Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry "hold, hold!"
as an example of "poetry debased by mean expressions;" because "dun" is a "low" expression," seldom heard but in the stable;" "knife" an instrument used by butchers and cooks in the meanest employment; and asking "who, without some relaxation of his gravity, can hear of the avengers of guilt peeping through the blanket of the dark!"
* No. 168.
Let the reader look on a little further, and find this fossil-scanning machine telling off the spondees and dactyls in the dramas (to ascertain if the cæsura was exactly in the middle) on his fingers and thumbs, and counting the unities up to three, to see if he could approve of what the ages after him were to worship! if, haply, this Shakespeare (although he might have devised a scheme to kill Laertes with the bowl and Hamlet with the dagger, or might have thrown a little more fire into the quarrel with Brutus and Cassius) could be admitted to sit at the feet of Addison, with his sleepy and dreary "Campaign;" or Pope, with his metrical proverbs about "Man;" or even the aforesaid Samuel Johnson himself, with his rhymed dictionaries about the "vanity of human wishes," and so on. Let him find the old lexicographer admitting, in his gracious condescension, that "The Tempest" "is sufficiently regular;" of "Measure for Measure" that "the unities are sufficiently preserved;" that the "Midsummer Night's Dream" was "well written;" that the style of the "Merchant of Venice" was "easy:" but that in "As you Like It" "an opportunity of exhibiting a moral lesson" is unhappily lost. The "Winter's Tale" is "entertaining;" in "King John" he finds "a pleasing interchange of incidents and characters," remarking that "the lady's grief is very affecting." Of "Troilus and Cressida" the old formalist says, that it "is one of the most correctly written of Shakespeare's plays;" of "Coriolanus," that it "is one of the most amusing." But, he says, that "Antony and Cleopatra" is "low" and "without any art of connection or care of disposition." he dismisses "Cymbeline" with the remark that he does not care "to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility; upon faults too evident for detection and too gross for aggravation." He is pleased to approve of "Romeo and Juliet," because "the incidents are numerous and important, the catastrophe irresistibly affecting, and the process of the action carried on with such probability, at least with such congruity to popular opinions, as tragedy requires" and, while on the whole, approving of "Othello," he can not help remarking that, "had the scene opened in Cyprus, and the preceding incidents been occasionally related, there had been little wanting to a drama of the most exact and scrupulous regularity." And so on every-where! Let the reader imagine one thus patronizing these mighty and deathless monographs to-day! Let him imagine a better illustration, if he can, of what our Johnson's friend Pope called—in long meter—"fools rushing; in where angels feared to tread!" And let him confess to himself that these were not the times nor the men to raise the question.
Is it not the fact that, until our own century, the eyes of the world were darkened, and men saw in these Shakespearean dramas only such stage plays, satisfying the acting necessities of almost any theater, as might have been written—not by "the soul" of any age; not by a man "myriad-minded" not by a "morning-star of song," or a "dear son of memory," but—by a clever playwright? The sort of days when an Addison could have been pensioned for his dreary and innocent "Campaign," and a Mr. Pye made poet-laureate of the laud where an unknown pen had once written "Hamlet were, consequently, not the days for the discovery with which this century has crowned itself—namely, the discovery that the great first of poets lived in the age when England and America were one world by themselves, and that they must now draw together again to search for the master "who came"—to use, with all reverence, the words of Judge Holmes—"upon our earth, knowing all past, all present, and all future, to be leader, guide, and second gospel of mankind." But the fullness of time has come, and we now know that, whoever was the poet that he "kept," he was of quite another kidney than the manager of the theater, "William Shakespeare, who employed him to write Plays, and who wrote Revelations and Gospels instead.
If we were interested to inquire what manner of man Mr. Manager Shakespeare was, we have only to look about us among the managers of theaters in this latter half of our nineteenth century. Let us take Mr. Wallack or Mr. Daly, both of whom arrange plays for the stages of their own theaters, for example; or, better yet, take Mr. Lion Boucieault, who is an actor as well as a manager, and is, moreover, as successful in his day as was William Shakespeare in his. Mr. Boucieault has, so far, produced about one hundred and thirty-seven successful plays. Mr. William Shakespeare produced about a hundred less. All of Mr. Boucicault's plays show that gentleman's skillful hand in cutting, expanding, arranging, and setting for the stage; and in the representation of them, Mr. Boucieault has himself often participated. In like manner, Mr. Shakespeare, the manager, we are told by tradition, often assisted at the representation of the dramas produced on his boards, playing the Ghost in "Hamlet," * and the King in "Henry VI," which indicate very readily that his place in the "stock" was that of a "walking (or utility) gentleman."
* And played it, it is thought by some, so wretchedly that
he made "the gods" hoot. At any rate, in a pamphlet
published by Lodge, in 1593, "Witt's Miserie and the World's
Madness; Discovering the Devil's Incarnate of this age," a
devil named "Hate-Vertue" is described as looking "as pale
as the vizard of the ghost, which cried so miserably at the
theatre like an oister-wife, 'Hamlet—Revenge.'" But perhaps
Shakespeare did not play the ghost that night. Shakespeare
also played "Old Knowell," Jonson's "Every Man in his
Humor," "Adam," in "As You Like It," and, according to
Jonson, apart in the latter's "Legacies," in 1603.
We happen to know, also, that Mr. Shakespeare rewrote for the stage what his unknown poet, poets, or friends composed, from the tolerable hearsay testimony of his fellow actor, Ben Jonson, who tells us that he remembers to have heard the players say that the stage copies of the plays were written in Shakespeare's autograph, and were all the more available on that account, because he (Shakespeare), was a good penman, in that "whatever he penned, he never blotted line." * Mr. Boucicault, while claiming the full credit to which he is entitled, is quite too clever, as well as too conscientious to set up for an original author or a poet, as well as a playwright. Neither does Shakespeare (as we have already said), anywhere appear to have ever claimed to be a poet, or even to have taken to himself—what we may, however, venture to ascribe to him—the merit of the stage-setting of the dramatic works, which, having been played at his theater, we collectively call the "Shakespearean plays" to-day. Why, then, to begin with, should we not conceive of Mr. Manager Shakespeare discharging the same duties as Mr. Wal-lack, Mr. Daly, or Mr. Boucicault? as very much—from the necessities of his vocation—the same sort of man as either of them?
* Post, part III, the Jonsonian Testimony.