WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
[CHAPTER VII]
THE PRACTICAL PERSONALITY AND THE POETICAL PERSONALITY
To state at the outset, that the practical personality of Shakespeare is not the object of study for the critic and historian of art, but his poetical personality; not the character and development of his life, but the character and development of his art, will perhaps seem to be superfluous, but as a matter of fact it will aid us in proceeding more rapidly.
We do not aim at forbidding the natural curiosity, which leads to the enquiry as to what sort of men in practical life were those whom we admire as poets, thinkers and scientists. This curiosity often leads to delusion, because there is nothing to be found behind the poet, the philosopher, or the man of science, which can arouse interest, though it is sometimes fruitful. It would certainly be agreeable to raise that sort of mysterious veil that surrounds Shakespeare. We should like to know what sort of passions, what ethical, philosophical and mental experiences were his, and above all what he thought about himself—whether, as appeared to those who rediscovered him a century or so later, he were really without feeling the greatness of his genius and of his own work. For what reason, too, if there were a special reason, did he not take the trouble to have his plays printed, but exposed them to the risk of being lost to posterity? Was it due to the ingenuousness and innocence of the poet, or to proud indifference on the part of a man, who disdains the world's applause and the mirage of glory, because he is completely satisfied with the greatness of his work? Or was it due to simple indolence, or to a settled plan, or to the web of events? Did he suppose, as has been suggested, that those plays, written for the theatre, would have continued ever to live in the theatre, under the care of his companions in art, in accordance with his intentions and in a manner suitable to their merit? But it is clear that these and such like questions concern the biography, rather than the artistic history of Shakespeare, which gives rise to an altogether different series of researches.
We do not however wish to assert that these two series of different questions are without relation: even different things have some relation to one another, which resides in their diversity itself and is connected above them. The critic and historian of art would certainly find it advantageous for the studies that he was about to undertake, to know the chronology, the circumstances, the details, the compositions, the recompositions, the recastings and the collaborations of the Shakespearean drama. He would thus avoid the obligation of vexing his mind as to certain interpretations, and of remaining more or less perplexed for a greater or lesser space of time, before certain peculiarities, discordances and inequalities, doubtful, that is to say, as to whether they be errors in art, or art forms of which it is difficult to seize the hidden connection. But he would gain nothing more from this advantage (with the conjoined admonition, to beware of the prejudices that such information is apt to cause). His judgment would of necessity be founded, in final analysis, upon intrinsic reasons of an artistic nature, arising from an examination of the works before him. The chronology that he will succeed in fixing, will not be a real or material chronology, but an ideal and an aesthetic one, for these are two forms of chronology which only coincide approximately and sometimes altogether diverge from one another. Were the authenticity of the works all clearly settled, the critic would be preserved from proclaiming that certain works or parts of works are Shakespeare's, when they are really, say, Greene's or Marlowe's, which is an inexactitude of nomenclature, as also is the treating of Shakespeare's work as being by someone else or anonymous. But this onomastic inexactitude is already corrected by the presumption that the critic has his eye fixed, not on the biographical and practical personage of Shakespeare, but on the poetical personage. He is thus able to face with calmness the danger, which is not a danger and is extremely improbable, of allowing to pass under the colours of Shakespeare a work drawn from the same or a similar source of inspiration, which stands at an equal altitude with others, or of adding another work to those of inferior quality and declining value assigned to the same name, because he is differentiating aesthetic values and not title-deeds to legal property.
