Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
perished,--which, if seen, would go to reduce the wonder. Did the bard
speak with authority? Did he feel himself overmatched by any
companion? The appeal is to the consciousness of the writer. Is there
at last in his breast a Delphi[580] whereof to ask concerning any
thought or thing whether it be verily so, yea or nay? and to have
answer, and rely on that? All the debts which such a man could
contract to other wit, would never disturb his consciousness of
originality: for the ministrations of books, and of other minds, are a
whiff of smoke to that most private reality with which he has
conversed.
9. It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius, in
the world, was no man's work, but came by wide social labor, when a
thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse. Our English
Bible[581] is a wonderful specimen of the strength and music of the
English language. But it was not made by one man, or at one time; but
centuries and churches brought it to perfection. There never was a
time when there was not some translation existing. The Liturgy,[582]
admired for its energy and pathos, is an anthology of the piety of
ages and nations, a translation of the prayers and forms of the
Catholic church,--these collected, too, in long periods, from the
prayers and meditations of every saint and sacred writer all over the
world. Grotius[583] makes the like remark in respect to the Lord's
Prayer, that the single clauses of which it is composed were already
in use, in the time of Christ, in the rabbinical forms.[584] He picked
out the grains of gold. The nervous language of the Common Law,[585]
the impressive forms of our courts, and the precision and substantial
truth of the legal distinctions, are the contribution of all the
sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who have lived in the countries where
these laws govern. The translation of Plutarch gets its excellence by
being translation on translation. There never was a time when there
was none. All the truly idiomatic and national phrases are kept, and
all others successively picked out, and thrown away. Something like
the same process had gone on, long before, with the originals of these
books. The world takes liberties with world-books. Vedas,[586] Æsop's
Fables,[587] Pilpay,[588] Arabian Nights,[589] Cid,[590] Iliad,[591]
Robin Hood,[592] Scottish Minstrelsy,[593] are not the work of single
men. In the composition of such works, the time thinks, the market
thinks, the mason, the carpenter, the merchant, the farmer, the fop,
all think for us. Every book supplies its time with one good word;
every municipal law, every trade, every folly of the day, and the
generic catholic genius who is not afraid or ashamed to owe his
originality to the originality of all, stands with the next age as the
recorder and embodiment of his own.
10. We have to thank the researches of antiquaries, and the Shakspeare
Society,[594] for ascertaining the steps of the English drama, from
the Mysteries[595] celebrated in churches and by churchmen, and the
final detachment from the church, and the completion of secular plays,
from Ferrex and Porrex,[596] and Gammer Gurton's Needle,[597] down to
the possession of the stage by the very pieces which Shakspeare
altered, remodelled, and finally made his own. Elated with success,
and piqued by the growing interest of the problem, they have left no
book-stall unsearched, no chest in a garret unopened, no file of old
yellow accounts to decompose in damp and worms, so keen was the hope
to discover whether the boy Shakspeare poached[598] or not, whether he
held horses at the theater-door, whether he kept school, and why he
left in his will only his second-best bed to Ann Hathaway, his wife.
11. There is somewhat touching in the madness with which the passing
age mischooses the object on which all candles shine, and all eyes are
turned; the care with which it registers every trifle touching Queen
Elizabeth,[599] and King James,[600] and the Essexes,[601]
Leicesters,[602] Burleighs,[603] and Buckinghams;[604] and lets pass
without a single valuable note the founder of another dynasty, which
alone will cause the Tudor dynasty[605] to be remembered,--the man who
carries the Saxon race in him by the inspiration which feeds him, and
on whose thoughts the foremost people of the world are now for some
ages to be nourished, and minds to receive this and not another bias.
A popular player,--nobody suspected he was the poet of the human race;
and the secret was kept as faithfully from poets and intellectual men,
as from courtiers and frivolous people. Bacon,[606] who took the
inventory of the human understanding for his times, never mentioned
his name. Ben Jonson,[607] though we have strained his few words of
regard and panegyric, had no suspicion of the elastic fame whose first
vibrations he was attempting. He no doubt thought the praise he has
conceded to him generous, and esteemed himself, out of all question,
the better poet of the two.
12. If it need wit to know wit, according to the proverb, Shakspeare's
time should be capable of recognizing it. Sir Henry Wotton[608] was
born four years after Shakspeare, and died twenty-three years after
him; and I find, among his correspondents and acquaintances, the
following persons:[609] Theodore Beza, Isaac Casaubon, Sir Philip
Sidney, Earl of Essex, Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Milton,
Sir Henry Vane, Isaac Walton, Dr. Donne, Abraham Cowley, Berlarmine,
Charles Cotton, John Pym, John Hales, Kepler, Vieta, Albericus
Gentilis, Paul Sarpi, Arminius; with all of whom exists some token of
his having communicated, without enumerating many others, whom
doubtless[610] he saw,--Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Beaumont,
Massinger, two Herberts, Marlow, Chapman and the rest. Since the
constellation of great men who appeared in Greece in the time of
Pericles,[611] there was never any such society;--yet their genius
failed them to find out the best head in the universe. Our poet's mask
was impenetrable. You cannot see the mountain near. It took a century
to make it suspected; and not until two centuries had passed, after
his death, did any criticism which we think adequate begin to appear.
