Montaigne and Shakspere Part 10

p. 222.

[111] The most elaborate and energetic attempt to prove Shakspere cla.s.sically learned is that made in the _Crit.i.tal Observations on Shakspere_ (1746) of the Rev. John Upton, a man of great erudition and much random acuteness (shown particularly in bold attempts to excise interpolations from the Gospels), but as devoid of the higher critical wisdom as was Bentley, whom he congenially criticised. To a reader of to-day, his arguments from Shakspere's diction and syntax are peculiarly unconvincing.

[112] It may not be out of place here to say a word for Farmer in pa.s.sing, as against the strictures of M. Stapfer, who, after recognising the general pertinence of his remarks, proceeds to say (_Shakspere and Cla.s.sical Antiquity_, Eng. trans, p. 83) that Farmer "fell into the egregious folly of speaking in a strain of impertinent conceit: it is as if the little man for little he must a.s.suredly have been--was eaten up with vanity." This is in its way as unjust as the abuse of Knight. M. Stapfer has misunderstood Farmer's tone, which is one of banter against, not Shakspere, but those critics who blunderingly ascribed to him a wide and close knowledge of the cla.s.sics. Towards Shakspere, Farmer was admiringly appreciative--and in the preface to the second edition of his essay he wrote: "Shakspere wanted not the stilts of languages to raise him above all other men."

[113] Ch. iv, of vol. cited.

[114] _The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy_, pp.

66-67.

[115] _Hercules Furens_, ad fin. (1324-1329.).

[116] _Hippolytus_, Act. II, 715-718 (723-726.)

[117] _Choephori_, 63-65.

[118] Carm. lx.x.xviii, _In Gellium_. See the note in Doering's edition.

[119] _Gerusalemme_, xviii, 8.

[120] _The Insatiate Countess_, published in 1613.

[121] _Hamlet_, Act iv, sc. 3.

[122] _Agamemnon_, 152-153.

[123] ii, 3 (near beginning.)

[124] _Hercules Furens_, Act. V. 1261-2.

[125] Act iv, Sc. 3.

[126] _Hercules Furens_, 1258-61.

[127] _Macbeth_, Act v, Sc. 2.

[128] _Ibid._ Act iv, Sc. 2.

[129] _Ibid._ Act i, sc. 7.

[130] B. ii, ch. 10.

[131] Tschischwitz, _Shakspere-Forschungen_, i. 1868, S. 52.

[132] "Es ist ubrigens nicht zu bedauern da.s.s Shakspere Brunos Komodie nicht durchweg zum Muster genommen, den sie enthalt so ma.s.slose Obsconitaten, da.s.s Shakspere an seinen starksten Stellen daneben fast jungfraulich erscheint" (Work cited, S. 52).

[133] Work cited, S. 57. I follow Dr. Tschischwitz's translation, so far as syntax permits.

[134] Act i, Sc. 4.

[135] Work cited, Sc. 59.

[136] See Frith's _Life of Giordano Bruno_, 1889, pp.

121-128.

[137] Act v. Sc. 1.

[138] Cited by Noack, art. _Bruno_, in _Philosophie-geschichtliches Lexikon_.

[139] Act i, Sc. 2.

[140] Work cited, p. 90.

[141] It would be unjust to omit to acknowledge that Dr.

Furnivall seeks to frame an inductive notion of Shakspere, even when rejecting good evidence and proceeding on deductive lines; that in the works of Professor Dowden on Shakspere there is always an effort towards a judicial method, though he refuses to take some of the most necessary steps; and that the work of Mr. Appleton Morgan, President of the New York Shakspere Society, ent.i.tled _Shakspere in Fact and Criticism_ (New York, 1888), is certainly not open to the criticism I have pa.s.sed. Mr. Morgan's essentially rationalistic att.i.tude is indicated in a sentence of his preface: "My own idea has been that William Shakspere was a man of like pa.s.sions with ourselves, whose moods and veins were influenced, just as are ours, by his surroundings, employments, vocations ... and that, great as he was, and oceanic as was his genius, we can read him all the better because he was, after all, a man...." In recognising the good sense of Mr. Morgan's general att.i.tude, I must not be understood to endorse his rejection of the "metrical tests"

of Mr. Fleay and other English critics. These seem to me to be about the most important English contribution to the scientific comprehension of Shakspere. On the other hand, it may be said that the naturalistic conception of Shakspere as an organism in an environment was first closely approached in the present century by French critics, as Guizot and Chasles (Taine's picture of the Elizabethan theatre, adopted by Green, having been founded on a study by Chasles); that the naturalistic comprehension of _Hamlet_, as an incoherent whole resulting from the putting of new cloth into an old garment, was first reached by the German Rumelin (_Shakspere Studien_); and that the structural anomalies of _Hamlet_ as an acting play were first clearly put by the German Benedix (_Die Shakspereomanie_) these two critics thus making amends for much vain discussion of _Hamlet_ by their countrymen before and since; while the naturalistic conception of the man Shakspere is being best developed at present in America.

The admirable work of Messrs. Clarke and Wright and Fleay in the a.n.a.lysis of the text and the revelation of its non-Shaksperean elements, seems to make little impression on English culture; while such a luminous manual as Mr. Barrett Wendell's _William Shakspere: a Study in Elizabethan Literature_ (New York, 1894), with its freshness of outlook and appreciation, points to decided progress in rational Shakspere-study in the States, though, like the _Shakspere Primer_ of Professor Dowden, it is not consistently scientific throughout.

[142] _Life of Shakspere_, 1886, p. 128.

[143] See Mr. Appleton Morgan's _Shakspere's Venus and Adonis: a Study in Warwicks.h.i.+re Dialect_.

[144] Professor Dowden notes in his _Shakspere Primer_ (p.

12) that before 1600 the prices paid for plays, by Henslowe, the theatrical lessee, vary from 4 to 8, and not till later did it rise as high as 20 for a play by a popular dramatist.

[145] Compare the 78th Sonnet, which ends;--

But thou art all my art, and dost advance As high as learning my rude ignorance.

[146] _Life of Shakspere_, pp. 29, 128.

[147] See it in his _Life of Shakspere_, pp. 120-124. Mr.

Fleay's theory, though perhaps the best "doc.u.mented" of all, has received little attention in comparison with Mr.

Tyler's, which has the attraction of fuller detail.

[148] Only in Chaucer (_e.g._, _The Book of the d.u.c.h.ess_) do we find before his time the successful expression of the same perception; and Chaucer counted for almost nothing in Elizabethan letters.

[149] See Fleay's _Life of Shakspere_, pp. 130-1.

[150] Cp. the _Essays_, ii, 17: iii, 2. (Edit. cited, vol.

ii, pp. 40, 231.)

[151] _Essays_, i, 25; _cf._ i, 48. (Edit. cited, vol. i, pp. 304, 429.)

[152] ii, 4. (Edit. cited, i, 380.)

[153] ii, 10. (Edit. cited, i, 429.)

[154] _Pensees Diverses._ Less satisfying is the further _pensee_ in the same collection:--"Les quatre grand poetes, Platon, _Malebranche_, _Shaftesbury_, Montaigne."