Chapter 2

_Olivia._ Go to, you're a dry fool; I'll no more of you: besides you grow dishonest.

_Clown._ Two faults, Madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend: for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry: bid the dishonest man mend himself; if he mend, he is no longer dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him. Anything that's mended is but patched: virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue. If that _this simple syllogism_ will serve, so; if it will not, what remedy?]

Such a theory of human life is first-rate poetry; it is an illuminating figure of poetic speech. But the simplicity with which the theme is presented, to the exclusion of many material issues, puts the statement out of the plane of metaphysical disquisition, which involves subtle conflict of argument and measured resolution of doubt, rather than imaginative certainty or unconditional assertion. Nor is Hamlet's famous soliloquy on the merits and demerits of suicide conceived in the spirit of the metaphysician. It is a dramatic description of a familiar phase of emotional depression; it explains nothing; it propounds no theory. It reflects a state of feeling; it breathes that torturing spirit of despondency which kills all hope of mitigating either the known ills of life or the imagined terrors of death.

The faint, shadowy glimpses which Shakespeare had of scientific philosophy gave him small respect for it. Like the typical hard-headed Englishman, he doubted its practical efficacy. Shakespeare viewed all formal philosophy much as Dr Johnson's Rasselas, whose faith in it dwindled, when he perceived that the professional philosopher, who preached superiority to all human frailties and weaknesses, succumbed to them at the first provocation.

There are more things in heaven and earth Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.[27]

For there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently.[28]

[Footnote 27: _Hamlet_, I., v., 166-7.]

[Footnote 28: _Much Ado About Nothing_, V., i., 35-6.]

Such phrases sum up Shakespeare's habitual bearing to formal philosophy. The consideration of causes, first principles, abstract truths, never, in the dramatist's opinion, cured a human ill. The futility of formal philosophy stands, from this point of view, in no further need of demonstration.

II

But it is permissible to use the words philosopher and philosophy, without scientific precision or significance, in the popular inaccurate senses of shrewd observer and observation of life. By philosophy we may understand common-sense wisdom about one's fellow-men, their aspirations, their failures and successes. As soon as we employ the word in that significance, we must allow that few men were better philosophers than Shakespeare.

Shakespeare is what Touchstone calls the shepherd in _As You Like It_--"a natural philosopher"--an observer by light of nature, an acute expositor of phases of human life and feeling. Character, thought, passion, emotion, form the raw material of which ethical or metaphysical systems are made. The poet's contempt for formal ethical or metaphysical theory co-existed with a searching knowledge of the ultimate foundations of all systematised philosophic structures. The range of fact or knowledge within which the formal theorist speculates in the fields of ethics, logic, metaphysics, or psychology, is, indeed, very circumscribed when it is compared with the region of observation and experience over which Shakespeare exerted complete mastery.

Almost every aspect of life Shakespeare portrays with singular evenness of insight. He saw life whole. The web of life always presented itself to him as a mingled yarn, good and ill together. He did not stay to reconcile its contradictions. He adduces a wealth of evidence touching ethical experience. It may be that the patient scrutiny of formal philosophers can alone reveal the full significance of his harvest. But the dramatist's exposition of the workings of virtue or vice has no recondite intention. Shakespeare was no patient scholar, who deliberately sought to extend the limits of human knowledge. With unrivalled ease and celerity he digested, in the recesses of his consciousness, the fruit of personal observation and reading. His only conscious aim was to depict human conduct and human thought. He interpreted them unconsciously by virtue of an involuntary intuition.

Shakespeare's intuition pierces life at the lowest as well as at the highest level of experience. It is coloured by delicate imaginative genius as well as by robust and practical worldliness. Not his writings only, but the facts of his private life--his mode of managing his private property, for example--attest his alert knowledge of the material and practical affairs of human existence. Idealism and realism in perfect development were interwoven with the texture of his mind.

Shakespeare was qualified by mental endowment for success in any career. He was by election a dramatist, and, necessarily, one of unmatched versatility. His intuitive faculty enabled him, after regarding life from any point of view that he willed, to depict through the mouths of his characters the chosen phase of experience in convincing, harmonious accord with his characters' individual circumstances and fortunes. No obvious trace of his own personal circumstance or experience was suffered to emerge in the utterances of his characters, who lived for the moment in his brain. It is a commonplace to credit Shakespeare with supreme dramatic instinct. It is difficult fully to realise the significance of that attribute. It means that he could contract or expand at will and momentarily, his own personality, so that it coincided exactly, now with a self-indulgent humorist like Falstaff, now with an introspective student like Hamlet, now with a cynical criminal like Iago, now with a high-spirited girl like Rosalind, now with an ambitious woman like Lady Macbeth, and then with a hundred more characters hardly less distinctive than these. It means that he could contrive the coincidence so absolutely as to leave no loophole for the introduction, into the several dramatic utterances, of any sentiment that should not be on the face of it adapted by right of nature to the speakers' idiosyncracies. That was Shakespeare's power. It is a power of which the effects are far easier to recognise than the causes or secret of operation.

In the present connection it is happily only necessary to dwell on Shakespeare's dramatic instinct in order to guard against the peril of dogmatising from his works about his private opinions. So various and conflicting are Shakespeare's dramatic pronouncements on phases of experience that it is difficult and dangerous to affirm which pronouncements, if any, present most closely his personal sentiment. He fitted the lips of his _dramatis personæ_ with speeches and sentiments so peculiarly adapted to them as to show no one quite undisputed sign of their creator's personality.

Yet there are occasions, when, without detracting from the omnipotence of Shakespeare's dramatic instinct, one may tentatively infer that Shakespeare gave voice through his created personages to sentiments which were his own. The Shakespearean drama must incorporate somewhere within its vast limits the personal thoughts and passions of its creator, even although they are for the most part absorbed past recognition in the mighty mass, and no critical chemistry can with confidence disentangle them. At any rate, there are in the plays many utterances--ethical utterances, or observations conceived in the spirit of "a natural philosopher"--which are repeated to much the same effect at different periods of the poet's career. These reiterated opinions frequently touch the conditions of well-being or calamity in civilised society; they often deal with man in civic or social relation with his neighbour; they define the capabilities of his will. It is unlikely that observations of this nature would be repeated if the sentiments they embody were out of harmony with the author's private conviction. Often we shall not strain a point or do our critical sense much violence if we assume that these recurring thoughts are Shakespeare's own. I purpose to call attention to a few of those which bear on large questions of government and citizenship and human volition. Involuntarily, they form the framework of a political and moral philosophy which for clear-eyed sanity is without rival.

III

Shakespeare's political philosophy is instinct with the loftiest moral sense. Directly or indirectly, he defines many times the essential virtues and the inevitable temptations which attach to persons exercising legalised authority over their fellow-men. The topic always seems to stir in Shakespeare his most serious tone of thought and word. No one, in fact, has conceived a higher standard of public virtue and public duty than Shakespeare. His intuition rendered him tolerant of human imperfection. He is always in kindly sympathy with failure, with suffering, with the oppressed. Consequently he brings at the outset into clearer relief than professed political philosophers, the saving quality of mercy in rulers of men. Twice Shakespeare pleads in almost identical terms, through the mouths of created characters, for generosity on the part of governors of states towards those who sin against law. In both cases he places his argument, with significant delicacy, on the lips of women. At a comparatively early period in his career as dramatist, in _The Merchant of Venice_, Portia first gave voice to the political virtue of compassion. At a much later period Shakespeare set the same plea in the mouth of Isabella in _Measure for Measure_. The passages are too familiar to justify quotation. Very brief extracts will bring out clearly the identity of sentiment which finds definition in the two passages.

These are Portia's views of mercy on the throne (_Merchant of Venice_, IV., i., 189 _seq._):--

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown;

* * * * *

Mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.

Consider this, That in the course of justice none of us Should see salvation.[29]

[Footnote 29: In a paper on "Latin as an Intellectual Force," read before the International Congress of Arts and Sciences at St Louis in September 1904, Professor E.A. Sonnenschein sought to show that Portia's speech on mercy is based on Seneca's tract, _De Clementia_. The most striking parallel passages are the following:--

It becomes The throned monarch better than his crown.

(_M. of V._, IV., i. 189-90.)

Nullum clementia ex omnibus magis quam regem aut principem decet. (Seneca, _De Clementia_, I., iii., 3):--

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest.

Eo scilicet formosius id esse magnificentiusque fatebimur quo in maiore praestabitur potestate (I., xix., 1):--

But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself.

(_M. of V._, IV., i., 193-5.)

Quod si di placabiles et aequi delicta potentium non statim fulminibus persequuntur, quanto aequius est hominem hominibus praepositum miti animo exercere imperium? (I., vii., 2):--

And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.

(_M. of V._, IV., i., 196-7.)

Quid autem? Non proximum eis (dîs) locum tenet is qui se ex deorum natura gerit beneficus et largus et in melius potens? (I., xix., 9):--

Consider this, That in the course of justice none of us Should see salvation.

(_M. of V._, IV., i., 198-200.)

Cogitato ... quanta solitudo et vastitas futura sit si nihil relinquitur nisi quod iudex severus absolverit (I., vi., 1).

This remarkable series of parallelisms does not affect the argument in the text that Shakespeare, who reiterated Portia's pleas and phraseology in Isabella's speeches, had a personal faith in the declared sentiment. Whether the parallelism is to be explained as conscious borrowing or accidental coincidence is an open question.]

Here are Isabella's words in _Measure for Measure_ (II., ii., 59 _seq._):--

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs, Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe, Become them with one half so good a grace As mercy does.

How would you be If He, which is the top of judgment, should But judge you as you are?

O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.

Mercy is the predominating or crowning virtue that Shakespeare demands in rulers. But the Shakespearean code is innocent of any taint of sentimentality, and mercifulness is far from being the sovereign's sole qualification or primal test of fitness. More especially are kings and judges bound by their responsibilities and their duties to eschew self-glorification or self-indulgence. It is the _virtues_ of the holders of office, not their office itself, which alone in the end entitles them to consideration. Adventitious circumstances give no man claim to respect. A man is alone worthy of regard by reason of his personal character. Honour comes from his own acts, neither from his "foregoers," _i.e._, ancestors, nor from his rank in society. "Good alone is good without a name." This is not the view of the world, which values lying trophies, rank, or wealth. The world is thereby the sufferer.[30]

[Footnote 30:

From lowest place, when virtuous things proceed, The place is dignified by the doer's deed: Where great additions swell's, and virtue none, It is a dropsied honour: good alone Is good without a name; vileness is so: The property by what it is should go, Not by the title; ... that is honour's scorn, Which challenges itself as honour's born, And is not like the sire: honours thrive When rather from our acts we them derive Than our foregoers: the mere word's a slave, Debauch'd on every tomb; on every grave A lying trophy; and as oft is dumb Where dust and damn'd oblivion is the tomb Of honour'd bones indeed.

(_All's Well_, II., iii., 130 _seq._)]

The world honours a judge; but if the judge be indebted to his office and not to his character for the respect that is paid him, he may deserve no more honour than the criminal in the dock, whom he sentences to punishment. "A man may see how this world goes with no eyes," says King Lear to the blind Gloucester. "Look with thine ears; see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear; change places, and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of authority; a dog's obeyed in office." "The great image of authority" is often a brazen idol.

Hereditary rulers form no inconsiderable section of Shakespeare's _dramatis personæ_. In _Macbeth_ (IV., iii., 92-4) he specifically defined "the king-becoming graces":--

As justice, verity, temperance, stableness, Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude.

But the dramatist's main energies are devoted to exposure of the hollowness of this counsel of perfection. Temptations to vice beset rulers of men to a degree that is unknown to their subjects. To avarice rulers are especially prone. Stanchless avarice constantly converts kings of ordinary clay into monsters. How often they forge

Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal, Destroying them for wealth.

(_Macbeth_, IV., iii., 83-4.)

Intemperance in all things--in business and pleasure--is a standing menace of monarchs.

Boundless intemperance In Nature is a tyranny: it hath been Th' untimely emptying of the happy throne And fail of many kings.

(_Macbeth_, IV., iii., 66-9.)

A leader of men, if he be capable of salvation, must "delight no less in truth than life." Yet "truth," for the most part, is banished from the conventional environment of royalty.

Repeatedly does Shakespeare bring into dazzling relief the irony which governs the being of kings. Want of logic and defiance of ethical principle underlie their pride in magnificent ceremonial and pageantry. The ironic contrast between the pretensions of a king and the actual limits of human destiny is a text which Shakespeare repeatedly clothes in golden language.

It is to be admitted that nearly all the kings in Shakespeare's gallery frankly acknowledge the make-believe and unreality which dogs regal pomp and ceremony. In self-communion they acknowledge the ruler's difficulty in finding truth in their traditional scope of life. In a great outburst on the night before Agincourt, Henry V.--the only king whom Shakespeare seems thoroughly to admire--openly describes the inevitable confusion between fact and fiction which infects the conditions of royalty. Anxiety and unhappiness are so entwined with ceremonial display as to deprive the king of the reliefs and recreations which freely lie at the disposal of ordinary men.

What infinite heart's-ease Must kings neglect that private men enjoy! And what have kings that privates have not too, Save ceremony, save general ceremony? And what art thou, thou idol ceremony? What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers? What are thy rents? what are thy comings-in? O ceremony, show me but thy worth! What is thy soul of adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, Creating awe and fear in other men? Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd Than they in fearing. What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness, And bid thy ceremony give thee cure! Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out With titles blown from adulation? Will it give place to flexure and low bending? Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee, Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream That play'st so subtly with a king's repose: I am a king that find thee; and I know 'Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball, The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, The intertissued robe of gold and pearl, The farced title running 'fore the king, The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp That beats upon the high shore of this world,-- No, not all these, thrice gorgeous ceremony, Not all these, laid in bed majestical, Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave Who, with a body fill'd and vacant mind Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread.

(_Henry V._, IV., i., 253-287.)

Barely distinguishable is the sentiment which finds expression in the pathetic speech of Henry V.'s father when he vainly seeks that sleep which thousands of his poorest subjects enjoy. The sleepless king points to the irony of reclining on the kingly couch beneath canopies of costly state when sleep refuses to weigh his eyelids down or steep his senses in forgetfulness. The king is credited with control of every comfort; but he is denied by nature comforts which she places freely at command of the humblest. So again does Richard II. soliloquize on the vain pride which imbues the king, while death all the time grins at his pomp and keeps his own court within the hollow crown that rounds the prince's mortal temples. Yet again, to identical effect is Henry VI.'s sorrowful question:--

Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade, To shepherds looking on their silly sheep, Than doth a rich-embroidered canopy To kings that fear their subjects' treachery?

(III. _Henry VI._, II., v., 42-5.)

To this text Shakespeare constantly recurs, and he bestows on it all his fertile resources of illustration. The reiterated exposition by Shakespeare of the hollowness of kingly ceremony is a notable feature of his political sentiment The dramatist's independent analysis of the quiddity of kingship is, indeed, alike in manner and matter, a startling contribution to sixteenth century speculation. In manner it is worthy of Shakespeare's genius at its highest. In matter it is for its day revolutionary rationalism. It defies a popular doctrine, held almost universally by Shakespeare's contemporary fellow-countrymen, that royalty is divine and under God's special protection, that the gorgeous ceremony of the throne reflects a heavenly attribute, and that the king is the pampered favourite of heaven.

Bacon defined a king with slender qualifications, as "a mortal god on earth unto whom the living God has lent his own name." Shakespeare was well acquainted with this accepted doctrine. He often gives dramatic definition of it. He declines to admit its soundness. Wherever he quotes it, he adds an ironical comment, which was calculated to perturb the orthodox royalist. Having argued that the day-labourer or the shepherd is far happier than a king, he logically refuses to admit that the monarch is protected by God from any of the ills of mortality. Richard II. may assert that "the hand of God alone, and no hand of blood or bone" can rob him of the sacred handle of his sceptre. But the catastrophe of the play demonstrates that that theft is entirely within human scope. The king is barbarously murdered. In _Hamlet_ the graceless usurping uncle declares that "such divinity doth hedge a king," that treason cannot endanger his life. But the speaker is run through the body very soon after the brag escapes his lips.

Shakespeare is no comfortable theorist, no respecter of orthodox doctrine, no smooth-tongued approver of fashionable dogma. His acute intellect cuts away all the cobwebs, all the illusions, all the delusions, of formulæ. His untutored insight goes down to the root of things; his king is not Philosopher Bacon's "mortal god on earth"; his king is "but a man as I am," doomed to drag out a large part of his existence in the galling chains of "tradition, form and ceremonious duty," of unreality and self-deception.

Shakespeare's intuitive power of seeing things as they are, affects his attitude to all social conventions. Not merely royal rulers of men are in a false position, ethically and logically. "Beware of appearances," is Shakespeare's repeated warning to men and women of all ranks in the political or social hierarchy. "Put not your trust in ornament, be it of gold or of silver." In the spheres of law and religion, the dramatist warns against pretence, against shows of virtue, honesty, or courage which have no solid backing.

The world is still deceiv'd with ornament. In law what plea so tainted and corrupt But, being season'd with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion What damned error, but 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 his outward parts: How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars, Who, inward searched, have livers white as milk.

(_Merchant of Venice_, III., ii., 74-86.)

Shakespeare was no cynic. He was not unduly distrustful of his fellow-men. He was not always suspecting them of something indistinguishable from fraud. When he wrote, "The world is still deceived with ornament" which "obscures the show of evil," he was expressing downright hatred--not suspicion--of sham, of quackery, of cant. His is the message of all commanding intellects which see through the hearts of men. Shakespeare's message is Carlyle's message or Ruskin's message anticipated by nearly three centuries, and more potently and wisely phrased.

IV

At the same time as Shakespeare insists on the highest and truest standard of public duty, he, with characteristically practical insight, acknowledges no less emphatically the necessity or duty of obedience to duly regulated governments. There may appear inconsistency in first conveying the impression that governments, or their officers, are usually unworthy of trust, and then in bidding mankind obey them implicitly. But, although logical connection between the two propositions be wanting, they are each convincing in their place. Both are the outcome of a robust common-sense. Order is essential to a nation's well-being. There must be discipline in civilised communities. Officers in authority must be obeyed. These are the axiomatic bases of every social contract, and no question of the personal fitness of officers of state impugns their stability.

Twice does Shakespeare define in the same terms what he understands by the principle of all-compelling order, which is inherent in government. Twice does he elaborate the argument that precise orderly division of offices, each enjoying full and unquestioned authority, is essential to the maintenance of a state's equilibrium.

The topic was first treated in the speeches of Henry V.'s councillors:--

_Exeter._ For government, though high and low and lower, Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, Congreeing in a full and natural close, Like music.

_Cant._ Therefore doth heaven divide The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavour in continual motion; To which is fixèd, as an aim or butt, Obedience: for so work the honey-bees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom.

(_Henry V._, I., ii., 180-9.)

There follows a very suggestive comparison between the commonwealth of bees and the economy of human society. The well-worn comparison has been fashioned anew by a writer of genius of our own day, M. Mæterlinck.

In _Troilus and Cressida_ (I., iii., 85 _seq._) Shakespeare returns to the discussion, and defines with greater precision "the specialty of rule." There he approaches nearer than anywhere else in his writings the sphere of strict philosophic exposition. He argues that:--

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom in all line of order.

Human society is bound to follow this celestial example. At all hazards, one must protect "the unity and married calm of states." Degree, order, discipline, are the only sure safeguards against brute force and chaos which civilised institutions exist to hold in check:--

How could communities, Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogeniture and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, But by degree stand in authentic place? Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, And make a sop of all this solid globe: Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead: Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong, Between whose endless jar justice resides, Should lose their names, and so should justice too. Then every thing includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey, And last eat up himself.

Deprived of degree, rank, order, society dissolves itself in "chaos."

Near the end of his career, Shakespeare impressively re-stated his faith in the imperative need of the due recognition of social rank and grade in civilised communities. In _Cymbeline_ (IV., ii., 246-9) "a queen's son" meets his death in fight with an inferior, and the conqueror is inclined to spurn the lifeless corpse. But a wise veteran solemnly uplifts his voice to forbid the insult. Appeal is made to the sacred principle of social order, which must be respected even in death:--

Though mean and mighty, rotting Together, make one dust; yet reverence,-- That angel of the world,--doth make distinction Of place 'twixt high and low.

"Reverence, that angel of the world," is the ultimate bond of civil society, and can never be defied with impunity, it is the saving sanction of social order.

V

I have quoted some of Shakespeare's avowedly ethical utterances which bear on conditions of civil society--on morals in their social aspect. There is no obscurity about their drift. Apart from direct ethical declaration, it may be that ethical lessons touching political virtue as well as other specific aspects of morality are deducible from a study of Shakespeare's plots and characters. Very generous food for reflection seems to be offered the political philosopher by the plots and characters of _Julius Cæsar_ and _Coriolanus_. The personality of Hamlet is instinct with ethical suggestion. The story and personages of _Measure for Measure_ present the most persistent of moral problems. But discussion of the ethical import of Shakespeare's several dramatic portraits or stories is of doubtful utility. There is a genuine danger of reading into Shakespeare's plots and characters more direct ethical significance than is really there. Dramatic art never consciously nor systematically serves obvious purposes of morality, save to its own detriment.

Nevertheless there is not likely to be much disagreement with the general assertion that Shakespeare's plots and characters involuntarily develop under his hand in conformity with the straightforward requirements of moral law. He upholds the broad canons of moral truth with consistency, even with severity. There is no mistaking in his works on which side lies the right. He never renders vice amiable. His want of delicacy, his challenges of modesty, need no palliation. It was characteristic of his age to speak more plainly of many topics about which polite lips are nowadays silent. But Shakespeare's coarsenesses do no injury to the healthy-minded. They do not encourage evil propensities. Wickedness is always wickedness in Shakespeare, and never deludes the spectator by masquerading as something else. His plays never present problems as to whether vice is not after all in certain conditions the sister of virtue. Shakespeare never shows vice in the twilight, nor leaves the spectator or reader in doubt as to what its features precisely are. Vice injures him who practises it in the Shakespearean world, and ultimately proves his ruin. One cannot play with vice with impunity.

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us.

It is not because Shakespeare is a conscious moralist, that the wheel comes full circle in his dramatic world. It is because his sense of art is involuntarily coloured by a profound conviction of the ultimate justice which governs the operations of human nature and society.

Shakespeare argues, in effect, that a man reaps as he sows. It may be contended that Nature does not always work in strict accord with this Shakespearean canon, and that Shakespeare thereby shows himself more of a deliberate moralist than Nature herself. But the dramatist idealises or generalises human experience; he does not reproduce it literally. There is nothing in the Shakespearean canon that runs directly counter to the idealised or generalised experience of the outer world. The wicked and the foolish, the intemperate and the over-passionate, reach in Shakespeare's world that disastrous goal, which nature at large keeps in reserve for them and only by rare accident suffers them to evade. The father who brings up his children badly and yet expects every dutiful consideration from them is only in rare conditions spared the rude awakening which overwhelms King Lear. The jealous husband who wrongly suspects his wife of infidelity commonly suffers the fate either of Othello or of Leontes.

VI

Shakespeare regards it as the noblest ambition in man to master his own destiny. There are numerous passages in which the dramatist figures as an absolute and uncompromising champion of the freedom of the will. "'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus," says one of his characters, Iago; "Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners." Edmond says much the same in _King Lear_ when he condemns as "the excellent foppery of the world" the ascription to external influences of all our faults and misfortunes, whereas they proceed from our wilful, deliberate choice of the worser way. Repeatedly does Shakespeare assert that we are useful or useless members of society according as we will it ourselves.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky Gives us free scope,

says Helena in _All's Well_ (I., i., 231-3).

Men at some time are masters of their fates,

says Cassius in _Julius Cæsar_ (I., ii., 139-41);

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves that we are underlings.

Hereditary predispositions, the accidents of environment, are not insuperable; they can be neutralised by force of will, by character. Character is omnipotent.

The self-sufficing, imperturbable will is the ideal possession, beside which all else in the world is valueless. But the quest of it is difficult, and success in the pursuit is rare. Mastery of the will is the result of a rare conjunction--a perfect commingling of blood and judgment. Without such harmonious union man is "a pipe"--a musical instrument--"for Fortune's finger to sound what stop she pleases." Man can only work out his own salvation when he can control his passions and can take with equal thanks Fortune's buffets or rewards.

The best of men is--

Spare in diet Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger, Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood.

(_Henry V._, II., ii., 131-3.)

His is

the nature Whom passion could not shake--whose solid virtue The shot of accident nor dart of chance Could neither graze nor pierce.

(_Othello_, IV., i., 176-9.)

Stability of temperament is the finest fruit of the free exercise of the will; it is the noblest of masculine excellences.

Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core--ay, in my heart of hearts.

(_Hamlet_, III., ii., 76-8.)

In spite of his many beautiful portrayals of the charms and tenderness and innocence of womanhood, Shakespeare had less hope in the ultimate capacity of women to control their destiny than in the ultimate capacity of men. The greatest of his female creations, Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, stand in a category of their own. They do not lack high power of will, even if they are unable so to commingle blood and judgment as to master fate.

Elsewhere, the dramatist seems to betray private suspicion of the normal woman's volitional capacity by applying to her heart and mind the specific epithet "waxen." The feminine temperament takes the impress of its environment as easily as wax takes the impress of a seal. In two passages where this simile is employed,[31] the deduction from it is pressed to the furthest limit, and free-will is denied women altogether. Feminine susceptibility is pronounced to be incurable; wavering, impressionable emotion is a main constituent of woman's being; women are not responsible for the sins they commit nor the wrongs they endure.

[Footnote 31:

For men have marble, _women waxen minds_, And therefore are they formed as marble will; The weak oppressed, the impression of strange kinds Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill. Then call them not the authors of their ill, No more than wax shall be accounted evil, Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.

(_Lucrece_, 1240-6.)

How easy it is for the proper-false In _women's waxen hearts_, to set their forms! Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we; For, such as we are made of, such we be.

(_Twelfth Night_, II., ii., 31.)]

This is reactionary doctrine, and one of the few points in Shakespeare's "natural" philosophy which invites dissent. But he makes generous amends by ascribing to women a plentiful supply of humour. No writer has proclaimed more effectively his faith in woman's brilliance of wit nor in her quickness of apprehension.

VII

Despite the solemnity which attaches to Shakespeare's philosophic reflections, he is at heart an optimist and a humorist. He combines with his serious thought a thorough joy in life, an irremovable preference for the bright over the dismal side of things. The creator of Falstaff and Mercutio, of Beatrice and the Princess in _Love's Labour's Lost_, could hardly fail to set store by that gaiety of spirit which is the antidote to unreasoning discontent, and keeps society in good savour.

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, There shall be no more cakes and ale?

is the voice of Shakespeare as well as of Sir Toby Belch. The dramatist was at one with Rosalind, his offspring, when she told Jaques:--

I had rather have a fool to make me merry, Than experience to make me sad.

The same sanguine optimistic temper constantly strikes a more impressive note.

There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out,

is a comprehensive maxim, which sounds as if it came straight from Shakespeare's lips. This battle-cry of invincible optimism is uttered in the play by Shakespeare's favourite hero, Henry V. It is hard to quarrel with the inference that these words convey the ultimate verdict of the dramatist on human affairs.

VIII

SHAKESPEARE AND PATRIOTISM[32]

[Footnote 32: This paper was first printed in the _Cornhill Magazine_, May 1901.]

His noble negligences teach What others' toils despair to reach.

I

Patriotism is a natural instinct closely allied to the domestic affections. Its normal activity is as essential as theirs to the health of society. But, in a greater degree than other instincts, the patriotic impulse works with perilous irregularity unless it be controlled by the moral sense and the intellect.

Every student of history and politics is aware how readily the patriotic instinct, if uncontrolled by morality and reason, comes into conflict with both. Freed of moral restraint it is prone to engender a peculiarly noxious brand of spurious sentiment--the patriotism of false pretence. Bombastic masquerade of the genuine impulse is not uncommon among place-hunters in Parliament and popularity-hunters in constituencies, and the honest instinct is thereby brought into disrepute. Dr Johnson was thinking solely of the frauds and moral degradation which have been sheltered by self-seekers under the name of patriotism when he none too pleasantly remarked: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

The Doctor's epigram hardly deserves its fame. It embodies a very meagre fraction of the truth. While it ignores the beneficent effects of the patriotic instinct, it does not exhaust its evil propensities. It is not only the moral obliquity of place-hunters or popularity-hunters that can fix on patriotism the stigma of offence. Its healthy development depends on intellectual as well as on moral guidance. When the patriotic instinct, however honestly it be cherished, is freed of intellectual restraint, it works even more mischief than when it is deliberately counterfeited. Among the empty-headed it very easily degenerates into an over-assertive, a swollen selfishness, which ignores or defies the just rights and feelings of those who do not chance to be their fellow-countrymen. No one needs to be reminded how much wrong-doing and cruelty have been encouraged by perfectly honest patriots who lack "intellectual armour." Dr Johnson knew that the blockhead seeks the shelter of patriotism with almost worse result to the body politic than the scoundrel.

On the other hand, morality and reason alike resent the defect of patriotism as stoutly as its immoral or unintellectual extravagance. A total lack of the instinct implies an abnormal development of moral sentiment or intellect which must be left to the tender mercies of the mental pathologist. The man who is the friend of every country but his own can only be accounted for scientifically as the victim of an aberration of mind or heart. Ostentatious disclaimers of the patriotic sentiment deserve as little sympathy as the false pretenders to an exaggerated share of it. A great statesman is responsible for an apophthegm on that aspect of the topic which always deserves to be quoted in the same breath as Dr Johnson's familiar half-truth. When Sir Francis Burdett, the Radical leader in the early days of the last century, avowed scorn for the normal instinct of patriotism, Lord John Russell, the leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons, sagely retorted: "The honourable member talks of the _cant_ of patriotism; but there is something worse than the _cant_ of patriotism, and that is the _recant_ of patriotism."[33] Mr Gladstone declared Lord John's repartee to be the best that he ever heard.

[Footnote 33: The pun on "cant" and "recant" was not original, though Lord John's application of it was. Its inventor seems to have been Lady Townshend, the brilliant mother of Charles Townshend, the elder Pitt's Chancellor of the Exchequer. When she was asked if George Whitefield, the evangelical preacher, had yet recanted, she replied: "No, he has only been canting."]

It may be profitable to consider how patriotism, which is singularly liable to distortion and perversion, presented itself to the mind of Shakespeare, the clearest-headed student of human thought and sentiment.

II

In Shakespeare's universal survey of human nature it was impossible that he should leave patriotism and the patriotic instinct out of account. It was inevitable that prevalent phases of both should frequently occupy his attention. In his rôle of dramatist he naturally dealt with the topic incidentally or disconnectedly rather than in the way of definite exposition; but in the result, his treatment will probably be found to be more exhaustive than that of any other English writer. The Shakespearean drama is peculiarly fertile in illustration of the virtuous or beneficent working of the patriotic instinct; but it does not neglect the malevolent or morbid symptoms incident either to its exorbitant or to its defective growth; nor is it wanting in suggestions as to how its healthy development may be best ensured. Part of Shakespeare's message on the subject is so well known that readers may need an apology for reference to it; but Shakespeare's declarations have not, as far as I know, been co-ordinated.[34]

[Footnote 34: In passing cursorily over the whole field I must ask pardon for dwelling occasionally on ground that is in detached detail sufficiently well trodden, as well as for neglecting some points which require more thorough exploration than is practicable within my present limits.]

Broadly speaking, the Shakespearean drama enforces the principle that an active instinct of patriotism promotes righteous conduct. This principle lies at the root of Shakespeare's treatment of history and political action, both English and Roman. Normal manifestations of the instinct in Shakespeare's world shed a gracious light on life. But it is seen to work in many ways. The patriotic instinct gives birth to various moods. It operates with some appearance of inconsistency. Now it acts as a spiritual sedative, now as a spiritual stimulant.

Of all Shakespeare's characters, it is Bolingbroke in _Richard II._ who betrays most effectively the tranquillising influence of patriotism. In him the patriotic instinct inclines to identity with the simple spirit of domesticity. It is a magnified love for his own hearthstone--a glorified home-sickness. The very soil of England, England's ground, excites in Bolingbroke an overmastering sentiment of devotion. His main happiness in life resides in the thought that England is his mother and his nurse. The patriotic instinct thus exerts on a character which is naturally cold and unsympathetic a softening, soothing, and purifying sway. Despite his forbidding self-absorption and personal ambition he touches hearts, and rarely fails to draw tears when he sighs forth the bald lines:--

Where'er I wander, boast of this I can, Though banished, yet a true-born Englishman.

In such a shape the patriotic instinct may tend in natures weaker than Bolingbroke's to mawkishness or sentimentality. But it is incapable of active offence. It makes for the peace and goodwill not merely of nations among themselves, but of the constituent elements of each nation within itself. It unifies human aspiration and breeds social harmony.

