Graham's Magazine, Vol. XIX, No. 3, September 1841

by Various

I hope the article will be widely reprinted in our own country. Its tendency is most beneficial. We are, from necessity, in the present point of our developement, a hard working, practical, matter-of-fact people—full—too full of mere worldly occupation and excitement. Subjects in no way connected with the higher exercise of the intellect absorb the public mind. Commercial and political questions unavoidably monopolize the national sympathies. We are compelled at present to strain every nerve to make money, that the ravages of the monetary tempest which has swept like a tornado or an earthquake, or an oriental plague over our land, may be repaired. There is danger in this state of things that we entirely forego the contemplation of those subjects, which, however without temporal pecuniary profit, repay the laborer with moral purity and elevation, which soften the asperity of the passions, infuse gentleness and liberality into opinion, strengthen the spiritual part of our nature, and ennoble and dignify life—at the same time that they cheer, guide, protect and sweeten it.

There is no repose, no patient leisure and calm tranquillity in our young and rapidly growing country. There is the same difference, I mean in respect to literary and scientific pursuits, between us and some of the European communities, Germany for instance, that there was between the Israelites travelling through the desert and the same people when gathered around the temple in the holy city. I believe we, too, are undergoing a kind of forty years’ penance, in order to shake off such of the habits and opinions of our European ancestors as are wrong—six thousand years of bloody prejudices and political errors. There will come a day of prosperity, when institutions shall be no longer doubtful, national character no longer unsettled, when we shall have a fixed standard of political morals far different from any that has hitherto prevailed in the world; and when the human mind, under these more favorable circumstances, will develop itself in a new manner.

But this depends upon ourselves. Nations, like individuals, are free agents. We can go upwards or downwards; we can hail our Messiah or we can reject him; and in order that we may mount not sink in the scale of moral being, it is desirable that we should not permit ourselves to be bound down too closely and too continually to the local and temporary but exciting exigencies of the present hour, that pecuniary and political subjects should not engross too much of our attention, lest we become altogether “of the earth, earthy.” Music, poetry, painting, sculpture, eloquence and science, the fine performances of a Forrest or a Kean, have a tendency to mingle with our daily and (when too exclusively persisted in) narrowing and degrading occupations; something that turns the spirit another way, and fills, refreshes and intellectualizes the character. Such articles as that alluded to on the wonderful and still scarcely appreciated excellences of Shakspeare, will be as softening and reviving in their effects upon thousands of minds, parched and hot under the influence of merely mechanical employments, or interested and selfish impressions, as a plentiful summer shower is to nature, when burnt and withered with a long drought.

The reading of this article has turned me again for a few evenings to my most favorite author, and raised many new ideas in my mind, which is always the case when I open those fascinating pages. I propose to furnish, in several papers, some of the thoughts which crowd upon me while reading him. I cannot bear to read him alone. It is like listening to an oration from the fiery lips of Cicero in an empty hall, or hearing Channing address deserted aisles. I want a circle to share those streams of light; I want to feel that the music-waves roll to the hearts of others beside myself. It almost seems selfish to brood over delights so ethereal, to gaze on vistas so resplendent, to enter a temple so gorgeous and so vast without some one at my side to call on in the moment of rapture.

There is, moreover, in the article of the Edinburgh Review, the following extraordinary annunciation.

“But the work which we should have most pleasure in believing to represent the state of German opinions, is Dr. Ulrici’s ‘Essay on Shakspeare’s Dramatic Art, and his relation to Calderon and Goethe.’ This book seems to us to be not only one of the most solidly philosophical pieces of criticism which have issued from the Teutonic school, but on its own absolute merits, an unusually valuable contribution to the literature of Shakspeare’s works. The theory upon which the treatise rests is assuredly partial and imperfect; and also, so far as it goes beyond opinions already received, palpably unsound; but the aspect in which it presents the poet of all nations is one which has been too often overlooked among ourselves, and grossly misunderstood by some of the most celebrated of Ulrici’s countrymen. The general discussions, which make up a considerable part of the volume, we must be allowed to waive. We cannot, especially in the way of commentary on a German text-book, attempt to investigate either the essence of the drama in general, or the essential differences between the views of life suggested respectively by Christianity and Grecian Paganism. The religious test thus indicated is that to which the critic subjects both Shakspeare and the poets with whom he compares him. ‘Shakspeare’s peculiar character,’ says he, ‘consists in the greater purity and clearness, decision and completeness, with which the Christian view of life is represented in his dramas. It consists especially in this, that every where the two great elements of human life, and of the history of the world, the divine guidance and the freedom of man, stand out in their legitimate authority, in organic connexion and reciprocal action, and thus in the whole fulness of their truth and reality.’ He insists, emphatically, that he recognizes in Shakspeare’s dramas, not indeed formally taught, either theologically or ethically, but embodied in the genuine form of poetical representation, the doctrines of the universal sinfulness of man, and of divine grace in his salvation; doctrines which, as he truly adds, are altogether left out of sight in Goethe’s view of life, and by Calderon either misunderstood or unpoetically used. All this must be to many of us not a little startling; but there lies at the bottom of it a mighty truth, not merely important in itself, but bearing a close relation to the great dramatist’s cast of thought; a truth which, in one sense or other, does furnish the clue to some of the most perplexing riddles in the poet’s works. In following out his own system, Ulrici, as was to have been expected from its one-sidedness, has been led to many conclusions which cannot possibly be admitted; but fewer of these are to be attributed to the essential parts of his theory, than to the peculiar way in which he has worked it out. In several instances he has literally resolved the leading idea, in which he represents the unity of each drama to consist, in a substantive enunciation of a moral precept, an error against which he himself protests. He has erred still further in acknowledging, as he seems to do almost invariably, the principle of what has been called poetical justice—a principle not involved in his own system upon any right interpretation of it, and assuredly quite alien to the far-reaching speculations of Shakspeare. But a man who thinks of poetry as Ulrici thinks, can never write of it altogether unworthily: one who is willing to consider Shakspeare as coming up to so lofty a standard, cannot fail to entertain that reverence for genius, and truth, and goodness, which is the source of all pleasure as well as soundness in criticism; and the admirable analysis of the poet’s works which constitute the latter half of the volume, shows the writer to be fully qualified for expounding such a creed.”

Startling, indeed! but, if true, this is one of the most singular discoveries ever made in literature. We have been accustomed to hear Shakspeare praised for everything but Christianity, or, indeed, any sense of religion. He has been sometimes represented even as a kind of neutral principle, from whom flow all opinions, all creeds, all virtues, all crimes, with a facility equally indifferent to the source which sends them forth. He has been attacked sometimes as a bigot, and sometimes as an infidel; sometimes as a whig, sometimes as a democrat; but no one before, that I am aware of, ever undertook to show him forth as a great prophet of Christianity.

I have not seen the work of Dr. Ulrici, nor are the following papers devoted exclusively to a consideration of our author in this point of view, but, in several parts of them, I have so considered him. They are not written systematically. They were commenced with the intention of saying all I had to say in a single article, but the subject is so large, and grew so under my hand, that I was obliged to let my observations run into several papers, and I soon found myself, moreover, compelled not only to confine my attention principally to one tragedy, but to leave many considerations respecting that tragedy untouched.

I wish to repeat that I am by no means thoroughly acquainted with Shakspeare, and do not dream of offering any more than the mere momentary impressions which the perusal of such parts of him as I happen to read make upon me. After the great students of his works, the laborious and learned critics of different nations who have devoted years to the understanding of him, it would be presuming to attempt to throw light on him. I have only endeavored to express what I feel and see and think while reading him, and to venture here and there an examination of him upon the idea suggested by Dr. Ulrici, as it may strike a reader like myself, unacquainted with other arguments concerning it than those probabilities existing in the plays. The theory of Ulrici is so beautiful and so consonant to the lofty rank which our poet occupies, that one cannot help wishing, and scarcely believing, that it may be true. It has the force and convincingness which characterize the solution of an enigma. And, in this view, it possesses something of the solemnity of the creation itself. The creation is an enigma of which Christianity is the solution. Without that, all is vague, contradictory, dark; an existing impossibility—powerless omnipotence—fiendish generosity and love—the omnipresence of a Divinity everywhere absent—a mockery—a paradox. Christianity makes all clear and simple. It scarcely requires proof more than the solution of any other enigma. When the Divine secret is revealed, it is self-evident.

With all reverence be it advanced, the suggestion of this theory, in reference to the works of Shakspeare, has something of the same fitness. The creation of the poet was, before, in many places, dark and inexplicable; but the light shed upon him by the word Christianity makes many things clear and intelligible. It raises him to something of the magnitude of a prophet, and the most stupendous fabric of profane literature acquires a more solemn grandeur by this connection with the sacred work of God.