in exchange for peace, 
 whose wealth and peace indude ' the rmposthume that inward 
 breaks,' bringing evil and death to, the age. Warlike valour 
 is, therefore, extolled even in its exaggeration in Coriolanus, 
 even in its criminality in Macbeth, even in its union with usur- 
 pation in John, still more when coupled with heroic calmness 
 in Othello, with patriotic love in Faulconbridge, with that 
 high idea of honour in Percy, with moderation and confidence 
 in Grod in Henry V. Manly honour and valoiir are with Shake- 
 speare one and the same idea : energy especially he regarded, like 
 the ancients, as the manly virtue (virtus). For this reason, 
 therefore, Shakespeare has nowhere dealt with the subjects 
 so familiar in Grerman poetry ; he has scorned to bring 
 sentimentality and sensibility into a system or into attrac- 
 tive representation, to depict the isolated life of mind and 
 heart, the images of feigned and artificial sentiments, 
 the shrivelled forms of private and hothouse life, ,imless it 
 
THE FSINCIPLES OF HIS MORAL VIEWS. 913 
 
 be as caricature^, which pass b^ the noblest aims of exist- 
 ence. Throughout he' points rather at the great stage of 
 life, and values action for mankind in geneiral beyond contem- 
 plation, the principle of Alexander before that of Diogenes, 
 because it tends to larger ideas. The opinion of the active 
 Englishman surpasses in this respect (and Bacon also is in this 
 of one mind witli Shakespeare) the opinion even of Aristotle, 
 the man of active antiquity, who conceded the Highest rank to 
 contemplative rather than to' active life/ The great world-life 
 of history possessed not for Shakespeare too much restlessness 
 and hostile commotion for it to drive him, as it did Groethe, to 
 escape it in science and nature ; he had interest enough in it 
 not to grow weary in its contemplation, po^^er enough' to raise 
 himself above its evils, perception enough to hear the harmony 
 in its discords. Finally, moreover, from this opinion of Shake- 
 speare's as to man's vocation to active life springs his aversion 
 to those systems of happiness which' is excellently expressed, 
 not strictly in the words, but in the whole spirit of Timon. 
 For all these doctrines of the ancients respecting the highest 
 good aim at personal good and not at the (Jommon good, to 
 which Bacon as well' as Shakespeare directed man as to the only 
 worthy aim of his activity. The hermit, who separates himself 
 wholly from the things of the world, would have been called 
 happy by Shakespeare as little as by Aristotle and Bacon, nor 
 according to this highest' conception of man Would he even 
 have been called a man. 
 
 If the first impression which Shakespeare drew from 
 the contemplation of active life was the conviction of our 
 obligation to use our inherent power of action, the second 
 was, as we have pointed out, the perception of the necessity 
 that this power should be guided aright by reason and 
 conscience. It is certainly not without design that Shake- 
 speare has placed in the Ups of just the most detestable of his 
 characters, lago and Edmund, strikingly distinct precepts, 
 namely, that it lies in our own free will that we are thus 
 or thus, and that it is not practicable to impute our .base 
 actions to causes lying without us ; that fatalistic view, 
 which disputes man's free will, the poet grants to the 
 sceptic alone, who is exactly at variance with those true 
 guides. The sayings of lago, accordiiig to whom reason is 
 given us to . keep passioii and sensuality in check, are quite 
 the same respecting the contrast of mind and desire as 
 
 3n 
 
914 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 those which occupy the poet personally so frequently in his 
 sonnets and descriptive poems ; free self-determination is 
 esteemed by him as the most distinguisihing gift of our race ; 
 mind and conscience are to be the rulers in the community of our 
 inward being, who are to restrain the storms of passion ; even 
 a monster like Eichard must acknowledge this power of 
 conscience in bridling the strong and presumptuous, and even 
 the aerial spirit Ariel is capable of mastering the fleeting 
 inclination by the power of the will. This may sound trivial, 
 but the simple is always the true. Schiller, who, endowed with 
 just as much. philosophical and poetic spirit as moral character, 
 pondered on the problem of human being, reached no other 
 point than this^-that as all mankind waver to and fro between 
 nature and cultivation, in individual men the struggle between 
 freedom and natural impulse and the striving after the due 
 . balance of these is the highest thing that affects us. In this 
 sense, we have seen, the struggles and collisions of the dramatic 
 actions in Shakespeare are all designed, in this spirit his 
 greater or lesser sympathies with this or that form of character 
 are expressed. He is attracted by the fine nature of the 
 womanly soul in which morality is inhate^ and in which those 
 antagonistic powers are peacefully united. In men, he has 
 rarely or not at all depicted this instinctive virtue, the kindly 
 nature in which goodness springs rather from simplicity. For 
 most of all he liked even in, women, but above all in men, that 
 purity of morals which has passed through struggles and 
 temptations, not the virtue of habit but of principle, not 
 instinctive but tested, the product of the reason and of volitiqn. 
 He would not, like Aristotle and Bacon, have believed virtue 
 inherent in us either from nature or against nature ; inherent 
 in us is alone the capacity for receiving it and for developing 
 it in us by culture or habit. He despised not the school of 
 habit as little as those philosophers did, he knew that cus- 
 tom and use 'almost can change the stamp of nature, and 
 master the devil, or throw him out with wondrous potency.' 
 But higher in value to him was the virtue of principle which 
 sets before itself noble aims in life. For such aims affect the 
 ennobling of the soul, not partially but at once ; they do not 
 cultivate in us single virtues, but they make us predisposed 
 for all, they develop in us that feeling of self-reliance and 
 honour which makes Henry and Posthumus inaccessible to all 
 lower temptations. Thus the instinctive virtue of Cymbeline's 
 
THE PRINCIPLES OF HIS MORAL VIEWS. 915 
 
 sons had also its charm for the poet, but like them Shakespeare 
 strives to rise out of the state of nature that knows no vice, as 
 he does out of the opposite condition of continual evil ( a time 
 like Lear's) when the mind has no power over the passions, 
 into that state of culture and reason in which tested and 
 approved virtue raises the man above the sin around him and 
 creates a golden age in his soul. For evil will be only then 
 wholly overcome when it is known and looked at in the face, 
 and evil desires will be conquered only when their syren song 
 has been resisted, for he cannot be a perfect man who has not 
 been ' tried and tutor'd in the world.' 
 
 From these maxims upon the active and guiding powers 
 within us the great truth develops itself that if activity and 
 action alone can give strength and fulness to life, moderation 
 alone can add the charm and the lasting fruit. As natural as 
 it was to the old tragedists when they, rooted firmly, in the 
 idea of the envy of the gods at the happiness of men, extolled 
 the middle state and a moderate prosperity, so was it natural to 
 Shakespeare, since in his tragedies throughout he has to do with 
 the consequences of overgrown passion, to commend moral 
 moderation and the middle state and disposition of the soul as 
 the happiest which falls to the lot of man. This doctrine 
 thoroughly pervades the works of our poet, and it is of such a 
 kind in him that it makes the difference between a middle 
 course and a half-way course most keenly perceptible through- 
 out, from the confounding of which in the present day we often 
 hear scornful objections raised against the ancient wisdom, 
 which pronounced the middle course to be the best. And it is 
 indeed only too true that in practice the weak man, who is 
 regarded as an example of the middle course, exhibits in- 
 difference as the result of an even balance, and a wavering 
 between extremes that of a middle path ; but that which Shake- 
 speare teaches is to confirm energy by moderation, and to seek 
 in the middle course no resting-place of inactivity, but the 
 necessary rallying point of the active powers. He sees the good 
 not in the steep ascent, nor in the precipice, but in the even 
 path through life, and this path he shows us with that unhesi- 
 tating assurance which gives confidence and courage to the 
 soul. He seeks the medium ntit in suppressing the power which 
 lies in passion, but in restraining it by the yoke of work, not in 
 the weakness of passiveness, but in the sparing of the powers, the 
 use of which is indeed his first law. What he means by in- 
 
 3 N 2 
 
916 SHAKESFEAEE. 
 
 decision and a half-way course Shakespeare has shown us in 
 York ; what he means by moderation and a middle course he has 
 exhibited in Posthumus, who is strong even to the heroic con- 
 trol of his passionate and excited nature, and in Henry, in whom 
 the middle course is not mediocrity but modesty in greatness. 
 It is just this favourite of our poet, who knows best the wise 
 reflection, which underlies this principle of a moderate habit 
 of life, that when that which is done is not done wisely 
 and circumspectly the power of action is in danger of being 
 itself ruined. For 'violent fires soon burn out themselves,' 
 ' to climb steep hills requires slow pace at first,' therefore this 
 Henry searches carefully for jiist motives and a safe beginning 
 for his noble exploits, to which indeed a hot ambition spurs him 
 on \ according to an expressive image of Bacon's, Argus 
 before the resolution "to act, Briareus after it. This is the same 
 man who from this very sense of moderation so wisely took 
 care not to deaden in himself the feeling of cheerfulness, not 
 to refuse to action that ' sweet recreation,' the lack of which 
 induces a sickly swarm of evils, to avoid that universal plodding 
 which 
 
 prisons up 
 The nlinWe spirit in the arteries, 
 Ap motion and long-during action tires 
 The sinewy vigour of the traveller. 
 
 It is the same man who, naturally passionate, indeed, has 
 become master of his passions, less by nature as Horatio than 
 by merit and power of will, who by the happy ' mixture of the 
 elements ' attained to that firnily resting central point of the 
 human being which lies in moderation and the true medium, 
 and which is secure against all the false hovering round ex- 
 tremes. 
 
