Complete Prose Works
time to time, thenceforward, systematically enlarged it to majestic and
mature proportions in "Richard II," "Richard III," "King John," "Henry
IV," "Henry V," and even in "Macbeth," "Coriolanus" and "Lear." For it
is impossible to grasp the whole cluster of those plays, however wide
the intervals and different circumstances of their composition, without
thinking of them as, in a free sense, the result of an _essentially
controling plan_. 'What was that plan? Or, rather, what was veil'd
behind it?--for to me there was certainly something so veil'd. Even the
episodes of Cade, Joan of Arc, and the like (which sometimes seem to me
like interpolations allow'd,) may be meant to foil the possible sleuth,
and throw any too 'cute pursuer off the scent. In the whole matter I
should specially dwell on, and make much of, that inexplicable element
of every highest poetic nature which causes it to cover up and involve
its real purpose and meanings in folded removes and far recesses. Of
this trait--hiding the nest where common seekers may never find it--the
Shaksperean works afford the most numerous and mark'd illustrations
known to me. I would even call that trait the leading one through the
whole of those works.
All the foregoing to premise a brief statement of how and where I get my
new light on Shakspere. Speaking of the special English plays, my friend
William O'Connor says:
They seem simply and rudely historical in their motive, as aiming
to give in the rough a tableau of warring dynasties,--and carry to
me a lurking sense of being in aid of some ulterior design, probably
well enough understood in that age, which perhaps time and criticism
will reveal.... Their atmosphere is one of barbarous and tumultuous
gloom,--they do not make us love the times they limn,... and it is
impossible to believe that the greatest of the Elizabethan men could
have sought to indoctrinate the age with the love of feudalism which
his own drama in its entirety, if the view taken of it herein be true,
certainly and subtly saps and mines.
Reading the just-specified play in the light of Mr. O'Connor's
suggestion, I defy any one to escape such new and deep
utterance-meanings, like magic ink, warm' d by the fire, and previously
invisible. Will it not indeed be strange if the author of "Othello" and
"Hamlet" is destin'd to live in America, in a generation or two, less as
the cunning draughtsman of the passions, and more as putting on record
the first full exposé--and by far the most vivid one, immeasurably ahead
of doctrinaires and economists--of the political theory and results, or
the reason-why and necessity for them which America has come on earth to
abnegate and replace?
The summary of my suggestion would be, therefore, that while the more
the rich and tangled jungle of the Shaksperean area is travers'd and
studied, and the more baffled and mix'd, as so far appears, becomes the
exploring student (who at last surmises everything, and remains certain
of nothing,) it is possible a future age of criticism, diving deeper,
mapping the land and lines freer, completer than hitherto, may discover
in the plays named the scientific (Baconian?) inauguration of modern
democracy--furnishing realistic and first-class artistic portraitures
of the mediaeval world, the feudal personalities, institutes, in their
morbid accumulations, deposits, upon politics and sociology,--may
penetrate to that hard-pan, far down and back of the ostent of to-day,
on which (and on which only) the progressism of the last two centuries
has built this Democracy which now hold's secure lodgment over the whole
civilized world.
Whether such was the unconscious, or (as I think likely) the more
or less conscious, purpose of him who fashion'd those marvellous
architectonics, is a secondary question.
A THOUGHT ON SHAKSPERE
The most distinctive poems--the most permanently rooted and with
heartiest reason for being--the copious cycle of Arthurian legends, or
the almost equally copious Charlemagne cycle, or the poems of the Cid,
or Scandinavian Eddas, or Nibelungen, or Chaucer, or Spenser, or _bona
fide_ Ossian, or Inferno--probably had their rise in the great historic
perturbations, which they came in to sum up and confirm, indirectly
embodying results to date. Then however precious to "culture," the
grandest of those poems, it may be said, preserve and typify results
offensive to the modern spirit, and long past away. To state it briefly,
and taking the strongest examples, in Homer lives the ruthless military
prowess of Greece, and of its special god-descended dynastic houses;
in Shakspere the dragon-rancors and stormy feudal Splendor of mediaeval
caste.
Poetry, largely consider'd, is an evolution, sending out improved
and-ever-expanded types--in one sense, the past, even the best of it,
necessarily giving place, and dying out. For our existing world,
the bases on which all the grand old poems were built have become
vacuums--and even those of many comparatively modern ones are broken and
half-gone. For us to-day, not their own intrinsic value, vast as that
is, backs and maintains those poems--but a mountain-high growth of
associations, the layers of successive ages. Everywhere--their own lands
included--(is there not something terrible in the tenacity with which
the one book out of millions holds its grip?)--the Homeric and Virgilian
works, the interminable ballad-romances of the middle ages, the
utterances of Dante, Spenser, and others, are upheld by their
cumulus-entrenchment in scholarship, and as precious, always welcome,
unspeakably valuable reminiscences.
