UCS.B LIBRARY
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 A STUDY
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 A STUDY 
 
 BY 
 
 DARRELL FIGGIS 
 
 LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD. 
 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C. 1911
 
 rlghtt reiervcd
 
 TO MY BROTHER 
 
 A TOKEN OF GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION . 
 
 HIS LIFE 
 
 HIS STAGE 
 
 HIS CRAFT 
 
 HIS ART 
 
 HIS THOUGHT . 
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 
 
 NOTES 
 
 INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PACK 
 I 
 
 27 
 
 86 
 
 137 
 182 
 229 
 
 281 
 
 329 
 339
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 To face page 
 THE STAGE OF THE GLOBE . . .94 
 
 PLAN AND SECTION OF STAGE OF THE GLOBE . 126
 
 SHAKESPEARE: A STUDY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THERE is probably no artist whose greatness has 
 more stood in the way of his fit appreciation than 
 has been the case with Shakespeare. On one hand 
 and the other he has cast a mist that obtrudes 
 between the eye of the beholder and his own 
 proper person and achievement. The splendour of 
 his stature, the breadth of his outlook, the strange 
 quality of his vision, partly account for this. For 
 the understanding being a limited instrument, all 
 things that transcend the reason pass the limitations 
 of its function. A chorus of voices, from the com- 
 pany of his contemporaries until this present hour of 
 grace, have acclaimed him as the only utterance of 
 Nature. So quick are men to take up any case that 
 has been raised, that this universality of acclaim may 
 by no means necessarily mean the truth of the thing 
 testified ; nevertheless, we feel the truth of it, and in 
 no way is the truth better tokened than by the very 
 similar attitude that is adopted both towards Shake- 
 speare and towards Nature. In both we feel a syn- 
 thesis, yet cannot think it out. Over both, there-
 
 2 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 fore, we argue in contrary terms, without advancing 
 ourselves much in the matter. We seek to submit 
 both to the utter folly of logical processes, and when 
 they elude us, cry out on them ; or, it may be, we 
 fail to see what has eluded us, and acclaim our partial 
 vision for the whole matter. Therefore we fail to 
 appreciate that what has eluded us may have been 
 caught by our neighbour, and that what we have 
 caught is what has fled his thought, and that therefore 
 there is comic laughter in the inevitable quarrel that 
 ensues. It is as though two draughtsmen were to 
 limn different aspects of some cathedral, and each, 
 on the virtue of his own design, deny the truth of 
 the other's vision, forgetting that not only is the 
 cathedral in question more than either design, but 
 considerably more than the joint product of both 
 designs. 
 
 In this Shakespeare was indeed like Nature. 
 And he was also like Nature in his use of Waste 
 a commodity which all philosophers condemn them- 
 selves by disregarding. That there should be a 
 thousand seeds cast forth for only one to germinate 
 and fructify, is spoken of as waste ; and what is 
 meant by that is that there is no use served by the 
 nine hundred and ninety-nine. In other words, it 
 is assumed that the thousand were cast forth for the 
 chance intention of the one result, overlooking 
 entirely the possibility that the fructification of the 
 one was but the chance bye-product of the nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine. Man is always stumbling
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 over the arch-fallacy of utility. Each system of 
 philosophy demands an economy of procedure ; and 
 in that it condemns itself as an effort to discover 
 a. purpose in things. For without a purpose in 
 things there could be no philosophy. Exactly 
 what purpose is served by the function of Waste 
 can be best seen in Shakespeare's own work for 
 Shakespeare, however wide his vision, being less 
 wide than Nature, is more easily, and more fre- 
 quently, approached than Nature. For example, 
 no Hamlet could ever have been economically created. 
 An Antony, a Lear, demand that the seeds be 
 strewn broadcast. Those who have spoken of a 
 divine largess in his method of work, have struck 
 on a penetrating truth. It is the divine way of 
 work ; for it is the only way to produce results 
 that are divine. A classic temple seeks to achieve 
 a perfect poise. Were it possible to carry the 
 process still further, the temple would achieve such 
 an inner adjustment that it would disappear, it would 
 pass into an inner nothingness. In other words, the 
 process is towards annihilation, the reverse of crea- 
 tion. But in a Gothic cathedral, its very waste of 
 design is of the very principle of creation ; for by 
 that very waste it becomes more and more a living 
 thing. It might fly into the heavens ; but it would 
 defy annihilation. 
 
