And the first motion, all the interim is Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.`` The timidity of guilt, its mental and physical effects,-the soul accusing itself: 'Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.'2 'How is't with me when every noise appals me?'s 'Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep; " Still it cried, "Sleep no more!" to all the house: "Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor And so Lady Macbeth, at whose heart, when royalty crowns her and royal robes enfold her, gnaws the undying worm: 'Naught's had all's spent Where our desire is had without content. 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy The boldness of innocence: 'What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted? Its peaceful, cheering, commanding effect: I feel within me A peace above all earthly dignities A still and quiet conscience.' To sum up all: 'Mark but my fall, and that that ruin'd me. The image of his Maker, hope to win by it? Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee; Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not: Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, Thy God's and truth's.' What altitudes did this man not reach? What depths did not his plummet sound? What domain of consciousness did he not extend? 1 Cæsar. "Henry VI. 3 Macbeth. • Ibid. Henry VI. • Henry VIII. Ibid. Originality.-A few years ago the most eminent living writer' of Holland said to a congress of authors and publishers at Brussels: For nearly forty years I have lived principally by robbery and theft.' He justified his practice by the example of Virgil, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Voltaire, Schiller, and others. Every man is receptive. The greatest are the most indebted. Chaucer's opulence has fed many pensioners, but he was himself a huge borrower, using Gower and the Italians like stonequarries. Shakespeare, like every master, is at once heir and dispenser. He has no credit of design. His materials, as the table shows, were already prepared. He absorbed all the light anywhere radiating. He borrowed not only the plot, but often and extensively the very terms. Read Plutarch's Lives for the originals of Julius Cæsar. Out of 6,043 lines in Henry VI, 1,771 were written by some antecedent author; 2,373 by Shakespeare on the foundation laid by his predecessors; and only 1,899 by himself alone! Ready-made plots, solitary thoughts, fortunate expressions were at hand, but he organized, enriched, and vivified them. Of little value where he found them, they were priceless where he left them. Thought,' says Emerson, 'is the property of him who can entertain it; and of him who can adequately place it.' Versification. He had no system, no mannerism, but the true secret of blank verse - the adaptation of words and rhythms to the sense contained in them. Thought runs before expression and moulds it to its own peculiar uses. Hence the defective and redundant lines, and other rhythmic variations, as the various distribution of the time-values within a bar, by which Shakespeare out of the bare type of blank verse has brought such marvellous and subtle music. Style. His versification is powerful, sweet and varied, naturally and enduringly musical. It was the sweetness of his utterance that gave to his first readers their chief delight. To them, he was the 'honey-tongued.' His diction is appropriate to the persons who use it, and to the idea or sentiment it conveys. The dominant feature of his style is impassioned luxuriance. It is the translation of abstract thoughts into visible images,2 Malone's computation. 1 Van Lennep. thoughts that come of themselves, thrown out from the furnace of invention by the seething, whirling energies of passion, crowded and contorted; images that unfold like a series of paintings, involuntarily, in mingled contrasts, copious, jumbled, flaming. Thus Hamlet to the queen's question, 'What have I done?' answers as if his brain were on fire: Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, A rhapsody of words; heaven's face doth glow: Yea, this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage, as against the doom, Is thought-sick at the act.' Whatever the situation, he is exuberant because he is buried and absorbed in it. All objects shrink and expand to serve him, are transfigured by his rapture. Thus, Or, And, The morning steals upon the night, Melting the darkness." 'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!' The strong based promontory Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up To the excited soul, metaphor is a necessity. It thinks of no rules, and requires none. It studies not to be just or clear, but attains life. It seizes ideas and figures without a consciousness of its movements, and hurls them with an energy like to the supernatural. Its condensation and confusion abide no criticism, and heed none. As the result of inspiration, they mark the suddenness and the breaks of the inner and divine afflatus. Rank. To excel in pathos, in wit, or in humor; in