9^, v LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 106 430 7 # Hollinger Corp. pH8.5 PR 2899 .S8 Copy 1 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE THE TERCENTENARY OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE A EULOG1UM PRONOUNCED IN ST. JAMES'S CHURCH, CHICAGO SUNDAY, APRIL 30, 1916 BY THE REV. JAMES S. STONE, D.D. RECTOR PRINTED BY REQUEST A- Copyright, 1916, JAMES S. STONE ©ill *t>thor 12 AUG IT JUN -2 IS* 6 This EULOGY ON WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE is distributed with the compliments of the Wardens, Vestry- men, and Treasurer of St. James's Church, Chicago. Charles A. Street Edwin J. Gardiner Wardens John S. Miller Henry E. Bullock Robert Foote Hall Robert Collyer Fergus W. Alford Green c. colton daughaday Thatcher Hoyt John W. Kendrick Vestrymen Archibald E. Freer Treasurer AN EPITAPH ON THE ADMIRABLE DRAMATIC POET W. SHAKESPEARE. 1630. What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones, The labour of an age in piled stones? Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a live-long monument. For whilst to the shame of slow-endeavouring art Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book Those Delphic lines with deep impression took, Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving, Doth make us marble with too much conceiving; And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. JOHN MILTON. You will agree with me, Good Friends, that this Church, the oldest Church in the City of Chicago in communion with the Church at Stratford-on-Avon, where lie interred the remains of William Shakespeare, should have its part in the tercentenary of the death of the immortal poet. I confess that had it been possible I should have invited to address you the most accomplished Shakespearian scholar I could have obtained in our University, or, failing such, some one of the many learned lovers of the Master who are to be found easily in this city. And yet, after all, it may be well that a priest of the Communion to which the poet un- doubtedly belonged should say what is to be said on this occasion. At the same time, it must be understood that I can tell you nothing new. As Mark Antony said of Julius Caesar, "I tell you that which you yourselves do know." I am myself only a disciple of those who have studied, and are the acknowledged exponents of, the Poet and of the vast literature which has grown up round him. There are many here who know more of him and of that literature than I do. I venture little more than to set myself in the multitude of those who admire and love the Man, who, beyond all other men, has enriched the world's literature, and given lasting and unsullied glory to the race which speaks his language. Much less will any one question that it is most fitting that the Church should acknowledge the debt due by all who are interested in the welfare of society to the art and the profession which have for their purpose the delineation of human nature in all its phases. True, "all the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players;" but it is well ever and anon to have the stage reduced to 7 proportions more readily comprehended, and to see the passions and virtues, the characters and purposes, even the vices and weaknesses of humanity, displayed and unfolded in just interpretation. Such representations serve both to educate and to divert the mind; and while progress towards knowledge and truth must be maintained, that progress can be the better pursued when imagination and pleasure are allowed a commensurate indulgence. The Church has never lost sight of the fact that histrionic art may service- ably supplement and truly strengthen her more severe method of instruction. In the Middle Ages she brought in the Mystery Play, precursor of the modern drama. Indeed, is not the chief and central service of the Church itself a drama — sacred verily beyond all other events of history, but still a drama? Does she not seek to depict in that Sacrament of the Altar the story of the Cross — the Man of Sorrows, the treachery and cowardice of disciples, the bitterness of persecutors, the selfishness and weakness of rulers, and the awful catastrophe by which the world was robbed of a Reformer and won a Saviour? Read between the lines, and every Sunday morning you behold a drama more wonderful than any that even a Sophocles or a Shakes- peare conceived. It is not therefore unreasonable that the Church, whose Scriptures contain not only the story of this sublime tragedy, but also such dramatic poems as the Song of Songs and the Book of Job, should commemorate in one of her own sons a poet and dramatist such as William Shakespeare. Moreover this man had in his many-sided character a side that was profoundly religious. Or, to put that state- ment another way, in his creations he set forth and appreci- ated spiritual and virtuous qualities, and placed on the lips of his men and women words expressive of holiness and purity of life. On the other hand, he dealt as clearly with characters the opposite of these. That was an attribute of his genius. He could put aside his own tastes, feelings, con- ceptions, and habits, more entirely than any other writer has ever done, and read and display absolutely and uner- ringly the man or woman whom he would make known. It may be claimed, therefore, that in neither direction did he reveal his own soul. But he was as just as he was. exact. There is no instance in which he excuses wrong, or in which he holds an evil or despicable character to be an object of praise or imitation. He invariably brings or leaves them to the shame and punishment which a life ignoble and in- human properly deserves. Even though he seems to hold that intention is the key to morality, yet he inculcated a strict morality, and vexed his soul concerning the low standards which so widely prevailed. True, he makes you love Sir John Falstaff in spite of the knight's blustering, drinking, and lax conduct. He loved him himself, and he is not the only one who has seen in men such as his stalwart warrior some qualities of good outrivalling the qualities of evil. But you do not love Iago; or the ungrateful daughters of King Lear ; or Lady Macbeth, ice-cold and cruel. Shakes- peare believed in retribution; and with unwavering skill he traces the development of thought, emotion, and habit which leads to it. Thus, notwithstanding his power of self-forgetfulness, I feel that his delight was in things which are pure and true, divine and noble; in other words, in that which is distinct- ively moral and spiritual. His reverence for the deep mysteries of religion can scarcely be mistaken. He speaks of crusaders "in those holy fields Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd For our advantage on the bitter cross." 9 And a brave warrior, — who had fought, he says, " For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field, Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross, " — he describes as dying in Italy, on his way back from the Holy Land, destined not to see again the land he loved so well : "and there at Venice gave His body to that pleasant country's earth, And his pure soul unto his captain Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long." It would be easy to gather line upon line from his plays bright with the lustre of respect for holy things— let me say, of faith and hope in holy things. I dare not stay to quote, nor is it needful that I should quote, Portia's eulogy of mercy, or Lorenzo's pleasing imagery of the star-strewn sky; much less may I stop to bring together the allusions to events narrated in Sacred Scripture. Nor may I do more here than direct attention again to the problems suggested, not only by the scepticism or doubt of Hamlet, but even more forcefully in the Tempest. There the critics have pointed out that Ariel appears to indicate the capabilities of the human intellect when detached from physical attri- butes; and Caliban seems to typify human nature before the evolution of moral sentiment. Significant, too, are Prospero's words, as the vision which he had conjured up for Ferdinand vanished away: "You do look, my son, in a mov'd sort, As if you were dismay : be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are en'ded. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air. And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 10 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep." So impressed am I with the genius and work of Shakes- peare, that I confess had I aught to do with the education of the clergy I should prescribe a thorough study of his plays and poems, and not of his only, but also of the great dramatists of Greece and of the Elizabethan age; and also of the chief works of Edmund Spenser and Francis Bacon. The reading of Francis Bacon, for instance, undoubtedly would expand their knowledge, and protect them from one of the most curious delusions known in the literary world. I believe that an acquaintance with human nature, and of the powers of the English tongue, as depicted by William Shakespeare, and, let us say, Christopher Marlowe and Beaumont and Fletcher, would be an invaluable part of a clergyman's education. As all men know, William Shakespeare was baptized in the parish church of Stratford-on-Avon, on April 26, 1564. It is taken for granted that he was born only three or four days earlier. In Henley Street are two adjoining houses forming a detached building; and in one of these visitors are shown a room which for more than a hundred and fifty years has been claimed to have been the poet's birthplace. It is doubtful, however, if this part of the building was then owned or occupied by the Shakespeares; and all that re- mains of the building as it was at the time Shakespeare was born is the cellar under the so-called birthplace. The ad- joining house, however, was bought by his father in 1556; and the family appear to have lived in it for many years. 11 But beyond a few exceptions, I must not take up your time with particulars of the poet's life which are familiar to all. Of the many critics and guides who have dealt with that life, none is surer than Sir Sidney Lee. For many of the details I advance, I depend on him. Of William Shakespeare's parents let this suffice. His father, John Shakespeare, of yeoman origin, went to Strat- ford from a neighbouring village about 1551, and set up in Henley Street as a trader in farm produce, dealing in corn, wool, malt, meat, skins, leather, and gloves. In 1552 he appears in the borough records as paying a fine of twelve- pence for having allowed a dung heap and pile of dirt to accumulate in the street in front of his house. This is John Shakespeare's introduction to English history. A keen man of affairs, he prospered both in business and in the esteem of his fellow townsmen. In turn he held several of the borough offices, and in 1561 became one of the two chamberlains. Later he reached the dignity of an alder- man, and from 1567 was known by the honourable appella- tion of Mr. John Shakespeare. From being the bailiff of Stratford he passed on, in 1571, to the dignity of chief alderman. His best good fortune, however, was his wife, Mary Arden, the daughter of a wealthy farmer, at Wilm- cote, near Stratford, whom he married in 1557. She in- herited both money and land; and seems to have been of gentle ancestry. Neither she nor her husband appears to have been able to write; but in those days people much higher in social position than they made their mark instead of signing their names. Some years after the wedding, the tide of prosperity turned. In the financial difficulties which overtook her husband, she freely sacrificed of her means. This did not save John Shakespeare from anxiety and distress. When William his son had reached his thir- teenth year, he took him from school and put him to work, 12 tradition says in his butcher's shop. Of this stress of cir- cumstances the detractors of the poet have made much. It has not the slightest bearing upon the genius. In the bestowal of gifts, Providence is no respecter of persons. But as with Thomas a Becket and Cardinal Wolsey, so some have endeavoured to belittle Shakespeare's parentage and early life. His father and mother were not among the world's great folk, but apart from their own acquirements, they had influential relatives and friends, and among their kinsfolk was Edward Arden, the trusted attendant of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. There were chances, therefore, whereby William Shakes- peare could get into touch with people of rank and influence, and obtain glimpses of a brilliancy and dignity of life un- known in Henley Street. And if an attempt be thought necessary to account for William Shakespeare's inclination to the stage, it may be said, that possibly, through this Edward Arden, he had an opportunity of witnessing some of the entertainments at Kenilworth, fifteen or twenty miles from Stratford, which the Earl of Leicester gave in honour of Queen Elizabeth. The Queen visited Kenilworth, then at its very best, in the July of 1575, and the series of festivals held during her stay there was unequalled for ingenuity and splendour, even in that age of extravagance. Shakes- peare was then eleven years old, and were he there the masques and pageants could not have failed to have had an influence on him. But not only at Kenilworth had Shakespeare oppor- tunities of seeing much of that life to which some day he should add the vitality and grace of his genius. Warwick and Coventry were replete with historical memories; and the latter city had regularly constituted guilds of players. Even to Stratford, though a town small, out-of-the-way, and insanitary, in the year when Shakespeare's father was 13 high bailiff, came a troupe of players, to be welcomed by Mr. John Shakespeare; and within the next eighteen years came there no less than twenty- three other strolling troupes. It is not unreasonable to suppose that a youth such as we may conjecture William Shakespeare to have been should have taken count of these players, and with fancy excited by their performances have developed a love for history and romance, and later, in his days of wandering, have turned to the theatre. More than this. Since childhood's surroundings have so much to do with the development of the man, let me say, that not only is that Warwickshire one of the most romantic regions in England, rich in traditions, folklore, and historical associations, but nowhere has Nature been more bountiful in many of her most charming graces. Villages and towns, manor-houses and churches, are there in almost every direction, set in landscapes that rival the most daring con- ceptions of artists and poets. In those far-away days and in quiet and winning silence lay hillside and valley, unsullied by smoke but beautified by mist, tender and purple, here covered with dark forest, here broken by park or field, and anon enlivened with the gleaming of running water. In the brooks the angler found abundant sport; the woodlands furnished prey for the hunter; and on the moors the fal- coner loosed his hawk. A wondrous country that, where numberless attractions twine themselves around the heart and quicken the imagination; where the daisies sleep while nightingales sing, and mill-wheels turn as the trout springs beneath the willows to the fly; and where Shakespeare had his first insight into the mystery of Nature! In that fair land, he watched the sun " gliding pale streams with heaven- ly alchemy ;' ' he knew "the uncertain glory of an April day ; " he heard the lark at .heaven's gate sing; he indeed found 14 " tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. " I know well that delectable country. Allow me to become personal. I was born, and in my early youth brought up, within a few miles of Stratford-on-Avon. Clearly do I remember one summer afternoon, soon after my thirteenth birthday, when I spent three or four hours in that town, for the first time by myself. Before this, I had been taken to Henley Street, to New Place, to the Church, and to the Grammar School; and often had I crossed the bridge built by Sir Hugh Clopton in the reign of Henry the Seventh. Once I had seen Charlecote on my way to Warwick, and had been told the tradition of Sir Thomas Lucy. I also knew the story of the beautiful and unfortunate Charlotte Clopton. But I had not read a line of Shakespeare, unless possibly as a quotation. This afternoon, however, I went by myself the usual route the tourists take, especially to the old church, where in the chancel I looked again on the monument of the great poet. Then I went out and listened to the rooks, and sat on the wall under the trees by the river. That scene Shakespeare saw full many a time: green fields beyond, cattle under the wide- spreading oaks, the stream lightly moving the sedges and lilies near the shore, butterflies and bees among the flowers on the bank, birds flitting from bush to bush, the sunshine falling through the boughs and brightening all with exquisite and tender glory — a warm July afternoon, when drowsiness and fancy went together hand in hand, and one knew not whether what one saw or thought was dream or verity. To me it seemed all Shakespeare. And yet, only for his name, Shakespeare to me was nothing. I bought an unbound copy of the Plays, "a poor thing, but mine own," the smell of the printer's ink lingering still about it; and in due time I went home. That night, hid 15 away in my room and supposed to be asleep, my candle screened so that no one passing by should see it, unconscious of time, indeed, to quote a winsome line, utterly forgetful that "the iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve," I read Romeo and Juliet. I did not know or even care for the passion, but the plot was mine. I could appreciate the characters and scenes. And much besides. I had felt the charm of romance and the fascination of Italy. I had met brave sirs and noble dames. The genius of Shakespeare had touched my soul. Humour had come to enrich fancy. Mab, queen of fairies, sported freely in the midst of dreams, and I laughed at her tricks — "And sometimes comes she with a tithe pig's tail, Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep ; Then dreams he of another benefice. " Knew I not, even in those early years, what tithes and benefices meant, the one to the farmer and the other to the priest? Nor did the charm of the lovers' contention miss me. Juliet, "Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree : Believe me, love, it was the nightingale. Romeo. " It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale : look, love, what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east: Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops." Perhaps this reminiscence will bring back to some of you the delight with which you first, in the dawn of youth, 16 read Shakespeare. Life has another joy, in some respects another meaning, after you have entered that realm of endless wonders. No one claims that Shakespeare was an accomplished or an exact scholar. I shall bring this up again a little later. He attended the free Grammar School at Stratford, where the Latin language and literature were the chief subjects of study; and though he left school early in his boyhood, yet, during the five or six }^ears we may assume he remained there, he probably acquired a working familiar- ity with authors such as Seneca, Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid. In after life he used Ovid in the original, though he seems to have preferred other Latin writers in translations, of which there were many. We do not know his character- istics as a boy. He may have been, as we would fain be- lieve, diligent and industrious; but he may have pictured himself in "the whining schoolboy with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school." With an alert and retentive mind such as his, those days at school gave him the means of access to any ancient author needed for his purpose. Perhaps I may add, that the little schooling he had was also enough to save him from spoiling himself with academic habits and in pedantic lore. For, after all, Shakespeare's real school, both as boy and man, was not Oxford or Cambridge or their like, but the world itself. He possessed the faculty of reading and understanding human nature, as well as a marvellous keen- ness of observation, and his gifts received their development largely from contact with all sorts and conditions of men. Whatever defects there were in his education were met by 17 an intuition, a fineness of thought, and a spirit of confidence, probably to some extent inherited from his mother, but for the most part indigenous to himself. As Professor Walter Raleigh says: "Shakespeare was 'to the manner born/ From the very first he has an unerringly sure touch with the character of his high-born ladies; he knows all that can neither be learned by method nor taught in words, — the un- written code of delicate honour, the rapidity and confidence of decision, the quickness of sympathy, the absolute trust in instinct, and the unhesitating freedom of speech." I have made these references to the poet's early life for obvious reasons. Of his career in London, either as play- wright or actor, I shall say no more than may be needed by way of illustration. Before those days of weary toil and noble triumph, however, it will be remembered that, while in his nineteenth year, he had married Anne Hatha- way, the daughter of a substantial yeoman at Shottery, near Stratford, and eight years his senior. First, was born a daughter, Susanna, baptized at Stratford, May 26, 1583; and then came twins, Hammet and Judith, both baptized in the same church, February 2, 1585. This early marriage and growing family added much to his father's perplexity, and, as he himself had no adequate means of livelihood, resulted in his own distress and impatience. It may have been for these domestic reasons, as much as from his prone- ness to trespass on Sir Thomas Lucy's preserves, that led him late in 1585 to try his chances in London. Thither he trudged on foot; nor did he return to Stratford for nearly eleven years, the year in which his son Hammet died. In those eleven years Mr. John Shakespeare became poorer and poorer, and William Shakespeare's wife seems to have fared badly. But with the poet's return, in 1596, the affairs of the family speedily improved; and though William continued to reside in London, he visited Stratford 18 once a year, till his final retirement, in 1611, and then he made his home there for the rest of his days. With pros- perity came comfort and honour. His father was awarded a coat of arms. Shakespeare himself purchased the largest house in town, known as New Place, and planted an orchard there. His reputation for wealth and influence increased. His income as a dramatist and actor grew, and in 1599 he obtained a share in the profits of the Globe Theatre. A shrewd and businesslike management of his interests added still more to his acquirements. He bought properties in London as well as at Stratford. His generosity was not less marked than his success. His native town appreciated his efforts to restore to his family that repute which was well nigh lost by his father's misfortunes. A rising phy- sician at Stratford, John Hall, in 1607, married his elder daughter, Susanna, long remembered as " witty above her sex," a woman of singular piety and of never-failing tender- ness and service for others; and the following year was born the poet's only grandchild, Elizabeth Hall. His younger daughter, Judith, was married in 1616 to Thomas Quiney. It has been suggested that we are indebted to Judith Shakespeare for something of the beauty and simplicity which appear in Miranda and Perdita. Judith survived her three children, and the only child of Susanna, Elizabeth Hall, though twice married, died without offspring in 1670. By the purchase in 1605 of the lease of a moiety of the tithes of Stratford, Shakespeare became one of the lay rectors of the parish, and thereby secured the right of burial in the chancel of the Church of the Holy Trinity for himself and his family. His son, his father and mother, and his only brother-in-law, William Hart, were buried in the churchyard; but he himself was interred before the altar, April 25, 1616, two days after his death, in a grave seven- teen feet deep. Soon after his death, the question was 19 raised among men of letters if his remains had received ap- propriate sepulture. Some of his admirers thought that he should have been buried in Westminster Abbey, beside the remains of Chaucer, Spenser, and Beaumont. One of the most enthusiastic of these admirers, William Basse, three or four years after the poet's burial in Stratford Church, penned the following lines: — "Renowned Spenser lie a thought more nigh To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie A little nearer Spenser, to make room For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb. To lodge all four in one bed make a shift Until Doomsday, for hardly will a fifth Betwixt this day and that by Fate be slain, For whom your curtains may be drawn again. If your precedency in death doth bar A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre, Under this carved marble of thine own, Sleep, rare Tragedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone; Tlry unmolested peace, unshared cave, Possess as lord, not tenant, of thy grave, That unto us and others it may be Honour hereafter to be laid by thee." Ben Jonson, in his eulogy to the dramatist, prefixed to the folio of 1623, evidently with this elegy in mind, says : — "My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further to make thee a room. Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy book doth live And we have wits to read and praise to give." Within five or six years of his funeral, the monument was erected which is still on the chancel wall over his grave, with an effigy of the poet, probably designed by Nicholas Stone, 20 the famous English sculptor of the day, and executed by his coadjutor, either Bernard or Nicholas Johnson; and with an epitaph, most likely written by a London friend, which, whatever its defects of style, maintains Shakespeare to have been the greatest man of letters of his times. Especially worthy of notice is the expression that with Shakespeare "quick nature died." The English part of the epitaph, which, as Sir Sidney Lee observes, embodies a conceit touch- ing art's supremacy over nature, characteristic of the spirit of the Renaissance, reads thus: — "Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast? Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast Within this monument; Shakespeare with whome Quick nature dide; whose name doth deck ys tombe Far more then cost; sith all yt he hath writt Leaves living art but page to serve his witt." Monuments to the memory of Shakespeare have been erected in many cities. Among the finest of them is the bronze statue in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Pardon another digression. This statue was provided for by a bequest of $10,000 made by Mr. Samuel Johnston, a member and benefactor of this parish, who at the time of his death, October 5, 1886, was living at 99 Pine Street, now 669 Lincoln Parkway, well within the sound of the bells of St. James's Church. He desired to give to Chicago some lasting expression of his affection for the great poet, and to carry out this purpose he appointed in his will Mr. John de Koven and Mr. Ezra B. McCagg, parishioners of this Church, and Mr. William Elliot Furness, an associate of his at Harvard. The work was done by William Ordway Partridge, and its dignity, grace, and poetry give it a place among the masterpieces of art. It was unveiled April 23, 1894, in the presence of a large and distinguished con- course of people. The newspapers speak of the enthusiasm 21 and applause. In his address, among other things, Mr. Partridge said: "My model was conceived in Milton, Mas- sachusetts, and executed in Boston. The large statue I worked out in Paris. I visited England: Stratford and London. I talked with Seymour, Lucas, and Henry Irving. I hunted down the types. I left no stone unturned. I walked with the poet, and dined in the old garden. In fact, I did my best to get at the spirit of the man; and yet, after all, how little we can put of this man's person- ality in bronze! Whatever criticisms may be made upon the work, believe me, I have done for you my level best. I have put my faith in only three of the one hundred and thirty-seven portraits which confronted me w T hen I went to England : the effigy at Stratford, the death mask, and the Droeshout which appears in the Folio Edition." It may be of interest to add, that "in loving memory of Samuel Johnston," his nephew, Mr. E. S. Fabian, gave to St. James's Church the cover to the font, the tiling on which the font stands, the brass railing in front of the font, and the prayer-desk and candelabrum used at bap- tisms. On the standard are inscribed the words, "Walk as Children of Light." Thus in this Church we have a perpetual memorial of the man who gave to Lincoln Park its statue of William Shakespeare. Need I say that every year, on April 23, this statue is covered with an abundance of flowers? But they who would see the statue at the best time, and think the thoughts inspired as it were by the kingly figure sitting there in his chair of state, should choose an early morning or a late afternoon in May, when the trees are thickening with foli- age, and the lawns are deepening in verdure, and the old- fashioned garden, which runs north and south on either side, is hour by hour growing richer and sweeter in colour and suggestion. Then the light streams from east or west, 22 as though it would give the glory of heaven to the man who, in the outcome of his mind, revealed attributes almost superhuman, if not divine. And you stand silently and reverently, as in the presence of genius, with heart sub- dued and memory alert, till imagination brings the fairies carrying the bloom of the bushes, and pictures pure and radiant spirits, such as an Imogen or a Perdita, passing from beside the poet into the shadows beyond. But I must return to the burying place in old Stratford Church. It may be well to observe, even though it would be naturally taken for granted, that there is no break in identity between the boy who was born in Henley Street and the man who was here buried. His contemporary townsfolk knew him to be the same: that he had gone to London, obtained fame and wealth there, and had spent his last years mostly in his native place. His London friends had no doubt that the man they had known on the stage and as a writer of dramas lay in his grave in Stratford Church. His widow knew that the man entombed in the chancel of Holy Trinity was the man she had married. Possibly her life with him had not been happy. Possibly he intended to slight her in his will; though quite as possibly he had made ample provision for her. But she taught her daughters to respect his memory; tradition says that she desired to be buried with him; and in 1623 she was laid beside him. Even her son-in-law, John Hall, puritan as he was, and it may have been not infrequently subject to his father-in-law's quips and jests,— for Shakespeare disliked puritans most heartily, — does not seem to have refused recognition to the poet's position as a playwright. These particulars should not be forgotten. They bear upon the singular hallucination which has sprung up, one 23 scarcely knows why or how, in regard to the claims of Shakespeare as an author. You are well aware, and you expect me to keep in mind, that the opinion has been entertained, and with no in- considerable energy advanced, that Shakespeare did not write the plays or poems which bear his name, but that they were, at least in all probability, the creation of Francis Bacon. The first approaches to this opinion were made nearly seventy years since, and the opinion rests principally on the supposition that, among the men of his day, Francis Bacon alone possessed the almost inexhaustible knowledge and marvellous literary skill manifested in these plays and poems. If there were other men approaching Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare, to judge from his bringing up, could not have been one of them. It may be said, indeed, that it matters little who wrote the poems and plays attributed to Shakespeare so long as we have them. And yet personality does add to the interest. To know the author is something towards under- standing the work. In this case the design is to set aside a tradition unquestioned for more than two hundred years, and to substitute one man for another. The controversy is familiar. We may dismiss from our consideration arguments drawn from ciphers and crypto- grams. Arbitrary and elusive, fantastic and ludicrous, they can be invented at will, and used to prove anything. Nor need we examine the parallelisms between passages in Shakespeare's works and passages in Bacon's works; or the enigmatic allusions in Bacon's correspondence to his secret recreations. The substance of the doubts brought against Shakespeare really lies in the hypothesis that he did not, and could not, have produced the literature which has been attributed to him. 24 To vindicate Shakespeare there is no necessity, even were it possible, to depreciate Bacon; though it should be observed that the opinion against Shakespearian author- ship depends upon the depreciation of Shakespeare and the exaltation of Bacon. Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Albans, well deserves to be called the British Socrates. Perhaps in the realm of thought he comes nearest to the Greek Seeker after Truth. Great as a statesman, a lawyer, and a philosopher, he combined the qualities and excellencies which go to the making up of those vocations in rarest symmetry and transcendent vigour. He possessed a wide range of thought, experience, and pow^ er of observation. Bacon, says Lord Macaulay, " moved the intellects that moved the world/ ' His language both marvellous and expressive; his clearness and majesty of diction; his grandeur and solemnity of tone, as his biogra- phers maintain, have the true ring of genius. All men know the stimulating power of his Essays and of his New Atlantis; and they who have read his philosophical and professional works realize that they have passed under the spell of a master. For his honour and fame, Francis Bacon requires not even the plays and poems of Shakespeare. No one need wonder that Shakespeare having been de- throned, the purple should have been given to Bacon. But even Bacon had his limitations. Genius cannot reach perfection in all things : certainly not in things literary . I cannot imagine the grave and judicious Richard Hooker, a master of eloquence and thought hardly less in rank than Bacon, writing the Hesperides of Robert Herrick; nor for a moment should I suppose that Thomas Huxley or John Tyndall, mighty scientists though they were, could have discovered a David Copperfield or a Henry Esmond. But were I to think such things possible, it would be no more absurd than to fancy that Francis Bacon could have written 25 Hamlet or a Midsummer Night's Dream. His literary style, his genius, and the bent of his mind as he reveals it in his books, preclude the possibility of a foundation for such a fancy. You might as reasonably expect men such as Sir William Blacks tone, formerly famous for his Com- mentaries, or the Reverend James Hervey, once popular for his Meditations among the Tombs, to produce the Elegy or the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Whatever else Francis Bacon could have done, his writings and his contemporary reputation show that he could not have created, say, a Miranda, a Juliet, or a Rosalind, a King Lear, a Shylock, or even a Sir John Falstaff . Moreover, Francis Bacon was not neglectful of his own interests. His genius indeed outstripped any vanity he may be supposed to have possessed; but he was ambitious and desirous of standing well in the world and with his sovereign. He would have found no surer way to the lasting affection of either Queen Elizabeth or King James than for him, their lord keeper and trusted counsellor, to manifest a genius such as that which Shakespeare displayed. It was ' no disgrace for a man high in rank and office to write plays or poems. The age was singularly rich in men of position who tried their hand at poetry. Versatility was held in honour, and there would have been no lowering of dignity in a man being both lawyer and dramatist. And though the voice of the Puritan was heard in the land, it was as yet feeble so far as the theatre was concerned, and little heeded by sovereign or court, or by the vast majority of the people. Nor, when the plays became popular and Shakespeare well known, could Francis Bacon have forgone the fame and credit of having written them, had he done so. No man is likely to allow his work to be appropriated by another, and the praise due to him for such to be given to another. 26 Francis Bacon must have known that immortality lay in those creations. It should be remembered also, that both Bacon and Shakespeare were well known men in their day and genera- tion. Queen Elizabeth and King James were in turn pat- rons of the dramatist. It is not to be supposed that they thought of him and of his plays to the same degree or at the same time that they thought of Francis Bacon; but they knew both men, and they were competent judges of men and of literature and art. Many of the plays ascribed to Shakespeare were presented before the court, and at the time were spoken of as his work. Queen Elizabeth was so pleased with the character of Falstaff in Henry the Fourth that she commanded Shakespeare to exhibit the valiant knight in another role, as a victim to the power of love. Hence the Merry Wives of Windsor. Among his other productions, Twelfth Night, which is still deservedly re- garded to be the perfection of English comedy and the most fascinating drama in the language, at the time was looked upon as Shakespeare 's most popular creation. Hamlet was performed before the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and speedily attained a position in literature which it has never lost. Shakespeare's praises were sung by many voices. The eyes of city and country were on him. At the gather- ings of wits in the Mermaid Tavern, he was a welcome guest. His friends speak of him as ingenious, mellifluous, silver tongued; his industry was described as happy and copious; and he is declared to have been honest and of an open and free nature. He is always "the gentle Shakes- peare," his amiability, courtesy, and kindly consideration for others winning the affection of those who came into contact with him. Among the courtiers with whom he was intimate, and who in turn inspired him with warm personal 21 regard, was Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. To that nobleman he dedicated his Venus and Adonis. Had Shakespeare not been thought capable of writing these plays, had his conversation, habits, and appearance not corresponded with the genius manifested, he would have been quickly found out and mercilessly exposed. He had rivals, but he overcame their jealousy and secured their homage. There was everything about him to justify his claims, had he seen fit to vindicate that of which no man had doubt. There was nothing about Francis Bacon, admirable as were his excellencies, to suspect that he had any love for the theatre or any leaning to dramatic art. Had he possessed a faculty for poetry, it would unfailingly have cropped out. Of all the gifts that God may give, the imagination and impulse of the poet can be least concealed. There is not a fragment of play or poem attributed to Bacon by the people who knew him: unless we are daring enough to consider as poetry his "Translation of certain Psalms into English Verse, " which he made while sick in the year 1624, and dedicated to his friend George Herbert. On the other hand, there is not the slightest intimation or suspicion that the people of those days discovered or imagined in- congruity between Shakespeare and the plays to which he set his name. On the contrary. Envy was shortsighted enough to testify to his reputation. Shakespeare's first play, Love's Labour's Lost, at least in its earliest form, appeared in 1591. Other plays followed fast, and it would seem that the third part of Henry the Sixth was acted in the March of the following year. About the end of August, in 1592, Robert Greene, a writer and playmaker of some repute, then on his deathbed, wrote an essay styled the " Groatsworth of Wit," in which he bitterly assailed Shakespeare as an "upstart crow," and denounced him as being "in his own conceit 28 the only Shake-scene in a country." He travestied and ridiculed the Duke of York's exclamation concerning Queen Margaret, and which evidently had caught the public's ear: "O tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide!" To Greene, Shakespeare's chief offence, beyond his success, was his adaptation and revision of other men's work: "beau- tified with our feathers;" but he did not question that the " antics garnished in our colours" were done by Shakes- peare. This savage attack on Shakespeare was resented, though not by the poet. In the December of the same year, 1592, three months after Greene's death, Henry Chettle, Greene's publisher, printed an apology for the abuse of the young actor. He regretted that when he put out the Groatsworth of Wit he had not spared Shakespeare. "I am as sorry," he wrote, " as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself have seen his demeanour no less civil, than he [is] excellent in the quality he professes; — besides, divers of worship (i. e. men of respectability) have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art." Allow me to quote another contemporary. Francis Meres, a clergyman of scholarly attainments, writing, in the year 1598, a review of English literature from Chaucer's times to his own, enumerates several of Shakespeare's plays and mentions some of his poems. "As Plautus and Seneca," he says, "are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage." He names him among those who have mightily enriched the English tongue, and gorgeously invested it in rare ornament and resplendent habiliments. "As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speak with Plautus's tongue, if they would speak Latin; so I say that the Muses would speak with 29 Shakespeare's fine filed phrase, if they would speak English." Elsewhere he writes: "As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare," The contemporary recognition of Shakespeare's work may not be lightly overlooked. Grandiloquence may be out of fashion, but it does not detract from truth. Two other encomiums lie before me: one published by Richard Barnwell the same year as Meres's book. "And Shakespeare thou, whose honey-flowing vein, Pleasing the world, thy praises doth obtain; Whose Venus, and whose Lucrece, sweet and chaste, Thy name in Fame's immortal book have plac't, — Live ever you, at least in fame live ever; Well may the body die, but fame dies never." The other was printed by William Barkstead in 1607, and comparing his own muse with that of the great poet, he says : "His song was worthy merit, Shakespeare he Sung the faire blossom, thou the withered tree." When Meres wrote his treatise on English literature, Shakespeare had not done his greatest work. Thirteen years of literary life at least remained. Beginning with Love's Labour's Lost in 1591, and ending probably with the Tempest in 1611, twenty years