Part 3

I once had a dream, and in this dream I was discussing a subject with another man. It occurred to me that I was dreaming, and I then said to myself: If this is a dream, I am doing the talking for both sides--consequently I ought to know in advance what the other man is going to say. In my dream I tried the experiment. I then asked the other man a question, and before he answered made up my mind what the answer was to be. To my surprise, the man did not say what I expected he would, and so great was my astonishment that I awoke.

It then occurred to me that I had discovered the secret of Shakespeare. He did, when awake, what I did when asleep--that is, he threw off a character so perfect that it acted independently of him.

In the delineation of character Shakespeare has no rivals. He creates no monsters. His characters do not act without reason, without motive.

Iago had his reasons. In Caliban, nature was not destroyed--and Lady Macbeth certifies that the woman still was in her heart, by saying:

"Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it."

Shakespeare's characters act from within. They are centres of energy. They are not pushed by unseen hands, or pulled by unseen strings. They have objects, desires. They are persons--real, living beings.

Few dramatists succeed in getting their characters loose from the canvas--their backs stick to the wall--they do not have free and independent action--they have no background, no unexpressed motives--no untold desires. They lack the complexity of the real.

Shakespeare makes the character true to itself. Christopher Sly, surrounded by the luxuries of a lord, true to his station, calls for a pot of the smallest ale.

Take one expression by Lady Macbeth. You remember that after the murder is discovered--after the alarm bell is rung--she appears upon the scene wanting to know what has happened. Macduff refuses to tell her, saying that the slightest word would murder as it fell. At this moment Banquo comes upon the scene and Macduff cries out to him:

"Our royal master's murdered."

What does Lady Macbeth then say? She in fact makes a confession of guilt. The weak point in the terrible tragedy is that Duncan was murdered in Macbeth's castle. So when Lady Macbeth hears what they suppose is news to her, she cries:

"What! In our house!"

Had she been innocent, her horror of the crime would have made her forget the place--the venue. Banquo sees through this, and sees through her.

Her expression was a light, by which he saw her guilt--and he answers:

"Too cruel anywhere."

No matter whether Shakespeare delineated clown or king, warrior or maiden--no matter whether his characters are taken from the gutter or the throne--each is a work of consummate art, and when he is unnatural, he is so splendid that the defect is forgotten.

When Romeo is told of the death of Juliet, and thereupon makes up his mind to die upon her grave, he gives a description of the shop where poison could be purchased. He goes into particulars and tells of the alligators stuffed, of the skins of ill-shaped fishes, of the beggarly account of empty boxes, of the remnants of pack-thread, and old cakes of roses--and while it is hardly possible to believe that under such circumstances a man would take the trouble to make an inventory of a strange kind of drug-store, yet the inventory is so perfect--the picture is so marvellously drawn--that we forget to think whether it is natural or not.

In making the frame of a great picture--of a great scene--Shakespeare was often careless, but the picture is perfect. In making the sides of the arch he was negligent, but when he placed the keystone, it burst into blossom. Of course there are many lines in Shakepeare that never should have been written. In other words, there are imperfections in his plays. But we must remember that Shakespeare furnished the torch that enables us to see these imperfections.

Shakespeare speaks through his characters, and we must not mistake what the characters say, for the opinion of Shakespeare. No one can believe that Shakespeare regarded life as "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." That was the opinion of a murderer, surrounded by avengers, and whose wife--partner in his crimes--troubled with thick-coming fancies--had gone down to her death.

Most actors and writers seem to suppose that the lines called "The Seven Ages" contain Shakespeare's view of human life. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The lines were uttered by a cynic, in contempt and scorn of the human race.

Shakespeare did not put his characters in the livery and uniform of some weakness, peculiarity or passion. He did not use names as tags or brands. He did not write under the picture, "This is a villain." His characters need no suggestive names to tell us what they are--we see them and we know them for ourselves.

It may be that in the greatest utterances of the greatest characters in the supreme moments, we have the real thoughts, opinions and convictions of Shakespeare.

Of all writers Shakespeare is the most impersonal.. He speaks through others, and the others seem to speak for themselves. The didactic is lost in the dramatic. He does not use the stage as a pulpit to enforce some maxim. He is as reticent as Nature.

He idealizes the common and transfigures all he touches--but he does not preach. He was in-terested in men and things as they were. He did not seek: to change them--but to portray, he was _Nature's mirror_--and in that mirror Nature saw herself.

When I stood amid the great trees of California that lift their spreading capitals against the clouds, looking like Nature's columns to support the sky, I thought of the poetry of Shakespeare.

XI.

WHAT a procession of men and women--statesmen and warriors--kings and clowns--issued from Shakespeare's brain. What women!

