It is not entirely just to say that the contributions of men who favor the theory are specimens of literary futility. They are frequently valuable to the scholar of Shakspeare by throwing unexpected side-lights upon the plays: they also furnish suggestions to the interpreter. They have amassed a quantity of collateral information of Shakspeare's epoch which the critic will thankfully acknowledge as he uses it. The minute and laborious research which Judge Holmes has expended upon his volume, the literary, historical, and social parallelisms which he discloses, the philosophy and style of thinking of Elizabeth's age, put the lover of Shakspeare under obligation.
SHAKSPEARE'S WOMEN.
For many years before the time of Shakspeare, it had been customary upon the continent to assign to women the female characters of plays. But we do not find any trace of the employment of women upon the English stage till 1632. It is a mistake of Colley Cibber that no actresses had been seen on the stage previous to the Restoration. A French company that included women appeared in a play at Blackfriars in 1629, and were soundly hissed for this innovation upon British prejudice. In 1641, during the Puritan interdiction of plays, the actors drew up their "Stage-players' Complaint,"—"Our boys, ere we shall have liberty to act again, will be grown out of use, like cracked organ-pipes, and have faces as old as our plays." In 1660, a play was acted entirely by men. In 1661, the same play was acted with the help of female actors. After women had effected a lodgement upon the English stage, they still divided for a while with men the female characters. But, during the life of Shakspeare, squeaking tongues and downy cheeks used to "boy" the greatness of his female parts.
We can understand how this custom must have helped both the audience and the actors through the frequently broad dialogue of the coarsest plays of that period, where things and situations are mentioned with a frankness and precision which cannot now possibly be reproduced, except in the sugar-coated fashion of the Offenbachian revival. Women wore masks when they attended the theatre, and needed not to be at the expense of blushing. The slight disguise lent to them the illusion of being neuters in the crowd. The world was then unsqueamish and forced no scruples on the playwrights, whose coarseness differed from Shakspeare's in being lugged in for its own sake. His plots always countenance his freedom and adopt it. There is Shakspearean motive for every wanton page, as there is, too, genius in it, which other writers could not ape nor rival. Each feeling is so essential to the intercourse of his characters that he cannot disguise it: it is a state of nature that gambols like a child among its elders, more likely to be smiled at than reproved. The texts of the poet's frankness survive, but not as deliberate outrages to the modern womanhood which would fain not speak nor hear them; and they do not justify the expurgated editions which unfix them from their natural connections with the chastity and married honor involved on every page and in the drift of every play.
When his plots disguise female characters in the dress of boys and pages, it was more effectively done because his actors, thus resuming their natural mien, could so easily sustain the dramatic contrivance with the advantages of sex. And this is something which our modern female actors cannot imitate. At least, they do not appear to be interested to make the attempt, because they are misled by vanity to set off their little rounded waists and the feminine charm of figure and movements. Perhaps it is not vanity, but an instinct of womanhood, which lays this embargo on her mimic power.
An exception must be made of Mrs. Kean; for a play was always the thing to catch her conscience, and engage it to lend the utmost reality to the scene. As Wilford, in the "Iron Chest," she never forgot to assume the perfect stride and motion of a man; and as the disguised Viola, when the thought hit her that Olivia had fallen in love with her, she slapped her cap, and threw out her right leg with all the jauntiness of a boy, as she exclaimed, "I am the man!"
But, in general, the figure, gait, and instinctive movements of the actress continually betray the Imogen, the Viola, the Jessica, the Julia, the Rosalind, who may well say, "I could find in my heart to disgrace my man's apparel, and to cry like a woman." Portia says to Nerissa,—
"I'll hold thee any wager,
When we are both accoutred like young men,
I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two,
And wear my dagger with the braver grace;
And speak, between the change of man and boy,
With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps
Into a manly stride."
But, when Shakspeare's smooth youngsters reassumed their characters as women, how the great poet must have been inwardly fretted with the incongruous presentation of the tone of masculinity in each passion, of the boy's smutch on the bloom of each emotion, the elbows wearing ragged holes through delicate sentiment, the scraggy shoulders and strong collar-bones working out of every tender phrase! He was forced to see a Cleopatra without "the entire and sinuous wealth of the shining shape" that held