Shakspeare and His Times

by François Guizot

And this work the dramatic poet must necessarily pursue; he must elevate and civilize, as it were, the crowd that he summons to hear his performance. How can he act upon the assembled multitude, except by an appeal to the most general and elevated characteristics of their nature? It is only by going out of the narrow circle of common life and individual interests that the imagination becomes exalted and the heart enlarged, that pleasures become disinterested and the affections generous, and that men can sympathize in those common emotions the expression of which causes the theatre to resound with transports of delight. Religion has, therefore, universally been the source and furnished the primitive materials of dramatic art; at its origin, it celebrated, among the Greeks, the adventures of Bacchus, and, in Northern Europe, the mysteries of Christ. This arises from the fact that, of all human affections, piety most powerfully unites men in common feelings, because it most thoroughly detaches them from themselves; it is also less dependent for its development upon the progress of civilization, as it is powerful and pure even in the most backward state of society. From its very beginning, dramatic poetry has invoked the aid of piety, because, of all the sentiments to which it could address itself, piety was the noblest and the most universal.

Originating thus among the people and for the people, but destined to elevate them by affording them delight, the dramatic art speedily became, in every age and country, and by reason of this very characteristic of its nature, the favorite pleasure of the superior classes.

This was its natural tendency; and in this, also, it has encountered its most dangerous quicksands. More than once, allowing itself to be led astray by its high fortune, dramatic art has lost or compromised its energy and liberty. When the superior classes can fully give themselves up to their position, they fall into the error or misfortune of isolating themselves from their fellows, and ceasing, as it were, to share in the general nature of man, and the public interests of society. Those universal feelings, natural ideas, and simple relationships which constitute the basis of humanity and of life, become changed and enervated in a social condition which consists entirely of exceptions and privileges. In such a state of society, conventionalisms take the place of realities, and morals become factitious and feeble. Human destiny ceases to be known under its most salient and general aspects. It has a thousand phases, it leads to a host of impressions and relations of which the higher classes are utterly ignorant, unless they are compelled to enter frequently into the public atmosphere. Dramatic art, when devoted to their pleasure, finds its domain greatly diminished and impoverished; it is invaded by a sort of monotony; events, passions, characters, all those natural treasures which it lays under contribution, no longer supply it with the same originality and wealth. Its independence is imperiled as well as its variety and energy. The habits of elegant society, as well as those of the multitude, are characterized by their littlenesses, and it is much more capable of imposing these littlenesses as laws. It is stimulated by tastes rather than by necessities; it rarely introduces into its pleasures that serious and ingenuous disposition which abandons itself with transport to the impressions which it receives; and it very frequently treats genius as a servant who is bound to please it, and not as a power that is capable of governing it by the enjoyments which it can supply. If the dramatic poet does not possess, in the suffrages of a larger and more simple public, the means of defending himself against the haughty taste of a select coterie—if he can not arm himself with public approbation, and rely for support upon the universal feelings which he has been able to arouse in all hearts—his liberty is lost; the caprices which he has attempted to satisfy will weigh upon him like a chain, from which he will be unable to free himself; talent, which is entitled to command all, will find itself subject to the minority, and he who ought to guide the taste of the people, will become the slave of fashion.

Such, then, is the nature of dramatic poetry that, in order to produce its most magical effects, and to preserve, during its growth, its liberty as well as its wealth, it must not separate from the people, to whom its earliest efforts were addressed. It languishes, if it is transplanted from the soil in which it first took root. Popular at its origin, it must continue to be national, and it must not cease to comprehend beneath its sway, and to charm with its productions, all classes that are capable of experiencing the emotions from which it derives its power.