 In somewhat of the same way, Hamlet, Antony, 
 Lear, and their brothers from the same brain, are 
 imperious with life before us. The process that
 
 4 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 went to make them was wasteful ; but without 
 waste they could not have come into being with 
 the urgency they possess. That is to say, in 
 them, as in the works of Nature, we feel that 
 the waste has served a turn that we cannot define, 
 and that, in our cowardly moments, we will not 
 trust. The result in them is of the same kind as 
 the process which produced it. We cannot find a 
 synthesis, that is to say a logical synthesis, for 
 Hamlet; but we know him for a vital personage, 
 and that is to admit a synthesis for him. He is, 
 say we, what he is : indecision may fasten on this 
 or that feature of him, but he is more than this or 
 that feature of him ; he is more than all features 
 of him ; he is himself. He could only have been 
 artistically, that is to say creatively, expressed ; 
 and he can only be artistically apprehended. It is 
 so men are made ; and men spin their philosophies 
 to account for themselves ; they cut their philo- 
 sophical garments to cover their nakedness in a vast 
 universe, each man for himself according to his own 
 needs. 
 
 This kinship of Shakespeare with Nature, this 
 aptitude to strike the thing he saw and felt at the 
 moment of vision, and leave it to fall into some 
 higher synthesis he could not express, raises him 
 out of the field of understanding. He may be 
 great, or he may be small ; but this faculty in him, 
 be he small or great, thwarts an intellectual appre- 
 ciation of him in a world that gropes blindly with
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 outstretched hands of reason with the eyes of vision 
 closed. That is why his interest is perennial. A 
 thing understood is a thing dismissed and done 
 with. Such are the shows of Time. The things 
 of Eternity are never understood : they are eternally 
 delighted in. 
 
 With this faculty in Shakespeare there has been 
 mixed another thing that is often confused with it, 
 and which further ravels the problem of appre- 
 ciating him. This is the weakness that came from 
 himself. This weakness will meet its attention in 
 due course ; but at the moment its connection with 
 the matter already mentioned cannot but be noticed. 
 His hand was often nerveless ; his pen often went 
 on writing after his thought had left it. We all 
 feel this; we can too often point out marked 
 instances of it ; but it defies our wit to define the 
 proper scope of it. And for a very obvious reason. 
 For we feel the functional importance of his in- 
 stinctive use of what we call Waste ; but we cannot 
 define it. But we feel also, instinctively, that there 
 is another waste that does not function ; and we 
 are not less at a loss to define that. Both are 
 beyond us; and both being beyond us, we are 
 perplexed ; we do not know where to tread, for 
 fear we shall tread in error. One man will see 
 the waste that does not function ; and, in his indig- 
 nation, will pluck the darnel, plucking up, too, good 
 full-eared corn with it. Another man will cry out 
 on such sacrilege. Perceiving, blindly perceiving,
 
 6 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the waste that serves its end, he will wonder 
 if after all the waste that seems to come from 
 sloth in Shakespeare is not an evidence of 
 blindness in the beholder. The classic example 
 of this latter attitude is, of course, Coleridge. 
 Whatever he had or had not, he had at least an 
 eye to see ; such an eye as few have been dowered 
 with. With this eye he saw so much that his 
 instinct was compelled to approve, but which he 
 could not understand, that he began to be dis- 
 trustful of his whole critical reason ; and was led 
 thus to explain for Wisdom much that all things 
 cry out in us to condemn as folly. In so remote 
 and intuitional a matter it is hazardous to be held 
 down to instances. But perhaps, with all the 
 shortcoming of illustrations, two instances may be 
 chosen from a single play. Take Romeo's call 
 to Juliet: 
 
 " 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." 
 
 The triumph of this is the triumph of a careless 
 abandon. No careful worker could have achieved 
 it. A careful worker would have been doubtful of 
 it had it come across his thought. It was, as one 
 has phrased it, just "pulled-off"; it was struck at 
 blindly, haphazardly, and it came. An imaginative 
 spendthrift could only have done it. But take this 
 other by the same spokesman :
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 " O brawling love ! O loving hate ! 
 O any thing, of nothing first created ! 
 O heavy lightness ! serious vanity ! 
 Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms ! 
 Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health ! " 
 
 and so on. 
 
 The process is the same in both, but how 
 different the result in each! One " pulled-off " ; 
 and the other failed to " pull-off." Both struck 
 wildly ; but while one came, the other was a com- 
 plete failure. The two examples have all the fault 
 of illustrations in this, that they widen a difference 
 to express a truth. Yet, surely, there are instances 
 enough that cannot be given even because they 
 hold both ends in poise such as Othello's " Like 
 to the Pontic sea," etc. In all these there is 
 a kinship. Failure, doubtful success, and sheer 
 splendour, all evidence their maker's wasteful way 
 of work. Coleridge, seeing the kinship, fitly mar- 
 velled at the one ; and then, in honour to the 
 kinship he saw, opened his mind to receive the 
 other. However much our judgment disapprove 
 him, we cannot but sympathise with him. We 
 feel, too, that if their maker had not generously 
 opened his breast to the possibility of failure, he 
 would never have achieved his splendour of 
 success ; and our censure is again withheld. We 
 feel that the pen writing without the thought must 
 needs be, if the thought is swiftly and unexpectedly 
 to sweep down on it for the purpose of a miracle.
 
 8 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 We feel it in Nature. We feel it in Shakespeare. 
 It is part of the perplexity of him ; but it is also 
 part of his greatness ; and we find it hard to appraise 
 and appreciate him. His weakness and his strength 
 are too mixed to dissever. 
 
 Thus the world is brought to him: wise and 
 foolish alike. And in this we discover another 
 reason why his very greatness had hindered a fit 
 appreciation of his work. For he has produced 
 idolatry ; that is to say, he has given occasion for 
 mental sloth. One of the most curious things to 
 discover is the type of mind that is stuffed replete 
 with all possible Shakespearian learning, but which, 
 nevertheless, looks out from darkened windows, 
 blinking strangely at the day. It would be impos- 
 sible to name a treatise or a study on Shake- 
 speare that it has not read ; it would be impos- 
 sible to mention any document or manuscript, 
 in any dusty archive or office, that it does not 
 know or that it has not transcribed, however so 
 remote its application be to Shakespeare : but 
 let mention be made of any contemporary poet 
 or dramatist, and dull incomprehension meets the 
 query. Had such a mind existed in the robustious 
 days of The Theater and The Globe (happily such 
 products do not seem to have been permitted then), 
 it would have spent its efforts seeking to fetch from 
 archival darkness some very properly discarded poem 
 of Chaucer's, or some new fragment of biography 
 concerning him ; and it would have met the news
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of Hamlet and Othello with puzzled disinterestedness 
 or mild beneficence. 
 
 Such minds are remote from all quickening im- 
 pulses, and therefore they can but obscure our 
 Shakespeare. Moreover, they are extolled : a new 
 Shakespearian signature is made an occasion for 
 exultation, while a new original poem is turned 
 coldly upon ; and thus the obscuration is the more 
 intensified. It is forgotten that if Shakespeare be 
 quick and living, then only quick and living minds 
 can appreciate him. It is forgotten that the meanest 
 poet in the making of the frailest sonnet is more 
 akin to Shakespeare in that act than the most 
 learned Shakespearian scholar. He may, from 
 divers causes, have been brought to forswear all 
 mention of Shakespeare ; yet ye cannot forswear his 
 relationship with him ; whereas the others are aliens. 
 Poets, however dissimilar, are always nearer one 
 another than any poet can ever be to his most 
 devout disciple. 
 
 Thus it has come about that Shakespeare has 
 become a pedestal deity : a fetish on men's mouths. 
 The pity is that Shakespeare has come to be regarded 
 as a man who spoke in the days of Elizabeth, instead 
 of as a man who is speaking to-day ; and this, even 
 while the lips repeat the phrase that he is " not for 
 an age, but for all time " ! A profounder disservice 
 to Shakespeare could scarcely be imagined. Obloquy 
 and active hate were better. But a deeper trouble 
 has been caused, a trouble harder to disentangle.
 
 io SHAKESPEARE 
 
 For many of the artists whose works have been 
 neglected in favour of archival interest in Shake- 
 speare have risen against their brother. In truth, 
 the issue has been thrust upon them, for they have 
 been called out to meet the competition of the Dead 
 Hand. A strange situation has thus arisen : Shake- 
 speare's own kinsmen, whom, if he were here, he 
 would be the first to seek out, have arisen against 
 him, and he has had to rely for his proper defence 
 on men who are nothing to him. The hewers of 
 wood and drawers of water have had to champion 
 him against those who, like him, have sprung from 
 the loins of aristocracy. From wherever he views 
 our scene, it is not a sight, this, calculated to move a 
 spirit of joy in him. 
 
 Wide as is his vision, lofty as is his stature, strange, 
 perplexing, and capricious as are his ways of work, 
 he has provided a sufficient field for disagreement 
 and misunderstanding. The tribute of enmity is a 
 tribute indeed, yet it scarcely makes for understand- 
 ing ; and idolatry assuredly cannot help the matter 
 more. Indeed, there is more aid in antagonism than 
 in idolatry ; for criticism, however unjust, is the bone 
 and marrow of antagonism, whereas idolatry can but 
 murmur platitudes. An antagonist does at least 
 measure his height with his opponent ; which is a 
 wholly manly thing to do. Idolatry kneels. Thus 
 out of the noise of combat there have emerged a 
 number of questions that deal with the very essentials 
 of Shakespeare's art; the unravelling and examination
 
 INTRODUCTION 1 1 
 
 of which must expose the whole basis of it, and so 
 elucidate some of the principles that lie at the root 
 of all Art. 
 
