Part 5

Beside these national histories, some few incidents from ancient histories, or the annals of other nations, took their place, commonly disfigured by the mixture of fabulous events. But neither authors nor public felt the slightest anxiety with regard to their origin and nature. They were invariably overloaded with those fantastic details, and those forms borrowed from the common habits of life, with which children so often decorate the objects which they are obliged to picture to themselves by the aid of their imagination alone. Thus Tamburlaine appeared in his chariot drawn by the kings whom he had conquered, and complaining bitterly of the slow pace and miserable appearance of his team. On the other hand, Vice, the usual buffoon of dramatic compositions, performed, under the name of Ambidexter, the principal part in Preston's tragedy of "Cambyses," which was thus converted into a Morality which would have been intolerably tedious if the spectators had not had the gratification of seeing a prevaricating judge flayed alive upon the stage, by means of "a false skin," as we are duly informed by the author. The performance, though almost entirely deficient in decorations and changes of scenery, was animated by material movement, and by the representation of sensible objects. When tragedies were performed, the stage was hung with black; and in an inventory of the properties of a troop of comedies, we find enumerated, "the Moor's limbs, four Turks' heads, old Mahomet's head, one wheel and frame in the siege of London, one great horse with his legs, one dragon, one rock, one cage, one tomb, and one hell's mouth." [Footnote 13] This is a curious specimen of the means of interest which it was then thought necessary to employ upon the stage.

[Footnote 13: Malone's Shakspeare, vol. iii., p. 309-313 ed. 1821.]

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And yet, at this period, Shakspeare had already appeared! and, before Shakspeare's advent, the stage had constituted, not only the chief gratification of the multitude, but the favorite amusement of the most distinguished men! Lord Southampton went to the theatre every day. As early as 1570, one, and probably two, regular theatres existed in London. In 1583, a short time after the temporary victory gained by the Puritans over the performance of stage-plays in that city, there were eight troops of actors in London, each of whom performed three times a week. In 1592, that is, eight years before the time when Hardy at length obtained permission to open a theatre in Paris, which had previously been impossible on account of the useless privilege possessed by the "Brethren of the Passion," an English pamphleteer complained most indignantly of "some shallow-brained censurers," who had dared "mightily to oppugn" the performance of plays, which, he says, are frequented by all "men that are their own masters--as gentlemen of the Court, the Inns of Court, and the number of captains and soldiers about London." [Footnote 14] Finally, in 1596, so vast a multitude of persons went by water to the theatres, which were nearly all situated on the banks of the Thames, that it became necessary considerably to augment the number of boatmen.

[Footnote 14: See Nash, "Pierce Penniless's Supplication to the Devil," p. 59, reprinted by the Shakspeare Society in 1842.]

A taste so universal and so eager could not long remain satisfied with coarse and insipid productions; a pleasure which is so ardently sought after by the human mind, calls for all the efforts and all the power of human genius, This national movement now stood in need only of a man of genius, capable of receiving its impulse, and raising the public to the highest regions of art. By what stimulus was Shakspeare prompted to undertake this glorious task? What circumstance revealed to him his mission? What sudden light illumined his genius? {59} These questions we can not answer. Just as a beacon shines in the nighttime without disclosing to our view the prop by which it is supported, so Shakspeare's mind appears to us, in his works, in isolation, as it were, from his person. Scarcely, throughout the long series of the poet's successes, can we discern any traces of the man, and we possess no information whatever regarding those early times of which he alone was able to give us an account. As an actor, it does not appear that he distinguished himself above his fellows. The poet is rarely adapted for action; his strength lies beyond the world of reality, and he attains his lofty elevation only because he does not employ his powers in bearing the burdens of earth. Shakspeare's commentators will not consent to deny him any of those successes to which he could possibly lay claim, and the excellent advice which Hamlet gives to the actors at the court of Denmark has been quoted in support of a theory that Shakspeare must have executed marvelously well that which he so thoroughly understood. But Shakspeare showed equal acquaintance with the characters of great kings, mighty warriors, and consummate villains, and yet no one would be likely to conclude from this that he was capable of being a Richard the Third or an Iago. Fortunately, we have reason to believe that applause, which was then so easily obtained, was not bestowed in a sufficient degree to tempt an ambition which the character of the young poet would have rendered it too easy for him to satisfy; and Rowe, his first historian, informs us that his dramatic merits "soon distinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer."

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Years nevertheless elapsed before Shakspeare made his appearance on the stage as an author. He arrived in London in 1584, and is not known to have engaged in any employment unconnected with the theatre during his residence in the metropolis; but "Pericles," his first work, according to Dryden, though many of his other critics and admirers have rejected it as spurious, did not appear until 1590. How was it possible that, amid the novel scenes that surrounded him, his active and fertile mind, whose rapidity, according to his contemporaries, "equaled that of his pen," could have remained for six years without producing any thing? In 1593, he published his poem of "Venus and Adonis," which he dedicated to Lord Southampton as "the first heir of his invention;" and yet, during the two preceding years, two dramas which are now ascribed to him had achieved success upon the stage. The composition of the poem may have preceded them, although the dedication was written subsequently to their production; but if the "Venus and Adonis" is anterior to all his dramas, we must come to the conclusion that, in the midst of his theatrical life, Shakspeare's eminently dramatic genius was able to engage in other labors, and that his first productions were not intended for the stage. A more probable supposition is that Shakspeare spent his labor, at first, upon works which were not his own, and which his genius, still in its novitiate, has been unable to rescue from oblivion. Dramatic productions, at that time, were less the property of the author who had conceived them than of the actors who had received them. This is always the case when theatres begin to be established; the construction of a building and the expenses of a performance are far greater risks to run than the composition of a drama. To the founder of the theatre alone is dramatic art indebted, at its origin, for that popular concourse which establishes its existence, and which the talent of the poet could never have drawn together without his assistance. {61} When Hardy founded his theatre at Paris, each troop of actors had its poet, who was paid a regular salary for the composition of plays, just in the same way as the chaplain of the Earl of Northumberland. In the time of Shakspeare, the English stage had made much greater progress, and already enjoyed the facility of selection and the advantages of competition. The poet no longer disposed of his labor beforehand, but he sold it when completed; and the publication of a piece, for permission to perform which an author had been paid, was regarded, if not as a robbery, at least as a want of delicacy which he found it difficult to defend or excuse. While dramatic property was in this state, the share which the self-love of an author might claim in it was held in very low account the success of a work which he had sold did not belong to him, and its literary merit became, in the hands of the actors, a property which they turned to account by all the improvements which their experience could suggest. Transported suddenly into the midst of that moving picture of human vicissitudes which even the paltriest dramatic productions then heaped upon the stage, the imagination of Shakspeare doubtless beheld new fields opening to its view. What interest, what truthfulness might he not infuse into the store of facts presented to him with such coarse baldness! What pathetic effects might he not educe from all this theatrical parade! The matter was before him, waiting for spirit and life. Why had not Shakspeare attempted to communicate them to it? However confused and incomplete his first views may have been, they were rays of light arising to disperse the darkness and disorder of chaos. Now a superior man possesses the power of making the light which illumines his own eyes evident to the eyes of others. {62} Shakspeare's comrades doubtless soon perceived what new successes he might obtain for them by remodeling the uncouth works which composed their dramatic stock; and a few brilliant touches imparted to a ground-work which he had not painted--a few pathetic or terrible scenes intercalated in an action which he had not directed--and the art of turning to account a plan which he had not conceived, were, in all probability, his earliest labors, and his first presages of glory. In 1592, a time at which we can scarcely be certain that a single original and complete work had issued from his pen, a jealous and discontented author, whose compositions he had probably improved too greatly, speaks of him, in the fantastic style of the time, as an "upstart crow, beautified with our feathers; an absolute _Johannes Factotum_, who is, in his own conceit, the only Shakescene in the country." [Footnote 15]

[Footnote 15: Greene's "Groatsworth of Wit," published in 1592.]

It was, we are inclined to believe, while engaged in these labors, more conformable to the necessities of his position than to the freedom of his genius, that Shakspeare sought to recreate his mind by the composition of his "Venus and Adonis." Perhaps even the idea of this work was not then entirely new to him; for several sonnets, relating to the same subject, occur in a volume of poems published in 1596, under Shakspeare's name, and the title of which, "The Passionate Pilgrim," is expressive of the condition of a man wandering, in affliction, far from his native land. The amusement of a few melancholy hours, from which the age and character of the poet had not availed to preserve him at his entrance upon a painful or uncertain destiny--these little works are doubtless the first productions which Shakspeare's poetic genius allowed him to avow; and several of them, as well as the poem of "Venus and Adonis," need to be excused, it must be confessed, by the effervescence of a youth too much addicted to dreams of pleasure not to attempt to reproduce them in all their forms. {63} In "Venus and Adonis," the poet, absolutely carried away by the voluptuous power of his subject, seems entirely to have lost sight of its mythological wealth. Venus, stripped of the prestige of divinity, is nothing but a beautiful courtesan, endeavoring unsuccessfully, by all the prayers, tears, and artifices of love, to stimulate the languid desires of a cold and disdainful youth. Hence arises a monotony which is not redeemed by the simple gracefulness and poetic merit of many passages, and which is augmented by the division of the poem into stanzas of six lines, the last two of which almost invariably present a _jeu d'esprit_. But a metre singularly free from irregularities, a cadence full of harmony, and a versification which had never before been equaled in England, announced the "honey-tongued poet," and the poem of "Lucrece" appeared soon afterward to complete those epic productions which for some time sufficed to maintain his glory.

