[9] It is perhaps most especially in his rendering of the shock and the effects of disillusionment in open natures that we seem to feel Shakespeare’s personality. The nature of this shock is expressed in Henry’s words to Lord Scroop:
| I will weep for thee; For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like Another fall of man. |
[10] There is nothing of this semi-reality, of course, in the passion of love as portrayed, for example, in men so different as Orlando, Othello, Antony, Troilus, whose love for Cressida resembles that of Romeo for Juliet. What I have said of Romeo’s ‘love’ for Rosaline corresponds roughly with Coleridge’s view; and, without subscribing to all of Coleridge’s remarks, I believe he was right in finding an intentional contrast between this feeling and the passion that displaces it (though it does not follow that the feeling would not have become a genuine passion if Rosaline had been kind). Nor do I understand the notion that Coleridge’s view is refuted and even rendered ridiculous by the mere fact that Shakespeare found the Rosaline story in Brooke (Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, 7th ed., illustrative note 2). Was he compelled then to use whatever he found? Was it his practice to do so? The question is always why he used what he found, and how. Coleridge’s view of this matter, it need hardly be said, is far from indisputable; but it must be judged by our knowledge of Shakespeare’s mind and not of his material alone. I may add, as I have referred to Halliwell-Phillipps, that Shakespeare made changes in the story he found; that it is arbitrary to assume (not that it matters) that Coleridge, who read Steevens, was unaware of Shakespeare’s use of Brooke; and that Brooke was by no means a ‘wretched poetaster.’
[11] Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Othello, Troilus and Cressida, King Lear, Timon of Athens. See Shakespearean Tragedy, pp. 79-85, 275-6. I should like to insist on the view there taken that the tragedies subsequent to Lear and Timon do not show the pressure of painful feelings.
[12] It is not implied that these scenes are certainly Shakespeare’s; but I see no sufficient ground for decisively rejecting them.
[13] That experience, certainly in part and probably wholly, belongs to an earlier time, since sonnets 138 and 144 were printed in the Passionate Pilgrim. But I see no difficulty in that. What bears little fruit in a normal condition of spirits may bear abundant fruit later, in moods of discouragement and exasperation induced largely by other causes.
[14] The Sonnets of Shakespeare with an Introduction and Notes. Ginn & Co., 1904.
[15] I find that Mr. Beeching, in the Stratford Town edition of Shakespeare (1907), has also urged these considerations.
[16] I do not mean to imply that Meres necessarily refers to the sonnets we possess, or that all of these are likely to have been written by 1598.
[17] A fact to be remembered in regard to references to the social position of the friend.