 For example, one has said, grudgingly, that 
 Shakespeare was certainly great, but that he had 
 severe limitations ; that, in the way of instance, King 
 Lear was a great drama undoubtedly, but that, so 
 far as construction was concerned, Shakespeare 
 would at least have to doff his cap to Henrik Ibsen. 
 Here, at once, is a question raised that cuts at the 
 very root of drama. For what is construction? 
 And what is construction both in Shakespeare and 
 in Ibsen? Another will say that Shakespeare's 
 greatness was but of a bastard sort, seeing that the 
 basis of it was romantic sentimentality. Again, the 
 further question is raised : What is sentimentality ? 
 What is romance ? What relation have they to the 
 springs of all action and the root of life ? We are 
 at once fronted by the profound problem of dis- 
 covering what are the elements in life, and conse- 
 quently in Drama, that should awake our admiration. 
 For replication is not less legitimate than query. 
 Similarly, it is said that Shakespeare indulges in the 
 ruinous glamour of sexual infatuation. But what is 
 infatuation ? Not what it appears to be ; for there 
 are none so ingenuous as not to know that ; but 
 what it actually is. This is a question that lies 
 at the root of Shakespeare's attitude towards sex, 
 which again cannot be rightly approached until 
 the deeper question of sex itself is first approached.
 
 1 2 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 The whole roots of Drama are laid bare in this 
 way. 
 
 It will be seen that, for such reasons as these, 
 there has probably been no time so favourable as 
 the present for a study of Shakespeare's Art. As 
 one traces the history of Shakespearian criticism 
 down from Ben Jonson to the present day, the 
 noticeable feature of every stage of it has been that, 
 however differently one or another may regard him, 
 they all unite in this, that they think of him and 
 do not examine the causes that went to the making 
 of his Art. He is accepted as a phenomenon, and 
 appraised as such. Criticism has never yet gone 
 behind him, though on a noteworthy occasion it 
 succeeded in going considerably above him. 
 
 Such criticism was scarcely to be expected of Ben 
 Jonson. It is not generally possible in a man's own 
 age to expose the roots of his work. Moreover, the 
 critical records of Ben Jonson are a scanty matter. 
 Whatever high debate echoed at night in the Mer- 
 maid Tavern, there remain only his Timber, or Dis- 
 coveries, and such of his conversation as Drummond 
 has recorded, to indicate to us his opinion on Shake- 
 speare and dramatic art. In any case, the opinions 
 of rare Ben approach Shakespeare so nearly that 
 they belong rather to a study of his Art and Craft ; 
 and therefore the attention travels on to one who 
 stands out as both expressive of an age ill-fitted to 
 understand Shakespeare, and as a man robust of 
 vigour and sagacity. In a sense it is, of course, true
 
 INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 that all the voices of an age in pledge to gentilities 
 were thereby unfitted for an intelligent interest in 
 the maker of King Lear. On the other hand, 
 Samuel Johnson possessed an attitude rare among 
 Shakespearian critics. No man was he to bend in 
 duteous service. The man who could write, "He 
 has scenes of undoubted and perpetual excellence, 
 but perhaps not one play, which, if it were now 
 exhibited as the work of a contemporary writer, 
 would be heard to the conclusion," is not only a 
 man singular, among Shakespearian critics, for his 
 independence of thought, but one, too, who strikes 
 past platitudes, so awaking an examination of 
 fundamentals. 
 
 In spite of this he does not search into the causes 
 of things. He is fearless enough; as fearless to 
 praise as to dismiss, which is of the essence of 
 courage ; but he judges rather than criticises. That 
 is to say, he does not examine the standards of 
 criticism. Rather, he accepts certain standards 
 without demur ; and when he has to praise in the 
 teeth of them he does so in a forthright, down- 
 right sort of a way, finely characteristic of him, 
 but somewhat destructive of his principles. For 
 example, this is how he sums up the matter: "This 
 therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his 
 drama is the mirrour of life ; that he who has mazed 
 his imagination in following the phantoms which 
 other writers raise up before him, may here be cured 
 of his delirous extasies by reading human sentiments
 
 i 4 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 in human language, by scenes from which a hermit 
 may estimate the transactions of the world, and a 
 confessor predict the progress of the passions." It 
 is a famous passage, and therefore little thought on. 
 But, looking at it anew, how perplexing it is ! 
 "Human sentiments in human language," "scenes 
 from which a hermit may estimate the transactions 
 of the world " : are these " the praise of Shake- 
 speare," or are they the puzzled pronouncements 
 of a vigorous apostle of common-sense, seeking to 
 find place for something which he cannot quite 
 understand, but which compels his admiration? 
 One thinks of Lear and Hamlet, and one wonders. 
 Then one discovers with a shock that it is not 
 Lear or Hamlet he is thinking of at all. "In 
 tragedy," says the learned doctor, " he often writes 
 with great appearance of wit and study, what is 
 written at last with little felicity ; but in his comick 
 scenes, he seems to produce without labour what 
 no labour can improve. In tragedy he is always 
 struggling after some occasion to be comick ; but in 
 comedy he seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a 
 mode of thinking congenial to his nature. In his 
 tragic scenes there is always something wanting, but 
 his comedy often surpasses expectation or desire. 
 His comedy pleases by the thoughts and the 
 language, and his tragedy for the greater part by 
 incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, 
 his comedy to be instinct." This pronouncement is 
 astonishing enough, in all conscience. Regarding it
 
 INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 from without, it is as though he said that black were 
 white and white black ; as though he had suddenly 
 been afflicted with the spirit of opposition for the 
 sake of devilry of a much later day ; but regarded 
 from within it is even more full of perplexity. To 
 name four typical comedies, are Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About 
 Nothing, and Winter's Tale, then, such plays that a 
 hermit may estimate from them the transactions of 
 the world? Are they? And when he says that 
 Shakespeare's comedy "pleases by the thoughts and 
 the language," whereas his tragedy pleases "for the 
 greater part by incident and action," has he not just 
 inverted the proper application of his attribution ? 
 
 It is a sufficient tangle, this. Nor can it be 
 properly explained by saying that Shakespeare's age 
 and Johnson's age were diametrically opposed in 
 their conceptions of life. For one thing, Life is 
 one, and therefore no two ages can be diametrically 
 opposed, to the frustration of grounds of sympathy, 
 save in a logician's antithesis. Yet, if this were so, 
 this would even more fail to express the confusion. 
 There is no necessary confusion in opposition. Oppo- 
 sition is often more clearly defined than unity. But 
 that it was not opposition is sufficiently obvious from 
 the fact that Johnson was seeking faithfully to ex- 
 press the " praise of Shakespeare." What alone can 
 account for the confusion, is something much deeper 
 than opposition, much deeper, even, than sympathy. 
 It is nothing less than this : that something had
 
 16 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 appealed to Johnson compelling his admiration, 
 and that he sought to express this in terms of a 
 different perception. Something came before him 
 that challenged his standards, and which, therefore, 
 his standards challenged no less. The obvious thing 
 should have been to have examined the standards in 
 the light of this new powerful appeal, fearlessly and 
 courageously ; instead of which he still endeavoured 
 to express one in the terms of the other, to the 
 injury of both, and to the confusion of clear vision. 
 
 But after Johnson there came one with clouds about 
 his brow, stepping through an intricacy of bright 
 glory with rapt eyes and an ecstacy of vision. An 
 angel is a loftier, and, strictly speaking, a more 
 trustworthy, being than a man ; but he is more 
 perplexing withal. And for precisely the same 
 reason Coleridge is loftier and more trustworthy, 
 and yet, at the same time, more perplexing, than 
 Johnson. He is more trustworthy because he is 
 able to perceive that quality in Shakespeare that 
 was his special glory, and which Johnson could only 
 acknowledge afar off. His own errors, even those 
 things in him that go to make him so frequently 
 perplexing, spring, not from a lack of perception, 
 but from a perception so swift that it overreaches 
 itself. There is a rugged earthiness about Johnson, 
 even as there is a piercing translunar quality about 
 Coleridge; and it is the everlasting refutation of 
 those who find in Shakespeare very little more 
 than an earthy being intent on mundane success,
 
 INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 that it was Coleridge and not Johnson who was the 
 better fitted to understand him. 
 
 For instance, Johnson praised his Shakespeare, 
 and in his praise he is perplexed. He settles on 
 the pastured lowlands, and finds the thunder-riven 
 uplands little to his liking. Coleridge scorns the 
 lowlands, and steps from crag to crag among the 
 peaks, hearing in the thunder voices full of meaning 
 to him. The lightnings of King Lear would have 
 scorched Johnson's understanding ; but they play 
 harmlessly about Coleridge, and illuminate his brow. 
 Johnson, thinking the seventeenth century the 
 crown of gentility, said: "The English nation, in 
 the time of Shakespeare, was yet struggling to 
 emerge from barbarity." It was left to Coleridge 
 to say, " that the supposed irregularity and ex- 
 travagancies of Shakespeare were the mere dreams 
 of a pedantry that arraigned the eagle because it 
 had not the dimensions of the swan." Or again : 
 " I have said, and I say it again, that great as was 
 the genius of Shakespeare, his judgment was at 
 least equal to it. Of this anyone will be convinced, 
 who attentively considers those points in which the 
 dramas of Greece and England differ, from the 
 dissimilitude of circumstances by which each was 
 modified and influenced." 
 
 He who spoke thus had seen something. That is 
 to say, he must either be rejected as moon-stricken, 
 and the history of the world proves this to be a 
 dangerous expedient at best, or his vision must be
 
 1 8 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 accepted and examined. The affirmative yoice of a 
 seer may safely, if only perhaps tentatively, be trusted 
 in the teeth of a thousand reasoned negatives, because 
 there is authority in it. Yet it would have been 
 thought, having glimpsed this sight of Shakespeare 
 as a constructive craftsman, that he would have 
 proceeded to analyse what this construction meant. 
 Yet now he fails. In spite of some illuminating 
 and suggestive comparisons between Shakespeare's 
 procedure and the procedure of the old Greek 
 tragedians, he fails, because he does not go on to 
 analyse what dramatic construction is, nor what it 
 purports to achieve. It is true, he could not well 
 do so. There was nothing urgent to prick him into 
 doing so. Having seen, it was but necessary in him 
 to affirm. His vision was at once accepted, and a 
 chorus of praise of Shakespeare rose around him. 
 Those about him and after him thought of nothing 
 so much as to write a typically Elizabethan play. 
 Had his vision been rejected, it would have been 
 necessary for him to press yet further back, and 
 examine the whole basis of the matter. He would 
 probably have withdrawn into his clouds, and wrapt 
 his seer's cloak closer about him ; but the necessity 
 would have remained. As it happened, the necessity 
 did not even arise. 
 
 Johnson saw the vision of Shakespeare, blindly; 
 and was bewildered at it. Coleridge saw it, clearly, 
 with ecstasy ; and went on bended knee to it. Con- 
 fronted with the passage already quoted, " O brawl-
 
 INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 ing love ! O loving hate ! " he can but say with 
 meek humility, "I dare not pronounce such 
 passages as these to be absolutely unnatural, not 
 merely because I consider the author a much better 
 judge than I can be, but because I can understand and 
 allow for an effort of the mind, when it would describe 
 what it cannot satisfy itself with the description of, to 
 reconcile opposites and qualify contradictions, leaving 
 a middle state of mind more strictly appropriate to 
 the imagination than any other, when it is, as it 
 were, hovering between images." We are strongly 
 reminded in this of Crabb Robinson's laconic 
 comment of some of Coleridge's lectures on Shake- 
 speare, "He surpassed himself in the art of talking 
 in a very interesting way, without talking at all on 
 the subject." Of course, Romeo does not hover 
 between images ; he plays with them ; and similarly 
 Coleridge does not explain the passage before him, 
 he explains with his extraordinary subtlety some- 
 thing quite different. But this is the very nadir of 
 abnegation. Certainly not from it can a complete 
 exposition of Shakespeare come. It denies itself the 
 very instrument that must undertake such an 
 exposition. It does not go behind Shakespeare ; it 
 goes high above him. From that altitude it partly 
 sees behind him ; but that is a different thing to 
 examining the causes that brought him into being. 
 
 Such an abnegation was not without echoes. In 
 Hazlitt it was attendant on a shrewd sagacity, serving 
 only to sharpen a sharp perception. It was the
 
 20 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 whet to an eager mind ; with the result that there 
 are few joys so keen as a journey through the 
 Shakespeare realms of wonder with the voice of 
 Hazlitt by one's ear. In Swinburne, however, it 
 awoke the following : " The word Shakespeare con- 
 nects more than any other man's name that ever was 
 written or spoken upon earth. The bearer of that 
 name was the one supreme creator of men who 
 ever rose among mortals to show them and to leave 
 with them an all but innumerable race of evident 
 and indisputable immortals. No child of man and 
 woman was too high or too low for his perfect 
 apprehension and appreciation. Of good and evil, in 
 all their subtlest and sublimest forms of thought 
 and action and revelation, he knew more than ever 
 it has been given to any other man to know. All this 
 incomparable birthright might conceivably have been 
 bestowed on a man from whom the birthright of 
 song had by equitable compensation been absolutely 
 withheld. But except upon the greatest of lyric and 
 prophetic poets it has never been bestowed in 
 ampler or more entrancing measure." 
 
 All this produced the result that might have been 
 foreseen. The diggers and delvers of the earth 
 have come over in their herds to make of Shake- 
 speare a happy venture ground. The fair landscape 
 of his country has been obscured by chimney stacks 
 and factories, by authorship disputations and bio- 
 graphical documents. Like a wronged Deity he has 
 been thrust into buildings and technicalities, and
 
 INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 held remote from life with its eager business. He 
 has been surfeited with praise in the stead of under- 
 standing. He has been made to encumber the 
 earth, and preclude newer visions, he who was ever 
 quick and sympathetic in work and in life. And so, 
 as has already been said, he has been criticised anew ; 
 and his newer critics have worn the cap of revolution 
 and enmity. 
 
