Nerissa: How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony’s nephew?
Portia: Very vilely in the morning when he is sober, and most vilely in the afternoon when he is drunk; when he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast.
One other thing we may perceive, and that is our Poet’s scorn of pettiness and treachery. Individual deceit—public or private hypocrisy—these seem to Shakespeare’s mind unforgivable. The “black-handed” hit—the cruel slander—the malicious lie—against these he delivers his most trenchant blows; but farther than this we are unable to penetrate into the kingdom of his heart or sentiment.
To woman he assigns the highest place as inspirer and saviour of man; when he shows her other than this, as in Lady Macbeth, he makes remorse half condone her sins and death conclude them. He seemed to be absolutely unconscious of any superiority in himself to others of his own calling. His poetic gift was like song to a nightingale that warbles for sheer delight and amorousness, in delicious ignorance of the entrancing beauty of its melody.
What affects, or should affect, us most deeply to-day is the deplorable fact that for three hundred years we have had no poet, no dramatist, to approach Shakespeare in any sense—neither in beauty of language, loftiness of thought, nor simple naturalness of expression. He towers among us as a veritable giant among pigmies—for the men of letters in all parts of the world at this epoch, men who are scrambling and pushing themselves forward to offer a very poor and inadequate “homage” to this mightiest genius of all time, are of such microscopic attainment when compared with him that one needs a mental lens to perceive them at all.
These are they for whom Self is not only the keynote, but the whole tune. Some of them take pride in their “style”; whereas Shakespeare had no “style” save his own, which has become a living part of the English language. He defied laws and conventions and dramatic “unities”; he dared to be his own master; and fortunately there were no newspapers in his day to publish venomous criticisms which might have daunted or discouraged his efforts.
The earliest newspaper, or News Packet, as it was called, was issued in 1619, three years after Shakespeare’s death. Shakespeare’s critics were the public—in fact, the “gallery.” He “played to the gallery,” and played “up”—never “down.” Moreover, he was apparently so indifferent to his own literary reputation that he made no effort to publish any of his works, and allowed them to be pirated wholesale. Only in the case of the two poems dedicated to the Earl of Southampton—“Venus and Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece”—does he seem to have taken any personal interest in his own productions.
One may perhaps venture to suggest that probably he attached no importance to what he knew were “adaptations” of old plays, and thought nothing of the rich poesy wherewith he had endowed them. The most of his work was this of industrious “adaptation”; so that he might have modestly considered it to be scarcely his own and that the magnificent speeches he put in the mouths of his stage puppets were only a part of what is called “business.” The superb indifference he thus displayed to his own place in the estimation of others was a striking proof of his sub-conscious power. That his contemporaries mentioned him but little would not have troubled a mind like Shakespeare’s and Robert Green’s jealous attack upon him as “an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, with his Tyger’s heart wrapt in a Player’s hide,” would but have moved him to a compassionate smile at such an outburst of malice and envy.
The chief lesson we may learn from Shakespeare’s unapproachable fame is of that greatness which is “impersonal.” The literary men of our day are all painfully personal and are seldom satisfied unless they are elbowing each other out of the way or scrambling over each other to the front; and some of them are never happier than when they can fasten themselves, like barnacles, to the splendid ship of Shakespeare’s immortal genius, which sails serenely onward over the seas of the infinite. As barnacles they do no particular harm; for, cling as they will, the great waves of time generally sweep them off in the progress of the voyage, while the great Ship goes on, carrying its messages of truth, honour, and strong patriotism to all the world! And it will still sail on, till the English language shall be no more. For if, in centuries to come, nothing should be left of England but Shakespeare, his name would be sufficient to prove that England once had lived!