The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume III Part 2

The author of "Romeo and Juliet" never wrote that.

It seems certain that the author of the wondrous Plays was one of the n.o.blest of men.

Let us see what sense of honor Bacon had.

In writing commentaries on certain pa.s.sages of Scripture, Lord Bacon tells a courtier, who has committed some offence, how to get back into the graces of his prince or king. Among other things he tells him not to appear too cheerful, but to a.s.sume a very grave and modest face; not to bring the matter up himself; to be extremely industrious, so that the prince will see that it is hard to get along without him; also to get his friends to tell the prince or king how badly he, the courtier, feels; and then he says, all these failing, "let him contrive to transfer the fault to others."

It is true that we know but little of Shakespeare, and consequently do not positively know that he did not have the ability to write the Plays--but we do know Bacon, and we know that he could not have written these Plays--consequently, they must have been written by a comparatively unknown man--that is to say, by a man who was known by no other writings. The fact that we do not know Shakespeare, except through the Plays and Sonnets, makes it possible for us to believe that he was the author.

Some people have imagined that the Plays were written by several--but this only increases the wonder, and adds a useless burden to credulity.

Bacon published in his time all the writings that he claimed. Naturally, he would have claimed his best. Is it possible that Bacon left the wondrous children of his brain on the door-step of Shakespeare, and kept the deformed ones at home? Is it possible that he fathered the failures and deserted the perfect?

Of course, it is wonderful that so little has been found touching Shakespeare--but is it not equally wonderful, if Bacon was the author, that not a line has been found in all his papers, containing a suggestion, or a hint, that he was the writer of these Plays? Is it not wonderful that no fragment of any scene--no line--no word--has been found?

Some have insisted that Bacon kept the authors.h.i.+p secret because it was disgraceful to write Plays. This argument does not cover the Sonnets--and besides, one who had been stripped of the robes of office for receiving bribes as a judge, could have borne the additional disgrace of having written "Hamlet." The fact that Bacon did not claim to be the author, demonstrates that he was not. Shakespeare claimed to be the author, and no one in his time or day denied the claim. This demonstrates that he was.

Bacon published his works, and said to the world: This is what I have done.

Suppose you found in a cemetery a monument erected to John Smith, inventor of the Smith-churn, and suppose you were told that Mr.

Smith provided for the monument in his will, and dictated the inscription--would it be possible to convince you that Mr. Smith was also the inventor of the locomotive and telegraph?

Bacon's best can be compared with Shakespeare's common, but Shakespeare's best rises above Bacon's best, like a domed temple above a beggar's hut.

VI.

OF course it is admitted that there were many dramatists before and during the time of Shakespeare--but they were only the foot hills of that mighty peak the top of which the clouds and mists still hide.

Chapman and Marlowe, Heywood and Jonson, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher wrote some great lines, and in the monotony of declamation now and then is found a strain of genuine music--but all of them together const.i.tuted only a herald of Shakespeare. In all these Plays there is but a hint, a prophecy, of the great drama destined to revolutionize the poetic thought of the world.

Shakespeare was the greatest of poets. What Greece and Rome produced was great until his time. "Lions make leopards tame."

The great poet is a great artist. He is painter and sculptor. The greatest pictures and statues have been painted and chiseled with words.

They outlast all others. All the galleries of the world are poor and cheap compared with the statues and pictures in Shakespeare's book.

Language is made of pictures represented by sounds. The outer world is a dictionary of the mind, and the artist called the soul uses this dictionary of things to express what happens in the noiseless and invisible world of thought. First a sound represents something in the outer world, and afterwards something in the inner, and this sound at last is represented by a mark, and this mark stands for a picture, and every brain is a gallery, and the artists--that is to say, the souls--exchange pictures and statues.

All art is of the same parentage. The poet uses words--makes pictures and statues of sounds. The sculptor expresses harmony, proportion, pa.s.sion, in marble; the composer, in music; the painter in form and color. The dramatist expresses himself not only in words, not only paints these pictures, but he expresses his thought in action.

