ever drew such rich and varied imagery from the common objects of our daily life? here are two or three kindred examples: You shall see him laugh till his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up. I am withered like an old apple-john, crestfallen as a dried pear. He does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies. We may say, finally, that no other writer has ever made such ample use of his powers of observation; indeed, the best means in general of identifying the work of Shakespeare is by tracing his intimate acquaintance with the world around us, and his methods of weaving its materials almost everywhere into the texture of his verse; and I may add that this infinite resource of nature-painting and of figurative expression generally, separates the work of Shakespeare not only from the work of all his contemporaries, but also from that of all poets, whether his forerunners or his followers. Yet it is as the observer of human nature that this great poet is most certainly without a rival; merely to mention Falstaff and Mistress Quickly, is to furnish proof incontestable. But this faculty enabled him also to give a semblance of real life to the personages of history and fiction who throng his stage; there they live and move and renew their being; and this is one explanation of the statement so often made, that Shakespeare gives us truer pictures of life and manners than either the historian or the novelist. And even when he lends a character something as from himself, the likeness is no more distorted than when he adds or takes away from the bare fact of beast or bird or flower; we feel no surprise when we read of Prospero's "infirmity," or of honey bees that have a king and officers of sorts; we take into account the con 2 1 See "The Tempest," Arden Edition, p. lxii. A reminiscence of Pliny and Lyly. E text, and in either instance are delighted by the excellence of the poetry. But I will now close this brief estimate with a few suggestions set down more at random. That Shakespeare was a patriot, that he loved England, and believed her to be the champion of Christendom and a mother of nations, may be gathered from such plays as "King John," "Richard II," and "Henry V"; and from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and elsewhere we learn that he had as much as was becoming to a philosopher, of that chivalrous devotion to a maiden Queen which was, perhaps, the best safeguard of his country in those perilous times. Of his political and social opinions1 I have remarked already (page 37) that they were discoloured by some tinge of feudalism; that he scarcely regarded the people as a member of the body politic, though some recognition of their growing importance might have been expected from him; and of course he has not quite our conception of the brotherhood of mankind. His concern is for Church and State, for law and order; finally, in the just phrase of Coleridge, he is a "philosophical aristocrat." Of Shakespeare's personal appearance we conjecture little from his plays; and the "Sonnets " disguise the man more completely than they conceal his mind; but we like to believe that he had a noble presence. He should have been a good horseman, and versed in-perhaps fond of— field sports, the pastimes of the wealthy, their hunting and their hawking, but he scarcely pursued these sports with mere brute ardour, for he had infinite compassion on the creatures of the chase. His life, moreover, must have been studious in great part; but study by no means robbed him of common 1 See also Chapter VI. 2 I attach little importance to traditions to the contrary; "good shape, good parts," writes John Davies in 1603 ("Microcosmos"). His portraits may not always be reliable, but they must approximate to the truth, sense-that faculty possessed by the few of rightly applying the truths which are obvious to all. His memory was marvellous, but though assisted by many devices of written method, it did not swamp his originality. He should have been a good talker and a good listener, and he may have possessed some gift of oratory. As an actor he had a fine critical taste, whatever the scope of his performance. From his poetry we learn that he was a lover of beauty, and of the arts that are its minister and expression; but he seems to have been curiously-it may have been conventionally-aloof from the dramatic art which was his main business for some twenty years. The priceless humour that not only fills the comedies, but adds the last hope of earth and the first glimpse of heaven to the great tragedies, was surely a saving merit of his daily life: he must have been genial, large-hearted, kindly with his kind; he must have been reverent to age, courteous to man, gentle to woman, youthful with the young, even childlike with children. And finally, to him the rarer action was in virtue, as we judge from the moral tone of the plays, and from the same we gather that his experience, if it made him a little sad, left him also wise, noble and loveable. When life's long burden hangeth heavily I muse that thou hast lived, beloved guide; 1 "In modern states play-acting is esteemed but as a toy, except when it is too satirical and biting." "Though it (actio theatralis) be of ill repute as a profession. ."-BACON. 2 "The Tempest," V. i. 27-28. He differs from all other dramatists of his time in thoughtfulness, tolerance, good temper, creation of the ideal, grasp of truth, and height of moral tone, 52 CHAPTER V THE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE; A SUMMARY 'HIS summary of the writings of Shakespeare may THIS serve as an introduction to the more detailed account which will be found in the following chapter. The works of an author should always be surveyed as nearly as possible in the order of their production; unfortunately, in the case of Shakespeare, we have very few chronological facts to guide us. Of his earlier literary training we know little or nothing; but granting that all his maturer writings have come down to us,1 we may safely assume the existence at one time of a mass of experimental work, prose as well as verse, some of which he himself withheld, while the rest has perished. In those days a large proportion even of printed matter, especially dramatic, was lost sight of as the years drew by, and I have no doubt that it included some of Shakespeare's literary exercises. Apart from this, he would certainly have lent his hand to the composition of several dramas that bore the names of other writers, and we know that he was often engaged in re-casting or re-touching dramatic work already existing. The play of "Henry VI" may serve to illustrate each of these contingencies, for in one or another of its three parts we have Shakespeare as a reviser-sometimes a joint one-of work to which he had formerly been a contributor. In this play, of which a 1 Possibly the "Love's Labour's Won" mentioned by Meres has not. But see Chapter VI. sect. 17. fuller account is given in the next chapter, we have possibly the earliest extant work of Shakespeare, and, conjecturally, some part of it may be assigned to the year 1590; and we can hardly get nearer to the starting-point of Shakespeare's career. But at this stage of our inquiry we have to bear in mind that the date assigned to a play may be variously determined; it may be that of composition or revision, or of the acting or of the publication of the play. To begin with the latter: the plays of Shakespeare, as everyone knows, were first collected and published in a folio volume in the year 1623, while about half of them appeared in quarto form during the poet's lifetime, and often without his name. Another of the earliest plays, "Love's Labour's Lost," illustrates all these points; it was written, let us say, in 1590, acted, possibly, in 1591, more certainly in 1598, and not long after was published as a quarto volume bearing Shakespeare's name, and on the title-page of this volume it was described as being "newly corrected and augmented,” and finally it took its place in the volume of 1623. From all this we learn something important; "Love's Labour's Lost" is frequently spoken of as the earliest of Shakespeare's dramatic efforts, a young man's frolic in fun, euphuism, satire, and so forth. If the work of a beginner, it is certainly a marvel, as may be seen by comparing it with the mature work of almost any of Shakespeare's contemporaries. But it was revised up to 1598, by which time its author was thirty-four years of age. Let us say, therefore, that the period of authorship represented by "Love's Labour's Lost" is somewhat doubtful, and that it can scarcely be regarded as Shakespeare's earliest attempt at drama. I will now present in tabular form the writings of Shakespeare arranged as far as possible in chronological order. |