After having, in "Venus and Adonis," employed the most lascivious colors to depict the pangs of unsatisfied desire, Shakspeare has described, in "The Rape of Lucrece," with the chastest pen, and by way of reparation, as it were, the progress and triumph of criminal lust. The refinement of the ideas, the affectation of the style, and the merits of the versification, are the same in both works: the poetry in the second is less brilliant, but more emphatic, and abounds less in graceful images than in lofty thoughts; but we can already discern indications of a profound acquaintance with the feelings of man, and great talent in developing them in a dramatic form, by means of the slightest circumstances of life. {64} Thus Lucrece, weighed down by a sense of her shame, after a night of despair, summons a young slave at dawn of day, to dispatch him to the camp with a letter to call her husband home; the slave, being of a timid and simple character, blushes on appearing in the presence of his mistress; but Lucrece, filled with the consciousness of her dishonor, imagines that he blushes at her shame; and, under the influence of the idea that her secret is discovered, she stands trembling and confused before her slave.

One detail in this poem seems to indicate the epoch at which it was written. Lucrece, to while away her grief, stops to contemplate a picture of the siege of Troy; and, in describing it, the poet complacently refers to the effects of perspective:

"The scalps of many, almost hid behind, To jump up higher seem'd to mock the mind."

This is the observation of a man very recently struck with the wonders of art, and a symptom of that poetic surprise which the sight of unknown objects awakens in an imagination capable of being moved thereby. Perhaps we may conclude, from this circumstance, that the poem of "Lucrece" was composed during the early part of Shakspeare's residence in London.

But whatever may be the date of these two poems, their place among Shakspeare's works is at a period far more remote from us than any of those which filled up his dramatic career. In this career he marched forward, and drew his age after him; and his weakest essays in dramatic poetry are indicative of the prodigious power which he displayed in his last works. Shakspeare's true history belongs to the stage alone; after having seen it there, we can not seek for it elsewhere; and Shakspeare himself no longer quitted it. {65} His sonnets--fugitive pieces which the poetic and sprightly grace of some lines would not have rescued from oblivion but for the curiosity which attaches to the slightest traces of a celebrated man--may here and there cast a little light on the obscure or doubtful portions of his life; but, in a literary point of view, we have in future to consider him only as a dramatic poet.

I have already stated what was the first employment of his talents in this kind of composition. Great uncertainty has resulted therefrom with regard to the authenticity of some of his works. Shakspeare had a hand in a vast number of dramas; and probably, even in his own time, it would not have been always easy to assign his precise share in them all. For two centuries, criticism has been engaged in determining the boundaries of his true possessions; but facts are wanting for this investigation, and literary judgments have usually been influenced by a desire to strengthen some favorite theory on the subject. It is, therefore, almost impossible, at the present day, to pronounce with certainty upon the authenticity of Shakspeare's doubtful plays. Nevertheless, after having read them, I can not coincide with M. Schlegel--for whose acumen I have the highest respect--in attributing them to him. The baldness which characterizes these pieces, the heap of unexplained incidents and incoherent sentiments which they contain, and their precipitate progress through undeveloped scenes toward events destitute of interest, are unmistakable signs by which, in times still rude, we may recognize fecundity devoid of genius; signs so contrary to the nature of Shakspeare's talent, that I can not even discover in them the defects which may have disfigured his earliest essays. {66} Among the multitude of plays which, by common consent, the latest editors have rejected as being at least doubtful, "Locrine," "Thomas, Lord Cromwell," "The London Prodigal," "The Puritan," and "The Yorkshire Tragedy," scarcely present the slightest indications of having been retouched by any hand superior to that of their original author. "Sir John Oldcastle," which is more interesting, and composed with greater good sense than any of the foregoing, is animated in some scenes by a comic humor akin to that of Shakspeare. But if it be true that genius, even in its lowest abasement, gives forth some luminous rays to betray its presence; if Shakspeare, in particular, bore that distinctive mark which, in one of his sonnets, makes him say, in reference to his writings,

"That every word doth almost tell my name," [Footnote 16]

assuredly he had not to reproach himself with the production of that execrable accumulation of horrors which, under the name of "Titus Andronicus," has been foisted upon the English people as a dramatic work, and in which, Heaven be thanked! there is not a single spark of truth, or scintillation of genius, which can give evidence against him.

