An Introduction to Shakespeare Part 7

"This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease, And utters it again when G.o.d doth please.

He is wit's pedler, and retails his wares At wakes and wa.s.sails, meetings, markets, fairs; And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know, Have not the grace to grace it with such show.

This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve; Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve."

--_Love's Labour's Lost_, V, ii, 315-321

"I was not much afeard; for once or twice I was about to speak and tell him plainly The self-same sun that s.h.i.+nes upon his court Hides not his visage from our cottage, but Looks on all alike. Will't please you, sir, be gone?

I told you what would come of this. Beseech you, Of your own state take care. This dream of mine-- Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch farther, But milk my ewes and weep."

--_Winter's Tale_, IV, iv, 452-400.

I do not mean to imply by the above that Shakespeare's early verse is poor according to ordinary standards. It is not; it contains much that is fine. But it is far inferior to his later work, and it is inferior in those very details which time and experience alone can teach.

An important point to remember is that while Shakespeare was growing in metrical skill, he was not growing alone. A crowd of other authors around him were developing in a similar way; and he was learning from them and they from him. The use of blank verse in English when Shakespeare began to write was a comparatively new practice, and, like all new inventions, for a time it was only imperfectly understood. Men {89} had to learn by experiments and by each other's successes and failures, just as men in recent years have learned to fly. Shakespeare surpa.s.sed all the others, as the Wright brothers in their first years surpa.s.sed all their fellow-aeronauts; but like the Wright brothers he was only part of a general movement. No other man changed as much as he in one lifetime, but the whole system of dramatic versification was changing.

+Taste+.--But wholly aside from questions of meter, Shakespeare improved greatly in taste and judgment between the beginning and middle of his career. This is shown especially in his humor. To the young man humor means nothing but the cause for a temporary laugh; to a more developed mind it becomes a pleasant suns.h.i.+ne that lingers in the memory long after reading, and interprets all life in a manner more cheerful, sympathetic, and sane. The early comedies give us nothing but the temporary laugh; and even this is produced chiefly by fantastic situations or plays on words, clever but far-fetched, puns and conceits so overworked that their very cleverness jars at times. On the other hand, in the great humorous characters of his middle period, like Falstaff and Beatrice, the poet is opening up to us new vistas of quiet, lasting amus.e.m.e.nt and indulgent knowledge of our imperfect but lovable fellow-men.

The same growth of taste is shown in the dramatist's increasing tendency to tone down all revolting details and avoid flowery, overwrought rhetoric. n.o.body knows whether Shakespeare wrote all of _t.i.tus Andronicus_ entire or simply revised it; but we feel sure that the older Shakespeare would have been unwilling, even as {90} a reviser, to squander so much that is beautiful on such an orgy of blood and violence. _Romeo and Juliet_ is full of beautiful poetry; but even here occasional lapses show the undeveloped taste of the young writer.

Notice the flowery and fantastic imagery in the following pa.s.sage, where Lady Capulet is praising Paris, her daughter's intended husband:--

"Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face And find delight writ there with beauty's pen; Examine every married lineament And see how one another lends content, And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies Find written in the margent of his eyes.

This precious book of love, this unbound lover, To beautify him, only lacks a cover.

The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride For fair without the fair within to hide.

That book in many's eyes doth share the glory, That in gold clasps locks in the golden story."

--_Romeo and Juliet_, I, iii, 81-92.

If we try to picture to ourselves the post-wedlock edition of Paris described above, we shall see how a young man's imagination may run away with his judgment. There are pa.s.sages in this play as good, perhaps, as anything which the author ever wrote; but if we compare such fantastic imagery with the uniform excellence of the later masterpieces, we shall see how much Shakespeare unlearned and outgrew.

+Character Study+.--Still more significant is the poet's development in the conception of character. In no other way, probably, does an observant mind change and expand so much as in this. For the infant all men fall into two very simple categories:--people whom he likes {91} and people whom he doesn't. The boy of ten has increased these two cla.s.ses to six or eight. The young man of twenty finds a few more, and begins to suspect that men who act alike may not have the same motives and emotions. But as the keen-eyed observer nears middle age, he begins to realize that no two souls are exact duplicates of each other; and that behind every human eye there lies an undiscovered country, as mysterious, as fascinating, as that which Alice found behind the looking-gla.s.s,--a country like, and yet unlike, the one we know, where dreams grow beautiful as tropic plants, and pa.s.sions crouch like wild beasts in the jungle.

