Susanna
Shakespeare
marries John Hall.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v05
But it is quite certain that anyone who, with fair
education and competent wits, gives his days and nights to the
reading of the actual plays will be a far better judge than
anyone who allows himself to be distracted by comment and
14
E. L. V.
CH. VIII.
## p. 210 (#234) ############################################
210
Shakespeare
controversy. The important thing is to get the Shakespearean
atmosphere, to feel the breath of the Shakespearean spirit. And
it is doubtful whether it is not much safer to get this first, and at
first hand, than to run the risk of not getting it while investigating
the exact meaning of every allusion and the possible date of every
item. The more thoroughly and impartially this spirit is observed
and extracted, the more will it be found to consist in the sub-
jection of all things to what may be called the romantic process of
presenting them in an atmosphere of poetical suggestion rather
than as sharply defined and logically stated. But this romantic
process is itself characterised and pervaded by a philosophical
depth and width of conception of life which is not usually asso-
ciated with romance. And it is enlivened and made actual by
the dramatic form which, whether by separable or inseparable
accident, the writer has adopted. Thus, Shakespeare-as no one
had done before him, and as people have done since far more
often in imitation of him than independently-unites the powers
and advantages of three great forms: the romance (in verse
or prose), pure poetry and the drama. The first gives him variety,
elasticity, freedom from constraint and limit. The second enables
him to transport. The third at once preserves his presentations
from the excessive vagueness and vastness which non-dramatic
romance invites, and helps him to communicate actuality and
vividness.
It is in the examination of his treatment, now of individual
incidents and personages, now of complicated stories, by the aid of
these combined instruments, that the most profitable, as well as
the most delightful, study of Shakespeare consists. But there is
no doubt that, as a result of this study, two things emerge as his
special gifts. The first is the coinage of separate poetic phrases ;
the second is the construction and getting into operation of indi-
vidual and combined character. In a third point-the telling of
a story or the construction of a drama-he is far greater than is
often allowed. After his earliest period, there is very little in any
play that does not directly bear upon the main plot in his sense of
that word. Even in so very long, so very complicated, a piece
.
as Hamlet, it is almost impossible to 'cut' without loss—to the
intelligent and unhasting reader, at any rate, if not to the eager
or restless spectator. But plot, in his sense, means, mainly-not
entirely—the evolution of character; and so we may return to
that point.
Two features strike us in Shakespearean character drawing
## p. 211 (#235) ############################################
Shakespeare's 'Palace of Truth' 2 II
which are not so prominent in any other. The one is its astonishing
prodigality, the other its equally astonishing thoroughness, regard
being had to the purpose of the presentation. On this latter
head, reference may be made to the examination of the character
of Claudius above given; but it would be perfectly easy to
supplement this by scores, nay, literally, by hundreds, of others,
were there space for it. Shakespeare never throws away a cha-
racter; but, at the same time, he never scamps one that is in any
way necessary or helpful to his scheme. But this thoroughness, of
course, shows itself more fully still in his great personages. It has
been almost a stumblingblock—the bounty of the describing
detail being so great that interpreters have positively lost them-
selves in it. Nor was this probably unintended; for Shakespeare
knew human nature too well to present the narrow unmistakable
type character which belongs to a different school of drama. His
methods of drawing character are numerous. The most obvious
of them is the soliloquy. This has been found fault with as un-
natural—but only by those who do not know nature. The fact is
that the soliloquy is so universal that it escapes observers who
are not acute and active. Everybody, except persons of quite
abnormal hebetude, 'talks to himself as he walks by himself, and
thus to himself says he. ' According to temperament and intellect,
he is more or less frank with himself; but his very attempts to
deceive himself are more indicative of character than his bare
actions. The ingenious idea of the 'palace of truth' owes all its
ingenuity and force to this fact. Now, Shakespeare has consti-
tuted his work, in its soliloquies, as a vast palace of truth, in
which those characters who are important enough are compelled
thus to reveal themselves. Nothing contributes quite so much to
the solidity and completeness of his system of developing plot by
the development of character; nor does anything display more fully
the extraordinary power and range, the ‘largeness and universality,'
of his own soul. For the soliloquy, like all weapons or instruments
which unite sharpness and weight, is an exceedingly difficult and
dangerous one to wield. It may very easily be overdone in the
novel (where there are not the positive checks on it which the
drama provides) even more than in the drama itself. It is very
difficult to do well. And there is a further danger even for those
who can do it well and restrain themselves from overdoing it:
that the soliloquies will represent not the character but the author;
that they will assist in building up for us, if we desire it, the nature
of Brown or Jones, but will not do very much for the construction
1442
## p. 212 (#236) ############################################
2 12
Shakespeare
or revelation of that of Brown's or Jones's heroes and heroines.
Shakespeare has avoided or overcome all these points. His
soliloquies, or set speeches of a soliloquial character, are never, in
the mature plays, overdone; they are never futile or unnatural;
and, above all, they are so variously adapted to the idiosyncrasies of
the speakers that, while many people have tried to distil an
essence of Shakespeare out of them, nobody has succeeded. From
Thackeray's famous parabases (even when they are put in the
mouths of his characters as they sometimes are) we learn very little
more about these characters than he has told us or will tell us in
another way; but we learn to know himself almost infallibly. From
Shakespeare's soliloquies we hardly see him even in a glass darkly;
but we see the characters who are made to utter them as plain
as the handwriting upon the wall.
It remains, before concluding with a skeleton table of dates
and facts which may serve to vertebrate this chapter, to consider
three points of great, though varying, importance-Shakespeare's
morality in the wide sense, his versification and his style.
In dealing with the first, there is no necessity to dwell much on
the presence in his work of 'broad' language and 'loose' scenes.
That he exceeds in this way far less than most of his contempo-
raries will only be denied by those who do not really know the
Elizabethan drama. Of the excess itself, it seems rather idle to
say much. The horror which it excites in some cases is, perhaps,
as much a matter of fashion as the original delinquency. But this
is only a miserable specialisation and belittlement of the word
'morality. In the larger sense, Shakespeare's morals are dis-
tinguished and conditioned almost equally by sanity, by justice
and by tolerance. He is not in the least squeamish-as has been
said, he shocks many as not being squeamish enough—but he
never, except in All's Well that Ends Well, and, perhaps, Measure
for Measure, has an unhealthy plot or even an unhealthy situation.
His justice is of the so-called 'poetical' kind, but not in the least
of the variety often so misnamed. In fact, as a rule, he is rather
severe—in some cases, decidedly so—and, though too much of an
artist to court the easy tragedy of the unhappy ending, is, except
in his last three plays, equally proof against the seductions of the
happy sort. But this severity is tempered by, and throws into
relief, the third quality of tolerance in which he excels every other
author. This tolerance is not complaisance: justice prevents
that, and sanity too. Shakespeare never winks at anything.
But, as he understands everything, so, without exactly pardoning it
## p. 213 (#237) ############################################
Justice and Tolerance
213
('that's when he's tried above '), he invariably adopts a strictly
impartial attitude towards everything and everybody. In this, he
stands in marked contrast to Dante, who, with almost equal sanity
and fully equal justice, is not merely unnecessarily inexorable, but
distinctly partisan—not merelya hanging judge, but a hanging judge
doubled with an unsparing public prosecutor. It was once observed
as an obiter dictum by a Dante scholar of unsurpassed competence
that 'Dante knows he is unfair. ' It might be said that the extraor-
dinary serenity and clarity of Shakespeare's mind and temper make
it unnecessary for him to think whether he is fair or not. He gives
the character as it is—the other characters and the reader may
make what they can of it. He allows Malcolm to call Macbeth
a 'dead butcher' and Lady Macbeth a 'fiendlike queen,' because
it is what Malcolm would have done. But he does not attach
these tickets to them; and you will accept the said tickets at your
own risk. Another contrast which is useful is, again, that of
Thackeray. The author of Vanity Fair and The Newcomes has
a power of vivifying character not much inferior to Shakespeare's.
