The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume III Part 3

Of all the poets--of all the writers--Shakespeare is the most original.

He is as original as Nature.

It may truthfully be said that "Nature wants stuff to vie strange forms with fancy, to make another."

VIII.

THERE is in the greatest poetry a kind of extravagance that touches the infinite, and in this Shakespeare exceeds all others.

You will remember the description given of the voyage of Paris in search of Helen:

"The seas and winds, old wranglers, made a truce, And did him service; he touched the ports desired, And for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive, He brought a Grecian queen whose youth and freshness Wrinkles Apollo, and makes stale the morning."

So, in Pericles, when the father finds his daughter, he cries out:

"O Helica.n.u.s! strike me, honored sir; Give me a gash, put me to present pain, Lest this great sea of joys, rus.h.i.+ng upon me, O'erbear the sh.o.r.es of my mortality."

The greatest compliment that man has ever paid to the woman he adores is this line:

"Eyes that do mislead the morn."

Nothing can be conceived more perfectly poetic. In that marvelous play, the "Midsummer Night's Dream," is one of the most extravagant things in literature:

"Thou rememberest Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath That the rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid's music."

This is so marvelously told that it almost seems probable.

So the description of Mark Antony:

"For his bounty There was no winter in't--an autumn t'was That grew the more by reaping.

His delights Were dolphin-like--they showed his back above The element they lived in."

Think of the astronomical scope and amplitude of this:

"Her bed is India--there she lies a pearl."

Is there anything more intense than these words of Cleopatra?

"Rather on Nilus mud lay me stark naked And let the water-flies blow me into abhorring."

Or this of Isabella:

"The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies, And strip myself to death as to a bed That longing I've been sick for, ere I yield My body up to shame."

Is there an intellectual man in the world who will not agree with this?

"Let me not live After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff Of younger spirits."

Can anything exceed the words of Troilus when parting with Cressida:

"We two, that with so many thousand sighs Did buy each other, most poorly sell ourselves With the rude brevity and discharge of one.

Injurious time now with a robber's haste Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how; As many farewells as be stars in heaven, With distinct breath and consigned kisses to them, He fumbles up into a loos'e adieu, And scants us with a single famished kiss, Distasted with the salt of broken tears."

Take this example, where pathos almost touches the grotesque.

"O dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair?

Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous, And that the lean, abhorred monster keeps thee here.

I' the dark, to be his paramour?"

Often when reading the marvelous lines of Shakespeare, I feel that his thoughts are "too subtle potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness, for the capacity of my ruder powers." Sometimes I cry out, "O churl!--write all, and leave no thoughts for those who follow after."

IX.

SHAKESPEARE was an innovator, an iconoclast. He cared nothing for the authority of men or of schools. He violated the "unities," and cared nothing for the models of the ancient world.

The Greeks insisted that nothing should be in a play that did not tend to the catastrophe. They did not believe in the episode--in the sudden contrasts of light and shade--in mingling the comic and the tragic.

The sunlight never fell upon their tears, and darkness did not overtake their laughter. They believed that nature sympathized or was in harmony with the events of the play. When crime was about to be committed--some horror to be perpetrated--the light grew dim, the wind sighed, the trees s.h.i.+vered, and upon all was the shadow of the coming event.

Shakespeare knew that the play had little to do with the tides and currents of universal life--that Nature cares neither for smiles nor tears, for life nor death, and that the sun s.h.i.+nes as gladly on coffins as on cradles.

The first time I visited the Place de la Concorde, where during the French Revolution stood the guillotine, and where now stands an Egyptian obelisk--a bird, sitting on the top, was singing with all its might.--Nature forgets.

One of the most notable instances of the violation by Shakespeare of the cla.s.sic model, is found in the 6th scene of the I. Act of Macbeth.

When the King and Banquo approach the castle in which the King is to be murdered that night, no shadow falls athwart the threshold. So beautiful is the scene that the King says:

"This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses."

And Banquo adds:

"This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here; no jutty, frieze, b.u.t.tress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle.

Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed The air is delicate."

Another notable instance is the porter scene immediately following the murder. So, too, the dialogue with the clown who brings the asp to Cleopatra just before the suicide, ill.u.s.trates my meaning.

I know of one paragraph in the Greek drama worthy of Shakespeare. This is in "Medea." When Medea kills her children she curses Jason, using the ordinary Billingsgate and papal curse, but at the conclusion says: "I pray the G.o.ds to make him virtuous, that he may the more deeply feel the pang that I inflict."

Shakespeare dealt in lights and shadows. He was intense. He put noons and midnights side by side. No other dramatist would have dreamed of adding to the pathos--of increasing our appreciation of Lear's agony, by supplementing the wail of the mad king with the mocking laughter of a loving clown.

X.

THE ordinary dramatists--the men of talent--(and there is the same difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone-mason and a sculptor) create characters that become types. Types are of necessity caricatures--actual men and women are to some extent contradictory in their actions. Types are blown in the one direction by the one wind--characters have pilots.

In real people, good and evil mingle. Types are all one way, or all the other--all good, or all bad, all wise, or all foolish.

Pecksniff was a perfect type, a perfect hypocrite--and will remain a type as long as language lives--a hypocrite that even drunkenness could not change. Everybody understands Pecksniff, and compared with him Tartuffe was an honest man.

Hamlet is an individual, a person, an actual being--and for that reason there is a difference of opinion as to his motives and as to his character. We differ about Hamlet as we do about Caesar, or about Shakespeare himself.