Shakspeare and His Times

by François Guizot

It was, we are inclined to believe, while engaged in these labors, more conformable to the necessities of his position than to the freedom of his genius, that Shakspeare sought to recreate his mind by the composition of his "Venus and Adonis." Perhaps even the idea of this work was not then entirely new to him; for several sonnets, relating to the same subject, occur in a volume of poems published in 1596, under Shakspeare's name, and the title of which, "The Passionate Pilgrim," is expressive of the condition of a man wandering, in affliction, far from his native land. The amusement of a few melancholy hours, from which the age and character of the poet had not availed to preserve him at his entrance upon a painful or uncertain destiny—these little works are doubtless the first productions which Shakspeare's poetic genius allowed him to avow; and several of them, as well as the poem of "Venus and Adonis," need to be excused, it must be confessed, by the effervescence of a youth too much addicted to dreams of pleasure not to attempt to reproduce them in all their forms. In "Venus and Adonis," the poet, absolutely carried away by the voluptuous power of his subject, seems entirely to have lost sight of its mythological wealth. Venus, stripped of the prestige of divinity, is nothing but a beautiful courtesan, endeavoring unsuccessfully, by all the prayers, tears, and artifices of love, to stimulate the languid desires of a cold and disdainful youth. Hence arises a monotony which is not redeemed by the simple gracefulness and poetic merit of many passages, and which is augmented by the division of the poem into stanzas of six lines, the last two of which almost invariably present a jeu d'esprit. But a metre singularly free from irregularities, a cadence full of harmony, and a versification which had never before been equaled in England, announced the "honey-tongued poet," and the poem of "Lucrece" appeared soon afterward to complete those epic productions which for some time sufficed to maintain his glory.

After having, in "Venus and Adonis," employed the most lascivious colors to depict the pangs of unsatisfied desire, Shakspeare has described, in "The Rape of Lucrece," with the chastest pen, and by way of reparation, as it were, the progress and triumph of criminal lust. The refinement of the ideas, the affectation of the style, and the merits of the versification, are the same in both works: the poetry in the second is less brilliant, but more emphatic, and abounds less in graceful images than in lofty thoughts; but we can already discern indications of a profound acquaintance with the feelings of man, and great talent in developing them in a dramatic form, by means of the slightest circumstances of life. Thus Lucrece, weighed down by a sense of her shame, after a night of despair, summons a young slave at dawn of day, to dispatch him to the camp with a letter to call her husband home; the slave, being of a timid and simple character, blushes on appearing in the presence of his mistress; but Lucrece, filled with the consciousness of her dishonor, imagines that he blushes at her shame; and, under the influence of the idea that her secret is discovered, she stands trembling and confused before her slave.

One detail in this poem seems to indicate the epoch at which it was written. Lucrece, to while away her grief, stops to contemplate a picture of the siege of Troy; and, in describing it, the poet complacently refers to the effects of perspective:

"The scalps of many, almost hid behind,
To jump up higher seem'd to mock the mind."

This is the observation of a man very recently struck with the wonders of art, and a symptom of that poetic surprise which the sight of unknown objects awakens in an imagination capable of being moved thereby. Perhaps we may conclude, from this circumstance, that the poem of "Lucrece" was composed during the early part of Shakspeare's residence in London.

But whatever may be the date of these two poems, their place among Shakspeare's works is at a period far more remote from us than any of those which filled up his dramatic career. In this career he marched forward, and drew his age after him; and his weakest essays in dramatic poetry are indicative of the prodigious power which he displayed in his last works. Shakspeare's true history belongs to the stage alone; after having seen it there, we can not seek for it elsewhere; and Shakspeare himself no longer quitted it. His sonnets—fugitive pieces which the poetic and sprightly grace of some lines would not have rescued from oblivion but for the curiosity which attaches to the slightest traces of a celebrated man—may here and there cast a little light on the obscure or doubtful portions of his life; but, in a literary point of view, we have in future to consider him only as a dramatic poet.

I have already stated what was the first employment of his talents in this kind of composition. Great uncertainty has resulted therefrom with regard to the authenticity of some of his works. Shakspeare had a hand in a vast number of dramas; and probably, even in his own time, it would not have been always easy to assign his precise share in them all. For two centuries, criticism has been engaged in determining the boundaries of his true possessions; but facts are wanting for this investigation, and literary judgments have usually been influenced by a desire to strengthen some favorite theory on the subject. It is, therefore, almost impossible, at the present day, to pronounce with certainty upon the authenticity of Shakspeare's doubtful plays. Nevertheless, after having read them, I can not coincide with M. Schlegel—for whose acumen I have the highest respect—in attributing them to him. The baldness which characterizes these pieces, the heap of unexplained incidents and incoherent sentiments which they contain, and their precipitate progress through undeveloped scenes toward events destitute of interest, are unmistakable signs by which, in times still rude, we may recognize fecundity devoid of genius; signs so contrary to the nature of Shakspeare's talent, that I can not even discover in them the defects which may have disfigured his earliest essays. Among the multitude of plays which, by common consent, the latest editors have rejected as being at least doubtful, "Locrine," "Thomas, Lord Cromwell," "The London Prodigal," "The Puritan," and "The Yorkshire Tragedy," scarcely present the slightest indications of having been retouched by any hand superior to that of their original author. "Sir John Oldcastle," which is more interesting, and composed with greater good sense than any of the foregoing, is animated in some scenes by a comic humor akin to that of Shakspeare. But if it be true that genius, even in its lowest abasement, gives forth some luminous rays to betray its presence; if Shakspeare, in particular, bore that distinctive mark which, in one of his sonnets, makes him say, in reference to his writings,

"That every word doth almost tell my name," [Footnote 16]

assuredly he had not to reproach himself with the production of that execrable accumulation of horrors which, under the name of "Titus Andronicus," has been foisted upon the English people as a dramatic work, and in which, Heaven be thanked! there is not a single spark of truth, or scintillation of genius, which can give evidence against him.

[Footnote 16: Sonnet 76, Knight's Library edition, vol. xii., p. 152.]