[540] Table-talk, vol. ii., p. 301. Coleridge had previously spoken of Shakspeare’s oceanic mind, which, if we take it in the sense of multitudinous unity, ποντιων κυματων ανηριθμον γελασμα, will present the same idea as μυριονουσ in a beautiful image.
His judgment. 50. These dramatists, as we shall speedily perceive, are hardly less inferior to Shakspeare in judgment. To this quality I particularly advert, because foreign writers, and sometimes our own, have imputed an extraordinary barbarism and rudeness to his works. They belong indeed to an age sufficiently rude and barbarous in its entertainments, and are of course to be classed with what is called the romantic school, which has hardly yet shaken off that reproach. But no one who has perused the plays anterior to those of Shakspeare, or contemporary with them, or subsequent to them down to the closing of the theatres in the civil war, will pretend to deny that there is far less regularity, in regard to everything where regularity can be desired, in a large proportion of these (perhaps in all the tragedies) than in his own. We need only repeat the names of the Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, the Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure. The plots in these are excellently constructed, and in some with uncommon artifice. But even where an analysis of the story might excite criticism, there is generally an unity of interest which tones the whole. The Winter’s Tale is not a model to follow, but we feel that the Winter’s Tale is a single story; it is even managed as such with consummate skill. It is another proof of Shakspeare’s judgment, that he has given action enough to his comedies without the bustling intricacy of the Spanish stage. If his plots have any little obscurity in some parts, it is from copying his novel or history too minutely.
51. The idolatry of Shakspeare has been carried so far of late years, that Drake and perhaps greater authorities have been unwilling to acknowledge any faults in his plays. This, however, is an extravagance rather derogatory to the critic than honourable to the poet. Besides the blemishes of construction in some of his plots, which are pardonable but still blemishes, there are too many in his style. His conceits and quibbles often spoil the effect of his scenes and take off from the passion he would excite. In the last act of Richard II., the Duke of York is introduced demanding the punishment of his son Aumale for a conspiracy against the king, while the Duchess implores mercy. The scene is ill conceived and worse executed throughout; but one line is both atrocious and contemptible. The Duchess having dwelt on the word pardon, and urged the king to let her hear it from his lips, York takes her up with this stupid quibble:
Speak it in French, King; say, Pardonnez moi.
It would not be difficult to find several other instances, though none, perhaps, quite so bad, of verbal equivocations, misplaced and inconsistent with the person’s, the author’s, the reader’s sentiment.
His obscurity. 52. Few will defend these notorious faults. But is there not one, less frequently mentioned, yet of more continual recurrence; the extreme obscurity of Shakspeare’s diction? His style is full of new words and new senses. It is easy to pass this over as obsoleteness; but though many expressions are obsolete and many provincial, though the labour of his commentators has never been so profitably, as well as so diligently, employed as in tracing this by the help of the meanest and most forgotten books of the age, it is impossible to deny that innumerable lines in Shakspeare were not more intelligible in his time than they are at present. Much of this may be forgiven, or rather is so incorporated with the strength of his reason and fancy that we love it as the proper body of Shakspeare’s soul. Still can we justify the very numerous passages which yield to no interpretation, knots which are never unloosed, which conjecture does but cut, or even those, which if they may at last be understood, keep the attention in perplexity till the first emotion has passed away? And these occur not merely in places where the struggles of the speaker’s mind may be well denoted by some obscurities of language, as in the soliloquies of Hamlet and Macbeth, but in dialogues between ordinary personages, and in the business of the play. We learn Shakspeare, in fact, as we learn a language, or as we read a difficult passage in Greek, with the eye glancing on the commentary; and it is only after much study that we come to forget a part, it can be but a part, of the perplexities he has caused us. This was no doubt one reason that he was less read formerly, his style passing for obsolete, though in many parts, as we have just said, it was never much more intelligible than it is.[541]
[541] “Shakspeare’s style is so pestered with figurative expressions that it is as affected as it is obscure. It is true that in his later plays he had worn off somewhat of this rust.”—Dryden’s Works (Malone), vol. ii., part ii., p. 252. This is by no means the truth, but rather the reverse of it: Dryden knew not at all which were earlier, or which later, of Shakspeare’s plays.
His popularity. 53. It does not appear probable that Shakspeare was ever placed below, or merely on a level with the other dramatic writers of this period.[542] That his plays were not so frequently represented as those of Fletcher, is little to the purpose; they required a more expensive decoration, a larger company of good performers, and above all, they were less intelligible to a promiscuous audience. But it is certain that throughout the seventeenth century, and even in the writings of Addison and his contemporaries, we seldom or never meet with that complete recognition of his supremacy, that unhesitating preference of him to all the world, which has become the faith of the last and the present century. And it is remarkable that this apotheosis, so to speak, of Shakspeare was originally the work of what has been styled a frigid and tasteless generation—the age of George II. Much is certainly due to the stage itself, when those appeared, who could guide and control the public taste, and discover that in the poet himself which sluggish imaginations could not have reached. The enthusiasm for Shakspeare is nearly coincident with that for Garrick; it was kept up by his followers, and especially by that highly-gifted family which has but recently been withdrawn from our stage.
[542] A certain William Cartwright, in commendatory verses addressed to Fletcher, has the assurance to say:
Shakspeare to thee was dull, whose best wit lies
I’ th’ ladies’ questions, and the fools’ replies.