 In this true medium Bacon and Aristotle sought for virtue, 
 and nothing is more consolatory than to" see Shakespeare 
 of one mind in this with these great men, above all in these 
 times, when, following in the track of Byron, a wild set of 
 young writers with wild outcry set up this doctrine as their 
 standard — that nothing is nobler in man than passion and desire, 
 which to our poet was the badge of animal nature. This man, 
 who had a hundred-fold more mind and passion to lavish than 
 hundreds of our modern regenerators, has throughout wisely 
 admonished to be sparing with it, that it may be ready for 
 
THE PBINCIPIES OF HIS MORAL VIEWS. 917 
 
 action ; he knew, before the thousand-fold experience of the 
 effervescent minds of the present day taught it, that 
 
 fire tliat mounts the liquor till't run o'er, 
 In seeming to augment it, wastes it. 
 
 In numberless passages in his works, therefore, he calls us 
 away from excess, because ' the sweetest honey is loathsome in 
 his own deliciousness,' because he saw surfeiting changed to 
 fasting, too great freedom to restraint, wildness in joy or sorrow 
 destroying itself, rash haste outrunning its aim, exaggerated 
 grief endangering life, and exaggerated jest recoiling on the 
 jester. He showed in Hamlet how hesitating deliberation and 
 fleeting insensibility mislead in action, in Coriolanus how the 
 highest endowments by being overstrained degenerate into 
 contrary ones, in Angelo how suppression of the senses 
 avenges itself, in Antony how suppression of the mind produces 
 the same result, in Eomeo how excess of love is blighted, in 
 Timon how excess of hatred becomes powerless. How 
 thoroughly penetrated Shakespeare was with this principle of 
 wise moderation is shown perhaps most strongly in this, that 
 he ventured even to oppose the Christian laws which demand 
 an overstraining of human nature, for he approved not that the 
 limits of duty should he extended beyond the intention of 
 nature. He taught, therefore, the wise and human medium 
 between the Christian and heathen precepts of love and hatred 
 of our enemies. We are ' not to heat a furnace for our foe, so 
 hot that it do singe ourselves ; ' we are to be satisfied with re- 
 pentance, because otherwise we are ' nor of Heaven nor earth ; ' 
 we are to avoid making enemies, but when we have them we 
 should so act that they may shun us ; we should be able for 
 our enemies, but rather in 'power than use.' That it is pos- 
 sible to do too much in good things is an express doctrine of 
 Shakespeare's, both ky word and example, which follows well 
 upon this his modified doctriae respecting the love of our 
 enemies. Thus excessive liberality ruins Timon, whilst mode- 
 rate liberality keeps Antonio in honour ; the genuine ambition 
 which makes Henry V. great overthrows Percy, in whom it 
 rises too high. Exaggerated virtue brings Angelo to ruin ; and 
 when in those near him the excess of punishment proves harm- 
 ful, and cannot hinder sin, then mercy, the most Grod-Iike gift 
 
918 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 that man possesses, is also exhibited in its excess as the pro- 
 ducer of sin. 
 
 With these last propositions that opinion is closely con- 
 nected which has become very familiar to us from Shakespeare, 
 that. in itself nothing is altogether good or evil, that nothing 
 upon earth is so base that it has not its good quality, and 
 nothing so good that it cannot degenerate into abuse. Virtue 
 misemployed,- we have seen in Eomeo, becomes vice, and 
 vice is at times ennobled by the mode of action. Thus we have 
 seen Jessica innocently violate ehild-Mke piety, and Desdemona 
 truth ; Isabel practises feigned sin and Lorenzo pious decep- 
 tions without scruple ; they depart from the straight line of 
 virtue, not because they follow the Jesuitical moral that the 
 aim sanctifies the means, but because the acutest conscience and 
 consciousness, the will to do right and to prevent wrong, directs 
 their actions undoubtedly aright. Thus in Pisanio truth and 
 falsehood alternate, according to the position of things, from 
 the same point of conscience, that although the duty of service 
 -lies in his office, the servant is not to do every service but only 
 what is right. Thus even Hamlet's too great conscientiousness 
 is not a crime but a fault, and somewhat, of the lack of it in 
 Faulconbridge is not a virtue but a praiseworthy quality, 
 because in the g;reat political world another law prevails than 
 in the domestic, and because the circumstances throughout 
 change the character of the actions. In Shakespeare's opinion 
 ^(and here also he is one with Bacon and Aristotle) there is no 
 positive law of religion or morals Which could form the rule of 
 moral action in precepts ever binding and suitable for all cases ; 
 not the ivhat alone, but the how also-, determines the worth of 
 actions ; the acting man depends, like the physician and the 
 pilot, upon circumstances, and not merely upon himself and 
 upon stated rules ; morality, like politics, is a matter so compli- 
 cate with relations, conditions of life, and motives, that it is 
 impossible to bring it to' final principles, and in the manifold 
 collisions of duties the balancing between man and man, 
 between public and private duty, between case and case, is 
 inevitable. 
 
 If, however, Shakespeare pointed out to us a middle line of 
 action between defect and excess, which can so easily be 
 missed, if he left it to ourselves to find our way in the complex 
 circumstances of life, does he deserve to be called so excellent a 
 moral teacher and guide through the world as we have desig- 
 
THE PBISCIPLES OF HIS MOSAL VIEWS. 919 
 
 nated him ? We believe that he does deserve it on account of 
 this very procedure. The line of straightforward action is only 
 one among innumerable crooked ones ; it is hard to find it in 
 life, as it is hard to define it tangibly in theory. Virtue is a 
 middle course, as Aristotle made perceptible, not with respect 
 to a matter, but with respect to ourselves, not objectively defin- 
 able as the medium between two numbets, 2 and 10, but only 
 subjectively to be defined as between him Who consumes the 
 weight of 2 mina (i/,va) and him who consumes that of 10 ; 
 the just medium is not 6 once for all, because this were too 
 much for a boy and not enough for a Milo. This aim of the 
 middle course in right action is but One, and it is difficult to 
 find ; the wrong are numberless and easy. Now to conceal this 
 truth, to represent to us the way through Life as eiasy, and to 
 deceive us respecting our powers as well as our vofeation, is not 
 expedient ; least of all for the teacher who wishes to lead plastic 
 minds to a conscious virtue based upon principle. Shakespeare, 
 however, speaks only for such an object and to such minds. 
 There are classes whose morality is best provided for by the 
 positive letter of religion and of law; but fc5r such as these 
 Shakespeare's writings are in themselves inaccessible ; they are 
 only readable and comprehensible to the cultivated, of whom it 
 can be required that they should appropriate to themselves the 
 healthful measure of life, and that , self-reliance in which the 
 guiding and inherent powers of conscience and reason united 
 with the will are, when consciously apprehended, worthy aims of 
 life. But even for th6 cultivated also Shakespeare's doctrine 
 may not always be without danger.- How should it alone escape 
 the possibility but just mentioned, that even from the best we 
 may gather the worst,' that in the most fragrant flower, to use the 
 poet's own image, ' poison has residence ' ? But the condition 
 on which his doctrine is entirely harmless is this, that it should 
 be fully and completely received, and without any expunging 
 and separating. Then it is' not alone without danger, but it is 
 also more unmistakable and more infallible^: and therefore 
 more worthy of our confidence than any system of morality can 
 be. For to the poet alone is it possible to teach by actions 
 instead of words, by living examples instead of cold doctrine, 
 by the eye instead of the ear, unrelentingly to exhibit the con- 
 sequences of actions, concisely and distinctly to place before us 
 the immeasurable sphere of vast experience, to open to us those 
 immense volumes of fate, as Groethe extols in Shakespeare, and 
 
920 SSAKESPEABE. 
 
 thus to Work on mind and bouI with a power, and to sharpen 
 reason ' and conscience ,in a manner, which far surpasses the 
 ability of the religious orator and the philosophical -writer. 
 
 By one great example that can stand for all we would en- 
 deavour to make clear how necessary it is to conceive Shake- 
 speare's moral system and his naoral being as a whole, if we 
 would not light enti^eiy upon a false track, and how easy it is 
 to select a part from him in yhich we deviate into direct con- 
 trast from the intention, aii^, and nature of the great master. 
 The doctrine that nothing is good in and for itself, that there 
 is no rule in which we do not meet with exceptions, misleads 
 most easily to that (bold leap of the free-thinker to make excep- 
 tion the rule, which is essentially the great history of the 
 mental and political revolutions of the present day. This pos- 
 sible perversion of the Shakespearian doctrine is besides con- 
 siderably assisted by the decide(My hostile bearing of the poet 
 towards all conventionalities; this bias against all that is 
 arbitrary and injudicious in the custoins of the age is inter- 
 preted very easily iijto a bias against all existing forms. Who- 
 ever struggles like Shakespeare against all prejudices of blood 
 and position, who sets aside, as he did, all political rules of 
 faith, opposes the accumulation of honoi^s upon ^undeserving 
 heads, personally overleaps the barriers of unequal rank, dis- 
 claims religious fanaticism, and states unscrupulously his 
 opinions, at that time highly heretical, respecting suicide, 
 duelling, and' the honourable interment of the suicide, who- 
 ever like him makes t)^e proudest aristo^crat (Coriolanus) de- 
 claim against pustoms and tjie heap of mountainous errors 
 — ^whoever, we say, thus holds open the breach of progress as 
 Shakespeare, has done, we might readily fear respecting him that 
 he would give a helping hand to the idealists and dreamers of 
 the present day, who, appealing to his example, strive to make 
 even the impossible possible, to overthrow the heights of truth 
 by mountains of error, to destroy the charming variety of the 
 world by a universal equalisation, and with religious and poli- 
 tical prejildice to strike out Church and State from the ideas of 
 human kind. 
 
 But, indeed, how totally different is the picture of the poet, 
 if, instead of setting forth one side in this distorted manner, we 
 consider him in his entire nature ! Fatal as that doctrine that in 
 itself nothing is either' good or bad may be in the hands of the 
 fanatic, who knows not and wishes not to know the world, but 
 
THE PBINCIFLES OF HIS MORAL VIEWS. 921 
 
 strives to give form to his self-created phantoms, with Shake- 
 speare it is perfectly harmless, because he not only knows the 
 world, but his healthful heart is unembittered by its evils, and 
 because he desired not to have it better than men can make 
 both it and themselves. In him the imagination of the poet is 
 ever linked with the sober judgment of the man of the world, 
 the labour of experience with the freshness of the soul, the 
 reason of age with the youth of the heart ; these unhappily in 
 the prime of German poetiy were irreconcilable contrasts, but 
 not so in Shakespeare. The autonomy and egotism of indi- 
 vidual self would have been an abhorrence to him, while it 
 opposes with strong will all law in politics and morals, and dis- 
 regards the bonds of religion and state which have kept society 
 together for centuries. For in his opinion the practical wisdom 
 of man would have no higher aim than to carry into society the 
 utmost possible nature and freedom, but for that very reason 
 that he might maiiitain sacredly and inviolably the natural 
 laws of society, respect existing" forms, yet at the same time 
 penetrate into their rational substance with sound criticism, not 
 forgetting nature in civilisation, nor, equally, civilisation in 
 nature. 
 
 How impartially imbiassed, how free from every prejudice, 
 does Shakespeare therefore appear, in spite of his anti-conven- 
 tional tendency, in spite of his noble freedom and independence 
 in all questions of that political, social, and religious life which 
 is most exposed to the ston^ of revolutionary minds and morals ! 
 That Shakespeare thought freely and clearly upon religious 
 things an attentive reader can never doubt from his writings ; 
 it is a quality which raises him far above the narrow-minded- 
 ness in religious matters so peculiar to many in the present day. 
 He was a man of much too clear a mind, in an age which had 
 not outgrown coarse superstition, to do homage even to the 
 more refined. Prophecies are with him under the law of nature, 
 and miracles below the line of reason, even in the lips of his 
 priests. He trifles so wantonly with heU and the devil that it 
 offends even the divines of the present day, who regard Lance- 
 lot's hit at the. Christian propaganda and the profane allusions 
 in general as striking proofs of Shakespeare's heathenism. It is 
 strange that it is his Friar Laurence who administers the sweet 
 milk of philosophy and not that of religion, and that his ancho- 
 rites are all practical worldly people. It may strike us that 
 his pious Eichard and Henry VI. are very weak people and 
 
922 SHAKE8PEAEE. 
 
 unrefreshing characters. It is the despair of the pious among 
 Shakespeare's admirew that he sends all his villains to the grave 
 without contrition, and his noble characters without religious 
 edification, that the requiem over Imogen speak of the evils of 
 this world and not of the glory of that to come, that the friar- 
 duke comforts Claudio with the nothingness of this life and not 
 with the promise of the future^ that his loving couples go to 
 the grave without the prospect of meeting again — except 
 precisely Antony and Cleopatra, heathens and voluptuaries! 
 Should we not rightly conclude from these traits that Shake- 
 speare was as much without religion as others of his dramatic 
 contemporaries ? But Shakespeare was indeed much too much 
 of a poet to undervalue religious belief; he was, it must be 
 admitted, on the other side much too free-thinii:^ to display 
 any one fixed form of religious views. in his poems, otherwise 
 than as a single side in man or a- characteristic attribute. He 
 appears also here in that wonderful medium between narrow- 
 mindedness and extreme.. He was no fanatic and no infidel, 
 no atheist and no mystic, no Brownist and no politician, he 
 was as much attracted by a good Eoman Catholic as by an 
 honest Lutheran ; he deline9,ted heathens, free-thinkers, rational- 
 ists, and pietists, Brutus, Faulbonbridge, Percy, and Katharine, 
 all with equal delight, if only they were worthy characters. In con- 
 trast to the above-mentioned traits is a similar series of utterly 
 opposite ones, ■Whio'h exhibit the poet to us always in the same 
 impartiality so conspicuous in him throughout. If he allows 
 Biblical passages to be harmlessly perverted in the lips of his 
 clowns, it was- at any rate better than the gloomy use which 
 the Puritans made of them, a frightful picture of which he 
 holds before us in Eichard III., who clothes his villainy with 
 mangled passages from Scripture. . If he harshly treats the ser- 
 vants of religion who with their practices and devices make 
 worldly things their gods, he has still placed others like Carlisle 
 in a great and illustrious light. If he contemns piety which 
 makes a man weak and dull for the world, he has, however, 
 exhibited in the most brilliant colours that faith and confi- 
 dence in Grod which produces strong deeds in Siward, Pos- 
 thumus, and Henry V. If he permits bad and good to die in 
 passion without remembrance of religion, yet the pious Katha- 
 rine and the repentant Wolsey die not without their consola- 
 tions. ' Eeadiness and ripeness is everything ' with the noble 
 Hamlet and Edgar; the words tell us that Shakespeare too 
 
THE PSmCIPLES OF HIS MOEAL VIEWS. 923 
 
 surrendered his conviction before the great riddle of the future, 
 and from the belief in immortality drew the soundest conclu- 
 sion — that all hinges upon a right use of this life. 
 
 • And just as here in religious things Shakespeare thought 
 according to the human principle that true freedom is neither to 
 encroach upon one's own, nor still less upon the freedom of 
 others, just as, magnanimous and many-sided, he honoured every 
 genuine conviction, even though it were not his own, and held 
 strongly to one ruling creed, even if he apprehended not all its 
 articles, so he acted also in politics. His ground with regard 
 to the state was as human as that with regard to religion. He 
 would not that the freedom of man in the moral kingdom 
 where he is his own ruler should be endangered by the state. 
 In the conflict of political and moral duties he has left unde- 
 cided in Brutus,. Faulconbridge, and Salisbury to which he 
 would give the preference, that is, he has even there taken the 
 men themselves as the deciding point according to their nature, 
 and has only desired that if Brutus should decide politically 
 he should also act politically, and if Salisbury should deter- 
 mine, mprally that he should also not immorally consent to 
 treachery and alliance with the enemies of the land. In 
 Pisanio and Hubert, however, he has shown that in the service 
 of lords and princes the service of God before everything should 
 not be forgotten. But however high Shakespeare might have 
 estimated the free right of the individual^ he would never have 
 fallen into the vain cosmopolitism of the G-erman poets of the 
 former century, much less into the Utopian ideas of the world 
 republic, which would seek to rise above the conditions of space, 
 and which even in those days were not indeed wholly unknown. 
 But working for the general good was to' him so dear that with 
 this aim he would have us regard death and honour with equal 
 courage; in the soul and substance of the state there was for 
 him a deep mystery worthy of consideration, and its operation 
 seemed to him ' more divine than breath or pen can give ex- 
 pressure to ; ' he was in this quite a son of his people, because 
 nothing ranked higher with him than his country and its power 
 and honour. How the joy of patriotism shines forth in his 
 playfulness respecting the French foe, in his representation of 
 the popular heroes, the Bastard, Talbot, and Percy, in his 
 Protestant self-reliance against the Papacy,. in his statesmanlike 
 glance upon the position of the sea-walled island, and in the 
 element in which its greatness lay 1 And yet how far-seeing. 
 
924 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 on the other hand, does his historical instinct appear, when we see 
 him grasping and understanding the nature of the tiroes and 
 people, far enough removed from wishing to mould all circum- 
 stances into one political form I In what impartiality does he 
 appear in the Eoman plays with regard to the democratic, the 
 aristocratic, the monarchical nature both in the state and in 
 men ! Coleridge has before remarked that whilst among Shake- 
 speare's contemporaries Massinger showed republican tenden- 
 cies, and Beaumont and Fletcher exaggerated the principle of 
 divine right, Shakespeare has nowhere testified his adherence 
 to any fixed political party. He evidences in the Eoman plays 
 that he esteems and appreciates all existing political forms, but 
 was not insensible to the deterioration of all. In these plays 
 Shakespeare expressed so natural and at the same time so judi- 
 cious a sense of political freedom, based entirely on historical 
 experience such as belonged not to those times throughout, and 
 in all ages will most, rarely be met with. Hume considered 
 that political freedom was never the question with Shake- 
 speare. It certainly was not in the style of modern political 
 cant. But to write a piece -so imbued with democratical prin- 
 ciples as Julius Csesar, to place in the mouth of the tyrant Henry 
 VIII. lessons against all undue exercise of power, to question 
 in Eichard II. the right of inviolability, this indeed, at a time 
 when James I. called kings earthly gods, was to speak of poli- 
 tical freedom. Whoever has any knowledge of English history, 
 whoever knows what feeling agitated the minds of the people 
 when James II. was dethroned, what different moods divided 
 the national leaders, what sentiments among the loyal Tories 
 strove with the judgment that a change of sovereign was neces- 
 sary, what views anaong the free-minded Whigs decided them 
 without scruple to take resolute measures — ■yhoever is acquainted 
 with this will perceive in reading the history-plays of Eichard 
 II. and King John that with wonderful richness and depth all is 
 here prefigured which in such crises of honoiu", humanity, and 
 patriotism swayed the English :aation on both sides. This is 
 of more value than the language of empty revolutionary boast- 
 ing, with which the poets of modern times alone recognise the 
 stamp of candour ; this coilld not nor would not have been 
 spoken by Shakespeare, who had so forcibly represented the 
 fearful tragedy of the York and Lancastrian struggles. We 
 must read in Eichard II. with what earnestness he insists upon 
 the sacredness of property, and in Troilus and Othello with 
 
THE PSmCIFLES OF HIS MOBAL .VIEWS. 925- 
 
 what rigour he maintains the strict observance of family, in 
 order that we may understand how infinite is the gap which 
 separates Shakespeare from the political free-thinkers of the 
 present day, when in the most civilised lands we are obliged to 
 defend with all the weapons of reason and political power the 
 right of family ^.nd property, which even savages protect in 
 their communities. Shakespeare has, indeed, sympathy with 
 the lower classes who are poor and destitute, and he makes the 
 mighty of the earth, who have forgotten poverty, remember it 
 in their own adversity, but whither the equalisation and pros- 
 perity of communism would lead he has made most plain in 
 Cade's revolution. No man has fought more strongly against 
 rank and class prejudice than Shakespeare, but how could his 
 liberal principles have been pleased with the doctrines of those 
 who would have done away with the prejudices of the rich and 
 cultivated only to replace them with the interests and pre- 
 judices of the poor and uncultivated. How would this man, 
 who allures so eloquently to the course of honour, have ap- 
 proved if in annulling rank, degrees of merit, and distinction, 
 we extinguish every impulse to greatness, and liy the removal 
 of all degrees 'shake the ladder to' all high designs'? If 
 indeed no surreptitious honour and false power were longer to 
 oppress mankind, how would the poet have acknowledged the 
 most fearful force of all, the power of barbarity? In conse- 
 quence of these modem doctrines of equality he would have 
 apprehended that everything would resolve itself into power : — 
 
 Power into will, will into appetite ; 
 And appetite, an universal wolf, 
 So doubly' seeonded with will and power, 
 Must make perforce an universal prey, 
 And, last, eat 'up Bimself. 
 
 Or if this were not the final lot which awaited mankind from 
 these aspirations after equality, if love between nations and 
 endless peace were not that 'nothing' of impossibility, as 
 Alonso expresses it in the Tempest, but could be an actual 
 fruit of these efforts after equality, then the poet would have 
 believed with this time the old age and decrepitude of the 
 world to have arrived, in which it were worthless to the active 
 to live. 
 
 Thus conservative is this free-minded poet in- religious and 
 political things. If we look upon his personal and moral charac- 
 ter, if we pass from his doctrines and characteristics to his own 
 
926 SHAKE8PEABE. 
 
 I 
 nature and example, we find still wider the interval which 
 
 separates him from all the frivolity, the false prejudice, the 
 hollow mediocrity, the vain love of originality, the exciting 
 discontent, which are the marks of the free-thinking of the 
 present day, marks of so many who are Shakespeare's most 
 jealous admirers, although he is not their pattern, but their 
 doom. If we would sum up this character, the simplest means 
 in this case would be that specified above, to extract the senti- 
 ments of his writings, and to fix our minds upon those among 
 them which recur most frequently, and so to conclude from 
 these what occupied him most deeply. Whoever will do this 
 will find to his surprise that' the relative majority of these 
 passages expresses quite the same character as that at which 
 we arrived from the comparison with Henry V. at the close of 
 the first volume ; from the consideration of the whole of his 
 works and their universal impression, and from the enumera- 
 tion of these single passages, the same result appears, and the one 
 procedure is a proof of the other. By far the purest and most beau- 
 tiful of his wise sayings are grouped into two concurring series, 
 which positively and negatively express one radical essence ; 
 on the one side they are directed against all the varieties of 
 conventional life, against all empty show and hollow ostenta- 
 tion, the insipid and superficial use' of life ; on the other they 
 urge after the essence of things,- after simple plainness, after 
 truth and humility. On the one side his stinging wit is 
 pointed against light-minded youth, whose Judgments are mere 
 fathers of their garments, and whose constancies expire before 
 their fashions; against the favourites of the drossy age, the 
 sweet gentlemen of the .court, who regard keeping their word 
 as mauvais ton, and whose accomplishments lie in hand- 
 kissing and ' picking one's teeth ; ' against the coxcombs who 
 smell like an apothecary's shop ; against all the perversity 
 which conceals the truth of nature with false hair and rouge ; 
 against the rogues and time-servers who ' turn their halcyon- 
 beaks with every gale ; ' against the whole age, to whom * a 
 sentence is but a cheveril-gloye ; ' against the self-conceited, 
 whose voice sounds to themselves like supernatural music ; 
 against the gibing spirit, whose ' influence is begot of that 
 loose grace which shallow laughing hearers give to fools ; ' and 
 just as much against the silent oracles, who by empty silence 
 hope to gain the reputation of wisdom ; Against the blasS feel- 
 ings which arise from wasted understanding and morals ; against 
 
THE PRINCIPLES OF HIS MOBAL VIEWS. 927' 
 
 the love of originality in the whimsical and the bullying ; against 
 the diplomatists, who 'unloose the gordian knot of policy, 
 familiar as their garter,' and against the politicians who could 
 ' circumvent Grod.' From the store of passages of this charac- 
 ter, the tone of which alternates from the merriest humour to 
 the bitterest sarcasm, this one point makes the fullest impres- 
 sion upon us, that this was not a man who cared for the glitter 
 and variety of the world. The opposite sayings, which recall 
 from all that is name, outward show, and ornament to sub- 
 stance, reality, and truth, form the most serious and sublime 
 contrast to these sallies. From those shallow sons of age, the 
 youths of fashion, his eye turns with delight to the bastards of 
 the age, those hearty fellows of rough exterior, those uncut 
 diamonds like Faulconbridge ; and from the sweet gentlemen 
 who rhyme themselves into ladies' favours he passes gladly to 
 the healthy, unsusceptible youths like Orlando and Sebastian. 
 In contrast to those court natures, with whom good faith is a 
 mockery, how he stickles for neglected truth, how strikingly 
 he sees in truth the only weapon with which to scorn the devil, 
 how serious and strong is his language and expression, when 
 from all ambiguity and deceit he calls us back to plain truth 
 and simple faith, which knows nothing of artifice, when he 
 warns us above all and before all to be true to ourselves, 
 because it follows from this that we cannot be false to another ! 
 How warmly he speaks against ^ the seeming truth which cun- 
 ning times put on to entrap the wisest ' ! How forcibly and 
 frequently he teaches not to measure things by a glittering ap- 
 pearance, but by their inner worth ! To him it is 
 
 The fool-multitude, that choose by show, 
 
 Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach, 
 
 hut like the martlet 
 
 Builds in the weather on the outward wall 
 Even — the force and road of casualty. 
 
 And he, therefore, is in his sight not a man of judgment who 
 sets value upon the applause of the multitude. In his aversion 
 to all show and falsity lies the foundation also of his zeal 
 against all hollow ostentation and self-elevation, against pride, 
 which is its own trumpet, against the vain, who praise them- 
 selves otherwise than in the deed, and thus ' devour the deed 
 in the praise.' He holds rather in esteem those honourable 
 ones who, for the sake of a good deed, shrink not from the show 
 of evil ; with self-denial such as this he has invested his most 
 
928 SHAKEaPEABE. 
 
 pious women, Isabella and Helena. He deHghted in unosten- 
 tatious virtue and extreme humility joined to the most spleh- 
 did endowments; the resignation which renounces a merited 
 reward, the self-consciousness which needs not outward acknow- 
 ledgment, these seemed to him amid all human virtues to 
 deserve the highest praise, or nwre justly to create the highest 
 self-contentment ; this doing and .acting for the sake of itself, 
 without regard to reward an^ commendation, was to him the 
 great contrast to the insipid conduct of the, world, which rests 
 on vanity, show, and folly. And with this' feeling he was 
 equally far from forfeiting his principles, and falling into the 
 extreme of Coriolanus ; in depicting this man's love of truth 
 and contempt of applause and reward he has too strikingly cast 
 into the shade the pride and self-exaltation of merit to allow 
 us to think that his own self-reliance could have risen to thi^ 
 exaggerated height. Much more is the impression forced 
 upon us in all his maxims and representations that the poet in 
 his personality himself possessed that modesty which he taught, 
 that his was that golden soul of the full-fraught man of plain 
 and uncoined constancy, to Which in the lips of his Henry he 
 always gave the pre-eminencfe, that in him' a love of truth pre- 
 dominated which surpassed every other qustlity. 
 
 ' Must not this quality in the poet of simple true nature rise 
 yet infinitely in value if we consider at' the same time his 
 boundless many-sidedness, iti which he seems apparently di- 
 verted by everything, the victim of every impression ? But 
 these apparently opposite sides hinge exactly one upon the 
 other; his many-sidedness depends essentially on his impar- 
 tiality, and his impartiality concurs essentialUy with his sense 
 of truth. Never has a man stood so equally open to the most 
 different sides of life, never has anyone suffered subjects of 
 every kind to affect him with such equal force, nor received 
 from them such unbiassed, genuine, and true impressions, that 
 he might do justice to everything. And just this is the quality 
 which every scholar in his sphere, whatever may be his qualifi- 
 cation, may learn from this master, and which he Tnust learn 
 from him if he will do honour to the teacher, and not carry 
 away fruit from the school, the §eed of which has indeed not 
 been sown there. Learn the spirit of truth from this poet and 
 ' laugh at the devil 1 ' The one great temptation at least which 
 can alone make his doctrine and his example harmful his dis- 
 ciple will then and only then certainly avoid — the temptation to 
 
THE PEINOIFLES OF HIS MOSAL VIEWS. ■ Q29 
 
 place aught in his teacher's mouth which he has not said, to 
 divide that which he requires to be left entire, to commit an 
 abuse with a part of his truths, which the whole truth which 
 he taught would prevent. For then we shall before everything 
 learn that great art from him, which with good resolution is. 
 not so difficult to learn, and in the age in which we live is most 
 salutary to learn, that art, namely, to unlearn all pretension, to 
 lay aside the ruling passion for censuring Grod in his economy, 
 not to despise and condemn the conditions of the world, but 
 first of all to understand and to be acquainted with everything 
 before passing sentence upon it, and thus to approach nearer to 
 that impartiality and many-sidedness of judgment which we 
 call first and last Shakespeare's most valuable quality. We 
 need not repeat that, free from all sectarian spirit and all party' 
 feeling, he knew how to grasp and to honoui- in religion every con- 
 viction, in the state every form suitable to the age, among mea 
 every complete character true to itself, among the vocations of 
 life every one which earnestly pursues its aim. He read in 
 all ages, in all nations, in all relations of life, and, as it were,, 
 everything in his own tongue, and with appreciation for every 
 kind of mould and nature. Human forms of character were 
 familiar to him from the demi-god to the distorted original, 
 all inclinations and vocations he seemed to know from his own 
 experience, for he is whatever he chooses to be — a lion-hearted, 
 warrior and a child harmlessly at play, a genius and an idiot,, 
 equally acquainted with human strength and weakness, his head 
 in the clouds and his feet upon the earth. It is for this reason 
 that the most different men have delighted in him and been 
 amazed at him, even those by nature the furthest removed 
 from him, for everyone has found a side in him which speaks, 
 to himself; there seems indeed scarcely aught in human- 
 nature which does not find an analogy in him. In Germany 
 the most sober-minded, such as Lichtenberg, and the most 
 fantastic, such as the Eomanticists, honour him equally ; master- 
 minds have despondingly admired him and novices have thought 
 by imitation to surpass him. The sectarian spirit alone, whicb 
 has strayed in one-sided directions, finds it hardest to agree with 
 this man of many-sidedness ; Platonic enthusiasm, sickly sen- 
 sibility, the intellectual barrenness of a Voltaire, or the zeal of 
 the religious — adversaries whom everyone would wish to pos- 
 sess. Otherwise this poet with his mighty power constrains all 
 to be his adherents, for he is master of all our feeling, of that 
 
 3 o 
 
930 SHAKESPEASE. 
 
 emotions of our souls and our thoughts, and Groethe stood lost 
 before this power and repose, and despairing before this ver- 
 satility, in which Shakespeare ' had exhausted the whole human 
 nature in all directions and in all its heights and depths,' and 
 by this had discouraged' his successor, even this great mind, 
 from venturing competition with his ' unfathomable and unat- 
 tainable excellencies.' And this same many-sidedness which his 
 works declare must have been also the characteristic of Shake- 
 speare himself. His portrait we have seen in Henry, who was 
 equally qualified for enjoyment and activity, for jest and 
 earnest, for war and peace, for vehemence and self-command, 
 for folly and noble effort, adapted for every business and every 
 society at the right time and in the right place, with kings a 
 Mng, and with beggars their equal, familiar and proud, selfish 
 and humble, in the variety of his being evading nothing but 
 monotonous habit. Thus must Shakespeare^ have been. His 
 favourite characters are those which unite the most contradic- 
 tory qualities ; a Hamlet with his rich endowments, a Posthu- 
 mus so strong and tender, a Portia so pious and determined, so 
 womanlike in her resignation, so active and so rigorous. And 
 nothing seems more opposed to Shakespeare than the cha- 
 racters in whom any one-sidedness predominates; a cold cal- 
 culating man like lago, a sentimentalist like Cassio ; and furthest 
 from him lies perhaps that dogmatical Leontes, who is shut, out 
 from ail truth by this one-sided narrow-mindedness. That 
 which moreover takes from this many-sidedness of Shake- 
 speare all idea of distraction and disunion, that which causes 
 this oceanic mind, as Coleridge called him, ever to appear as 
 one and the same element, that which makes him at once irdw 
 oXos, which gives to his versatility at once the greatest com- 
 pactness and entirety, is the property which we have often pointed 
 out in him, according to which all his powers are so equally 
 balanced, and are united in the most beautiful bond. As we 
 found in an intellectual point of view that mind, judgment, 
 fancy, contemplativeness, and practical understanding, the 
 rarest wit which perceives analogy in the most remote object, 
 and the greatest profoundness which pierces into the deepest 
 ground of things were ever in umison, so is it also with his 
 moral qualities in themselves and in their relation to the 
 intellectual. His heart is as fresh as his head is healthy, his 
 feelings as genuine and deep as his judgment is rich and tried, 
 his inclination is in such harmony with his will, and his moral 
 
THE FBINCIPLES OF HIS MOBAL VIEWS. 931 
 
 efforts with his understanding, that as from an assthetic point 
 of view the ideal and beautiful in his art concur with the 
 truth of his sensual and spiritual intention, so from an ethical 
 point of view the good and the moral coincides with this same 
 truth, so that ever in increased degree the same one, entire, 
 normal being steps forth, whose peculiarity, as Hudson said, 
 lies in his lack of peculiarities, in his generic properties, in 
 the united perfection and in the equal balancing of his powers. 
 For those who, among us, daily fall lamentable victims to one- 
 sidedness, caprice, and narrow-mindedness, Shakespeare is a con- 
 trast of the highest value ; to him it would have been utterly im- 
 possible to dissever human gifts and powers ; in his art he knew 
 no ideal that was irreconcilable with the actual, h.e scorned 
 the beautiful which would divert from the good, and refused 
 the truth which contradicted the beautiful and good. So that 
 the most complete characteristic of the poet and of his poetry, 
 of its many-?idedness and its unity, lies perhaps in the fol- 
 lowing verse, which is written in his 105th sonnet in a nar- 
 rower application, but is capable of being understood in this 
 wider one : — 
 
 Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument, 
 
 Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words ; 
 
 And in this change is my invention spent, 
 
 Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. 
 
 In virtue of this rare union of that universality, which the 
 Oermans gladly boast of, with that totality which is the nature 
 of the Englishman, Shakespeare stands as a link between the 
 two nations, and is an equally great example and model for 
 both, for each people from a different side, because he possesses 
 that which on both sides expresses a want of the national 
 nature. He impresses the Germans on the side of his totality, 
 with which he casts all their own poetry into the shade. That 
 which most invests Shakespeare's writings with this character 
 of completeness is the natural inclination of the poet for the 
 active side of life. It was this nature which fettered Bacon as 
 well as Shakjespeare to his age and nation ; and it was this 
 again which led them both to their activity in art and science, 
 ay, placed before them practical aims and objects. The want 
 of such conceivable aims, based on present national circum- 
 stances, has left the entire German poetry of the last century 
 without a point of concentration ; their poets found no settled 
 political life and nationality, no prevailing tendency of taste 
 
 3 o 2 
 
932 SHAKESFEABE. 
 
 and style of poetry ; each strove, therefore, to create and 'to 
 form art and life^ according to his own ideal, since no com- 
 plete and real national existence guided him in a definite 
 course ; the near result was lost in these wide-spreading efforts, 
 and the greatest of their poets confessed that he had only known 
 what he would and should do, but, divided and distracted, he 
 had in nothing reached the true aim, and only in the works of 
 other masters had found himself satisfied with what they had, 
 done. It is, therefore, easily accounted- for that the nation, 
 blessed indeed with so immense a mass <of poetic productions, 
 always felt a want unsatisfied, which it replaced by Shake- 
 speare's works, and that it maintains the ambitious belief thp-t 
 the man shall yet stand forth in the history of poetry who shall 
 be called the German Shakespeare. Let us, in the meanwhile, 
 rejoice in unembittered joy in the English Shakespeare, even 
 in the chance of no German succeeding him. Let us, even as 
 a nation, learn modesty from him, not to grieve because a 
 foreigner — he is certainly of our own stock — has won the prize 
 I from our -own poetry; let us, on the other hand, contend with 
 England for the glory of understandiag him and thus natu- 
 ralising him amongst us. We must, acknowledge it with envy 
 and jealousy : this poet is utterly free from all the hereditary 
 faults of German poetry, ,and possesses at the same time virtues 
 which German poetry has never possessed. ■ How our poetry of 
 the past century reeled to and fro between the extremes of a - 
 sickly sensibility and weakness and a strong-minded — ^as 
 we then called it — power of genius (Kraftgenialitdt), and, as 
 we ought to have called it, imaginary power and rude nature ; 
 of these strange deformities, from which our greatest masters 
 were not wholly free, thfere is only one Shakespearian (and this 
 moreover doubtful) youthful production. How our poetry 
 alternated between a. singular aspiring after originality on the 
 one side and after a versatile imitation' of the originals of all 
 ages and nations on the other; our most favoured men have 
 stood in relation to some period of civilisation, Klopstock to 
 the Northern and Oriental, Wieland to the chivalrie Byzantine, 
 Goethe by turns to all ; from leaps like these Shakespeare and 
 the English stage were completely preserved by the national 
 life around them. Our poetry, at the commencement of its 
 regeneration in the past century and still more of late, has ever 
 suffered from an inclination to all possible, natural, and forced 
 extravagances ; but Shakespeare knew nothing of these pas-» 
 
THE FBINCIPLES OF HIS MORAL VIEWS. 933 
 
 sionate paroxysms of which our poets feigned themselves the 
 prey, nothing of the mental weaknesses which le^d them to 
 singularities of all kinds, to nonsense, to delirious excitement, 
 nothing of the tormenting problems of civilisation and science, 
 which have made our poetry so full of doctrines, abstractions, 
 and practical tendencies, nothing of the pain of unsatisfied 
 knowledge and unlimited sensibilities, which disturbed the 
 most eminent minds among us, nothing of the irreconcilable 
 enmity between the ideal and the actual life, which subverted 
 our finest talents. He had to experience the struggle of scep- 
 tical years as much as any, his Hamlet- is a warrant for this ; 
 but his healthful nature delighted not, as so many amongst us, 
 in a voluntary defeat in the struggle ; he was even in his youth 
 a man, and his poetry has therefore nothing of the youthful 
 character in it, which our own hardly laid aside in their best 
 productions ; he wrote for men, and to men only is he wholly 
 intelligible. However much in the spirit of our Grerman 
 poetry he strove to free himself from the vain conventionalities 
 of life, nowhere do we see him even tempted to reject the good 
 with the bad, and, as is customary with us, to carry the experi- 
 ments of an ideal witticism at random into actual life. How- 
 ever much he fashioned himself out of the limits of narrow- 
 hearted nationality for universal humanity, contemptible would 
 thbse cosmopolitan principles have been to him which the 
 heads of our nation embraced.. He had imbibed a political and 
 patriotic spirit from history, the most valuable study for the 
 poet, but one which ours, with the single exception of SchiUer, 
 left untouched ; in its domain Shakespeare on the contrary did 
 all that Bacon demanded even from the historian ; he carries 
 the mind into the past and makes it, as it were, old ; he inves- 
 tigates the movements of the ages, the characters of the per- 
 sons, the uncertainty of counsels, the course of actions, the soul 
 of pretexts, the' secrets of governments, and with candour and 
 truth he renders them intelligible. If we compare Shake- 
 speare with every single one of our mightiest German poets, 
 we may maintain that the highest predicates pronounced upon 
 them are just with reference to him, but their faults and one- 
 sidedness he has avoided. As Klopstock first ennobled German 
 poetry by his personal bearing, we may say the same indeed of 
 Shakespeare with regard to dramatic poetry in England. 
 Schiller denominated Klopstock the poet of dignity, for he 
 raised the language of poetry, he insisted upon the closest 
 
934: SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 union between poetry and morality, and ever gave work to the- 
 mind ; all this applies also to Shakespeare, but he never lost 
 himself in Klopstock's religious extravagances, nor did he, lik& 
 him, overstrain the mind with exertion, but he maintains it in 
 constant freshness and power, Schiller denominated Wieland 
 in contrast to Klopstock the poet of grace ; Shakespeare is this 
 as, much as he is the poet of dignity. But never like Wieland 
 does he weaken "either the mind or the moral power. He has 
 nowhere, as Wieland has not rarely done, covered. the bare 
 stump of vice with flowers, and thrown a veil of grace over the 
 deformity of evil ; wherever he has made the foul and the base 
 open to all, he has not chosen attractive vessels, and when he has: 
 done so he has rendered them not easy to appropriate ; his- 
 wantonness is clothed in such wit that the lascivious taste is 
 not a match for it, and whoever seeks after such spoil in the 
 works of Boccaccio or Wieland will never read Shakespeare's. 
 Wieland is also among the poets of Germany the poet of a 
 middle course, as we have declared Shakespeare to be. But 
 Shakespeare never alternated like Wieland between enthusiasm 
 and soberness, between naturalism and epicureanism, but he 
 adhered firinly to the point of medium between these extremes ; 
 and he did not, like Wieland, consider all in man created as an 
 instrument for pleasure, but as an instrument for activity. On 
 this point Lessing's character approaches nearest to Shake- 
 speare's, and on that also of his perfectly manly bearing ; but Les- 
 sing was born for science and criticism, and he lacked the poetic 
 oKytw?, which was Shakespeare's richest possession. If we place 
 Shakespeare by the side of Schiller and Groethe, we see easily 
 how, with respect to mind and morals, he concentrated both 
 natures in his own. Out of numberless points of comparison we 
 will select only a few at random. With Goethe's comprehensive 
 knowledge of human nature, Shakespeare united Schiller's im- 
 shaken reverence for mankind, which Goethe lost. Goethe lost 
 it in individual intercourse, by a life distracted by manifold 
 small activity, by his dislike and ignorance of the gTeat world of 
 politics and history ; it was just in this world that Shakespeare 
 moved and felt himself at ease, and maintained in it his re- 
 verence for hiunan nature, because, even in Goethe's opinion, 
 there are always the greatest objects at stake where mankind 
 operates in combination. Shakespeare carries us, therefore, in 
 the spirit of Schiller, ever upwards to the heights of active life, 
 which Goethe always lost sight of the nearer he endeavoured to 
 
THE PEINCIPLE8 OF HIS MOBAL VIEWS. 935 
 
 lead us to the heights of civilisation. If from Goethe's many- 
 sided pursuits and universal interest in all things a comprehen- 
 sive mind was formed, from Shakespeare's interest in the active 
 world, we may believe, a character was at the same time moulded. 
 If Schiller's moral digijity elicited the esteem even of him who 
 loves him less as a poet, and Goethe's elegance aUuxed the love 
 even of him who morally esteems him less, with Shakespeare we 
 are in the happy position to be able always at once to esteem 
 and' love, ay, to be obliged to do so. Goethe himself has thus 
 characterised the highest point of contrast between himself and 
 SchiUer — that Schiller was excited by the idea of freedom, but 
 that he stood on the side of nature ; in Shakespeare this contrast 
 is not to be found. Compared with Goethe he gives us the 
 impression of freedom, compared with Schiller that of nature, 
 but also, on the other hand, compared even with Goethe he 
 gives us the impression of natui-e, and with Schiller that of 
 freedom ; just as much is he a picture of natural perfections as 
 of free mental effort, endowed by nature like Goethe, and re- 
 quiting her fayours by his own free endeavours like Schiller. 
 Schiller denoininated this to be the perfect work of civilisation 
 — ^to place the sensual power in the richest contact with the 
 world, and to increase its susceptibility to the highest degree, 
 and to maintain the Tnental power independent and absolute, 
 and to raise its activity and power of decision to the utmost : 
 this is most peculiarly the characteristic of Shakespeare's mind. 
 He has at once shown us, like Goethe, the compass of receptive 
 nature, and, like Schiller, the power of the productive mind. 
 He has neither neglected, as Schiller reproached Goethe with 
 having done, to convert the gifts of natixre into a true possession 
 of the mind, nor has he, as Goethe blamed Schiller, endangered 
 instinct by the activity of the mind. Nature had liberally 
 endowed him, but he traded with the talent she had lent him, 
 and the profit he was justified in calling his property ; poetry, 
 as Schiller pursued it, was to Goethe indeed too serious a busi- 
 ness, but Shakespeare carried it on with more intense labour 
 than either. No wonder, therefore, if Goethe stood satisfied 
 before the performances of this master, as he did not before his 
 own works, and if he looked up to him with reverence ' as a 
 being of a higher kind ; ' a greater testimony has never been 
 given to a genius than that the greatest poet who has followed 
 Shakespeare during three centuries should have said of him 
 that he feared to founder upon him. Thus it is then no wonder 
 
936 SHAKESPEABE. 
 
 •that Shakespeare influenced so powerfully jn Grermany, that in 
 spite of the interval of time he has worked more effectually 
 than living poets, that among the unprejudiced he has overcome 
 national jealousy, and that weighed even with those favourites of 
 Oermany, Goethe and Schiller, whose greatness and importance 
 the nation truly has in nowise overlooked, he has stepped 
 beyond them. In the very beginning of these notahle influences 
 upon G-ermany, Shakespeare appears again in one line with 
 Homer. Both have first awakened the better day of German 
 poetry, and have given the strongest and most lasting impulse 
 to its greatest masters — Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller. Since 
 this period Shakespeare's works have ever made greater con- 
 quests among the Teutonic races from Western America to 
 Eastern Europe. For to these races he especially belongs in 
 virtue of his general nature, which exhibits him never nationally 
 as a hard Englishman, never religiously as the narrow follower 
 of a confession, never, as regards his poetical taste, as a one-sided 
 Saxon. Only in the Romanic nations, where the narrow na- 
 tional conventionalities of art, and yet far more Eoman Catho- 
 licism and all that is connected with it, impede access to 
 Shakespeare's works, is their circulation at a standstill. But 
 this limitation to the Teutonic race is no sign of the limited 
 views of the poet, or of too great a peculiarity in his ideal of art. 
 The nature of times and nations is indeed of such a kind that 
 they reject these reciprocal productions of literature ; Homer 
 also was unknown during 1,000 years of the middle ages, and 
 Calderon and Dante never penetrated further towards the North 
 than Shakespeare towards the South. But the Teutonic race is 
 great enough in soul and body to dare independently to oppose 
 its taste to that of the South and the ancients, and its civilisa- 
 tion has moreover so boundless a prospect of extension and 
 duration that at all events no inferior lot of activity is 
 measured out to our Shakespeare than to the greatest poets 
 among the Greek and Latin races. 
 