As we have said, it has not seemed superfluous to repeat these statements, because in the first place, the silent and tenacious, though erroneous conviction, as to the unity and identity of the two histories, the practical and the poetical, or at least the obscurity as to their true relation, is the hidden source of the vast and to a large extent useless labours, which form the great body of Shakespearean philology. This in common with the philology of the nineteenth century in general, is unconsciously dominated by romantic ideas of mystical and naturalistic unity, whence it is not by accident that Emerson is found among the precursors of hybrid biographical aesthetic, and the romanticizing Brandes among its most conspicuous supporters. These labours are animated with the hope of obtaining knowledge of the poetry of Shakespeare in its full reality, by means of the discovery of the complete chronology, of biographical incidents, of allusions, and of the origin of his themes. The ranks of the seekers are also swollen by those who are animated with like hopes and wish to exhibit their cleverness in the solution of enigmas, or are urged by the professional necessity of producing dissertations and theses. Unfortunately, the documents and traditions relating to the life of Shakespeare are very few. All or nearly all, relate to external and insignificant details. We are without letters, confessions or memoirs by the author, and also without authentic and abundant collections of facts relating to him. Although almost every year there appears some new Life of Shakespeare, it is now time to recognise with resignation and clearly to declare that it is not possible to write a biography of Shakespeare. At the most, an arid and faulty biographical chronicle can be composed, rather as proof of the devotion of posterity, longing to possess even a shadow of that biography, than as genuinely satisfying a desire for knowledge. Owing to this lack of documents, the above-mentioned philological literature consists, almost altogether, of an enormous and ever increasing number of conjectures, of which the one contests, impugns, or varies the other, and all are equally incapable of nourishing the mind. It suffices to glance through a few pages of a Shakespearean annual or handbook, to hear of the "Southampton theory," the "Pembroke theory," and of other theories, in relation to the Sonnets; that is to say, whether the person concealed beneath the initials W. H. in the printer's dedication, is the Earl of Southampton, or the Earl of Pembroke, or a musician of the name of Hughes, or even William Harvey, the third husband of Southampton's mother, or the retail bookseller, William Hell, or an invention of the printer, or a joke of the poet, who should thus indicate himself (William Himself); and so on, with the "Fitton theory," the "Davenant theory," and the like, that is to say, whether the "dark lady," celebrated in some of the sonnets, be a court lady of the name of Mary Fitton, or the hostess by whom Shakespeare is said to have become the father of the poet Davenant (and one of the critics has dared admit that he spent fifteen years in research and meditation on this point alone), or the French wife of the printer Field, or finally a conventional and imaginary personage of Elizabethan sonneteering, which was based upon the manner of Petrarch. And in the same way as with the Sonnets, there have been conjectures of the most varied sorts as to Shakespeare's marriage, his relations with his wife, the incidents of his family and of his profession. Passing to the plays, there are and have been discussions without apparent end, as to whether Titus Andronicus be an original work, or has been patched up by him; as to whether Henry VI be all of it his, or only a part, or revised and enlarged by him; as to which portions of Henry VIII and of Pericles are his and which Fletcher's, or whether by other hands; as to whether Timon be a sketch finished by others or a sketch by others finished by Shakespeare; whether and to what extent there persists in Hamlet a previous Hamlet by Kyd or by another author; whether certain of the so-called "apocryphas," such as Arden of Feversham and Edward III, are on the contrary to be held to be authentic. In like manner, the difficulties connected with the chronology are great and conjectures numerous. The Dream, for instance, is by some placed in the year 1590, by others in 1595, Julius Caesar now in 1606, now in 1599, Cymbeline in 1605 and 1611, Troilus and Cressida, by some in 1599, by others in 1603, by others still in 1609, by yet others resolved into three parts or strata, form 1592 to 1606, and 1607, with additions by other hands. For the majority, the Tempest belongs to the year 1611, but is by others dated earlier, and as regards Hamlet again, in its first form, there are some who believe that it was composed, not by any means in 1602, but between 1592 and 1594. And so on, without advantage being taken of the few sure aids offered by stylistic or metrical measurements, as one may prefer to call them. Now conjectures are of use as heuristic instruments, only in so far as it is hoped to convert them into certainties, by means of the documents of which they aid in the search and the interpretation. But when this is not possible, they are altogether vain and vacuous, and consequently, were they convertible into certainties, would not give the solution or the criterion of solution of the critical problems relating to the poetry of Shakespeare. When they are not to be so converted and remain mere vague imagining, they do not even supply the practical and biographical history, which others delude themselves with the belief that they can construct piecemeal by means of them. Hence it has happened that careful writers, who have wished to give the character and life of Shakespeare, as far as possible without hypotheses and fancies, have been obliged to retail a series of general assertions, in which all individualisation is lost, even if Shakespeare be pronounced good, honest, gentle, serviceable, prudent, laborious, frank, gay, and the like.
But the majority convert the less probable conjectures into certainties, and proceed from conjecture to conjecture and from assertion to assertion, finally producing, under the title, Life of Shakespeare, nothing but a romance, which, however, always turns out to be too colourless to be called artistic. A rapacious hand is stretched out to seize the poetical works themselves, with the view of writing this sort of fiction since (to quote the author of one of these unamusing fictions, Brandes) it cannot be admitted that it is impossible to know by deducing them from his writings, the life, the adventures, and the person of a man who has left about forty plays and poems. And it is certainly possible to deduce all these things from the poetical writings, but the life, and the poetical adventures and personages, not the practical and biographical; save in the case (which is not that of Shakespeare,) where definitely informative, autobiographical statements and excursions are to be found among the poems, that is to say, passages that are not poetical, but prosaic. In every other instance, the poetical emotion does not lead to the practical, because the relation between the two is not deterministic, from effect to cause, but creative, from material to form, and therefore incommensurable. The moment it is raised to the sphere of poetry, a sentiment that has really been experienced is plucked from its practical and realistic soil, and made the motive of composition for a world of dreams, one of the infinite possible worlds, in which it is as useless to seek any longer the reality of that sentiment, as it is vain to seek a drop of water poured into the ocean, and transformed from what it was previously by ocean's vast embrace. One feels almost inclined to repeat as warning that strophe from the Sonnets, where the poet said of his mistress to his friend: