During Shakspeare’s life, he was, it is well known, celebrated beyond his expectations, and many of those acquainted with him and his productions thought quite beyond his merits. He was one of the fashionable poets of England; his verses were familiar to the lips of kings and queens, and himself, besides having acquired a pecuniary independence by his pen, received the highest honors, as he thought, which could be bestowed on him. He was, in short, a successful writer, and he passed away from the earth with the agreeable consciousness of having procured for himself a niche in the temple of Fame.
It is pretty certain, however that no person on the globe, at the period of his life, had any just appreciation of him. Notwithstanding the triumphant success of his career, and the high honor and opulence he attained, his real character, as such a mighty patriarch of literature, was not dreamed of either by himself or any of his contemporaries. As a mind impregnated with a fire nearly beyond the mortal sphere—as one whose birth was an event in which mankind were personally interested—who was to give a name to his age—who, at that point of his posthumous celebrity where other great men begin to recede into the shadows of the past, was to start up anew, in more living distinctness and intellectual splendor—was to pass in this apotheoside grandeur over the usually impenetrable barriers of nations and languages, and to become (like some of the universal and ever-enduring elements of nature—like light, fire or air) a constant pleasure and nutriment to the human mind—as this extraordinary, and, I may say, mysterious being—no one knew him. His full brightness was veiled not only from his contemporary friends and admirers, but, as is now universally acknowledged, from many of his most distinguished subsequent editors and commentators. The rapturous eulogies, the commendatory verses, the folios on folios written upon him—extravagant as they are—fall short of his true value. Even Johnson, Warburton, Theobald, Pope, and the rest of his commentators of the same rank, appear to have meted out to him less than the deserved measure of praise. It appears that the comparative smallness of their minds (I mean comparative with Shakspeare’s) did not permit them to comprehend the complete dimensions of the subject they had undertaken. They have all too much the air of critics, instead of humble followers and pupils. They assume a familiarity with him which their relative nature did not warrant. There is a greater difference between him and any one who has lived with him or subsequent to him, considered as two minds, than is always understood by those who even confine themselves to panegyric.
My idea of this wonderful prophet of poetry is that his intellectual dimensions are too great for any one man who ever lived to explore them by himself. He could but discover a portion of the vastness of his intelligence and contemplate one or two aspects of it. No one age could completely seize all the meaning that lies in him. It has required two centuries to place within the reach even of superior and well cultivated minds a just idea of him. He died in 1616, and he is beginning to be understood in 1840. Although aided by the accumulated Shakspearian lore of the two preceding centuries—although the most learned and greatest geniuses of the two ages have contributed the beams of their science and literature to shed light on him—although innumerable theatres in so many lands have given his plays to the world—still even yet, greatly as he is admired and studied, he is not fully appreciated. There are thousands and millions who often read his works with delight yet without understanding half their profound depth and celestial beauty—and even they who have studied him the most—who have fitted themselves for that study by their previous pursuits—who have written books upon classes of his characters, do not yet completely comprehend him. To-morrow, perhaps, the wisest among them will take up one of his plays and discover some resplendent meaning—some new beam reflected from the human heart, never known to them before. For myself I frankly confess I have never understood him. Every day I make new discoveries, and have no doubt I shall continue to do so as long as I live.
The advance of Shakspeare upon the world has been as broad, deep and steady as the on-flow of civilization itself. So much has been said and written of him that, it may be, some will turn from the title of these papers as from a thing of which there has been enough. They will mutter with Hamlet, “Something too much of this.” But I may assure them that the mere idea that they know enough of Shakspeare—that they have seen him enough and that his praise has got to be only a fashion, is sufficient to prove that they know nothing of him.
The true pupil kindles at the sound of his name—at the rustle of his robe, at the sight of his foot-mark. Whoever comes with a new idea concerning him or to speak in his praise is welcome; and so convinced is he that a part of him as yet is terra incognita that he is always on the watch for some discovery in him.
To my eye, Shakspeare is a world. I do not understand by this a mere phrase expressive of the variety and beauty of the plays, but I mean those works are morally invested with attributes resembling the physical globe. This planet is given by Providence as the abode of man’s body. A vast extent of variegated surface, when he first began to move upon it, he knew nothing about it. The dawn of it upon the human mind was that of a bright scene—a circle of land—a verdant plain. The more it was studied the more it grew in variety and size. It was found divided into wonderful compartments and the first dazzled wanderers beheld with joy and wonder the huge-rolling sea arrest their steps on one side, the ice-topped mountains towering above them on the other,—broad and winding rivers—silver lakes—fathomless caverns—and awful, sombre forests. Each age since, the adventurous step of man has wandered farther and farther, has climbed the mountain—crossed the sea—circumnavigated the globe—and found out what it is—how it hangs in the air—how it revolves around the sun and many of the secrets of its bosom. Each age since, man has occupied himself studying its nature and forming theories concerning it.
To me, Shakspeare—although they who have not closely and habitually studied him, may smile at such a hyperbolical comparison—yet to me, Shakspeare lies like this solid and wonderful globe we inhabit. He is a second nature—a new creation—a more amazing production of the inscrutable Deity who formed the shoreless sea—and built the cloud cleaving Alps and Andes. He is a significant illustration of the degree of intellectual perfection to which the human mind—so destined—so worthy to be immortal—may reach even in this sublunary sphere.
The theory of Ulrici accords exactly with my impressions of Shakspeare. Such an event as his coming—such superhuman powers of mind—such a mixture of all that is grand, terrible and profound with all that is tender—sweet, and aerial—in one brain, seems fit to be linked with a great purpose. The idea of an ever superintending Providence being in my mind, I cannot join those philosophers who find in our poet merely a colossal diamond or a chance giant—as if the same hazard which gives to the farmer an overgrown cucumber or pumpkin had dropped the rare soul of this first of human geniuses among men. To me—I repeat, he resembles the globe. I see in him always, as when I travel over any country, sweet and striking scenes. I enter him as I do a landscape or an island; looking around, above, and beneath me, and sure to find wonders and beauties. Here, the bending rose—there—the silver brook—yonder the swelling hill—and again the shadowy forest. I stop sometimes to examine the hues of a violet half withdrawn from sight by the road-side—and then I am struck at the majestic grandeur of the oak at whose root it grows. Suddenly a storm which awes and startles my soul sweeps over me—and then the broad sunshine breaks upon the glittering face of nature. These are in the foreground of Shakspeare, but this is not Shakspeare. He has far remote wonders and beauties. If I choose to travel into him, I shall come upon things new and strange. He has foreign countries and distant wonders like Rome or Jerusalem. There are even in him tracts yet untravelled, and secrets—like the Pyramids and hieroglyphics of Egypt, like the Polar seas and the central wastes of Africa—which future time will perhaps unravel, but which we do not yet understand.
The meaning of Othello has always been locked from me. I have not yet been a reader of commentators and, perhaps, some of the crowd of distinguished writers who, ever since his death, have been endeavoring to throw light on him, may have accounted for the till now inexplicable mystery of it. But I could never conceive it. Why a perfectly noble mind, should be so cruelly tortured without guilt on its own part; why a scene of innocent happiness should be thus wantonly destroyed was always an unanswerable question I asked myself on seeing or reading this, one of the greatest of his five great tragedies. The reader will find the mystery solved, by an extract, in the course of these papers.
Hamlet is yet full of unexplained mystery. Why he does not kill the bloody usurper? Why he ill treats Ophelia? Was he mad? etc. etc. etc., are long standing themes of debate.