Polynices, in the Phœnissæ of Euripides (504–506), exclaims:
“To the stars’ risings, and the sun’s I’d go,
And dive ’neath earth,—if I could do this thing,—
Possess Heaven’s highest boon of sovereignty.”
Then compare Hotspur:
“By Heaven, methinks it were an easy leap
To pluck bright honour from the pale faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drownèd honour by the locks,
So he that doth redeem her thence, might wear
Without corrival all her dignities.”
What a hurrying crowd of pictures rush through Hotspur’s mind! Is Shakespeare thinking of the Phœnissæ, or is he speaking only on the promptings of his genius?
V
SHAKESPEARE, GENIUS, AND SOCIETY
A phrase has been used to explain the Greek element in Shakespeare’s work, namely, “congruity of genius,” which is apt to be resented by Baconians. Perhaps they have a right to resent it, for “genius” is hard to define, and genius is invoked by some wild wits to explain feats of Shakespeare’s which (to Baconians) appear “miracles.” A “miracle” also is notoriously hard to define; but we may take it (“under all reserves”) to stand for the occurrence of an event, or the performance of an action which, to the speaker who applies the word “miracle,” seems “impossible.” The speaker therefore says, “The event is impossible; miracles do not happen: therefore the reported event never occurred. The alleged performance, the writing of the plays by the actor, was impossible, was a miracle, therefore was done by some person or persons other than the actor.” This idea of the impossibility of the player’s authorship is the foundation of the Baconian edifice.
I have, to the best of my ability, tried to describe Mr. Greenwood’s view of the young provincial from Warwickshire, Will Shakspere. If Will were what Mr. Greenwood thinks he was, then Will’s authorship of the plays seems to me, “humanly speaking,” impossible. But then Mr. Greenwood appeared to omit from his calculations the circumstance that Will may have been, not merely “a sharp boy” but a boy of great parts; and not without a love of stories and poetry: a passion which, in a bookless region, could only be gratified through folk-song, folk-tale, and such easy Latin as he might take the trouble to read. If we add to these very unusual but not wholly impossible tastes and abilities, that Will may have been a lad of genius, there is no more “miracle” in his case than in other supreme examples of genius. “But genius cannot work miracles, cannot do what is impossible.” Do what is impossible to whom? To the critics, the men of common sense.
Alas, all this way of talking about “miracles,” and “the impossible,” and “genius” is quite vague and popular. What do we mean by “genius”? The Latin term originally designates, not a man’s everyday intellect, but a spirit from without which inspires him, like the “Dæmon,” or, in Latin, “Genius” of Socrates, or the lutin which rode the pen of Molière. “Genius” is claimed for Shakespeare in an inscription on his Stratford monument, erected at latest some six years after his death. Following this path of thought we come to “inspiration”: the notion of it, as familiar to Australian savages as to any modern minds, is that, to the poet, what he produces is given by some power greater than himself, by the Boilyas (spirits) or Pundjel, the Father of all. This palæolithic psychology, of course, is now quite discredited, yet the term “genius” is still (perhaps superstitiously) applied to the rare persons whose intellectual faculties lightly outrun those of ordinary mortals, and who do marvels with means apparently inadequate.
In recent times some philosophers, like Mr. F. W. H. Myers, put—in place of the Muses or the Boilyas, or the Genius—what they call the “Subliminal Self,” something “far more deeply interfused than the everyday intellect.” This subconscious self, capable of far more than the conscious intelligence, is genius.