But it is rarely absent from his pages for long; while the live being, by a whim of the Muse, becomes a doll once more, and moves its creaking limbs by jerks, life reappears elsewhere, around it, above, below for this marvellous gift of Shakespeare's is with him of universal application. His dramas being, by the absence of rules, open to all humanity, every sample of the human race figures in them, all equally living. He succeeds as perfectly in depicting Hotspur who is all action, as Hamlet who is all dreams, Lady Macbeth who is but ambition, and Imogen who is but gentleness, Falstaff the "fat-witted" knight, and Jaques the pale dreamer. If he introduces a dog into his play, that dog will have life and individuality, will be one dog in particular and no other, will have a disposition and manners quite as personal as Brutus, Hotspur, or Macbeth. The poet's thoughts roam the world; he sees, divines, or imagines life everywhere, in plants, in the clouds, at the bottom of the sea; * he notices the martlets' "pendent beds," built in the battlements of Inverness; he listens to the "drowsy hums" of the "shard-borne beetle" at nightfall; he whispers a tale: "yond' crickets shall not hear it;" a he has seen the little fairies of the shore pace "the sands with printless foot," and the little fairies of the glade model mushrooms at midnight; 3 he stops to hear the wind whistle and the hour strike, to listen to the song of the waves, to see the sun sink to rest, and to contemplate distant sights "undistinguishable," Like far-off mountains turned into clouds." 'Clarence's dream: fantastic picture (life and death amid sunken wrecks and treasures), as rich in hues as a water-colour by Gustave Moreau, in "Richard III.," i. 4. 2 "Macbeth," i. 6, iii. 2; "Winter's Tale," ii. I; more crickets, "Cymbeline," ii. 2 ; Macbeth," ii. 2. ''Tempest," v. I; "Ye elves of hills," etc., partly imitated from Ovid. 4 "Midsummer," iv. I. 2 A nurse, a porter, a pedlar, a boatswain, a page, appear in their reality, specialised, having their own interests quite apart from the hero's, insisting upon talking to us of their own affairs, which often have nothing to do with the play. But then they are not "dramatis persona," they are persons in real life. Shakespeare does not dictate their words, but lets them speak; they often abuse the permission; they know the evocation will be brief and that their "little life" upon the stage will be still shorter than the short lives of real men; they pour out their hearts and explain their case so fully, with such spirit, that they are an encumbrance and that the development of the play will be slackened, if not impeded. It is one of the inconveniences of the method. It happens to Shakespeare to allow each one to explain and defend himself so well that we no longer know where we are going, nor whom we should love. Wanting too much to have the individual understood, he risks our losing the thread of the drama. To make an end, then, he removes his hand, and the personage, a lifeless pack of wood and wires, collapses behind the scenes. Or, again, he leads him off all alive and we shall see him no more, or he kills him. Shylock, so Jewish, and who has so eloquently defended his Jewishness, falls back at the end, a Christian puppet, into the chest of stage properties. King John talks so well at the beginning of the play that we fail to understand how he behaves so badly at the end. Bertram gives so frankly such good reasons that it is hard to blame him, at the commencement of "All's well," for refusing the hand of Helena; between Henry IV., a murderer, and Richard II., a weakling, both eloquent and claiming, in admirable lines, one the crown, the other our pity, our heart hesitates and does not know whether to side with Bolingbroke or his victim. Richard, treading English soil, on his return from Ireland, expresses himself with a tenderness and emotion fit to win him the sympathy of his compatriots for all time: Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand As a long parted mother with her child Plays fondly with her tears and smiles, in meeting: Yet it is to Richard's enemy that the poet wanted in reality our sympathy to go. It is difficult, whatever one may do, to compose a drama absolutely clear while showing humanity such a mixture as it often is of good and evil, and so troubled by conflicting passions. Classic art, which selects and simplifies, here regains its advantages. Taking literally the pleadings which had struck them most, various critics have been pleased to attribute to Shakespeare himself the ideas of his