115. But it is in the towns, the centres of interchange of thought, of learning, and of controversy, that this revolution first gathers power; the sparsely populated country-sides are far more impervious to the new ideas, and the country people cling far longer and more tenaciously to the dying religion and its attendant beliefs. The rural districts were but little affected by the Reformation for years after it had triumphed in the towns, and consequently the beliefs of the inhabitants were hardly touched by the struggle that was going on within so short a distance. We find a Reginald Scot, indeed, complaining, half in joke, half in sarcasm, that Robin Goodfellow has long disappeared from the land;[1] but it is only from the towns that he has fled—towns in which the spirit of the Cartwrights and the Latimers, the Barnhams and the Delabers, is abroad. In the same Cambridge where Scot had been educated, a young student had hanged himself because the shadow of the doctrine of predestination was too terrible for him to live under;[2] and such a place was surely no home for Puck and his merry band. But in the country places, remote from the growl and trembling of this mental earthquake, he still loved to lurk; and even at the very moment when Scot was penning the denial of his existence, he was nestling amongst the woods and flowers of Avonside, and, invisible, whispering in the ear of a certain fair-haired youth there thoughts of no inconsiderable moment. And long time after that—after the youth had become a man, and had coined those thoughts into words that glitter still; after his monument had been erected in the quiet Stratford churchyard—Puck revelled, harmless and undisturbed, along many a country-side; nay, even to the present day, in some old-world nooks, a faint whispering rumour of him may still be heard.
[Footnote 1: Scot, Introduction.]
[Footnote 2: Foxe, iv. p. 694.]
116. Now, perhaps one of the most distinctive marks of literary genius is a certain receptivity of mind; a capability of receiving impressions from all surrounding circumstance—of extracting from all sources, whether from nature or man, consciously or unconsciously, the material upon which it shall work. For this process to be perfectly accomplished, an entire and enthusiastic sympathy with man and the current ideas of the time is absolutely essential, and in proportion as this sympathy is contracted and partial, so will the work produced be stunted and untrue; and, on the other hand, the more universal and entire it is, the more perfect and vital will be the art. Bearing this in mind, and also the facts that Shakspere's early training was effected in a little country village; that upon the verge of manhood, he came to London, where he spent his prime in contact with the bustle and friction of busy town life; and that the later years of his life were passed in the quiet retirement of the home of his boyhood—there would be good ground for an argument, a priori, even were there none of a more conclusive nature, that his earlier works would be found impregnated with the country fairy-myths with which his youth would come in contact; that the result of the labours of his middle life would show that these earlier reminiscenses had been gradually obliterated by the gloomier influence of ideas that were the result of the struggle of opposed theories that had not then ceased to rage in the towns, and that the diabolic element and questions relating thereto would predominate; and that, finally, his later works, written under the calmer influence of Stratford life, would show a certain return to the fairy-lore of his earlier years.
117. But fortunately we are not left to rely upon any such hypothetical evidence in this matter, however probable it may appear. Although the general reading public cannot be asked to accept as infallible any chronological order of Shakspere's plays that dogmatically asserts a particular sequence, or to investigate the somewhat dry and specialist arguments upon which the conclusions are founded, yet there are certain groupings into periods which are agreed upon as accurate by nearly all critics, and which, without the slightest danger of error, may be asserted to be correct. For instance, it is indisputable that "Love's Labour's Lost," "The Comedy of Errors," "Romeo and Juliet," and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" are amongst Shakspere's earliest works; that the tragedies of "Julius Caesar," "Hamlet," "Othello," "Macbeth," and "Lear" are the productions of his middle life, between 1600 and 1606; and that "A Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest" are amongst the latest plays which he wrote.[1] Here we have everything that is required to prove the question in hand. At the commencement and at the end of his writings—when a youth fresh from the influence of his country nurture and education, and when a mature man, settling down into the old life again after a long and victorious struggle with the world, with his accumulated store of experience—we find plays which are perfectly saturated with fairy-lore: "The Dream" and "The Tempest." These are the poles of Shakspere's thought in this respect; and in the centre, imbedded as it were between two layers of material that do not bear any distinctive stamp of their own, but appear rather as a medium for uniting the diverse strata, lie the great tragedies, produced while he was in the very rush and swirl of town life, and reflecting accurately, as we have seen, many of the doubts and speculations that were agitating the minds of men who were ardently searching out truth. It is worth noting too, in passing, that directly Shakspere steps out of his beaten path to depict, in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," the happy country life and manners of his day, he at the same time returns to fairyland again, and brings out the Windsor children trooping to pinch and plague the town-bred, tainted Falstaff.
