Oxford Lectures on Poetry Part 23

[18] Mr. Beeching's ill.u.s.tration of the friends.h.i.+p of the sonnets from the friends.h.i.+p of Gray and Bonstetten is worth pages of argument.

[19] In 125 the poet repudiates the accusation that his friends.h.i.+p is too much based on beauty.

[20] This does not imply that the Sonnets are as early as the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, and much less that they are earlier.

[21] This seems to be referred to in lines by John Davies of Hereford, reprinted in Ingleby's _Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse_, second edition, pp. 58, 84, 94. In the first of these pa.s.sages, dated 1603 (and perhaps in the second, 1609), there are signs that Davies had read Sonnet 111, a fact to be noted with regard to the question of the chronology of the Sonnets.

[22] 'Mistress Tearsheet' too 'would fain hear some music,' and 'Sneak's noise' had to be sent for (2 _Henry IV._, II. iv. 12).

[23] It is tempting, though not safe, to infer from the _Tempest_ and the great pa.s.sage in _Pericles_ that Shakespeare must have been in a storm at sea; but that he felt the poetry of a sea-storm is beyond all doubt. Few moments in the reading of his works are more overwhelming than that in which, after listening not without difficulty to the writer of the first two Acts of _Pericles_, suddenly, as the third opens, one hears the authentic voice:

Thou G.o.d of this great vast, rebuke these surges That wash both heaven and h.e.l.l.... The seaman's whistle Is as a whisper in the ears of death, Unheard.

Knowing that this is coming, I cannot stop to read the Prologue to Act III., though I believe Shakespeare wrote it. How it can be imagined that he did more than touch up Acts I. and II. pa.s.ses my comprehension.

I may call attention to another point. Unless I mistake, there is nothing in Shakespeare's authorities, as known to us, which corresponds with the feeling of Timon's last speech, beginning,

Come not to me again: but say to Athens, Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Upon the beached verge of the salt flood:

a feeling made more explicit in the final speech of Alcibiades.

[24] The lily seems to be in almost all cases the Madonna lily. It is very doubtful whether the lily of the valley is referred to at all.

[25] But there is something disappointing, and even estranging, in Sonnet 50, which, promising to show a real sympathy, cheats us in the end. I may observe, without implying that the fact has any personal significance, that the words about 'the poor beetle that we tread upon' are given to a woman (Isabella), and that it is Marina who says:

I trod upon a worm against my will, But I wept for it.

[26] Three times in one drama Shakespeare refers to this detestable trait. See _Shakespearean Tragedy_, p. 268, where I should like to qualify still further the sentence containing the qualification 'on the whole.' Good judges, at least, a.s.sure me that I have admitted too much against the dog.

[27] Nor can I recall any sign of liking, or even approval, of that 'prudent, _cautious_, self-control' which, according to a pa.s.sage in Burns, is 'wisdom's root.'

[28] The _locus cla.s.sicus_, of course, is _Troilus and Cressida_, I.

iii. 75 ff.

[29] Of all the evils inflicted by man on man those chosen for mention in the dirge in _Cymbeline_, one of the last plays, are the frown o' the great, the tyrant's stroke, slander, censure rash.

[30] Having written these paragraphs, I should like to disclaim the belief that Shakespeare was habitually deeply discontented with his position in life.

[31] Allusions to puritans show at most what we take almost for granted, that he did not like precisians or people hostile to the stage.

[32] In the Sonnets, for example, there is an almost entire absence of definitely religious thought or feeling. The nearest approach to it is in Sonnet 146 ('Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth'), where, however, there is no allusion to a divine law or judge.

According to Sonnet 129, l.u.s.t in action is

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame;

but no word shows that it is also felt as alienation from G.o.d. It must be added that in 108 and 110 there are references to the Lord's Prayer and, perhaps, to the First Commandment, from which a decidedly religious Christian would perhaps have shrunk. Of course I am not saying that we can draw any _necessary_ inference from these facts.