Shakespeare was not only a poet, but a dramatist, and expressed the ideal, the poetic, not only in words, but in action. There are the wit, the humor, the pathos, the tragedy of situation, of relation. The dramatist speaks and acts through others--his personality is lost.

The poet lives in the world of thought and feeling, and to this the dramatist adds the world of action. He creates characters that seem to act in accordance with their own natures and independently of him. He compresses lives into hours, tells us the secrets of the heart, shows us the springs of action--how desire bribes the judgment and corrupts the will--how weak the reason is when pa.s.sion pleads, and how grand it is to stand for right against the world.

It is not enough to say fine things,--great things, dramatic things, must be done.

Let me give you an ill.u.s.tration of dramatic incident accompanying the highest form of poetic expression:

Macbeth having returned from the murder of Duncan says to his wife:

"Methought I heard a voice cry: Sleep no more, Macbeth does murder sleep; the innocent sleep; Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast."...

"Still it cried: Sleep no more, to all the house, Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more--Macbeth shall sleep no more."

She exclaims:

"Who was it that thus cried?

Why, worthy Thane, you do unbend your n.o.ble strength To think so brain-sickly of things; get some water, And wash this filthy witness from your hand.

Why did you bring the daggers from the place?"

Macbeth was so overcome with horror at his own deed, that he not only mistook his thoughts for the words of others, but was so carried away and beyond himself that he brought with him the daggers--the evidence of his guilt--the daggers that he should have left with the dead. This is dramatic.

In the same play, the difference of feeling before and after the commission of a crime is ill.u.s.trated to perfection. When Macbeth is on his way to a.s.sa.s.sinate the king, the bell strikes, and he says, or whispers:

"Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell."

Afterward, when the deed has been committed, and a knocking is heard at the gate, he cries:

"Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst."

Let me give one more instance of dramatic action. When Antony speaks above the body of Caesar he says:

"You all do know this mantle: I remember The first time ever Caesar put it on-- 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent, That day he overcame the Nervii: Look! In this place ran Ca.s.sius' dagger through: See what a rent the envious Casca made!

Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed, And as he plucked his cursed steel away, Mark how the blood of Caesar followed it."

VII.

THERE are men, and many of them, who are always trying to show that somebody else chiseled the statue or painted the picture,--that the poem is attributed to the wrong man, and that the battle was really won by a subordinate.

Of course Shakespeare made use of the work of others--and, we might almost say, of all others. Every writer must use the work of others.

The only question is, how the accomplishments of other minds are used, whether as a foundation to build higher, or whether stolen to the end that the thief may make a reputation for himself, without adding to the great structure of literature.

Thousands of people have stolen stones from the Coliseum to make huts for themselves. So thousands of writers have taken the thoughts of others with which to adorn themselves. These are plagiarists. But the man who takes the thought of another, adds to it, gives it intensity and poetic form, throb and life,--is in the highest sense original.

Shakespeare found nearly all of his facts in the writings of others, and was indebted to others for most of the stories of his plays. The question is not: Who furnished the stone, or who owned the quarry, but who chiseled the statue?

We now know all the books that Shakespeare could have read, and consequently know many of the sources of his information. We find in Pliny's _Natural History_, published in 1601, the following: "The sea Pontis evermore floweth and runneth out into the Propontis; but the sea never retireth back again with the Impontis." This was the raw material, and out of it Shakespeare made the following:

"Like to the Pontic Sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on To the Propontic and the h.e.l.lespont-- Even so my b.l.o.o.d.y thoughts, with violent pace, Shall ne'er turn back, ne'er ebb to humble love, Till that a capable and wide revenge Swallow them up."

Perhaps we can give an idea of the difference between Shakespeare and other poets, by a pa.s.sage from "Lear." When Cordelia places her hand upon her father's head and speaks of the night and of the storm, an ordinary poet might have said:

"On such a night, a dog Should have stood against my fire."

A very great poet might have gone a step further and exclaimed:

"On such a night, mine enemy's dog Should have stood against my fire."

But Shakespeare said:

"Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me, Should have stood, that night, against my fire."