All ages of society, and all states of civilization are not equally favorable to calling the people to the aid of dramatic poetry, and insuring its prosperity under their influence. It was the happy lot of Greece that the whole nation grew and developed itself together with literature and the arts, keeping always on a level with their progress, and acting as a competent judge of their glory. That same people of Athens, who had surrounded the chariot of Thespis, thronged to hear the master-pieces of Sophocles and Euripides; and the most splendid triumphs of genius were always, in that city, popular festivals. So brilliant a moral equality has not presided over the destiny of modern nations; their civilization, displaying itself upon a far more extended scale, has undergone many more vicissitudes, and presented much less unity. During more than ten centuries, nothing was easy, general, or simple in our Europe. Religion, liberty, public order, literature—nothing has been developed among us without long-continued effort, in the midst of incessantly-renewed struggles, and under the most diversified influences. Amid this mighty and agitated chaos, dramatic poetry did not possess the privilege of an easy and rapid career. It was not its fate to find, almost at its birth, a public at once homogeneous and various, the constituent members of which, both great and small, rich and poor, in fine, all classes of citizens, should be equally eager for, and worthy of its most brilliant solemnities. Neither epochs of great social disorder nor periods of severe necessity are times in which the masses can devote themselves with enthusiasm to the pleasures of the stage. Literature prospers only when it is so intimately united with the tastes, habits, and entire existence of a people as to be regarded at once as an occupation and a festivity, an amusement and a necessity. Dramatic poetry, more than any other branch of literature, depends upon this deep-seated and general union of the arts with society. It is not satisfied with the tranquil pleasures of enlightened approbation, but it requires the quick impulses of passion; it does not seek men in leisure and retirement that it may furnish agreeable occupation for their hours of repose, but it requires men to hasten and throng around it. A certain degree of mental development and simplicity, a certain community of ideas and habits between the different classes of society, greater ardor than fixity of imagination, greater movement of soul than of existence, a strongly-excited moral activity destitute of any imperious and determined object, liberty of thought and repose of life—these are the circumstances of which dramatic poetry has need, in order to shine with its full splendor. These circumstances never combined so completely or so harmoniously among modern peoples as among the Greeks. But wherever their leading characteristics have been found to exist, the drama has become elevated; and neither have men of genius been failing to the public, nor has the public proved wanting to men of genius.

The reign of Elizabeth, in England, was one of those decisive epochs, so laboriously attained by modern peoples which terminate the empire of force and inaugurate the reign of ideas. Original and fruitful epochs are these, when the nations flock to mental enjoyments as to a new kind of gratification, and when thought prepares, in the pleasures of youth, for the discharge of those functions which it will be called upon to exercise at a riper age.

Scarcely recovered from the storms with which it had been ravaged by the alternate successes and reverses of the Red and White Roses, before it was again distracted and exhausted by the capricious tyranny of Henry VIII. and the malevolent despotism of Mary, England demanded of Elizabeth, at her accession, nothing but order and peace; and this was precisely what Elizabeth was most disposed to bestow. Naturally prudent and reserved, though haughty and strong-willed, she had been taught by the stern necessities of her youth never to compromise herself. When upon the throne, she maintained her independence by asking little of her people, and staked her policy upon running no risks. Military glory could not seduce a distrustful woman. The sovereignty of the Netherlands, notwithstanding the efforts of the Dutch to induce her to accept it, did not tempt her wary ambition. She resignedly determined to make no attempt to recover Calais, or to retain Havre; and all her desires of greatness, as well as all the cares of her government, were concentrated upon the direct interests of the country which she had to restore to repose and prosperity.

Surprised at so novel a state of things, the people reveled in it with the intoxication of returning health. Civilization, which had been destroyed or, suspended by their dissensions, revived or progressed on every side. Industry brought wealth in its train, and notwithstanding the shackles imposed by the oppressive proceedings of the government, all the historians and all the documents of this period bear testimony to the rapid progress of popular luxury. The chronicler Harrison informs us that he had heard many old men express their surprise at "the multitude of chimneys lately erected, whereas in their young days there were not above two or three, if so many, in most uplandish towns of the realm (the religious houses and manor-places of their lords always excepted). 'Our fathers,' they said, 'lay full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats covered only with a sheet, and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster or pillow; and if the good man of the house had, within seven years after his marriage, purchased a mattress or stock-bed, and thereto a sack of chaff to rest his head upon, he thought himself to be as well lodged as the lord of the town.'" [Footnote 1]