characters; they have made him a friend of the Jews because of Shylock, a favourer of Catholicism because of Catherine of Aragon, hostile to distinctions between natural and legitimate children because of Edmund, and so on. They say nothing of opposite pleas, which, on that score, would allow one to attribute to the poet the most contrary opinions, and to see in him a friend of liberty because of Brutus, an enemy of the people because of Jack Cade; a superstitious believer in ghosts because of Hamlet, a sceptic scoffing at them because of Hotspur. The cases in which may be perceived, without possibility of doubt, Shakespeare's personal views are in reality very rare: they occur when the personage, diverging from the subject and from his rôle, emits opinions which have nothing to do with the play; or, again when the same : III. 2. appreciation is reiterated in various works with a frequency showing a strong prepossession and a firmlyrooted idea. When Hamlet complains of the competition, ruinous for adult comedians, of the child players "of the city," Shakespeare certainly uses him here as his mouthpiece. When the dramatist repeats, over and over again, always with enraptured pleasure, the praise of his native land, This precious stone set in the silver sea,' or the praise of music, or the dispraise of the multitude, or the satire of those water-flies with many-coloured wings, fluttering about, as busy as if they knew why, courtiers, followers of the great, brilliant depositaries of the secrets of etiquette, aides-de-camp who have never aided any one, obsequious and ceremonious sayers of nothings, he certainly expresses what he thinks, and reveals to us his own sentiments. But these cases are rare. As a rule he is a true creator: with life, he gives * "Richard II.," ii. 1. For instance, Osric in " Hamlet," or, better still, the courtier so well described by Hotspur : When I was dry with rage, and extreme toil, Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, Came there a certain lord, neat and trimly dress'd . . . He was perfumed like a milliner . . . With many holiday and lady terms He question'd me, etc. ("I Henry IV.,” i. 3.) The poet's personality appears again in the allusions he lets slip, now and then, to contemporary events or whimsicalities (but he is very chary of them in comparison with other dramatists, Jonson for example); allusions to remote or near-by countries, "Othello," i. 3, "As you like it," iv. I, "Taming," Induction; to fashions, "Macbeth," ii. 3, "Twelfth Night," i. 3; to piratical expeditions," Measure,” i. 2 ; to new-coined words, "Twelfth Night,” iii. 1; to love-sick youths poetically inclined, "As you like it," iii. 2; to the supposed punning armorial bearings of the Lucy family, "Merry Wives," i. I; to Essex's expedition to Ireland, "Henry V.," chorus of act v.; to the glory of Elizabeth, "Midsummer," ii. 2; or that of James I., "Macbeth," iv. I. his personages independence; they have their free will; they talk as they please, and are alone responsible for their opinions. III. Considering in our mind the whole series of Shakespeare's dramas, it is impossible not to come to the conclusion that this life-giving faculty is the great poet's dominant virtue, that which, together with his lyricism, captivates us most strongly. His dramatic power, carried so far in his masterpieces, the art of constructing a play and of conducting it, without a flaw, to an inevitable termination, are unsurpassed, but are with him of less common occurrence. The life-giving power accompanies him much more constantly. Even in his most hastily composed plays, those in which the dramatic art proper is weakest, in which the various parts, ill-joined, are fastened one to the other by big nails visible from a distance, suddenly a tremor of life is felt, and, just as we were about to revolt, to protest against a puppet-show, behold, the magician emerges from his torpor, life circulates, and the wooden doll of a moment ago now utters words that no ages can ever forget.1 In the masterpieces, the dramatic power is incomparable. In a few very rare cases, "Othello," for instance, it remains such throughout; generally, however, it keeps to the highest level during only a portion of the work. That which Shakespeare found in his model, often the most execrable scribbler, teller of tales, or patcher of plays, he would take as it was, especially if the plot happened to be Example: to Ulysses, a mere puppet through most of the play, is given the famous line: One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. ("Troilus," iii. 3.) |