But, when he has vivified his characters, he descends too much
into the same arena with them; and he likes or dislikes them, as
one likes or dislikes fellow creatures, not as the creator should be
affected towards creations. Becky Sharp is a very fallible human
creature, and Barnes Newcome is a detestable person. But
Thackeray is hard on Becky; and, though he tries not to be
hard on Barnes, he is. Shakespeare is never hard on any of his
characters-not merely in the cases of Lady Macbeth and Cleo-
patra, where there is no difficulty; but in those of Iago and
Edmund, of Richard and of John, where there is. The difficulty
does not exist for him. And yet he has no sneaking kindness for
the bad, great person as Milton has. The potter has made the pot
as the pot ought to be and could not but be; he does not think it
necessary to label it 'caution' or 'this is a bad pot,' much less
to kick it into potsherds. If it breaks itself, it must; in the
sherds into which it breaks itself, in those it will lie; and 'there is
namore to seyn. "
Equally matter subject to opinion, but matter much more
difficult to pronounce upon with even tolerable distinctness and
trenchancy, is the feature of style. It is, perhaps, in this point
that Shakespeare is most distinguished from the other greatest
writers. He has mannerisms; but they are mostly worn as clothes -
adopted or discarded for fashion's or season's sake. He has no
mannerism in the sense of natural or naturalised gesture which is
1 (A. J. Butler. ]
## p. 214 (#238) ############################################
214
Shakespeare
recognisable at once. When we say that a phrase is Shake-
spearean, it is rather because of some supreme and curiously simple
felicity than because of any special 'hall-mark,' such as exists in
Milton and even in Dante. Even Homer has more mannerism
than Shakespeare, whose greatest utterances-Prospero's epilogue
to the masque, Cleopatra's death words, the crispest sayings of
Beatrice and Touchstone, the passion of Lear, the reveries of
Hamlet, others too many even to catalogue-bear no relation to
each other in mere expression, except that each is the most appro-
priate expression for the thought. Euphuism and word play, of
course, are very frequent-shockingly frequent, to some people,
it would seem.
But they are merely things that the poet plays
at—whether for his own amusement or his readers', or both, is
a question, perhaps of some curiosity, but of no real importance.
The well ascertained and extraordinary copiousness of his voca-
bulary is closely connected with this peculiar absence of peculiarity
in his style. The writer given to mannerism necessarily repeats, if
not particular words, particular forms of phrases--notoriously, in
some cases, particular words also. The man who, in all cases, is to
suit his phrase to his meaning, not his meaning to his phrase,
cannot do this. Further, Shakespeare, like almost all good English
writers, though to the persistent displeasure of some good English
critics, coins words with the utmost freedom, merely observing
sound analogy. He shows no preference for 'English' over ‘Latin’
vocabulary, nor any the other way. But, no doubt, he appreci-
ates, and he certainly employs, the advantages offered by their
contrast, as in the capital instance of
>
The multitudinous seas incarnadine
Making the green one red,
where all but the whole of the first line is Aristotle's xenon and the
whole of the next clause his kyrion. In fact, it is possible to talk
about Shakespeare's style for ever, but impossible in any way to
define it. It is practically 'allstyle, as a certain condiment is
called 'allspice'; and its universality justifies the Buffonian
definition-even better, perhaps, that earlier one of Shakespeare's
obscure Spanish contemporary Alfonso Garcia Matamoros as
habitus orationis a cujusque natura fluens.
There is no need to acknowledge defeat, in this way, as regards
the last point to be handled, Shakespeare's versification. This,
while it is of the highest importance for the arrangement of his
work, requires merely a little attention to the prosody of his prede-
## p. 215 (#239) ############################################
215
a
His Progress in Versification
cessors, and a moderate degree of patient and intelligent observation,
to make it comparatively plain sailing. In no respect is the Meres
list of more importance than in this; for, though it does not arrange
its own items in order, it sets them definitely against the others
as later, and enables us, by observing the differences between the
groups as wholes, to construct the order of sequence between in-
dividual plays. Hardly less valuable is the practical certainty that
The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline and The Tempest are the latest plays,
and, to say the least, the extreme probability of the grouping of
the greatest of the others as belonging to a short period im-
mediately before and a rather longer period immediately after the
meeting of the centuries.
Putting these facts together with the certain conditions of
prosody in the plays of the Marlowe group, and in the nondescripts
of the third quarter of the sixteenth century, we are in a condition
to judge Shakespeare's progress in versification with fair safety.
For the earliest period, we have pieces like Love's Labour's Lost
and The Comedy of Errors on the one hand, like Titus Andronicus
on the other. In this last, we see an attempt to play the game of
the Marlowe heroic, the unrimed'drumming decasyllabon,' strictly
and uncompromisingly. The verses are turned out like bullets,
singly from the mould; there is little condescendence (though there
is some) to rime, even at the end of scenes and tirades; there is no
prose proper. But there is considerable variation of pause; and,
though the inflexibility of the line sound is little affected by it,
there is a certain running over of sense in which, especially when
conjoined with the pause, there is promise for the future.
The two other plays represent a quite different order of experi-
ment. Love's Labour's Lost, especially, is a perfect macédoine of
metres. There is blank verse, and plenty of it, and sometimes
very good, though always inclining to the ‘single-mould. ' But
there is also abundance of rime; plenty of prose; arrangement
in stanza, especially quatrain; doggerel, sometimes refining itself to
tolerably regular anapaests; fourteeners; octosyllables or, rather,
the octosyllable shortened catalectically and made trochaic; finally,
pure lyric of the most melodious kind. The poet has not made up
his mind which is the best instrument and is trying all-not, in
every case, with a certain touch, but, in every case, with a touch
which brings out the capacities of the instrument itself as it has
rarely, if ever, been brought out before.
In the other early plays, with a slight variation in proportion to
subject, and with regard to the fact whether they are adaptations
## p. 216 (#240) ############################################
216
Shakespeare
or not, this process of promiscuous experiment and, perhaps, half
unconscious selection continues. The blank verse steadily improves
and, by degrees, shakes off any suggestion of the chain, still more
of the tale of bullets, and acquires the astonishing continuity and
variety of its best Shakespearean form. Still, it constantly relapses
into rime-often for long passages and, still oftener, at the ends
or breaks of scenes and at the conclusion of long speeches ; some-
times, perhaps, merely to give a cue; sometimes, to emphasise
a sentiment or call attention to an incident or an appearance.
The very stanza is not relinquished; it appears in Romeo and
Juliet, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, even in The Merchant
of Venice. The doggerel and the fourteeners, except when the
latter are used (as they sometimes are) to extend and diversify
the blank verse itself, gradually disappear; but the octosyllabic,
and more directly lyrical, insets are used freely. The point, how-
ever, in that which is, probably, the latest of this batch, and in the
whole of the great central group of comedies and tragedies, is the
final selection of blank verse itself for reliance, and its development.
Not only, as has just been noticed, do the deficiencies of the form
in its earlier examples-its stiffness, its want of fluency and sym-
phony, the gasps, as it has been put, of a pavior with the lifting
and setting down of his rammer-not only do these defects
disappear, but the merits and capabilities of the form appear con-
trariwise in ways for which there is no precedent in prosodic
history. The most important of these, for the special dramatic
purpose, if also the most obvious, is the easy and unforced breaking
up of the line itself for the purpose of dialogue. But this, of course,
had been done with many metres before; even medieval octo-
syllable writers had had no difficulty with it, though the unsuitable-
ness of rime for dialogue necessarily appeared. But Shakespeare
enlarged greatly and boldly on their practice. In all his mature
plays—Hamlet is a very good example to use for illustration—the
decasyllabic or five-foot norm is rather a norm than a positive
rule. He always, or almost always, makes his lines, whether single,
continuous, or broken, referable to this norm. But he will cut
them down to shorter, or extend them to greater, length without
the least hesitation. Alexandrines are frequent and fourteeners
not uncommon, on the one hand; octosyllables and other fractions
equally usual. But all adjust themselves to the five-foot scheme;
and the pure examples of that scheme preponderate so that there
is no danger of its being confused or mistaken.
Secondly, the lines, by manipulation of pause and of enjambe-
a
>
## p. 217 (#241) ############################################
Shakespearean Blank Verse
217
ment or overrunning, are induced to compose a continuous sym-
phonic run-not a series of gasps. In some passages—for instance,
the opening lines of Antony and Cleopatra—the pause will hardly
be found identical in any two of a considerable batch of verses.
As to its location, the poet entirely disregards the centripetal rule
dear to critics at almost all times. He sometimes disregards it to
the extent-horrible to the straiter sect of such critics—of putting
a heavy pause at the first or at the ninth syllable. Always, in
his middle period, he practises what he taught to Milton-the
secret of the verse period and paragraph-though in drama he has
a greater liberty still of beginning this and ending it at any of his
varied pause places, without troubling himself whether these places
begin and end a line or not. Sometimes, indeed, he seems to prefer
that they should not coincide.
But the third peculiarity which distinguishes the accomplished
blank verse of Shakespeare is the most important of all. It is the
mastery-on good principles of English prosody from the thirteenth
century onwards, but in the teeth of critical dicta in his own day
and for centuries to follow-of trisyllabic substitution. By dint of
this, the cadence of the line is varied, and its capacity is enlarged,
in the former case to an almost infinite, in the latter to a very
great, extent. Once more, the decasyllabic norm is kept-is, in fact,
religiously observed. But the play of the verse, the spring and
reach and flexibility of it, are as that of a good fishing-rod to that
of a brass curtain-pole. The measure is never really loose-it
never in the least approaches doggerel. But it has absolute
freedom: no sense that it wishes to convey, and no sound that
it wishes to give as accompaniment to that sense, meet the slightest
check or jar in their expression.
