The Critics Versus Shakspere Part 3

"The Tragedy of Soliman and Perseda," first printed in 1599, is of doubtful authors.h.i.+p, but has sometimes been credited to Kyd. "The piece still bears a striking resemblance to the old Moral Plays and thereby proves its relatively early origin. A chorus consisting of the allegorical figures Love, Happiness, and Death opens the play and each separate act, and ends it with a controversy in which all the personified powers boast of their deeds and triumphs over the others, till at the end of the fifth act Death remains the victor, and the whole concludes with a eulogy of Queen Elizabeth, the only mortal whom Death does not venture to approach." "t.i.tus Andronicus" will be searched in vain for "much" or little of this "manner of Kyd."

"The First Part of Jeronimo, with the Warres of Portugal and the Life and Death of Don Andrea," not published till 1605, is not an authentic work of Kyd, but is attributed to him by some because, judging from the subject, it belongs to "The Spanish Tragedy" and is regarded by Henslowe as the first part of it. A. W. Schlegel says that "both of these parts are full of absurdities, that the author had ventured upon describing the most forced situations and pa.s.sions without being aware of his want of power, that especially the catastrophe of the second part, which is intended to surpa.s.s every conceivable horror, is introduced in a trivial manner, merely producing a ludicrous effect, and that the whole was like a child's drawings, wholly unmindful of the laws of proportion."

Ulrici maintains that "Jeronimo" itself may be treated as a play in three parts connected only externally: first, the war between Portugal and Spain; second, the life and death of Don Andrea, and third the acts of Jeronimo, who is, however, only a subordinate character. But whether the play be treated as a whole or as composed of substantially separate parts, its action and interest are centred in the story of the love of Don Andrea and Bellimperia; Lorenzo, her brother, persecutes both because he is jealous of Andrea's success. Andrea is finally killed; at his funeral, his ghost appears for no a.s.signed reason, except to exchange greeting with his friend Horatio. "Revenge" and Charon also appear, the one "to forbid Andrea's ghost from divulging the secrets of h.e.l.l, the other to accompany him back to the lower regions," and the learned critic adds that "this allegorical by-play is inserted so arbitrarily, so inappropriately and so unmeaningly, that it forms the best standpoint for judging the piece as regards its composition and poetical character. _In this respect its value is next to nothing._"

If Kyd wrote "Jeronimo," of which there is no satisfactory proof, and if Shakspere wrote "t.i.tus," "much in the manner of Kyd," which we venture to think more doubtful than the authors.h.i.+p of "Jeronimo," then Shakspere's supposed imitation was much "better" than the original "popular thing."

That Kyd wrote "The Spanish Tragedy, containing the lamentable end of Don Horatio and Bellimperia with the pitifull Death of Old Hieronimo,"

first published in 1599, is certified by Heywood in his "Apology for Actors," and there is good authority for the opinion that it was acted as early as 1588. We quote the summary of the plot:

"It is not wanting in absurdities, for the play opens and is connected with 'Jeronimo' by a conversation between Andrea's ghost and 'Revenge'; both remain continually on the stage as silent, invisible spectators, in order, at the end of every act, to add a few words, in which Andrea laments over the delay in the revenge of his death upon the Infanta Belthazar, and 'Revenge' admonishes him to be patient; at the end of the fifth act both return satisfied to the lower regions. Then Bellimperia suddenly falls in love with Horatio, who now steps into Andrea's place, and is persecuted by Lorenzo, at first without any cause whatever, and is finally a.s.sa.s.sinated. By some means which remain perfectly unexplained and incomprehensible, Lorenzo keeps old Jeronimo from the Court, so that he cannot bring forward his accusation against the murderers of his son. Jeronimo is consequently seized with madness, which, however, suddenly turns into a well calculated and prudent action. The conclusion of the piece is a general ma.s.sacre, in which Jeronimo, after having killed Lorenzo, bites off his own tongue, stabs the Duke of Castile, and then himself with a penknife."

It can hardly seem strange that the critic should add: "This at once explains why no piece was more generally ridiculed by contemporary and younger poets, than "The Spanish Tragedy.""

If Shakspere imitated Kyd in "t.i.tus," from such stuff as this, he was surely wise in his "sluggish avoidance of needless invention."

We are tempted to suggest, however, that "The Spanish Tragedy" affords a rich and ample field to modern critics who are solicitous to save the life and work of "the gentle William" from the imputation of being "superhuman": Is it not clear that "Hamlet" was only an imitation of "The Spanish Tragedy"? Did not Hamlet have a friend whose name was Horatio? Was not Hamlet, like Jeronimo, "essentially mad," and did not his madness "turn into a well calculated and prudent action"?

Kyd was the undoubted author of another work, under the following t.i.tle: "Pompey the Great, his fair Cornelia's Tragedie: effected by her Father's and Husband's downe-cast Death and fortune, written in French by that excellent Poet, R. Garnier, and translated into English by Thomas Kyd." This translation was printed in 1595. The play is thus summarized: It is "a piece which is constructed upon a misunderstood model of the ancients; it is altogether devoid of dramatic action, in reality merely lyrics and rhetoric in dialogue. The whole of the first act consists of one emphatic jeremiad by Cicero, about the desperate condition of Rome as it then was, its factiousness, its servility,--a jeremiad which is continued at the end of the act, by the chorus, in rhymed stanzas. In this tone it proceeds without a trace of action through the whole of the succeeding act, till maledictions and outbursts of grief on the part of Cornelia conclude the piece at the same point at which it had commenced."

It has never been claimed that "Cornelia" was the model for "t.i.tus."

"Cornelia" and "The Spanish Tragedy" are the only dramas that can be certainly called Kyd's. Comparison between these, or either of the others doubtfully attributed to him, and "t.i.tus Andronicus," shows beyond question that the only similarity between the most similar is that both are "tragedies of blood." There is no likeness of plot, characterization, action or diction. There is in "t.i.tus" none of Kyd's "huffing, bragging, puft" language. A ghost concludes "Jeronimo" whose "hopes have end in their effects" "when blood and sorrow finish my desires," "these were spectacles to please my soul." In "t.i.tus," even the Satanic Aaron, "in the whirlwind of pa.s.sion," "acquires and begets a temperance" that "gives it smoothness."

When Tamora proposes crimes to her sons, that fiends would refuse to execute, Lavinia does not shriek, nor rant, nor call upon the G.o.ds, but speaks what n.o.body but Shakspere could have uttered,--

"O Tamora! thou bear'st a woman's face."

It is not necessary to consider the claim sometimes made, that Kyd wrote an old "Taming of the Shrew" or an old "Hamlet." "It is a mere arbitrary conjecture" that he was the author of either.

There is therefore no proof that Shakspere imitated Kyd, and Professor Wendell's a.s.sertion that "t.i.tus Andronicus" is "much" in his manner is utterly without support.

"The Comedy of Errors" was unquestionably suggested by the "Twins" of Plautus. Is it therefore an imitation?

What is literary imitation? Did Dante imitate Virgil because Virgil's ghost was the guide through the "Inferno"? Did Milton imitate Dante in "Paradise Lost" because he describes the same scenes in different words?

Did he imitate the author of Genesis because he reproduces the Garden of Eden in majestic poetry? "Paradise Lost" seems to Professor Wendell "almost superhuman," but when any suggestion of transcendent power is applied to Shakspere, it a.s.sumes an "unnecessary miracle." Shakspere, whom ten generations of great men have failed to imitate, is in the opinion of Professor Wendell but an imitator, because while, as he says, "he could not help wakening to life the stiffly conventional characters which he found, as little more than names, in the tales and the fictions he adapted for the stage," he wrote chronicle plays, comedies, romances, tragedies, after others had worked in the same fields.

Milton was born in 1608. "That was the year," says Professor Wendell, "when Shakspere probably came to the end of his tragic period, and, with the imitativeness which never forsook him, was about to follow the newly popular manner of Beaumont and Fletcher."

But let us turn to Professor Wendell's opinion of Milton and quote his language: "With Milton, the case is wonderfully different. Read Scripture, if you will, and then turn to your 'Paradise Lost.' Turn then to whatever poet you chance to love of Greek antiquity or of Roman. Turn to Dante himself.... Then turn back to Milton. Different you will find him, no doubt, in the austere isolation of his masterful and deliberate Puritanism and learning; but that difference does not make him irrevocably lesser. Rather you will grow more and more to feel how wonderful his power proves. Almost alone among poets, he could take the things for which he had need from the masters themselves, as confidently as any of the masters had taken such matters from lesser men; and he could so place these spoils of masterpieces in his own work that they seem as truly and as admirably part of it as they seemed of the other great works where he found them." "'Paradise Lost' transcends all traces of its lesser origins, until those lesser origins become a matter of mere curiosity."

And so it appears that Professer Wendell applies one definition of the word "imitation" to Shakspere, another to Milton. If Shakspere found chronicle plays in the theatre, and transformed them into the most vivid and truthful history ever written, "those lesser origins become a matter of mere curiosity," and the charge of imitation fails. If the "Comedy of Errors" is an "imitation" of Plautus, "Paradise Lost" is an "imitation"

of Moses. If "Paradise Lost" is not an "imitation" but "something utterly apart," "something almost superhuman ... in its grand solitude"; if Milton has "so placed the spoils of masterpieces in his own work that they seem truly and admirably a part of it," then "Love's Labour's Lost"

is not an "imitation" of Lilly, nor "Henry VI." of Greene or Peele or Marlowe, nor "t.i.tus Andronicus" of Kyd.

But this indictment against Shakspere is made more definite in form, and may therefore be more conclusively answered. This is the charge as stated by Professor Wendell:

"A young American scholar whose name has hardly yet crossed the Atlantic,--Professor Ashley Horace Thorndike,--has lately made some studies in dramatic chronology which go far to confirm the unromantic conjecture that to the end Shakspere remained imitative and little else.

Professor Thorndike, for example, has shown with convincing probability that certain old plays concerning Robin Hood proved popular; a little later, Shakspere produced the woods and outlaws of 'As You Like It.' The question is one of pure chronology; and pure chronology has convinced me, for one, that the forest scenes of Arden were written to fit available costumes and properties.... Again, Professor Thorndike has shown that Roman subjects grew popular, and tragedies of revenge such as Marston's; a little later, Shakspere wrote 'Julius Caesar' and 'Hamlet.'

With much more elaboration Professor Thorndike has _virtually proved_ that the romances of Beaumont and Fletcher--different both in motive and in style from any popular plays which had preceded them--were conspicuously successful on the London stage before Shakspere began to write romances. It seems likely, therefore, that 'Cymbeline,' which less careful chronology had conjectured to be a model for Beaumont and Fletcher, was in fact imitated from models which they had made. In other words, Professor Thorndike has shown that one may account for all the changes in Shakspere, after 1600, by merely a.s.suming that the most skilful and instinctive imitator among the early Elizabethan dramatists, remained to the end an instinctively imitative follower of fas.h.i.+ons set by others."

Again, he says: "The likeness of their work to the romances of Shakspere--in subject, in structure, in peculiarities of verse,--has been often remarked; and they have consequently been supposed to have begun by skilful superficial imitation of his spiritually ripest phase.

The question is one of chronology not yet fixed in detail; but as I have told you already, the studies of my friend Professor Thorndike have virtually proved that several of their plays must have been in existence decidedly before the dates commonly a.s.signed to 'Cymbeline,' the 'Tempest' or the 'Winter's Tale.' If he is right,--and I believe him so,--the relation commonly thought to have existed between them and Shakspere is precisely reversed. Shakspere was the imitator, not they; indeed, as we have seen, he was from the beginning an imitator, not an inventor. And here his imitations are not in all respects better than his models."

Here the grave accusation is distinctly made that Shakspere imitated Beaumont and Fletcher, and to support it, reference is made to one man only, Professor Thorndike, his pupil and disciple.

And so, in this new case, we have two judges, and the curious fact that the instructor refers to the student and the student to the instructor as the sole authority for the soundness of the decision.

The "Introduction" of Professor Thorndike to his "Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere" sufficiently shows the animus of his essay: he cites the libel of Greene, and intimates that it is an accusation of plagiarism which we have rejected, but which "contains an element of truth worth keeping in mind"; he repeats in positive words the charge of Professor Wendell that Shakspere began by "imitating or revamping the work of others"; that "t.i.tus Andronicus" and "Henry VI.," "so far as they are his, are certainly imitative of other plays of the time," and adds that "Richard II." and "Richard III." show the influence of Marlowe's tragedies, and "Love's Labour's Lost" of Lilly's comedies.

We have sufficiently answered as to "Henry VI.," "t.i.tus Andronicus," and "Love's Labour's Lost." There is no proof offered as to the histories of the two Richards. The a.s.sertion is made without authority or example, without even the application of the usual "verse-tests" by which authors.h.i.+p is so conveniently determined.

Having repeated the erroneous and unsupported statements of his master, Professor Thorndike announces that after these early "imitations" little attention has been given to Shakspere's subsequent indebtedness to his contemporaries, for the reason that "to most students it has seemed absurd," while to him it is clear that "Hamlet" and "Lear" "contain traces of the 'tragedy of blood type'"; that "a closer adherence to current forms can be seen in the relation between the 'Merchant of Venice' and the 'Jew of Malta,'" "or in the many points of similarity between 'Hamlet' and the ... tragedies dealing with the theme of blood revenge," and that "characters ... are often clearly developments of types familiar on the stage," "as for example, Iago is a development of the conventional stage villain." He is certainly correct in saying that to most students these a.s.sumptions "seem absurd." Let us examine them briefly, for the purpose of learning whether they deserve any more serious adjective.

Marlowe's "Jew of Malta" appeared about 1589. As the author announces in the prologue, it is based upon Machiavel's theory of life--pure selfishness. The Jew makes war upon all the world, for the gratification of his pa.s.sion for revenge; he poisons his daughter "and the entire nunnery in which she had taken refuge"; he kills, he betrays, he prepares a burning caldron for a whole garrison,--"tragedy such as this is simply revolting. The characters of Barabas and of his servant, and the motives by which they are stimulated, are the mere coinage of extravagance; and the effect is as essentially undramatic as the personification is unreal." The conduct of the drama is in keeping with the character of this incomprehensible monster of vindictiveness; he is "without shame or fear, and bloodthirsty even to madness." His bad schemes are always successful; but the action proceeds without connection, the characters come and go without apparent cause; the three Jews, the monks and nuns, the mother of Don Mathias "appear and disappear so unexpectedly, and are interwoven with the action in so entirely an external manner, that the defects of the composition are at once apparent."

If this seems a good model for Shakspere's Shylock, it will seem impossible, when Barabas shows us his own portrait:

"As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights, And kill sick people groaning under walls; Sometimes I go about and poison wells; And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves I am content to lose some of my crowns; That I may, walking in my gallery, See 'em go pinion'd along by my door.

Being young, I studied physic, and began To practice first upon the Italian; There I enriched the priest with burials, And always kept the s.e.xton's arms in use, With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells; And after that was I an engineer, And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany, Under pretence of helping Charles the Fifth, Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems.

And after that was I an usurer, And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting, And tricks belonging unto brokery, I filled the jails with bankrupts in a year, And with young orphans planted hospitals, And every moon made some or other mad, And now and then one hung himself for grief, Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll, How I with interest tormented him.

But mark how I am bless'd for plaguing them; I have as much coin as will buy the town.

But tell me now, how hast thou spent thy time?"

And the servant answers in sympathetic lines:

"Faith, master, in setting Christian villages on fire, Chaining of eunuchs, binding galley slaves.

One time I was an ostler in an inn, And in the night-time secretly would I steal To travellers' chambers, and there cut their throats; Once at Jerusalem, where the pilgrims kneel'd, I strewed powder on the marble stones, And therewithal their knees would rankle so That I have laughed a-good to see the cripples Go limping home to Christendom on stilts."

Undoubtedly, the "groundlings" shouted with delight when this fiend was plunged into the boiling caldron which he had heated for others. Barabas dies, "in the midst of his crimes, with blasphemy and cursing on his lips; everything is the same at the end as it was from the beginning."

To the unlearned reader, there is no "relation" between this wild drama and the perfect art shown in Shakspere's Jew, who utters no curse when the gentle Portia p.r.o.nounces sentence, but retires with dignity from her court, because "he is not well."

Professor Thorndike tells us that the "traces" of blood revenge in "Hamlet" and "Lear" have been frequently "remarked." What those traces are we are not informed, but he a.s.sures us that "they have not led to any careful investigation of Shakspere's indebtedness to his contemporaries." That investigation was reserved for his research, and we hope to show how successfully he has performed his great task.

Meanwhile, we may be allowed to say that if "Lear" contains any "trace"

of the tragedy of blood, it is utterly undiscoverable to the ordinary reader, in the action, character or fate of the victims; and as for "Hamlet," so far is he from any idea of blood revenge, that he doubts and disobeys the message from the other world, doubts indeed the existence of any other world, and dies at last not a b.l.o.o.d.y death, but by a foil "unbated and envenomed."

If Iago is but the development of the conventional stage villain, his origin and some of the missing links of his evolution ought to be shown; they have never been guessed, and no critic can produce a single member of his kindred.

From such premises, Professor Thorndike concludes that "it is only natural to expect that the genius who brought many of these forms to their highest perfection should not have been so much an inventor as an adapter"; "We may naturally expect," he says, "that Shakspere's transcendent plays owe a considerable debt to the less perfect but not less original efforts of his contemporaries." This "natural expectation"

is not disappointed, in Professor Thorndike's opinion, by a comparison between some of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays and those he calls the "romances" of Shakspere,--"Cymbeline," "The Tempest," and "Winter's Tale." The argument is circuitous, but must be carefully followed in order to estimate the validity and weight of the conclusion.

In the first place, it is a.s.sumed as probable that Shakspere and Fletcher wrote "The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen," and that Fletcher wrote part of "Henry VIII." It is admitted that this last a.s.sumption is "at odds with the weight of authority" and rests mainly, if not wholly, upon Spedding's essay, in 1850. The only additional suggestion is the new and original test, the so-called "em-them" test. A laborious table is made, purporting to show that in the part a.s.signed to Shakspere "them" is used seventeen times, "'em" only five; that in the part a.s.signed to Fletcher "them" is used but four times, "'em" fifty-seven. We are not told from what source this table was made, but "Henry VIII." was first published in the folio of 1623. Professor Thorndike says that later editions have strictly followed it, and in Knight's edition, which he certifies to be a reprint of the first folio, "'em" as a contraction for "them" occurs just once and no more. Thus far, then, the new "test" seems to give us no satisfactory aid.

It may be permitted an ordinary reader to wonder how any critic can persuade himself that Fletcher wrote the speech of Wolsey on his downfall, or the prophecy of Cranmer at the christening of Elizabeth.

Why is it not a permissible hypothesis that "Henry VIII." was written during the reign of the great Queen, and subsequently revised by Shakspere, after her death, and presented as a "new play," as Wotten calls it?

The only external evidence that Shakspere wrote any portion of "The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen" is the quarto of 1634. On the contrary, all the previous external evidence is against that guess, for it was left out of the First Folio, and Heminge & Condell's positive knowledge is certainly of more weight than the opinion of Professor Thorndike's sole authority, Mr. Littledale. Moreover, the play was not included among Shakspere's works in the folio of 1632, and did not appear among them until, with six other doubtful plays, the editions of 1664 and 1685. In view of this proof, it is admitted that the question of collaboration is likely to remain forever unsettled, "because it does not admit of complete demonstration." Nevertheless, collaboration is a.s.sumed, and the "em-them" test is applied to the text so as to credit 1034 lines to Shakspere, 1486 to Fletcher.