SHAKESPEARE; OR, THE POET
[525] Shakespeare; or the Poet is one of seven essays on great men in various walks of life, published in 1850 under the title of Representative Men. These essays were first delivered as lectures in Boston in the winter of 1845, and were repeated two years later before English audiences. They must have been especially interesting to those Englishmen who had, seven years before, heard Emerson's friend, Carlyle, deliver his six lectures on great men whom he selected as representative ones. These lectures were published under the title of Heroes and Hero-Worship. You should read the latter part of Carlyle's lecture on The Hero as Poet and compare what he says about Shakespeare with Emerson's words. Both Emerson and Carlyle reverenced the great English poet as "the master of mankind." Even in serious New England, the plays of Shakespeare were found upon the bookshelf beside religious tracts and doctrinal treatises. There the boy Emerson found them and learned to love them, and the man Emerson loved them but the more. It was as a record of personal experiences that he wrote in his journal: "Shakespeare fills us with wonder the first time we approach him. We go away, and work and think, for years, and come again,—he astonishes us anew. Then, having drank deeply and saturated us with his genius, we lose sight of him for another period of years. By and by we return, and there he stands immeasurable as at first. We have grown wiser, but only that we should see him wiser than ever. He resembles a high mountain which the traveler sees in the morning and thinks he shall quickly near it and pass it and leave it behind. But he journeys all day till noon, till night. There still is the dim mountain close by him, having scarce altered its bearings since the morning light."
[526] Genius. Here instead of speaking as in Friendship, see note [286], of the genius or spirit supposed to preside over each man's life, Emerson mentions the guardian spirit of human kind.
[527] Shakespeare's youth, etc. It is impossible to appreciate or enjoy this essay without having some clear general information about the condition of the English people and English literature in the glorious Elizabethan age in which Shakespeare lived. Consult, for this information, some brief history of England and a comprehensive English literature.
[528] Puritans. Strict Protestants who became so powerful in England that in the time of the Commonwealth they controlled the political and religious affairs of the country.
[529] Anglican Church. The Established Church of England; the Episcopal church.
[530] Punch. The chief character in a puppet show, hence the puppet show itself.
[531] Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, etc. For an account of these dramatists consult a text book on English literature. The English drama seems to have begun in the Middle Ages with what were called Miracle plays, which were scenes from Bible history; about the same time were performed the Mystery plays, which dramatized the lives of saints. These were followed by the Moralities, plays in which were personified abstract virtues and vices. The first step in the creation of the regular drama was taken by Heywood, who composed some farcical plays called Interludes. The people of the sixteenth century were fond of pageants, shows in which classical personages were introduced, and Masques, which gradually developed from pageants into dramas accompanied with music. About the middle of the sixteenth century, rose the English drama,—comedy, tragedy, and historical plays. The chief among the group of dramatists who attained fame before Shakespeare began to write were Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, and Peele. Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher rank next to Shakespeare among his contemporaries, and among the other dramatists of the period were Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Ford, and Massinger.
[532] At the time when, etc. Probably about 1585.
[533] Tale of Troy. Drama founded on the Trojan war. The subject of famous poems by Latin and Greek poets.
[534] Death of Julius Cæsar. An account of the plots which ended in the assassination of the great Roman general.
[535] Plutarch. See note on Heroism([264]). Shakespeare, like the earlier dramatists, drew freely on Plutarch's Lives for material.
[536] Brut. A poetical version of the legendary history of Britain, by Layamon. Its hero is Brutus, a mythical King of Britain.
[537] Arthur. A British King of the sixth century, around whose life and deeds so many legends have grown up that some historians say he, too, was a myth. He is the center of the great cycle of romances told in prose in Mallory's Morte d'Arthur and in poetry in Tennyson's Idylls of the King.
[538] The royal Henries. Among the dramas popular in Shakespeare's day which he retouched or rewrote are the historical plays. Henry IV., First and Second Parts; Henry V; Henry VI., First, Second, and Third Parts; and Henry VIII.
[539] Italian tales. Italian literature was very popular in Shakespeare's day, and authors drew freely from it for material, especially from the Decameron, a famous collection of a hundred tales, by Boccaccio, a poet of the fourteenth century.
[540] Spanish voyages. In the sixteenth century, Spain was still a power upon the high seas, and the tales of her conquests and treasures in the New World were like tales of romance.
[541] Prestige. Can you give an English equivalent for this French word?
[542] Which no single genius, etc. In the same way, some critics assure us, the poems credited to the Greek poet, Homer, were built up by a number of poets.
[543] Malone. An Irish critic and scholar of the eighteenth century, best known by his edition of Shakespeare's plays.
[544] Wolsey's Soliloquy. See Shakespeare's Henry VIII. iii, 2. Cardinal Wolsey was prime minister of England in the reign of Henry VIII.
[545] Scene with Cromwell. See Henry VIII. iii, 2. Thomas Cromwell was the son of an English blacksmith; he rose to be lord high chamberlain of England in the reign of Henry VIII., but, incurring the King's displeasure, was executed on a charge of treason.
[546] Account of the coronation. See Henry VIII. iv, 1.
[547] Compliment to Queen Elizabeth. See Henry VIII. v, 5.
[548] Bad rhythm. Too much importance must not be attached to these matters in deciding authorship, as critics disagree about them.
[549] Value his memory, etc. The Greeks, in appreciation of the value of memory to the poet, represented the Muses as the daughters of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory.
[550] Homer. A Greek poet to whom is assigned the authorship of the two greatest Greek poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey; he is said to have lived about a thousand years before Christ.
[551] Chaucer. (See note [33].)
[552] Saadi. A Persian poet, supposed to have lived in the thirteenth century. His best known poems are his odes.
[553] Presenting Thebes, etc. This quotation is from Milton's poem, Il Penseroso. Milton here names the three most popular subjects of Greek tragedy,—the story of [OE]dipus, the ill-fated King of Thebes who slew his father; the tale of the descendants of Pelops, King of Pisa, who seemed born to woe—Agamemnon was one of his grandsons; the third subject was the tale of Troy and the heroes of the Trojan war,—called "divine" because the Greeks represented even the gods as taking part in the contest.
[555] Dryden. (See note [35].)
[556] Chaucer is a huge borrower. Taine, the French critic, says on this subject: "Chaucer was capable of seeking out in the old common forest of the Middle Ages, stories and legends, to replant them in his own soil and make them send out new shoots.... He has the right and power of copying and translating because by dint of retouching he impresses ... his original work. He recreates what he imitates."
[557] Lydgate. John Lydgate was an English poet who lived a generation later than Chaucer; in his Troy Book and other poems he probably borrowed from the sources used by Chaucer; he called himself "Chaucer's disciple."
[558] Caxton. William Caxton, the English author, more famous as the first English printer, was not born until after Chaucer's death. The work from which Emerson supposes the poet to have borrowed Caxton's translation of Recueil des Histoires de Troye, the first printed English book, appeared about 1474.
[559] Guido di Colonna. A Sicilian poet and historian of the thirteenth century. Chaucer in his House of Fame placed in his vision "on a pillar higher than the rest, Homer and Livy, Dares the Phrygian, Guido Colonna, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the other historians of the war of Troy."
[560] Dares Phrygius. A Latin account of the fall of Troy, written about the fifth century, which pretends to be a translation of a lost work on the fall of Troy by Dares, a Trojan priest mentioned in Homer's Iliad.
[561] Ovid. A Roman poet who lived about the time of Christ, whose best-known work is the Metamorphoses, founded on classical legends.
[562] Statius. A Roman poet of the first century after Christ.
[563] Petrarch. An Italian poet of the fourteenth century.
[564] Boccaccio. An Italian novelist and poet of the fourteenth century. See note on "Italian tales," [539]. It is supposed that the plan of the Decameron suggested the similar but far superior plan of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
[565] Provençal poets. The poets of Provençe, a province of the southeastern part of France. In the Middle Ages it was celebrated for its lyric poets, called troubadours.
[566] Romaunt of the Rose, etc. Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose, written during the period of French influence, is an incomplete and abbreviated translation of a French poem of the thirteenth century, Roman de la Rose, the first part of which was written by William of Loris and the latter by John of Meung, or Jean de Meung.