In the latest division, one of the means of variation which had
been used even before Shakespeare, and freely by him earlier,
assumes a position of paramount and, perhaps, excessive importance,
which it maintains in successors and pupils like Fletcher, and which,
perhaps, carries with it dangerous possibilities. This is what is
sometimes called the feminine, or, in still more dubious phrase,
the 'weak, ending; but what may be better, and much more
expressively, termed the redundant syllable. That, with careful,
and rather sparing, use it adds greatly to the beauty of the
measure, there is no doubt at all: the famous Florizel and Perdita
scene in The Winter's Tale is but one of many instances. But it
is so convenient and so easy that it is sure to be abused; and
abused it was, not, perhaps, by Shakespeare, but certainly by
## p. 218 (#242) ############################################
218
Shakespeare
Fletcher. And something worse than mere abuse, destruction
of the measure itself, and the substitution of an invertebrate mass
of lines that are neither prose nor verse, remained behind.
But this has nothing to do with Shakespeare, who certainly
cannot be held responsible for the mishaps of those who would
walk in his circle without knowing the secrets of his magic. Of
that magic his manipulation of all verse that he tried-sonnet,
stanza, couplet, lyric, what not-is, perhaps, the capital example,
but it reaches its very highest point in regard to blank verse. And,
after all, it may be wrong to use the word capital even in regard
to this. For he is the caput throughout, in conception and in
execution, in character and in story-not an unnatural, full-blown
marvel, but an instance of genius working itself up, on precedent
and by experiment, from promise to performance and from the
part to the whole.
## p. 219 (#243) ############################################
APPENDIX
TABULAR CONSPECTUS
I
BIOGRAPHICAL
1564 April 26. Shakespeare baptised.
1582 November 27. Licence granted for marriage of William Shakespeare
and Anne Whateley. 28. Bond entered into in reference to marriage
of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway.
1583 May 26. Susanna Shakespeare baptised.
1585 February 2. Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare baptised.
1587 Michaelmas Term. Shakespeare appears in deed concerning Asbies
mortgage.
1592. Referred to (? ) by Greene as 'Shake-scene. Apology by Chettle to
the person thus referred to at end of this year or beginning of next.
1593. Venus and Adonis published.
1594. The Rape of Lucrece published. Shakespeare concerned in Christmas
entertainments before the queen at Greenwich. The Comedy of Errors
simultaneously acted on Innocents' day at Gray's inn.
1596 August 11. Hamnet Shakespeare buried. Shakespeare's father applies
for coat of arms (20 October).
1597 May 4. Shakespeare buys New Place. References to him thence-
forward by citizens of Stratford. He buys land and more houses.
1598. Meres mentions certain of Shakespeare's poems and plays. He acts (? )
in Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour.
1599. Arms granted. Shakespeare acquires share in Globe theatre.
1601 September 8. John Shakespeare buried.
1604 March 15. Shakespeare takes part in procession at James I's entry
into London.
1605. Augustine Phillips, a brother actor, leaves Shakespeare a thirty-
shilling piece of gold in his will.
1607 June 5.
Susanna Shakespeare marries John Hall.
1608 September 9. Shakespeare's mother buried. Soon afterwards, he
establishes himself at New Place and has more business transactions of
various kinds.
1609. The Sonnets published.
1616 January 25. Shakespeare makes his will, though it is not signed till
March.
February 10. Judith Shakespeare marries Thomas Quiney.
April 23. Shakespeare dies, and is buried on the 25th.
1623. Shakespeare's widow dies. The first folio is published.
## p. 220 (#244) ############################################
220
Appendix to Chapter VIII
II
:
6
LITERARY
(The order followed is that of The Cambridge Shakespeare. )
The Tempest. Probably subsequent to 1610, certainly acted in May 1613,
but not printed till first folio. References to Somers' shipwreck on the
Bermudas (1609). Plot partly found in Jacob Ayrer's Die schöne Sidea.
(This play is assigned to about 1595. )
The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Early. Story derived from Montemayor's
Diana. Not printed till folio.
The Merry Wives of Windsor. After 1598. Licensed 1601: printed in
part next year. Plot partly suggested by divers tales, Italian and other.
Measure for Measure. Produced December 1604 (? ). Not printed till folio.
Story from Cinthio and Whetstone.
The Comedy of Errors. Early. Acted December 1594. Not printed till folio.
Adapted from the Menaechmi of Plautus.
Much Ado About Nothing. After 1598. Printed in 1600. Part of story
from Bandello and Ariosto.
Love's Labour's Lost. Early. First printed 1598. No direct source of story
known.
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Middle early. Printed 1600. Story com-
bined from Chaucer, Ovid, Huon of Bordeaux and many other sources.
Practically original.
The Merchant of Venice. Late early, but before 1598. First printed
(twice) in 1600. “Casket' and 'pound of flesh' stories old medieval;
frequently rehandled before Shakespeare separately and, perhaps, com-
bined before him.
As You Like It. About 1600. Not printed till folio. Main story from
Lodge's Rosalynde, which throws back to the medieval English tale of
Gamelyn.
The Taming of the Shrew. Adapted from an older play printed in 1594.
Not itself printed till folio. Partly drawn from Gascoigne's Supposes.
All's Well that Ends Well. Before 1598 (if identical with Love's Labour's
Won). Not printed till folio. Story from Boccaccio through Painter.
Twelfth Night. About 1600. Acted at Middle Temple, February 1601/2. First
printed in folio. Origin Italian either from play or novel, but perhaps
directly from Barnabe Rich's translation of Bandello.
The Winter's Tale. Acted in May 1611. Not printed till folio. Story
from Greene's novel of Pandosto (Dorastus and Fawnia).
King John. Early. Not printed till folio. Directly adapted from earlier
play on same subject.
Richard II. Early. Printed 1597. Matter from Holinshed.
Henry IV. Late early. Part I printed 1598. Part II printed 1600.
Partly worked up from earlier play The Famous Victories of Henry
the fifth, but all best things original.
Henry V. 1599. Printed imperfectly next year. Origin as above.
Henry VI. Part I was first published in folio and no part is mentioned
by Meres. Parts II and III in folio had appeared in a different and
much less elaborate shape under the titles The First Part of the
Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster,
and The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke in 1594 and 1595.
The source of the matter, as in all English chronicle plays, is Holinshed;
but he is here largely corrected from other authorities.
## p. 221 (#245) ############################################
Tabular Conspectus
221
Richard III. Completing the series, apparently, but more original than the
Henry VI plays. It was published in 1597. Source again Holinshed.
Henry VIII. Performed in 1613; not printed till folio.
Troilus and Cressida. Acted and licensed for publication in February 1602/3,
was not actually printed till January 1608/9. It may have been suggested
by Chaucer whom it follows in the main lines of the love story; but owes
much to other forms of the tale of Troy-perhaps most to Lydgate's.
Coriolanus. Appeared at an unknown date (c. 1608/9 is the favourite guess)
but was never printed till folio. It follows Plutarch very closely-an
observation which applies to all the Roman plays except
Titus Andronicus ; which, one of the earliest, was acted in January 1593/4
and printed next year. The subject is quite unhistorical and its original
source is unknown; it could have had little or nothing to do with a previous
play on Titus and Vespasian. '
Romeo and Juliet, which is certainly early, has been put as far back as
1591; was printed in 1597. Its source was a novel of Bandello's, already
Englished by Broke in verse and Painter in prose.
Timon of Athens. Supposed to haye been written in 1607, but was not printed
till folio. A play on the same subject had been produced in 1600 and
the suggestion of it was taken from Lucian and Plutarch through
Painter.
Julius Caesar. Perhaps acted in 1601. Not printed till folio and is
Plutarchian.
Macbeth. Has been conjecturally put as early as 1605. It was certainly
acted in 1610: but was not printed till folio. The matter comes from
Holinshed.
Hamlet. First acted and entered on the register 1602; first extant edition
1603; again printed in 1604 and, finally, in folio-the three forms differing
much. The story came from Saxo Grammaticus through Belleforest,
and, apparently, had been dramatised in English. [But see Bullen, A. H.
in The Times, 3. XII. 1913. ]
King Lear. Acted on 26 December 1606, was printed in 1608 and again later,
before folio. It comes from Holinshed, whose story had been (more
exactly but much worse) dramatised in 1605 by someone else.
Othello. Aoted, apparently, in November 1604 but was not printed till 1622.
The story comes from Cinthio.
Antony and Cleopatra. Licensed for publication, but not published, in
1608. Like Julius Caesar, to which it is a sequel, it did not appear in
print till folio, and is again Plutarchian.
Cymbeline. Acted in 1610 or next year, but not printed till folio. Its
matter comes partly from Holinshed, partly from Boccaccio.
Pericles. Though not included in folio, was printed in 1609 and no less than
five times again before 1635. It was included among Shakespeare's
works thirty years later in the third folio of 1664. The story comes
from Gower.
Poems. Venus and Adonis, published 1593, is, apparently, Ovidian in origin;
and Lucrece, published 1594, may be so or may only go back to Chaucer.
The Sonnets were referred to by Meres in 1598. Next year, two were
printed in Jaggard's Passionate Pilgrim, and all appeared in 1609.
The Phoenix and The Turtle dates from 1601.
For editions and for commentaries on Shakespeare, reference must be
made to the bibliography; but this chapter would be incomplete without
some reference to the history of his fame in his own country. That his repu-
tation was considerable already in his lifetime is proved by the references of
Chettle probably, certainly of Meros, of The Returne from Pernassus, of
## p. 222 (#246) ############################################
222
Appendix to Chapter VIII
Webster, of Heywood and of others. But the two famous passages in verse
and in prose of Ben Jonson have an importance greater than anything else.
As was partly seen by Samuel Johnson, whose critical acuteness, when unpre-
judiced, was of the highest order, and who was certainly no Shakespeare
fanatic, the testimony of these passages disproves most of the common errors
and should preclude most of the doubts which have at different times existed
on all the most important questions relating to the poet. For no man's work
was better known than Jonson's, and, when he died, there were still living
numerons men of letters who must have known the facts more or less fully, and
would pretty certainly not have failed to correct or contradict Ben if there
had been occasion to do so. In the succeeding generation, the admiration of
Charles I, of John Hales and of Suckling-men as different as possible and
yet all representative and all of unusual capacity-takes up the tale. After
the Restoration, the expressions of a man like Pepys, who had no faculty of
literary criticism whatever, merely set off those of Dryden, who was the
best critic of the time; while the fact that Dryden's admiration is chequered
itself enhances its value-especially as the unfavourable utterances can be
easily explained. Almost more remarkable than this is the way in which, at
the close of the seventeenth century and after the issue of the four folio
editions, without any known attempt to edit, this attempt was made by a
series of men of letters sometimes of the very highest literary eminence and
always of some special ability. But the principal English editors of Shake-
speare, beginning with Rowe, will be discussed in a later chapter (xi), while
the chapter succeeding it (XII) will be devoted to the consideration of Shake-
speare's reputation and influence abroad, and especially in France and
Germany, from the seventeenth century onwards. Nor did the tide which rose
steadily through the eighteenth century show any signs of ebb at its close.
On the contrary, in Germany, with the younger Schlegels and Tieck; in
England, with Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt and many others; in France, all the
main promoters of the romantic movement with Victor Hugo, later, at their
head, joined in exalting Shakespeare to a higher position than he had ever
held and in deliberately reversing the previous estimate of his supposed faults
and drawbacks. Nor has an entire century arrested the progress of his fame.
At many times, indeed, there have been gainsayers; but, in almost every
case, from Rymer, and, indeed, from Ben Jonson himself in his carping mood
to the remarkable Breton critic named above, it has been obvious that the
objections came from theories, sometimes demonstrably erroneous, always
resting ultimately upon opinion, and, therefore, no more valid than their
opposites. And for the last half century or more, in accordance with a
prevailing tendency of the criticism of the age, attempts have been made to
question in larger or lesser extent the claim of William Shakespeare of
Stratford to the personal authorship of the plays called by his name, special
efforts being used to transfer the credit to Bacon, The latest of these
fantastic suggestions has fixed on Roger Manners, earl of Rutland, ambassador
to Denmark, and son-in-law of Sir Philip Sidney. To give an account of
these attempts, and to deal with them adequately, would oblige us to outrun
our limits altogether. It is sufficient to say that, up to the present time,
they have not commended themselves to a single person who unites accurate
knowledge of Elizabethan and other literature with the proved possession of
an adequate critical faculty.
9
## p. 223 (#247) ############################################
CHAPTER IX
SHAKESPEARE: POEMS
INTRICATE as are the complications which have been introduced
into the study of Shakespeare's plays by attempts to use them as
supplements to the missing biography, they are as nothing to those
which concern the non-dramatic poems, especially the Sonnets. The
main facts, with which we shall begin, are by no means enigmatical;
and, save in regard to the small fringe or appendix of minor pieces-
A Lover's Complaint, and the rest—there can be no doubt of
their authenticity, except in the minds of persons who have made
up their minds that, as Shakespeare cannot possibly have written
Shakespeare's works, somebody else must have done so. Some-
thing has been said in the preceding chapter concerning these
poems, in connection with what is known of the general course of
Shakespeare's life, and with the plays; but it seems expedient to
treat them also, and more fully, by themselves.
Venus and Adonis, the earliest published, was licensed on
18 April 1593, and appeared shortly afterwards with a fully signed
dedication by the author to the earl of Southampton, in which he
describes the poem as 'the first heire of my invention. ' It was
followed a year later by Lnicrece, again dedicated to Southampton.
Both poems were very popular, and were praised (sometimes with
the author's name mentioned) by contemporaries. Four years later,
again, the invaluable Meres referred, in the famous passage about
the plays, to their author's “sugared sonnets among his private
friends' as well as to Venus and Lucrece; and, a year later still,
in 1599, Jaggard the printer included two of these sonnets, numbers
138 and 144, in The Passionate Pilgrim. The whole was not
published till ten years later, in 1609, by Thomas Thorpe, with
Shakespeare's full name, but without any dedication or other sign
of recognition from him. The circumstances make it quite clear
that Shakespeare did not wish to undertake any ostentatious
responsibility for the publication; but it is, perhaps, rather rash
6
## p. 224 (#248) ############################################
224
Shakespeare: Poems
to assume that this publication was carried out against his will or
even without his privity. There is no evidence on either point;
and the probabilities must be estimated according to each man's
standard of the probable. What is certain is that he never
repudiated them.
Thorpe subjoined to them A Lover's Complaint, about which
we know nothing more. But, in The Passionate Pilgrim, Jaggard
had not merely included the two sonnets referred to, but had
assigned the whole of the poems, of which three others were
actually taken from Love's Labour's Lost, to ‘W. Shakespeare. '
Others had already appeared under the names of Marlowe, Ralegh,
Barnfield, Griffin and others. Nine have no further identification.
It appears that, in this instance, Shakespeare did protest; at any
rate, the dramatist Thomas Heywood, from whom Jaggard, in
a later edition, 'lifted' two more poems to add to the original
twenty, says that Shakespeare was ‘much offended'-a little piece
of evidence of a wide ranging effect, both positive and negative,
which, perhaps, has never been quite fully appreciated.
Some of the adespota are quite worthy of Shakespeare; and
his 'offence' would, of course, be quite sufficiently explained by
the imputation to him of plagiarism from such men as the living
Ralegh, and the dead Marlowe. Lastly, there exists a rather
obscure, very curious and, in parts, extremely beautiful, poem
called The Phoenix and the Turtle, which, in 1601, was added to
Robert Chester's Love's Martyr, as a contribution by Shakespeare:
Jonson, Chapman, 'Ignoto' and others contributing likewise. This
was reprinted ten years later, and we hear of no protests on
the part of any of the supposed contributors, though, whatever
Shakespeare might be, neither Jonson nor Chapman could be
described as "gentle' or likely to take a liberty gently. We
may take it, then, that, as regards the two classical pieces, the
Sonnets, A Lover's Complaint and The Phoenix and the Turtle,
we have at least the ordinary amount of testimony to genuine-
ness, and, in the case of the first three, rather more than this;
while some of The Passionate Pilgrim pieces are certainly genuine,
and more may be. Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music, it should,
perhaps, be mentioned, though they often are separately entered
in the contents of editions, merely form a division, with sub-title,
of The Passionate Pilgrim.
There is nothing, therefore, so far, in what may be called the
external and bibliographical history of the work, which justifies
any special diversion from the study of it as literature. But,
6
## p. 225 (#249) ############################################
225
Dedication of the Sonnets
beyond all question, there is perilous stuff of temptation away
from such study in the matter of the Sonnets. And, unfortunately,
Thomas Thorpe stuck a burning fuse in the live shell of this matter
by prefixing some couple of dozen words of dedication: To the
only begetter of these ensuing sonnets Mr W. H.
education and competent wits, gives his days and nights to the
reading of the actual plays will be a far better judge than
anyone who allows himself to be distracted by comment and
14
E. L. V.
CH. VIII.
## p. 210 (#234) ############################################
210
Shakespeare
controversy. The important thing is to get the Shakespearean
atmosphere, to feel the breath of the Shakespearean spirit. And
it is doubtful whether it is not much safer to get this first, and at
first hand, than to run the risk of not getting it while investigating
the exact meaning of every allusion and the possible date of every
item. The more thoroughly and impartially this spirit is observed
and extracted, the more will it be found to consist in the sub-
jection of all things to what may be called the romantic process of
presenting them in an atmosphere of poetical suggestion rather
than as sharply defined and logically stated. But this romantic
process is itself characterised and pervaded by a philosophical
depth and width of conception of life which is not usually asso-
ciated with romance. And it is enlivened and made actual by
the dramatic form which, whether by separable or inseparable
accident, the writer has adopted. Thus, Shakespeare-as no one
had done before him, and as people have done since far more
often in imitation of him than independently-unites the powers
and advantages of three great forms: the romance (in verse
or prose), pure poetry and the drama. The first gives him variety,
elasticity, freedom from constraint and limit. The second enables
him to transport. The third at once preserves his presentations
from the excessive vagueness and vastness which non-dramatic
romance invites, and helps him to communicate actuality and
vividness.
It is in the examination of his treatment, now of individual
incidents and personages, now of complicated stories, by the aid of
these combined instruments, that the most profitable, as well as
the most delightful, study of Shakespeare consists. But there is
no doubt that, as a result of this study, two things emerge as his
special gifts. The first is the coinage of separate poetic phrases ;
the second is the construction and getting into operation of indi-
vidual and combined character. In a third point-the telling of
a story or the construction of a drama-he is far greater than is
often allowed. After his earliest period, there is very little in any
play that does not directly bear upon the main plot in his sense of
that word. Even in so very long, so very complicated, a piece
.
as Hamlet, it is almost impossible to 'cut' without loss—to the
intelligent and unhasting reader, at any rate, if not to the eager
or restless spectator. But plot, in his sense, means, mainly-not
entirely—the evolution of character; and so we may return to
that point.
Two features strike us in Shakespearean character drawing
## p. 211 (#235) ############################################
Shakespeare's 'Palace of Truth' 2 II
which are not so prominent in any other. The one is its astonishing
prodigality, the other its equally astonishing thoroughness, regard
being had to the purpose of the presentation. On this latter
head, reference may be made to the examination of the character
of Claudius above given; but it would be perfectly easy to
supplement this by scores, nay, literally, by hundreds, of others,
were there space for it. Shakespeare never throws away a cha-
racter; but, at the same time, he never scamps one that is in any
way necessary or helpful to his scheme. But this thoroughness, of
course, shows itself more fully still in his great personages. It has
been almost a stumblingblock—the bounty of the describing
detail being so great that interpreters have positively lost them-
selves in it. Nor was this probably unintended; for Shakespeare
knew human nature too well to present the narrow unmistakable
type character which belongs to a different school of drama. His
methods of drawing character are numerous. The most obvious
of them is the soliloquy. This has been found fault with as un-
natural—but only by those who do not know nature. The fact is
that the soliloquy is so universal that it escapes observers who
are not acute and active. Everybody, except persons of quite
abnormal hebetude, 'talks to himself as he walks by himself, and
thus to himself says he. ' According to temperament and intellect,
he is more or less frank with himself; but his very attempts to
deceive himself are more indicative of character than his bare
actions. The ingenious idea of the 'palace of truth' owes all its
ingenuity and force to this fact. Now, Shakespeare has consti-
tuted his work, in its soliloquies, as a vast palace of truth, in
which those characters who are important enough are compelled
thus to reveal themselves. Nothing contributes quite so much to
the solidity and completeness of his system of developing plot by
the development of character; nor does anything display more fully
the extraordinary power and range, the ‘largeness and universality,'
of his own soul. For the soliloquy, like all weapons or instruments
which unite sharpness and weight, is an exceedingly difficult and
dangerous one to wield. It may very easily be overdone in the
novel (where there are not the positive checks on it which the
drama provides) even more than in the drama itself. It is very
difficult to do well. And there is a further danger even for those
who can do it well and restrain themselves from overdoing it:
that the soliloquies will represent not the character but the author;
that they will assist in building up for us, if we desire it, the nature
of Brown or Jones, but will not do very much for the construction
1442
## p. 212 (#236) ############################################
2 12
Shakespeare
or revelation of that of Brown's or Jones's heroes and heroines.
Shakespeare has avoided or overcome all these points. His
soliloquies, or set speeches of a soliloquial character, are never, in
the mature plays, overdone; they are never futile or unnatural;
and, above all, they are so variously adapted to the idiosyncrasies of
the speakers that, while many people have tried to distil an
essence of Shakespeare out of them, nobody has succeeded. From
Thackeray's famous parabases (even when they are put in the
mouths of his characters as they sometimes are) we learn very little
more about these characters than he has told us or will tell us in
another way; but we learn to know himself almost infallibly. From
Shakespeare's soliloquies we hardly see him even in a glass darkly;
but we see the characters who are made to utter them as plain
as the handwriting upon the wall.
It remains, before concluding with a skeleton table of dates
and facts which may serve to vertebrate this chapter, to consider
three points of great, though varying, importance-Shakespeare's
morality in the wide sense, his versification and his style.
In dealing with the first, there is no necessity to dwell much on
the presence in his work of 'broad' language and 'loose' scenes.
That he exceeds in this way far less than most of his contempo-
raries will only be denied by those who do not really know the
Elizabethan drama. Of the excess itself, it seems rather idle to
say much. The horror which it excites in some cases is, perhaps,
as much a matter of fashion as the original delinquency. But this
is only a miserable specialisation and belittlement of the word
'morality. In the larger sense, Shakespeare's morals are dis-
tinguished and conditioned almost equally by sanity, by justice
and by tolerance. He is not in the least squeamish-as has been
said, he shocks many as not being squeamish enough—but he
never, except in All's Well that Ends Well, and, perhaps, Measure
for Measure, has an unhealthy plot or even an unhealthy situation.
His justice is of the so-called 'poetical' kind, but not in the least
of the variety often so misnamed. In fact, as a rule, he is rather
severe—in some cases, decidedly so—and, though too much of an
artist to court the easy tragedy of the unhappy ending, is, except
in his last three plays, equally proof against the seductions of the
happy sort. But this severity is tempered by, and throws into
relief, the third quality of tolerance in which he excels every other
author. This tolerance is not complaisance: justice prevents
that, and sanity too. Shakespeare never winks at anything.
But, as he understands everything, so, without exactly pardoning it
## p. 213 (#237) ############################################
Justice and Tolerance
213
('that's when he's tried above '), he invariably adopts a strictly
impartial attitude towards everything and everybody. In this, he
stands in marked contrast to Dante, who, with almost equal sanity
and fully equal justice, is not merely unnecessarily inexorable, but
distinctly partisan—not merelya hanging judge, but a hanging judge
doubled with an unsparing public prosecutor. It was once observed
as an obiter dictum by a Dante scholar of unsurpassed competence
that 'Dante knows he is unfair. ' It might be said that the extraor-
dinary serenity and clarity of Shakespeare's mind and temper make
it unnecessary for him to think whether he is fair or not. He gives
the character as it is—the other characters and the reader may
make what they can of it. He allows Malcolm to call Macbeth
a 'dead butcher' and Lady Macbeth a 'fiendlike queen,' because
it is what Malcolm would have done. But he does not attach
these tickets to them; and you will accept the said tickets at your
own risk. Another contrast which is useful is, again, that of
Thackeray. The author of Vanity Fair and The Newcomes has
a power of vivifying character not much inferior to Shakespeare's.
But, when he has vivified his characters, he descends too much
into the same arena with them; and he likes or dislikes them, as
one likes or dislikes fellow creatures, not as the creator should be
affected towards creations. Becky Sharp is a very fallible human
creature, and Barnes Newcome is a detestable person. But
Thackeray is hard on Becky; and, though he tries not to be
hard on Barnes, he is. Shakespeare is never hard on any of his
characters-not merely in the cases of Lady Macbeth and Cleo-
patra, where there is no difficulty; but in those of Iago and
Edmund, of Richard and of John, where there is. The difficulty
does not exist for him. And yet he has no sneaking kindness for
the bad, great person as Milton has. The potter has made the pot
as the pot ought to be and could not but be; he does not think it
necessary to label it 'caution' or 'this is a bad pot,' much less
to kick it into potsherds. If it breaks itself, it must; in the
sherds into which it breaks itself, in those it will lie; and 'there is
namore to seyn. "
Equally matter subject to opinion, but matter much more
difficult to pronounce upon with even tolerable distinctness and
trenchancy, is the feature of style. It is, perhaps, in this point
that Shakespeare is most distinguished from the other greatest
writers. He has mannerisms; but they are mostly worn as clothes -
adopted or discarded for fashion's or season's sake. He has no
mannerism in the sense of natural or naturalised gesture which is
1 (A. J. Butler. ]
## p. 214 (#238) ############################################
214
Shakespeare
recognisable at once. When we say that a phrase is Shake-
spearean, it is rather because of some supreme and curiously simple
felicity than because of any special 'hall-mark,' such as exists in
Milton and even in Dante. Even Homer has more mannerism
than Shakespeare, whose greatest utterances-Prospero's epilogue
to the masque, Cleopatra's death words, the crispest sayings of
Beatrice and Touchstone, the passion of Lear, the reveries of
Hamlet, others too many even to catalogue-bear no relation to
each other in mere expression, except that each is the most appro-
priate expression for the thought. Euphuism and word play, of
course, are very frequent-shockingly frequent, to some people,
it would seem.
But they are merely things that the poet plays
at—whether for his own amusement or his readers', or both, is
a question, perhaps of some curiosity, but of no real importance.
The well ascertained and extraordinary copiousness of his voca-
bulary is closely connected with this peculiar absence of peculiarity
in his style. The writer given to mannerism necessarily repeats, if
not particular words, particular forms of phrases--notoriously, in
some cases, particular words also. The man who, in all cases, is to
suit his phrase to his meaning, not his meaning to his phrase,
cannot do this. Further, Shakespeare, like almost all good English
writers, though to the persistent displeasure of some good English
critics, coins words with the utmost freedom, merely observing
sound analogy. He shows no preference for 'English' over ‘Latin’
vocabulary, nor any the other way. But, no doubt, he appreci-
ates, and he certainly employs, the advantages offered by their
contrast, as in the capital instance of
>
The multitudinous seas incarnadine
Making the green one red,
where all but the whole of the first line is Aristotle's xenon and the
whole of the next clause his kyrion. In fact, it is possible to talk
about Shakespeare's style for ever, but impossible in any way to
define it. It is practically 'allstyle, as a certain condiment is
called 'allspice'; and its universality justifies the Buffonian
definition-even better, perhaps, that earlier one of Shakespeare's
obscure Spanish contemporary Alfonso Garcia Matamoros as
habitus orationis a cujusque natura fluens.
There is no need to acknowledge defeat, in this way, as regards
the last point to be handled, Shakespeare's versification. This,
while it is of the highest importance for the arrangement of his
work, requires merely a little attention to the prosody of his prede-
## p. 215 (#239) ############################################
215
a
His Progress in Versification
cessors, and a moderate degree of patient and intelligent observation,
to make it comparatively plain sailing. In no respect is the Meres
list of more importance than in this; for, though it does not arrange
its own items in order, it sets them definitely against the others
as later, and enables us, by observing the differences between the
groups as wholes, to construct the order of sequence between in-
dividual plays. Hardly less valuable is the practical certainty that
The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline and The Tempest are the latest plays,
and, to say the least, the extreme probability of the grouping of
the greatest of the others as belonging to a short period im-
mediately before and a rather longer period immediately after the
meeting of the centuries.
Putting these facts together with the certain conditions of
prosody in the plays of the Marlowe group, and in the nondescripts
of the third quarter of the sixteenth century, we are in a condition
to judge Shakespeare's progress in versification with fair safety.
For the earliest period, we have pieces like Love's Labour's Lost
and The Comedy of Errors on the one hand, like Titus Andronicus
on the other. In this last, we see an attempt to play the game of
the Marlowe heroic, the unrimed'drumming decasyllabon,' strictly
and uncompromisingly. The verses are turned out like bullets,
singly from the mould; there is little condescendence (though there
is some) to rime, even at the end of scenes and tirades; there is no
prose proper. But there is considerable variation of pause; and,
though the inflexibility of the line sound is little affected by it,
there is a certain running over of sense in which, especially when
conjoined with the pause, there is promise for the future.
The two other plays represent a quite different order of experi-
ment. Love's Labour's Lost, especially, is a perfect macédoine of
metres. There is blank verse, and plenty of it, and sometimes
very good, though always inclining to the ‘single-mould. ' But
there is also abundance of rime; plenty of prose; arrangement
in stanza, especially quatrain; doggerel, sometimes refining itself to
tolerably regular anapaests; fourteeners; octosyllables or, rather,
the octosyllable shortened catalectically and made trochaic; finally,
pure lyric of the most melodious kind. The poet has not made up
his mind which is the best instrument and is trying all-not, in
every case, with a certain touch, but, in every case, with a touch
which brings out the capacities of the instrument itself as it has
rarely, if ever, been brought out before.
In the other early plays, with a slight variation in proportion to
subject, and with regard to the fact whether they are adaptations
## p. 216 (#240) ############################################
216
Shakespeare
or not, this process of promiscuous experiment and, perhaps, half
unconscious selection continues. The blank verse steadily improves
and, by degrees, shakes off any suggestion of the chain, still more
of the tale of bullets, and acquires the astonishing continuity and
variety of its best Shakespearean form. Still, it constantly relapses
into rime-often for long passages and, still oftener, at the ends
or breaks of scenes and at the conclusion of long speeches ; some-
times, perhaps, merely to give a cue; sometimes, to emphasise
a sentiment or call attention to an incident or an appearance.
The very stanza is not relinquished; it appears in Romeo and
Juliet, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, even in The Merchant
of Venice. The doggerel and the fourteeners, except when the
latter are used (as they sometimes are) to extend and diversify
the blank verse itself, gradually disappear; but the octosyllabic,
and more directly lyrical, insets are used freely. The point, how-
ever, in that which is, probably, the latest of this batch, and in the
whole of the great central group of comedies and tragedies, is the
final selection of blank verse itself for reliance, and its development.
Not only, as has just been noticed, do the deficiencies of the form
in its earlier examples-its stiffness, its want of fluency and sym-
phony, the gasps, as it has been put, of a pavior with the lifting
and setting down of his rammer-not only do these defects
disappear, but the merits and capabilities of the form appear con-
trariwise in ways for which there is no precedent in prosodic
history. The most important of these, for the special dramatic
purpose, if also the most obvious, is the easy and unforced breaking
up of the line itself for the purpose of dialogue. But this, of course,
had been done with many metres before; even medieval octo-
syllable writers had had no difficulty with it, though the unsuitable-
ness of rime for dialogue necessarily appeared. But Shakespeare
enlarged greatly and boldly on their practice. In all his mature
plays—Hamlet is a very good example to use for illustration—the
decasyllabic or five-foot norm is rather a norm than a positive
rule. He always, or almost always, makes his lines, whether single,
continuous, or broken, referable to this norm. But he will cut
them down to shorter, or extend them to greater, length without
the least hesitation. Alexandrines are frequent and fourteeners
not uncommon, on the one hand; octosyllables and other fractions
equally usual. But all adjust themselves to the five-foot scheme;
and the pure examples of that scheme preponderate so that there
is no danger of its being confused or mistaken.
Secondly, the lines, by manipulation of pause and of enjambe-
a
>
## p. 217 (#241) ############################################
Shakespearean Blank Verse
217
ment or overrunning, are induced to compose a continuous sym-
phonic run-not a series of gasps. In some passages—for instance,
the opening lines of Antony and Cleopatra—the pause will hardly
be found identical in any two of a considerable batch of verses.
As to its location, the poet entirely disregards the centripetal rule
dear to critics at almost all times. He sometimes disregards it to
the extent-horrible to the straiter sect of such critics—of putting
a heavy pause at the first or at the ninth syllable. Always, in
his middle period, he practises what he taught to Milton-the
secret of the verse period and paragraph-though in drama he has
a greater liberty still of beginning this and ending it at any of his
varied pause places, without troubling himself whether these places
begin and end a line or not. Sometimes, indeed, he seems to prefer
that they should not coincide.
But the third peculiarity which distinguishes the accomplished
blank verse of Shakespeare is the most important of all. It is the
mastery-on good principles of English prosody from the thirteenth
century onwards, but in the teeth of critical dicta in his own day
and for centuries to follow-of trisyllabic substitution. By dint of
this, the cadence of the line is varied, and its capacity is enlarged,
in the former case to an almost infinite, in the latter to a very
great, extent. Once more, the decasyllabic norm is kept-is, in fact,
religiously observed. But the play of the verse, the spring and
reach and flexibility of it, are as that of a good fishing-rod to that
of a brass curtain-pole. The measure is never really loose-it
never in the least approaches doggerel. But it has absolute
freedom: no sense that it wishes to convey, and no sound that
it wishes to give as accompaniment to that sense, meet the slightest
check or jar in their expression.
In the latest division, one of the means of variation which had
been used even before Shakespeare, and freely by him earlier,
assumes a position of paramount and, perhaps, excessive importance,
which it maintains in successors and pupils like Fletcher, and which,
perhaps, carries with it dangerous possibilities. This is what is
sometimes called the feminine, or, in still more dubious phrase,
the 'weak, ending; but what may be better, and much more
expressively, termed the redundant syllable. That, with careful,
and rather sparing, use it adds greatly to the beauty of the
measure, there is no doubt at all: the famous Florizel and Perdita
scene in The Winter's Tale is but one of many instances. But it
is so convenient and so easy that it is sure to be abused; and
abused it was, not, perhaps, by Shakespeare, but certainly by
## p. 218 (#242) ############################################
218
Shakespeare
Fletcher. And something worse than mere abuse, destruction
of the measure itself, and the substitution of an invertebrate mass
of lines that are neither prose nor verse, remained behind.
But this has nothing to do with Shakespeare, who certainly
cannot be held responsible for the mishaps of those who would
walk in his circle without knowing the secrets of his magic. Of
that magic his manipulation of all verse that he tried-sonnet,
stanza, couplet, lyric, what not-is, perhaps, the capital example,
but it reaches its very highest point in regard to blank verse. And,
after all, it may be wrong to use the word capital even in regard
to this. For he is the caput throughout, in conception and in
execution, in character and in story-not an unnatural, full-blown
marvel, but an instance of genius working itself up, on precedent
and by experiment, from promise to performance and from the
part to the whole.
## p. 219 (#243) ############################################
APPENDIX
TABULAR CONSPECTUS
I
BIOGRAPHICAL
1564 April 26. Shakespeare baptised.
1582 November 27. Licence granted for marriage of William Shakespeare
and Anne Whateley. 28. Bond entered into in reference to marriage
of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway.
1583 May 26. Susanna Shakespeare baptised.
1585 February 2. Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare baptised.
1587 Michaelmas Term. Shakespeare appears in deed concerning Asbies
mortgage.
1592. Referred to (? ) by Greene as 'Shake-scene. Apology by Chettle to
the person thus referred to at end of this year or beginning of next.
1593. Venus and Adonis published.
1594. The Rape of Lucrece published. Shakespeare concerned in Christmas
entertainments before the queen at Greenwich. The Comedy of Errors
simultaneously acted on Innocents' day at Gray's inn.
1596 August 11. Hamnet Shakespeare buried. Shakespeare's father applies
for coat of arms (20 October).
1597 May 4. Shakespeare buys New Place. References to him thence-
forward by citizens of Stratford. He buys land and more houses.
1598. Meres mentions certain of Shakespeare's poems and plays. He acts (? )
in Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour.
1599. Arms granted. Shakespeare acquires share in Globe theatre.
1601 September 8. John Shakespeare buried.
1604 March 15. Shakespeare takes part in procession at James I's entry
into London.
1605. Augustine Phillips, a brother actor, leaves Shakespeare a thirty-
shilling piece of gold in his will.
1607 June 5.
Susanna Shakespeare marries John Hall.
1608 September 9. Shakespeare's mother buried. Soon afterwards, he
establishes himself at New Place and has more business transactions of
various kinds.
1609. The Sonnets published.
1616 January 25. Shakespeare makes his will, though it is not signed till
March.
February 10. Judith Shakespeare marries Thomas Quiney.
April 23. Shakespeare dies, and is buried on the 25th.
1623. Shakespeare's widow dies. The first folio is published.
## p. 220 (#244) ############################################
220
Appendix to Chapter VIII
II
:
6
LITERARY
(The order followed is that of The Cambridge Shakespeare. )
The Tempest. Probably subsequent to 1610, certainly acted in May 1613,
but not printed till first folio. References to Somers' shipwreck on the
Bermudas (1609). Plot partly found in Jacob Ayrer's Die schöne Sidea.
(This play is assigned to about 1595. )
The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Early. Story derived from Montemayor's
Diana. Not printed till folio.
The Merry Wives of Windsor. After 1598. Licensed 1601: printed in
part next year. Plot partly suggested by divers tales, Italian and other.
Measure for Measure. Produced December 1604 (? ). Not printed till folio.
Story from Cinthio and Whetstone.
The Comedy of Errors. Early. Acted December 1594. Not printed till folio.
Adapted from the Menaechmi of Plautus.
Much Ado About Nothing. After 1598. Printed in 1600. Part of story
from Bandello and Ariosto.
Love's Labour's Lost. Early. First printed 1598. No direct source of story
known.
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Middle early. Printed 1600. Story com-
bined from Chaucer, Ovid, Huon of Bordeaux and many other sources.
Practically original.
The Merchant of Venice. Late early, but before 1598. First printed
(twice) in 1600. “Casket' and 'pound of flesh' stories old medieval;
frequently rehandled before Shakespeare separately and, perhaps, com-
bined before him.
As You Like It. About 1600. Not printed till folio. Main story from
Lodge's Rosalynde, which throws back to the medieval English tale of
Gamelyn.
The Taming of the Shrew. Adapted from an older play printed in 1594.
Not itself printed till folio. Partly drawn from Gascoigne's Supposes.
All's Well that Ends Well. Before 1598 (if identical with Love's Labour's
Won). Not printed till folio. Story from Boccaccio through Painter.
Twelfth Night. About 1600. Acted at Middle Temple, February 1601/2. First
printed in folio. Origin Italian either from play or novel, but perhaps
directly from Barnabe Rich's translation of Bandello.
The Winter's Tale. Acted in May 1611. Not printed till folio. Story
from Greene's novel of Pandosto (Dorastus and Fawnia).
King John. Early. Not printed till folio. Directly adapted from earlier
play on same subject.
Richard II. Early. Printed 1597. Matter from Holinshed.
Henry IV. Late early. Part I printed 1598. Part II printed 1600.
Partly worked up from earlier play The Famous Victories of Henry
the fifth, but all best things original.
Henry V. 1599. Printed imperfectly next year. Origin as above.
Henry VI. Part I was first published in folio and no part is mentioned
by Meres. Parts II and III in folio had appeared in a different and
much less elaborate shape under the titles The First Part of the
Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster,
and The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke in 1594 and 1595.
The source of the matter, as in all English chronicle plays, is Holinshed;
but he is here largely corrected from other authorities.
## p. 221 (#245) ############################################
Tabular Conspectus
221
Richard III. Completing the series, apparently, but more original than the
Henry VI plays. It was published in 1597. Source again Holinshed.
Henry VIII. Performed in 1613; not printed till folio.
Troilus and Cressida. Acted and licensed for publication in February 1602/3,
was not actually printed till January 1608/9. It may have been suggested
by Chaucer whom it follows in the main lines of the love story; but owes
much to other forms of the tale of Troy-perhaps most to Lydgate's.
Coriolanus. Appeared at an unknown date (c. 1608/9 is the favourite guess)
but was never printed till folio. It follows Plutarch very closely-an
observation which applies to all the Roman plays except
Titus Andronicus ; which, one of the earliest, was acted in January 1593/4
and printed next year. The subject is quite unhistorical and its original
source is unknown; it could have had little or nothing to do with a previous
play on Titus and Vespasian. '
Romeo and Juliet, which is certainly early, has been put as far back as
1591; was printed in 1597. Its source was a novel of Bandello's, already
Englished by Broke in verse and Painter in prose.
Timon of Athens. Supposed to haye been written in 1607, but was not printed
till folio. A play on the same subject had been produced in 1600 and
the suggestion of it was taken from Lucian and Plutarch through
Painter.
Julius Caesar. Perhaps acted in 1601. Not printed till folio and is
Plutarchian.
Macbeth. Has been conjecturally put as early as 1605. It was certainly
acted in 1610: but was not printed till folio. The matter comes from
Holinshed.
Hamlet. First acted and entered on the register 1602; first extant edition
1603; again printed in 1604 and, finally, in folio-the three forms differing
much. The story came from Saxo Grammaticus through Belleforest,
and, apparently, had been dramatised in English. [But see Bullen, A. H.
in The Times, 3. XII. 1913. ]
King Lear. Acted on 26 December 1606, was printed in 1608 and again later,
before folio. It comes from Holinshed, whose story had been (more
exactly but much worse) dramatised in 1605 by someone else.
Othello. Aoted, apparently, in November 1604 but was not printed till 1622.
The story comes from Cinthio.
Antony and Cleopatra. Licensed for publication, but not published, in
1608. Like Julius Caesar, to which it is a sequel, it did not appear in
print till folio, and is again Plutarchian.
Cymbeline. Acted in 1610 or next year, but not printed till folio. Its
matter comes partly from Holinshed, partly from Boccaccio.
Pericles. Though not included in folio, was printed in 1609 and no less than
five times again before 1635. It was included among Shakespeare's
works thirty years later in the third folio of 1664. The story comes
from Gower.
Poems. Venus and Adonis, published 1593, is, apparently, Ovidian in origin;
and Lucrece, published 1594, may be so or may only go back to Chaucer.
The Sonnets were referred to by Meres in 1598. Next year, two were
printed in Jaggard's Passionate Pilgrim, and all appeared in 1609.
The Phoenix and The Turtle dates from 1601.
For editions and for commentaries on Shakespeare, reference must be
made to the bibliography; but this chapter would be incomplete without
some reference to the history of his fame in his own country. That his repu-
tation was considerable already in his lifetime is proved by the references of
Chettle probably, certainly of Meros, of The Returne from Pernassus, of
## p. 222 (#246) ############################################
222
Appendix to Chapter VIII
Webster, of Heywood and of others. But the two famous passages in verse
and in prose of Ben Jonson have an importance greater than anything else.
As was partly seen by Samuel Johnson, whose critical acuteness, when unpre-
judiced, was of the highest order, and who was certainly no Shakespeare
fanatic, the testimony of these passages disproves most of the common errors
and should preclude most of the doubts which have at different times existed
on all the most important questions relating to the poet. For no man's work
was better known than Jonson's, and, when he died, there were still living
numerons men of letters who must have known the facts more or less fully, and
would pretty certainly not have failed to correct or contradict Ben if there
had been occasion to do so. In the succeeding generation, the admiration of
Charles I, of John Hales and of Suckling-men as different as possible and
yet all representative and all of unusual capacity-takes up the tale. After
the Restoration, the expressions of a man like Pepys, who had no faculty of
literary criticism whatever, merely set off those of Dryden, who was the
best critic of the time; while the fact that Dryden's admiration is chequered
itself enhances its value-especially as the unfavourable utterances can be
easily explained. Almost more remarkable than this is the way in which, at
the close of the seventeenth century and after the issue of the four folio
editions, without any known attempt to edit, this attempt was made by a
series of men of letters sometimes of the very highest literary eminence and
always of some special ability. But the principal English editors of Shake-
speare, beginning with Rowe, will be discussed in a later chapter (xi), while
the chapter succeeding it (XII) will be devoted to the consideration of Shake-
speare's reputation and influence abroad, and especially in France and
Germany, from the seventeenth century onwards. Nor did the tide which rose
steadily through the eighteenth century show any signs of ebb at its close.
On the contrary, in Germany, with the younger Schlegels and Tieck; in
England, with Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt and many others; in France, all the
main promoters of the romantic movement with Victor Hugo, later, at their
head, joined in exalting Shakespeare to a higher position than he had ever
held and in deliberately reversing the previous estimate of his supposed faults
and drawbacks. Nor has an entire century arrested the progress of his fame.
At many times, indeed, there have been gainsayers; but, in almost every
case, from Rymer, and, indeed, from Ben Jonson himself in his carping mood
to the remarkable Breton critic named above, it has been obvious that the
objections came from theories, sometimes demonstrably erroneous, always
resting ultimately upon opinion, and, therefore, no more valid than their
opposites. And for the last half century or more, in accordance with a
prevailing tendency of the criticism of the age, attempts have been made to
question in larger or lesser extent the claim of William Shakespeare of
Stratford to the personal authorship of the plays called by his name, special
efforts being used to transfer the credit to Bacon, The latest of these
fantastic suggestions has fixed on Roger Manners, earl of Rutland, ambassador
to Denmark, and son-in-law of Sir Philip Sidney. To give an account of
these attempts, and to deal with them adequately, would oblige us to outrun
our limits altogether. It is sufficient to say that, up to the present time,
they have not commended themselves to a single person who unites accurate
knowledge of Elizabethan and other literature with the proved possession of
an adequate critical faculty.
9
## p. 223 (#247) ############################################
CHAPTER IX
SHAKESPEARE: POEMS
INTRICATE as are the complications which have been introduced
into the study of Shakespeare's plays by attempts to use them as
supplements to the missing biography, they are as nothing to those
which concern the non-dramatic poems, especially the Sonnets. The
main facts, with which we shall begin, are by no means enigmatical;
and, save in regard to the small fringe or appendix of minor pieces-
A Lover's Complaint, and the rest—there can be no doubt of
their authenticity, except in the minds of persons who have made
up their minds that, as Shakespeare cannot possibly have written
Shakespeare's works, somebody else must have done so. Some-
thing has been said in the preceding chapter concerning these
poems, in connection with what is known of the general course of
Shakespeare's life, and with the plays; but it seems expedient to
treat them also, and more fully, by themselves.
Venus and Adonis, the earliest published, was licensed on
18 April 1593, and appeared shortly afterwards with a fully signed
dedication by the author to the earl of Southampton, in which he
describes the poem as 'the first heire of my invention. ' It was
followed a year later by Lnicrece, again dedicated to Southampton.
Both poems were very popular, and were praised (sometimes with
the author's name mentioned) by contemporaries. Four years later,
again, the invaluable Meres referred, in the famous passage about
the plays, to their author's “sugared sonnets among his private
friends' as well as to Venus and Lucrece; and, a year later still,
in 1599, Jaggard the printer included two of these sonnets, numbers
138 and 144, in The Passionate Pilgrim. The whole was not
published till ten years later, in 1609, by Thomas Thorpe, with
Shakespeare's full name, but without any dedication or other sign
of recognition from him. The circumstances make it quite clear
that Shakespeare did not wish to undertake any ostentatious
responsibility for the publication; but it is, perhaps, rather rash
6
## p. 224 (#248) ############################################
224
Shakespeare: Poems
to assume that this publication was carried out against his will or
even without his privity. There is no evidence on either point;
and the probabilities must be estimated according to each man's
standard of the probable. What is certain is that he never
repudiated them.
Thorpe subjoined to them A Lover's Complaint, about which
we know nothing more. But, in The Passionate Pilgrim, Jaggard
had not merely included the two sonnets referred to, but had
assigned the whole of the poems, of which three others were
actually taken from Love's Labour's Lost, to ‘W. Shakespeare. '
Others had already appeared under the names of Marlowe, Ralegh,
Barnfield, Griffin and others. Nine have no further identification.
It appears that, in this instance, Shakespeare did protest; at any
rate, the dramatist Thomas Heywood, from whom Jaggard, in
a later edition, 'lifted' two more poems to add to the original
twenty, says that Shakespeare was ‘much offended'-a little piece
of evidence of a wide ranging effect, both positive and negative,
which, perhaps, has never been quite fully appreciated.
Some of the adespota are quite worthy of Shakespeare; and
his 'offence' would, of course, be quite sufficiently explained by
the imputation to him of plagiarism from such men as the living
Ralegh, and the dead Marlowe. Lastly, there exists a rather
obscure, very curious and, in parts, extremely beautiful, poem
called The Phoenix and the Turtle, which, in 1601, was added to
Robert Chester's Love's Martyr, as a contribution by Shakespeare:
Jonson, Chapman, 'Ignoto' and others contributing likewise. This
was reprinted ten years later, and we hear of no protests on
the part of any of the supposed contributors, though, whatever
Shakespeare might be, neither Jonson nor Chapman could be
described as "gentle' or likely to take a liberty gently. We
may take it, then, that, as regards the two classical pieces, the
Sonnets, A Lover's Complaint and The Phoenix and the Turtle,
we have at least the ordinary amount of testimony to genuine-
ness, and, in the case of the first three, rather more than this;
while some of The Passionate Pilgrim pieces are certainly genuine,
and more may be. Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music, it should,
perhaps, be mentioned, though they often are separately entered
in the contents of editions, merely form a division, with sub-title,
of The Passionate Pilgrim.
There is nothing, therefore, so far, in what may be called the
external and bibliographical history of the work, which justifies
any special diversion from the study of it as literature. But,
6
## p. 225 (#249) ############################################
225
Dedication of the Sonnets
beyond all question, there is perilous stuff of temptation away
from such study in the matter of the Sonnets. And, unfortunately,
Thomas Thorpe stuck a burning fuse in the live shell of this matter
by prefixing some couple of dozen words of dedication: To the
only begetter of these ensuing sonnets Mr W. H.
