The Mind of Shakspere (cont.)

Parts 3 and 4 of "The Mind of Shakspere" from *The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent, and Other Essays* by John Erskine.

PART 3

The theory of Shakspere's mind which is here put forth seems to find two objections. The sonnets, which follow a contemporary fashion in a set literary form, can hardly be accounted for as the unconscious product of the naive contemplation of life. And in the plays there seems to be constant though uneven evidence of design, and in the later plays especially the poet seems to speak as a philosopher, passing conscious verdicts upon life. It was this philosophical matter that led Coleridge and his school to see in Shakspere a profound nature.

This paper does not intend, of course, to announce the great dramatist as a sort of automaton, who had no sense of the quality or purport of his work. In the sonnets and the early plays Shakspere is artificially self-conscious. But he is the most uneven of great writers; even in his artificial moments he is capable of naive utterance, of that penetrating truth which is his characteristic; on the other hand, in his noblest passages of this sort he sometimes indulges in palpable tricks of style or artifice of idea. Without raising the mooted questions of the sonnets, we can agree with those many critics who have found in them some of Shakspere's happiest phrases; whatever else they are, they are born of a nature in love with fine speech. If we study the style of the sonnets at all, however, it is only fair to reckon with the style of all of them—not simply to dwell upon the most felicitous, in the habit of the Shaksperian fanatics. At least, it is only fair to reckon with them all if we are to use them as indications of the poet's mind. The series has had its fame from a bare dozen of really splendid sonnets, much helped by the dramatic story which seems to be their background, and which may or may not be autobiography. It is hard not to think that the noblest of these poems are direct reflections of life; yet it does not follow that the whole story is. On the contrary, there are rather more sonnets of an artificiality so great as to raise the doubt whether the poet knew anything of love at all. Did the imagination that fashioned the Dark Lady, or uttered the terrible curse of lust, or the superb praise of friendship and of the "marriage of true minds," equally indulge in choplogic? The examples are familiar. To choose one—

"If I love thee, my loss is my love's gain,
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
Both find each other, and I lose both twain.
And both for my sake lay on me this cross.
But here's the joy; my friend and I are one;
Sweet flattery! Then she loves but me alone."

Or the whole of the following sonnet, with its amazing artifice—

"When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see.
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee.
And darkly bright are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright.
How would thy shadow's form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light.
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
All days are nights to see till I see thee.
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me."

If this sort of writing indicates anything of the writer's mind, it tells us that he was practising the devices of style with great ingenuity. The human experience contained in the poem, however, is hardly what his admirers would like to call Shaksperian. Nor does it aid them greatly to say that here Shakspere was learning his craft. What craft? The use of language? Perhaps,—though he used language less and less often in this fashion. But how is this sort of hairsplitting a training for his knowledge of life? What is the connection between these lines and Hamlet's words with Horatio—

"Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making?
"Horatio. Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.
"Hamlet. 'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense."

Or if the sonnets and early plays of Shakspere were a training for his art, how comes it that even in the mature plays he slips into unfinished and undistinguished passages? It is usual to say that in the later work his thought overbalanced his speech, at times to the confusion of both; but it would be easier to suppose that throughout his life his moments of energetic vision alternated with very ordinary states of consciousness, and that he had little sense of the value of one condition over the other. The sonnets clearly echo older plots and older sonnet series. It is impossible to prove them autobiographical as a whole. Yet it is just as difficult to deny the similitude of personal experience in the great sonnets. Shakspere followed the sonnet fashion, as he followed other fashions, doing only what others had done, but doing it better, with more energy; and in the process he lights up unexpected and amazing areas of truth.

To say that in his later plays the thought overbalances the language, is to raise the main question as to whether Shakspere was a thinker at all. According to the theory of his mind here advanced, he was not. Except for his characteristic moments in which he flashes life into words, he is curiously conventional and timid. Though he followed the daring Marlowe and was the contemporary of Bacon, he never ventured out of the most conservative, even non-committal, attitudes toward religion and learning and the established professions. The endings of many of his plays and the initial circumstances of others, completely ignore the logic of the plot and of the characters; he is content that the scene should open and close upon artificial situations, but while the story is in motion he vitalizes it with his naive energy. If he is the greatest of world-dramatists, is he not also the playwright who has taught least to posterity? He did with supreme excellence what had been done before him, but added practically nothing to the craft of the theatre; the modern dramatist goes to other men for technical instruction.

If Shakspere was a thinker, he must have accepted the conclusions of his own wisdom; if he did not know when he uttered wisdom, he was hardly a thinker. It is easier to take the latter conclusion, though the admiring school have implied that Shakspere knew his own profundity, but carried the secret to his grave. The difficulty with that explanation is that it makes Shakspere practically omniscient. The Baconian heresy and other attempts to explain him, have been attempts to explain the author that Coleridge and the Germans found in the plays. Foolish as is the doctrine that Bacon could write and produce these dramas and have the secret kept for two centuries, it is really wiser than the belief that Shakspere could have been consciously omniscient, and yet keep the secret to himself—nay, even write a great many shallow things to hide the fact.

To be sure, almost every phase of earthly life is glanced at in the plays. Yet this does not prove that Shakspere thought about any of them; he merely observed them. For example, the favorite memory of our first acquaintance with political economy is that question about what sort of society we would establish if cast upon a desert island. In The Tempest, when the King of Naples and his courtiers find themselves on what they think is a deserted island, they argue this very question. Says Gonzalo,

"Had I plantation of this very isle, my lord—

I’ the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty.
And use of service, none; contract, succession.
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;

All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavor; treason, felony.
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine.
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth.
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance.
To feed my innocent people."

Now are we to believe that Shakspere here anticipates and pokes fun at the speculations of political economy, or that having this group of men upon a desert island he perceives the possibilities of the speculation, and puts into Gonzalo's mouth a translation of words used with another reference by Montaigne?

So with those curious coincidences which are strewn through the dramas. The poet has a trick—say some critics—of putting into the first words of the leading persons a clue to their characters. When Romeo says, "Is the day then so young," we are to see in him the embodiment of youth. It is easy enough to find marvels of this sort in Shakspere—perhaps in every poet. The themes of this same play of Romeo and Juliet may be said to be the conflict of Youth with Age—Age having forgotten what young love is like; and also the conflict of Love with Hate—Hate being expressed in the feud, which in turn is incarnate in Tybalt. It is easy enough for us to think of the story in these terms, but did Shakspere so think of it while writing it? and did he summarize the themes intentionally in a passage at the end of Act I? Capulet speaks first, doubtless representing Age—

"Nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin Capulet,
For you and I are past our dancing days:
How long is't now since last yourself and I
Were in a mask?

Second Capulet. By'r lady, thirty years.
Cap. What, man! 'tis not so much, 'tis not so much:
'Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio,
Come pentecost as quickly as it will.
Some five and twenty years : and then we masked.
Sec. Cap. 'Tis more, 'tis more: his son is elder, sir;
His son is thirty.
Cap. Will you tell me that?
His son was but a ward two years ago."

Immediately Romeo speaks, representing Youth and Love—

"What lady is that, which doth enrich the hand
Of yonder knight?
Serving-man. I know not, sir.
Rom. O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows.
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand.
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now.'' forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night."

Now enters Tybalt, who personifies the last theme, Hate—

"This, by his voice, should be a Montague.
Fetch me my rapier, boy."

It makes all the difference whether we believe that Shakspere consciously inserted these designs or patterns in his work, or that they are there because they are in life, and the poet, reflecting life, mirrored more than he knew. The chanson d'aube and the aubade are in old French literature, but Shakspere never found them there; he found them, where the old French poets found them, in a dramatic situation of real life. Hamlet was the victim of heredity; the conflict of the vacillating mother and of the downright father was in him; yet Shakspere only perceived in life what we have perceived there also and have learned to call heredity. When Macbeth says that he has murdered sleep, and we trace through the play the remorseful sleeplessness which finally drives Lady Macbeth to suicide, we may call Shakspere a criminal psychologist if we choose, but he only observed what we have classified. He saw that we are such stuff as dreams are made of, but he probably would not have agreed with Bishop Berkeley. These designs in Shakspere are true and recognizable, but they are coincidences, like the Dipper in the heavens; we cannot think that a supreme intelligence marshalled planets and stars to illustrate a kitchen utensil.

PART 4

This view of Shakspere may seem to belittle him, as reducing his work to the improvisations of a child. The kingdom of heaven was once thought to be for aristocracy of intellect, and some of us think as much of the kingdom of poetry; but there is good authority for believing that they are both open to the imaginative, to those who can be unconscious of self as little children. Great intellect alone cannot force its way in, and it is the part of intelligence to recognize that fact. There is, of course, no reason why great intellect and great poetic faculty—the ability to reason and the ability to see and feel and speak—should not meet in the same person. They did so meet in Sophocles and in Euripides. But it seems that they did not so meet in Shakspere, and perhaps it is only a wilful praise of the poet of our own tongue that would call him, on the whole, the equal of the Greek dramatists.

If we make an intelligent distinction, however, between logical or analytical power and the poetic gift, then this theory of Shakspere's naive mind is not without hope for a richer conception of the nature of poetry. Shakspere's critics have measured themselves in their measure of him. Milton, who prayed that his own lips might be touched with fire from off the sacred altar, beheld in the dramatist a secular, somewhat secondary, prophet of the same ineffable inspiration. Coleridge, philosopher and dreamer, never a man of action, saw in Shakspere a Prospero, a magician, controlling the ends of life by study and forethought. Arnold, the self-reliant, somewhat estranged servant of culture, expecting or desiring from men neither comprehension nor contact, imaged the poet in the unattainable, unguessed-at height. And if with another attitude we perceive in the mind of Shakspere only the most fortunate occurrence of qualities common to all men—only the eye to see, the heart to feel, the tongue to speak, and the absence of that over- caution which ceases to live when it stops to think—may it not be that our age, with all its sophistication, consciously aspires to the immediateness and the simplicity of life, and to that poetry which is not the accomplishment but the essence of life.

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