Isabella--in whose spotless life love and reason blended into perfect truth.

Juliet--within whose heart passion and purity met like white and red within the bosom of a rose.

Cordelia--who chose to suffer loss, rather than show her wealth of love with those who gilded lies in hope of gain.

Hermione--"tender as infancy and grace"--who bore with perfect hope and faith the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her heart.

Desdemona--so innocent, so perfect, her love so pure, that she was incapable of suspecting that another could suspect, and who with dying words sought to hide her lover's crime--and with her last faint breath uttered a loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her pallid lips.

Perdita--A violet dim, and sweeter than the lids of Junos eyes--"The sweetest low-born lass that ever ran on the green sward." And Helena--who said:

"I know I love in vain, strive against hope-- Yet in this captious and intenable sieve I still pour in the waters of my love, And lack not to lose still, Thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun that looks upon his worshipper, But knows of him no more."

Miranda--who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its bosom to the kisses of the sun.

And Cordelia, whose kisses cured and whose tears restored. And stainless Imogen, who cried:

"What is it to be false?"

And here is the description of the perfect woman:

"To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love; To keep her constancy in plight and youth-- Outliving beauty's outward with a mind That doth renew swifter than blood decays."

Shakespeare done more for woman than all the other dramatists of the world.

For my part. I love the Clowns. I love _Launce_ and his dog Crabb, and _Gobbo_, whose conscience threw its arms around the neck of his heart, and _Touchstone_, with his lie seven times removed; and dear old _Dogberry_--a pretty piece of flesh, tedious as a king. And _Bottom_, the very paramour for a sweet voice, longing to take the part to tear a cat in; and _Autolycus_, the snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, sleeping out the thought for the life to come. And great _Sir John_, without conscience, and for that reason unblamed and enjoyed--and who at the end babbles of green fields, and is almost loved. And ancient _Pistol_, the world his oyster. And _Bardolph_, with the flea on his blazing nose, putting beholders in mind of a damned soul in hell. And the poor _Fool_, who followed the mad king, and went "to bed at noon." And the clown who carried the worm of Nilus, whose "biting was immortal." And _Corin_, the shepherd--who described the perfect man: "I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat--get that I wear--owe no man aught--envy no man's happiness--glad of other men's good--content."

And mingling in this motley throng, _Lear_, within whose brain a tempest raged until the depths were stirred, and the intellectual wealth of a life was given back to memory--and then by madness thrown to storm and night--and when I read the living lines I feel as though I looked upon the sea and saw it wrought by frenzied whirlwinds, until the buried treasures and the sunken wrecks of all the years were cast upon the shores.

And _Othello_--who like the base Indian threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe.

And _Hamlet_--thought-entangted--hesitating between two worlds.

And _Macbeth_--strange mingling of cruelty and conscience, reaping the sure harvest of successful crime--"Curses not loud but deep--mouth-honor,--breath."

And _Brutus_, falling on his sword that Cæsar might be still.

And _Romeo_, dreaming of the white wonder of Juliet's hand. And _Ferdinand_, the patient log-man for Miranda's sake. And _Florizel_, who, "for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the profound seas hide," would not be faithless to the low-born lass. And _Constance_, weeping for her son, while grief "stuffs out his vacant garments with his form."

And in the midst of tragedies and tears, of love and laughter and crime, we hear the voice of the good friar, who declares that in every human heart, as in the smallest flower, there are encamped the opposed hosts of good and evil--and our philosophy is interrupted by the garrulous old nurse, whose talk is as busily useless as the babble of a stream that hurries by a ruined mill.

From every side the characters crowd upon us--the men and women born of Shakespeare's brain. They utter with a thousand voices the thoughts of the "myriad-minded" man, and impress themselves upon us as deeply and vividly as though they really lived with us.

Shakespeare alone has delineated love in every possible phase--has ascended to the very top, and actually reached heights that no other has imagined. I do not believe the human mind will ever produce or be in a position to appreciate, a greater love-play than "Romeo and Juliet." It is a symphony in which all music seems to blend. The heart bursts into blossom, and he who reads feels the swooning intoxication of a divine perfume.

In the alembic of Shakespeare's brain the baser metals were turned to gold--passions became virtues--weeds became exotics, from some diviner land--and common mortals made of ordinary clay outranked the Olympian Gods. In his brain there was the touch of chaos that suggests the infinite--that belongs to genius. Talent is measured and mathematical--dominated by prudence and the thought of use. Genius is tropical. The creative instinct runs riot, delights in extravagance and waste, and overwhelms the mental beggars of the world with uncounted gold and unnumbered gems.

Some things are immortal: The plays of Shakespeare, the marbles of the Greeks, and the music of Wagner.

XII.

Shakespeare was the greatest of philosophers.