Great as he was, Shakespeare had to learn this lesson like other men; but he learned it much better. In _Love's Labour's Lost_, generally considered his earliest play, he has not led us into the inner selves of his men and women at all, has not seemed to realize that they possess inner selves. At the conclusion we know precisely as much of them as we should if we had met them at a formal reception, and no more. The princess is pretty and clever on dress parade; but how does the real princess feel when parade is over and she is alone in her chamber? The later Shakespeare might have told us, did tell us, in regard to more than one other princess; but the young Shakespeare has nothing to tell.

_Richard III_, which is supposed to have come some three years later, is a marked advance in characterization, but still far short of the goal. Here the dramatist attempts, indeed, to a.n.a.lyze the tyrant's motives and emotions; but he does not yet understand what {92} he is trying to explain, and for that reason the being whom he creates is portentous, but not human. To understand this, you need only compare Richard with Macbeth. In Macbeth we have a host of different forces--ambition, superst.i.tion, poetry, remorse, vacillation, affection, despair--all struggling together as they might in you or me; and it is this mingling of feelings with which we all can sympathize that makes him, in spite of all his crimes, a human being like ourselves. But in Richard there is no human complexity. His is the fearful simplicity of the lightning, the battering-ram, the earthquake, forces whose achievements are terrible and whose inner existence a blank. Richard hammers his b.l.o.o.d.y way through life like the legendary Iron Man with his flail, awe-inspiring as a destructive agency, not as a human being.

Two or three years later we find Shakespeare in his conception of Shylock capable of greater things as a student of character. In this pathetic, lonely, vindictive figure, exiled forever from the warm fireside of human friends.h.i.+p by those inherent faults which he can no more change than the tiger can change his claws, the long tragedy which accompanies the survival of the fittest finds a voice. Yet even in Shylock the dramatist has not reached his highest achievement in character study. The old Jew is drawn splendidly to the life, but he is a comparatively easy character to draw, a man with a few simple and prominent traits. Depicting such a man is like drawing a p.r.o.nounced Roman profile, less difficult to do, and less satisfactory when done, than tracing the subdued curves of a more evenly rounded face. Still greater will be the triumph {93} when Shakespeare can draw equally true to life a many-sided man or woman, in whose single heart all our different experiences find a sympathetic echo.

And this final triumph is not long in coming. Between his thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth years, in Falstaff and Hamlet the poet produced the greatest comic and the greatest tragic character of dramatic history. The man who has read _Hamlet_ understandingly has found in the young prince a lifelong companion. Has he been unjustly treated? Hamlet, too, had suffered and hated. Has he loved? So had Hamlet. Has he had a bosom friend? The most sacred and beautiful of college friends.h.i.+ps was that between Hamlet and Horatio. Has he been bored by some stupid old adviser? So had Hamlet by Polonius and similar "tedious old fools." Has he been thrilled by some beautiful landscape? Hamlet, too, had admired "this goodly frame, the earth" and the sky, "that majestical roof fretted with golden fire." Has he had a parent whom he loved and admired? So had Hamlet in his father. Has he had a friend for whom his love was mixed with shame? So felt Hamlet toward his mother. Has he felt the pride of a great deed bravely accomplished? So did Hamlet in dying. Has he felt the shame and remorse of a duty unperformed? So did Hamlet while his father was still unrevenged. Has he shuddered at the mystery of death? So had Hamlet shuddered at "that undiscovered country." Or has he been racked, as all good men are in practical life, by the doubt as to what is his duty? So had Hamlet been racked by the same terrible responsibility. And thus we might go on indefinitely. The {94} experience of a lifetime is packed into this play. Shakespeare never surpa.s.sed _Hamlet_, though he wrote for nine or ten years after; but when he had once reached this high level, he maintained it, with only occasional lapses, to the end.

+Dramatic Technique+.--Lastly, Shakespeare developed greatly in dramatic technique. By dramatic technique we mean the method in which the machinery of the story is handled. The dramatist, to do his duty properly, must accomplish at least five things at once. He must make his play lifelike and natural; he must keep his hearers well informed as to what is happening; he must bring in different events after each other in rapid succession to hold the interest of his audience; he must make the different characters influence each other so that the whole becomes one connected story, not several unrelated ones; and he must make the audience feel that the play is working toward a certain inevitable end, must bring it to that end, and must then stop. The lack of any one of these factors may make a play either dull or disappointing. It takes ability to get any one of these alone. It takes years of training before even a born genius can work them all in together. Of course, these details are much easier to handle in dramatizing some subjects than others; and we find Shakespeare succeeding comparatively early in easy subjects and making mistakes later in harder ones; but, on the whole, in dramatic technique as in other things, his history is one of increasing power and judgment.

