The natural history of the evolution of opinion upon matters which, for want of a more embracing and satisfactory word, we must be content to call "religious," follows a uniform course in the minds of all men, except those "duller than the fat weed that roots itself at ease on Lethe's wharf," who never get beyond the primary stage. This course is separable into three periods. The first is that in which a man accepts unhesitatingly the doctrines which he has received from his spiritual teachers—customary not intellectual, belief. This sits lightly on him; entails no troublesome doubts and questionings; possesses, or appears to possess, formulae to meet all possible emergencies, and consequently brings with it a happiness that is genuine, though superficial. But this customary belief rarely satisfies for long. Contact with the world brings to light other and opposed theories: introspection and independent investigation of the bases of the hereditary faith are commenced; many doctrines that have been hitherto accepted as eternally and indisputably true are found to rest upon but slight foundation, apart from their title to respect on account of age; doubts follow as to the claim to acceptance of the whole system that has been so easily and unhesitatingly swallowed; and the period of scepticism, or no-belief, with its attendant misery, commences—for although Dagon has been but little honoured in the time of his strength, in his downfall he is much regretted. Then comes that long, weary groping after some firm, reliable basis of belief: but heaven and earth appear for the time to conspire against the seeker; an intellectual flood has drowned out the old order of things; not even a mountain peak appears in the wide waste of desolation as assurance of ultimate rest; and in the dark, overhanging firmament no arc of promise is to be seen. But this is a state of mind which, from its very nature, cannot continue for ever: no man could endure it. While it lasts the struggle must be continuous, but somewhere through the cloud lies the sunshine and the land of peace—the final period of intellectual belief. Out of the chaos comes order; ideas that but recently appeared confused, incoherent, and meaningless assume their true perspective. It is found that all the strands of the old conventional faith have not been snapped in the turmoil; and these, re-knit and strengthened with the new and full knowledge of experience and investigation, form the cable that secures that strange holy confidence of belief that can only be gained by a preliminary warfare with doubt—a peace that truly passes all understanding to those who have never battled for it,—as to its foundation, diverse to a miracle in diverse minds, but still, a peace.
121. If this be a true history of the course of development of every mind that is capable of independent thought upon and investigation of such high matters, it follows that Shakspere's soul must have experienced a similar struggle—for he was a man of like passions with ourselves; indeed, to so acute and sensitive a mind the struggle would be, probably, more prolonged and more agonizing than to many; and it is these three mental conditions—first, of unthinking acceptance of generally received teaching; second, of profound and agitating scepticism; and, thirdly, of belief founded upon reason and experience—that may be naturally expected to be found impressed upon his early, middle, and later works.
122. It is impossible here to do more than indicate some of the evidence that this supposition is correct, for to attempt to investigate the question exhaustively would involve the minute consideration of a majority of the plays. The period of Shakspere's customary or conventional belief is illustrated in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and to a certain extent also in the "Comedy of Errors." In the former play we find him loyally accepting certain phases of the hereditary Stratford belief in supernaturalism, throwing them into poetical form, and making them beautiful. It has often before been observed, and it is well worthy of observation, that of the three groups of characters in the play, the country folk—a class whose manner and appearance had most vividly reflected themselves upon the camera of Shakspere's mind—are by far the most lifelike and distinct; the fairies, who had been the companions of his childhood and youth in countless talks in the ingle and ballads in the lanes, come second in prominence and finish; whilst the ostensible heroes and heroines of the piece, the aristocrats of Athens, are colourless and uninteresting as a dumb-show—the real shadows of the play. This is exactly the ratio of impressionability that the three classes would have for the mind of the youthful dramatist. The first is a creation from life, the second from traditionary belief, the third from hearsay. And when it has been said that the fairies are a creation from traditionary belief, a full and accurate description of them has been afforded. They are an embodiment of a popular superstition, and nothing more. They do not conceal any thought of the poet who has created them, nor are they used for any deeper purpose with regard to the other persons of the drama than temporary and objectless annoyance. Throughout the whole play runs a healthy, thoughtless, honest, almost riotous happiness; no note of difficulty, no shadow of coming doubt being perceptible. The pert and nimble spirit of mirth is fully awakened; the worst tricks of the intermeddling spirits are mischievous merely, and of only transitory influence, and "the summer still doth tend upon their state," brightening this fairyland with its sunshine and flowers. Man has absolutely no power to govern these supernatural powers, and they have but unimportant influence over him. They can affect his comfort, but they cannot control his fate. But all this is merely an adapting and elaborating of ideas which had been handed down from father to son for many generations. Shakspere's Puck is only the Puck of a hundred ballads reproduced by the hand of a true poet; no original thought upon the connection of the visible with the invisible world is imported into the creation. All these facts tend to show that when Shakspere wrote "A Midsummer Night's Dream," that is, at the beginning of his career as a dramatic author, he had not broken away from the trammels of the beliefs in which he had been brought up, but accepted them unhesitatingly and joyously.
123. But there is a gradual toning down of this spirit of unbroken content as time wears on. Putting aside the historical plays, in which Shakspere was much more bound down by his subject-matter than in any other species of drama, we find the comedies, in which his room for expression of individual feeling was practically unlimited, gradually losing their unalloyed hilarity, and deepening down into a sadness of thought and expression that sometimes leaves a doubt whether the plays should be classed as comedies at all. Shakspere has been more and more in contact with the disputes and doubts of the educated men of his time, and seeds have been silently sowing themselves in his heart, which are soon to bring forth a plenteous harvest in the great tragedies of which these semi-comedies, such as "All's Well that Ends Well" and "Measure for Measure," are but the first-fruits.
124. Thus, when next we find Shakspere dealing with questions relating to supernaturalism, the tone is quite different from that taken in his earlier work. He has reached the second period of his thought upon the subject, and this has cast its attendant gloom upon his writings. That he was actually battling with questions current in his time is demonstrated by the way in which, in three consecutive plays, derived from utterly diverse sources, the same question of ghost or devil is agitated, as has before been pointed out. But it is not merely a point of theological dogma which stamps these plays as the product of Shakspere's period of scepticism, but a theory of the influence of supernatural beings upon the whole course of human life. Man is still incapable of influencing these unseen forces, or bending them to his will; but they are now no longer harmless, or incapable of anything but temporary or trivial evil. Puck might lead night wanderers into mischance, and laugh mischievously at the bodily harm that he had caused them; but Puck has now disappeared, and in his stead is found a malignant spirit, who seeks to laugh his fiendish laughter over the soul he has deceived into destruction. Questions arise thick and fast that are easier put than answered. Can it be that evil influences have the upper hand in this world? that, be a man never so honest, never so pure, he may nevertheless become the sport of blind chance or ruthless wickedness? May a Hamlet, patiently struggling after truth and duty, be put upon and abused by the darker powers? May Macbeth, who would fain do right, were not evil so ever present with him, be juggled with and led to destruction by fiends? May an undistinguishing fate sweep away at once the good with the evil—Hamlet with Laertes; Desdemona with Iago; Cordelia with Edmund? And above the turmoil of this reign of terror, is there no word uttered of a Supreme Good guiding and controlling the unloosed ill—no word of encouragement, none of hope? If this be so indeed, that man is but the puppet of malignant spirits, away with this life. It is not worth the living; for what power has man against the fiends? But at this point arises a further question to demand solution: what shall be hereafter? If evil is supreme here, shall it not be so in that undiscovered country,—that life to come? The dreams that may come give him pause, and he either shuffles on, doubting, hesitating, and incapable of decision, or he hurls himself wildly against his fate. In either case his life becomes like to a tale
"Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying—nothing!"
125. It is strange to note, too, how the ebb of this wave of scepticism upon questions relating to the immaterial world is only recoil that adds force to a succeeding wave of cynicism with regard to the physical world around. "Hamlet," "Macbeth," and "Othello" give place to "Lear," "Troilus and Cressida," "Antony and Cleopatra," and "Timon." So true is it that "unfaith in aught is want of faith in all," that in these later plays it would seem that honour, honesty, and justice were virtues not possessed by man or woman; or, if possessed, were only a curse to bring down disgrace and destruction upon the possessor. Contrast the women of these plays with those of the comedies immediately preceding the Hamlet period. In the latter plays we find the heroines, by their sweet womanly guidance and gentle but firm control, triumphantly bringing good out of evil in spite of adverse circumstance. Beatrice, Rosalind, Viola, Helena, and Isabella are all, not without a tinge of knight-errantry that does not do the least violence to the conception of tender, delicate womanhood, the good geniuses of the little worlds in which their influence is made to be felt. Events must inevitably have gone tragically but for their intervention. But with the advent of the second period all this changes. At first the women, like Brutus' Portia, Ophelia, Desdemona, however noble or sweet in character and well meaning in motive, are incapable of grasping the guiding threads of the events around them and controlling them for good. They have to give way to characters of another kind, who bear the form without the nature of women. Commencing with Lady Macbeth, the conception falls lower and lower, through Goneril and Regan, Cressida, Cleopatra, until in the climax of this utter despair, "Timon," there is no character that it would not be a profanity to call by the name of woman.
126. And just as womanly purity and innocence quail before unwomanly self-assertion and voluptuousness, so manly loyalty and unselfishness give way before unmanly treachery and self-seeking. It is true that the bad men do not finally triumph, but they triumph over the good with whom they happen to come in contact. In "King Lear," what man shows any virtue who does not receive punishment for the same? Not Gloucester, whose loyal devotion to his king obtains for him a punishment that is only merciful in that it prevents him from further suffering the sight of his beloved master's misery; not Kent, who, faithful in his self-denying service through all manner of obloquy, is left at last with a prayer that he may be allowed to follow Lear to the grave; and beyond these two there is little good to be found. But "Lear" is not by any means the climax. The utter despair of good in man or woman rises higher in "Troilus and Cressida," and reaches its culminating point in "Timon," a fragment only of which is Shakspere's. The pen fell from the tired hand; the worn and distracted brain refused to fulfil the task of depicting the depth to which the poet's estimate of mankind had fallen; and we hardly know whether to rejoice or to regret that the clumsy hand of an inferior writer has screened from our knowledge the full disclosure of the utter and contemptuous cynicism and want of faith with which, for the time being, Shakspere was infected.
127. Before passing on to consider the plays of the third period as evidence of Shakspere's final thought, it will be well to pause and re-read with attention a summing-up of Shakspere's teaching as it has been presented to us by one of the greatest and most earnest teachers of morality of the present day. Every word that Mr. Ruskin writes is so evidently from the depth of his own good heart, and every doctrine that he enunciates so pure in theory and so true in practice, that a difference with him upon the final teaching of Shakspere's work cannot be too cautiously expressed. But the estimate of this which he has given in the third Lecture of "Sesame and Lilies"[1] is so painful, if regarded as Shakspere's latest and most mature opinion, that everybody, even Mr. Ruskin himself, would be glad to modify its gloom with a few rays of hope, if it were possible to do so. "What then," says Mr. Ruskin, "is the message to us of our own poet and searcher of hearts, after fifteen hundred years of Christian faith have been numbered over the graves of men? Are his words more cheerful than the heathen's (Homer)? is his hope more near, his trust more sure, his reading of fate more happy? Ah no! He differs from the heathen poet chiefly in this, that he recognizes for deliverance no gods nigh at hand, and that, by petty chance, by momentary folly, by broken message, by fool's tyranny, or traitor's snare, the strongest and most righteous are brought to their ruin, and perish without word of hope. He, indeed, as part of his rendering of character, ascribes the power and modesty of habitual devotion to the gentle and the just. The death-bed of Katharine is bright with visions of angels; and the great soldier-king, standing by his few dead, acknowledges the presence of the hand that can save alike by many or by few. But observe that from those who with deepest spirit meditate, and with deepest passion mourn, there are no such words as these; nor in their hearts are any such consolations. Instead of the perpetual sense of the helpful presence of the Deity, which, through all heathen tradition, is the source of heroic strength, in battle, in exile, and in the valley of the shadow of death, we find only in the great Christian poet the consciousness of a moral law, through which 'the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to scourge us;' and of the resolved arbitration of the destinies, that conclude into precision of doom what we feebly and blindly began; and force us, when our indiscretion serves us, and our deepest plots do pall, to the confession that 'there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.'"[2]
[Footnote 1: 3rd edition, § 115.]