Shakspeare and His Times

by François Guizot

This disturbance of mind can not cease so long as the question remains undecided between science and barbarism, the beauties of order and the effects of disorder; so long as men persist in seeing, in that system of which the first outlines were traced by Shakspeare, nothing but an allowance of unrestrained liberty and undefined latitude to the flights of the imagination, as well as to the course of genius. If the romantic system has beauties, it necessarily has its art and rules. Nothing is beautiful, in the eyes of man, which does not derive its effects from certain combinations, the secret of which can always be supplied by our judgment when our emotions have attested its power. The knowledge or employment of these combinations constitutes art. Shakspeare had his own art. We must seek it out in his works, examine into the means which he employs, and the results to which he aspires. Then only shall we possess a true knowledge of his system; then we shall know how far it is capable of increased development, according to the nature of dramatic art, considered in its application to modern society.

It is, in fact, nowhere else—neither in past times, nor among peoples unacquainted with our habits—but among ourselves, and in ourselves, that we must seek the conditions and necessities of dramatic poetry. Differing in this respect from other arts, in addition to the absolute rules imposed upon it, as on all others, by the unchangeable nature of man, dramatic art has relative rules which flow from the changeful state of society. In imitating the antique style, modern statuaries labor under no other constraint but the difficulty of equaling its perfection; and the most fervent and powerful adorer of antiquity would not venture to reproduce, even upon the most submissive stage, all that he admires in a tragedy of Sophocles. It is easy to discern the cause of this. When contemplating a statue or a picture, the spectator receives at first, from the sculptor or the painter, the first impression which occurs to him; but it rests with himself to continue the work. He stops and looks; his natural disposition, his recollections and thoughts, group themselves around the leading idea which is presented to his view, and gradually develop within him the ever-increasing emotion which will soon hold entire dominion over him. The artist has done nothing but awaken in the spectator the faculty of conceiving and feeling; it takes hold of the movement which has been communicated to it, follows it up in its own direction, accelerates it by its own strength, and thus creates for itself the pleasure which it enjoys. Before a picture of a martyrdom, one person is moved by the expression of fervent piety, another by the manifestation of resigned grief; some are filled with indignation at the cruelty of the executioners. A tinge of courageous satisfaction which is evident in the look of the victim, reminds the patriot of the joys of devotion to a sacred cause; and the soul of the philosopher is elevated by the contemplation of man sacrificing himself for truth. The diversity of these impressions is of little consequence; they are all equally natural and equally free; each spectator chooses, as it were, the feeling which suits him best, and when it has once entered into his soul, no external fact can disturb its supremacy, no movement can interrupt the course of that to which every man yields himself according to his inclination.

In the prolonged course of dramatic action, on the contrary, all becomes changed at every step, and each moment produces a new impression. The painter is satisfied with establishing one first and unvarying connection between his picture and the spectator. The dramatic poet must incessantly renew this relation, and maintain it through all the vicissitudes of the most various positions. All the acts in which human existence is manifested, all the forms which it assumes, and all the feelings which may modify it during the continuance of an always complicated event—these are the numerous and changeful objects which he presents to the public view; and he is never allowed to separate himself from his spectators, or to leave them for an instant alone and at liberty; he must be incessantly acting upon them, and must at every step excite in their souls emotions analogous to the ever-changing position in which he has placed them. How can he succeed in this, unless he carefully adapts himself to their dispositions and inclinations; unless he supplies the actual requirements of their mind; unless he addresses himself constantly to ideas which are familiar to them, and speaks to them in the language which they are accustomed to hear? Passion will not appear to us so touching if it be displayed in a manner contrary to our habits; and sympathy will not be awakened with the same vivacity in regard to interests of which we have ceased to be personally conscious. The necessity for appeasing the gods by a human sacrifice does not, in our mind, give that force to the speeches of Menelaus which it would have imparted to them among the Greeks, who were attached to their faith: the stern chastity of Hippolytus does not interest us in his fate: and virtue itself, in order to obtain from us that affectionate reverence which it has a right to expect, needs to connect itself with duties which our habits have taught us to respect and cherish.

Subject, therefore, at once to the conditions of the arts of imitation and to those of the purely poetical arts; bound, like epic poetry in its narratives, to set human life in motion; and called upon, like painting and sculpture, to present in its person and under its individual features—the dramatic poet is obliged to include, within the probabilities of one action, all the means which he requires to make it understood. His characters can only tell us what they would say if they were actually there, really occupied with the fact which they represent. The epic poet, as it were, does the honors, to his readers, of the edifice into which he introduces them; he accompanies them with his own speeches, assists them by his explanations, and, by the description of manners, times, and places, prepares them for the scene which he is about to disclose to their view, and opens to them in every sense the world into which he is desirous to transport them, and himself also. The dramatic personage comes forward alone, concerned with himself only; he places himself, without preliminary explanation, in communication with the spectator; and without calling or guiding them, he must make his audience follow him. Thus separated from one another, how can they succeed in coming into connection, unless a profound and general analogy already exists between them? Evidently those heroes, who do nothing for the public but speak and feel in their presence, will be understood and received by them only so far as they coincide with them in their mode of conceiving, feeling, and speaking; and dramatic effect can result only from their aptitude to unite in the same impressions.

The impressions of man communicated to man—this is, in fact, the sole source of dramatic effects. Man alone is the subject of the drama; man alone is its theatre. His soul is the stage upon which the events of this world come to play their part; it is not by their own virtue, but merely by their relations to the moral being whose destiny occupies our attention, that events take part in the action; every dramatic character abandons them as soon as they aspire to exercise a direct influence over us, instead of acting by the intermediary of a visible person, and by means of the emotion which we receive, in our turn, from the emotion which they have excited in him. Why is the narrative of Theramenes epic, and not dramatic? Because he addresses himself to the spectator, and not to Theseus. Theseus, being already aware of his son's death, is no longer capable of experiencing the impressions occasioned by the narrative; and if, while still in uncertainty, he were only to arrive at a knowledge of his misfortune through the anguish of such a recital, the poetical ornaments with which it is, perhaps, overloaded would not prevent it from being dramatic, for the impressions which it produces would be to us those of a person interested in the result: we should be conscious of them in the heart of Theseus.

In the heart of man alone can the dramatic fact take place; the event which is its occasion does not constitute it. The death of the lover is rendered dramatic by the grief of his mistress—the danger of the son by the terror of his mother; and however horrible may be the idea of the murder of a child, Andromache inspires us with greater solicitude than Astyanax. An earthquake and the physical convulsions which accompany it will furnish only a spectacle for contemplation, or the subject of an epic narrative; but the rain is dramatic upon the bald head of old Lear, and especially in the heart of his companions, racked by the pity which they feel for him. The apparition of a spectre would have no effect upon the audience unless some one on the stage were alarmed by it; and to produce the dramatic effect of Lady Macbeth's somnambulism, Shakspeare has taken care that it should be witnessed by a physician and a waiting-woman, whom he has employed to transmit to us the terrible impressions which it produces upon themselves.