Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille

by Benedetto Croce

SHAKESPEAREAN SENTIMENT

Everyone possesses at the bottom of his heart, as it were, a synthetic or compendious image of a poet like Shakespeare, who belongs to the common patrimony of culture, and in his memory the definitions of him that have been given and have become current formulae. It is well to fix the mind upon that image, to remember these formulae, and to extract from them their principal meanings, with the view of obtaining, at least in a preliminary and provisory manner, the characteristic spiritual attitude of Shakespeare, his poetical sentiment.

The first observation leaps to the eye and is generally admitted: namely, that no particular feeling or order of feelings prevails in him; it cannot be said of him that he is an amorous poet, like Petrarch, a desperately sad poet like Leopardi, or heroic, as Homer. His name is adorned rather with such epithets as universal poet, as perfectly objective, entirely impersonal, extraordinarily impartial. Sometimes even his coldness has been remarked—a coldness certainly sublime, "that of a sovran spirit, which has described the complete curve of human existence and has survived all sentiment" (Schlegel).

Nor is he a poet of ideals, as they are called, whether they be religious, ethical, political, or social. This explains the antipathy frequently manifested towards him by apostles of various sorts, of whom the last was Tolstoi, and the unsatisfied desires that take fire in the minds of the right thinking, urging them always to ask of any very great man for something more, for a supplement. They conclude their admiration with a sigh that there should really be something missing in him—he is not to be numbered along those who strive for more liberal political forms and for a more equable social balance, nor has he had bowels of compassion for the humble and the plebeian. A certain school of German critics (Ulrici, Gervinus, Kreyssig, Vischer, etc.), perhaps as an act of opposition to such apparent accusations (I would not recommend the reading of these authors, whom I have felt obliged to peruse owing to the nature of my task) began to represent Shakespeare as a lofty master of morality, a casuist most acute and reliable, who never fails to solve an ethical problem in the correct way, a prudent and austere counsellor in politics, and above all, an infallible judge of actions, a distributor of rewards and punishments, graduated according to merit and demerit, paying special attention that not even the slightest fault should go unpunished. Now setting aside the fact that the ends attributed to him were not in accordance with his character as a poet and bore evidence only to the lack of taste of those critics; setting aside that the design of distributing rewards and punishments according to a moral scale, which they imagine to exist and praise in him, was altogether impossible of accomplishment by any man or even by any God, since rewards and punishments are thoughts altogether foreign to the moral consciousness and of a purely practical and judicial nature; setting aside these facts, which are generally considered unworthy of discussion and jeered at in the most recent criticism, as the ridiculous survivals of a bygone age, even if we make the attempt to translate these statements into a less illogical form, and assume that there really existed in Shakespeare an inclination for problems of that sort, they shew themselves to be at variance with simple reality. Shakespeare caressed no ideals of any sort and least of all political ideals; and although he magnificently represents political struggles also, he always went beyond their specific character and object, attaining through them to the only thing that really attracted him; life.

This sense of life is also extolled in his work, which for that reason is held to be eminently dramatic, that is to say, animated with a sense of life considered in itself, in its eternal discord, its eternal harshness, its bitter-sweet, in all its complexity.

To feel life potently, without the determination of a passion or an ideal, implies feeling it unilluminated by faith, undisciplined by any law of goodness, not to be corrected by the human will, not to be reduced to the enjoyment of idyllic calm, or to the inebriation of joy; and Shakespeare has indeed been judged in turn not religious, not moral, no assertor of the freedom of the will, and no optimist. But no one has yet dared to judge him to be irreligious, immoral, a fatalist, or a pessimist, for these adjectives are seen not to suit him, as soon as they are pronounced.

And here too were required the strange aberration of fancy of a Taine, his singular incapacity for receiving clear impressions of the truth, in order to portray the feeling of Shakespeare towards man and life as being fundamentally irrational, based on blind deception, a sequence of hasty impulses and swarming images, without an autonomous centre, where truth and wisdom are accidental and unstable effects, or appearances without substance. These are simply exercises in style, repeated with variants from other writers; they do not even present a caricature of the art of Shakespeare, since even for this, some connection with fact is necessary. Shakespeare, who has so strong a feeling for the bounds set to the human will, in relation to the Whole, which stands above it, possesses the feeling for the power of human liberty in equal degree. As Hazlitt says, he, who in some respects is "the least moral of poets," is in others "the greatest of moralists." He who beholds the unremovable presence of evil and sorrow, has his eye open and intent in an equal degree upon the shining forth of the good, the smile of joy, and is healthy and virile as no pessimist ever was. He who nowhere in his works refers directly to a God, has ever present within him the obscure consciousness of a divinity, of an unknown divinity, and the spectacle of the world, taken by itself, seems to him to be without significance, men and their passions a dream, a dream that has for intrinsic and correlative end a reality which, though hidden, is more solid and perhaps more lofty.

But we must be careful not to insist too much upon these positive definitions and represent his sentiment as though it were one in which negative elements were altogether overcome. The good, virtue, is without doubt stronger in Shakespeare than evil and vice, not because it overcomes and resolves the other term in itself, but simply because it is light opposed to darkness, because it is the good, because it is virtue. This is because of its special quality, which the poet discerns and seizes in its original purity and truth, without sophisticating or weakening it. Positive and negative elements do really become interlaced or run into one another, in his mode of feeling, without becoming reconciled in a superior harmony. Their natural logic can be expressed in terms of rectitude, justice and sincerity; but their logic and natural character also finds its expression in terms of ambition, cupidity, egoism and satanic wickedness. The will is accurately aimed at the target, but also, it is sometimes diverted from it by a power, which it does not recognise, although it obeys it, as though under a spell. The sky becomes serene after the devastating hurricane, honourable men occupy the thrones from which the wicked have fallen, the conquerors pity and praise the conquered. But the desolation of faith betrayed, of goodness trampled upon, of innocent creatures destroyed, of noble hearts broken, remains. The God that should pacify hearts is invoked, his presence may even be felt, but he never appears.

The poet does not stand beyond these struggling passions, attraction and repugnance, love and hate, hope and despair, joy and sorrow; but he is beyond being on the side of one or the other. He receives them all in himself, not that he may feel them all, and pour tears of blood around them, but that he may make of them his unique world, the Shakespearean world, which is the world of those undecided conflicts.