INDEX, 
 
 ACT 
 
 ACTIVITY gives strength to life, 
 913 
 Alexandrines, 73 
 AUeyri, E., 99 
 AWs Well that Ends B^ell, 152, 164, 175 
 
 — contrast to Love's Labour's Lost, 174 
 — '■ natural repugnance to the play of, 
 
 185 ' 
 Andrew, Sir, 427 
 Angelo, character of, 489 
 Antonio, character of, 238 
 Antony and Cleopatra, date of, 722 
 
 — Coleridge's opinion of, 724 
 
 — characters in, 727 
 
 — relation to Julius Cmsar, 735 
 Antony, Shakespeare's judgment of, 741 
 
 — Octavius, contrast to, 742 
 
 — Brutus, contrast to, 708 
 
 — conference with Octavius, 733 
 Arden family, 24 
 
 Ariel, description of, 796 
 Armddo, character of, 166 
 Arthur, Prince, character of, 363 
 As You lake It, interpretation of, 386 
 
 — origin of story of, 389 
 
 — purport of, 390 
 
 — character of, 394 
 
 — a pastoral play, 404 
 
 BACON, Shakespeare's contemporary, 
 884 
 Banquo, character of, 593 
 Basaanio, character of, 241 
 Beatrice, character of, 177 
 Bertram, character of, 174, 180 
 Betterton, 28, 308 
 Biron, 166 
 Blackfriar's Theatre formed, 86 
 
 — celebrity of, 90 
 
 Bolingbroke, contrast to Eichard II„ 
 
 294 
 Brutus, character and position of, 705 
 
 — relation of Cassius to, 712 
 Burbage, J., 86, 96, 97, 186 
 
 CTM 
 
 CiESAR, character of, 719 
 CaUban, 798 
 
 Caskets, comments on the, 236 
 
 Cassius, character of, 714 
 
 Character and action inseparable in 
 drama, 847 
 
 Characters — ideal beauty in Shake- 
 speare's, 864 
 
 Characters, Shakespeare's true pictures 
 of nature, 860 
 
 Characters of low comedy retained, 
 164 
 
 Chettle's Tract, 132 
 
 Cicero, 718 
 
 Claudio, 491 
 
 Cloten, 662 
 
 Coleridge's lectures, 16 
 
 Collier's edition of Shakespeare, 17 
 
 Comedies, subject of Shakespeare's, 901 
 
 Comedy, nature of, 373 
 
 Comedy of Errors, 133, 145 
 
 Comic characters, principle faction in, 
 373 
 
 Comic power of Benedick and Beatrice, 
 414 
 
 Cordelia, 637 
 
 Coriolarms, date of, 746 
 
 — struggle of aristocratic and de- 
 
 mocratic principles depicted in, 
 
 746 
 Coriolanus, psychological idea in, 747 
 ■ — characters of, 752 
 
 — Shakespeare's interest in character 
 
 of, 763 
 
 — adherence to Plutarch in, 767 
 Cressida, 683 
 
 Curse on love, 163 
 CymbeUne, 165 
 
 — date of, 644 
 
 — contrast to King Lear, 645 
 
 — key to, 671 
 
 — picture of fidelity, 673 ^ 
 
 — purport of, 648 
 
 — lesson derived from play of, 674 ■ 
 
 — characters of, 651 
 
938 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 DAW 
 
 DAWN Songs, 208 
 Descriptive poems, 36 
 Desdemona, 514 
 Different conditions of art in ancient 
 
 and modern times, 867 
 Drake, Nathan, 16, 328 
 Drama, despised state of, 7 
 
 — history of, 46 
 
 — slight influence of ancient, 61 
 
 — • artistic character of English, 68 _ 
 
 — diction and versification of English, 
 
 75 
 
 — difference between ancient and mo- 
 
 dern, 839 
 
 — character, most important point of, 
 
 849 
 — • favourable position of, in England, 
 883 
 
 — progress of, in Germany, 884 
 
 — different branches of, 894 
 Dramas of Shakespeare's third period, 
 
 478 
 Drama^iic poets, actors, 100 
 Dumain, 166 
 Dyce, ^., 17 
 
 EDGAE, character of, 632 
 Edmund, character of, 634 
 Emilia, character of, 544 
 Enobarbus, character of, 743 
 Excess condemned by Shakespeare, 917 
 
 FAIEIES, 194 
 Fairy literature, 200 
 TalstafF, 301 
 
 — character of, 321 
 
 — effect produced by character of, 327 
 
 — subsequent career of, 333, 378 . 
 Farces, earliest, 67 
 
 Faulconbridge, English character of, 368 
 Eeste the Fool, 437 
 
 Fidelity, song of, 673 
 
 Fools introduced on ihe stage, 403 
 
 Friar Lawrence, 211 
 
 GARDEN scene in Someo and JvMet, 
 221 
 GarricKs acting; of Henry V., 340 
 
 — acting of Taming of the Shrmi, 140 
 
 — version of Borneo and Juliet, 228 
 Genius displayed in Shakespeare's 
 
 Works, 859 
 Germany, Shakespeare's plays well 
 
 acted in, 440 
 • — appreciation of Shakespeare in, 453 
 Gloster, character of, 262 
 Gloster (King Lear), character of, 632 
 
 IDE 
 G:oeth.^' sWilhelm Meister, 16 
 
 — Hamlet, 18 
 
 — Shakespeare compared with, 934 
 Greene, Eobert, 76 
 
 Greene, letter, 131 
 
 — Henry VL, 118, 122, 131 
 
 fTAMLET, origin of, 648 
 -tl' — Subject of, 561 
 
 — idea of, 660 
 
 — moral teaching of, 671 
 
 — character of, 661 
 
 — type of Germany, 576 
 
 — treatment of Ophelia reproaehable, 
 
 579 
 Helena, character of, 177 
 Henry IV., 298 
 ' — effect produced by, 899 
 
 — subject of, 301 
 
 — character of, 302 
 -^ moral centre of, 307 
 Henry Percy, character of, 307 
 Henry, Prince, character of, 313 
 Henry IV., second part of, 331 
 Henry V., date of, 339 
 
 — change of, as King, 340 
 
 — religious characteristic of, 347 
 — - central point of, 348 
 
 — characters in, 350 • / 
 Hen/ry FT., play of, 113 ' 
 
 contrast of, to Shakespeare's other 
 
 plays, 115 
 
 — apDropriation of, by Shakespeare, 124 
 Hemry VIII., original title of, 253 
 
 — date of, 818 
 
 — characters in, 819 
 
 — portrayal of King himself, 823 
 
 — the work of Shakespeare, 826 
 
 — lack of dramatic unity in, 827 
 Hermione, 808 
 
 Heywood, J., 62, 58 
 Heywood, Thomas, 251 
 Historical plays, 73, 248 
 
 — wider interest of, 256 
 
 — produced by political dreum- 
 
 stances, 250 
 
 — pervading idea of, 268 
 
 — ; lack of Eesthetic merit in, 254 
 Holinshed's Chronicle followed by 
 
 Shakespeare, 252 
 Homer, Chapman's translation of, 680 
 Horn, Franz, 16 
 Hudson's lectures, 20 
 Hypocrisy, character possessing, 266 
 
 I AGO, character of, 521 
 Ideal beauty in Shakespeare's cha- 
 racters, 864 
 
INDEX. 
 
 939^ 
 
 IDE 
 
 Ideal of ait, Shakespeare's, 861 
 
 Ideal and real combined in Shake- 
 speare, 876 
 
 Imogen( 656 
 
 Indirect moral teaching in Shakespeare, 
 889 
 
 Interludes, 62 
 
 Isabella, character of, 493 
 
 Italian schoolj poetry of, 39, 42 
 
 Italy, no drama of its own, 65 
 
 JAQtTES, character of, 393 
 Jonson's, Ben, Poetaster, 5 
 Juliet's character, 2T9 
 
 — soliloquy, 207 
 
 Jidius CiBsar, source of effective cha- 
 racter of, 700 
 
 — date of, 701 
 
 — connection with Hamlet, 702 
 Justice in issue of Antony and Cleo- 
 patra, 740 
 
 "17ENT, character of, 630 
 JV King John, date of, 3^3 
 
 — subject of, 355 
 
 — character of, 386 , 
 King Lear, origin of, 611 
 
 — epic characters of, 616 
 
 — age depicted in, 619 
 
 — character of, 622 
 
 — daaighters of, 624 
 
 — central point of, 626 
 
 LAERTES, contoast to Hamlet, 557 
 Lafeu, character of, 181 
 Leading idea in all plays, 235 
 Leontes, contrast to Othello, 805 
 Xessing's,Dramatui;gie, 13 
 Lov^s Labour's Lost, 152 
 
 — Character of play, 163 
 Love plays, 151 
 
 Love, Shakespeare's treatment of, 153 
 Love, passion of, in extreme, 210 
 Lucrece, 36 
 Lyric verse, application to love, 206 
 
 lUTACBETH, origin of, 582 
 ■^"- — date of, 685 
 
 — contrast to Hamlet, 587 
 
 — aimof^jlay of, 603 
 
 — Lady, 695 
 
 Macduff, character of, 606 
 Malvolio, character of, 425 
 Marlowe's Tamberlaine, 68 
 Measure for Measure, 154, 485 
 
 — masterly arraiigement of play of, 487 
 
 — intention of play of, 602 
 
 POS 
 Merohant of Venice, 164, 230 
 
 — af&nity of, with earlier plays, 230 
 
 — sources of play of, 231 
 Mercutio, character of, 218 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, date of, 377 
 
