Our object has not been, however, to give the history of that criticism, but rather to select those points in it, which it was advisable to clear up, in order to confirm the judgment that we propose and defend. If erroneous positions of criticism serve by their opposition to arouse correct thoughts relating to the poet, others, which are not erroneous, lead directly to them. In addition to the pages of older writers, always worthy of perusal (though devoted to problems of different times), such as those of Herder, Goethe, Schlegel, Coleridge and Manzoni, the student will find among those with whom he will like to think among the Dowdens, the Bradleys, the Raleighs of to-day. These will inspire in him the wish to continue thinking on his own account about the nature of the great poetry of Shakespeare.
[CHAPTER XII]
SHAKESPEARE AND OURSELVES
Shakespeare (and this applies to every individual work) had a history, but has one no longer. He had a history, which was that of his poetical sentiment, of its various changing notes, of the various forms in which it found expression. He had also (we must insist), an individual history which it is difficult to identify united with that of the Elizabethan drama, to which he belongs solely as an actor and provider of theatrical works. The general traits, which, among many differences, he shares with his contemporaries, predecessors and imitators (even when these are more substantial than theatrical imitations, conventions and habits) form part of the history of the Renaissance in general and of the English Renaissance in particular, but do not of themselves constitute the history that was properly speaking his own.
But he no longer has this, because what happened afterwards and what happens in the present, is the history of others, is our history, no longer his. Indeed, the histories of Shakespeare, which have been composed, considered in the light of later times—and they are still being written—have been and are understood, in a first sense, as the history of the criticism of his works; and it is clear that in this case, it is the history of us, his critics, the history of criticism and of philosophy, no longer that of Shakespeare. Or they are understood as the history of the spiritual needs and movements of different periods, which now approach and now recede from Shakespeare, causing either almost complete forgetfulness of his poetry, or causing it to be felt and loved. In this case too, it is the history, not of Shakespeare, but of the culture and the mode of feeling of other times than his. Or they are understood in a third sense, as the history of the literary and artistic works, in which the so-called influence of Shakespeare is more or less discernible; and since this influence would be without interest, if it produced nothing but mere mechanical copies, and on the contrary has interest only because we see it transformed in an original manner by new poets and artists, it is the history of the new poets and artists and no longer that of Shakespeare.
As regards the last statement, it will not be out of place to remark that the accounts which have been given of the representations of his plays are altogether foreign to Shakespeare; because theatrical representations are not, as is believed, "interpretations," but variations, that is to say "creations of new works of art," by means of the actors, who always bring to them their own particular manner of feeling. There is never a tertium comparationis, in the sense of a presumably authentic and objective interpretation, and here the same criterion applies as to music and painting suggested by plays, which are music and painting, and not those plays. Giuseppe Verdi, who for his part composed an Othello, wrote to the painter Morelli, who had conceived a painting of Iago (in a letter of 1881, recently published): "You want a slight figure, with little muscular development, and if I have understood you rightly, one of the cunning, malignant sort ... But if were I an actor and wished to represent Iago, I should prefer a lean, meagre figure, with thin lips, and small eyes close to the nose, like a monkey's, a high retreating forehead, with a deal of development at the back of the head; absent and nonchalant in manner, indifferent to everything, incredulous, sneering, speaking good and evil lightly, with an air of thinking about something quite different from what he says ..." They might have entered into a long discussion as to the two different interpretations, had not Verdi, with his accustomed good sense, hastened to conclude: "But whether Iago be small or big, whether Othello be Venetian or Turk, execute them as you conceive them: the result will always be good. But remember not to think too much about it."
The insurmountable difference that exists between the most studiously poetic theatrical representation and the original poetry of Shakespeare, is the true reason why, contrary to the general belief in Shakespeare's eminent "theatricality," Goethe considered that "he was not a poet of the theatre and did not think of the stage, which is too narrow for so vast a soul, that the visible world is too narrow for it." Coleridge too held that the plays were not intended for acting, but to be read and contemplated as poems, and added sometimes to say laughingly, that an act of Parliament should be passed to prohibit the representation of Shakespeare on the stage.