The Works of Shakspeare: the Text Carefully Restored According to the First Editions; With Introductions, Notes, Original and Selected, and a Life of the Poet. By the Rev. H. N. Hudson, A. M. In Eleven Volumes. Boston: James Monroe & Co. Vol. 3.
This beautiful edition of Shakspeare, a fac-simile of the celebrated Chiswick edition in type and paper, has now reached its third volume. It is edited by Mr. Hudson, well known all over the country as one of the most accomplished of Shakspeare’s critics and commentators, and who in his present labors has far surpassed the reputation he obtained by his lectures on the same subject. The present volume contains The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, All’s Well that Ends Well, and The Taming of the Shrew. The text is very carefully revised, and the notes are clear, short, and full of matter, and flash the meaning of obscure phrases, remote allusions, and other difficulties of the text, at once upon the reader’s mind, without any parade of learning or paradox of interpretation. It is, however, in the introductory notices to the plays that the analytical and interpretative genius of the editor shines forth most resplendently. Every lover of Shakspeare should possess this edition, had it nothing to recommend it but these alone. They give the results of meditations, alike penetrating and profound, on the interior processes of Shakspeare’s mind in creating character and in forming plots; and the marvel of his genius, in its depth, delicacy, comprehension, fertility, and sweetness, is developed with the austerity of science and the geniality of a sympathizing spirit. These introductions are not only thus critical, but they include in a short space a large amount of antiquarian knowledge respecting the bibliography and sources of the plays; and the old tales which suggested or formed the basis of the plots, are re-told with much skill and simplicity of narration.
The masterpiece of the present volume is the introduction to The Merchant of Venice. It is exceedingly brilliant in style, but the brilliancy seems to come from an inward heat and fervor generated by an intense contemplation of the subject, so that the diction sparkles, as Ben Jonson would say, “like salt in fire.” The brilliancies are flashes, not of fancy, but of thought; and frequently are the result of vigorous condensation in statement, or of logic which gets on fire by the very rapidity of its movement. The finest elements of the style, however, are its subtleties of statement and representation, subtleties which follow the most intricate windings and enfoldings of complex thought, speeding on the fire track of an ideal allusion to the very limits of its course, and thoroughly mastering all the obstacles of expression in giving form to the most evanescent workings of the creative power.
Thus in speaking of the apparent heterogeneousness but real unity of the play, he remarks: “The persons naturally fall into three several groups, with each its several plot and action; yet the three are most skillfully complotted, each standing out clear and distinct in its place, yet concurring with the others in dramatic unity, so that every thing helps on every other thing, without either the slightest confusion or the slightest appearance of care to avoid it. Of these three groups it is hardly necessary to add that Antonio, Shylock and Portia are the respective centres; while the part of Lorenzo and Jessica, though strictly an episode, seems, nevertheless, to grow forth as an element of the original germ, a sort of inherent superfluity, and as such essential, not indeed to the being, but to the well-being of the work; in short, a fine romantic undertone accompaniment to the other parts, yet contemplated and provided for in the whole plan and structure of the piece; itself in harmony with all the rest, and therefore perfecting their harmony with one another.” We will put it to the consciousness of every reader of Shakspeare if this does not chime with his feeling of the matter; but to show the grounds of this instinctive taste, and exhibit it in its intellectual form, and justify it by the austerest principles of philosophical criticism, requires Mr. Hudson’s sharpness of eye and ready refinements of expression. The specimen we have given, as it is not the best which might be selected, so is it a very common and unobtrusive characteristic of his criticism.
In commenting on the characters of the play, Mr. Hudson displays more than ordinary keenness and discrimination. We are acquainted with no student of Shakspeare who could read the analysis of Shylock, Antonio, Portia and Jessica, without receiving an addition to his knowledge. Even Launcelot Gobbo has his share of the critic’s acumen; his necessity, in the organism of the piece, is demonstrated; and the exquisite non-sequiturism of his whole personality is finely described. “A mixture, indeed, of conceit and drollery, and hugely wrapped up in self, yet he is by no means a commonplace buffoon, but stands firm and secure in the sufficiency of his original stock. His elaborate nonsense, his grasping at a pun without catching it, yet feeling just as grand as if he did, is both ludicrous and natural; his jokes, to be sure, are mostly failures; nevertheless they are laughable, because he dreams not but that they succeed.”