 — Shakespeare's intention in, 383 
 
 — idea contained in, 384 
 Miracle plays, 47 
 Miranda, character of, 723 
 Moderation not weakness, 504 
 Moderation necessary in all things, 915 
 Modem art, characteristic of, 871 
 Moral spirit of Shakespeare's works, 888 
 Moralities, 49 
 
 ■ — versification of, 76 
 Much Ado About Nothing, source of, 
 406 
 
 — contrast to As You Like It, 407 
 
 — characters of, 408 
 
 — analogy with Lov^s Labour's Lost, 41 ^ 
 Musical element in plays, 437 
 Mysteries, 47 
 
 — versification of, 75 
 
 NASH'S, Thomas, letter, 130 
 National narrow-mindedness in. 
 Shakespeare, 350 
 Northern and southern art, difference- 
 between, 868 
 Nuptial poems, 207 
 
 OCTAVIUS, contrast to Antony, 742 
 Oldcastle, Sir John, 299, 300 
 Olivia, 434 
 
 Ophelia, character of, 681 
 Orsino, Duke of, 429 
 Othello, 155 
 
 — origin of, 505 
 
 — design of, 610 
 
 — character of, 610 
 
 — origin of jealousy of, 628 
 
 — causes of suspicion of, 629 
 
 PANTOMEVEES, 62 
 Pastoral poetry, 41 
 Pastoral episode in As You Like It, 40O 
 Perdita, character of, 812 
 Pericles, 102, 145 
 
 — written for Burbage, 111 
 Pisanio, character of, 674 
 
 Plautus and Seneca, influence of, on 
 
 Shakespeare, 66 
 Players, Queen's, 89 
 Portia, character of, 239 
 Portia^ Brutus' wife, 711 
 Posthumus, likeness to Othello, 669 
 
 — character of, 654 
 
940 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PST 
 Psychological tendency of Shakespeare, 
 
 EEAL and ideal combined in Shake- 
 speare's poetry, 876 
 Bealistic element in Shakespeare, 866 
 Eeflections upon truth and seeming, 
 
 338 
 Eevival of ancient art, 59 
 Bichard II., 279 
 
 — connection -with Hemry IV. and V., 
 
 280 
 
 — character of, 282 
 
 • — lesson to be drawn from, 288 
 
 — characters in, 296 
 
 Richard III., connection -With Henry VI., 
 
 269 
 — characters of, 262 
 
 — tisk for actor, 270 
 
 — contrast to Henry V., 270 
 
 — female characters in, 271 
 
 — opposite characters in, 275 
 Borneo and Juliet, 152, 165, 204 
 
 — lyric poetry in, 20fi 
 
 — garden scene in, 221 
 
 — Garriek's version of, 228 
 — ^pervading idea of, 232, 235 
 Eomeo's character, 216 
 Bosalind, 395 
 
 Eosaline, 166 
 
 Howe's, Nicholas, edition, 10 
 
 SCENE shifting, 91 
 Schlegel, A. W., dramatic lectures 
 . of, 16 ( 
 
 Sebastian, 431 
 
 Second period of Shakespeare's poetry, 
 149 
 
 Seven plays at the outset of Shake- 
 speare's career, 144 
 
 Shakespeare — Tardy notoriety, 8, 10. 
 Different treatment in Germany and 
 England, 12. Works explained only 
 by representation, 21. Early His- 
 tory, 23. Education, 25. Family difB- 
 culties, 27. Peer stealing, 28, 29. 
 Wild habits, 30. Marriage, 31. 
 Anecdotes of love adventures, 33. 
 Heroine of sonnets, 33. Descriptive 
 poems, 36. Trojan tendency, 40. Left 
 Stratford, 45. Mixture of various 
 elements in his plays, 66. Acquaint- 
 ance with Latin writers, 66. Devia- 
 tion from predecessors in tragedy, 
 comedy, and history, 73. Sources 
 from which he drew, 83. State of 
 things when he began to act in Lon- 
 don, 99. Eiist dramatic attempts, 
 
 SHA 
 100. Talent in development of cha- 
 racter as shown in Henry VI., 126. 
 Superiority in appropriating foreign 
 works, 130. Display of learning, 
 146. Advantage possessed in foreign 
 models, 147. Treatment of love dif- 
 ferent to that of Goethe and Schiller, 
 162. His wit, 170. Delineation of 
 fairy world, 196. Various interpre- 
 tations of his works, 232. Two- 
 sided nature, 249. Mode of using 
 his sources, 252. Eeflections upon 
 truth and seeming, 338. No moral 
 free-thinker, 346. Touches of national 
 narrow-mindedness, 350. His rever- 
 ential feeling, 364. His view as to 
 man's moral nature, 373. His twc- 
 sidednessof mind exhibited in Jaques' 
 character, 393. Significance given by 
 him to fools, 402. His treatment of 
 humorous characters, 420. Type of 
 female character in his second period, 
 420. - His worldly prosperity, 465. 
 Eenovation of character, 466. Eise of 
 position, 467. Eetirement from stage, 
 468. Portrayal in Prince Henry, 469. 
 Long delay in the appreciation of his 
 works, 473. Analogy with Prince 
 Henry, 473. Dramas of his third 
 period, 478. Tragic events in his 
 life, 478. Saxon character of his 
 later writings, 482. His death, 484. 
 His interest in moral truth evidenced 
 in Oihdlo, 506. Considered with re- 
 gard to his age, 574. His age not 
 barbarous, 613. His interval of care- 
 lessness, 725. His aristocratic in- 
 clinations, 748. His anachronisms, 
 768. His position by the side of 
 Homer, 678. His Trojan sympathies, 
 681. tJniversality of his genius, 
 786. Close of "poetic career, 829. 
 Highest honours as poet, 830. His 
 sense of beauty, 831. His faults of 
 taste, 835. His use of metaphorical 
 images, 836. His alleged inattention 
 to rules, 839. His works the result 
 of conscious intellect, 856. His ideal 
 of art, 861. His psychological ten- 
 dency, 869. His medium position 
 between ancient and modern art, 872. 
 His age, 879. His contemporaory. 
 Bacon, 884. His indirect teaching of 
 morality, 889. His self-command, 
 892. Impression produced by his 
 dramas, 893. His admiration of 
 poetic justice, 905. His moral view, 
 910. His freedom from prejudice, 
 920. His political liberality, 924. 
 His character as shown in his works. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 941 
 
 SHE 
 926. His many-sidedness, 929. Com- 
 pared with Klopstock, 933; -with 
 Wieland, 934 ; with Schiller and 
 Goethe, 934 
 
 Shrew, a frequent character, 139 
 
 Shyloojc, 244 
 
 Significance given hy Shakespeare to 
 
 ^ fools, 402 
 
 Similarity between Comedy of Errors 
 and Taming of the Shrew, 137 
 
 Sonnets, Shakespeare's, 441 
 
 — mystery attached to them, 442 
 
 — to whom addressed, 445 
 
 — connecting thread in, 451 
 
 — psychological value of, 452 
 
 — fight cast by, on Shakespeare'slife, 464 
 Southampton, Earl of, 446 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, 42 
 Stage, English formed, 57 
 Stage, history of, 84 
 
 — denounced, 89 
 
 Sympathies, Trojan, of Shakespeare, 681 
 
 TAMBERLAINE, 69 , 
 Taming of Shrew, 133, 145 
 Tarlton, 96, 171, 325 
 Tenvpest, 154 
 
 — origin of, 788 
 
 — subject of, 789 
 
 — Shakespeare's intention in the, 799 
 Tieck's opinion of Lov^s Labour's Lost, 
 
 169 
 Tmon of Athens, date of, 769 
 
 — unequal character of play of, 770 
 
 — intention of play of, 772 
 
 — character of, 775 
 
 Timon contrasted with Apemantus, 782 
 Titus Andronieus, 102, 145 
 Toby, Sir, 428 
 Touchstone, 401 
 Tragedy, first English, 50 
 
 — nature of, 373 
 
 — age suited for, 614 
 
 — object of, 615, 621 
 
 WIT 
 Tragedies, bloody, 69 
 
 — subject of Shakespeare's, 899 
 Tragic characters, principle of action 
 
 in, 373 
 Troilus and Oressida, date of, 154, 681 
 
 — subject of, 682 
 
 — taken from Homer, 687 
 
 ■^— comic distortion of characters in, 694 
 Truth, spirit of, inculcated by, 928 
 Truth and beauty in SlM,kespeare's 
 
 poetry, 874 
 Twelfth Night, origin of, 425 
 
 — characters of, 425 
 
 — merriest of comedies, 439 
 Two noble kinsmen, 828 
 
 Type of female characters in Shake- 
 speare's second period, 420 
 
 TpPTITY of time and place disregarded 
 U in Winter's Tale and Tempest, 816 
 Unity of action presented by Aristotle, 
 
 843 
 Unity of action an ever-binding law, 844 
 Unity of character, Shakespeare's main 
 
 law, -853 
 Universality of Shakespeare's genius, 
 
 786 
 
 FENUS and Adonis, 36 
 Viola, character of, 432 
 Voltaire's criticism, 15 
 Volumnia, character of,' 751 
 
 TTTINTER'S Tale, 155 
 '^'^ —date of, 801 
 
 — fictitious character of, 803 
 
 — two actions in, 805 
 
 — connection with Othello, 805 
 
 — comic element in, 805 
 Wit, foundation of, 170 
 Witches, 591 
 
 Witchcraft, Shakespeare's use' of, 795 
 
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