An important point to remember is that while Shakespeare was growing in metrical skill, he was not growing alone. A crowd of other authors around him were developing in a similar way; and he was learning from them and they from him. The use of blank verse in English when Shakespeare began to write was a comparatively new practice, and, like all new inventions, for a time it was only imperfectly understood. Men had to learn by experiments and by each other's successes and failures, just as men in recent years have learned to fly. Shakespeare surpassed all the others, as the Wright brothers in their first years surpassed all their fellow-aeronauts; but like the Wright brothers he was only part of a general movement. No other man changed as much as he in one lifetime, but the whole system of dramatic versification was changing.
Taste.—But wholly aside from questions of meter, Shakespeare improved greatly in taste and judgment between the beginning and middle of his career. This is shown especially in his humor. To the young man humor means nothing but the cause for a temporary laugh; to a more developed mind it becomes a pleasant sunshine that lingers in the memory long after reading, and interprets all life in a manner more cheerful, sympathetic, and sane. The early comedies give us nothing but the temporary laugh; and even this is produced chiefly by fantastic situations or plays on words, clever but far-fetched, puns and conceits so overworked that their very cleverness jars at times. On the other hand, in the great humorous characters of his middle period, like Falstaff and Beatrice, the poet is opening up to us new vistas of quiet, lasting amusement and indulgent knowledge of our imperfect but lovable fellow-men.
The same growth of taste is shown in the dramatist's increasing tendency to tone down all revolting details and avoid flowery, overwrought rhetoric. Nobody knows whether Shakespeare wrote all of Titus Andronicus entire or simply revised it; but we feel sure that the older Shakespeare would have been unwilling, even as a reviser, to squander so much that is beautiful on such an orgy of blood and violence. Romeo and Juliet is full of beautiful poetry; but even here occasional lapses show the undeveloped taste of the young writer. Notice the flowery and fantastic imagery in the following passage, where Lady Capulet is praising Paris, her daughter's intended husband:—
"Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen;
Examine every married lineament
And see how one another lends content,
And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margent of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him, only lacks a cover.
The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story."
—Romeo and Juliet, I, iii, 81-92.
If we try to picture to ourselves the post-wedlock edition of Paris described above, we shall see how a young man's imagination may run away with his judgment. There are passages in this play as good, perhaps, as anything which the author ever wrote; but if we compare such fantastic imagery with the uniform excellence of the later masterpieces, we shall see how much Shakespeare unlearned and outgrew.
Character Study.—Still more significant is the poet's development in the conception of character. In no other way, probably, does an observant mind change and expand so much as in this. For the infant all men fall into two very simple categories:—people whom he likes and people whom he doesn't. The boy of ten has increased these two classes to six or eight. The young man of twenty finds a few more, and begins to suspect that men who act alike may not have the same motives and emotions. But as the keen-eyed observer nears middle age, he begins to realize that no two souls are exact duplicates of each other; and that behind every human eye there lies an undiscovered country, as mysterious, as fascinating, as that which Alice found behind the looking-glass,—a country like, and yet unlike, the one we know, where dreams grow beautiful as tropic plants, and passions crouch like wild beasts in the jungle.
Great as he was, Shakespeare had to learn this lesson like other men; but he learned it much better. In Love's Labour's Lost, generally considered his earliest play, he has not led us into the inner selves of his men and women at all, has not seemed to realize that they possess inner selves. At the conclusion we know precisely as much of them as we should if we had met them at a formal reception, and no more. The princess is pretty and clever on dress parade; but how does the real princess feel when parade is over and she is alone in her chamber? The later Shakespeare might have told us, did tell us, in regard to more than one other princess; but the young Shakespeare has nothing to tell.
Richard III, which is supposed to have come some three years later, is a marked advance in characterization, but still far short of the goal. Here the dramatist attempts, indeed, to analyze the tyrant's motives and emotions; but he does not yet understand what he is trying to explain, and for that reason the being whom he creates is portentous, but not human. To understand this, you need only compare Richard with Macbeth. In Macbeth we have a host of different forces—ambition, superstition, poetry, remorse, vacillation, affection, despair—all struggling together as they might in you or me; and it is this mingling of feelings with which we all can sympathize that makes him, in spite of all his crimes, a human being like ourselves. But in Richard there is no human complexity. His is the fearful simplicity of the lightning, the battering-ram, the earthquake, forces whose achievements are terrible and whose inner existence a blank. Richard hammers his bloody way through life like the legendary Iron Man with his flail, awe-inspiring as a destructive agency, not as a human being.
Two or three years later we find Shakespeare in his conception of Shylock capable of greater things as a student of character. In this pathetic, lonely, vindictive figure, exiled forever from the warm fireside of human friendship by those inherent faults which he can no more change than the tiger can change his claws, the long tragedy which accompanies the survival of the fittest finds a voice. Yet even in Shylock the dramatist has not reached his highest achievement in character study. The old Jew is drawn splendidly to the life, but he is a comparatively easy character to draw, a man with a few simple and prominent traits. Depicting such a man is like drawing a pronounced Roman profile, less difficult to do, and less satisfactory when done, than tracing the subdued curves of a more evenly rounded face. Still greater will be the triumph when Shakespeare can draw equally true to life a many-sided man or woman, in whose single heart all our different experiences find a sympathetic echo.
And this final triumph is not long in coming. Between his thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth years, in Falstaff and Hamlet the poet produced the greatest comic and the greatest tragic character of dramatic history. The man who has read Hamlet understandingly has found in the young prince a lifelong companion. Has he been unjustly treated? Hamlet, too, had suffered and hated. Has he loved? So had Hamlet. Has he had a bosom friend? The most sacred and beautiful of college friendships was that between Hamlet and Horatio. Has he been bored by some stupid old adviser? So had Hamlet by Polonius and similar "tedious old fools." Has he been thrilled by some beautiful landscape? Hamlet, too, had admired "this goodly frame, the earth" and the sky, "that majestical roof fretted with golden fire." Has he had a parent whom he loved and admired? So had Hamlet in his father. Has he had a friend for whom his love was mixed with shame? So felt Hamlet toward his mother. Has he felt the pride of a great deed bravely accomplished? So did Hamlet in dying. Has he felt the shame and remorse of a duty unperformed? So did Hamlet while his father was still unrevenged. Has he shuddered at the mystery of death? So had Hamlet shuddered at "that undiscovered country." Or has he been racked, as all good men are in practical life, by the doubt as to what is his duty? So had Hamlet been racked by the same terrible responsibility. And thus we might go on indefinitely. The experience of a lifetime is packed into this play. Shakespeare never surpassed Hamlet, though he wrote for nine or ten years after; but when he had once reached this high level, he maintained it, with only occasional lapses, to the end.