He knew the conditions of success--of happiness--the relations _that men, sustain_ to each other, and the duties of all. He knew the tides and currents of the heart--the cliffs and caverns of the brain. He knew the weakness of the will, the sophistry of desire--and "That pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true decision."

He knew that the soul lives in an invisible world--that flesh is but a mask, and that "There is no art to find the mind's construction In the face."

He knew that courage should be the servant of judgment, and that

"When valor preys on reason it eats the sword It fights with."

He knew that man is never "master of the event, that he is to some extent the sport or prey of the blind forces of the world, and that

"In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men."

Feeling that the past is unchangeable, and that that which must happen is as much beyond control as though it had happened, he says:

"Let determined things to destiny Hold unbewailed their way."

Shakespeare was great enough to know that every human being prefers happiness to misery, and that crimes are but mistakes. Looking in pity upon the human race, upon the pain and poverty, the crimes and cruelties, the limping travelers on the thorny paths, he was great and good enough to say:

"There is no darkness but ignorance."

In all the philosophies there is no greater line. This great truth fills the heart with pity.

He knew that place and power do not give happiness--that the crowned are subject as the lowest to fate and chance.

"Within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps death his Court, and there the antic sits Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, Allowing him a brief and little scene To monarchize by fear and kill with looks, Infusing him with self and vain conceit-- As if this flesh that walls about our life Were brass impregnable; and humored thus, Comes at the last and with a little pin Bores through his castle wall--and farewell king!"

So, too, he knew that gold could not bring joy--that death and misfortune come alike to rich and poor, because:

"If thou art rich thou art poor; For like an ass whose back with ingots bows Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, And death unloads thee."

In some of his philosophy there was a kind of scorn--a hidden meaning that could not in his day and time have safely been expressed. You will remember that Laertes was about to kill the king, and this king was the murderer of his own brother, and sat upon the throne by reason of his crime--and in the mouth of such a king Shakespeare puts these words:

"There's such divinity doth hedge a king."

So, in Macbeth

"How he solicits Heaven himself best knows; but strangely visited people All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despairs of surgery, he cures; Hanging a golden stamp about their necks. Put on with holy prayers; and 'tis spoken To the succeeding royalty--he leaves The healing benediction.

"With this strange virtue He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy, And sundry blessings hang about his throne, That speak him full of grace."

Shakespeare was the master of the human heart--knew all the hopes, fears, ambitions, and passions that sway the mind of man; and thus knowing, he declared that

"Love is not love that alters When it alteration finds."

This is the sublimest declaration in the literature of the world.

Shakespeare seems to give the generalization--the result--without the process of thought. He seems always to be at the conclusion--standing where all truths meet.

In one of the Sonnets is this fragment of a line that contains the highest possible truth:

"Conscience is born of love."

If man were incapable of suffering, the words right and wrong never could have been spoken. If man were destitute of imagination, the flower of pity never could have blossomed in his heart.

We suffer--we cause others to suffer--those that we love--and of this fact conscience is born.

Love is the many-colored flame that makes the fireside of the heart. It is the mingled spring and autumn--the perfect climate of the soul.

XIII.

IN the realm of comparison Shakespeare seems to have exhausted the relations, parallels and similitudes of things, He only could have said:

"Tedious as a twice-told tale Vexing the ears of a drowsy man."

"Duller than a great thaw. Dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage."

In the words of Ulysses, spoken to Achilles, we find the most wonderful collection of pictures and comparisons ever compressed within the same number of lines:

"Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,-- A great-sized monster of ingratitudes-- Those scraps are good deeds passed; which are devoured As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done; perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honor bright: to have done is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery.

"Take the instant way; For honor travels in a strait so narrow Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path; For emulation hath a thousand sons That one by one pursue; if you give way, Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, Like to an entered tide, they all rush by And leave you hindmost: Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank, Lie there for pavement to the abject rear, O'errun and trampled on: then what they do in present, Tho' less than yours in past, must o' ertop yours; For time is like a fashionable host That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arms outstretched as he would fly, Grasps in the comer: Welcome ever smiles, And Farewell goes out sighing."

So the words of Cleopatra, when Charmain speaks:

"Peace, peace: Dost thou not see my baby at my breast That sucks the nurse asleep?"

XIV.

NOTHING is more difficult than a definition--a crystallization of thought so perfect that it emits light. Shakespeare says of suicide:

"It is great to do that thing That ends all other deeds, Which shackles accident, and bolts up change."

He defines drama to be:

"Turning the accomplishments of many years Into an hour glass."

Of death:

"This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod, To lie in cold obstruction and to rot."

Of memory:

"The warder of the brain."

Of the body:

"This muddy vesture of decay."

And he declares that

"Our little life is rounded with a sleep."

