66 merely the most masterly works of art, and as such in the opinion of eminent critics, surpassing the Greek tragedy itself, but classical poems, and plays the most profoundly philosophical in the English language, or any other (for no less a critic than Goethe has awarded this high praise), may justly strike us in the outset as simply preposterous and absurd. "What!" exclaims Coleridge, at this consequence of the traditional biography, "are we to have miracles in sport? . . . . . Does God choose idiots by whom to convey divine truths to man?" Emerson, no less, considering that the Shakespeare Society had ascertained that this William Shakespeare was a good-natured sort of man, a jovial actor, manager, and shareholder, not in any striking manner distinguished from other actors and managers,” and that he was " a veritable farmer" withal, engaged in all sorts of traffic at Stratford, doing business commissions in London, and suing Philip Rogers for malt delivered, while writing a "Hamlet," or a "Lear," is apparently obliged to lay down the problem in despair, with this significant confession: "I cannot marry this fact to his verse. Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought; but this man, in wide contrast." 2 In like manner, Jean Paul Richter "would have him buried, if his life were like his writings, with Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, and the highest nobility of the human race, in the same best consecrated earth of our globe, God's flower-garden in the deep North." 8 Indeed, considering how this man should drop the theatre as an idle pastime, or as a trade that had filled his coffers, and should quietly sit him down for the remainder of life merely to talk and jest with the Stratford burghers, and, turning over his works to the spoiling hand of blundering printers and surreptitious traffic, regardless of his own reputation, heedless of the world around him, leaving his manuscripts to perish, taking 2 Rep. Men, 215. 1 Notes on Shakes., Works, IV. 56. no thought of foreign nations, or the next ages, or as if not deeming he had written anything worthy of preservation, should "steal in silence to his grave,"1 beneath a doggerel epitaph reputed to have been written by himself, and certainly suitable enough for his "bones," by the side of which the knowing friends who erected a monument over him caused to be inscribed a Latin memento, which might indeed do honor to the memory of the "Star of Poets": "Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, Terra tegit, populus moret, Olympus habet "; any man might wonder, if he did not laugh outright, to see this Son of Momus wearing thus his lion's skin even in his tomb. Carlyle, that other master-critic of our time, chewing the cud of this "careless mortal, open to the Universe and its influences, not caring strenuously to open himself; who, Prometheus-like, will scale Heaven (if it so must be), and is satisfied if he therewith pay the rent of his London Play-house," as it were, with the imperturbability of Teufelsdroch himself, simply breaks out, at last, with this brief exclamation: "An unparalleled mortal." 2 § 5. HIS STUdies. There is no evidence on record other than that which is drawn from the works themselves, that during his connection with the theatre in London, he was given to profound studies or much reading; and it is evident that no man in his circumstances, conditions, and daily occupations, could have found time, means, and facilities, not merely for supplying the known deficiencies of his previous education, but to make extensive and thorough acquisitions in all departments of human knowledge, and, at the same time, to carry on the work of inventing and writing these extraordinary compositions. If it were to be admitted that he was in fact the author of them, then of course, all the rest should be 1 Mem. of the Court of James I., by Lucy Aiken. 2 Essays (Boston, 1861), III. 211. presumed, however miraculous and inconceivable. There are no certain proofs that he enjoyed the intimacy of literary associates beyond the purlieus of the theatre and certain small writers for the stage, Ben Jonson only excepted. Some of his earlier contemporaries, like Greene, made envious attacks upon him, significantly hinting at the incongruity between him and his supposed productions; though numerous other writers and poets of later dates, following the general report, unquestionably recognized him as the admitted author of the works which were attributed to him. He certainly had the acquaintance and friendship of Ben Jonson, who was famous among the literary men of his time, received the countenance of the Court, and enjoyed the intimacy and favor of high literary characters, and particularly of Lord Bacon, in whose service he was engaged for some years. Ben Jonson did not fail to discover "the Star of Poets" in these works; but his description of the person, qualities, genius, and individual characteristics of William Shakespeare, not to speak of his criticisms upon him and the players, do not help to remove the manifest contradiction that exists between the man and the works. The traditions of his having been a member of Raleigh's Club, and his wit-combats at the "Mermaid" (some books say "wet-combats") with Ben Jonson and the assembled wits, will not bear the test of critical examination: they rest, at last, on mere inference from the supposed relations, character, and genius of such an author, and are as baseless in reality as the conceit of worthy old Fuller, proceeding upon the indubitable fact that "his learning was very little,” and the old saw, "Poeta non fit sed nascitur," that "as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any lapidary, but are pointed and smoothed even as they are taken out of the earth, so Nature itself was all the art that was used upon him." 1 It was a shrewd conjecture of Dr. Maginn, that the reason why we know so little of him is, that " when his 1 Worthies of England, III. 284. business was over at the theatre, he did not mix with his fellow-actors, but stepped into his boat, and rowed up to Whitehall, there to spend his time with the Earl of Southampton and the gentlemen about the Court." There may be some truth in this suggestion; but it will be necessary also to suppose an invisible boat and a further passage to Gray's Inn. If these plays had not begun to appear for a period of ten years or so after William Shakespeare came to London, it might be possible to imagine, that, even in his employments, he might have found time and means to prosecute to some extent those studies which every reasonable mind must acknowledge to have been absolutely necessary in order to fit the most luminous natural genius for the writing of these dramas. But there was no such period: the plays began to appear at least as early as the year 1588, even if it be not satisfactorily proved, that the first sketches of several of them had been upon the stage for some years previous to that date, and before Shakespeare arrived in London. There were six years after this event in which the two principal poems may have been written, and before he was twenty-nine years of age. Doubtless, many poems of great merit have been produced at an earlier age than this: nothing need be objected on the score of age merely. Nor would it be anything remarkable that an actor should correct and amend, or even write or rewrite plays. Heming, or Condell, may have done as much as this. In fact, some plays were written by other actors and members of this same company; but they appear to have been no better than such authors might reasonably be expected to produce, and they speedily passed into oblivion. It might be admitted that William Shakespeare may have altered, amended, or rewritten, old plays to adapt them to his stage, without danger to the question of this authorship. The greater plays, it is true, were not produced until more than 1 Shakes. Papers (New York, 1856), p. 10. ten years had elapsed. Of course, any author should be expected to grow in this time; but there is exhibited, in the character and succession of these works, an order of growth quite other than any that can be ascribed to a mortal man with the personal history which must be assigned to William Shakespeare; ascending, as it does, from the very gates of the university, upward and upward, into the highest spheres of human thought and culture. § 6. EARLY PLAYS. Critical researches have demonstrated that this author gathered his materials from any quarry that was at hand, suitable to his purposes. Old ballads, poems, plays, novels, tales, histories, in English, French, Italian, Latin, or Greek, translated or untranslated, were made to yield their treasures of fact and fable. There had been an old play of "King John" in the reign of Edward VI. Some critics think that the "Troublesome Reign of King John," printed in 1591, and written in two parts, was an early work of this author, and the foundation of the "King John " of the Folio of 1623; but later writers, no doubt correctly, have attributed it to Marlowe, Greene, or Peele, or some other poet, though it was reprinted in 1611, and in 1622, with the initials "W. Sh." on the title-page; doubtless a trick of the booksellers to make it sell. The " King John" of Shakespeare is first mentioned by Meres in 1598; it was first printed in the Folio; and, in the absence of any other data than the style and manner of the composition, on which to fix the date of its production, Mr. White places it in the year 1596, while admitting that the author must have had the older play before him, or in his head, when this was written,1 and that the date of it may go back to 1591. The old play called the "Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth," which was acted on the stage prior to 1588, after having undergone a marvellous transformation, seems tc 1 White's Shakes., VI. 15. |