Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille

by Benedetto Croce

SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM

Criticism of Shakespeare, like every criticism, has followed and expressed the progress and alternations of the philosophy of art, or aesthetic; it has been strong or weak, profound or superficial, well-balanced or one-sided, according to the doctrines that have there been realised. Their history would form an excellent History of Aesthetic, because the fame of Shakespeare became widespread, concurrently with the spread of aesthetic theory, with its liberation from external norms and concepts, and its penetration to the heart of its subject. Shakespeare's poetry in its turn stimulated this deepening of the theory of aesthetic, by its revelation of a poetic world, for emotion and admiration, in appearance at least, very different from what had previously passed as its sole and perfect example. But since we are occupied at the present moment with Shakespeare and not with aesthetic theory, we shall touch only upon certain points of this criticism, in order the more firmly to establish by indirect proof the judgment expressed above, and to indicate certain obstacles, which the student of Shakespeare will meet with in critical literature relating to that poet. Our description and definition of them may render avoidable certain of the most common errors.

Among these must be included (not in the seat of criticism, but in the entrance-hall and at the gates) what may be called exclamatory criticism, which instead of understanding a poet in his particularity, his finite-infinity, drowns him beneath a flood of superlatives. This is the method employed by English writers towards Shakespeare (I am bound to admit that the Italians do the same as regards Dante). An example of this habit, selected from innumerable others, is Swinburne's book, from which we learn that "it would be better that the world should lose all the books it contains rather than the plays of Shakespeare"; that Shakespeare is "the supreme creator of men"; that he "stands alone," and at the most might admit "Homer on his right and Dante on his left hand"; then, as to individual plays, we learn that the trilogy of Henry IV-V suffices to reveal him as "the greatest playwright of the world," that the Dream stands "without and above any possible or imaginable criticism." Thus he continues, puffing out his cheeks to find hyperboles, which themselves finally turn out to be inferior to hyperbolic requirements. Sometimes such exclamations not only border on the ridiculous, but fall right into it, as is the case with Carlyle, who stood in perplexity before the hypothetical dilemma, as to whether England could better afford to lose "the empire of India or Shakespeare." Victor Hugo, more generous, and an admirer of the ocean, constituted a series of hommes océans, where the tragic poet of Albion found a place alongside of Aeschylus, Dante, Michael-Angelo, Isaiah and Juvenal.

Another style of criticism, by images to be found in works that are estimable in other respects, is somewhat akin to this criticism without criticism, besides being far more justifiable, because, if it does not explain, it tries at least to give, as though in a poetical translation, a synthetic impression of Shakespeare's art and of the physiognomy of his various works. It describes the works of Shakespeare by means of landscapes and other pictures, as Herder and other writers of the Sturm and Drang period delighted in doing. Coleridge too did likewise and Hazlitt even more often, as may be shown by an extract from the letter of a certain Miss Florence O'Brien, on King Lear, to be found in well-nigh all books that deal with this tragedy. She begins: "This play is like a tempestuous night: the first scene is like a wild sunset, grandiose and terrible, with gusts of wind and rumblings of thunder, which announce the imminence of the hurricane: then comes a furious tempest of madness and folly, through which we see darkly the monstrous and unnatural figures of Goneril and Regan"; et cetera. The danger of such poetical variations is that of superimposing one art on another, and of leading astray or of distracting the attention from the genuine features of the original to be enjoyed and understood, in the attempt to render its effect.

Let us pass over biographical-aesthetic criticism: its fundamental error and the arbitrary judgments with which it disturbs both biography and the criticism of art have already been sufficiently illustrated; and let us also pass over the aesthetic criticism of philologists, who imagine themselves to be interpreting and judging poetry, when they are talking mere philology and uttering ineptitudes prepared with infinite pains. Being confined to citing but one example of their method, I would select for that purpose Furnivall's introduction to the Leopold Shakespeare. I fail to understand why this introduction is so highly esteemed and reverenced. Furnivall too, when he contrives not to lose himself in exclamations and attempts poetry, ("who could praise Falstaff sufficiently?" "who could fail to love Percy?" "the countess mother in All's Well resembles one of Titian's old ladies;" etc.), amuses himself by establishing links between the plays. These he discovers in the situations, in the action and elsewhere, regarding the works externally and from a general point of view. Thus he discovers a connection between Julius Caesar and Hamlet, in the repetition of the name of "Caesar," which is found thrice in the latter play, in the mouth of Horatio, of Polonius and of Hamlet, on the occasion of both seeing a ghost, in Hamlet's feeling that he must avenge his father like Antonius Caesar, and in the likeness of character between Brutus and Hamlet's father. Thus he attains to the ridiculous, as Carlyle and Swinburne by another route, when, for instance, he affirms that "in a certain sense Hotspur (the fiery Hotspur of Henry IV) is Kate (that is to say, the shrew in the Taming of the Shrew,) become a man and bearing armour!"