[33] It is only this 'quiet but deep sense' that is significant. No inference can be drawn from the fact that the mere belief in powers above seems to be taken as a matter of course in practically all the characters, good and bad alike. On the other hand there may well be something symptomatic in the apparent absence of interest in theoretical disbelief in such powers and in the immortality of the soul. I have observed elsewhere that the atheism of Aaron does not increase the probability that the conception of the character is Shakespeare's.

[34] With the first compare, what to me has, though more faintly, the same ring, Hermione's

If powers divine Behold our human actions, as they do:

with the second, Helena's

It is not so with Him that all things knows As 'tis with us that square our guess by shows; But most it is presumption in us when The help of heaven we count the act of men:

followed soon after by Lafeu's remark:

They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless.

Hence it is that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.

[35] It is worth noting that the reference, which appears in the First Quarto version of 'To be or not to be,' to 'an everlasting judge,' disappears in the revised versions.

[36] The suggested inference, of course, is that this speech, thus out of character, and Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' (though that is in character), show us Shakespeare's own mind. It has force, I think, but not compulsory force. The topics of these speeches are, in the old sense of the word, commonplaces. Shakespeare may have felt, Here is my chance to show what I can do with certain feelings and thoughts of supreme interest to men of all times and places and modes of belief. It would not follow from this that they are not 'personal,'

but any inference to a non-acceptance of received religious ideas would be much weakened. ('All the world's a stage' is a patent example of the suggested elaboration of a commonplace.)

[37] What actions in particular _his_ conscience approved and disapproved is another question and one not relevant here.

[38] This does not at all imply to Shakespeare, so far as we see, that evil is never to be forcibly resisted.

[39] I do not mean to reject the idea that in some pa.s.sages in the _Tempest_ Shakespeare, while he wrote them with a dramatic purpose, also thought of himself. It seems to me likely. And if so, there _may_ have been such a thought in the words,

And thence retire me to my Milan, where Every third thought shall be my grave;

and also in those lines about prayer and pardon which close the Epilogue, and to my ear come with a sudden effect of great seriousness, contrasting most strangely with their context. If they _had_ a grave and personal under-meaning it cannot have been intended for the audience, which would take the prayer as addressed to itself.

[40] It may be added that _As You Like It_, though idyllic, is not so falsely idyllic as some critics would make it. It is based, we may roughly say, on a contrast between court and country; but those who inhale virtue from the woodland are courtiers who bring virtue with them, and the country has its churlish masters and unkind or uncouth maidens.

[41] This has been strongly urged and fully ill.u.s.trated by Mr.

Harris.

[42] It may be suggested that, in the catalogue above, I should have mentioned that imaginative 'unreality' in love referred to on p. 326.

But I do not see in Hamlet either this, or any sign that he took Ophelia for an Imogen or even a Juliet, though naturally he was less clearly aware of her deficiencies than Shakespeare.

I may add, however, another item to the catalogue. We do not feel that the problems presented to most of the tragic heroes could have been fatal to Shakespeare himself. The immense breadth and clearness of his intellect would have saved him from the fate of Oth.e.l.lo, Troilus, or Antony. But we do feel, I think, and he himself may have felt, that he could not have coped with Hamlet's problem; and there is no improbability in the idea that he may have experienced in some degree the melancholia of his hero.

SHAKESPEARE'S THEATRE AND AUDIENCE.

SHAKESPEARE'S THEATRE AND AUDIENCE.

Why should we concern ourselves with Shakespeare's theatre and audience?

The vast majority of his readers since the Restoration have known nothing about them, and have enjoyed his plays enormously. And if they have enjoyed without fully understanding, it was for want of imagination and of knowledge of human nature, and not from ignorance of the conditions under which his plays were produced. At any rate, such ignorance does not exclude us from the _soul_ of Shakespearean drama, any more than from the soul of Homeric epic or Athenian tragedy; and it is the soul that counts and endures. For the rest, we all know that Shakespeare's time was rough, indecorous, and inexpert in regard to machinery; and so we are prepared for coa.r.s.e speech and primitive stage-arrangements, and we make allowance for them without thinking about the matter. Antiquarians may naturally wish to know more; but what more is needed for intelligent enjoyment of the plays?