Very different is the phase of the patriotic instinct which is portrayed in the more joyous, more frank, and more impulsive characters of Faulconbridge the Bastard in the play of _King John_, and of the King in _Henry V._ It is in them an inexhaustible stimulus to action. It is never quiescent, but its operations are regulated by morality and reason, and it finally induces a serene exaltation of temper. It was a pardonable foible of Elizabethan writers distinctly to identify with the English character this healthily energetic sort of patriotism--the sort of patriotism to which an atmosphere of knavery or folly proves fatal.

Faulconbridge is an admirable embodiment of the patriotic sentiment in its most attractive guise. He is a manly soldier, blunt in speech, contemning subterfuge, chafing against the dictates of political expediency, and believing that quarrels between nations which cannot be accommodated without loss of self-respect on the one side or the other, had better be fought out in resolute and honourable war. He is the sworn foe of the bully or the braggart. Cruelty is hateful to him. The patriotic instinct nurtures in him a warm and generous humanity. His faith in the future of his nation depends on the confident hope that she will be true to herself, to her traditions, to her responsibilities, to the great virtues; that she will be at once courageous and magnanimous:--

Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true.

Faulconbridge's patriotism is a vivacious spur to good endeavour in every relation of life.

Henry V. is drawn by Shakespeare at fuller length than Faulconbridge. His character is cast in a larger mould. But his patriotism is of the same spirited, wholesome type. Though Henry is a born soldier, he discourages insolent aggression or reckless displays of prowess in fight. With greater emphasis than his archbishops and bishops he insists that his country's sword should not be unsheathed except at the bidding of right and conscience. At the same time, he is terrible in resolution when the time comes for striking blows. War, when it is once invoked, must be pursued with all possible force and fury:--

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility. But when the blast of war blows in his ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger.[35]

[Footnote 35: On this point the Shakespearean oracle always speaks with a decisive and practical note:--

Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.

(_Hamlet_, I., iii., 65-7.)]

But although Henry's patriotic instinct can drive him into battle, it keeps him faithful there to the paths of humanity. Always alive to the horrors of war, he sternly forbids looting or even the use of insulting language to the enemy. It is only when a defeated enemy declines to acknowledge the obvious ruin of his fortunes that a sane and practical patriotism defends resort on the part of the conqueror to the grimmest measure of severity. The healthy instinct stiffens the grip on the justly won fruits of victory. As soon as Henry V. sees that the French wilfully deny the plain fact of their overthrow, he is moved, quite consistently, to exclaim:--

What is it then to me if impious war, Arrayed in flames like to the prince of fiends, Do with his smirched complexion all fell feats, Enlinked to waste and desolation?

The context makes it clear that there is no confusion here between the patriotic instinct and mere bellicose ecstasy.

The confusion of patriotism with militant aggressiveness is as familiar to the Shakespearean drama as to the external world; but it is always exhibited by Shakespeare in its proper colours. The Shakespearean "mob," unwashed in mind and body, habitually yields to it, and justifies itself by a speciousness of argument, against which a clean vision rebels. The so-called patriotism which seeks expression in war for its own sake is alone intelligible to Shakespeare's pavement orators. "Let me have war, say I," exclaims the professedly patriotic spokesman of the ill-conditioned proletariat in _Coriolanus_; "it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it's spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible.... Ay, and it makes men hate one another." For this distressing result of peace, the reason is given that in times of peace men have less need of one another than in seasons of war, and the crude argument closes with the cry: "The wars for my money." There is irony in this suggestion of the mercantile value of war on the lips of a spokesman of paupers. It is solely the impulsive mindless patriot who strains after mere military glory.

Glory is like a circle in the water, Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.

(I. _Henry VI._, I., ii., 133-5.)

No wise man vaunts in the name of patriotism his own nation's superiority over another. The typical patriot, Henry V., once makes the common boast that one Englishman is equal to three Frenchmen, but he apologises for the brag as soon as it is out of his mouth. (He fears the air of France has demoralised him.)

Elsewhere Shakespeare utters a vivacious warning against the patriot's exclusive claim for his country of natural advantages, which all the world shares substantially alike.

Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night, Are they not but in Britain? I' the world's volume Our Britain seems as of it, but not in 't; In a great pool, a swan's nest: prithee, think There's livers out of Britain.[36]

[Footnote 36: _Cymbeline_, III., iv., 139-43.]

It is not the wild hunger for war, but the stable interests of peace that are finally subserved in the Shakespearean world by true and well-regulated patriotism. _Henry V._, the play of Shakespeare which shows the genuine patriotic instinct in its most energetic guise, ends with a powerful appeal to France and England, traditional foes, to cherish "neighbourhood and Christianlike accord," so that never again should "war advance his bleeding sword 'twixt England and fair France."

However whole-heartedly Shakespeare rebukes the excesses and illogical pretensions to which the lack of moral or intellectual discipline exposes patriotism, he reserves his austerest censure for the disavowal of the patriotic instinct altogether. One of the greatest of his plays is practically a diagnosis of the perils which follow in the train of a wilful abnegation of the normal instinct. In _Coriolanus_ Shakespeare depicts the career of a man who thinks that he can, by virtue of inordinate self-confidence and belief in his personal superiority over the rest of his countrymen, safely abjure and defy the common patriotic instinct, which, after all, keeps the State in being. "I'll never," says Coriolanus,

"Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand As if a man were author of himself, And knew no other kin."[37]

[Footnote 37: _Coriolanus_, V., iii., 34-7.]

Coriolanus deliberately suppresses the patriotic instinct, and, with greater consistency than others who have at times followed his example, joins the fighting ranks of his country's enemies by way of illustrating his sincerity. His action proves to be in conflict with the elementary condition of social equilibrium. The subversion of the natural instinct is brought to the logical issues of sin and death. Domestic ties are rudely severed. The crime of treason is risked with an insolence that is fatal to the transgressor. With relentless logic does the Shakespearean drama condemn defiance of the natural instinct of patriotism.

III

It does not, however, follow that the patriotic instinct of the Shakespearean gospel encourages blind adoration of state or country. Intelligent citizens of the Shakespearean world are never prohibited from honestly criticising the acts or aspirations of their fellows, and from seeking to change them when they honestly think they can be changed for the better. It is not the business of a discerning patriot to sing pæans in his nation's honour. His final aim is to help his country to realise the highest ideals of social and political conduct which are known to him, and to ensure for her the best possible "reputation through the world." Criticism conceived in a patriotic spirit should be constant and unflagging. The true patriot speaks out as boldly when he thinks the nation errs as when, in his opinion, she adds new laurels to her crown. The Shakespearean patriot applies a rigorous judgment to all conditions of his environment--both social and political.

Throughout the English history plays Shakespeare bears convincing testimony to the right, and even to the duty, of the patriot to exercise in all seriousness his best powers of criticism on the political conduct of his fellow-citizens and of those who rule over him.

Shakespeare's studies of English history are animated by a patriotism which boldly seeks and faces the truth. His dramatic presentations of English history have been often described as fragments of a national epic, as detached books of an English _Iliad_. But they embody no epic or heroic glorification of the nation. Taking the great series which begins chronologically with _King John_ and ends with _Richard III._ (_Henry VIII._ stands apart), we find that Shakespeare makes the central features of the national history the persons of the kings. Only in the case of _Henry V._ does he clothe an English king with any genuine heroism. Shakespeare's kings are as a rule but men as we are. The violet smells to them as it does to us; all their senses have but human conditions; and though their affections be higher mounted than ours, yet when they stoop they stoop with like wing. Excepting _Henry V._, the history plays are tragedies. They "tell sad stories of the death of kings." But they do not merely illustrate the crushing burdens of kingship or point the moral of the hollowness of kingly pageantry; they explain why kingly glory is in its essence brittle rather than brilliant. And since Shakespeare's rulers reflect rather than inspire the character of the nation, we are brought to a study of the causes of the brittleness of national glory.

The glory of a nation, as of a king, is only stable, we learn, when the nation, as the king, lives soberly, virtuously, and wisely, and is courageous, magnanimous, and zealous after knowledge. Cowardice, meanness, ignorance, and cruelty ruin nations as surely as they ruin kings. This is the lesson specifically taught in the most eloquent of all the direct avowals of patriotism which are to be found in Shakespeare's plays--in the dying speech of John of Gaunt.

That speech is no ebullition of the undisciplined patriotic instinct. It is a solemn announcement of the truth that the greatness and glory, with which nature and history have endowed a nation, may be dissipated when, on the one hand, the rulers prove selfish, frivolous, and unequal to the responsibilities which a great past places on their shoulders, and when, on the other hand, the nation acquiesces in the depravity of its governors. In his opening lines the speaker lays emphasis on the possibilities of greatness with which the natural physical conditions of the country and its political and military traditions have invested his countrymen. Thereby he brings into lurid relief the sin and the shame of paltering with, of putting to ignoble uses, the national character and influence. The dying patriot apostrophises England in the familiar phrases, as:--

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle.... This fortress, built by nature for herself, Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world; This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands: This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, Dear for her reputation through the world.

(_Richard II._, II., i., 40-58.)

The last line identifies with the patriotic instinct the aspiration of a people to deserve well of foreign opinion. Subsequently the speaker turns from his survey of the ideal which he would have his country seek. He exposes with ruthless frankness the ugly realities of her present degradation.

England, bound in with the triumphant sea, Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege Of wat'ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame, With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds,-- That England, that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

(_Richard II._, II., i., 61-6.)

At the moment the speaker's warning is scorned, but ultimately it takes effect. At the end of the play of _Richard II._, England casts off the ruler and his allies, who by their self-indulgence and moral weakness play false with the traditions of the country.

In _Henry V._, the only one of Shakespeare's historical plays in which an English king quits the stage in the full enjoyment of prosperity, his good fortune is more than once explained as the reward of his endeavour to abide by the highest ideals of his race, and of his resolve to exhibit in his own conduct its noblest mettle. His strongest appeals to his fellow-countrymen are:--

Dishonour not your mothers; now attest That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you;

* * * * *

Let us swear That you are worth your breeding.

The kernel of sound patriotism is respect for a nation's traditional repute, for the attested worth of the race. That is the large lesson which Shakespeare taught continuously throughout his career as a dramatist. The teaching is not solely enshrined in the poetic eloquence either of plays of his early years like _Richard II._ or of plays of his middle life like _Henry V._ It is the last as well as the first word in Shakespeare's collective declaration on the true character of patriotism. _Cymbeline_ belongs to the close of his working life, and there we meet once more the assurance that a due regard to the past and an active resolve to keep alive ancestral virtue are the surest signs of health in the patriotic instinct.

The accents of John of Gaunt were repeated by Shakespeare with little modulation at that time of his life when his reflective power was at its ripest. The Queen of Britain, Cymbeline's wife, is the personage in whose mouth Shakespeare sets, not perhaps quite appropriately, the latest message in regard to patriotism that he is known to have delivered. Emissaries from the Emperor Augustus have come from Rome to demand from the King of Britain payment of the tribute that Julius Cæsar had long since imposed on the island, by virtue of a _force majeure_, which is temporarily extinguished. The pusillanimous King Cymbeline is indisposed to put himself to the pains of contesting the claim, but the resolute queen awakens in him a sense of patriotism and of patriotic obligation by recalling the more nobly inspired attitude of his ancestors, and by convincing him of the baseness of ignoring the physical features which had been bestowed by nature on his domains as a guarantee of their independence.

Remember, sir my liege, The kings your ancestors, together with The natural bravery of your isle, which stands As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters, With sands, that will not bear your enemies' boats, But suck them up to the topmast.

(_Cymbeline_, III., i., 16-22.)

The appeal prevails, and the tribute is refused. Although the evolution of the plot which is based on an historical chronicle compels the renewed acquiescence of the British king in the Roman tax at the close of the play, the Queen of Britain's spirited insistence on the maritime strength of her country loses little of its significance.

IV

Frank criticism of the social life of the nation is as characteristic of Shakespearean drama as outspoken exposition of its political failings. There is hardly any of Shakespeare's plays which does not offer shrewd comment on the foibles and errors of contemporary English society.

To society, Shakespeare's attitude is that of a humorist who invites to reformation half-jestingly. His bantering tone, when he turns to social censure, strikingly contrasts with the tragic earnestness that colours his criticism of political vice or weakness. Some of the national failings on the social side which Shakespeare rebukes may seem trivial at a first glance. But it is the voice of prudent patriotism which prompts each count in the indictment. The keenness of Shakespeare's insight is attested by the circumstance that every charge has a modern application. None is yet quite out of date.

Shakespeare rarely missed an opportunity of betraying contempt for the extravagances of his countrymen and countrywomen in regard to dress. Portia says of her English suitor Faulconbridge, the young baron of England: "How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere." Another failing in Englishmen, which Portia detects in her English suitor, is a total ignorance of any language but his own. She, an Italian lady, remarks: "You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me nor I him. He hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian. He is a proper man's picture, but, alas! who can converse with a dumb show." This moving plaint draws attention to a defect which is not yet supplied. There are few Englishmen nowadays who, on being challenged to court Portia in Italian, would not cut a sorry figure in dumb show--sorrier figures than Frenchmen or Germans. No true patriot ought to ignore the fact or to direct attention to it with complacency.

Again, Shakespeare was never unmindful of the drunken habits of his compatriots. When Iago sings a verse of the song beginning, "And let me the cannikin clink," and ending, "Why then let a soldier drink," Cassio commends the excellence of the ditty. Thereupon Iago explains: "I learned it in England, where indeed they are most potent in potting; Your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander--drink, ho!--are nothing to your English." Cassio asks: "Is your Englishman so expert in his drinking?" Iago retorts: "Why, he drinks you, with facility, your Dane dead drunk," and gains, the speaker explains, easy mastery over the German and the Hollander.

A further stroke of Shakespeare's social criticism hits the thoughtless pursuit of novelty, which infected the nation and found vent in Shakespeare's day in the patronage of undignified shows and sports. When Trinculo, perplexed by the outward aspect of the hideous Caliban, mistakes him for a fish, he remarks: "Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian."

Shakespeare seems slyly to confess a personal conviction of defective balance in the popular judgment when he makes the first grave-digger remark that Hamlet was sent into England because he was mad.

"He shall recover his wits there," the old clown suggests, "or if he do not, 'tis no great matter there."

"Why?" asks Hamlet.

"'Twill not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he."

So, too, in the emphatically patriotic play of _Henry V._, Shakespeare implies that he sees some purpose in the Frenchman's jibes at the foggy, raw, and dull climate of England, which engenders in its inhabitants, the Frenchman argues, a frosty temperament, an ungenial coldness of blood. Nor does the dramatist imply dissent from the French marshal's suggestion that Englishmen's great meals of beef impair the efficiency of their intellectual armour. The point of the reproof is not blunted by the subsequent admission of a French critic in the same scene to the effect that, however robustious and rough in manner Englishmen may be, they have the unmatchable courage of the English breed of mastiffs. To credit men with the highest virtues of which dogs are capable is a grudging compliment.

V

To sum up. The Shakespearean drama enjoins those who love their country wisely to neglect no advantage that nature offers in the way of resisting unjust demands upon it; to remember that her prosperity depends on her command of the sea,--of "the silver sea, which serves it in the office of a wall, or as a moat defensive to a house, against the envy of less happier lands"; to hold firm in the memory "the dear souls" who have made "her reputation through the world"; to subject at need her faults and frailties to criticism and rebuke; and finally to treat with disdain those in places of power, who make of no account their responsibilities to the past as well as to the present and the future. The political, social, and physical conditions of his country have altered since Shakespeare lived. England has ceased to be an island-power. The people rule instead of the king. Social responsibilities are more widely acknowledged. But the dramatist's doctrine of patriotism has lost little of its pristine vitality, and is relevant to current affairs.

IX

A PERIL OF SHAKESPEAREAN RESEARCH[38]

[Footnote 38: This paper was first printed in _The Author_, October 1903.]

I

For some years past scarcely a month passes without my receipt of a communication from a confiding stranger, to the effect that he has discovered some piece of information concerning Shakespeare which has hitherto eluded research. Very often has a correspondent put himself to the trouble of forwarding a photograph of the title-page of a late sixteenth or early seventeenth century book, on which has been scrawled in old-fashioned script the familiar name of William Shakespeare. At intervals, which seem to recur with mathematical regularity, I receive intelligence that a portrait of the poet, of which nothing is hitherto known, has come to light in some recondite corner of England or America, and it is usually added that a contemporary inscription settles all doubt of authenticity.

I wish to speak with respect and gratitude of these confidences. I welcome them, and have no wish to repress them. But truth does not permit me to affirm that such as have yet reached me have done more than enlarge my conception of the scope of human credulity. I look forward to the day when the postman shall, through the generosity of some appreciative reader of my biography of Shakespeare, deliver at my door an autograph of the dramatist of which nothing has been heard before, or a genuine portrait of contemporary date, the existence of which has never been suspected. But up to the moment of writing, despite the good intentions of my correspondents, no experience of the kind has befallen me.

There is something pathetic in the frequency with which correspondents, obviously of unblemished character and most generous instinct, send me almost tearful expressions of regret that I should have hitherto ignored one particular document, which throws (in their eyes) a curious gleam on the dramatist's private life. At least six times a year am I reminded how it is recorded in more than one obscure eighteenth-century periodical that the dramatist, George Peele, wrote to his friend Marle or Marlowe, in an extant letter, of a merry meeting which was held at a place called the "Globe." Whether the rendezvous were tavern or playhouse is left undetermined. The assembled company, I am assured, included not merely Edward Alleyn the actor, and Ben Jonson, but Shakespeare himself. Together these celebrated men are said to have discussed a passage in the new play of _Hamlet_. The reported talk is at the best tame prattle. Yet, if Shakespeare be anywhere revealed in unconstrained intercourse with professional associates, no biographer deserves pardon for overlooking the revelation, however disappointing be its purport.

Unfortunately for this neglected intelligence, the letter in question is an eighteenth century fabrication. It is a forgery of no intrinsic brilliance or wit. It bears on its dull face marks of guilt which could only escape the notice of the uninformed. It is not likely to mislead the critical. Nevertheless it has deceived many an uncritical reader, and has constantly found its way into print without meeting serious confutation. It may therefore be worth while setting its true origin and subsequent history on record. No endeavour is likely in all the circumstances of the case to prevent an occasional resurrection of the meagre spectre; but at present it appears to walk in various quarters quite unimpeded, and an endeavour to lay it may not be without its uses.

II

Through the first half of 1763 there was published in London a monthly magazine called the _Theatrical Review, or Annals of the Drama_, an anonymous miscellany of dramatic biography and criticism. It was a colourless contribution to the journalism of the day, and lacked powers of endurance. It ceased at the end of six months. The six instalments were re-issued as "Volume I." at the end of June 1763; but that volume had no successor.[39]

[Footnote 39: Other independent publications of similar character appeared under the identical title of _The Theatrical Review_ both in 1758 and 1772. The latter collected the ephemeral dramatic criticisms of John Potter, a well-known writer for the stage.]

All that is worth noting of the _Theatrical Review_ of 1763 now is that among its contributors was an extremely interesting personality. He was a young man of good education and independent means, who had chambers in the Temple, and was enthusiastically applying himself to a study of Shakespeare and Elizabethan dramatic literature. His name, George Steevens, acquired in later years world-wide fame as that of the most learned of Shakespearean commentators. Of the real value of Steevens's scholarship no question is admissible, and his reputation justly grew with his years. Yet Steevens's temper was singularly perverse and mischievous. His confidence in his own powers led him to contemn the powers of other people. He enjoyed nothing so much as mystifying those who were engaged in the same pursuits as himself, and his favourite method of mystification was to announce anonymously the discovery of documents which owed all their existence to his own ingenuity. This, he admitted, was his notion of "fun." Whenever the whim seized him, he would in gravest manner reveal to the Press, or even contrive to bring to the notice of a learned society, some alleged relic in manuscript or in stone which he had deliberately manufactured. His sole aim was to recreate himself with laughter at the perplexity that such unholy pranks aroused. It is one of these Puck-like tricks on Steevens's part that has spread confusion among those of my correspondents, who allege that Peele has handed down to us a personal reminiscence of the great dramatist.

The _Theatrical Review_, in its second number, offered an anonymous biography of the great actor and theatrical manager of Shakespeare's day, Edward Alleyn. This biography was clearly one of Steevens's earliest efforts. It is for the most part an innocent compilation. But it contains one passage in its author's characteristic vein of mischief. Midway in the essay the reader is solemnly assured that a brand-new contemporary reference to Alleyn's eminent associate Shakespeare was at his disposal. The new story "carries with it" (asserts the writer) "all the air of probability and truth, and has never been in print before." "A gentleman of honour and veracity," run the next sentences, which were designed to put the unwary student off his guard, "in the commission of the peace for Middlesex, has shown us a letter dated in the year 1600, which he assures us has been in the possession of his family, by the mother's side, for a long series of years, and which bears all the marks of antiquity." The superscription was interpreted to run: "For Master Henrie Marle, livynge at the sygne of the rose by the palace."

There follows at length the paper of which the family of the honourable and veracious gentleman "in the commission of the peace for Middlesex" had become possessed "by the mother's side." The words were these:--

"FRIENDE MARLE,

"I must desyre that my syster hyr watche, and the cookerie booke you promysed, may be sent by the man. I never longed for thy company more than last night; we were all very merrye at the Globe, when Ned Alleyn did not scruple to affyrme pleasantely to thy friend Will, that he had stolen his speech about the qualityes of an actor's excellencye, in _Hamlet_ hys tragedye, from conversations manyfold which had passed between them, and opinyons given by Allen touchinge the subject. Shakespeare did not take this talke in good sorte; but Jonson put an end to the stryfe with wittielie saying: 'This affaire needeth no contentione; you stole it from Ned, no doubt; do not marvel; have you not seen him act tymes out of number?'

"Believe me most syncerelie,

"Harrie,

"Thyne,

"G. PEEL."

The text of this strangely-spelt, strangely-worded epistle, with its puny efforts at a jest, was succeeded by a suggestion that "G. Peel," the alleged signatory, could be none other than George Peele, the dramatist, who achieved reputation in Shakespeare's early days, and was an industrious collector of anecdotes.

Thus the impish Steevens baited his hook. The sport which followed must have exceeded his expectations. Any one familiar with the bare outline of Elizabethan literary history should have perceived that a trap had been set. The letter was assigned to the year 1600. Shakespeare's play of _Hamlet_, to the performance of which it unconcernedly refers, was not produced before 1602; at that date George Peele had lain full four years in his grave. Peele could never have passed the portals of the theatre called the "Globe"; for it was not built until 1599. No historic tavern of the name is known. The surname of the person, to whom the letter was pretended to have been addressed, is suspicious. "Marle" was one way of spelling "Marlowe" at a period when forms of surnames varied with the caprice of the writer. The great dramatist, _Christopher_ Marle, or Marloe, or Marlowe, had died in 1593. "Henrie Marle" is counterfeit coinage of no doubtful stamp.

The language and the style of the letter are undeserving of serious examination. They are of a far later period than the Elizabethan age. They cannot be dated earlier than 1763. Safely might the heaviest odds be laid that in no year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth "did friende Marle promyse G. Peel his syster that he would send hyr watche and the cookerie book by the man," or that "Ned Alleyn made pleasante affirmation to G. Peel of friend Will's theft of the speech in _Hamlet_ concerning an actor's excellencye."

From top to toe the imposture is obvious. But the general reader of the eighteenth century was confiding, unsuspicious, greedy of novel information. The description of the source of the document seemed to him precise enough to silence doubt.

III

The _Theatrical Review_ of 1763 succeeded in launching the fraud on a quite triumphal progress. Again and again, as the century advanced, was G. Peel's declaration to "friende Marle" paraded, without hint of its falsity, before snappers-up of Shakespearean trifles. Seven years after its first publication, the epistle found admission in a slightly altered setting to so reputable a periodical as the _Annual Register_. Burke was still directing that useful publication, and whatever information the _Register_ shielded, was reckoned to be of veracity. "G. Peel" and "friende Marle" were there, in the year 1770, suffered to exchange their confidences in the most honourable environment.

Another seven years passed, and in 1777 there appeared an ambitious work of reference, entitled _Biographia Literaria, or a Biographical History of Literature_, which gave its author, John Berkenhout, a free-thinking physician, his chief claim to remembrance. Steevens was a friend of Berkenhout, and helped him in the preparation of the book. Into his account of Shakespeare, the credulous physician introduced quite honestly the fourteen-year-old forgery. The reputed date of 1600, which the supposititious justice of the peace had given it in the _Theatrical Review_, was now suppressed. Berkenhout confined his comment to the halting reminiscence: "Whence I copied this letter I do not recollect; but I remember that at the time of transcribing it, I had no doubt of its authenticity."

Thrice had the trick been worked effectively in conspicuous places before Steevens died in 1800. But the evil that he did lived after him, and within a year of his death the imposture renewed its youth. A correspondent, who concealed his identity under the signature of "Grenovicus" (_i.e._, of Greenwich), sent Peel's letter in 1801 to the _Gentleman's Magazine_, a massive repertory of useful knowledge. There it was duly reprinted in the number for June. "Grenovicus" had the assurance to claim the letter as his own discovery. "To my knowledge," he wrote, "it has never yet appeared in print." He refrained from indicating how he had gained access to it, but congratulated himself and the readers of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ on the valiant feast that he provided for them. His action was apparently taken by the readers of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ at his own valuation.

Meanwhile the discerning critic was not altogether passive. Isaac D'Israeli denounced the fraud in his _Curiosities of Literature_; but he and others did their protesting gently. The fraud looked to the expert too shamefaced to merit a vigorous onslaught. He imagined the spurious epistle must die of its own inanity. In this he miscalculated the credulity of the general reader. "Grenovicus" of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ had numerous disciples.

Many a time during the past century has that worthy's exploit been repeated. Even so acute a scholar as Alexander Dyce thought it worth while to reprint the letter in 1829 in the first edition of his collected works of George Peele (Vol. I., page 111), although he declined to pledge himself to its authenticity. The latest historian of Dulwich College[40] has admitted it to his text with too mildly worded a caveat. Often, too, has "G. Peel" emerged more recently from a long-forgotten book or periodical to darken the page of a modern popular magazine. I have met him unabashed during the present century in two literary periodicals of repute--in the _Academy_ (of London), in the issue of 18th January 1902, and in the _Poet Lore_ (of Boston) in the following April number. Future disinterments may safely be prophesied. In the jungle of the _Annual Register_ or the _Gentleman's Magazine_ the forgery lurks unchallenged, and there will always be inexperienced explorers, who from time to time will run the unhallowed thing to earth there, and bring it forth as a new and unsuspected truth.

[Footnote 40: William Young's _History of Dulwich College_, 1889, II., 41-2.]

Perhaps forgery is too big a word to apply to Steevens's concoction. Others worked at later periods on lines of mystification similar to his; but, unlike his disciples, he did not seek from his misdirected ingenuity pecuniary gain or even notoriety. He never set his name to this invention of "Peel" and "Marle," and their insipid chatter about _Hamlet_ at the "Globe." Steevens's sole aim was to delude the unwary. It is difficult to detect humour in the endeavour. But the perversity of the human intellect has no limits. This ungainly example of it is only worth attention because it has sailed under its false colours without very serious molestation for one hundred and forty-three years.

X

SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE[41]

[Footnote 41: This paper was first printed in _The Nineteenth Century_, June 1899.]

I

Nothing but good can come of a comparative study of English and French literature. The political intercourse of the two countries has involved them in an endless series of broils. But between the literatures of the two countries friendly relations have subsisted for over five centuries. In the literary sphere the interchange of neighbourly civilities has known no interruption. The same literary forms have not appealed to the tastes of the two nations; but differences of æsthetic temperament have not prevented the literature of the one from levying substantial loans on the literature of the other, and that with a freedom and a frequency which were calculated to breed discontent between any but the most cordial of allies. While the literary geniuses of the two nations have pursued independent ideals, they have viewed as welcome courtesies the willingness and readiness of the one to borrow sustenance of the other on the road. It is unlikely that any full or formal balance-sheet of such lendings and borrowings will ever be forthcoming, for it is felt instinctively by literary accountants and their clients on both shores of the English Channel that the debts on the one side keep a steady pace with the debts on the other, and there is no balance to be collected.

No recondite research is needed to establish this general view of the situation. It is well known how the poetic career of Chaucer, the earliest of great English poets, was begun under French masters. The greatest poem of mediæval France, the _Roman de la Rose_, was turned into English by his youthful pen, and the chief French poet of the day, Eustace Deschamps, held out to him the hand of fellowship in the enthusiastic _balade_, in which he apostrophised "le grand translateur, noble Geoffroi Chaucer." Following Chaucer's example, the great poets of Elizabeth's reign and of James the First's reign most liberally and most literally assimilated the verse of their French contemporaries, Ronsard, Du Bellay, and Desportes.[42] Early in the seventeenth century, Frenchmen returned the compliment by naturalising in French translations the prose romances of Sir Philip Sidney and Robert Greene, the philosophical essays of Bacon, and the ethical and theological writings of Bishop Joseph Hall. From the accession of Charles the Second until that of George the Third, the English drama framed itself on French models, and Pope, who long filled the throne of a literary dictator in England, acknowledged discipleship to Boileau. A little later the literary philosophers of France--Rousseau and the Encyclopédistes--drew their nutrition from the writings of Hobbes and Locke. French novel-readers of the eighteenth century found their chief joy in the tearful emotions excited by the sentimentalities of Richardson and Sterne. French novel-writers one hundred and thirty years ago had small chance of recognition if they disdained to traffic in the lachrymose wares which the English novelists had brought into fashion.

[Footnote 42: In the Introduction to a collection of Elizabethan Sonnets, published in Messrs Constable's re-issue of Arber's _English Garner_ (1904), the present writer has shown that numerous sonnets, which Elizabethan writers issued as original poems, were literal translations from the French of Ronsard, Du Bellay, and Desportes. Numerous loans of like character were levied silently on Italian authors.]

At the present moment the cultured Englishman finds his most palatable fiction in the publications of Paris. Within recent memory the English playgoer viewed with impatience any theatrical programme which lacked a Parisian flavour. The late Sir Henry Irving, who, during the past generation, sought to sustain the best traditions of the English drama, produced in his last years two original plays, _Robespierre_ and _Dante_, by the _doyen_ of living French dramatists, M. Sardou. Complementary tendencies are visible across the Channel. The French stage often offers as cordial a reception to plays of English manufacture as is offered in London to the plays derived from France. No histrionic event attracts higher interest in Paris than the assumption by a great actor or actress of a Shakespearean rôle for the first time; and French dramatic critics have been known to generate such heat in debates over the right conception of a Shakespearean character that their differences have required adjustment at the sword's point.

Of greater interest is it to note that in all the cultivated centres of France a new and unparalleled energy is devoted to-day to the study of English literature of both the present and the past. The research recently expended on the topic by French scholars has not been excelled in Germany, and has rarely been equalled in England. Critical biographies of James Thomson (of _The Seasons_), of Burns, of Young, and of Wordsworth have come of late from the pens of French professors of English literature, and their volumes breathe a minute accuracy and a fulness of sympathetic knowledge which are certainly not habitual to English professors of English literature. This scholarly movement in France shows signs of rapid extension. Each summer vacation sees an increase in the number of French visitors to the British Museum reading-room, who are making recondite researches into English literary history. The new zeal of Frenchmen for English studies claims the most cordial acknowledgment of English scholars, and it is appropriate that the most coveted lectureship on English literature in an English University--the Clark lectureship at Trinity College, Cambridge--should have been bestowed last year on the learned professor of English at the Sorbonne, M. Beljame, author of _Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au XVIIIe Siècle_. M. Beljame's unexpected death (on September 17, 1906), shortly after his work at Cambridge was completed, is a loss alike to English and French letters.

II

In view of the growth of the French interest in English literary history, it was to be expected that serious efforts should be made in France to determine the character and dimensions of the influence exerted on French literature by the greatest of all English men of letters--by Shakespeare. That work has been undertaken by M. Jusserand. In 1898 he gave to the world the results of his investigation in his native language. Subsequently, with a welcome consideration for the linguistic incapacities of Shakespeare's countrymen, he repeated his conclusions in their tongue.[43] The English translation is embellished with many pictorial illustrations of historic interest and value.

[Footnote 43: _Shakespeare in France under the Ancien Régime_, by J.J. Jusserand. London: T. Fisher Unwin. 1899.]

Among French writers on English literature, M. Jusserand is the most voluminous and the most widely informed. His career differs in an important particular from that of his countrymen who pursue the same field of study. He is not by profession a teacher or writer: he is a diplomatist, and now holds the high office of French ambassador to the United States of America. M. Jusserand has treated in his books of almost all periods of English literary history, and he has been long engaged on an exhaustive _Literary History of the English People_, of which the two volumes already published bring the narrative as far as the close of the Civil Wars.

M. Jusserand enjoys the rare, although among modern Frenchmen by no means unexampled, faculty of writing with almost equal ease and felicity in both French and English. His walk in life gives him a singularly catholic outlook. His learning is profound, but he is not overburdened by it, and he preserves his native gaiety of style even when solving crabbed problems of bibliography. He is at times discursive, but he is never tedious; and he shows no trace of that philological pedantry and narrowness or obliquity of critical vision which the detailed study of literary history has been known to breed in English and German investigators. While M. Jusserand betrays all the critical independence of his compatriot M. Taine, his habit of careful and laborious research illustrates with peculiar vividness the progress which English scholarship has made in France since M. Taine completed his sparkling survey of English literature in 1864.

M. Jusserand handles the theme of _Shakespeare in France under the Ancien Régime_ with all the lightness of touch and wealth of minute detail to which he has accustomed his readers. Nowhere have so many facts been brought together in order to illustrate the literary intercourse of Frenchmen and Englishmen between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. It is true that his opening chapters have little concern with Shakespeare, but their intrinsic interest and novelty atone for their irrelevance. They shed a flood of welcome light on that interchange of literary information and ideas which is a constant feature in the literary history of the two countries.

Many will read here for the first time of the great poet Ronsard's visits to this country; of the distinguished company of English actors which delighted the court of Henry IV. of France; and of Ben Jonson's discreditable drunken exploits in the French capital when he went thither as tutor to Sir Walter Ralegh's son. To these episodes might well be added the pleasant personal intercourse of Francis Bacon's brother, Anthony, with the great French essayist Montaigne, when the Englishman was sojourning at Bordeaux in 1583. Montaigne's Essays achieved hardly less fame in Elizabethan England than in France. Both Shakespeare and Bacon gave proof of indebtedness to them.

By some freak of fortune Shakespeare's fame was slow in crossing the English Channel. The French dramatists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries lived and died in the paradoxical faith that the British drama reached its apogee in the achievement of the Scottish Latinist, George Buchanan, who was reckoned in France "prince of the poets of our day." In Buchanan's classical tragedies Montaigne played a part, while he was a student at Bordeaux. His tragedy of _Jephtha_ achieved exceptional fame in sixteenth century France; three Frenchmen of literary repute rendered it independently into their own language, and each rendering went through several editions. Another delusion which French men of letters cherished, not only during Shakespeare's lifetime, but through three or four generations after his death, was that Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and the father of Lord Chancellor Bacon were the greatest authors which England had begotten or was likely to beget. French enthusiasm for the suggestive irony of More's Latin romance of _Utopia_ outran that of his fellow-countrymen. A French translation anticipated the earliest rendering of the work in the author's native tongue. No less than two independent French versions of Sir Philip Sidney's voluminous fiction of _Arcadia_ were circulating in France one hundred and twenty years before the like honour was paid to any work of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's work first arrived in France towards the close of the seventeenth century. Frenchmen were staggered by its originality. They perceived the dramatist's colossal breaches of classical law. They were shocked by his freedom of speech. When Louis the Fourteenth's librarian placed on the shelves of the Royal Library in Paris a copy of the Second Folio of his works which had been published in London in 1632, he noted in his catalogue that Shakespeare "has a rather fine imagination; he thinks naturally; but these fine qualities are obscured by the filth he introduces into his comedies." An increasing mass of pedestrian literature was imported into France from England through the middle and late years of the seventeenth century. Yet Shakespeare had to wait for a fair hearing there till the eighteenth century.

Then it was very gradually that Shakespeare's pre-eminence was realised by French critics. It is to Voltaire that Frenchmen owe a full knowledge of Shakespeare. Voltaire's method of teaching Shakespeare to his countrymen was characteristically cynical. He studied him closely when he visited England as a young man. At that period of his career he not merely praised him with discerning caution, but he paid him the flattery of imitation. Voltaire's tragedy of _Brutus_ betrays an intimate acquaintance with Shakespeare's _Julius Cæsar_. His _Eryphile_ was the product of many perusals of _Hamlet_. His _Zaïre_ is a pale reflection of _Othello_. But when Voltaire's countrymen showed a tendency to better Voltaire's instruction, and one Frenchman conferred on Shakespeare the title of "the god of the theatre," Voltaire resented the situation that he had himself created. He was at the height of his own fame, and he felt that his reputation as the first of French writers for the stage was in jeopardy.

The last years of Voltaire's life were therefore consecrated to an endeavour to dethrone the idol which his own hands had set up. Voltaire traded on the patriotic prejudices of his hearers, but his efforts to depreciate Shakespeare were very partially successful. Few writers of power were ready to second the soured critic, and after Voltaire's death the Shakespeare cult in France, of which he was the unwilling inaugurator, spread far and wide.

In the nineteenth century Shakespeare was admitted without demur into the French "pantheon of literary gods." Classicists and romanticists vied in doing him honour. The classical painter Ingres introduced his portrait into his famous picture of "Homer's Cortège" (now in the Louvre). The romanticist Victor Hugo recognised only three men as memorable in the history of humanity, and Shakespeare was one of the three; Moses and Homer were the other two. Alfred de Musset became a dramatist under Shakespeare's spell. To George Sand everything in literature seemed tame by the side of Shakespeare's poetry. The prince of romancers, the elder Dumas, set the English dramatist next to God in the cosmic system; "after God," wrote Dumas, "Shakespeare has created most."

III

It would be easy to multiply eulogies of Shakespeare from French lips in the vein of Victor Hugo and Dumas--eulogies besides which the enthusiasm of many English critics appears cold and constrained. So unfaltering a note of admiration sounds gratefully in the ears of Shakespeare's countrymen. Yet on closer investigation there seems a rift within the lute. When one turns to the French versions of Shakespeare, for which the chief of Shakespeare's French encomiasts have made themselves responsible, an Englishman is inclined to moderate his exultation in the French panegyrics.

No one did more as an admiring critic and translator of Shakespeare than Jean François Ducis, who prepared six of Shakespeare's greatest plays for the French stage at the end of the eighteenth century. Not only did Ducis introduce Shakespeare's masterpieces to thousands of his countrymen who might otherwise never have heard of them, but his renderings of Shakespeare were turned into Italian and many languages of Eastern Europe. They spread the knowledge of Shakespeare's achievement to the extreme boundaries of the European Continent. Apparently Ducis did his work under favourable auspices. He corresponded regularly with Garrick, and he was never happier than when studying Shakespeare's text with a portrait of Shakespeare at his side. Yet, in spite of Ducis's unquestioned reverence and his honourable intentions, all his translations of Shakespeare are gross perversions of their originals. It is not merely that he is verbally unfaithful. He revises the development of the plots; he gives the _dramatis personæ_ new names.

Ducis's _Othello_ was accounted his greatest triumph. The play shows Shakespeare's mastery of the art of tragedy at its highest stage of development, and rewards the closest study. But the French translator ignored the great tragic conception which gives the drama its pith and moment. He converted the piece into a romance. Towards the end of his rendering Iago's villanies are discovered by Othello; Othello and Desdemona are reconciled; and the Moor, exulting in his newly recovered happiness, pardons Iago. The curtain falls on a dazzling scene of domestic bliss.

Ducis frankly acknowledged that he was guilty of a somewhat strained interpretation of Shakespeare's tragic scheme, but he defended himself on the ground that French refinement and French sensitiveness could not endure the agonising violence of the true catastrophe. It is, indeed, the fact that the patrons of the Comédie Française strictly warned the adapter against revolting their feelings by reproducing the "barbarities" that characterised the close of Shakespeare's tragic masterpiece.

If so fastidious a flinching from tragic episode breathe the true French sentiment, what, we are moved to ask, is the significance of the unqualified regard which Ducis and his countrymen profess for Shakespearean drama? There seems a strange paradox in the situation. The history of France proves that Frenchmen can face without quailing the direst tragedies which can be wrought in earnest off the stage. There is a startling inconsistency in the outcry of Ducis's French clients against the terror of Desdemona's murder. For the protests which Ducis reports on the part of the Parisians bear the date 1792. In that year the tragedy of the French Revolution--a tragedy of real life, grimmer than any that Shakespeare imagined--was being enacted in literal truth by the Parisian playgoers themselves. It would seem that Ducis and his countrymen deemed the purpose of art to be alone fulfilled when the artistic fabric was divorced from the ugly facts of life.

A like problem is presented by Dumas's efforts in more pacific conditions to adapt Shakespeare for the Parisian stage. With his friend Paul Meurice Dumas prepared the version of _Hamlet_ which long enjoyed a standard repute at the Comédie Française. Dumas's ecstatic adoration for Shakespeare's genius did not deter him, any more than Ducis was deterred by his more subdued veneration, from working havoc on the English text. Shakespeare's blank verse was necessarily turned into Alexandrines. That was comparatively immaterial. Of greater moment is it to note that the _dénouement_ of the tragedy was completely revolutionised by Dumas. The tragic climax is undermined. Hamlet's life is spared by Dumas. The hero's dying exclamation, "The rest is silence," disappears from Dumas's version. At the close of the play the French translator makes the ghost rejoin his son and good-naturedly promise him indefinite prolongation of his earthly career. According to the gospel of Dumas, the tragedy of Hamlet ends, as soon as his and his father's wrongs have been avenged, in this fashion:--

_Hamlet._ Et moi, vais-je rester, triste orphelin sur terre, À respirer cet air imprégné de misère?... Est-ce que Dieu sur moi fera peser son bras, Père? Et quel châtiment m'attend donc?

_Le Fantôme._ Tu vivras.

Such defiant transgressions of the true Shakespearean canon as those of which Ducis and Dumas stand convicted may well rouse the suspicion that the critical incense they burn at Shakespeare's shrine is offered with the tongue in the cheek. But that suspicion is not justified. Ducis and Dumas worship Shakespeare with a whole heart. Their misapprehensions of his tragic conceptions are due, involuntarily, to native temperament. In point of fact, Ducis and Dumas see Shakespeare through a distorting medium. The two Frenchmen were fully conscious of Shakespeare's towering greatness. They perceived intuitively that Shakespeare's tragedies transcended all other dramatic achievement. But their æsthetic sense, which, as far as the drama was concerned, was steeped in the classical spirit, set many of the essential features of Shakespeare's genius outside the focus of their vision.

To a Frenchman a tragedy of classical rank connotes "correctness," an absence of tumult, some observance of the classical law of unity of time, place, and action. The perpetration of crime in face of the audience outraged all classical conventions. Ducis and Dumas recognised involuntarily that certain characteristics of the Shakespearean drama could not live in the classical atmosphere of their own theatre. Excision, expansion, reduction was inevitable before Shakespeare could breathe the air of the French stage. The grotesque perversions of Ducis and Dumas were thus not the fruit of mere waywardness, or carelessness, or dishonesty; they admit of philosophical explanation.

By Englishmen they may be viewed with equanimity, if not with satisfaction. They offer strong proof of the irrepressible strength or catholicity of the appeal that Shakespeare's genius makes to the mind and heart of humanity. His spirit survived the French efforts at mutilation. The Gallicised or classicised contortions of his mighty work did not destroy its saving virtue. There is ground for congratulation that Ducis's and Dumas's perversions of Shakespeare excited among Frenchmen almost as devoted an homage as the dramatist's work in its native purity and perfection claims of men whose souls are free of the fetters of classical tradition.

IV

If any still doubt the sincerity of the worship which is offered Shakespeare in France, I would direct the sceptic's attention to a pathetically simple tribute which was paid to the dramatist by a French student in the first year of the last century, when England and France were in the grip of the Napoleonic War. It was then that a young Frenchman proved beyond cavil by an ingenuous confession that the English poet, in spite of the racial differences of æsthetic sentiment, could touch a French heart more deeply than any French or classical author. In 1801 there was published at Besançon, "de l'imprimerie de Métoyer," a very thin volume in small octavo, under fifty pages in length, entitled, _Pensées de Shakespeare, Extraites de ses Ouvrages_. No compiler's name is mentioned, but there is no doubt that the book was from the pen of a precocious native of Besançon, Charles Nodier, who was in later life to gain distinction as a bibliographer and writer of romance.

This forgotten volume, of which no more than twenty-five copies were printed, and only two or three of these seem to survive, has escaped the notice of M. Jusserand. No copy of it is in the British Museum, or in La Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, with which the author, Nodier, was long honourably associated as librarian. I purchased it a few years ago by accident in a small collection of imperfectly catalogued Shakespeareana. Lurking in the rear of a very ragged regiment on the shelves of the auctioneer stood Charles Nodier's _Pensées de Shakespeare_. None competed with me for the prize. A very slight effort delivered into my hands the little chaplet of French laurel.

The major part of the volume consists of 190 numbered sentences--each a French rendering of an apophthegm or reflection drawn from Shakespeare's plays. The translator is not faithful to his English text, but his style is clear and often rises to eloquence. The book does not, however, owe its interest to Nodier's version of Shakespearean maxims. Nor can one grow enthusiastic over the dedication "A elle"--an unidentified fair-one to whom the youthful writer proffers his homage with respectful propriety. The salt of the little volume lies in the "Observations Préliminaires," which cover less than five widely-printed pages. These observations breathe a genuine affection for Shakespeare's personality and a sense of gratitude for his achievement in terms which no English admirer has excelled for tenderness and simplicity.

"Shakespeare," writes this French worshipper, "is a friend whom Heaven has given to the unhappy of every age and every country." The writer warns us that he offers no eulogy of Shakespeare; that is to be found in the poet's works, which the Frenchman for his own part prefers to read and read again rather than waste time in praising them. "The features of Alexander ought only to be preserved by Apelles." Nodier merely collects some of Shakespeare's thoughts on great moral truths which he thinks to be useful to the conduct of life. But such extracts, he admonishes his reader, supply no true knowledge of Shakespeare. "From Shakespeare's works one can draw forth a philosophy, but from no systems of philosophy could one construct one page of Shakespeare." Nodier concludes his "Observations" thus:--

"I advise those who do not know Shakespeare to study him in himself. I advise those who know him already to read him again.... I know him, but I must needs declare my admiration for him. I have reviewed my powers, and am content to cast a flower on his grave since I am not able to raise a monument to his memory."

Language like this admits no questioning of its sincerity. Nodier's modest tribute handsomely atones for his countrymen's misapprehensions of Shakespeare's tragic conceptions. None has phrased more delicately or more simply the sense of personal devotion, which is roused by close study of his work.

XI

THE COMMEMORATION OF SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON[44]

[Footnote 44: This paper was first printed in _The Nineteenth Century and After_, April 1905.]

I

The public memory is short. At the instant the suggestion that Shakespeare should receive the tribute of a great national monument in London is attracting general attention. In the ears of the vast majority of those who are taking part in the discussion the proposal appears to strike a new note. Few seem aware that a national memorial of Shakespeare has been urged on Londoners many times before. Thrice, at least, during the past eighty-five years has it exercised the public mind.

At the extreme end of the year 1820, the well-known actor Charles Mathews set on foot a movement for the erection of "a national monument to the immortal memory of Shakespeare." He pledged himself to enlist the support of the new King, George the Fourth, of members of the royal family, of "every man of rank and talent, every poet, artist, and sculptor." Mathews's endeavour achieved only a specious success. George the Fourth, readily gave his "high sanction" to a London memorial. Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Tom Moore, and Washington Irving were among the men of letters; Sir Thomas Lawrence, [Sir] Francis Chantrey, and John Nash, the architect, were among the artists, who approved the general conception. For three or four years ink was spilt and breath was spent in the advocacy of the scheme. But nothing came of all the letters and speeches.

In 1847 the topic was again broached. A committee, which was hardly less influential than that of 1821, revived the proposal. Again no result followed.

Seventeen years passed away, and then, in 1864, the arrival of the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth seemed to many men of eminence in public life, in letters or in art, an appropriate moment at which to carry the design into effect. A third failure has to be recorded.

The notion, indeed, was no child of the nineteenth century which fathered it so ineffectually. It was familiar to the eighteenth. One eighteenth century effort was fortunate enough to yield a little permanent fruit. To an eighteenth-century endeavour to offer Shakespeare a national memorial in London was due the cenotaph in Westminster Abbey.

II

The suggestion of commemorating Shakespeare by means of a monument in London has thus something more than a "smack of age" about it, something more than a "relish of the saltness of time"; there are points of view from which it might appear to be already "blasted with antiquity." On only one of the previous occasions that the question was raised was the stage of discussion passed, and that was in the eighteenth century when the monument was placed in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. The issue was not felicitous. The memorial in the Abbey failed to satisfy the commemorative aspirations of the nation; it left it open to succeeding generations to reconsider the question, if it did not impose on them the obligation. Most of the poets, actors, scholars, and patrons of polite learning, who in 1741 subscribed their guineas to the fund for placing a monument in Westminster Abbey, resented the sculpturesque caricature to which their subscriptions were applied. Pope, an original leader of the movement, declined to write an inscription for this national memorial, but scribbled some ironical verses beginning:--

Thus Britons love me and preserve my fame.

