Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille

by Benedetto Croce

We could in like manner enable anyone to understand the fabulous-human character of King Lear, who did not at once understand it for himself, by analysing the great initial scene between Lear and his three daughters, where, at the poet's touch, the story and the fabulous personages assume at one stroke a reality that is the very strength of our abhorrence of dry egoism cloaking itself in affectionate words and also the very strength of our tender admiration for the true goodness, which conceals itself and does not speak ("What shall Cordelia do? Love and be silent").

This insistence upon analysis and eulogy will be of special value to those who do not immediately understand of themselves, owing either to preconceptions, to habitual lack of attention, to their slight knowledge of art or to their lack of penetration. It will be of use in schools, to promote good reading, and outside them, it may assist in softening those hard heads which belong sometimes to men of letters. But it does not form part of our object in writing this treatise, nor does it appear to form part of the duty of Shakespearean criticism, for Shakespeare is one of the clearest and most evident of poets, capable of being perfectly understood by men of slight or elementary culture. We run with impatience through the many prolix, aesthetic commentaries which we already possess on his plays, as we should certainly listen with impatience to anyone who should draw our attention to the fact that the sun is shining brightly in the sky at midday, that it is gilding the country with its light, making sparkle the dew, and playing with its rays upon the leaves.

On the other hand, it is not inopportune to record that excellence in his art was long denied or contested to Shakespeare. This was the general view of his contemporaries themselves, because we now know what we are to think of the words of praise, which we find relating to him in the literature of his time. These had been diligently traced and collected by scholars, but had been more or less deliberately misunderstood, and interpreted in a sense opposed to their correct meaning, which was that of benevolent sympathy and condescending praise for a poet of popular appeal, approximately what we should employ now for a lively and pleasing writer of romantic adventures. Similar judgments reappeared in a different style and at a different time in the famous utterances of Voltaire, which vary in their intonation according to his humour: such are barbare aimable, fou séduisant, sauvage ivre, and the like. They do not appear to have lost their weight especially in France, where a certain Monsieur Pellissier has filled a large volume with them, coming to the conclusion that the work of Shakespeare, "malgré tant de beautés admirables est un immense fouillis," and that it generally seems to be, "celle d'un écolier, d'un écolier génial, qui n'ayant ni expérience, ni mesure, ni tact, gaspille prématuré son génie abortif." Finally (and this has greater weight), Jusserand, a learned historian of English literature, treating of Shakespeare with great display of erudition, presents him as "un fidèle serviteur" of his theatrical public, and speaks of his "défauts énormes." Chateaubriand, in his essay of 1801, playing the Voltaire in his turn, attributed to him "le génie," while he denied to him "l'art," the observance of the "règles" and "genres," which are "nés de la nature même"; but later he recognises that he was wrong to "mesurer Shakespeare avec la lunette classique." Here he put his finger on the fundamental mistake of that sort of criticism, which judges art, not by its intrinsic qualities, but by comparison with other works of art, which are taken as models. The same mistake was renewed, when French tragedy was not the model, but the art of realistic modern drama and fiction. The principal document in support of this is Tolstoi's book, where at every word or gesture of Shakespeare's characters, he exclaims that men do not speak thus, that is to say, the men who are not man in universal, but the men of Tolstoi's romances, though these latter happen to be far nearer to the characters of Shakespeare than their great, but unreasonable and quite uncritical author suspected. Tolstoi arrives at the point of preferring the popular and unpoetical play King Lear, to the King Lear of Shakespeare, because there is more logic in the conduct of the plot in the former, thus showing that he prefers minute prosaic details to sublime poetry.

An attenuated form of these views as to the lack of art in Shakespeare is the theory maintained better by Rümelin than by others, to the effect that the characters in Shakespeare are worth a great deal more than the action or plots, which are disconnected, intermittent, contradictory and without any feeling for verisimilitude. He also holds that Shakespeare works on each scene, without having the power of visualising the preceding scene, or the one that is to follow, and also that the characters themselves do not respect the truth of dialogue and of the drama, in their manner of speech, which is always fiery, imaginative and splendid. Finally, it might be said of him that he composes beautiful music for libretti, which are more or less ill constructed. Now if this theory had for its object to assert, though with emphasis and exaggeration, that in a poetical work the material part of the story, the web of events, does not count, and that the only thing of importance is the soul that circulates within it, just as in a picture, it is not the material side of the things painted (which is called by critics of painting "the literary element," or that which taken in itself is external and without importance), but the rhythm of the lines and of the colours, what he maintained would be correct, if only as a reaction. Coleridge has already noted the independence of the dramatic interest from the intrigue and quality of the story, which in the Shakespearean drama, was obtained from the best known and commonest sources. But the object with which this theory was conceived by Rümelin and with which it is generally maintained, has for its object to establish a dualism or contradiction in the art of Shakespeare, by proving him to be "strong" in one domain of the spirit and "weak" in another, where strength in both is "necessary," in order to produce a perfect work.