covered his dramatic activity. His poems and some sixteen of his plays were in print before he died; and seven years after his death, in 1623, a nearly complete collection of his plays was published in folio size. This folio edition is prefaced by commendatory verses by several poets, including Ben Jonson, and by an assurance from two of Shakespeare's friends and fellow- actors, Heming and Condell, that they were moved to assist in this enterprise, not by ambition either of self profit or 30 fame, but by the desire to "keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare." In their preface, the compilers of this edition speak of Shakespeare as a happy imitator of nature, and a most gentle expresser of it. "His mind and hand went together: and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who only gather his works, and give them you, to praise him. It is yours that read him. And there, we hope, to your diverse capacities, you will find enough, both to draw, and hold you : for his wit can no more lie hid, than it could be lost." Among the verses appears a poem by Leonard Digges, an eminent Oxonian, a good classical scholar, and a poet and translator of no little merit. He speaks of Shakespeare's works as living when time has dissolved the Stratford monument; thereby showing that in 1623 the monument in the church was already erected, and that no one doubted that the man buried there wrote the poems: "Be sure our Shakespeare, thou canst never die, But crown'd with laurel, live eternally." These particulars do not so nearly interest us, as does the friendship of Ben Jonson for Shakespeare. It was not a friendship as intimate as that which Jonson had with Francis Bacon, whom he looked upon as the culminating glory of his generation in letters, but it was close enough for him to understand and to appreciate the man whose genius went beyond his own. His admiration for him was outspoken. "I loved the man," he said, "and do honour to his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any." He noted adversely the absence in Shakespeare of qualities on which he himself set high value. Among other things he censured his frequent extravagance of language and wit. He did not think him faultless, but he declared that "he 31 redeemed his vices with his virtues;" and he added, "there was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned." At times in his conversation he exposed himself to ridicule; and yet, says Jonson, "he was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy; brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped." Jonson himself differed from Shakespeare widely in acquirements and achievements. His scholarship was un- questioned. Professor Her ford says : " He had constructive imagination in an extraordinary degree, a force of intellect and memory which supplied it at every point with profuse material, and a personality which stamped with distinction every line he wrote." He was a dramatist of recognized ability. More than this, he knew the world, had pro- fessional jealousy sufficient to defend his own interests, and was courageous enough to speak his own mind. It would have been impossible for Shakespeare to have palmed off on Ben Jonson work which was not in every sense his own. It would have been no less impossible for Ben Jonson to have imagined that Francis Bacon possessed any of the gifts of a dramatist. Indeed, Jonson does not seem to have questioned Shakes- peare's right to popular esteem. He knew that in the judgment of both actors and spectators Shakespeare out- stripped all competitors. In a dialogue written about 1602, William Kempe, the chief comedian of the day, re- ferring to the faults of University players as he had seen them at Cambridge, says, "Why, here's our fellow Shakes- peare puts them all down; aye, and Ben Jonson, too." This did not hinder Ben Jonson from writing the stately and glowing eulogy which appears in the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare's works, "'to the Memory of my Beloved Master William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us." 32 In this eulogy, he calls the " Sweet Swan of Avon" by such epithets as " the applause, delight, the wonder of our stage; " he declares that neither Man nor Muse can praise too much his writings; and he closes his hymn of praise with the lines: "But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere Advanced, and made a constellation there! Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage, Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage, Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night, And despairs day but for thy volume's light." What more than has been said is needed to prove the authorship of the plays? Against this evidence and every canon of criticism, can we dispute Shakespeare's right, or believe that one of the most unlikely men in the world could have been the originator of dramas and verses acknowl- edged at the time and for more than two centuries immedi- ately after the time to have been written by the Man of Stratford? Faith must have some fact or reason to rest upon; but when we examine the pretensions of the advocates of Bacon we find neither. Notwithstanding the abundance and force of this con- temporary evidence, and the allowances which may be reasonably made for Shakespeare's extraordinary power of absorption and assimilation of books and of conversation, to say nothing of his genius,— " he was," says Thomas Fuller, "an eminent instance of the truth of that rule, one is not made but born a poet,"— it is still reiterated that the works ascribed to Shakespeare could not have been written by a man so poor and uneducated, brought up in the com- parative seclusion and barbaric conditions of a remote part of the country. Even though it be admitted that he attained excellence as an actor, how came a poverty stricken, 33 peasant bred, and outlandish stranger to know the courts and customs of kings, the glamour of battlefields, the delicacy of poetry, or the richness of a humour the superior of which has never been found? To put the question is supposed to answer it. The assumption is as desperate as it is brave. And it may be remembered that of One im- measurably greater than Shakespeare it was asked, " Whence hath this man this wisdom? " Nor may we forget the lowly origin and mean advantages of Robert Burns, of the youth Chatterton, and of Abraham Lincoln. Plautus himself, the most celebrated comic poet of Rome, had no education, and worked as a menial for the actors on the stage. Let it be admitted, once and for all, that Shakespeare had his limitations. These limitations appear clearly and palpably in his plays; and, by the way, they are not limita- tions like unto any to be found in anything that Bacon ever wrote. Ben Jonson declared that Shakespeare had small Latin and less Greek. "I remember," he says, "the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that, in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand!" His works do not display the learning of the Schools. He made the refinements of logic and rhetoric ridiculous. He laughed at schoolmasters. Unlike Bacon, who had travelled and lived abroad, Shakespeare does not appear to have crossed the borders of his own country. He picked up his information anywhere, and used it simply to suit his purpose. He represents one of his characters as travelling from Verona to Milan by sea, and another as embarking in a ship at the gates of Milan. He speaks of Delphos as an island, and makes one of his personages say, "our ship hath touch'd upon the deserts of Bohemia." Many of his characters and plots he took from Greek and Latin, or French and Italian tales, and these he knew mostly, 34 if not entirely, through translations. By the time he had his will with them, their original makers would not have recognized them. He gave clocks to the Romans of Julius Caesar's time; he allowed England to have papermills in the days of Henry the Sixth. He used Holinshed for his English history, and never troubled himself when he sub- stituted legend for fact. The critics have had their fling at him: one says that in tragedy he is outdone by Otway; and another tells us that his King Lear is not to be com- pared with the old Greek OEdipus. Thus errors and faults have been pointed out, which, granting that they exist, and many more, is only as much as to say, that the sun has spots. Why blame an almost faultless scholar for slips of this kind? Bacon would no more have blundered in this guise, than, with his scrupulous care in correcting proof-sheets, he would have allowed the First Folio Edition of the Plays to have gone out with its thousands of typographical mistakes. This discussion has entangled and delayed us unneces- sarily. Why should we have to prove that which is as evident as anything can be in human life and history? We do not question that other poets and dramatists have had some qualities in kind and measure scarcely inferior to the like which Shakespeare possessed. And yet I question if his powers of observation and expression have ever been excelled, and in union I doubt if they have ever been equalled. He sees and remembers things apparently without effort, and he writes with entrancing ease and charm. Into his work he brings an inexhaustible knowledge of country life, of birds, flowers and trees, of horses and dogs, of hawking, hunting, coursing and angling, which he undoubtedly acquired in his youth. No one better than he could depict 35 village constables, country justices, tavern keepers, rustic housewives, and shepherds and clowns; indeed, all the varied characters of rural life, and not less exactly those belonging to the city. The same sureness and fulness of delineation mark his dealings with kings and princes, with barons, bishops, ladies of high degree, and men of distant lands and ages. He presents with equal fidelity characters as diverse as Imogen, Anne Page, and Mistress Quickly; Malvolio and Touchstone; Henry the Fifth, the melancholy Jaques, Abraham Slender, and Master Robert Shallow; to say nothing of scores of other creations, distinct as they, which spring to the mind unbidden and yet welcome. There have been characters drawn by other men as clear as these; scenes depicted no less interestingly; allusions made with equal aptness : but the student will search in vain for any one author who has touched and revealed life, and the springs and motives of action, so abundantly, so uni- . versally, so completely, as Shakespeare has done. Every phase of life has been dealt with by some writer; Shakes- peare only has brought all phases within the scope of his genius. No illustration is required: but as an instance of sug- gestive description none better need be searched for than that of the night before the Battle of Agincourt. "Now entertain conjecture of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark Fills the wide vessel of the universe. From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night, The hum of either army stilly sounds, That the fix'd sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other's watch: Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames Each battle sees the other's umber 'd face: Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs 36 Piercing the night's dull ear; and from the tents The armourers, accomplishing the knights, With busy hammers closing rivets up, Give dreadful note of preparation. The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll, And the third hour of drowsy morning name." Sir Sidney Lee reminds us that no one has better de- scribed Shakespeare's faculty in portraying character than Margaret Cavendish, the learned and celebrated Duchess of Newcastle. Writing about the year 1664, she declares that Shakespeare creates the illusion that he had been " transformed into every one of those persons he hath de- scribed," and had experienced all their emotions. To her his tragedies became real. They were no mere represent ar tion of acts that had been performed, but were the acts themselves. "Indeed," she concludes, "Shakespeare had a clear judgment, a quick wit, a subtle observation, a deep apprehension, and a most eloquent elocution." The powers of the dramatist have been abundantly ex- emplified by a succession of men and women who have been the pride of the British and American stage. They have interpreted his characters according to their several talents and capacities, each with the purpose of bringing out, if it were possible, some trait or meaning undiscovered by others, hidden away in the dramatist's conception. England's great Roscius, as he has been called, Richard Burbage, a companion of Shakespeare, took for the first time the char- acters of Hamlet, King Lear, and Othello. His Richard the Third was very popular. In the reign of Charles the Second, Thomas Betterton, called in his day the greatest actor in the world, presented a Hamlet that Samuel Pepys declared to be "beyond imagination," and a Henry the Fifth that was "incomparable." Elizabeth Barry's Lady 37 Macbeth, Barton Booth's Othello and Henry the Eighth, and Colley Cibber's Cardinal Wolsey, delighted the folk of the early eighteenth century. Then came the noblest Roman of them all, David Garrick, eclipsing his contemporary, James Quinn, an eminent depicter of Shakespearian characters, and rivalling Charles Macklin, whose Shylock has rarely been equalled, and John Henderson, whose Falstaff won him widespread celebrity. Garrick secured fame as Richard the Third, to say nothing of his Macbeth, Henry the Fourth, and Iago. Greater on the stage than all other women, be- fore or since,— and that is saying much when one remembers the brilliant women who have followed her,— was Mrs. Sarah Siddons. She reigned in her day, and is now remembered, as a very queen of tragedy. Tate Wilkinson said, "If you ask me 'What is a queen?' I should say Mrs. Siddons." Lord Byron thought her worth Cooke, Kemble, and Kean all put together. She was praised for her physical perfections, her cadences and intonations, and the harmony of her periods and pronunciations. Enough could not be said of her Isabella, in Measure for Measure, her Queen Katherine, or her Cordelia. W T ith Ophelia she is said to have failed seri- ously, and indeed no one has ever come near Susanna Maria Cibber in that character. But her Lady Macbeth remains magnificently unique. It is said that in the sleep-walking scene she missed the horror in the sigh, the sleepiness in the tone, and the articulation in the voice, which had made Mrs. Pritchard's presentation so impressive ; but the world soon forgot Mrs. Pritchard in Mrs. Siddons, even though Mrs. Siddons would not carry the candle, and imagined the heroine to be a delicate blonde. But these last hundred years have not been less pro- ductive of thoroughly proficient Shakespearian imperson- ators. If I refer to some of them, it is to bring out more clearly the impression they have made on us; and also to 38 evince how great a man he was who could engage and hold fast the life-strength of such people to represent his creations and express his thoughts. The men and women were mighty, but they had material such as only he could provide. Of them all, has any one ever equalled Edmund Kean in characters such as Richard the Third, Shylock, and Hamlet? Kemble when asked, if he had seen Kean as Othello, replied, "I did not see Mr. Kean, but Othello;" and Coleridge said, "To see Kean act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning." His mantle fell on Junius Brutus Booth, who, like the splendid Tommaso Salvini, a much finer and more finished actor, had a remarkable intensity, which on some memorable occasion is said to have awed a crowded and tumultuous house into instant silence. Even actresses tak- ing part with him were frightened at his sudden and nervous expression of concentrated passion. Of his sons, Edwin Thomas Booth takes precedence for a Hamlet and a Wolsey of striking excellence. He was an actor of rare eloquence, spiritual energy, graceful manners, and inexpressible charm, whose personality, like that of some other masters of the stage, seemed to lose itself absolutely in the character he was presenting. Lawrence Barrett took Cassius to Edwin Booth's Brutus. Even greater than they was Edwin For- rest, say, as Othello and Macbeth. In the forefront of scholarly, conscientious, and captivating exponents of Shakespeare comes William Charles Macready. Tennyson classed him with Garrick and Kemble; and some critics thought him so high as to be above criticism. And yet, in almost every respect, he was excelled by Sir Henry Irving- one of the truest and most masterful of Shakespearian scholars and interpreters, whose scrupulous attention to de- tail, shown in his stage settings and his well selected com- panies, was as gratifying as his own exact and magnificent impersonations. Irving was supported by Ellen Terry, whose 39 rank among the queenliest of tragediennes is well assured. Near her stands the pride of the American stage, Charlotte Saunders Cushman, whose Lady Macbeth was second to none, and whose Shakespearian readings never failed of large and enthusiastic audiences. She played Romeo, with her sister Susan as Juliet. Mary Anderson, most charm- ing of Juliets, Ada Rehan, and Irene Vanbrugh shine in the same brilliant constellation; nor will Helen Faucit, one of the most delightful of Rosalinds, be forgotten as the Beatrice at the opening, in 1879, of the Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon. I have not overlooked Modjeska and her marvellous Cleopatra, Ophelia, and Viola. Nor shall I fail to mention Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, first of living Shakespearian actors, whose Macbeth, for instance, is deserv- ing of much praise. And no one who saw Richard Mansfield will fail to recall his Richard the Third, and the way in which he made the exclamation which has been the joy of all actors and the delight of all audiences ever since the words were written: "A horse! a horse! My kingdom for a horse !" Undoubtedly our appreciation of Shakespeare has been influenced by actors such as these, as well as by the multi- tude of scholars who have sought to elucidate his works. A strong, living tradition has made itself felt. We have probably come to read into Shakespeare more than Shakes- peare meant, and have ascribed to him a faultlessness of art, as well as of genius, at which he did not always aim, and indeed sometimes came short of. On the other hand, it is quite as likely that we have read out of Shakespeare much that is in Shakespeare, and have imagined defects that do not really exist. Of one thing we may be sure, that we shall never know the processes by which he did his work. Thus equally destitute of authority are they who say that he wrote without thought or design, in what might be called 40 * the haphazard or confidence of genius, and they who suppose that he laboured and amended, in what might be called the timidity of talent and the anxiety of taste or purpose. I have said nothing of the poems: the Sonnets, the Venus and Adonis, or the Rape of Lucrece. These are read later and less frequently than the Plays, and with some reason. To the general reader, as Brandes admits, the Sonnets, for instance, are the most inaccessible of Shakespeare's works. Though in beauty, strength, and art, and sometimes in evasive ingenuity, they were the wonder and despair of other Elizabethan poets, yet they range in quality from sublimity to inanity. For the most part, they seem to have been written in the apprentice days, long before Shakespeare had acquired the skill of a master. And even at their best, they do not escape the artificiality common to sonnets of those times. To use Sir Philip Sidney's expres- sion, — himself struggling against the fault he censured, but could not escape, — they are void of the "inward touch.' ' Writing in 1593, Dr. Giles Fletcher, author of a collection of sonnets, in which he held up to ridicule this tendency, says, "Now that I have written love sonnets, if any man measure my affection by my style, let him say that I am in love;" and he adds, "A man may write of love and not be in love, as well as of husbandry and not go to the plough, or of witches and be none, or of holiness and be profane." In these days we should not call Shakespeare's Sonnets in- sincere, but rather abstract; and though they may have in them allusions to personal experiences, yet they are not to be regarded as autobiographical. Undoubtedly I shall be charged with a want of insight, but I have not been able to convince myself that Shakespeare intended in these Sonnets to tell any part of the story of his life. I am not sure of Wordsworth's opinion, that "with this key Shakespeare 41 unlocked his heart." Indeed, I should be sorry to think that Shakespeare was a man such as these Sonnets are claimed to reveal. I believe that he is as impersonal in them as he is in his Plays. The age indulged in this form of literary expression to a surprising extent, and he followed the fashion. It is not his fault if in these days the fashion is not attractive. Even he himself makes his characters laugh at such work. In Henry the Fifth, the Dauphin, speaking of his horse, says, "I once writ a sonnet in his praise and began thus: Wonder of nature!' " Benedick, in Much Ado about Nothing, being urged by a waiting- woman to write a sonnet in praise of her beauty, promises one "in so high a style that no man living shall come over it;" and a little later, some friends discover a paper written in his hand, "a halting sonnet of his own pure brain, fash- ion'd to Beatrice. " But lest it should be supposed that I am belittling the Sonnets, let me say that some critics, both wise and compe- tent, think that it is in the Sonnets rather than in the Plays we may easier discover Shakespeare's genius. I do not agree with them; and yet as an illustration of the beauty and perfection of Shakespeare's work as a sonneteer, I quote the Seventy-third Sonnet, sad, to be sure, as the best of them all are; and with confidence, if it has not already done so, I leave it to make its own way into your good graces: "That time of year thou may'st in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold— - Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after Sunset fadeth in the West, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. 42 In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth He, As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by. This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong To love that well which thou must leave ere long." But neither this nor aught that I have said sets forth the genius. We may affirm things about that genius, but only a master near unto Shakespeare himself can fully make it known. Why should the effort be made? In his comedies and tragedies we are brought into the thraldom and fascination of a mind that to most minds seems as mountains to hillocks or oceans to valley ponds. Explana- tion baffles and escapes. I can no more reach the heights and depths and breadths of his genius than I can define the charm of a Haydn or the ecstacy of a Handel. Hamlet becomes stupendous as St. Paul's. If I wonder at the one, I am overawed at the other. I cannot grasp the mystery of either. I only know that I am in a realm of thought and behold a magnificence of art; and with profoundest reverence I read the legend, which applies alike to archi- tect and poet, "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice." But I have kept you long, and I come quickly to my last words. There have been many princes in the realms of poetry, but there have been only three kings: Homer, Dante and Shakespeare; and he would be a venturesome man, perhaps a foolish man, who would decide which of the three is the greatest. They reign in a glory all their own. Outside the writers of Sacred Scriptures, they have done more than any other poets or writers to influence the progress and develop- ment of human thought. But in that Shakespeare speaks your own tongue, you come nearest to him and understand 43 him best. You can enter unreservedly into his treasure- land, and according to your industry and capacity appro- priate therefrom the wealth that shall make your life the brighter, your mind the broader, and your heart the happier. He will unfold to your wondering eyes visions that do not fade away and that tell you of things which can never be forgotten. With him you may possess a world which gold could not buy or the strength of kings conquer— a world that has in it more than suggestions of inexpressible felicity and of unceasing refreshment. That region of living, splendid imagination is within the reach of all who speak the English tongue; and no one ever yet wandered therein, and missed the grapes of Eshcol. For all these memories, we thank God; we praise Him that He gave such surpassing genius to one of our own race and blood; we pray that in the sons and daughters of earth we may see, as Shakespeare saw, the dignity of sorrow or the charm of lightheadedness; and in the day, when our kinsfolk the world round would do honour to the Man of Avon, we bring as our tribute, not only rosemary and laurel, but also the golden wreath which tells of immortality and love. 44 This plate of the Statue of William Shakespeare, in Lincoln Park, Chicago, was made from a photograph taken on May 12, 1916. GUILIELMUS REX. The folk who lived in Shakespeare's day And saw that gentle figure pass By London Bridge, his frequent way— They little knew what man he was. The pointed beard, the courteous mien, The equal port to high and low, All this they saw or might have seen — But not the light behind the brow! The doublet's modest gray or brown, The slender sword-hilt's plain device, What sign had these for prince or clown? Few turned, or none, to scan him twice. Yet 't was the king of England's kings ! The rest with all their pomps and trains Are mouldered, half-remembered things— 'T is he alone that lives and reigns! THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH, 47 1 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS lllll 014 106 430 7 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 106 430 7 # Hollinger Corp. pH 8.5