sublimity, as Milton; in intensity, as Chaucer; or in remoteness, as Spenser, would form a great poet; but to unite all, as Shakespeare has done, is To get the start of the majestic world, Others have equalled or surpassed him in some particular excellence, but no man ever had at once such strength and variety of imagination. He has grasped all the diversities of rank, sex, and age. His imperial muse has swept the poles of existence-the human and the superhuman. His characters are legion; but — whether sage or idiot, king or beggar, queen or nurse, hero or clown, plotting villain or sportive fairy-all are distinct, all speak and act with equal truth, all are inspired by the artist's animation. No other ever saw the world of nature and of mind from so many points of view. He is all that he imaginatively sees. Thus his figures acquire a relief and color which create illusion. They are so consistent and vital that we seem to know them, not by description, but by intercourse. If we seek to refer this preeminence to the possession of any peculiar quality, we think it may be found in the superior power of grouping men in natural classes by an insight of general laws. His penetrative genius discerns the common attributes of individuals; his dramatic genius gathers them up into one conception, and embodies that in a type; his poetic genius lifts it into an ideal region, where, under circumstances more propitious, it may find a free and full development. Each character is thus the ideal head of a family. Each is rooted in humanity. Each is an impassioned representative. Each, therefore, is a species individualized. You will find many that resemble it, but none identical with it. In actual existence, there is no Falstaff, though there be multitudes like him. Vital generalization is thus the secret of Shakespeare's transcendent superiority over all other writers. His personages are of no locality, no sect. They belong to all regions, and to all ages. This is the essential principle of highest literature, that it is addressed to man as man, not to men as they are parted into trades and professions. Its audience-chamber is the globe. Its touches of nature make the whole world kin. We are not, however, to think of Shakespeare as having achieved his work by the power of his single genius. He was fortunately born. The tide of thoughts and events was at its flood. Contemporary ideas and necessities forced him on. He stood, like every greatest man, where all hands pointed in the direction in which he should go. Generations pioneered his road. Noble conceptions and a noble school of execution awaited him. Filled with the power of that spirit which prevailed widely around him and formed his environment, he carried them to the summit of excellence. The topstone of Bunker Hill Monument is highest only because it rests on every block underneath; the lowest and smallest helps to hold it there. Character.-Norman by the father, Saxon by the mother, Shakespeare had the English duality. He combined the Oriental soaring of the first with the grip and exactitude of the second. Imperfectly educated, he had as much culture as he wanted, and of whatever kind he wanted. All the classicism then attainable he got cheap-ready-made. Like Goethe, he set little store by useless learning. Yet who can reckon all that he knew of man and of history? Such minds have no need to be taught; they are full, and overflow, by the revelations of their seer's madness. A nature affectionate and kind,' witty in conversation, brilliantly gay; extreme in joy and pain; so exquisitely sensitive, that, like a perfect harp, it vibrated at the slightest touch; with an imagination so broad, that it grasped all the complexity of human lot, its laughter and its tears; so copious, that he never erased what he had written; so glowing, that it set at defiance the Unities which imprisoned it, and produced in their stead a fantastic pageant,-a medley of forms, colors, and sentiments; with sympathies so embracing, so urgent, that he became transfused into all that he conceived, and gave to a multitude of diverse individualities each a separate soul. Without doubt, in his youth, he was not a pattern of propriety. His Venus and Adonis is little else than a debauch. As a dramatist he is certainly neither a professed religionist, nor a pronounced reformer. He copies at random the high and the low. He holds the mirror up to all that is the whole reality. While the lower half of the far-spread glass is therefore blotched, we believe that the upper half is his ultimate and essential self. With advancing years, he evidently dwells more upon the great characters of his tragedies, and gives increased light to moral issues. More and more, as he grows older, he tightens the strands in the colossal harp of his nature and strikes the resonant wires with a firmer plectrum. Deeper and deeper sink the pangs of affection misplaced, the memory of hours misspent. Conscience is ill at ease with the world. Thus again and 1My darling Shakespeare,' 'Sweet swan of Avon.'-Ben Jonson. |