We are bound to deny with firmness this assumption: we refuse to admit the existence of any such dualism and contradiction, because the distinction between characters and actions, between style and dialogue and style and work, is arbitrary, scholastic and rhetorical. There is in Shakespeare one poetical stream, and it is impossible to set its waters against one another—characters against actions, and the like. So true is this, that save in cold blood, one does not notice his so-called contradictions, omissions and improbabilities, that is to say, when we leave the poetical condition of the spirit and begin to examine what we have read, as though it were the report of an occurrence. Nor is the imputation cast upon the speech of Shakespeare's characters, which is perfectly consonant with the nature of the poems, admissible. Hence from the lips of Macbeth and of Lady Macbeth, of Othello and of Lear, came true and proper lyrics. These are not interruptions and dissonances in the play, but motions and upliftings of the play itself; they are not the superposition of one life upon another, but the outpouring of that life, which is continued in the central motive. These witticisms, conceits and misunderstandings in Romeo and Juliet, which have so often been blamed, are to be explained, at least in great measure, in a natural way, as the character of the play, as the comedy, which precedes and imparts its colour to the tragedy, and is brilliant with the fashionable and gallant speech of the day.

In making the foregoing statement, we do not wish to deny that in the drama of Shakespeare are to be found (besides historical, geographical, and chronological errors, which are indifferent to poetry but not necessary and for that reason avoidable or to be avoided) words and phrases, and sometimes entire scenes, which are not justifiable, save for theatrical reasons. We do not know to what extent they had his assent and to what extent they are due to the very confused tradition, under the influence of which the text of his works has descended to us. We also do not wish to deny that he was guilty of little over-sights and contradictions, and that he was perhaps generally negligent. But it is important in any case to understand and bear in mind the psychological reasons for this negligence, inspired with that sort of indifference and contempt for the easy perfecting of certain details, of those engaged upon works of great magnitude and importance. Giambattista Vico, a mighty spirit who resembles Shakespeare, both in his full, keen sense of life and in the adventures of his work and of his fame, was also apt frequently to overlook details and to make slight mistakes, and was convinced "that diligence must lose itself in arguments, which have anything of greatness in them, because it is a minute, and because minute a tardy virtue." Thus he openly vindicated the right of rising to the level of heroic fury, which will not brook delay from small and secondary matters.

As Vico was nevertheless most accurate in essentials, never sparing himself the most lengthy meditations to sound the bottom of his thoughts, so it is impossible to think that Shakespeare did not give the best and greatest part of himself to his plays, that he was not continually intent upon observing, reflecting comparing, examining his own feelings, seeking out and weighing his expressions, collecting and valuing the impressions of the public and of his colleagues in art, in fact, upon the study of his art. The precision, the delicacy, the gradations, the shading of his representations, are an irrefragable proof of this. The sense of classic form is often denied to him, even by his admirers, that is to say, of a partial and old-fashioned ideal of classical form, consisting of certain external regularities. But he was a classic, because he possessed the strength that is sure of itself, which does not exert itself, nor proceed in a series of paroxysmal leaps, but carries in itself its own moderation and serenity. He had that taste which is proper to genius and commensurate with it, because genius without taste is an abstraction to be found only in the pages of treatises. The various passages, where he chances to find an opportunity for theorizing on art, show that he had profoundly meditated the art he practised. In one of the celebrated passages of the Dream, he makes Theseus say,

"The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."

And that a powerful imagination, if it is affected by some joy, imagines someone as the bringer of that joy, and if it imagine some nocturnal terror, it changes a bush into a wild beast with great facility. That is to say, he shows himself conscious of the creative virtue of poetry and of its origin in the feelings, which it changes into persons, endowed with ethereal sentiment. But in the equally celebrated passage of Hamlet, he dwells upon the other aspect of artistic creation, upon its universality, and therefore upon its calm and harmony. What Hamlet chiefly insists upon in his colloquy with the players, is "moderation," "for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness." To declare Shakespeare to be a representative of the frenzied and convulsed style in poetry, as has been done several times, is to utter just the reverse of the truth. In this respect, it is well to read the contemporary dramatists, with a view to measuring the difference, indeed the abyss between them. In the famous Spanish Tragedy of Kyd, there is a scene (perhaps due to another hand) in which Hieronymus asks a painter to paint for him the assassin of his own son, and cries out: