“’Tis not the wholesome sharp morality,
Or modest anger of a satiric spirit,
That hurts or wounds the body of the state;
But the sinister application
Of the malicious, ignorant, and base
Interpreter, who will distort and strain
The general scope and purpose of an author
To his particular and private spleen.”
The stigma that rested on Shakespeare in his lifetime for having written this play rests on him still, for some unintelligible reason, since no man ever sat down to put his thoughts on paper with a loftier motive. But so it is! Then, as now, whenever a dramatist attempts to be teacher and preacher, all the other teachers and preachers in the world hold up their hands in horror and exclaim: “What impiety! What stupendous ignorance!”
Gervinus, in his criticism of this play, compares the satire of the Elizabethen poet with that of Aristophanes, and points out that the Greek dramatist directed his sallies against the living. This, he contends, should ever be the object of satire, because a man must not war against the defenceless and dead. Yet Shakespeare’s instincts as a dramatist were too unerring for him to be unconscious of this fundamental principle of his art. The stage in his time supplied the place now occupied by the Press, and political discussions were carried on in public through the mouth of the actor, of which few indications can now be traced on the printed page, owing to the difficulty of fitting the date of composition with that of the performance. Heywood, the dramatist, in his answer to the Puritan’s abuse of the theatre, alludes to the stage as the great political schoolmaster of the people. And yet until recent years the labours of commentators have been chiefly confined to making literary comparisons, to discovering sources of plots, and the origin of expressions, so that there still remains much investigation needed to discover Shakespeare’s political, philosophical, and religious affinities as they appear reflected in his plays. Mr. Richard Simpson, the brilliant Shakespearian scholar, many years ago pointed out the necessity for a new departure in criticism, and added that it was still thought derogatory to Shakespeare “to make him an upholder of any principles worth assertion,” or to admit that, as a reasoner, he took any decided part in the affairs which influenced the highest minds of his day. Now, in regard to politics, government by factions was then the prevailing feature; factions consisting of individuals who centred round some nobleman, whom the Queen favoured and made, or weakened, according to her judgment or caprice. In the autumn of 1597 Essex’s influence over the Queen was waning, and after a sharp rebuke received from her at the Privy Council table, he abruptly left the Court and sullenly withdrew to his estate at Wanstead, where he remained so long in retirement that his friends remonstrated with him against his continued absence. One of them, who signed himself “Thy true servant not daring to subscribe,” urged him to attend every Council and to let nothing be settled either at home or abroad without his knowledge. He should stay in the Court, and perform all his duties there, where he can make a greater show of discontent than he possibly could being absent; there is nothing, adds this writer, that his enemies so much wish, enjoy, and rejoice in as his absence. He is advised not to sue any more, “because necessity will entreat for him.” All he need do now is to dissemble like a courtier, and show himself outwardly unwilling of that which he has inwardly resolved. For by retiring he is playing his enemies’ game, since “the greatest subject that ever is or was greatest, in the prince’s favour, in his absence is not missed.” In “Troilus and Cressida” we have a similar situation, and we hear similar advice given. Achilles, like Essex, has withdrawn unbidden and discontentedly to his tent, refusing to come again to his general’s council table. For doing so Ulysses remonstrates with him in almost the same words as the writer of the anonymous letter.
“The present eye praises the present object.
Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,
That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;
Since things in motion sooner catch the eye
Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee,
And still it might, and yet it may again,
If thou would’st not entomb thyself alive,
And case thy reputation in thy tent;
Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late,
Made emulous missions ’mongst the gods themselves
And drave great Mars to faction.”
Then Achilles replies:
“Of this my privacy I have strong reasons.”
And Ulysses continues:
“But ’gainst your privacy
The reasons are more potent and heroical,
’Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love
With one of Priam’s daughters.
Achilles: Ha! known?
Ulysses: Is that a wonder?
*****
All the commerce that you have had with Troy
As perfectly is ours as yours, my lord;
And better would it fit Achilles much
To throw down Hector than Polyxena.”
If, again, we turn to the life and letters of Essex, we find there that upon the 11th of February, 1598, “it is spied out by some that my Lord of Essex is again fallen in love with his fairest B.: it cannot chance but come to her Majesty’s ears, and then he is undone.” The lady in question was Mary Brydges, a maid-of-honour and celebrated beauty. Again, in the same month Essex writes to the Queen, “I was never proud till your Majesty sought to make me too base.” And Achilles is blamed by Agamemnon for his pride in a remarkably fine passage. Then after news had come of the disaster to the Queen’s troops in Ireland, in the summer of 1598, Essex reminds the Queen that, “I posted up and first offered my attendance after my poor advice to your Maj. But your Maj. rejected both me and my letter: the cause, as I hear, was that I refused to give counsel when I was last called to my Lord Keeper.” A similar situation is found in the play. Agamemnon sends for Achilles to attend the Council and he refuses to come, and later on, when he desires a reconciliation, the Council pass him by unnoticed. It is almost impossible to read the third act of this play without being reminded of these and other incidents in Essex’s life. Nor would Shakespeare forget the stir that had been created in London when in 1591 it was known at Court that Essex, at the siege of Rouen, had sent a personal challenge to the governor of the town couched in the following words: “Si vous voulez combattre vous-même à cheval ou à pied je maintiendrai que la querelle du rois est plus juste que celle de la ligue, et que ma Maîtresse est plus belle que la votre.” And Æneas, the Trojan, brings a challenge in almost identical words from Hector to the Greeks. It is true that this incident is in the Iliad together with the incidents connected with the withdrawal of Achilles, but Shakespeare selected his material from many sources and appears to have chosen what was most likely to appeal to his audience. Now it is not presumed that Achilles is Essex, nor that Ajax is Raleigh, nor Agamemnon Elizabeth, or that Shakespeare’s audience for a moment supposed that they were; although it is to be noticed that the Achilles who comes into Shakespeare’s play is not the same man at the beginning and end of the play as he is in the third act, where, in conversation with Ulysses he suddenly becomes an intelligent being and not simply a prize-fighter. To the injury of his drama, Shakespeare here runs away from his Trojan story, and does so for reasons that must have been special to the occasion for which the play was written. For about this time, the Privy Council wrote to some Justices of the Peace in Middlesex, complaining that certain players at the Curtain were reported to be representing upon the stage “the persons of some gentlemen of good descent and quality that are yet alive,” and that the actors were impersonating these aristocrats “under obscure manner, but yet in such sorte as all the hearers may take notice of the matter and the persons that are meant thereby. This being a thing very unfit and offensive.” The protest seems almost to suggest that the Achilles’s scenes in Shakespeare’s play express, “under obscure manner,” reflections upon contemporary politicians. But, indeed, the growing political unrest which marked the last few years of Elizabeth’s reign could not fail to find expression on the stage.