It was not possible to write the history of Shakspeare till now; for
he is the father of German literature: it was on the introduction of
Shakspeare into German, by Lessing,[612] and the translation of his
works by Wieland[613] and Schlegel,[614] that the rapid burst of
German literature was most intimately connected. It was not until the
nineteenth century, whose speculative genius is a sort of living
Hamlet,[615] that the tragedy of Hamlet could find such wondering
readers. Now, literature, philosophy, and thought, are Shakspearized.
His mind is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do not see. Our
ears are educated to music by his rhythm. Coleridge[616] and
Goethe[617] are the only critics who have expressed our convictions
with any adequate fidelity; but there is in all cultivated minds a
silent appreciation of his superlative power and beauty, which, like
Christianity, qualifies the period.
[Transcriber's Note: Number runs from 12 to 14. Number 13 omitted]
14. The Shakspeare Society have inquired in all directions,
advertised the missing facts, offered money for any information that
will lead to proof; and with what result? Beside some important
illustration of the history of the English stage, to which I have
adverted, they have gleaned a few facts touching the property, and
dealings in regard to property, of the poet. It appears that, from
year to year, he owned a larger share in the Blackfriars'
Theater:[618] its wardrobe and other appurtenances were his: and he
bought an estate in his native village, with his earnings, as writer
and shareholder; that he lived in the best house in Stratford;[619]
was intrusted by his neighbors with their commissions in London, as of
borrowing money, and the like; and he was a veritable farmer. About
the time when he was writing Macbeth,[620] he sues Philip Rogers, in
the borough-court of Stratford, for thirty-five shillings, ten pence,
for corn delivered to him at different times; and, in all respects,
appears as a good husband with no reputation for eccentricity or
excess. He was a good-natured sort of man, an actor and shareholder in
the theater, not in any striking manner distinguished from other
actors and managers. I admit the importance of this information. It is
well worth the pains that have been taken to procure it.
15. But whatever scraps of information concerning his condition these
researches may have rescued, they can shed no light upon that infinite
invention which is the concealed magnet of his attraction for us. We
are very clumsy writers of history. We tell the chronicle of
parentage, birth, birth-place, schooling, schoolmates, earning of
money, marriage, publication of books, celebrity, death; and when we
have come to an end of this gossip no ray of relation appears between
it and the goddess-born; and it seems as if, had we dipped at random
into the "Modern Plutarch," and read any other life there, it would
have fitted the poems as well. It is the essence of poetry to spring,
like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to abolish
the past, and refuse all history. Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and
Collier,[621] have wasted their oil. The famed theaters, Covent
Garden, Drury Lane, the Park, and Tremont,[622] have vainly assisted.
Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Macready,[623] dedicate their
lives to this genius; him they crown, elucidate, obey, and express.
The genius knows them not. The recitation begins; one golden word
leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantry, and sweetly
torments us with invitations to its own inaccessible homes. I
remember, I went once to see the Hamlet of a famed performer,[624] the
pride of the English stage; and all I then heard, and all I now
remember, of the tragedian, was that in which the tragedian had no
part; simply, Hamlet's question to the ghost,--
"What may this mean,[625]
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon?"
That imagination which dilates the closet he writes in to the world's
dimension, crowds it with agents in rank and order, as quickly
reduces the big reality to be the glimpses of the moon. These tricks
of his magic spoil for us the illusions of the green-room. Can any
biography shed light on the localities into which the Midsummer
Night's Dream[626] admits me? Did Shakspeare confide to any notary or
parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate, in Stratford, the genesis of
that delicate creation? The forest of Arden,[627] the nimble air of
Scone Castle,[628] the moonlight of Portia's villa,[629] "the antres
vast[630] and desarts idle," of Othello's captivity,--where is the
third cousin, or grand-nephew, the chancellor's file of accounts, or
private letter, that has kept one word of those transcendent secrets?
In fine, in this drama, as in all great works of art,--in the
Cyclopean architecture[631] of Egypt and India; in the Phidian
sculpture;[632] the Gothic ministers;[633] the Italian painting;[634]
the Ballads of Spain and Scotland,[635]--the Genius draws up the
ladder after him, when the creative age goes up to heaven, and gives
way to a new, which sees the works, and ask in vain for a history.
16. Shakspeare is the only biographer of Shakspeare; and even he can
tell nothing, except to the Shakspeare in us; that is, to our most
apprehensive and sympathetic hour. He cannot step from off his
tripod,[636] and give us anecdotes of his inspirations. Read the antique
documents extricated, analyzed, and compared, by the assiduous Dyce and