[567] Troilus and Creseide, etc. Chaucer ascribes the Italian poem which he followed in his Troilus and Creseide to an unknown "Lollius of Urbino"; the source of the poem, however, is Il Filostrato, by Boccaccio, the Italian poet already mentioned. Chaucer's poem is far more than a translation; more than half is entirely original, and it is a powerful poem, showing profound knowledge of the Italian poets, whose influence with him superseded the French poets.
[568] The Cock and the Fox. The Nun's Priest's Tale in the Canterbury Tales was an original treatment of the Roman de Renart, of Marie of France, a French poet of the twelfth century.
[569] House of Fame, etc. The plan of the House of Fame, written during the period of Chaucer's Italian influence, shows the influence of Dante; the general idea of the poem is from Ovid, the Roman poet.
[570] Gower. John Gower was an English poet, Chaucer's contemporary and friend; the two poets went to the same sources for poetic materials, but Chaucer made no such use of Gower's works as we would infer from this passage. Emerson relied on his memory for facts, and hence made mistakes, as here in the instances of Lydgate, Caxton, and Gower.
[571] Westminster, Washington. What legislative body assembles at Westminster Palace, London? What at Washington?
[572] Sir Robert Peel. An English statesman who died in 1850, not long after Representative Men was published.
[573] Webster. Daniel Webster, an American statesman and orator who was living when this essay was written.
[574] Locke. John Locke. (See note [18].)
[575] Rousseau. Jean Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher of the eighteenth century.
[576] Homer. (See note [550].)
[577] Menn. Menn, or Mann, was in Sanscrit one of fourteen legendary beings; the one referred to by Emerson, Mann Vaivasvata was supposed to be the author of the laws of Mann, a collection made about the second century.
[578] Saadi or Sadi. (See note [552].)
[579] Milton. Of this great English poet and prose writer of the seventeenth century, Emerson says: "No man can be named whose mind still acts on the cultivated intellect of England and America with an energy comparable to that of Milton. As a poet Shakespeare undoubtedly transcends and far surpasses him in his popularity with foreign nations: but Shakespeare is a voice merely: who and what he was that sang, that sings, we know not."
[580] Delphi. Here, source of prophecy. Delphi was a city in Greece, where was the oracle of Apollo, the most famous of the oracles of antiquity.
[581] Our English Bible. The version made in the reign of King James I. by forty-seven learned divines is a monument of noble English.
[582] Liturgy. An appointed form of worship used in a Christian church,—here, specifically, the service of the Episcopal church. Emerson's mother had been brought up in that church, and though she attended her husband's church, she always loved and read her Episcopal prayer book.
[583] Grotius. Hugo Grotius was a Dutch jurist, statesman, theologian, and poet of the seventeenth century.
[584] Rabbinical forms. The forms used by the rabbis, Jewish doctors or expounders of the law.
[585] Common law. In a general sense, the system of law derived from England, in general use among English-speaking people.
[586] Vedas. The sacred books of the Brahmins.
[587] Æsop's Fables. Fables ascribed to Æsop, a Greek slave who lived in the sixth century before Christ.
[588] Pilpay, or Bidpai. Indian sage to whom were ascribed some fables. From an Arabic translation, these passed into European languages and were used by La Fontaine, the French fabulist.
[589] Arabian Nights. The Arabian Nights' Entertainment or A Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Oriental tales, the plan and name of which are very ancient.
[590] Cid. The Romances of the Cid, the story of the Spanish national hero, mentioned in note on Heroism 139:5, was written about the thirteenth century by an unknown author; it supplied much of the material for two Spanish chronicles and Spanish and French tragedies written later on the same subject.
[591] Iliad. The poem in which the Greek, poet, Homer, describes the siege and fall of Troy. Emerson here expresses the view adopted by many scholars that it was the work, not of one, but of many men.
[592] Robin Hood. The ballads about Robin Hood, an English outlaw and popular hero of the twelfth century.
[593] Scottish Minstrelsy. The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, a collection of original and collected poems, published by Sir Walter Scott in 1802.
[594] Shakespeare Society. The Shakespeare Society, founded in 1841, was dissolved in 1853. In 1874 The New Shakespeare Society was founded.
[595] Mysteries. See "Kyd, Marlowe, etc." [531].
[596] Ferrex and Porrex, or Gorboduc. The first regular English tragedy, by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, printed in 1565.
[597] Gammer Gurtor's Needle. One of the first English comedies, written by Bishop Still and printed in 1575.
[598] Whether the boy Shakespeare poached, etc. For a fuller account of the facts of Shakespeare's life, of which some traditions and facts are mentioned here, consult some good biography of the poet.
[599] Queen Elizabeth. Dining her reign, 1558-1603, the English drama rose and attained its height, and there was produced a prose literature hardly inferior to the poetic.
[600] King James. King James VI. of Scotland and I. of England who was Elizabeth's kinsman and successor; he reigned in England from 1603 to 1625.
[601] Essexes. Walter Devereux was a brave English gentleman whom Elizabeth made Earl of Essex in 1572. His son Robert, the second Earl of Essex, was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth's.
[602] Leicester. The Earl of Leicester, famous in Shakespeare's time, was Robert Dudley, an English courtier, politician, and general, the favorite of Queen Elizabeth.
[603] Burleighs or Burghleys: William Cecil, baron of Burghley, was an English statesman, who, for forty years, was Elizabeth's chief minister.
[604] Buckinghams. George Villiers, the first duke of Buckingham, was an English courtier and politician, a favorite of James I. and Charles I.
[605] Tudor dynasty. The English dynasty of sovereigns descended on the male side from Owen Tudor. It began with Henry VII. and ended with Elizabeth.
[606] Bacon. Consult English literature and history for an account of the great statesman and author, Francis Bacon, "the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind."
[607] Ben Jonson, etc. In his Timber or Discoveries, Ben Jonson, a famous classical dramatist contemporary with Shakespeare, says: "I loved the man and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was indeed honest and of an open and free nature: had an excellent fancy; brave notions and gentle expressions: wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped.... His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so, too. Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter.... But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned."
[608] Sir Henry Wotton. An English diplomatist and author of wide culture.
[609] The following persons, etc. The persons enumerated were all people of note of the seventeenth century. Sir Philip Sidney, Earl of Essex, Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Milton, Sir Henry Vane, Isaac Walton, Dr. John Donne, Abraham Cowley, Charles Cotton, John Pym, and John Hales were Englishmen, scholars, statesmen, and authors. Theodore Beza was a French theologian; Isaac Casaubon was a French-Swiss scholar; Roberto Berlarmine was an Italian cardinal; Johann Kepler was a German astronomer; Francis Vieta was a French mathematician; Albericus Gentilis was an Italian jurist; Paul Sarpi was an Italian historian; Arminius was a Dutch theologian.
[610] Many others whom doubtless, etc. Emerson here enumerates some famous English authors of the same period, not mentioned in the preceeding list.
[611] Pericles. See note on Heroism, [352].
[612] Lessing. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a German critic and poet of the eighteenth century.
[613] Wieland. Christopher Martin Wieland was a German contemporary of Lessing's, who made a prose translation into German of Shakespeare's plays.
[614] Schlegel. August Wilhelm von Schlegel, a German critic and poet, who about the first of the nineteenth century translated some of Shakespeare's plays into classical German.
[615] Hamlet. The hero of Shakespeare's play of the same name.
[616] Coleridge. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet, author of critical lectures and notes on Shakespeare.
[617] Goethe. (See note [85].)
[618] Blackfriar's Theater. A famous London theater in which nearly all the great dramas of the Elizabethan age were performed.
[619] Stratford. Stratford-on-Avon, a little town in Warwickshire, England, where Shakespeare was born and where he spent his last years.
[620] Macbeth. One of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, written about 1606.
[621] Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and Collier. English scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who edited the works of Shakespeare.
[622] Covent Garden, Drury Lane, the Park, and Tremont: The leading London theaters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
[623] Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Macready, famous British actors of the Shakespearian parts.
[624] The Hamlet of a famed performer, etc. Macready. Emerson said to a friend: "I see you are one of the happy mortals who are capable of being carried away by an actor of Shakespeare. Now, whenever I visit the theater to witness the performance of one of his dramas, I am carried away by the poet."
[625] What may this mean, etc. Hamlet, I. 4.
[626] Midsummer Night's Dream. One of Shakespeare's plays.
[627] The forest of Arden. In which is laid, the scene of Shakespeare's play, As You Like It.
[628] The nimble air of Scone Castle. It was of the air of Inverness, not of Scone, that "the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses."—Macbeth, i. 6.
[629] Portia's villa. See the moonlight scene, Merchant of Venice, v. 1.
[630] The antres vost, etc. See Othello, I. 3. "Antres" is an old word, meaning caves, caverns.
[631] Cyclopean architecture. In Greek mythology, the Cyclops were a race of giants. The term 'Cyclopean' is applied here to the architecture of Egypt and India, because of the majestic size of the buildings, and the immense size of the stones used, as if it would require giants to perform such works.
[632] Phidian sculpture. Phidias was a famous Greek sculptor who lived in the age of Pericles and beautified Athens with his works.
[633] Gothic minsters. Churches or cathedrals, built in the Gothic, or pointed, style of architecture which prevailed during the Middle Ages; it owed nothing to the Goths, and this term was originally used in reproach, in the sense of "barbarous."
[634] The Italian painting. In Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries pictorial art was carried to a degree of perfection unknown in any other time or country.
[635] Ballads of Spain and Scotland. The old ballads of these countries are noted for beauty and spirit.
[636] Tripod. Define this word, and explain its appropriateness here.
[637] Aubrey. John Aubrey, an English antiquarian of the seventeenth century.
[638] Rowe. Nicholas Rowe, an English author of the seventeenth century, who wrote a biography of Shakespeare.
[639] Timon. See note on Gifts, [466].
[640] Warwick. An English politician and commander of the fifteenth century, called "the King Maker." He appears in Shakespeare's plays, Henry IV., V., and VI.
[641] Antonio. The Venetian Merchant in Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice.
[642] Talma. François Joseph Talma was a French tragic actor, to whom Napoleon showed favor.
[643] An omnipresent humanity, etc. See what Carlyle has to say on this subject in his Hero as Poet.
[644] Daguerre. Louis Jacques Daguerre, a French painter, one of the inventors of the daguerreotype process, by means of which an image is fixed on a metal plate by the chemical action of light.
[645] Euphuism. The word here has rather the force of euphemism, an entirely different word. Euphuism was an affected ornate style of expression, so called from Euphues, by John Lyly, a sixteenth century master of that style.
[646] Epicurus. A Greek philosopher of the third century before Christ. He was the founder of the Epicurean school of philosophy which taught that pleasure should be man's chief aim and that the highest pleasure is freedom.
[647] Dante. (See note [258].)
[648] Master of the revels, etc. Emerson always expressed thankfulness for "the spirit of joy which Shakespeare had shed over the universe." See what Carlyle says in The Hero as Poet, about Shakespeare's "mirthfulness and love of laughter."
[649] Koran. The Sacred book of the Mohammedans.
[650] Twelfth Night, etc. The names of three bright, merry, or serene plays by Shakespeare.
[651] Egyptian verdict. Emerson used Egyptian probably in the sense of "gipsy." He compares such opinions to the fortunes told by the gipsies.
[652] Tasso. An Italian poet of the sixteenth century.
[653] Cervantes. A Spanish poet and romancer of the sixteenth century, the author of Don Quixote.
[654] Israelite. Such Hebrew prophets as Isaiah and Jeremiah.
[655] German. Such as Luther.
[656] Swede. Such as Swedenborg, the mystic philosopher of the eighteenth century of whom Emerson had already written in Representative Men.
[657] A pilgrim's progress. As described by John Bunyan, the English writer, in his famous Pilgrim's Progress.
[658] Doleful histories of Adam's fall, etc. The subject of Paradise Lost, the great poem by John Milton.
[659] With doomsdays and purgatorial, etc. As described by Dante in his Divine Commedia, an epic about hell, purgatory, and paradise.