The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

by Delia Salter Bacon

It was easy, for instance, in defining the position of the favourite in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, in recommending a civil rather than a military greatness as the one least likely to provoke the animosity and suspicion of government under those conditions, in recommending that so far from taking umbrage at the advancement of a rival—the policy of the position prescribed, the deliberate putting forward and sustaining of another favourite to avert the jealousy and fatal suspicion with which, under such conditions, the government regards its favourite, when popularity and the qualities of a military chieftain are combined in him; it was easy in marking out those grand points in the conditions of the chief courtiers' policy at that time, to glance at the position of other men in that same court, seeking for power under those same conditions—men whose position, inasmuch as the immediate welfare of society and the destinies of mankind in future ages were concerned in it, was infinitely more important than that of the person whose affairs were agitated on the surface of the letter.

It was easy, too, in setting forth the conflicting claims of the 'New Company and the Old' to the monopoly of the manufacture and dying of woollens, for instance, to glance at the New Company and the Old whose claims to the monopoly of another public interest, not less important, were coming forward for adjustment just about that time, and urging their respective rights upon the attention of the chief men in the nation.

Or in the discussion of a plan for reforming the king's household, and for reducing its wanton waste and extravagance—in exhibiting the detail of a plan for relieving the embarrassments of the palace just then, which, with the aid of the favourite and his friends, and their measures for relief, were fast urging on the revolution—it was easy to indicate a more extensive reform; it was impossible to avoid a glance, in passing, at the pitifulness of the position of the man who held all men in awe and bondage then; it was impossible to avoid a touch of that same pen which writes elsewhere, 'Beggar and Madman,' too, so freely,—consoling the Monarch with the suggestion that Essex was also greatly in debt at a time when he was much sought after and caressed, and instancing the case of other courtiers who had been in the same position, and yet contrived to hold their heads up.

Under the easy artistic disguise of courtly rivalries and opposing ambitions—under cover, it might be, of an outrageous personal mutual hostility—it was easy for public men belonging to the same side in politics, who were obliged to conduct, not only the business of the state, but their own private affairs, and to protect their own most sacred interests under such conditions,—it was easy for politicians trained in such a school, by the skilful use of such artifices, to play into each other's hands, and to attain ends which in open league they would have been sure to lose; to avert evils, it might be, which it would have been vain and fatal for those most concerned in them openly to resist. To give to a courtier seeking advancement, with certain ulterior aims always in view, the character of a speculator, a scholastic dreamer, unable for practice, unfit to be trusted with state affairs, was not, after all, however pointedly it might be complained of at the time, so fatal a blow as it would have been to direct attention, already sufficiently on the alert, to the remarkable practical gifts with which this same speculator happened, as we all know, to be also endowed. This courtier's chief enemy, if he had been in his great rival's secrets, or if he had reflected at all, might have done him a worse turn than that. The hostilities of that time are no more to be taken on trust than its friendships, and the exaggerated expressions of them,—the over-doing sometimes points to another meaning.

While indicating the legal method of proceeding in conducting the show of a trial, to which 'the man whose fame did indeed fold in the orb o' the world' was to be subjected—a trial in which the decision was known beforehand—'though,' says our Poet—

'Though well, we may not pass upon his life,
Without the form of justice;'—

it was easy for the mean, sycophantic, truckling tool of a Stuart—for the tool of a Stuart's favourite—to insert in such a paper, if not private articles, private readings of passages, interlinings, pointing to a history in that case which has not yet transpired; it was easy for such a one to do it, when the partner of his treasons would have had no chance to criticise his case, or meddle with it.

In this collection of the apparently miscellaneous remains of our great philosopher, there are included many important state papers, and much authentic correspondence with the chief personages and actors of that age, which performed their part at the time as letters and state papers, though they were every one of them written with an inner reference to the position of the writer, and intended to be unfolded eventually with the key of that position. But along with this authentic historical matter, cunningly intermingled with it, much that is 'supposititious,' to borrow a term which this writer found particularly to his purpose—supposititious in the same sense in which the speeches of Thucydides and those of his imitators are suppositious—is also introduced. There is a great deal of fictitious correspondence here, designed to eke out that view of this author's life and times which the authentic letters left unfinished, and which he was anxious, for certain reasons, to transmit to posterity,—which he was forbidden to transmit in a more direct manner. There is a good deal of miscellaneous letter-writing here, and there will be found whole series of letters, in which the correspondence is sustained on both sides in a tolerably lively manner, by this Master of Arts; but under a very meagre dramatic cover in this case, designedly thin, never meant to serve as a cover with 'men of understanding.' Read which side of the correspondence you will in these cases, 'here is his dry hand up and down.'

These fictitious supposititious letters are written in his own name, as often as in another's; for of all the impersonations, ancient and modern, historical and poetic, which the impersonated genius of the modern arts had to borrow to speak and act his part in, there is no such mask, no so deep, thick-woven, impenetrable disguise, as that historical figure to which his own name and person is attached;—the man whom the Tudor and the Stuart admitted to their secrets,—the man whom the Tudor tolerated, whom the Stuart delighted to honor. In his rules of policy, he has left us the most careful directions for the interpretations of the lives of men whose 'impediments' are such, and whose 'natures and ends' are so 'differing and dissonant from the general state of the times in which they live,' that it is necessary for them to avoid 'disclosing themselves,' 'to be in the whole course of their lives close, retired, reserved, as we see in Tiberius, who was never seen at a play,' men who are compelled, as it were, 'to act their lives as in a theatre.' 'The soundest disclosing,' he says, 'and expounding of MEN is by their NATURES and ENDS. The weaker sort of men are best interpreted by their natures, the wisest by their ends.' 'Princes are best interpreted by their natures, private persons by their ends, because princes being at the top of human desires, they have, for the most part, no particular ends whereto they aspire, by distance from which a man might take measure and scale of the rest of their actions and desires' 'Distance from which,'—that is the key for the interpretation of the lives of private persons of certain unusual endowments, who propound to themselves under such conditions 'good and reasonable ends, and such as are within their power to attain.' As to the worthiness of these ends, we have some acquaintance with them already in our own experience. The great leaders of the new movements which make the modern ages—the discoverers of its science of sciences, the inventors of its art of arts, found themselves in an enemy's camp, and the policy of war was the only means by which they could preserve and transmit to us the benefits we have already received at their hands,—the benefits we have yet to receive from them. The story of this Interpreter is sent down to us, not by accident, but by his own design. But it is sent down to us with the works in which the nobility of his nature is all laid open,—in which the end of his ends is constantly declared, and constantly pursued,—it is sent down to us along with the works in which his ends are accomplished, to the times that have found in their experience what they were. He did not think it too much to ask of ages experimentally acquainted with the virtue of the aims for which he made these sacrifices,—aims which he constantly propounded as the end of his large activity, to note the 'dissonance' between that life which the surface of these documents exhibits,—between that historic form, too, which the surface of that time's history exhibits,—and the nature which is revealed in this life-act,—the soul, the never-shaken soul of this proceeding.

'The god of soldiers,
With the consent of supreme Jove, inform
Thy thoughts with nobleness; that thou may'st prove
The shame UNVULNERABLE, and stick i' the war
Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw,
And saving those that eye thee.'