Even the one who at present reigns unquestion'd--of Shakspere--for all
he stands for so much in modern literature, he stands entirely for
the mighty esthetic sceptres of the past, not for the spiritual
and democratic, the sceptres of the future. The inward and outward
characteristics of Shakspere are his vast and rich variety of persons
and themes, with his wondrous delineation of each and all,--not only
limitless funds of verbal and pictorial resource, but great excess,
superfoetation--mannerism, like a fine, aristocratic perfume, holding
a touch of musk (Euphues, his mark)--with boundless sumptuousness and
adornment, real velvet and gems, not shoddy nor paste--but a good deal
of bombast and fustian--(certainly some terrific mouthing in Shakspere!)
Superb and inimitable as all is, it is mostly an objective and
physiological kind of power and beauty the soul finds in Shakspere--a
style supremely grand of the sort, but in my opinion stopping short of
the grandest sort, at any rate for fulfilling and satisfying modern and
scientific and democratic American purposes. Think, not of growths as
forests primeval, or Yellowstone geysers, or Colorado ravines, but of
costly marble palaces, and palace rooms, and the noblest fixings and
furniture, and noble owners and occupants to correspond--think of
carefully built gardens from the beautiful but sophisticated gardening
art at its best, with walks and bowers and artificial lakes, and
appropriate statue-groups and the finest cultivated roses and lilies
and japonicas in plenty--and you have the tally of Shakspere. The
low characters, mechanics, even the loyal henchmen--all in themselves
nothing--serve as capital foils to the aristocracy. The comedies
(exquisite as they certainly are) bringing in admirably portray'd common
characters, have the unmistakable hue of plays, portraits, made for the
divertisement only of the élite of the castle, and from its point
of view. The comedies are altogether non-acceptable to America and
Democracy.
But to the deepest soul, it seems a shame to pick and choose from
the riches Shakspere has left us--to criticise his infinitely royal,
multiform quality--to gauge, with optic glasses, the dazzle of his
sun-like beams.
The best poetic utterance, after all, can merely hint, or remind, often
very indirectly, or at distant removes. Aught of real perfection, or the
solution of any deep problem, or any completed statement of the moral,
the true, the beautiful, eludes the greatest, deftest poet--flies away
like an always uncaught bird.
ROBERT BURNS AS POET AND PERSON
What the future will decide about Robert Burns and his works--what place
will be assign'd them on that great roster of geniuses and genius which
can only be finish'd by the slow but sure balancing of the centuries
with their ample average--I of course cannot tell. But as we know him,
from his recorded utterances, and after nearly one century, and its
diligence of collections, songs, letters, anecdotes, presenting the
figure of the canny Scotchman in a fullness and detail wonderfully
complete, and the lines mainly by his own hand, he forms to-day, in some
respects, the most interesting personality among singers. Then there are
many things in Burns's poems and character that specially endear him to
America. He was essentially a Republican--would have been at home in
the Western United States, and probably become eminent there. He was
an average sample of the good-natured, warm-blooded, proud-spirited,
amative, alimentive, convivial, young and early-middle-aged man of the
decent-born middle classes everywhere and any how. Without the race of
which he is a distinct specimen, (and perhaps his poems) America and
her powerful Democracy could not exist to-day--could not project with
unparallel'd historic sway into the future.
Perhaps the peculiar coloring of the era of Burns needs always first
to be consider'd. It included the times of the '76-'83 Revolution in
America, of the French Revolution, and an unparallel'd chaos development
in Europe and elsewhere. In every department, shining and strange names,
like stars, some rising, some in meridian, some declining--Voltaire,
Franklin, Washington, Kant, Goethe, Fulton, Napoleon, mark the era.
And while so much, and of grandest moment, fit for the trumpet of the
world's fame, was being transacted--that little tragi-comedy of R. B,'s
life and death was going on in a country by-place in Scotland!
Burns's correspondence, generally collected and publish'd since his
death, gives wonderful glints into both the amiable and weak (and worse
than weak) parts of his portraiture, habits, good and bad luck, ambition
and associations. His letters to Mrs. Dunlop, Mrs. McLehose, (Clarinda,)
Mr. Thompson, Dr. Moore, Robert Muir, Mr. Cunningham, Miss Margaret
Chalmers, Peter Hill, Richard Brown, Mrs. Riddel, Robert Ainslie, and
Robert Graham, afford valuable lights and shades to the outline, and
with numerous others, help to a touch here, and fill-in there, of
poet and poems. There are suspicions, it is true, of "the Genteel
Letter-Writer," with scraps and words from "the Manual of French
Quotations," and, in the love-letters, some hollow mouthings. Yet we
wouldn't on any account lack the letters. A full and true portrait is
always what is wanted; veracity at every hazard. Besides, do we not
all see by this time that the story of Burns, even for its own sake,
requires the record of the whole and several, with nothing left out?
Completely and every point minutely told out its fullest, explains and
justifies itself--(as perhaps almost any life does.) He is very close
to the earth. He pick'd up his best words and tunes directly from the
Scotch home-singers, but tells Thompson they would not please his, T.'s,
"learn'd lugs," adding, "I call them simple--you would pronounce them
silly." Yes, indeed; the idiom was undoubtedly his happiest hit. Yet
Dr. Moore, in 1789, writes to Burns, "If I were to offer an opinion, it
would be that in your future productions you should abandon the Scotch
stanza and dialect, and adopt the measure and language of modern English
poetry"!