From Chaucer to Tennyson
It was Shakspere's habit to work out his tragic conclusions from within,
through character, rather than through external chances. This is true of
all the great tragedies of his middle life, _Hamlet, Othello, Lear,
Macbeth_, in every one of which the catastrophe is involved in the
character and actions of the hero. This is so, in a special sense, in
_Hamlet_, the subtlest of all Shakspere's plays, and, if not his
masterpiece, at any rate the one which has most attracted and puzzled
the greatest minds. It is observable that in Shakspere's comedies there
is no one central figure, but that, in passing into tragedy, he
intensified and concentrated the attention upon a single character. This
difference is seen even in the naming of the plays; the tragedies always
take their titles from their heroes, the comedies never.
Somewhat later, probably, than the tragedies already mentioned were the
three Roman plays, _Julius Caesar, Coriolanus,_ and _Anthony and
Cleopatra_. It is characteristic of Shakspere that he invented the plot
of none of his plays, but took material that he found at hand. In these
Roman tragedies he followed Plutarch closely, and yet, even in so doing,
gave, if possible, a greater evidence of real creative power than when
he borrowed a mere outline of a story from some Italian novelist. It is
most instructive to compare _Julius Caesar_ with Ben Jonson's _Catiline_
and _Sejanus_. Jonson was careful not to go beyond his text. In
_Catiline_ he translates almost literally the whole of Cicero's first
oration against Catiline. _Sejanus_ is a mosaic of passages from Tacitus
and Suetonius. There is none of this dead learning in Shakspere's play.
Having grasped the conceptions of the characters of Brutus, Cassius, and
Mark Anthony, as Plutarch gave them, he pushed them out into their
consequences in every word and act, so independently of his original,
and yet so harmoniously with it, that the reader knows that he is
reading history, and needs no further warrant for it than Shakspere's
own. _Timon of Athens_ is the least agreeable and most monotonous of
Shakspere's undoubted tragedies, and _Troilus and Cressida_, said
Coleridge, is the hardest to characterize. The figures of the old
Homeric world fare but hardly under the glaring light of modern
standards of morality which Shakspere turns upon them. Ajax becomes a
stupid bully, Ulysses a crafty politician, and swift-footed Achilles a
vain and sulky chief of faction. In losing their ideal remoteness the
heroes of the _Iliad_ lose their poetic quality, and the lover of Homer
experiences an unpleasant disenchantment.
It was customary in the 18th century to speak of Shakspere as a rude
though prodigious genius. Even Milton could describe him as "warbling
his native wood-notes wild." But a truer criticism, beginning in England
with Coleridge, has shown that he was also a profound artist. It is true
that he wrote for his audiences, and that his art is not every-where and
at all points perfect. But a great artist will contrive, as Shakspere
did, to reconcile practical exigencies, like those of the public stage,
with the finer requirements of his art. Strained interpretations have
been put upon this or that item in Shakspere's plays; and yet it is
generally true that some deeper reason can be assigned for his method in
a given case than that "the audience liked puns," or, "the audience
liked ghosts." Compare, for example, his delicate management of the
supernatural with Marlowe's procedure in _Faustus_. Shakspere's age
believed in witches, elves, and apparitions; and yet there is always
something shadowy or allegorical in his use of such machinery. The ghost
in _Hamlet_ is merely an embodied suspicion. Banquo's wraith, which is
invisible to all but Macbeth, is the haunting of an evil conscience. The
witches in the same play are but the promptings of ambition, thrown into
a human shape, so as to become actors in the drama. In the same way, the
fairies in _Midsummer Night's Dream_ are the personified caprices of the
lovers, and they are unseen by the human characters, whose likes and
dislikes they control, save in the instance where Bottom is "translated"
(that is, becomes mad) and has sight of the invisible world. So in the
_Tempest_, Ariel is the spirit of the air and Caliban of the earth,
ministering, with more or less of unwillingness, to man's necessities.
Shakspere is the most universal of writers. He touches more men at more
points than Homer, or Dante, or Goethe. The deepest wisdom, the sweetest
poetry, the widest range of character, are combined in his plays. He
made the English language an organ of expression unexcelled in the
history of literature. Yet he is not an English poet simply, but a
world-poet. Germany has made him her own, and the Latin races, though at
first hindered in a true appreciation of him by the canons of classical
taste, have at length learned to know him. An ever-growing mass of
Shakespearian literature, in the way of comment and interpretation,
critical, textual, historical, or illustrative, testifies to the
durability and growth of his fame. Above all, his plays still keep, and
probably always will keep, the stage. It is common to speak of
Shakespeare and the other Elizabethan dramatists as if they stood, in
some sense, on a level. But in truth there is an almost measureless
distance between him and all his contemporaries. The rest shared with
him in the mighty influences of the age. Their plays are touched here
and there with the power and splendor of which they were all joint
heirs. But, as a whole, they are obsolete. They live in books, but not
in the hearts and on the tongues, of men.
The most remarkable of the dramatists contemporary with Shakespeare was
Ben Jonson, whose robust figure is in striking contrast with the other's
gracious impersonality. Jonson was nine years younger than Shakespeare.
He was educated at Westminster School, served as a soldier in the low
countries, became an actor in Henslowe's company, and was twice
imprisoned--once for killing a fellow-actor in a duel, and once for his
part in the comedy of _Eastward Hoe_, which gave offense to King James.
He lived down to the time of Charles I (1635), and became the
acknowledged arbiter of English letters and the center of convivial wit
combats at the Mermaid, the Devil, and other famous London taverns.
What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid; heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whom they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.[22]
The inscription on his tomb in Westminster Abbey is simply
O rare Ben Jonson!
[Footnote 22: Francis Beaumont. _Letter to Ben Jonson_.]
Jonson's comedies were modeled upon the _vetus comaedia_ of Aristophanes,
which was satirical in purpose, and they belonged to an entirely
different school from Shakspere's. They were classical and not romantic,
and were pure comedies, admitting no admixture of tragic motives. There
is hardly one lovely or beautiful character in the entire range of his
dramatic creations. They were comedies not of character, in the high
sense of the word, but of manners or humors. His design was to lash the
follies and vices of the day, and his _dramatis personae_ consisted for
the most part of gulls, impostors, fops, cowards, swaggering braggarts,
and "Pauls men." In his first play, _Every Man in his Humor_ (acted in
1598), in _Every Man Out of his Humor, Bartholomew Fair_, and, indeed,
in all of his comedies, his subject was the fashionable affectations,
the whims, oddities, and eccentric developments of London life. His
procedure was to bring together a number of these fantastic humorists,
and "squeeze out the humor of such spongy souls," by playing them off
upon each other, involving them in all manner of comical misadventures,
and rendering them utterly ridiculous and contemptible. There was thus a
perishable element in his art, for manners change; and, however
effective this exposure of contemporary affectations may have been
before an audience of Jonson's day, it is as hard for a modern reader to
detect his points as it will be for a reader two hundred years hence to
understand the satire upon the aesthetic craze in such pieces of the
present day as _Patience_, or the _Colonel_. Nevertheless, a patient
reader, with the help of copious footnotes, can gradually put together
for himself an image of that world of obsolete humors in which Jonson's
comedy dwells, and can admire the dramatist's solid good sense, his
great learning, his skill in construction, and the astonishing fertility
of his invention. His characters are not revealed from within, like
Shakspere's, but built up painfully from outside by a succession of
minute, laborious particulars. The difference will be plainly manifest
if such a character as Slender, in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, be
compared with any one of the inexhaustible variety of idiots in Jonson's
plays; with Master Stephen, for example, in _Every Man in his Humor_;
or, if Falstaff be put side by side with Captain Bobadil, in the same
comedy, perhaps Jonson's masterpiece in the way of comic caricature.
_Cynthia's Revels_ was a satire on the courtiers and the _Poetaster_ on
Jonson's literary enemies. The _Alchemist_ was an exposure of quackery,
and is one of his best comedies, but somewhat overweighted with
learning. _Volpone_ is the most powerful of all his dramas, but is a
harsh and disagreeable piece; and the state of society which it depicts
is too revolting for comedy. The _Silent Woman_ is, perhaps, the easiest
of all Jonson's plays for a modern reader to follow and appreciate.
There is a distinct plot to it, the situation is extremely ludicrous,
and the emphasis is laid upon a single humor or eccentricity, as in some
of Moliere's lighter comedies, like _Le Malade Imaginaire_, or _Le
Medecin malgre lui_.
In spite of his heaviness in drama, Jonson had a light enough touch in
lyric poetry. His songs have not the careless sweetness of Shakspere's,
but they have a grace of their own. Such pieces as his _Love's Triumph,
Hymn to Diana_, the adaptation from Philostratus,
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
and many others entitle their author to rank among the first of English
lyrists. Some of these occur in his two collections of miscellaneous
verse, the _Forest_ and _Underwoods_; others in the numerous masques
which he composed. These were a species of entertainment, very popular
at the court of James I., combining dialogue with music, intricate
dances, and costly scenery. Jonson left an unfinished pastoral drama,
the _Sad Shepherd_, which contains passages of great beauty; one,
especially, descriptive of the shepherdess
Earine,
Who had her very being and her name
With the first buds and breathings of the spring,
Born with the primrose and the violet
And earliest roses blown.
1. A History of Elizabethan Literature. George Saintsbury.
London: Macmillan & Co., 1877.
2. Palgrave's Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics. London:
Macmillan & Co., 1877.
3. The Courtly Poets from Raleigh to Montrose. Edited
by J. Hannah. London: Bell & Daldy, 1870.
4. The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. London: Sampson
Low, Son & Marston, 1867.
5. Bacon's Essays. Edited by W. Aldis Wright. Macmillan
& Co. (Golden Treasury Series.)
6. The Cambridge Shakspere. (Clark & Wright.)
7. Charles Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets.
8. Ben Jonson's Volpone and Silent Woman. Cunningham's
Edition. London: J.C. Hotten, (3 vols.)
CHAPTER IV.
THE AGE OF MILTON.
1608-1674.
The Elizabethan age proper closed with the death of the queen, and the