A later critic imagined Shakespeare's wraith pausing in horror by the familiar monument in the Abbey, and lightly misquoting Shelley's familiar lines:--

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, ... And long to unbuild it again.

One of the most regrettable effects of the Abbey memorial, with its mawkish and irrelevant sentimentality, has been to set a bad pattern for statues of Shakespeare. Posterity came to invest the design with some measure of sanctity.

The nineteenth century efforts were mere abortions. In 1821, in spite of George the Fourth's benevolent patronage, which included an unfulfilled promise to pay the sum of 100 guineas, the total amount which was collected after six years' agitation was so small that it was returned to the subscribers. The accounts are extant in the Library of Shakespeare's Birthplace at Stratford-on-Avon. In 1847 the subscriptions were more abundant, but all was then absorbed in the purchase of Shakespeare's Birthplace at Stratford; no money was available for a London memorial. In 1864 the expenses of organising the tercentenary celebration in London by way of banquets, concerts, and theatrical performances, seem to have left no surplus for the purpose which the movement set out to fulfil.

III

The causes of the sweeping failure of the proposal when it came before the public during the nineteenth century are worthy of study. There was no lack of enthusiasm among the promoters. Nor were their high hopes wrecked solely by public apathy. The public interest was never altogether dormant. More efficient causes of ruin were, firstly, the active hostility of some prominent writers and actors who declaimed against all outward and visible commemoration of Shakespeare; and secondly, divisions in the ranks of supporters in regard to the precise form that the memorial ought to take. The censorious refusal of one section of the literary public to countenance any memorial at all, and the inability of another section, while promoting the endeavour, to concentrate its energies on a single acceptable form of commemoration had, as might be expected, a paralysing effect.

"England," it was somewhat casuistically argued in 1864, "has never been ungrateful to her poet; but the very depth and fervour of the reverence in which he is held have hitherto made it difficult for his scholars to agree upon any common proceeding in his name." Neither in 1864 nor at earlier and later epochs have Shakespearean scholars always formed among themselves a very happy family. That amiable sentiment which would treat the realisation of the commemorative aim as a patriotic obligation--as an obligation which no good citizen could honourably repudiate--has often produced discord rather than harmony among the Shakespearean scholars who cherish it. One school of these has argued in the past for a work of sculpture, and has been opposed by a cry for a college for actors, or a Shakespearean theatre. "We do not like the idea of a monument at all," wrote _The Times_ on the 20th of January 1864. "Shakespeare," wrote _Punch_ on the 6th of February following, "needs no statue." In old days it was frequently insisted that, even if the erection of a London monument were desirable, active effort ought to be postponed until an adequate memorial had been placed in Stratford-on-Avon where the poet's memory had been hitherto inadequately honoured. At the same time a band of students was always prepared to urge the chilling plea that the payment of any outward honour to Shakespeare was laboursome futility, was "wasteful and ridiculous excess." Milton's query: "What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones?" has always been quoted to satiety by a vociferous section of the critics whenever the commemoration of Shakespeare has come under discussion.

IV

Once again the question of a national memorial of Shakespeare in London has been revived in conditions not wholly unlike those that have gone before. Mr Richard Badger, a veteran enthusiast for Shakespeare, who was educated in the poet's native place, has offered the people of London the sum of £3500 as the nucleus of a great Shakespeare Memorial Fund. The Lord Mayor of London has presided over a public meeting at the Mansion House, which has empowered an influential committee to proceed with the work. The London County Council has promised to provide a site. With regard to the form that the memorial ought to take, a variety of irresponsible suggestions has been made. It has now been authoritatively determined to erect a sculptured monument on the banks of the Thames.[45]

[Footnote 45: The proceedings of the committee which was formed in the spring of 1905 have been dilatory. Mr Badger informs me that he paid the organisers, nearly two years ago, the sum of £500 for preliminary expenses, and deposited bonds to the value of £3000 with Lord Avebury, the treasurer of the committee. The delay is assigned to the circumstance that the London County Council, which is supporting the proposal, is desirous of associating it with the great Council Hall which it is preparing to erect on the south side of the Thames, and that it has not yet been found practicable to invite designs for that work. (Oct. 1, 1906.)]

The propriety of visibly and outwardly commemorating Shakespeare in the capital city of the Empire has consequently become once more an urgent public question. The public is invited anew to form an opinion on the various points at issue. No expression of opinion should carry weight which omits to take into account past experience as well as present conditions and possibilities. If regard for the public interest justify a national memorial in London, it is most desirable to define the principles whereby its precise form should be determined.

In one important particular the consideration of the subject to-day is simpler than when it was debated on former occasions. Differences existed, then as now, in regard to the propriety of erecting a national memorial of Shakespeare in London; but almost all who interested themselves in the matter in the nineteenth century agreed that the public interest justified, if it did not require, the preservation from decay or demolition of the buildings at Stratford-on-Avon with which Shakespeare's life was associated. So long as those buildings were in private hands, every proposal to commemorate Shakespeare in London had to meet a formidable objection which was raised on their behalf. If the nation undertook to commemorate Shakespeare at all, it should make its first aim (it was argued) the conversion into public property of the surviving memorials of Shakespeare's career at Stratford. The scheme of the London memorial could not be thoroughly discussed on its merits while the claims of Stratford remained unsatisfied. It was deemed premature, whether or no it were justifiable, to entertain any scheme of commemoration which left the Stratford buildings out of account.

A natural sentiment connected Shakespeare more closely with Stratford-on-Avon than with any other place. Whatever part London played in his career, the public mind was dominated by the fact that he was born at Stratford, died, and was buried there. If he left Stratford in youth in order to work out his destiny in London, he returned to it in middle life in order to end his days there "in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends."

In spite of this widespread feeling, it proved no easy task, nor one capable of rapid fulfilment, to consecrate in permanence to public uses the extant memorials of Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon. Stratford was a place of pilgrimage for admirers of Shakespeare from early days in the seventeenth century--soon, in fact, after Shakespeare's death in 1616. But local veneration did not prevent the demolition in 1759, by a private owner, of New Place, Shakespeare's last residence. That act of vandalism was long in provoking any effective resentment. Garrick, by means of his Jubilee Festival of 1769, effectively, if somewhat theatrically, called the attention of the English public to the claims of the town to the affectionate regard of lovers of the great dramatist. Nevertheless, it was left to the nineteenth century to dedicate in perpetuity to the public service the places which were the scenes of Shakespeare's private life in his native town.

Charles Mathews's effort of 1821 took its rise in an endeavour to purchase in behalf of the nation the vacant site of Shakespeare's demolished residence of New Place, with the great garden attached to it. But that scheme was overweighted by the incorporation with it of the plan for a London monument, and both collapsed ignominiously. In 1835 a strong committee was formed at Stratford to commemorate the poet's connection with the town. It was called "the Monumental Committee," and had for its object, firstly, the repair of Shakespeare's tomb in the Parish Church; and secondly, the preservation and restoration of all the Shakespearean buildings in the town. Subscriptions were limited to £1, and all the members of the royal family, including the Princess Victoria, who two years later came to the throne, figured, with other leading personages in the nation's life, in the list of subscribers. But the subscriptions only produced a sum sufficient to carry out the first purpose of the Monumental Committee--the repair of the tomb.

In 1847 the sale by public auction was announced of the house in which Shakespeare was born. It had long been a show-place in private hands. A general feeling declared itself in favour of the purchase of the house for the nation. Public sentiment was in accord with the ungrammatical grandiloquence of the auctioneer, the famous Robins, whose advertisement of the sale included the sentence: "It is trusted the feeling of the country will be so evinced that the structure may be secured, hallowed, and cherished as a national monument almost as imperishable as the poet's fame." A subscription list was headed by Prince Albert with £250. A distinguished committee was formed under the presidency of Lord Morpeth (afterwards the seventh Earl of Carlisle), then Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests, who offered to make his department perpetual conservators of the property. (That proposal was not accepted.) Dickens, Macaulay, Lord Lytton, and the historian Grote were all active in promoting the movement, and it proved successful. The property was duly secured by a private trust in behalf of the nation. The most important house identified with Shakespeare's career in Stratford was thus effectively protected from the risks that are always inherent in private ownership. The step was not taken with undue haste; two hundred and thirty-one years had elapsed since Shakespeare's death.

Fourteen years later, in very similar circumstances, the still vacant site of Shakespeare's demolished residence, New Place, with the great garden behind it, and the adjoining house, was acquired by the public. A new Shakespeare Fund, to which the Prince Consort subscribed £100, and Miss Burdett-Coutts (afterwards Baroness Burdett-Coutts) £600, was formed not only to satisfy this purpose, but to provide the means of equipping a library and museum which were contemplated at the Birthplace, as well as a second museum which was to be provided on the New Place property. It was appropriate to make these buildings depositories of authentic relics and books which should illustrate the poet's life and work. This national Shakespeare Fund was actively promoted, chiefly by the late Mr Halliwell-Phillipps, for more than ten years; a large sum of money was collected, and the aims with which the Fund was set on foot were to a large extent fulfilled. It only remained to organise on a permanent legal basis the completed Stratford Memorial of Shakespeare. By an Act of Parliament passed in 1891 the two properties of New Place and the Birthplace were definitely formed into a single public trust "for and in behalf of the nation." The trustees were able in 1892, out of their surplus income, which is derived from the fees of visitors, to add to their estates Anne Hathaway's Cottage at Shottery, a third building of high interest to students of Shakespeare's history.

The formation of the Birthplace Trust has every title to be regarded as an outward and visible tribute to Shakespeare's memory on the part of the British nation at large.[46] The purchase for the public of the Birthplace, the New Place property, and Anne Hathaway's Cottage was not primarily due to local effort. Justly enough, a very small portion of the necessary funds came from Stratford itself. The British nation may therefore take credit for having set up at least one fitting monument to Shakespeare by consecrating to public uses the property identified with his career in Stratford. Larger funds than the trustees at present possess are required to enable them to carry on the work which their predecessors began, and to compete with any chance of success for books and relics of Shakespearean interest--such as they are empowered by Act of Parliament to acquire--when these memorials chance to come into the market. But a number of small annual subscriptions from men of letters has lately facilitated the performance of this part of the trustees' work, and that source of income may, it is hoped, increase.

[Footnote 46: Nor is this all that has been accomplished at Stratford in the nineteenth century in the way of the national commemoration of Shakespeare. While the surviving property of Shakespearean interest was in course of acquisition for the nation, an early ambition to erect in Stratford a theatre in Shakespeare's memory was realised--in part by subscriptions from the general public, but mainly by the munificence of members of the Flower family, three generations of which have resided at Stratford. The Memorial Theatre was opened in 1879, and the Picture Gallery and Library which were attached to it were completed two years later. The Memorial Buildings at Stratford stand on a different footing from the properties of the Birthplace Trust. The Memorial institution has an independent government, and is to a larger extent under local control. But the extended series of performances of Shakespearean drama, which takes place each year in April at the Memorial Theatre, has something of the character of an annual commemoration of Shakespeare by the nation at large.]

At any rate, the ancient objection to the erection of a national monument in London, which was based on the absence of any memorial in Stratford, is no longer of avail. In 1821, in 1847, and in 1864, when the acquisition of the Stratford property was unattempted or uncompleted, it was perfectly just to argue that Stratford was entitled to have precedence of London when the question of commemorating Shakespeare was debated. It is no just argument in 1906, now that the claims of Stratford are practically satisfied.

Byron, when writing of the memorial to Petrarch at Arquà, expressed with admirable feeling the sentiment that would confine outward memorials of a poet in his native town to the places where he was born, lived, died, and was buried. With very little verbal change Byron's stanza on the visible memorials of Petrarch's association with Arquà is applicable to those of Shakespeare's connexion with Stratford:--

They keep his dust in Stratford, where he died; The midland village where his later days Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride-- An honest pride--and let it be their praise, To offer to the passing stranger's gaze His birthplace and his sepulchre; both plain And venerably simple, such as raise A feeling more accordant with his strain Than if a pyramid form'd his monumental fane.[47]

[Footnote 47: Cf. _Childe Harold_, Canto IV., St. xxxi.]

Venerable simplicity is hardly the characteristic note of Shakespeare's "strain" any more than it is of Petrarch's "strain." But there can be no just quarrel with the general contention that at Stratford, where Shakespeare gave ample proof of his characteristic modesty, a pyramidal fane would be out of harmony with the environment. There his birthplace, his garden, and tomb are the fittest memorials of his great career.

V

It may justly be asked: Is there any principle which justifies another sort of memorial elsewhere? On grounds of history and sentiment, but in conditions which demand most careful definition, the right answer will, I think, be in the affirmative. For one thing, Shakespeare's life was not confined to Stratford. His professional career was spent in London, and those, who strictly insist that memorials to great men should be erected only in places with which they were personally associated, can hardly deny that London shares with Stratford a title to a memorial from a biographical or historical point of view. Of Shakespeare's life of fifty-two years, twenty-four years were in all probability spent in London. During those years the work that makes him memorable was done. It was in London that the fame which is universally acknowledged was won.

Some valuable details regarding Shakespeare's life in London are accessible. The districts where he resided and where he passed his days are known. There is evidence that during the early part of his London career he lived in the parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, and during the later part near the Bankside, Southwark. With the south side of the Thames he was long connected, together with his youngest brother, Edmund, who was also an actor, and who was buried in the church of St Saviour's, Southwark.

In his early London days Shakespeare's professional work, alike as actor and dramatist, brought him daily from St Helen's, Bishopsgate, to The Theatre in Shoreditch. Shoreditch was then the chief theatrical quarter in London. Later, the centre of London theatrical life shifted to Southwark, where the far-famed Globe Theatre was erected, in 1599, mainly out of the materials of the dismantled Shoreditch Theatre. Ultimately Shakespeare's company of actors performed in a theatre at Blackfriars, which was created out of a private residence on a part of the site on which _The Times_ office stands now. At a few hundred yards' distance from the Blackfriars Theatre, in the direction of Cannon Street, Shakespeare, too, shortly before his death, purchased a house.

Thus Shakespeare's life in London is well identified with four districts--with Bishopsgate, with Shoreditch, with Southwark, and with Blackfriars. Unhappily for students of Shakespeare's life, London has been more than once remodelled since the dramatist sojourned in the city. The buildings and lodgings, with which he was associated in Shoreditch, Southwark, Bishopsgate, or Blackfriars, have long since disappeared.

It is not practicable to follow in London the same historical scheme of commemoration which has been adopted at Stratford-on-Avon. It is impossible to recall to existence the edifices in which Shakespeare pursued his London career. Archæology could do little in this direction that was satisfactory. There would be an awkward incongruity in introducing into the serried ranks of Shoreditch warehouses and Southwark wharves an archæological restoration of Elizabethan playhouse or private residence. Pictorial representations of the Globe Theatre survive, and it might be possible to construct something that should materialise the extant drawings. But the _genius loci_ has fled from Southwark and from Shoreditch. It might be practicable to set up a new model of an Elizabethan theatre elsewhere in London, but such a memorial would have about it an air of unreality, artificiality, and affectation which would not be in accord with the scholarly spirit of an historic or biographic commemoration. The device might prove of archæological interest, but the commemorative purpose, from a biographical or historical point of view, would be ill served. Wherever a copy of an Elizabethan playhouse were brought to birth in twentieth-century London, the historic sense in the onlooker would be for the most part irresponsive; it would hardly be quickened.

VI

Apart from the practical difficulties of realising materially Shakespeare's local associations with London, it is doubtful if the mere commemoration in London of Shakespeare's personal connection with the great city ought to be the precise aim of those who urge the propriety of erecting a national monument in the metropolis. Shakespeare's personal relations with London can in all the circumstances of the case be treated as a justification in only the second degree. The primary justification involves a somewhat different train of thought. A national memorial of Shakespeare in London must be reckoned of small account if it merely aim at keeping alive in public memory episodes of Shakespeare's London career. The true aim of a national London memorial must be symbolical of a larger fact. It must typify Shakespeare's place, not in the past, but in the present life of the nation and of the world. It ought to constitute a perpetual reminder of the position that he fills in the present economy, and is likely to fill in the future economy of human thought, for those whose growing absorption in the narrowing business of life tends to make them forget it.

The day is long since past when vague eulogy of Shakespeare is permissible. Shakespeare's literary supremacy is as fully recognised by those who justly appreciate literature as any law of nature. To the man and woman of culture in all civilised countries he symbolises the potency of the human intellect. But those who are content to read and admire him in the cloister at times overlook the full significance of his achievement in the outer world. Critics of all nationalities are in substantial agreement with the romance-writer Dumas, who pointed out that Shakespeare is more than the greatest of dramatists; he is the greatest of thinking men.

The exalted foreign estimate illustrates the fact that Shakespeare contributes to the prestige of his nation a good deal beyond repute for literary power. He is not merely a literary ornament of our British household. It is largely on his account that foreign nations honour his country as an intellectual and spiritual force. Shakespeare and Newton together give England an intellectual sovereignty which adds more to her "reputation through the world" than any exploit in battle or statesmanship. If, again, Shakespeare's pre-eminence has added dignity to the name of Englishman abroad, it has also quickened the sense of unity among the intelligent sections of the English-speaking peoples. Admiration, affection for his work has come to be one of the strongest links in the chain which binds the English-speaking peoples together. He quickens the fraternal sense among all who speak his language.

London is no nominal capital of the kingdom and the Empire. It is the headquarters of British influence. Within its boundaries are assembled the official insignia of British prestige. It is the mother-city of the English-speaking world. To ask of the citizens of London some outward sign that Shakespeare is a living source of British prestige, an unifying factor in the consolidation of the British Empire, and a powerful element in the maintenance of fraternal relations with the United States, seems therefore no unreasonable demand. Neither cloistered study of his plays, nor the occasional representation of them in the theatres, brings home to either the English-speaking or the English-reading world the full extent of the debt that England owes to Shakespeare. A monumental memorial, which should symbolise Shakespeare's influence in the universe, could only find an appropriate and effective home in the capital city of the British Empire. It is this conviction, and no narrower point of view, which gives endeavour to commemorate Shakespeare in London its title to consideration.

VII

The admitted fact that Shakespeare's fame is established beyond risk of decay does not place him outside the range of conventional methods of commemoration. The greater a man's recognised service to his fellows, the more active grows in normally constituted minds that natural commemorative instinct, which seeks outward and tangible expression. A strange fallacy underlies the objection that has been taken to any commemoration of Shakespeare on the alleged ground that Milton warned the English people of all time against erecting a monument to Shakespeare.

In 1630 Milton asked the question that is familiar to thousands of tongues:

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones?

By way of answer he deprecated any such "weak witness of his name" as "pilèd stones" or "star-y-pointing pyramid." The poet-laureate of England echoed Milton's sentiment in 1905. He roundly asserted that "perishable stuff" is the fit crown of monumental pedestals. "Gods for themselves," he concluded, "have monument enough." There are ample signs that the sentiment to which Milton and the laureate give voice has a good deal of public support.

None the less the poet-laureate's conclusion is clearly refuted by experience and cannot terminate the argument. At any rate, in the classical and Renaissance eras monumental sculpture was in habitual request among those who would honour both immortal gods and mortal heroes--especially mortal heroes who had distinguished themselves in literature or art.

A little reflection will show, likewise, that Milton's fervid couplets have small bearing on the question at issue in its present conditions. Milton's poem is an elegy on Shakespeare. It was penned when the dramatist had lain in his grave less that fourteen years, and when the writer was in his twenty-second year. The exuberant enthusiasm of youth was couched in poetic imagery which has from time immemorial been employed in panegyrics of great poets. The beautiful figure which presents a great man's work as his only lasting monument is as old as poetry itself. The conceit courses through the classical poetry of Greece from the time of Pindar, and through that of Italy from the time of Ennius. No great Renaissance writer of modern Italy, of sixteenth-century France, or of Elizabethan England, tired of arguing that the poet's deathless memorial is that carved by his own pen. Shakespeare himself clothed the conceit in glowing harmonies in his sonnets. Ben Jonson, in his elegy on the dramatist, adapted the time-honoured figure when he hailed his dead friend's achievement as "a monument without a tomb."

"The truest poetry is the most feigning," and, when one recalls the true significance and influence of great sculptured monuments through the history of the civilised world, Milton's poetic argument can only be accepted in what Sir Thomas Browne called "a soft and flexible sense"; it cannot "be called unto the rigid test of reason." To treat Milton's eulogy as the final word in the discussion of the subject whether or no Shakespeare should have a national monument, is to come into conflict with Sir Walter Scott, Tennyson, Ruskin, Dickens, and all the greatest men of letters of the nineteenth century, who answered the question in the affirmative. It is to discredit crowds of admirers of great writers in classical and modern ages, who have commemorated the labours of poets and dramatists in outward and visible monuments.

The genius of the great Greek dramatists was not underrated by their countrymen. Their literary efforts were adjudged to be true memorials of their fame, and no doubt of their immortality was entertained. None the less, the city of Athens, on the proposition of the Attic orator, Lycurgus, erected in honour of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides statues which ranked with the most beautiful adornments of the Greek capital. Calderon and Goethe, Camoens and Schiller, Sir Walter Scott and Burns enjoy reputations which are smaller, it is true, than Shakespeare's, but are, at the same time, like his, of both national and universal significance. In memory of them all, monuments have been erected as tokens of their fellow-countrymen's veneration and gratitude for the influence which their poetry wields.

The fame of these men's writings never stood in any "need" of monumental corroboration. The sculptured memorial testified to the sense of gratitude which their writings generated in the hearts and minds of their readers.

Again, the great musicians and the great painters live in their work in a singularly vivid sense. Music and painting are more direct in popular appeal than great poetry. Yet none can ridicule the sentiment which is embodied in the statue of Beethoven at Bonn, or in that of Paolo Veronese at Verona. To accept literally the youthful judgment of Milton and his imitators is to condemn sentiments and practices which are in universal vogue among civilised peoples. It is to deny to the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey a rational title to existence.

To commemorate a great man by a statue in a public place in the central sphere of his influence is, indeed, a custom inseparable from civilised life. The theoretic moralist's reminder that monuments of human greatness sooner or later come to dust is a doctrine too discouraging of all human effort to exert much practical effect. Monuments are, in the eyes of the intelligent, tributes for services rendered to posterity by great men. But incidentally they have an educational value. They help to fix the attention of the thoughtless on facts which may, in the absence of outward symbols, escape notice. They may act as incentives to thought. They may convert the thoughtless into the thoughtful. Wide as are the ranks of Shakespeare's readers, they are not, in England at any rate, incapable of extension; and, whatever is likely to call the attention of those who are as yet outside the pale of knowledge of Shakespeare to what lies within it, deserves respectful consideration.

It is never inconsistent with a nation's dignity for it to give conspicuous expression of gratitude to its benefactors, among whom great writers take first rank. Monuments of fitting character give that conspicuous expression. Bacon, the most enlightened of English thinkers, argued, within a few years of Shakespeare's death, that no self-respecting people could safely omit to erect statues of those who had contributed to the genuine advance of their knowledge or prestige. The visitors to Bacon's imaginary island of New Atlantis saw statues erected at the public expense in memory of all who had won great distinction in the arts or sciences. The richness of the memorial varied according to the value of the achievement. "These statues," the observer noted, "are some of brass, some of marble and touchstone, some of cedar and other special woods, gilt and adorned, some of iron, some of silver, some of gold." No other external recognition of great intellectual service was deemed, in Bacon's Utopia, of equal appropriateness. Bacon's mature judgment deserves greater regard than the splendid imagery of Milton's budding muse.

VIII

In order to satisfy the commemorative instinct in a people, it is necessary, as Bacon pointed out, strictly to adapt the means to the end. The essential object of a national monument to a great man is to pay tribute to his greatness, to express his fellow-men's sense of his service. No blunder could be graver than to confuse the issue by seeking to make the commemoration serve any secondary or collateral purpose. It may be very useful to erect hospitals or schools. It may help in the dissemination of knowledge and appreciation of Shakespearean drama for the public to endow a theatre, which should be devoted to the performance of Shakespeare's plays. The public interest calls loudly for a playhouse that shall be under public control. Promoters of such a commendable endeavour might find their labours facilitated by associating their project with Shakespeare's name--with the proposed commemoration of Shakespeare. But the true aim of the commemoration will be frustrated if it be linked with any purpose of utility, however commendable, with anything beyond a symbolisation of Shakespeare's mighty genius and influence. To attempt aught else is "wrenching the true cause the false way." A worthy memorial to Shakespeare will not satisfy the just working of the commemorative instinct, unless it take the sculpturesque and monumental shape which the great tradition of antiquity has sanctioned. A monument to Shakespeare should be a monument and nothing besides.

Bacon's doctrine that the greater the achievement that is commemorated the richer must be the outward symbol, implies that a memorial to Shakespeare must be a work of art of the loftiest merit conceivable. Unless those who promote the movement concentrate their energies on an object of beauty, unless they free the movement of all suspicion that the satisfaction of the commemorative instinct is to be a secondary and not the primary aim, unless they resolve that the Shakespeare memorial in London is to be a monument pure and simple, and one as perfect as art can make it, then the effort is undeserving of national support.

IX

This conclusion suggests the inevitable objection that sculpture in England is not in a condition favourable to the execution of a great piece of monumental art. Past experience in London does not make one very sanguine that it is possible to realise in statuary a worthy conception of a Shakespearean memorial. The various stages through which recent efforts to promote sculptured memorials in London have passed suggest the mock turtle's definition in _Alice in Wonderland_ of the four branches of arithmetic--Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. Save the old statue of James the Second, at Whitehall, and the new statue of Oliver Cromwell, which stands at a disadvantage on its present site beneath Westminster Hall, there is scarcely a sculptured portrait in the public places of London which is not

A fixèd figure for the time of scorn To point his slow unmoving finger at.

London does not lack statues of men of letters. There are statues of Burns and John Stuart Mill on the Thames Embankment, of Byron in Hamilton Place, and of Carlyle on Chelsea Embankment. But all convey an impression of insignificance, and thereby fail to satisfy the nation's commemorative instinct.

The taste of the British nation needs rigorous control when it seeks to pay tribute to benefactors by means of sculptured monuments. During the last forty years a vast addition has been made throughout Great Britain--with most depressing effect--to the number of sculptured memorials in the open air. The people has certainly shown far too enthusiastic and too inconsiderate a liberality in commemorating by means of sculptured monuments the virtues of Prince Albert and the noble character and career of the late Queen Victoria. The deduction to be drawn from the numberless statues of Queen Victoria and her consort is not exhilarating. British taste never showed itself to worse effect. The general impression produced by the most ambitious of all these memorials, the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, is especially deplorable. The gilt figure of the Prince seems to defy every principle that fine art should respect. The endeavour to produce imposing effect by dint of hugeness is, in all but inspired hands, certain to issue in ugliness.

It would, however, be a mistake to take too gloomy a view of the situation. The prospect may easily be painted in too dismal colours. It is a commonplace with foreign historians of art to assert that English sculpture ceased to flourish when the building of the old Gothic cathedrals came to an end. But Stevens's monument of the Duke of Wellington in St Paul's Cathedral, despite the imperfect execution of the sculptor's design, shows that the monumental art of England has proved itself, at a recent date, capable of realising a great commemorative conception. There are signs, too, that at least three living sculptors might in favourable conditions prove worthy competitors of Stevens. At least one literary memorial in the British Isles, the Scott monument in Edinburgh, which cost no more than £16,000, satisfies a nation's commemorative aspiration. There the natural environment and an architectural setting of impressive design reinforce the effect of sculpture. The whole typifies with fitting dignity the admiring affection which gathers about Scott's name. This successful realisation of a commemorative aim--not wholly dissimilar from that which should inspire a Shakespeare memorial--must check forebodings of despair.

There are obviously greater difficulties in erecting a monument to Shakespeare in London than in erecting a monument to Scott in Edinburgh. There is no site in London that will compare with the gardens of Princes Street in Edinburgh. It is essential that a Shakespeare memorial should occupy the best site that London can offer. Ideally the best site for any great monument is the summit of a gently rising eminence, with a roadway directly approaching it and circling round it. In 1864, when the question of a fit site for a Shakespeare memorial in London was warmly debated, a too ambitious scheme recommended the formation of an avenue on the model of the Champs-Elysées from the top of Portland Place across Primrose Hill; and at the end of the avenue, on the summit of Primrose Hill, at an elevation of 207 feet above the river Thames, the Shakespeare monument was to stand. This was and is an impracticable proposal. The site which in 1864 received the largest measure of approbation was a spot in the Green Park, near Piccadilly. A third suggestion of the same date was the bank of the river Thames, which was then called Thames-way, but was on the point of conversion into the Thames Embankment. Recent reconstruction of Central London--of the district north of the Strand--by the London County Council now widens the field of choice. There is much to be said for a site within the centre of London life. But an elevated monumental structure on the banks of the Thames seems to meet at the moment with the widest approval. In any case, no site that is mean or cramped would be permissible if the essential needs of the situation are to be met.

A monument that should be sufficiently imposing would need an architectural framework. But the figure of the poet must occupy the foremost place in the design. Herein lies another embarrassment. It is difficult to determine which of the extant portraits the sculptor ought to follow. The bust in Stratford Church, the print in the First Folio, and possibly the Chandos painting in the National Portrait Gallery, are honest efforts to present a faithful likeness. But they are crudely executed, and are posthumous sketches largely depending on the artist's memory. The sculptor would be compelled to work in the spirit of the historian, who recreates a past event from the indication given him by an illiterate or fragmentary chronicle or inscription. He would be bound to endow with artistic life those features in which the authentic portraits agree, but the highest effort of the imagination would be needed to create an impression of artistic truth.

The success of a Shakespeare memorial will ultimately depend on the pecuniary support that the public accord it. But in the initial stage of the movement all rests on the discovery of a sculptor capable of realising the significance of a national commemoration of the greatest of the nation's, or indeed of the worlds, heroes. It would be well to settle satisfactorily the question of such an artist's existence before anything else. The first step that any organising committee of a Shakespeare memorial should therefore take, in my view, would be to invite sculptors of every country to propose a design. The monument should be the best that artistic genius could contrive--the artistic genius of the world. There may be better sculptors abroad than at home. The universality of the appeal which Shakespeare's achievement makes, justifies a competition among artists of every race or nationality.

The crucial decision as to whether the capacity to execute the monument is available, should be entrusted to a committee of taste, to a committee of liberal-minded connoisseurs who command general confidence. If this jury decide by their verdict that the present conditions of art permit the production of a great memorial of Shakespeare on just principles, then a strenuous appeal for funds may be inaugurated with likelihood of success. It is hopeless to reverse these methods of procedure. If funds are first invited before rational doubts as to the possibility of a proper application of them are dispelled, it is improbable that the response will be satisfactory or that the issue of the movement of 1905 will differ from that of 1821 or 1864.

In 1864 Victor Hugo expressed the opinion that the expenses of a Shakespeare memorial in London ought to be defrayed by the British Government. There is small likelihood of assistance from that source. Individual effort can alone be relied upon; and it is doubtful if it be desirable to seek official aid. A great national memorial of Shakespeare in London, if it come into being at all on the lines which would alone justify its existence, ought to embody individual enthusiasm, ought to express with fitting dignity the personal sense of indebtedness and admiration which fills the hearts of his fellow-men.

INDEX

Acting, importance of, in Shakespearean drama, 13; evil effects of long runs, 14; Shakespeare on, 45, 47

Actor-manager, his merits and defects, 125, 126

Actors, training of, 139; English, in France, 203. (See also Benson, Mr F.R., and Boys.)

Æschylus, statue of, 233

Albert, Prince (Consort), and Shakespeare's birthplace, 222; statues of, 237

Alleyn, Edward, 191, 194

_Annual Register_ of 1770, 194

Aristotle, Shakespeare's mention of, 144, 145; Bacon's study of, 145

Arnold, Matthew, on Shakespeare, 29

Astronomy, Shakespeare on, 146

Athens, statuary at, 233

Aubrey, John, his gossip about Shakespeare, 67, 68

Austria, subsidised theatres in, 131, 134

Bacon, Anthony, in France, 203

Bacon, Francis, philosophical method of, 143; on memorial monuments in _New Atlantis_, 234, 235

Bacon, Sir Nicholas, his fame in France, 204

Badger, Mr Richard, proposal for a Shakespeare monument, 219

Bannister, John, his music for _The Tempest_, 107

Barker, Mr Granville, as Richard II., 13 _n._

Basse, William, his tribute to Shakespeare, 50

Beeston, Christopher, Elizabethan actor, 64

Beeston, William the first, patron of Nash, 64

Beeston, William the second, his theatrical career, 65, 66; his gossip about Shakespeare, 65; his conversation, 66; Aubrey's account of, 67

Beethoven, statue of, 233

Beljame, Alexandre, on English literature, 201; death of, 201

Benson, Mr F.R., his company of actors, 111; his principles, 112 _seq._; list of Shakespeare plays produced by, 114 _n._; his production of _Hamlet_ unabridged, 116-118; his training of actors, 119; his services to Shakespeare, 121; his pupils on the London stage, 130

Berkenhout, John, 195

Betterton, Thomas, at Stratford-on-Avon, 73; contributes to Rowe's biography, 73, 76; his rendering of Hamlet, 101, 102

Biography, art of, in England, 51

Bishop, Sir William, 76

Bishopsgate (London), Shakespeare at, 226, 227

Blackfriars, Shakespeare's house at, 227

Boileau, and English literature, 199

Bolingbroke, in _Richard II._, patriotism of, 173

Bowman, John, actor, 69; at Stratford-on-Avon, 76

Boys in women's parts in Elizabethan theatres, 19, 41; abandonment of the practice, 43; superseded by women, 88, 89

Buchanan, George, his plays, 204

Burbage, Richard, Shakespeare's friend and fellow-actor, 33

Burns, Mr John, 131

Burns, Robert, French study of, 201; monument to, 233, 237

Byron, Lord, on Petrarch at Arquà, 225; statue of, 237

Calderon, 136; monument to, 233

Calvert, Charles A., his Shakespearean productions at Manchester, 12 _n._

Camoens, monument to, 233

Capital and the literary drama, 124, 126, 127, 128

Carlyle, Thomas, statue of, 237

_Cataline's Conspiracy_, by Ben Jonson, 30, 31

Ceremony, Shakespeare on, 157, 158

Chantrey, Sir Francis, and commemoration of Shakespeare, 216

Charlecote, Shakespeare's escapade at, 76

Chaucer, Geoffrey, French influence on, 199

Clarendon, Lord, on Shakespeare, 78

Cockpit theatre, Drury Lane, 65, 86

Cockpit theatre, Whitehall, 87 and _n._

Coleman, John, on the subsidised theatre, 132

Coleridge S.T., and commemoration of Shakespeare, 216

Congreve, William, 91

Coriolanus and the patriotic instinct, 178, 179

Cromwell, Oliver, statue of, 237

Davenant, Robert, Sir William's brother, 70

D'Avenant, Sir William: theatrical manager, 67; his youth at Oxford, 69; relations in boyhood with Shakespeare, 70; elegy on Shakespeare, 71; champion of Shakespeare's fame, 71; his story of Shakespeare and Southampton, 72; his influence on Betterton, 72; manager of the Duke's Company, 87 _n._; as dramatist, 91; his adaptations of Shakespeare, 103-105, 106 _n._, 108

Deschamps, Eustace, on Chaucer, 199

Desportes, Philippe, and Elizabethan poetry, 199

D'Israeli, Isaac, on Steevens's forgery, 195

Downs, John, prompter and stage annalist, 63

Dramatic societies in England, 129

Dress, Shakespeare on extravagant, 185

Drunkenness, Shakespeare on, 185

Dryden, John, on William Beeston, 66; as dramatist, 91; his share in the adaptation of _The Tempest_, 105

Du Bellay, Joachim, and Elizabethan poetry, 199

Ducis, Jean François, his translation of Shakespeare, 207, 208

Dugdale, Sir William, 74

Dumas _père_, on Shakespeare, 206; his translation of _Hamlet_, 209-211

Dyce, Alexander, on Steevens's forgery, 196

Elizabeth, Queen, summons Shakespeare to Greenwich, 31

Elizabethan Stage Society, 13 _n._

England, Shakespeare on history of, 180

Ennius on poetic fame, 232

Etherege, Sir George, 91

Eton College, debate about Shakespeare at, 78

Euripides, statue of, 233

Evelyn, John, on _Hamlet_, 90

Farquhar, George, 91

Faulconbridge (in _King John_), patriotism of, 174

Fletcher, John, his _Custom of the Country_, 92, 93; its obscenity, 93

Folio, the First [of Shakespeare's plays], actors' co-operation in, 59; list of actors in, 61; rejected by Pepys, 94

Folio, the Second [of Shakespeare's plays], in France, 205

Folio, the Third [of Shakespeare's plays], purchased by Pepys, 94

Folio, the Fourth [of Shakespeare's plays], in Pepysian library, 94

France, subsidised theatres in, 131, 134; Shakespeare in, 198 _seq._; English actors in, 203

Freedom of the will, Shakespeare on, 166

Fuller, Thomas, his _Worthies of England_, 52; notice of Shakespeare, 52

Garrick, David, his stage costume, 18

_Gentleman's Magazine_ of 1801, 195

George IV. and commemoration of Shakespeare, 215

German drama, 129, 135, 136

Germany, subsidised theatres in, 131, 134

Goethe, 136; monument to, 233

Greene, Robert, French translation of romance by, 199

Grendon, tradition of Shakespeare at, 77

"Grenovicus" contributes to _Gentleman's Magazine_, 195

Hales, John, of Eton, 78

Hall, Bishop Joseph, French translation of works by, 199

Hart, Charles, Shakespeare's grand-nephew, actor, 59, 68

Hauptmann, Gerhart, 135

Henry V., on kingly ceremony, 157; patriotism of, 175, 182

Heywood, Thomas, projected _Lives of the Poets_, 54 _n._; affection for Shakespeare, 65; his _Apology for Actors_, 65

History plays of Shakespeare, character of, 180

Hobbes, Thomas, in France, 200

Howe, Josias, on a Shakespeare tradition, 77

Hugo, Victor, on Shakespeare, 206; on Shakespeare memorial, 241

Imagination in the audience, 22, 47, 48

Ingres, Jean, his painting of Shakespeare, 206

Irving, Sir Henry, experience of Shakespearean spectacle, 10; and the literary drama, 123; and the municipal theatre, 132; and French drama, 200

Irving, Washington, and commemoration of Shakespeare, 216

James I., his alleged letter to Shakespeare, 72

James II., statue of, 236

John of Gaunt in _Richard II._, dying speech of, 115-116, 181

Johnson, Dr, on false patriots, 171

Jonson, Ben, testimony to Shakespeare's popularity, 29; his classical tragedies compared with Shakespeare's, 30; his elegy on Shakespeare, 50, 232; his dialectical powers contrasted with Shakespeare's, 53; on the players' praise of Shakespeare, 60; his son, Shakespeare's godson, 61; Beeston's talk of, 67; popularity of his plays at Restoration, 91, 92

Jusserand, Jules, on English literature, 202; his _Shakespeare in France_, 203

Kean, Charles, experience of Shakespearean spectacle, 9; Macready's criticism of, 14

Kemp, William, Elizabethan comedian, 33

Killigrew, Tom, manager of the King's Company, 87 _n._

Kingship, Shakespeare on, 155-160, 180-182

Kirkman, Francis, his account of William Beeston the second, 66

Lacy, John, actor, 67; acquaintance with Ben Jonson, 68; adaptation of _The Taming of the Shrew_, 108

Lawrence, Sir Thomas, and commemoration of Shakespeare, 216

Lessing, 136

Lincoln's Inn Fields (Portugal Row), Theatre at, 86, 87 and _n._

Literary drama, on the modern stage, 123; antagonism of capital to, 126-128

_Lives of the Poets_ of the seventeenth century, 54

Locke, John, in France, 200

Locke, Matthew, Shakespearean music of, 105, 108

Logic, Shakespeare on, 146

London, Shakespeare's association with, 226 _seq._; statues in, 236, 237; proposed sites for Shakespeare monument in, 239

London County Council, and the theatre, 130, 131; and subsidised enlightenment, 133; and Shakespeare monument, 219

London Trades Council and the theatre, 132

Lowin, John, original actor in Shakespeare's plays, 61; coached by Shakespeare in part of _Hamlet_, 63, 71, 72

Lycurgus, Attic orator, 233

Macready, W.C., his criticism of spectacle, 14

Marlowe, Christopher, Shakespeare's senior by two months, 37, 193

Massinger, Philip, his _Bondman_, 92, 93

Mathews, Charles, on a monument of Shakespeare, 214

Mercy, Shakespeare on, 152, 153

Metaphysics, Shakespeare on, 146-148

Mill, John Stuart, statue of, 237

Milton, his elegy on Shakespeare, 51, 231

Molière, accepted methods of producing his plays, 16, 18, 136

Montaigne, Michel de, and Anthony Bacon, 203; his essays in English, 204

Moore, Thomas, and commemoration of Shakespeare, 216

More, Sir Thomas, his _Utopia_ in France, 204

Municipal theatre, its justification, 122; in Europe, 134

Musset, Alfred de, on Shakespeare, 206

Nash, John, and commemoration of Shakespeare, 216

Nash, Thomas, 64

Nodier, Charles, his _Pensées de Shakespeare_, 211-213

Norwegian drama, 129

Obedience, the duty of, 161

Oldys, William, antiquary, 68, 69

Opera in England, 131

Oxford, the Crown Inn at, 69; Shakespeare at, 70; visitors from, to Stratford, 75-77

Patriotism, Shakespeare on, 170 _seq._

Peele, George, alleged letter of, 189 _seq._

Pepys, Samuel, his play-going experience, 81-86; on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, 91-93; on Shakespeare, 94 _seq._; his attitude to poetic drama, 95, 96; his musical setting of "To be or not to be," 100

Petrarch, his tomb at Arquà, 225

Phelps, Samuel, at Sadler's Wells, 11; list of plays produced by, 11, 114 _n._; his mode of producing Shakespeare, 12; on a State theatre in London, 120; on public control of theatres, 140, 141

Philosophy, Shakespeare's attitude to, 143 _seq._

Pindar on poetic fame, 232

Platter, Thomas, journal of his London visit (1599), 38

Playhouses in London, Blackfriars, 227; Drury Lane, 86, 87 and _n._; "The Globe," 38, 227; "The Red Bull," 86; Sadler's Wells, 11; Salisbury Court, Whitefriars, 66, 86; "The Theatre" at Shoreditch, 37, 227

Pope, Alexander, and French literature, 199; on the Shakespeare cenotaph, 216

Richardson, Samuel, in France, 200

Robinson, Richard, actor, 68

Ronsard, Pierre de, and Elizabethan poetry, 199; in England, 203

Rousseau, J.J., and English literature, 200

Rowe, Nicholas, Shakespeare's first formal biographer, 54; his acknowledgment to Betterton, 73; his biography of Shakespeare, 79, 80

Royal ceremony, irony of, 158

Russell, Lord John, on patriotism, 172

Sadler's Wells Theatre, 11

Sand, George, on Shakespeare, 206

Sardou, Victorien, work of, 200

Scenery, its purpose, 5; uselessness of realism, 23

Schiller, on the German stage, 136; monument to, 233

Scott, Sir Walter, and commemoration of Shakespeare, 216, 232; Edinburgh monument of, 238

Sedley, Sir Charles, 91

Seneca on mercy, 153 _n._

Shadwell, Thomas, 67, adaptation of _The Tempest_, 106 _n._

Shakespeare, Edmund, actor, 227

Shakespeare, Gilbert, actor, 68

Shakespeare, William, his creation of the Ghost in _Hamlet_, 27; contemporary popularity of, 29; at Court, 31; early London career, 32; advice to the actor, 45; his modest estimate of the actor's powers, 47; elegies on death of, 49; Fuller's notice of, 52; early biographies of, 54; oral tradition of, in seventeenth century, 55; similarity of experience with that of contemporary dramatists and actors, 57; Elizabethan players' commendation of, 60; resentment with a publisher, 65; William Beeston's reminiscences of, 67; Stratford gossip about, 74-76; present state of biographical knowledge, 81; his attitude to philosophy, 143 _seq._; his intuition, 149-150; concealment of his personality, 150; his private sentiments, 151; on mercy, 152-153; on rulers of states, 154; on divine right of kings, 159; on obedience, 161; on social order, 162-163; on freedom of the will, 166; on women's will, 168; his humour and optimism, 169; on patriotism, 170 _seq._; on English history, 180; on social foibles, 184-186; commemoration of, in London, 214 _seq._; portraits of, 239

Shakespearean drama, attitude of students and actors to, 1; costliness of modern production, 2; the simple method and the public, 8; Charles Kean's spectacular method, 9; Irving's method, 10; plays produced by Phelps, 11; reliance on the actor, 13; in Vienna, 17; advantage of its performance constantly and in variety, 23; importance of minor rôles of, 115; its ethical significance, 164, 165; in France, 198 _seq._; and British prestige, 229

----, (separate plays):-- _Antony and Cleopatra_ in Vienna, 17 _Coriolanus_, political significance of, 164; and patriotism, 178 _Cymbeline_ (III. i., 16-22), on patriotism, 183 _Hamlet_, Shakespeare's performance of the Ghost, 27; early popularity of the play, 29; Pepys's criticism of, 95, 99-101; the stage abridgment contrasted with the full text, 117-119 _Henry IV._ (Part I.), Pepys's criticism of, 97, 98 _Henry V._, meaning of first chorus, 19, 46; quoted, 157, 158, 162 _Julius Cæsar_, preferred by contemporary playgoers to Jonson's _Cataline_, 31; political significance of, 164 _Lear, King_, performed at Elizabeth's Court, 36; quarto of, 36 _Love's Labour's Lost_, performed at Court, 34; title-page of the quarto, 35 _Macbeth_, Pepys's criticism of, 104-105; quoted, 156 _Measure for Measure_, ethics of, 164 _Merry Wives of Windsor, The_, title-page of the quarto, 36; Pepys's criticism of, 97 _Midsummer Night's Dream, A_, Pepys's criticism of, 96 _Othello_, Pepys's criticism of, 95, 98, 99 _Richard II._, purport of John of Gaunt's dying speech, 115-116, 181 _Romeo and Juliet_, Pepys's criticism of, 96 _Tempest, The_, Pepys's criticism of, 105-108; spectacular production of, at Restoration, 107 _Troilus and Cressida_ (II. ii., 166), on Aristotle, 144, 145; (I. iii., 101-124), on social equilibrium, 163 _Twelfth Night_, Pepys's criticism of, 96

Sheffield, John, Earl of Mulgrave and Duke of Buckinghamshire, 72

Shoreditch, the theatre in, 227

Sidney, Sir Philip, French translations of _Arcadia_, 199, 204

Somerset, the "proud" Duke of, on Shakespeare, 79

Sophocles, statue of, 233

Southampton, Earl of, and Shakespeare, 72

Southwark, the Globe Theatre at, 227

Spenser, Edmund, Beeston's gossip about, 67

Steevens, George, character of, 191; a forged letter by, 192, 193

Sterne, Laurence, in France, 200

Stevenson, R.L., his imaginary discovery of lost works by Shakespeare, 25

Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's tomb at, 50; Betterton at, 73; visitors from Oxford to, 75, 76, 77; Shakespeare tradition at, 75, 76; Shakespeare memorials at, 218; destruction of New Place, 221; the monumental committee of, 221; sale of Shakespeare's birthplace, 222; purchase of New Place site, 223; the Birthplace Trust, 223, 224

Suckling, Sir John, his love for Shakespeare, 71

Sudermann, Hermann, 135

Tate, Nahum, his adaptations of Shakespeare, 103, 104

Theatres in Elizabethan London, 36; seating arrangements, 39; prices of admission, 39; the scenery, 40; the costumes, 41; contrast between their methods of production and those of later date, 44

Theatres, at Restoration, 86; characteristics of, 87-90. (See also Playhouses.)

_Theatrical Review_ of 1763, 190

Theatrical spectacle in Shakespearean drama, effect of excess, 3; its want of logic, 4; its costliness, 7; at the Restoration, 89, 109; at the present day, 110

Thomson, James, French study of, 201

Tuke, Sir Samuel, his _Adventures of Five Hours_, 98-99

Taylor, Joseph, original actor in Shakespeare's plays, 61; coached by Shakespeare in part of Henry VIII., 63, 71, 72

Vanbrugh, Sir John, 91

Veronese, Paolo, statue of, 233

Victoria, Queen, and Stratford-on-Avon, 222; statues of, 237

Vienna, production of _Antony and Cleopatra_ at the Burg-Theater, 17; types of subsidised theatres at, 136, 138; conservatoire of actors at, 139

Voltaire on Shakespeare, 205, 206

War, popular view of, 177

Ward, John, vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, 74; his _Diary_, 74

Warner, Mrs, at Sadler's Wells, 11

Wellington, Duke of, monument to, 238

Westminster Abbey, Shakespeare's exclusion from, 50; his cenotaph in, 215-216

Will, freedom of, 166

Women, Shakespeare's views on, 168

Wordsworth, William, French study of, 201

Wycherley, William, 91

Young, Edward, French study of, 201