[Footnote 1: For an elaborate and masterly investigation of the question of the chronological order of the plays, which must be assumed here, see Mr. Furnivall's Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere.]
118. But this is not by any means all that this subject reveals to us about Shakspere; if it were, the less said about it the better. To look upon "The Tempest" as in its essence merely a return to "The Dream"—the end as the beginning; to believe that his thoughts worked in a weary, unending circle—that the Valley of the Shadow of Death only leads back to the foot of the Hill Difficulty—is intolerable, and not more intolerable than false. Although based upon similar material, the ideas and tendencies of "The Tempest" upon supernaturalism are no more identical with those of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" than the thoughts of Berowne upon things in general are those of Hamlet, or Hamlet's those of Prospero. But before it is possible to point out the nature of this difference, and to show that the change is a natural growth of thought, not a mere retrogression, a few explanatory remarks are necessary.
There is no more insufficient and misleading view of Shakspere and his work than that which until recently obtained almost universal credence, and is even at the present time somewhat loudly asserted in some quarters; namely, that he was a man of considerable genius, who wrote and got acted some thirty plays more or less, simply for commercial purposes and nothing more; made money thereby, and died leaving a will; and that, beyond this, he and his works are, and must remain, an inexplicable mystery. The critic who holds this view, and finds it equally advantageous to commence a study of Shakspere's work by taking "The Tempest" or "Love's Labour's Lost" as his text, is about as judicious as the botanist who would enlarge upon the structure of the seed-pod without first explaining the preliminary stages of plant growth, or the architect who would dilate upon the most convenient arrangement of chimney-pots before he had discussed the laws of foundation. The plays may be studied separately, and studied so are found beautiful; but taken in an approximate chronological order, like a string of brilliant jewels, each one gains lustre from those that precede and follow it.
119. For no man ever wrote sincerely and earnestly, or indeed ever did any one thing in such a spirit, without leaving some impress upon his work of his mental condition whilst he was doing it; and no such man ever continued his literary labours from the period of youth right through his manhood, without leaving behind him, in more or less legible character, a record of the ripening of his thought upon matters of eternal importance, although they may not be of necessity directly connected with the ostensible subject in hand. Insincere men may ape sentiments they do not really believe in; but in the end they will either be exposed and held up to ridicule, or their work will sink into obscurity. Sincerity in the expression of genuine thought and feeling alone can stand the test of time. And this is in reality no contradiction to what has just been said as to the necessity of a receptive condition of mind in the production of works of true genius. This capacity of receiving the most delicate objective impressions is, indeed, one essential; but without the cognate power to assimilate this food, and evolve the result that these influences have produced subjectively, it is, worse than useless. The two must co-exist and act and react upon one another. Nor must we be induced to surrender these principles, in the present particular case, on account of the usual fine but vague talk about Shakspere's absolute self-annihilation in favour of the characters that he depicts. It is said that Shakspere so identifies himself with each person in his dramas, that it is impossible to detect the great master and his thoughts behind this cunningly devised screen. If this means that Shakespere has always a perfect comprehension of his characters, is competent to measure out to each absolute and unerring justice, and is capable of sympathy with even the most repulsive, it will not be disputed for an instant. It is so true, that it is dangerous to take a sentence out of the mouth of any one of his characters and say for certain, "This Shakspere thought," although there are many characters with whom every one must feel that Shakspere identified himself for the time being rather than others. But if it is intended to assert that Shakspere has so eliminated himself from his writings as to make it impossible to trace anywhere the tendencies of his own thought at the time when he was writing, it must be most emphatically denied for the reasons just stated. Freedom from prejudice must be carefully dissociated from lack of interest in the motive that underlies the construction of each play. There is a tone or key-note in each drama that indicates the author's mental condition at the time when it was produced; and if several plays, following each other in brisk succession, all have the same predominant tone, it seems to be past question that Shakspere is incidentally and indirectly uttering his own personal thought and experience.
120. If it be granted, then, that it is possible to follow thus the growth of Shakspere's thought through the medium of his successive works, there is only one small point to be glanced at before attempting to trace this growth in the matter of supernaturalism.