Shakespeare's Roman plays and their background

by Sir Mungo William MacCallum

For the last of them there is at any rate this much to say, that, though the play on native history virtually disappears, the Historical Play as such survives and wins new triumphs. The Roman group resembles the English group in many ways, and, where they differ, it has excellences of its own.

What are the main points in which respectively they diverge or coincide?

(1) There is no doubt that it was patriotic enthusiasm that called into existence the Chronicle Histories so numerous in Elizabeth’s reign, of which the best in Shakespeare’s series are only the consummate flower. The pride in the present and confidence in the future of England found vent, too, in occupation with England’s past, and since the general appetite could not be satisfied by the histories of every sort and size that issued from the press, the vigorous young drama seized the opportunity of extending its operations, and stepped in to supply the demand. Probably with a more definite theory of its aims, methods, and sphere there might have been less readiness to undertake the new department. But in the popular conception the play was little else than a narrative presented in scenes. The only requirement was that it should interest the spectators, and few troubled themselves about classic rule and precedent, or even about connected structure and arrangement. And when by and by the Elizabethan Tragedy and Comedy became more organic and vertebrate, the Historic Play had secured recognition, and was able to persist in what was dramatically a more rudimentary phase and develop without regard to more exacting standards. Shakespeare’s later Histories, precisely the superlative specimens of the whole species, illustrate this with conspicuous force. The subject of Henry IV., if presented in summary, must seem comparatively commonplace; the ‘argument’ of both parts, if analysed, is loose and straggling; the second part to a great extent repeats at a lower pitch the motifs of the first; yet it is hardly if at all less excellent than its predecessor, and together they represent Shakespeare’s grand achievement in this kind. In Henry V., which has merits that make it at least one of the most popular pieces that Shakespeare ever wrote, the distinctively narrative wins the day against the distinctively dramatic. Not only are some of the essential links supplied only in the story of the chorus, but there is no dramatic collision of ideas, no conflict in the soul of the hero, except in the scenes preliminary to Agincourt, not even much of the excitement of suspense. It is a plain straightforward history, admirably conveyed in scene and speech, all the episodes significant and picturesque, all the persons vividly characterised, bound to stir and inspire by its sane and healthy patriotism; but in the notes that are considered to make up the differentia of a drama, whether ancient or modern, it is undoubtedly defective.

In proportion then as Shakespeare realised the requirements of the Chronicle History, and succeeded in producing his masterpieces in this domain, he deviated from the course that he pursued in his other plays. And this necessarily followed from the end he had in view. He wished to give, and his audience wished to get, passages from the history of their country set forth on the stage as pregnantly and attractively as possible; but the history was the first and chief thing, and in it the whole species had its raison d’être. History delivered the material and prescribed the treatment, and even the selection of the episodes treated was determined less perhaps by their natural fitness for dramatic form, than by the influence of certain contemporary historic interests. For the points which the average Elizabethan had most at heart were—(1) The unity of the country under the strong and orderly government of securely succeeding sovereigns, who should preserve it from the long remembered evils of Civil War; (2) Its rejection of Papal domination, with which there might be, but more frequently among the play-going classes, there was not associated the desire for a more radical reconstruction of the Church; (3) The power, safety and prestige of England, which Englishmen believed to be the inevitable consequence of her unity and independence. So whatever in bygone times bore on these matters and could be made to illustrate them, whether by parallel or contrast, was sure of a sympathetic hearing. And in this as in other points Shakespeare seems to have felt with his fellow-men and shared their presuppositions. At least all the ten plays on English history in which he is known to have had a hand deal with rivalry for the throne, the struggle with Rome, the success or failure in France accordingly as the prescribed postulates are fulfilled or violated. It may have been his engrossment in these concerns that sometimes led him to choose subjects which the mere artist would have rejected as of small dramatic promise.

When he turned to the records of antiquity, the conditions were very different. Doubtless to a man of the Renaissance classical history in its appeal came only second, if even second, to the history of his own land; doubtless also to the man who was not a technical scholar, the history of Rome had far more familiar charm than the history of Greece. When, therefore, Shakespeare went outside his own England in search for historical themes, he was still addressing the general heart, and showed himself in closer accord with popular taste than, e.g. Chapman, whose French plays are perhaps next to his own among the best Elizabethan examples of the historical drama. But we may be sure that Ambois and Biron and Chabot were much less interesting persons to the ordinary Londoner than Caesar and Antony and Coriolanus. Not merely in treatment, but in selection of the material—which cannot fail to influence the treatment—Shakespeare was in touch with common feeling and popular taste.

All the same a great deal more was now required than in the case of the English series. In that the story of a reign or the section of a reign, the chronicle of a flimsy conspiracy or a foreign campaign might furnish the framework for a production that would delight the audience. It was otherwise when dramatist and spectators alike knew the history only in its mass, and were impressed only by the outstanding features. Just as with individuals so with nations, many things become significant and important in those of our familiar circle that would seem trivial in mere strangers and acquaintances. If the Roman plays were to be popular as the English ones had been, Shakespeare was bound to select episodes of more salient interest and more catholic appeal than such as had hitherto sometimes served his turn. In the best of the English plays we constantly wonder that Shakespeare could get such results from stories that we should have thought in advance to be quite unfit for the stage. But the fall of Caesar and the fate of those who sought to strangle the infant empire, the shock of opposing forces in Augustus and Antony and the loss of the world for Cleopatra’s love, the triumph and destruction of the glorious renegade from whose wrath the young republic escaped as by fire—that there are tragic possibilities in themes like these is patent to a casual glance. It is significant that, while of the subjects handled in the English histories only the episode of Joan of Arc and the story of Richard III. have attracted the attention of foreign dramatists, all the Roman plays have European congeners. One of the reasons may be, that though the events described in the national series are dramatic enough for national purposes, they do not like the others satisfy the severer international test.

And to a difference in the character of the material corresponds a difference in the character of the treatment. The best of the English plays, as we have seen, are precisely those that it would be hardest to describe in terms of the ordinary drama. The juvenile Richard III. is the only one that could nowadays without objection be included in a list of Shakespeare’s tragedies. But with the Roman plays it is quite the reverse. In the main lines of construction they are of tragic build; there is invariably a tragic problem in the hero’s career; and it reaches a tragic solution in his self-caused ruin. So they are always ranked with the Tragedies, and though here and there they may show a variation from Shakespeare’s usual tragic technique, it would occur to no one to alter the arrangement.

(2) Yet these little variations may remind us that after all they were not produced under quite the same presuppositions as plays like Hamlet and Othello, or even King Lear and Macbeth. In a sense they remain Histories, as truly histories as any of their English analogues. The political vicissitudes and public catastrophes do not indeed contribute the chief elements of interest. Here as everywhere Shakespeare is above all occupied with the career of individuals, with the interaction of persons and persons, and of persons and circumstances. Nevertheless in these plays the characters are always exhibited in relation to the great mutations in the State. Not merely the background but the environment and atmosphere are supplied by the large life of affairs. It is not so in Lear, where the legend offered no tangible history on which the imagination could take hold; it is only partially so in Macbeth, where Shakespeare knew practically nothing of the actual local conditions; nor, had it been otherwise, was there anything in these traditions of prerogative importance for later times. But in the Roman plays the main facts were accredited and known, and of infinite significance for the history of the world. They could not be overlooked, they had to be taken into account.

For the same reason they must no more be tampered with than the accepted facts of English History. The two historical series are again alike in this, that they treat their sources with much more reverence than either the Comedies or the other Tragedies show for theirs. Even in Lear the dramatist has no scruple about altering the traditional close; even in Macbeth he has no scruple about blending the stories of two reigns. But in dealing with the professedly authentic records whether of England or Rome, Shakespeare felt that he had to do with the actual, with what definitely had been; and he did not conceive himself free to give invention the rein, as when with a light heart he reshaped the caprices of a novel or the perversions of a legend. As historical dramatist he was subordinated to his subject much in the same way as the portrait painter. He could choose his point of view, and manage the lights and shades, and determine the pose. He could emphasize details, or slur them over, or even leave them out. He could interpret and reveal, so far as in him lay, the meaning and spirit of history. But he had his marching orders and could no more depart from them to take a more attractive way of his own, than the portrait painter can correct the defects of his sitter to make him an Apollo. It cannot always have been easy to keep true to this self-denying ordinance. Despite the suitability of the subject in general suggestion and even in many particular incidents there must have been a recalcitrance to treatment here and there; and traces of this may be detected, if the Roman plays are compared with the tragedies in which the genius of Shakespeare had quite unimpeded sway. To some of the chief of these traces Mr. Bradley has called attention. Thus there is in the middle of Antony and Cleopatra, owing to the undramatic nature of the historic material, an excessive number of brief scenes “in which the dramatis personae are frequently changed, as though a novelist were to tell his story in a succession of short chapters, in which he flitted from one group of his characters to another.” In Coriolanus, “if Shakespeare had made the hero persist and we had seen him amid the flaming ruins of Rome, awaking suddenly to the enormity of his deed and taking vengeance on himself ... that would merely have been an ending more strictly tragic[72] than the close of Shakespeare’s play.” In Julius Caesar the “famous and wonderful” quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius is “an episode the removal of which would not affect the actual sequence of events (unless we may hold that but for the emotion caused by the quarrel and reconciliation Cassius would not have allowed Brutus to overcome his objection to the fatal policy of offering battle at Philippi).” Mr. Bradley discusses this in another connection, and here, as we shall see, Shakespeare only partially adheres to his authority. In the same play, however, we have the episode of the poet Cinna’s murder which, however useful in illustrating the temper of the mob and suggestive in other respects, is nevertheless a somewhat crude intrusion of history, for it leads to nothing and in no way helps on the action. But Shakespeare will put up with an occasional awkwardness in the mechanism rather than fail to give what he considers a faithful picture. As in the best English Histories he omits, he compresses, he even regroups; but he never consciously alters the sense, and to bring out the sense he utilises material that puts a little strain on his art.

Yet of course this does not mean that in the Roman any more than in the English plays he attempts an accurate reconstruction of the past. It may even be doubted whether such an attempt would have been intelligible to him or to any save one or two of his contemporaries. To the average Elizabethan (and in this respect Shakespeare was an average Elizabethan, with infinitely clearer vision certainly, but with the same outlook and horizon) the past differed from the present chiefly by its distance and dimness; and distinctive contrasts in manners and customs were but scantily recognised. A generation later French audiences could view the perruques and patches of Corneille’s Romans without any sense of incongruity, and the assimilation of the ancient to the modern was in some respects much more thorough-going in Shakespeare’s England. In all his classical pieces the impression of historic actuality and the genuine antique cachet is only produced when there is a kind of inner kinship between the circumstances to be represented and the English life that he knew. There was a good deal of such correspondence between Elizabethan life and Roman life, so the Roman Tragedies have a breath of historic verisimilitude and even a faint suggestion of local colour. There was much less between Elizabethan life and Greek life, so Timon and Troilus and Cressida, though true as human documents, have almost nothing Hellenic about them. But even in the Roman plays, so soon as there is anything that involves a distinctive difference between Rome and London Shakespeare is sure to miss it. Anachronisms in detail are of course abundantly unimportant, though a formidable list of them could be computed. In Julius Caesar there are clocks that strike, and the crowd throw up their sweaty nightcaps. The arrangements of the Elizabethan stage furnish Cleopatra and Comminius with similes. Menenius is familiar with funeral knells and batteries and Galen’s prescriptions.