Take, for example, that passage in the poem where Venus represents the loveliness of Adonis as sending thrills of passion into the earth on which he treads, and as making the bashful moon hide herself from the sight of his bewildering beauty:—
"But if thou fall, O, then imagine this!
The earth, in love with thee, thy footing trips,
And all is but to rob thee of a kiss.
Rich preys make true men thieves; so do thy lips
Make modest Dian cloudy and forlorn,
Lest she should steal a kiss and die forsworn.
"Now of this dark night I perceive the reason:
Cynthia for shame obscures her silver shine,
Till forging Nature be condemned of treason,
For stealing moulds from heaven that were divine.
Wherein she framed thee, in high heaven's despite.
To shame the sun by day and her by night."
This is reflected and reflecting passion, or, at least, imagination awakening passion, rather than passion penetrating imagination.
Now mark, by contrast, the gush of the heart into the brain, dissolving thought, imagination, and expression, so that they run molten, in the delirious ecstasy of Pericles in recovering his long-lost child:—
"O Helicanus, strike me, honored sir!
Give me a gash; put me to present pain;
Lest this great sea of joys, rushing upon me,
O'erbear the shores of my mortality,
And drown me with their sweetness."
If, as is probable, "Venus and Adonis" was written as early as 1586, we may suppose that the plays which represent the boyhood of his genius, and which are strongly marked with the characteristics of that poem, namely, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," the first draft of "Love's Labor's Lost," and the original "Romeo and Juliet," were produced before the year 1592. Following these came "King Richard III.," "King Richard II.," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "King John," "The Merchant of Venice," and "King Henry IV.," all of which we know were written before 1598, when Shakespeare was in his thirty-fourth year. During the next eight years he produced "King Henry V.," "The Merry Wives of Windsor," "As You Like It," "Hamlet," "Twelfth Night," "Measure for Measure," "Othello," "Macbeth," and "King Lear." In this list are the four great tragedies in which his genius culminated. Then came "Troilus and Cressida," "Timon of Athens," "Julius Cæsar," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Cymbeline," "King Henry VIII.," "The Tempest," "The Winter's Tale," and "Coriolanus." If heed be paid to this order of the plays, it will be seen at once that a quotation from Shakespeare carries with it a very different degree of authority, according as it refers to the youth or the maturity of his mind.
Indeed, when we reflect that between the production of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" and "King Lear" there is only a space of fifteen years, we must admit that the history of the human intellect presents no other example of such marvellous progress; and if we note the giant strides by which it was made, we shall find that they all imply a progressive widening and deepening of soul, a positive growth of the nature of the man, until in Lear the power became supreme and becomes amazing. Mr. Verplanck considers the period when he produced his four great tragedies to be the period of his intellectual grandeur, as distinguished from an earlier period which he thinks shows the perfection of his merely poetic and imaginative power; but the fact would seem to be that his increasing greatness as a philosopher was fully matched by his increasing greatness as a poet, and that in the devouring swiftness of his onward and upward movement imagination kept abreast of reason. His imagination was never more vivid, all-informing, and creative,—never penetrated with more unerring certainty to the inmost spiritual essence of whatever it touched,—never forced words and rhythm into more supple instruments of thought and feeling,—than when it miracled into form the terror and pity and beauty of Lear.
Indeed, the coequal growth of his reason and imagination was owing to the wider scope and increased energy of the great moving forces of his being. It relates primarily to the heart rather than the head. It is the immense fiery force behind his mental powers, kindling them into white heat, and urging them to efforts almost preternatural,—it is this which impels the daring thought beyond the limits of positive knowledge, and prompts the starts of ecstasy in whose unexpected radiance nature and human life are transfigured, and for an instant shine with celestial light. In truth he is, relatively, more intellectual in his early than in his later plays, for in his later plays his intellect is thoroughly impassioned, and, though it has really grown in strength and massiveness, it is so fused with imagination and emotion as to be less independently prominent.
The sources of individuality lie below the intellect; and as Shakespeare went deeper into the soul of man, he more and more represented the brain as the organ and instrument of the heart, as the channel through which sentiment, passion, and character found an intelligible outlet. His own mind was singularly objective; that is, he saw things as they are in themselves. The minds of his prominent characters are all subjective, and see things as they are modified by the peculiarities of their individual moods and emotions. The very objectivity of his own mind enables him to assume the subjective conditions of less-emancipated natures. Macbeth peoples the innocent air with menacing shapes, projected from his own fiend-haunted imagination; but the same air is "sweet and wholesome" to the poet who gave being to Macbeth. The meridian of Shakespeare's power was reached when he created Othello, Macbeth, and Lear, complex personalities, representing the conflict and complication of the mightiest passions in colossal forms of human character, and whose understandings and imaginations, whose perceptions of nature and human life, and whose weightiest utterances of moral wisdom, are all thoroughly subjective and individualized. The greatness of these characters, as compared with his earlier creations, consists in the greater intensity and amplitude of their natures, and the wider variety of faculties and passions included in the strict unity of their natures. Richard III., for example, is one of his earlier characters, and though excellent of its kind, its excellence has been approached by other dramatists, as, for instance, Massinger, in "Sir Giles Overreach." But no other dramatist has been able to grasp and represent a character similar in kind to Macbeth, and the reason is that Richard is comparatively a simple conception, while Macbeth is a complex one. There is unity and versatility in Richard; there is unity and variety in Macbeth. Richard is capable of being developed with almost logical accuracy; for though there is versatility in the play of his intellect, there is little variety in the motives which direct his intellect. His wickedness is not exhibited in the making. He is so completely and gleefully a villain from the first, that he is not restrained from convenient crime by any scruples and relentings. The vigor of his will is due to his poverty of feeling and conscience. He is a brilliant and efficient criminal because he is shorn of the noblest attributes of man. Put, if you could, Macbeth's heart and imagination into him, and his will would be smitten with impotence, and his wit be turned to wailing. The intellect of Macbeth is richer and grander than Richard's, yet Richard is relatively a more intellectual character; for the intellect of Macbeth is rooted in his moral nature, and is secondary in our thoughts to the contending motives and emotions it obeys and reveals. In crime, as in virtue, what a man overcomes should enter into our estimate of the power exhibited in what he does.