We shall also not dwell upon rhetorical criticism, which employs the method of "styles." This method, after having rejected Shakespeare, because he does not pay attention to the different styles of writing (French criticism), and having then proceeded to reconcile him with styles as explained by Aristotle in his Poetics, when these are well understood (Lessing), having sung his praises as the "genius of the drama," the "Homer of dramatic style" (Gervinus), is still seeking for what is "his alone and individually" in "the treatment" of the "drama." This it will never find, because such a thing as a "dramatic style" does not exist in the world of poetry: what does exist is simply and solely "poetry." These questions of literary style are now rather out of date: they survive rather in the lazy repetition of words and forms than in actual substance. It is certainly surprising to know that there still exist persons who examine what are called the "historical plays," and because they are "historical," compare them with history books, blaming the poet for not having given to Caesar the part that should have been his in Julius Caesar, and quoting in support of their argument (like Brandes) the histories of Mommsen and of Boissier. And there are also fossils who discuss in the language of the sixteenth century, verisimilitude, incongruity or multiplicity of plot, congruity or reverse of characters, crudeness of expression, and observation or failure to observe by Shakespeare the rules of dramatic composition. To German criticism of the speculative period and to the vast monographs that it produced upon Shakespeare must be given the credit of having tried to discover and determine the soul of Shakespeare's poetry. We must also admit, as a general quality of scientific German books on literature, even when these are of the heaviest and most full of mistakes, that they do make us feel the presence of problems not yet solved, whereas other books, more easy to read, better written and perhaps less full of mistakes, are less fruitful of thoughts that arise by repercussion or reaction. Unfortunately, these German writers imagined that soul to reside in a sort of philosophical, moral, political and historical teaching, upon which Shakespeare was supposed to have woven his plays. This was a flagrant offence against all sense of poetry, for not only did they forget the poetical in favour of the non-poetical; and attributed equal value to all of Shakespeare's widely differing works, whatever their real value, but also, since this non-poetical teaching had no existence, they set about creating it on their own account by means of various subtleties, and of a sort of allegorical exegesis. Thus in Ulrici, Gervinus, Kreyssig, Vischer and others like them, we read with astonishment, that in Richard III (to take a historical play) Shakespeare wished to impart "an immortal doctrine upon the divine right of kings and their intangibility," and at the same time to give warning that it does not suffice a king to be conscious of his right divine, unless he be prepared to maintain it with force against force. These writers have an almost prophetic vision that Germany will need this lesson in the case of its romantic king, Frederick William IV of Prussia! In the Tempest again (to take an imaginative play) Shakespeare is supposed by them to have desired to give his opinion upon the great question, common to our time and his, as to the right of Europeans to colonise and the need of subjecting the native savage by means of whip and sword, free of any scruple dictated by false sentiment. Finally (to take a last example from the great tragedies), they held that the ideal teaching of Othello is that punishment awaits unequal marriages, marriage between persons of different race, or different social condition, or of different age; and that Desdemona deserved her cruel fate, for she was weighed down with sin, having disobeyed her old father, imprudently and over-warmly supported the cause of Cassio, and shown negligence and lack of care in handling the famous handkerchief, which she let fall at her feet! We can only reply to all this in the witty words of Riimelin, à propos of such incredible interpretations of Shakespeare's catastrophes, to the effect that this "dramatic justice," so dear to German aestheticians, is "like Draco's sanguinary code, which decreed a single penalty for all misdeeds: death."

Numberless are the shocks that the artistic consciousness receives from such a method as this. Gervinus, who professed "an even firmer belief in Shakespeare's infallibility in matters of morality than in his lack of aesthetic defects," is indignant with readers disposed to find hard and cruel Prince Henry's repulse on coming to the throne, of his old friend Falstaff, the companion of his merry adventures. He gravely declares that this proves modern readers to be "far inferior both to Prince Henry and to Shakespeare in nobility and ethical fervour"; whereas it is evident that the poor readers are right, because we have to deal here with poetical images, not with practical and moral acts, and readers justly feel that Shakespeare was on this occasion obeying certain ends outside the province of art. Falstaff is sympathetic to every reader: even Gervinus does not dare to declare him antipathetic, but sets about finding plausible explanations for this illicit attractiveness. He produces three: the artistic perfection of the representation, the logical perfection of the type, and the struggle between the will for pleasure that always stimulates Falstaff, and his old age and his paunch, which hinder or make him impotent, and according to Gervinus, are bestowed upon him, in order to appease or mitigate our shocked sense of ethical severity. But the only and obvious explanation of Falstaff's sympathetic attractiveness is the sympathy which the poet himself felt in his genial way for him as a human force. In like manner, what we have held to be an error of composition, such as the story of Gloucester and his sons forming a parallel with that of Lear, is held to be a miracle by the professors aforesaid, because, as says Ulrici, the poet wished to teach us that "moral corruption is not isolated, but diffused among the most noble families, representative of all the others." Vischer holds a similar view, to the effect that Shakespeare "intended to show that, if impiety is widely diffused, society becomes impossible, and the world rocks to its foundation; but one instance of this did not suffice, so he had to accumulate the most terrifying confirmation of the fact."

These professors are also unanimous in rejecting the interpretation of the words: "He has no sons!" uttered by Macduff, when he learns that Macbeth has caused his wife and little son to be murdered, as they are understood by the ingenuous reader, namely, that Macduff thus expresses his rage at not being able to take an equal vengeance upon Macbeth, by slaying his sons. Their reason for this is that such a thing would be unworthy of so upright and honourable a man as Macduff. As though such honourable men as Macduff are not subject to the impulse of anger and capable of at least momentary blindness; as though the eyes, even of Manzoni's Father Christopher did not sometimes blaze "with a sudden vivacity," though he kept them as a rule fixed on the ground, as if (in the word of the author), they were two queer-tempered horses, driven by a coachman, whom they know to be their master, yet they will nevertheless indulge in an occasional frolic, for which they immediately atone with a good pull on the bit.

That is what happens to Macduff, who assumes possession of himself when he hears Malcolm's words that immediately follow. "Dispute it like a man,"—and says: "I shall do so; but I must also feel it like a man."

Quitting psychology and returning to poetry, nothing short of Malcolm's savage outburst can express his torment, in the climax of the dialogue. Were Shakespeare himself to come forward and declare that he meant what those insipid, moralising professors declare that he meant, Shakespeare would be wrong, and whoever said that he was wrong, would be in better accordance with his genius than he himself, for he was a genius; only upon condition of remaining true to the logic of poetry.