Here, again, as in his metrical development, Shakespeare was merely one leading figure in a popular {95} movement. Through a long evolution the English drama had just come into existence when he began to write.

There were no settled theories about this new art, no results of long experience such as lie at the service of the modern dramatist. All men were experimenting, and Shakespeare among the rest.

His early play of _Love's Labour's Lost_ has already been used to ill.u.s.trate lack of characterization. In technique, also, in spite of many marks of natural brilliance, it shows the faults of the beginner.

The story in the first three acts does not move on fast enough; there is a lack of that rapid series of connected events which we mentioned above and which adds so much to the interest of the later plays, like _Macbeth_. Likewise, the characters in the prose underplot (except Costard) have too little connection with the story of the king and his friends. In very badly constructed plays this lack of connection sometimes goes so far that the main and under plots seem like two separate serial stories in a magazine, in which the reader alternates from one to the other, but never thinks of them as one. This obviously is bad, for just when the reader is most interested in one, he is interrupted and has to lay it aside for the other. No play of Shakespeare's errs so far as that; but the defect in _Love's Labour's Lost_ is similar in a very modified form. Neither is this comedy as successful as the author's later plays in preparing us for a certain ending as the inevitable outcome and then placing that ending before us. We are led to expect that all four love affairs must be successful, and shall feel disappointed if the sympathetic dreams which we have woven around that idea {96} are not satisfied. Yet the play ends hurriedly in a way which leaves us all in doubt, and disappointed, like guests who have been invited to a wedding and find it indefinitely postponed. There is a wonderful amount of clever dialogue in this comedy, but its structure shows how much the author had yet to learn.

_The Two Gentleman of Verona_, probably written a little later, shows improvement, but by no means perfect mastery. The first two acts still drag, although the play moves more rapidly when it is under way. The inability to lead up naturally to an inevitable end still persists.

The young author, well as he has managed the middle of the play, does not wait for events to take their logical course. He winds up everything abruptly like a man who has just changed his mind or become tired of his task, and marries the most lovable girl in the play to a rascal who is scarcely given time for even a pretense of reformation.

_The Merchant of Venice_, two or three years later, shows a great advance in technique as in other ways. Notice how skillfully the dramatist makes the different characters all influence each other's lives, so that the interest in one becomes the interest in all. There is one story in the relations of Shylock and Antonio, another in the love affair of Lorenzo and Jessica, and a third in Ba.s.sanio's courts.h.i.+p of Portia. There is also a fourth, a sequel to Ba.s.sanio's courts.h.i.+p, in the trick which his wife plays on him with regard to the rings after they are married. Yet we never feel an unpleasant interruption when we are stopped in one story and started in one of the others, because the interest of the first lives on in the second, {97} owing to the interrelation of the people taking part in both. We leave Shylock's story to take up Jessica's, but Jessica is Shylock's child, and our interest in the fate of his ducats and his daughter, which began in his story, goes on in hers. We leave Antonio's story to take up Ba.s.sanio's; but Antonio's story was that of sacrifice for a friend, and in Ba.s.sanio's we see the fruit of that sacrifice in his friend's joy.

Moreover, all four of the above threads of action are knotted together in one scene where Ba.s.sanio chooses the right casket. Of the swift succession of exciting scenes of the natural way in which these lead up to the final end, of the lifelike truthfulness with which each little event is made to work itself out, there is no need to speak here.

Though Shakespeare was not a third through his literary career when he wrote _The Merchant of Venice_, he had by this time mastered the technique of comedy; and we need trace his course in it no farther.

_Much Ado_ and _Twelfth Night_ somewhat later, and _The Tempest_ long years after, are simply repet.i.tions so far as technique is concerned, of this early triumph. Let us turn now from comedy to those plays which deal with the sterner side of life. Here the development in technical skill is similar, but much slower, requiring nearly a lifetime before it reaches perfection, for the poet is grappling with a problem so difficult that it taxed all the resources of his great genius.

Before 1599 nearly all Shakespeare's plays which were not comedies were histories. By a history or chronicle play we mean a play which pictures some epoch in the past of the English nation. In one sense {98} of the word, most of them are tragedies, since they frequently result in death and disaster; but they are always separated as a cla.s.s from tragedy proper, because they represent some great event in English national life centering around some king or leader; while tragedy proper deals with the misfortunes of some one man in any country, and regards him as an individual rather than as a national figure. They differ also in purpose, since the chronicle play was intended to appeal to Anglo-Saxon patriotism, the tragedy to our sympathy with human suffering in general.

The first and crudest of Shakespeare's histories written at about the same time as his first comedy is the triple play of _Henry VI_.[1] We should hesitate to judge him by this, since he wrote it only in part; but it is a woefully rambling production in which we no sooner become interested in one character than we lose him, and are asked to transfer our sympathies to another. _Richard III_ is a great step forward in this respect; for the excitement and interest focuses uninterruptedly on the one central figure; and his influence on other men and theirs on him bind all the events of the drama into one coherent whole. Also, it moves straight on to a definite end which we know and wish and are prepared for beforehand. We feel, even in the midst of his success, that such a b.l.o.o.d.y tyrant cannot be tolerated forever; and like men in a tiger hunt we thrill beforehand at the dramatic catastrophe which we know is coming. _Richard III_, though, a powerful play, is {99} still crude in many details. The scenes where Margaret curses her enemies, though strong as poetry, lack action as drama. In a wholly different way, they clog the onward movement of the story almost as much as some scenes in _Love's Labour's Lost_. Then again, one of the most important requirements for good technique is that everything shall be true to life. When Anne, for the sake of a little bare-faced flattery, marries a man whom she loathes, we feel that no real woman would have done this. From that moment Anne becomes a mere paper automaton to us, and we can no longer be interested in her as we would in a living woman. The motivation, as it is called, the art of showing adequately why every person should act as he or she does, is sadly lacking.

Moving onward a few years, we find marked improvement in _I Henry IV_.

It is indeed not technically perfect,--in fact, Shakespeare in the chronicle play never attained what seems to modern students technical perfection,--but its minor defects are thrown into shadow by its splendid virtues. The three stories of Hotspur, the King, and the Falstaff group, though partially united by their common connection with Prince Hal, do not blend together as perfectly as the different plots in _The Merchant of Venice_, and there is some truth in the idea that the play has four heroes instead of one. But in spite of this, its general impression as a great panorama of English life is remarkably clear and delightful; and it improves on _Richard III_ in its swift succession of incident, and vastly surpa.s.ses it in the lifelike truth of its motivation.

In the middle of his career Shakespeare dropped {100} the chronicle play, and instead began the writing of tragedies proper. He carried into this, however, the lessons learned from his experience with histories, and continued to improve. _Julius Caesar_ marks the transition from chronicle play to tragedy. The lack of close connection between the third and fourth acts and the absence of one central hero are characteristic defects of the chronicle play which the dramatist had not yet outgrown. _Hamlet_, coming next, has shaken off all the lingering relics of the older type. Of its general excellence there is no need to speak. Yet even in _Hamlet_ the action at times halts and becomes disjointed. _Caesar_ and _Hamlet_ are great plays, the latter, perhaps, the greatest of all plays; but, transfigured as they are by genius, they show that in the difficult problem of tragic technique the author was learning still. At the age of forty, approximately, and a year or two after _Hamlet_, Shakespeare produced _Oth.e.l.lo_, the most perfect, although not necessarily the greatest, of all his great tragedies. It is less profoundly reflective than _Hamlet_ and less pa.s.sionately imaginative than _King Lear_ or _Macbeth_; but no other of his masterpieces shows such perfect balance of taste and judgment, or is so free from any jarring note. Hence, through the histories and tragedies taken together, we see the same growth in technical skill which we have already found in his comedies, save that it took longer here because the poet was working in a more difficult field. It would not be true to say that each play up to _Oth.e.l.lo_ is superior to its immediate predecessor in technique, still less that it is so in absolute merit; but the general upward tendency is there.

{101}

+The Four Periods+.--Such was Shakespeare's development in meter, in taste, in conception of character, and in dramatic technique. In line with this development, it has been customary to divide his literary career into four periods and his plays into four corresponding groups.

These groups or periods are characterized partly by their different degrees of maturity, but more by the difference in the character of the plays during these intervals.

The First Period includes all plays which there is good reason for dating before 1595. In this the great dramatist was serving his literary apprentices.h.i.+p, learning the difficult art of play writing, and learning it by experiments and mistakes. In the course of his experiments, he tried many different types, tragedies, histories, comedies, and rewrote old plays either alone or with a more experienced playwright to help him. Nearly all of this work is full of promise; most of it is also full of faults. Here belong the early comedies mentioned above--_Love's Labour's Lost_ and _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_. Here is the crude but powerful _Richard III_, and _Romeo and Juliet_, the early faults of which are redeemed by such a wealth of youthful poetic fire.

The Second Period extends roughly from 1595 to 1600. The poet has learned his profession now, is no longer a beginner but a master, though hardly yet at the summit of his powers. Here are included three chronicle plays, the two parts of _King Henry IV_ and _King Henry V_, and six comedies. One of the earliest of these comedies was _The Merchant of Venice_, already mentioned. Three others, a little later,--_Much Ado, Twelfth {102} Night_, and _As You Like It_,--are usually regarded as Shakespeare's crowning achievement in the world of mirth and humor. In this group of plays, whether history or comedy, the author is depicting chiefly the cheerful, energetic side of life.

The Third Period really begins about 1599, for this and the second overlap; and it continues to about 1608. In the plays of this group the poet becomes interested in a wholly new set of themes. The aspects of life which he interprets are no longer bright and cheerful, but stern and sad. Here come the great tragedies, several of which we have mentioned above--_Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Oth.e.l.lo, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra_. Shakespeare is now at the height of his power, for his greatest masterpieces are included in the above list. Mixed in with this wealth of splendid tragedy (though inferior to it in merit), there are also three comedies. But even the comedies share in the somber gloom which absorbed the poet's attention during this period.

The comedies before 1600 had been full of suns.h.i.+ne, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with kindly, good-natured mirth, overflowing with the genial laughter which makes us love the very men at whom we are laughing. But the three comedies of this Third Period are bitter and sarcastic in their wit, making us despise the people who furnish us fun, and leaving an unpleasant taste in the mouth after the laugh is over. Some have a.s.sumed that the dark tinge of this period was due to an unknown sorrow in the poet's own life, but there seems to be no need of any such a.s.sumption. We may become interested in reading cheerful books one year and sad ones the next without being more cheerful or {103} more sad in one year than in the other; and what is true of the reader might reasonably be true of the writer. But whatever the cause which influenced Shakespeare, the tragedies of this group are the saddest as well as the greatest of all his plays.

The Fourth and last Period contains plays written after 1608-1609.

There are only five of these, and since _Pericles_ and _Henry VII_ are in large part by other hands, our interest focuses chiefly on the remaining three--_The Tempest, Cymbeline_, and _The Winter's Tale_.

All the plays of this period end happily and are wholly free from the bitterness of the Third Period comedy. Nevertheless, they have little of the rollicking, uproarious fun of the earlier comedies. Their charm lies rather in a subdued cheerfulness, a quiet, pure, sympathetic serenity of tone, less strenuous, but even more poetic, than what had gone before. In some ways they are hardly equal to the great tragedies just mentioned, for the poet is growing older now, and the fiery vigor of _Macbeth_ is fading out of his verse. But in loftiness of thought and tenderness of feeling these later romances are equal to anything that the author ever gave us.

Whether other causes influenced him or not, Shakespeare was doubtless in these four periods conforming to some extent to the literary tendencies of the hour. The writings of his contemporaries also show a larger percentage of comedies between 1595-1600 than between 1590-1595.

Many other dramatists, too, were writing histories while he was, and dropped them at about the same time. Likewise during his Fourth Period three-quarters of all the plays written by other men were comedies, the most successful of them in a similar {104} romantic tone. On the whole, too, other writers produced a rather larger percentage of tragedies during 1601-1607 than at any other time while Shakespeare was writing, although the change was not nearly as marked in them as in him. But whether the influence of contemporaries was great or small, these periods exist; and the individual plays can be better understood if read in the light of the groups to which they belong.

Perhaps the best book on Shakespeare's development as a dramatist is: _The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist_ by G. P. Baker (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1907).

[1] These plays are throughout designated as _I_, _II_, and _III_ Henry VI.

{105}

CHAPTER VIII

THE CHIEF SOURCES OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS

+Shakespeare and Plagiarism+.--Among the curious alterations in public sentiment that have come in the last century or two, none is more striking than the change of att.i.tude in regard to what is called "plagiarism." Plagiarism may be defined as the appropriation for one's own use of the literary ideas of another. The laws of patent and of copyright have led us into thinking that the ideas of a play must not be borrowed in any degree, but must originate in every detail with the writer. This is as if we should say to an inventor, "Yes, you may have invented a safety trigger for revolvers, but you must not apply it to revolvers until you have invented a completely new type of revolver from the original matchlock."