[Footnote 16: Sonnet 76, Knight's Library edition, vol. xii., p. 152.]

Of the doubtful plays, "Pericles" is, in my opinion, the only one to which the name of Shakspeare can be attached with any degree of certainty; or at least, it is the only one in which we find evident traces of his co-operation, especially in the scene in which Pericles meets and recognizes his daughter Marina, whom he believed dead. If, during Shakspeare's lifetime, any other man could have combined power and truth in so high a degree in the delineation of the natural feelings, England would then have possessed another poet. {67} Nevertheless, though it contains one fine scene and many scattered beauties, the play is a bad one; it is destitute of reality and art, and is entirely alien to Shakspeare's system: it is interesting only as marking the point from which he started; and it seems to belong to his works as a last monument of that which he overthrew--as a remnant of that anti-dramatic scaffolding for which he was about to substitute the presence and movement of vitality.

The spectacles of barbarous nations always appeal to their sense of vision before they attempt to influence their imagination by the aid of poetry. The taste of the English for those _pageants_, which, during the Middle Ages, constituted the chief attraction of public solemnities throughout Europe, exercised great influence over the stage in England. During the first half of the fifteenth century, the monk Lydgate, when singing the misfortunes of Troy with that liberty of erudition which English literature tolerated to a greater extent than that of any other country, describes a dramatic performance which, he says, took place within the walls of Troy. He describes the poet, "with deadly face all devoid of blood," rehearsing from a pulpit "all the noble deeds that were historical of kings, princes, and worthy emperors." At the same time,

"Amydde the theatre, shrowded in a tent There came out men, gastful of their cheres, Disfygured their faces with vyseres, Playing by signes in the people's sight That the poete songe hath on height."

Lydgate, a monk and poet, equally ready to rhyme a legend or a ballad, to compose verses for a masquerade or to sketch the plan of a religious pantomime, had probably figured in some performance of this kind; and his description certainly gives us an accurate idea of the dramatic exhibitions of his time. {68} When dialogue-poetry had taken possession of the stage, pantomime remained as an ornament and addition to the performance. In most of the plays anterior to Shakspeare, personages of an almost invariably emblematical character appear between the acts, to indicate the subjects of the scenes about to follow. An historical or allegorical personage is introduced to explain these emblems, _moralize_ the piece, that is, to point out the moral truths contained in it. In "Pericles," Gower, a poet of the fourteenth century--celebrated for his "Confessio Amantis," in which he has related, in English verse, the story of Pericles as told by more ancient writers--comes upon the stage to state to the public, not that which is about to happen, but such anterior facts as require to be explained, that the drama may be properly understood. Sometimes his narrative is interrupted and supplemented by the dumb representation of the facts themselves. Gower then explains all that the mute action has not elucidated. He appears not only at the commencement of the play and between the acts, but even during the course of an act, whenever it is found convenient to abridge by narrative some less interesting part of the action, in order to apprise the spectator of a change of place or a lapse of time, and thus to transport his imagination wherever a new scene requires its presence. This was decidedly a step in advance; a useless accessory had become a means of development and of clearness. But Shakspeare speedily rejected this factitious and awkward contrivance as unworthy of his art and ere long he inspired the action with power to explain itself, to make itself understood on appearance, and thus to give dramatic performances that aspect of life and reality which could never be attained by a machinery which thus coarsely displayed its wheel-works to public view. {69} Among Shakspeare's subsequent dramas, "Henry V." and the "Winter's Tale" are the only ones in which the chorus intervenes to relieve the poet in the difficult task of conveying his audience through time and space. The chorus of "Romeo and Juliet," which was retained perhaps as a relic of ancient usage, is only a poetic ornament, quite unconnected with the action of the play. After the production of "Pericles," dumb pageants completely disappeared; and if the three parts of "Henry VI." do not attest, by their power of composition, a close relationship to Shakspeare's system, nothing, at least in their material forms, is out of harmony with it.