deservedly given up, as "entirely out of the question[538:A];" the second rests merely on the unsupported assertion of a Stationers' Register[538:B], and the third, though more express and distinct, has been completely refuted by Colman and Steevens.[538:C] Indeed, there is much reason to suppose that The Two Noble Kinsmen was not written until after the death of Shakspeare.[538:D]
From what has been said, under each article of the preceding chronology, perhaps no very inadequate idea may be formed of the Dramatic Character of our poet; but, it will be expected here, and it is indeed essential to a just and facile comprehension of the subject, that a summary or condensed view of this character be attempted, in order, by collecting the scattered rays into a focus, to throw upon it a due degree of brilliancy and strength.
With the view of ascertaining the peculiar Genius of his Drama, it is necessary that we should attend to a distinction, which has been very correctly and luminously laid down by some late German critics, particularly by Herder and Schlegel, who oppose the modern to the ancient drama, under the appellation of the Gothic or romantic, assimilating the antique or classical theatre to a group in sculpture, and the Gothic or romantic to an extensive picture, separation being the essence of the former, and combination of the latter; or, in other words, that the spirit of the Grecian drama is plastic, and that of the English picturesque.
In fact, the Romantic Drama is the result of that great change which took place in society on the extinction of the western empire, when the blended influence of Christianity and Chivalry, operating on the stern virtues of the Teutonic tribes, gave birth to a spirit of seriousness and sentiment, of love and honour, of enterprise and adventure, which led to a constant aspiration after the great, the wonderful, the wild, and, by mingling the melancholy of a sublime religion with an enthusiastic homage for female worth, threw an anxious but unparalleled interest over all the relations of existence, and all the products of intellectual effort.
The effect of this combination on the poetry of the middle ages, and more especially on that of the immediately subsequent centuries, in impressing it with an awful and mysterious character, has been beautifully sketched by Schlegel, particularly where, as in the following passage, he accounts for the solemn and contemplative cast of its structure, by tracing its dependency on the genius of our faith. "Among the Greeks," he observes, "human nature was in itself all-sufficient; they were conscious of no wants, and aspired at no higher perfection than that which they could actually attain by the exercise of their own faculties. We, however, are taught by superior wisdom that man, through a high offence, forfeited the place for which he was originally destined; and that the whole object of his earthly existence is to strive to regain that situation, which, if left to his own strength, he could never accomplish. The religion of the senses had only in view the possession of outward and perishable blessings; and immortality, in so far as it was believed, appeared in an obscure distance like a shadow, a faint dream of this bright and vivid futurity. The very reverse of all this is the case with the Christian; every thing finite and mortal is lost in the contemplation of infinity; life has become shadow and darkness, and the first dawning of our real existence opens in the world beyond the grave. Such a religion must waken the foreboding, which slumbers in every feeling heart, to the most thorough consciousness, that the happiness after which we strive we can never here attain; that
no external object can ever entirely fill our souls; and that every mortal enjoyment is but a fleeting and momentary deception. When the soul, resting as it were under the willows of exile, breathes out its longing for its distant home, the prevailing character of its songs must be melancholy. Hence the poetry of the ancients was the poetry of enjoyment, and ours is that of desire: the former has its foundation in the scene which is present, while the latter hovers betwixt recollection and hope. Let me not be understood to affirm that every thing flows in one strain of wailing and complaint, and that the voice of melancholy must always be loudly heard. As the austerity of tragedy was not incompatible with the joyous views of the Greeks, so the romantic poetry can assume every tone, even that of the most lively gladness; but still it will always, in some shape or other, bear traces of the source from which it originated. The feeling of the moderns is, upon the whole, more intense, their fancy more incorporeal, and their thoughts more contemplative."[540:A]
Who does not perceive that this reference to futurity, this apprehension of the possible consequences of death, which chills the blood with awful emotion, and mingles fear even with the energies of hope, is peculiarly characteristic of the serious drama of Shakspeare? In what poet, for instance, shall we find the terrors of dissolution painted with such appalling strength? where nature recoiling with such involuntary horror from the thoughts of extinction? and where those blended feelings which, on the eve of our departure, even agitate the good, ere the forms of earthly love sink into night, and a world unknown receives the disembodied spirit? Need we point to Henry the Sixth, to Hamlet, to Measure for Measure, to Macbeth, and to many others, for proofs of this continual appeal to life beyond the grave, this perpetual effort to unite, with influential power, these two states of our existence, certainly one of the most striking distinctions which separate the romantic from the antique style
of dramatic fiction, and in which, as in every other feature of this species of poetry, Shakspeare was the first who, in our own or any other country, exhibited such unrivalled excellence, as to constitute him, in every just sense of the term, the founder of this species of the drama.
For have we not, in his productions, the noblest model of that comprehensive form which, including under one view all the varieties and vicissitudes of human being, presents us with a picture in which not only the virtues and the vices, but the follies and the frailties, the levities and the mirth of man, are harmonised and blended into a perfect whole, connected too, and that intimately, with a vast range of surrounding circumstances which, both in the foreground and in the distance, are so managed, as, by the illusory aid of tinting, grouping, and shadowing, to assist in the production of a great and determinate effect. To evince the superiority of this mode of composition over that which prevailed on the Grecian stage, it is only necessary to reflect, that the concatenated series of events which is unfolded, with so much unity of design, in the single drama of Macbeth, could only be represented, on the simple and confined plan of the school of Athens, by a trilogy, or succession of distinct tragedies! Can a system, thus necessarily broken into insulated parts, be put into competition with the rich and full evolution of the romantic or Shakspearean drama?
It is evident, therefore, that the romantic or picturesque drama should be judged by laws and regulations of its own; that it is a distinct order of art, displaying great originality and invention, and a much more perfect and profound view of human life and its dependencies, than any anterior effort in the same department of literature; and as all the productions of our poet are exclusively referable to this order, of which he is, without dispute, the greatest master, a brief enquiry into the Conduct of his Drama cannot fail to throw some light on the subject.