He speaks of Echo as:

"The babbling gossip of the air"--

Romeo, addressing the poison that he is about to take, says:

"Come, bitter conduct, come unsavory guide, Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy sea-sick, weary bark."

He describes the world as

"This bank and shoal of time."

He says of rumor--

"That it doubles, like the voice and echo."

It would take days to call attention to the perfect definitions, comparisons and generalizations of Shakespeare. He gave us the deeper meanings of our words--taught us the art of speech. He was the lord of language--master of expression and compression.

He put the greatest thoughts into the shortest words--made the poor rich and the common royal.

Production enriched his brain. Nothing exhausted him. The moment his attention was called to any subject--comparisons, definitions, metaphors and generalizations filled his mind and begged for utterance. His thoughts like bees robbed every blossom in the world, and then with "merry march" brought the rich booty home "to the tent royal of their emperor."

Shakespeare was the confidant of Nature. To him she opened her "infinite book of secrecy," and in his brain were "the hatch and brood of time."

XV.

THERE is in Shakespeare the mingling of laughter and tears, humor and pathos. Humor is the rose, wit the thorn. Wit is a crystallization, humor an efflorescence. Wit comes from the brain, humor from the heart. Wit is the lightning of the soul.

In Shakespeare's nature was the climate of humor. He saw and felt the sunny side even of the saddest things. "You have seen sunshine and rain at once." So Shakespeare's tears fell oft upon his smiles. In moments of peril--on the very darkness of death--there comes a touch of humor that falls like a fleck of sunshine.

Gonzalo, when the ship is about to sink, having seen the boatswain, exclaims:

"I have great comfort from this fellow; Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him; His complexion is perfect gallows."

Shakespeare is filled with the strange contrasts of grief and laughter. While poor Hero is supposed to be dead--wrapped in the shroud of dishonor--Dogberry and Verges unconsciously put again the wedding wreath upon her pure brow.

The soliloquy of Launcelot--great as Hamlet's--offsets the bitter and burning words of Shylock.

There is only time to speak of Maria in "Twelfth Night," of Autolycus in the "Winter's Tale," of the parallel drawn by Fluellen between Alexander of Macedon and Harry of Monmouth, or of the marvellous humor of Falstaff, who never had the faintest thought of right or wrong--or of Mercutio, that embodiment of wit and humor--for of the grave-diggers who lamented that "great folk should have countenance in this world to drown and hang themselves, more than their even Christian," and who reached the generalization that

"the gallows does well because it does well to those who do ill."

There is also an example of grim humor--an example without a parallel in literature, so far as I know. Hamlet having killed Polonius is asked:

"Where's Polonais?" "At supper." "At supper! where?" "Not where he eats, but where he is eaten."

Above all others, Shakespeare appreciated the pathos of situation.

Nothing is more pathetic than the last scene in "Lear." No one has ever bent above his dead who did not feel the words uttered by the mad king,--words born of a despair deeper than tears:

"Oh, that a horse, a dog, a rat hath life And thou no breath!"

So Iago, after he has been wounded, says:

"I bleed, sir; but not killed."

And Othello answers from the wreck and shattered remnant of his life:

"I would have thee live; For in my sense it is happiness to die."

When Troilus finds Cressida has been false, he cries:

"Let it not be believed for womanhood; Think! we had mothers."

Ophelia, in her madness, "the sweet bells jangled out o' tune," says softly:

"I would give you some violets; But they withered all when my father died."

When Macbeth has reaped the harvest, the seeds of which were sown by his murderous hand, he exclaims,--and what could be more pitiful?

"I 'gin to be aweary of the sun."

Richard the Second feels how small a thing it is to be, or to have been, a king, or to receive honors before or after power is lost; and so, of those who stood uncovered before him, he asks this piteous question:

"I live with bread, like you; feel want, Taste grief, need friends; subjected thus, How can you say to me I am a king?"

Think of the salutation of Antony to the dead Cæsar:

"Pardon me, thou piece of bleeding earth."

When Pisanio informs Imogen that he had been ordered by Posthumus to murder her, she bares her neck and cries:

"The lamb entreats the butcher: Where is thy knife? Thou art too slow To do thy master's bidding when I desire it."

Antony, as the last drops are falling from his self-inflicted wound, utters with his dying breath to Cleopatra, this:

"I here importune death awhile, until Of many thousand kisses the poor last I lay upon thy lips."

To me, the last words of Hamlet are full of pathos:

"I die, Horatio. The potent poison quite o'er crows my spirit * * * The rest is silence."

XVI.

SOME have insisted that Shakespeare must have been a physician, for the reason that he shows such knowledge of medicine--of the symptoms of disease and death--was so familiar with the brain, and with insanity in all its forms.