It is needless to say that the prominent feature in Mr. Hudson’s criticism is Shylock. The combination in him of the individual and the national, Shylock the Jew and the Jew Shylock, is indicated with a bold, firm hand. One paragraph is especially powerful. “Shylock,” he says, “is a true representative of his nation; wherein we have a pride which for ages never ceased to provoke hostility, but which no hostility could ever subdue; a thrift which still invited rapacity, but which no rapacity could ever exhaust; and a weakness, which, while it exposed the subjects to wrong, only deepened their hate, because it left them without the means or the hope of redress. Thus Shylock is a type of national sufferings, sympathies, and antipathies. Himself an object of bitter insult and scorn to those about him; surrounded by enemies whom he is too proud to conciliate and too weak to oppose; he can have no life among them but money; no hold upon them but interest; no indemnity out of them but revenge. Such being the case, what wonder that the elements of national greatness became congealed or petrified into malignity? As avarice was the passion in which he mainly lived, of course, the Christian virtues which thwarted this were the greatest wrong that could be done him. With these strong national traits are interwoven personal traits equally strong. Thoroughly and intensely Jewish, he is not more a Jew than he is Shylock. In his hard, icy intellectuality, and his ‘dry, mummy-like tenacity’ of purpose, with a dash now and then of biting sarcastic humor, we see the remains of a great and noble nature, out of which all the genial sap of humanity has been pressed by accumulated injuries. With as much elasticity of mind as stiffness of neck, every step he takes but the last is as firm as the earth he treads upon. Nothing can daunt, nothing disconcert him; remonstrance cannot move, ridicule cannot touch, obloquy cannot exasperate him; when he has not provoked, he has been forced to bear them; and now that he does provoke them, he is proof against them. In a word, he may be broken; he cannot be bent.”
We cannot refrain from picking out a sentence, here and there, in the critic’s admirable delineation of Portia. “Eminently practical in her tastes and turn of mind, full of native, home-bred sense and virtue, she unites therewith something of the ripeness and dignity of a sage, a rich, mellow eloquence, and a large, noble discourse, the whole being tempered with the best grace and sensibility of womanhood. . . Nothing can be more fitting and well-placed than her demeanor, now bracing her speech with grave maxims of moral and practical wisdom, now unbending her mind in playful sallies of wit, or innocent, roguish banter. . . . It is no drawback upon Portia’s strength and substantial dignity of character, that her nature is all overflowing with romance; rather, this it is that glorifies her and breathes enchantment about her; it adds that precious seeing to the eye which conducts her to such winning beauty and sweetness of deportment, and makes her the ‘rich-souled’ creature that Schlegel describes her to be.”
The introductions to All’s Well that Ends Well, and The Taming of the Shrew, are replete with shrewd remark and acute analysis, but both are inferior to the criticism of As You Like It. The woodland sweetness of this play tasks all the subtlety and all the enthusiasm of Mr. Hudson to do it justice. An exquisite ideal beauty casts its sweet and satisfying charm over the whole of this matchless comedy, and we envy Shakspeare’s delight in its composition more than Campbell envied his happiness in bodying forth A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Even Le Beau, the courtier of Frederic, is an ideal courtier; on inborn gentlemanliness, of the finest kind, stealing out from him in performing his most ungracious duties. This character is commonly performed on the stage by the worst actor the manager has in his company, but we have always noticed that the feeblest performer became lifted into dignity by simply pronouncing one golden sentence in the first act. It is where Le Beau expresses at once his loyal duty to Frederic and his admiration for Orlando’s brave and gentle qualities. As his master has chosen to be Orlando’s enemy, he cannot obey his impulse to be Orlando’s friend, and his parting words to the latter are touchingly noble:
“Sir, fare you well: