IV.
All that I have been saying is applicable in the most complete and marvellous way to Shakespeare's genius. His sympathies are universal, perfect in their own immediate use, infinitely varied, and strikingly beautiful, when they reach remoter objects. And hence, though at first sight he might be classified among those who have displayed a literary genius, he stretches his mind and his feelings so beyond them on every side, that to him, almost, perhaps, beyond any other man, the simple distinctive, without any qualification, belongs. No one need fear to call Shakespeare simply a grand, a sublime genius.
The centre-point of his sympathies is clearly his dramatic art. From this they expand, for many degrees, with scarce perceptible diminution, till they lose themselves in far distant, and, to him, unexplored space. This nucleus of his genius has certainly never been equalled before or since. Its essence consists in what is the very soul of the dramatic idea, the power to throw himself into the situation, the circumstances, the nature, the acquired habits, the feelings, true or fictitious, of every character which he introduces. This forms, in fact, the most perfect of sympathies. We do not, of course, use the word in that more usual sense of harmony of affection, or consent of feeling. Shakespeare has sympathy as complete for Shylock or Iago as he as for Arthur or King Lear. For a time he lives in the astute villain as in the innocent child; he works his entire power of thought into intricacies of the traitor's brain; he makes his heart beat in concord with the usurer's sanguinary spite, and then, like some beautiful creature in the animal world, draws himself out of the hateful evil, and is himself again; and able, even, often to hold his own noble and gentle qualities as a mirror, or exhibit the loftiest, the most generous, and amiable examples of our nature. And this is all done without study, and apparently without effort. His infinitely varied characters come naturally into their places, never for a moment lose their proprieties, their personality, and the exact flexibility which results from the necessary combination in every man of many qualities. From the beginning to the end each one is the same, yet reflecting in himself the lights and shadows which flit around him.
This extraordinary versatility stands in striking contrast with the dramatic productions of other countries. The Greek tragedian is Greek throughout—his subjects, his mythology, his sentences, play wonderfully indeed, but yet restrictedly, within a given sphere. And Rome is but the imitator in all its literature of its great mistress and model.
"Graiis eloquium, Gratis dedit ore rotundo, Musa loqui."
Even through the French school, with the strict adhesion to the ancient rule of the unities, seems to have descended the partiality for what may be called the chastely classical subjects. Not so with Shakespeare.
Who, a stranger might ask, is the man, and where was he born, and where does he live, that not only his acts and scenes are placed in any age, or in any land, but that he can fill his stage with the very living men of the time and place represented; make them move as easily as if he held them in strings; and make them speak not only with general conformity to their common position, but with individual and distinctive propriety, so that each is different from the rest? Did he live in ancient Rome, strolling the Forum, or climbing the Capitol; hear ancient matrons converse with modest dignity; listen to conspirators among the columns of its porticos; mingle among senators around Pompey's [{560}] statue; or with plebeians crowding to hear Brutus or Anthony harangue? Was he one accustomed to idle in the piazza of St. Mark, or shoot his gondola under the Rialto? Or was he a knight or even archer in the fields of France or England during the period of the Plantagenets or Tudors, and witnessed and wrote down the great deeds of those times, and knew intimately and personally each puissant lord who distinguished himself by his valor, by his wisdom, or even by his crimes? Did he live in the courts of princes, perchance holding some office which enabled him to listen to the grave utterances of kings and their counsellors, or to the witty sayings of court jesters? Did he consort with banished princes, and partake of their sports or their sufferings? In fine, did he live in great cities, or in shepherds' cottages, or in fields and woods; and does he date from John and live on to the eighth Henry—a thread connecting in himself the different epochs of mediaeval England? One would almost say so; or multiply one man into many, whose works have been united under one man.
This ubiquity, if we may so call it, of Shakespeare's sympathies, constitutes the unlimited extent and might of his dramatic genius. It would be difficult to imagine where a boundary line could at length have been drawn, beyond which nothing original, nothing new, and nothing beautiful, could be supposed to have come forth from his mind. We are compelled to say that his genius was inexhaustible.