I.
There have been some men in the world's history—and they are necessarily few—who by their deaths have deprived mankind of the power to do justice to their merits, in those particular spheres of excellence in which they had been pre-eminent. When the "immortal" Raphael for the last time laid down his palette, still moist with the brilliant colors which he had spread upon his unfinished masterpiece, destined to be exposed to admiration above his bier, he left none behind him who could worthily depict and transmit to us his beautiful lineaments: so that posterity has had to seek in his own paintings, among the guards at a sepulchre, or among the youthful disciples in an ancient school, some figure which may be considered as representing himself.
When his mighty rival, Michelangelo, cast down that massive chisel which no one after him was worthy or able to wield, none survived him who could venture to repeat in marble the rugged grandeur of his countenance; but we imagine that we can trace in the head of some unfinished satyr, or in the sublime countenance of his Moses, the natural or the idealized type from which he drew his stern and noble inspirations.
And, to turn to another great art, when Mozart closed his last uncompleted score, and laid him down to pass from the regions of earthly to those of heavenly music, which none had so closely approached as he, the science over which he ruled could find no strains in which worthily to mourn him except his own, and was compelled to sing for the first time his own marvelous requiem at his funeral. [Footnote 101]
[Footnote 101: The same may be said of the celebrated Cimarosa.]
No less can it be said that when the pen dropped from Shakespeare's hand, when his last mortal illness mastered the strength of even his genius, the world was left powerless to describe in writing his noble and unrivalled characteristics. Hence we turn back upon himself, and endeavor to draw from his own works the only true records of his genius and his mind. [Footnote 102]
[Footnote 102: Even in his lifetime this seems to have been foreseen. In 1664, in an epigram addressed to "Master William Shakespeare," and first published by Mr. Halliwell, occurred the following lines: "Besides in places thy wit windes like Maeander. When (whence) needy new composers borrow more Thence (than) Terence doth from Plautus or Menander, But to praise thee aright I want thy store. Then let thine owne words thine owne worth upraise And help t' adorne thee with deserved baies." Halliwell's Life of Shakespeare, p. 160.]
We apply to him phrases which he has uttered of others; we believe that he must have involuntarily described himself, when he says,
"Take him all in all,
We shall not look upon his like again;"
or that he must even consciously have given a reflection of himself when he so richly represents to us "the poet's eye in a fine phrenzy rolling." ("Midsummer-Night's Dream," act v., scene 1.)
But in fact, considering that the character of a man is like that which he describes, "as compounded of many simples extracted from many objects" ("As You Like It," act iv., scene 1), we naturally seek for those qualities which enter into his composition; we look for them in his own pages; we endeavor to cull from every part of his works such attributions of great and noble qualities to his characters, and unite them so as to form what we believe is his truest portrait. In truth, no other author has perhaps existed who has so completely reflected himself in his works as Shakespeare. For, as artists will tell us that every great master has more or less reproduced in his works characteristics to be found in himself, this is far more true of our greatest dramatist, whose genius, whose mind, whose heart, and whose entire soul live and breathe in every page and every line of his imperishable works. Indeed, as in these there is infinitely greater variety, and consequently greater versatility of power necessary to produce it, so must the amount of elements which enter into is composition represent changeable yet blending qualities beyond what the most finished master in any other art an be supposed to have possessed.
The positive and directly applicable materials which we possess for constructing a biography of this our greatest writer, are more scanty than have been collected to illustrate the life of many an inferior author. His contemporaries, his friends, perhaps admirers, have left us but few anecdotes of his life, and have recorded but few traits of either his appearance or his character. Those who immediately succeeded him seem to have taken but little pains to collect early traditions concerning him, while yet they must have been fresh in the recollections of his fellow-countrymen, and still more of his fellow-townsmen. [Footnote 103]
[Footnote 103: As evidence of this neglect we may cite the "Journal" of the Rev. John Ward, Incumbent of Stratford-upon-Avon, to which he was appointed in 1662. This diary, which has been published by Doctor Severn, "from the original MSS.," preserved in the library of the Medical Society of London, contains but two pages relating to Shakespeare, and those contain but scanty and unsatisfactory notices. I will quote only two sentences: "Remember to peruse Shakespeare's Plays—bee much versed in them, that I may not bee ignorant in that matter, whether Dr. Heylin does well, in reckoning up the dramatick poets which have been famous in England, to omit Shakespeare" (p. 184). Shakespeare's daughter was still alive when this was written, as appears from the sentence that immediately follows: it seems to us wonderful that so soon after the poet's death a shrewd and clever clergyman and physician (for Mr. Ward was both) should have known so little about his celebrated townsman's works or life. ]
It appears as though they were scarcely conscious of the great and brilliant luminary of English literature which was shining still, or had but lately passed away; and as though they could not anticipate either the admiration which was to succeed their duller perceptions of his unapproachable grandeur, or the eager desire which this would generate of knowing even the smallest details of its rise, its appearance, its departure. For by the biography of Shakespeare one cannot understand the records of what he bought, of what he sold, or the recital of those acts which only confound him with the common mass which surrounded him, and make him appear as the worthy burgess or the thrifty merchant; though even about the ordinary commonplace portions of his life such uncertainty exists, that doubts have been thrown on the very genuineness of that house which he is supposed to have inhabited.
Now, it is the characteristic individualizing quality, actions, and mode of executing his works, to whatever class of excellence he may belong, that we long to be familiar with in order to say that we know the man. What matters it to us that he paid so many marks or [{550}] shillings to purchase a homestead in Stratford-upon-Avon? The simple autograph of his name is now worth all the sums that he thus expended. One single line of one of his dramas, written in his own hand, would be worth to his admirers all the sums which are known to have passed between him and others. What has become of the goodly folios which must have once existed written in his own hand? Where are the books annotated or even scratched by his pen, from which he drew the subjects and sometimes the substance of his dramas? What vandalism destroyed the first, or dispersed the second of these valuable treasures? How is it that we know nothing of his method of composition? Was it in solitude and sacred seclusion, self-imprisoned for hours beyond the reach of the turmoil of the street or the domestic sounds of home? Or were his unrivalled works produced in scraps of time and fugitive moments, even perhaps in the waiting-room of the theatre, or the brawling or jovial sounds of the tavern?
Was he silent, thoughtful, while his fertile brain was seething and heaving in the fermentation of his glorious conceptions; so that men should have said—"Hush! Shakespeare is at work with some new and mighty imaginings!" or wore he always that light and careless spirit which often belongs to the spontaneous facility of genius; so that his comrades may have wondered when, and where, and how his grave characters, his solemn scenes, his fearful catastrophes, and his sublime maxims of original wisdom, were conceived, planned, matured, and finally written down, to rule for ever the world of letters? Almost the only fact connected with his literary life which has come down to us is one which has been recorded, perhaps with jealousy, certainly with ill-temper, by his friend Ben Jonson—that he wrote with overhaste, and hardly ever erased a line, though it would have been better had he done so with many.
This almost total absence of all external information, this drying-up of the ordinary channels of personal history, forces us to seek for the character and the very life of Shakespeare in his own works. But how difficult, in analyzing the complex constitution of such a man's principles, motives, passions, and affections, to discriminate between what he has drawn for himself, and what he has created by the force of his imagination. Dealing habitually with fictions, sometimes in their noblest, sometimes in their vilest forms—here gross and even savage, there refined and sometimes ethereal, how shall we discover what portions of them were copied from the glass which he held before himself, what from the magic mirrors across which flitted illusive or fanciful imagery? The work seems hopeless. It is not like that of the printer, who, from a chaotic heap of seemingly unmeaning lead, draws out letter after letter, and so disposes them that they shall make senseful and even brilliant lines. It is more like the hopeless labor of one who, from the fragments of a tesselated pavement, should try to draw the elegant and exquisitely tinted figure which once it bore.
This difficulty of appreciating, and still more of delineating, the character of our great poet, makes him, without perhaps an exception, the most difficult literary theme in English letters.
How to reduce the subject to a lecture seems indeed a literal paradox. But when to this difficulty is added that of an impossible compression into narrow limits of the widest and vastest compass ever embraced by any one man's genius, it must appear an excess of rashness in any-one to presume that he can do justice to the subject on which I am addressing you.
It seems, therefore, hardly wonderful that even the last year, dedicated naturally to the tercentenary commemoration of William Shakespeare, should have passed over without any public eulogy of his greatness in this our metropolis. It seemed, indeed, as if the magnitude of that one man's genius was too oppressive for this generation. It was not, I believe, an undervaluing [{551}] of his merits which produced the frustration of efforts, and the disappointment of expectations, that seemed to put to rout and confusion, or rather to paralyze, the exertions so strenuously commenced to mark the year as a great epoch in England's literary history. I believe, on the contrary, that the dimensions of Shakespeare had grown so immeasurably in the estimation of his fellow-countrymen, that the proportions of his genius to all that had followed him, and all that surround us, had grown so enormously in the judgment and feeling of the country, from the nobleman to the workman, that the genius of the man oppressed us, and made us feel that all our multiplied resources of art and speech were unequal to his worthy commemoration. No plan proposed for this purpose seemed adequate to attain it. Nothing solid and permanent that could either come up to his merits or to our aspirations seemed to be within the grasp either of the arts or of the wealth of our country. The year has passed away, and Shakespeare remains without any monument, except that which, by his wonderful writings, he has raised for himself. Even the research after a site fit for the erection of a monument to him, in the city of squares, of gardens, and of parks, seemed only to work perplexity and hopelessness.
Presumptuous as it may appear, the claim to connect myself with that expired and extinct movement is my only apology for my appearing before you. If, a year after its time, I take upon myself the eulogy of Shakespeare, if I appear to come forward as with a funeral oration, to give him, in a manner, posthumous glory, it is because my work has dropped out of its place, and not because I have inopportunely misplaced it. In the course of the last year, it was proposed to me, both directly and indirectly, to deliver a lecture on Shakespeare. I was bold enough to yield my assent, and thus felt that I had contracted an obligation to the memory of the bard, as well as to those who thought that my sharing what was done for his honor would possess any value. A task undertaken becomes a duty unfulfilled. When, therefore, it was proposed to me to perform my portion of the homage which I considered due to him, though it was to be a month too late, I felt it would be cowardice to shrink from its performance.
For in truth the undertaking required some courage; and to retire before its difficulties might be stigmatized as a dastardly timidity. It is a work of courage at any time and in any place to undertake a lecture upon Shakespeare, more in fact than to venture on the delivery of a series. The latter gives scope for the thousand things which one would wish to say—it affords ample space for apposite illustration—and it enables one to enrich the subject with the innumerable and inimitable beauties that are flung like gems or flowers over every page of his magnificent works. But in the midst of public, or rather universal, celebration of a national and secular festival in his honor, in the presence probably of the most finished literary characters in this highly-educated country, still more certainly before numbers of those whom the nation acknowledges as deeply read in the works of our poet as the most accomplished critic of any age has been in the writings of the classics—men who have introduced into our literature a class-name—that of "Shakespearian scholars"—to have ventured to speak on this great theme might seem to have required, not courage, but temerity. Why, it might have been justly asked, do none of those who have consumed their lives in the study of him, not page by page, but line by line, who have pressed his sweet fruits between their lips till they have absorbed all their lusciousness, who have made his words their study, his thoughts their meditation,—why does not one at least among them stand forward now, and leave for posterity the record of his matured observation? Perhaps I may assign the reason which I have before, that they [{552}] know, too, the unapproachable granduer of the theme, and the rare powers which are required to grasp and to hold it.
Be it so; but at any rate, if in the presence of others so much more capable it would have been rash to speak, to express one's thoughts, when there is no competition, may be pardonable at least.
And yet, when everybody else is silent, it may be very naturally asked, Have I a single claim to put forward upon your attention and indulgence? I think I may have one; though I fear that when I mention it, it may be considered either a paradox or a refutation of my pretensions. My claim, then, to be heard and borne with is this—that I have never in my life seen Shakespeare acted; I have never heard his eloquent speeches declaimed by gifted performers; I have not listened to his noble poetry as uttered by the kings or queens of tragedy; I have not witnessed his grand, richly-concerted scenes endowed with life by the graceful gestures, the classical attitudes, the contrasting emotions, and the pointed emphasis of those who in modern times may be considered to have even added to that which his genius produced; I know nothing of the original and striking readings or renderings of particular passages by masters of mimic art; I know him only on his flat page, as he is represented in immovable, featureless, unemotional type.
Nor am I acquainted with him surrounded, perhaps sometimes sustained, but, at any rate, worthily adorned and enhanced in accessory beauty, by the magic illusion of scenic decorations, the splendid pageantry which he simply hints at, but which, I believe, has been now realized to its most ideal exactness and richness—banquets, tournaments, and battles, with the almost deceptive accuracy of costume and of architecture. When I hear of all these additional ornaments hung around his noble works, the impression which they make upon my mind creates a deeper sense of amazement and admiration, how dramas written for the "Globe" Theatre, wretchedly lighted, incapable of grandeur even from want of space, and without those mechanical and artistical resources which belong to a later age, should be capable of bearing all this additional weight of lustre and magnificence without its being necessary to alter a word, still less a passage, from their original delivery. [Footnote 104 ] This exhibits the nicely-balanced point of excellence which is equally poised between simplicity and gorgeousness; which can retain its power and beauty, whether stript to its barest form or loaded with exuberant appurtenances.
[Footnote 104: The chorus which serves as a prologue to "King Henry V.," shows how Shakespeare's own mind keenly felt the deficiencies of his time, and almost anticipatingly wrote for the effects which a future age might supply:
"But pardon, gentles all,
This flat unraised spirit that hath dar'd,
On this unworthy scaffold, to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cock-pit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt.
…
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance:
Think, when we talk of horses, that ye see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings.">[
After having said thus much of my own probably unenvied position, I think I shall not be wrong in assuming that none of Shakespeare's enthusiastic admirers, one of whom I profess myself to be, and that few of my audience, are in this exceptional position. They will probably consider this a disadvantage on my side; and to some extent I must acknowledge it—for Shakespeare wrote to be acted, and not to be read.
But, on the other hand, is it not something to have approached this wonderful man, and to have communed with him in silence and in solitude, face to face, alone with him alone; to have read and studied and meditated on him in early youth, without gloss or commentary, or preface or glossary? For such was my good or evil fortune; not during the still hours of night, but during that stiller portion of an Italian [{553}] afternoon, when silence is deeper than in the night, under a bright and sultry sun when all are at rest, all around you hushed to the very footsteps in a well-peopled house, except the unquelled murmuring of a fountain beneath orange trees, which mingled thus the most delicate of fragrance with the most soothing of sounds, both stealing together through the half-closed windows of wide and lofty corridors. Is there not more of that reverence and that relish which constitute the classical taste to be derived from the concentration of thought and feelings which the perusal of the simple unmarred and unoverlaid text produces; when you can ponder on a verse, can linger over a word, can repeat mentally and even orally with your own deliberation and your own emphasis, whenever dignity, beauty, or wisdom invite you to pause, or compel you to ruminate?
In fact, were you desired to give your judgment on the refreshing water of a pure fountain, you would not care to taste it from a richly-jewelled and delicately-chased cup; you would not consent to have it mingled with the choicest wine, nor flavored by a single drop of the most exquisite essence; you would not have it chilled with ice, or gently attempered by warmth. No, you would choose the most transparent crystal vessel, however homely; you would fill at the very cleft of the rock from which it bubbles fresh and bright, and drink it yet sparkling, and beading with its own air-pearls the walls of the goblet. Nay, is not an opposite course that which the poet himself censures as "wasteful, ridiculous excess?"
"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily;
To throw a perfume on the violet.
…
Or with a taper light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to varnish."
("King John" act iv., scene 2.)
You will easily understand, from long and almost apologetic preamble, in the first place, that I take it for granted that I am addressing an audience which is not assembled to receive elementary or new information concerning England's greatest poet. On the contrary, I believe myself to stand before many who are able to judge, rather than merely accept, my opinions, and in the presence of an assembly exclusively composed of his admirers, thoroughly conversant with his works. A further consequence is this, that my lecture will not consist of extracts—still less of recitations of any of those beautiful passages which occur in every play of Shakespeare. The most celebrated of these are present to the mind of every English scholar, from his school-boy days to his maturer studies.