of things-implies and demands a similar faculty in ourselves; first working backwards, and then again forwards, our imagination must re-create what he has created. To take an extreme instance, it was thus with Keats when he wrote his "Ode on a Grecian Urn." But, "the best in this kind are but shadows!" Shakespeare did not fully realize the exquisite fitness of things, even of shadows. He could not without the theory of evolution, nor could the Greeks; and we return for a moment to Bacon, "The use of this feigned history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction, etc.," and to the other passages quoted in Chap. IV. (pp. 32, 42, 43, 45), where Bacon paraphrases Plato and Aristotle; and we now understand my remark on a former page (32), “It is strange that with such an imperfect estimate of the ideal, Shakespeare has given us the world's masterpieces in the ideal." This statement I will now further explain, but not in my own words: Even more convincing is the context of these quotations as proving the reality and importance of the shadow, the ideal; but for its shadow, indeed, the world we call substance would have little value.1 1 Even in the twentieth century we cannot live on the brute reality; the real must be interpreted and made tolerable by the ideal. Shakespeare, I think, comes nearest to a modern conception of the ideal in the line ("A Midsummer Night's Dream," V. i. 13) “Doth glance from heaven to earth, But Shakespeare is not content with applying his destructive Baconian analysis to the illusion of stage representation and poetic imaginings, for in "The Tempest" he passes from these to reflect with some sadness on the illusory nature of that greater drama, human life; that is at once the most striking difference and the most striking resemblance between the two plays; in “A Midsummer Night's Dream" drama is a shadow; in "The Tempest," life is a shadow. But Shakespeare rights himself in the later play, and does full justice to the possibilities and the sacred responsibilities of our human life, and no modern quotations need be supplied under this head. This brings me to speak of the excrescent passages in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," the most famous of which is devoted to a consideration of the nature of poetry, and to the subject of our former paragraph in general; but this has been dealt with in Chapter IV (pp. 31-45). A second, from earth to heaven," which we may paraphrase, "Realizes the ideal, or idealizes the real, interpreter as he is between the gods and men." But further, as we shall see in Chapter VIII, Shakespeare's work in its entirety is a splendid attempt to anticipate whole centuries of ethical and aesthetic progress. And this is the lordliest function of the poet-even of Shakespeare -to come before Science as a prophet, and after as an interpreter and idealist; and such a poet, I may add, is needed amongst us now. I have just read the public declaration of one of our leading scientists, who gives it as his opinion that Oxford ought to abandon her ethics and aesthetics, and teach only what is useful. We could write volumes in reply; but I see no reason why one short sentence should not be as convincing as a volume; I will frame it thus: "It in his pursuit of food and fact man is to lose his inheritance, his appreciation and his progressive realization of the beautiful and the good, he will become "A beast-no more " ("Hamlet," IV. iv. 33-35; “In Memoriam," CXX). 1 To what was there stated I may add the less important conjecture that Shakespeare was indebted to Plutarch's "Morals," where we read (Symp., I. v): "But above all, the ravishment of the spirit or that divine inspiration which is called enthusiasmus, casteth body, mind, voice, and all far beyond the ordinary habit; which is the cause that the furious, raging priests of Bacchus . . . use rime and meeter; those also who by a propheticall spirit give answer by Oracle, deliver the same in verse; and few persons shall a man see starke mad, but among their raving speeches they sing and say some verses. (Holland's Translation, Ed. 1657.) I may note the debt of Plutarch to Plato in the foregoing; see also p. 41. . " the reference to the wet season of 1594, has been noticed in this section, as also the third, which includes the most interesting of all Shakespeare's references to the reigning sovereign. A fourth, which, however, adapts itself more readily to the dramatic scheme, is the description of the hounds (IV. i. 108, sqq.), which covers no less than twenty lines; it finds the merest suggestion in the "Knightes Tale," possibly something more in Ovid and Sophocles, but more and more certainly-in the "Hippolytus" of Seneca (30, sqq.); indeed, like "The poet's eye" passage (pp. 31-45) it is full of classical echoes, and again, like that passage, is written in a style and with a fervour and, we may add, with a poetic power and beauty that separates it -perhaps by an interval of years-from its context. Connected with this autobiographical aspect of the play are the passages wherein Shakespeare takes occasion-as in "Love's Labour's Lost" and others of his earlier attempts to criticise the productions of contemporaries, their mannerisms, vices of style and the rest; such criticism mostly betrays the beginner who has his own reputation to make. Thus, when writing the doggerel in V. i. 289-292, and V. i. 343-351, he may have had in mind a passage in the "Damon and Pythias" of Richard Edwards, 1582: "Ye furies. . . You sisters three, with cruel handes, With speed come stop my breath" (Ed. Hazlitt's "Dodsley," p. 44); or he may have remembered such similar rubbish as "The furies fell of Limbo lake My princely days do short . . ." ("Appius and Virginia," by R. B., 1575). Possibly, also, he throws ridicule on the extravagances of the "New Sonet of Pyramus and Thisbie" mentioned in the former division of this Section: "And then the beast with his bright blade He slew certain," etc. (16) ROMEO AND JULIET, 1595 Historical Particulars Like so many of the legends immortalized by Shakespeare, the story of this "pair of star-crossed lovers" has a long pedigree. But we must omit mention of versions that have little or no direct bearing on the play. We begin with the Novellino of Massuccio of Salerno, 1476; the story of Mariotto Mignanelli and Giannozza Saraceni corresponds in many points to Shakespeare's drama. But the correspondence is much closer when we come to the "Istoria novellamente ritrovata di due nobili Amanti,” by Luigi Da Porto, which was published at Venice about 1535, yet the nurse is still absent from the story. Next to be mentioned is Bandello, to whom Shakespeare is several times indebted; the tale is told in his novelle of 1554; it is the most important of these early versions, and a nurse —but not Shakespeare's nurse-appears for the first time. Pierre Boaistuau de Launay gave his version to the “Histoires Tragiques" of Belleforest in 1559, and as on other occasions, the French volume is doubtless with Shakespeare as he writes; with him, also, as I venture to think, is a copy of the famous story in some early dramatic form. Apart from this conjecture, Shakespeare's immediate authority is the "Romeus and Juliet" of Arthur Brooke or Broke, which is a rendering of Boaistuau into English verse, 1562. The prose version of William Painter in his "Palace of Pleasure" (1567) would probably be read by Shakespeare, but it gave him no assistance worth mentioning. 1 Arthur Brooke, on the other hand, supplied the dramatist with most of the raw material that he wove into this deathless tragedy of love and death; thus early was 1 Otherwise I hardly think that Shakespeare would make this early venture in original tragic drama; and Brooke in his preface asserts that he had seen "the same argument lately set foorth on stage." a mighty genius to declare itself; "raw material" was the most and the best that Brooke or any other could supply; the charm, the beauty, the power that are in the play, these none could lend, even if Shakespeare had cared to borrow: And how she gave her sucke in youth, she leaveth not to tell. Art thou (quoth he) a man? thy shape saith, so thou art : ... (Cf. with III. iii. 108-115.) These extracts will explain the remarks that precede them; we need only add that while availing himself of whatever was suitable in Brooke's poem, Shakespeare created much for himself, the cynical wit of Mercutio, for example, the humorous realism of the nurse, and the finer elements in the character of Friar Laurence. For his dramatic purpose he shortens the action from months to days,-" So quick bright things come to confusion." Brooke's Juliet is a woman of sixteen, Shakespeare's a girl of fourteen,' a lovely bud that bursts into sudden blossom under Italian skies at the sunbright call of love; the transformation from girl to woman is nowhere else so swift and so complete: "It is an honour that I dreamt not of” (I. i. 66); “Be but sworn my love, And I'll no longer be a Capulet" (II. ii. 35, 36). 1 "Younger than she are happy mothers made" (I. ii. 12). But we have in the "Jew of Malta": A fair young maid, scarce fourteen years of age, Cropt from the pleasures of the fruitful earth; With this passage compare IV. v. 28, 29: Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field. |