 Foremost among those critics has been Bernard 
 Shaw. There have not wanted critics of Shake- 
 speare whose works have been luminous and 
 recreative. Among the many the very intensity of 
 whose labours to prove Shakespeare an adherent 
 of this or that faith have disproved their own 
 findings ; among the many who have sought to make 
 books on matters that should have served for 
 concordances, taking Shakespeare's reference to this 
 or that matter of passing interest ; among the many 
 who have spent years of seemingly inexhaustible 
 labour in Black-letter researches there have been 
 those whose criticisms, even after all that has gone 
 before, have broken new ground and illuminated 
 their subject anew in newer ways. But the crack 
 of Bernard Shaw's voice has been singular in this, 
 that it has driven us back on fundamentals. The 
 very perversity of his mind has aided to this. 
 Jonson saw a beauty he could not understand, and 
 in his praise evinced his perplexity ; Coleridge 
 saw clearly and praised intricately. But they both 
 accepted. Partly because Shakespeare obstructed
 
 22 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 his own proper recognition, partly because he had a 
 philosophy to propound that assumed the opposite 
 of Shakespeare's vision, and largely by his very love 
 of opposition, his desire to win recognition by the 
 swiftest method of travel, Mr Shaw came into the 
 field and challenged the basis of all judgment. 
 
 For example, the whole music of Shakespeare's 
 praise has rung to the dominant of his kinship 
 with Nature. An interesting collection might be 
 made of those who have spoken of Shakespeare's 
 art as being the most immediate voice of Nature, or 
 who use the very word " nature " in some or 
 other application to his work; and it would be 
 found to include all who have written on him, from 
 Ben Jonson onwards. Bernard Shaw steps into 
 the field, however, saying that it is in no way akin 
 to Nature ; that it is unnatural, that it is sentimental, 
 fustian, and bombastical. Such an assertion does 
 not examine the roots of the matter. In blandly 
 assuming an antithesis, its begs its question as surely 
 as did Coleridge, but with far less reason. It is 
 opposition that requires to make good its ground, not 
 an earlier affirmation. But in its very assumption it 
 clears the air as only a challenge can. 
 
 Again, it has been the praise of Shakespeare that 
 he is supremely and supereminently a dramatist. 
 But of Mr Shaw it is said 1 that when he came to 
 judge the works of Shakespeare and Ibsen " by the 
 tests of intellectual force and dramatic insight, quite 
 apart from beauty of expression, he found that
 
 INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 ' Ibsen comes out with a double first-class, whereas 
 Shakespeare comes out hardly anywhere ' " ; and 
 that " if the fellow had not been a great poet, his 
 rubbish would have been forgotten long ago." The 
 clumsy thinking that speaks of " intellectual force 
 and dramatic insight, quite apart from beauty of 
 expression" as though beauty of expression were 
 not at one and the same time both intellectual 
 force and dramatic insight, may pass for the nonce. 
 So also the confusion of the latter quotation, as 
 though rubbish were ever great poetry, or great 
 poetry rubbish. The main matter is that certain 
 fundamentals have been attacked ; and that it is 
 wholly desirable that they should be attacked, 
 however inadequately or confusedly it be done. 
 
 Moreover, the same critic has declared his lack of 
 sympathy with Shakespeare because his "pregnant 
 observations and demonstrations of life are not 
 co-ordinated into any philosophy or religion." To 
 this, of course, there are a considerable number of 
 replies. One is, that it is impossible to give 
 vent to "pregnant observations," or to get at 
 continual "demonstrations of life," without express- 
 ing a philosophy ; and that philosophies become 
 less and less philosophies the more and more they 
 are co-ordinated. Another is, that Shakespeare does 
 indeed suggest a higher synthesis to his philosophical 
 outlook, whereas Mr Shaw as dramatist is ever 
 and deliberately eluding any decisive co-ordination 
 to his thinking ; but that, while Shakespeare, when
 
 24 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 he eludes us, does so in healthy humour and a wide 
 sympathy, Mr Shaw does so in cruel and unhealthy 
 cynicism. Also, that the dramatist of his choice 
 and praise, Henrik Ibsen, has no philosophy, since 
 negation and obscuration, on Mr Shaw's own show- 
 ing, can never form a philosophy. Further, that 
 not only is there an impermissible assumption, but 
 also internecine warfare, in his identity of drama 
 with an articulated scheme of the universe. Yet by 
 this very fact there is at once opened up a discussion 
 of what drama is, in origin and in intention, that 
 must needs be dealt with in any adequate study of 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 The same critic touches a deeper matter, however, 
 when he says: "When your Shakespears . 
 huddle up the matter at the end by killing somebody 
 and covering your eyes with the undertaker's hand- 
 kerchief, duly onioned with some pathetic phrase, as 
 The flight of angels sing thee to thy rest, or Adsum, 
 or the like, I have no respect for them at all : such 
 maudlin tricks may impose on tea-drunkards, not on 
 me." The whole question of tragedy is opened at 
 once : tragedy in general, and Shakespeare's con- 
 ception of tragedy in particular. It may happen 
 that by his very framing of tragedy Shakespeare 
 may convey his philosophy of the universe, for it is 
 true, as Coleridge :said, that u no man was ever a 
 great poet without being a great philosopher." It 
 is not necessary for a dramatist consciously to 
 formulate a philosophy, or consciously to hold one ;
 
 INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 in the casting of tragedy it will out ; while it is an 
 undeniable and inerradicable instinct in man that 
 tragedy is the loftiest of all works of the creative 
 mind, since it strikes down to the roots of all actions 
 human and divine. If this be so, then it appears 
 that Bernard Shaw's imperious rejection of " such 
 maudlin tricks " does not at all mean that Shake- 
 speare has no philosophy, but that Mr Bernard 
 Shaw does not happen to like Shakespeare's philos- 
 ophy quite a different matter. In any case, the 
 philosophical basis of tragedy is opened for investiga- 
 tion, and a new avenue opened for the understanding 
 of Shakespeare. 
 
 In all this it is apparent that the time has passed 
 for either mere praise or appraisal of Shakespeare. 
 The acceptation of him as a figure on the stream of 
 years belongs to yesterday ; it is the business of 
 to-day to examine the causes that went to the 
 making of him. And when such causes are spoken 
 of, it is not sufficient only to mean his Elizabethan 
 environment ; it is not less necessary to investigate 
 the assumptions of his art, the conditions of his 
 craft, his philosophical outlook on life, both in 
 expressed judgments and in tacit attitudes, the life 
 he himself lived, the disappointments he suffered, 
 the struggles he undertook, the successes he 
 achieved, and the opinions his friends held of him. 
 Nor will it only be necessary to envisage the man 
 in his work. The work as the product of the man 
 requires no less an attention. We are past the days
 
 26 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 when everything that bore his signature was held to 
 be the work of a faultless god. Mistakes enough 
 abound in his work ; and, as has already been inti- 
 mated, some of those very seeming mistakes seem to 
 have a functional importance, and give him a glory 
 that would otherwise never have been his. Yet, 
 whatever be said, should be said fearlessly. He 
 must needs be faced, frankly, openly, as man to man ; 
 and perhaps there was never a time so opportune 
 for such a task as the present. 
 
 Before such a scheme be set about, however, it is 
 necessary that the life he lived be framed clearly 
 before the eye, that thus the quality of the work he 
 achieved, and the manner of its achievement, might 
 give the fit and adequate structure to the design.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HIS LIFE 
 
 IT is a frequent saying, that is to say it is the 
 general impression, that we neither have, nor can 
 have, any detailed knowledge of the facts of Shake- 
 speare's life. To aver, therefore, in the face of 
 this, that we not only know as much of his life as 
 we do of most men who have written and lived, 
 but that our very paucity of knowledge leads us to 
 a greater accuracy of judgment, would seem like 
 cracking a paradox for the humour of perversity. 
 Yet a little examination will show this to be strictly 
 just. It is true, for example, that we have very 
 little knowledge ot his family intimacies. This 
 might very well be taken to mean that, as a 
 matter of fact, he had little family intimacy ; but, 
 leaving this fair inference on one side, it might be 
 asked, what do we know of the family intimacy of 
 other writers ? Generally, when a modern celebrity 
 has died, and a sufficient period of time has elapsed, 
 a biographer is carefully chosen, whose chief busi- 
 ness it is to tread from dry rock to dry rock, care- 
 fully stepping over swirls of passion and eddies of 
 frailty, all intimacy of detail in fact, finally to deposit 
 his hero on the farther Elysian fields of perduring and
 
 28 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 gracious fame. This injustice, at least, has not been 
 done Shakespeare. In his case, at least, we are sure 
 that no tender myth has been carefully engineered, 
 by craft, innocence, or affection, into the field of 
 literature. What we know of him is as sharp and 
 clear as a desert shadow: what lies in darkness 
 may or may not safely be inferred from what we 
 see in the light, but generally we may know when 
 we step from one to the other. 
 
 This fact, in itself, is an immense advantage in 
 more ways than one. Thus only the purposeful 
 acts of his life will rise up into knowledge ; what 
 comes to us will come to us from him, and not from 
 the ingenuity of another. That such and such a man 
 should have lived in such and such a place is not 
 knowledge of the man, it is only the satisfaction of an 
 idle curiosity in the reader. But that a man should 
 have chosen an indicated abode for a purposeful and 
 specific motive is knowledge gained of the man. 
 It is more. It is the safe indication to further 
 knowledge. It opens the door to inferential think- 
 ing, and a logical inference has all the fine strength 
 of native truth ; it is not swayed by any active force 
 of personal influence. Thus, if two facts in a man's 
 life may be declared irrefragable, then it should be 
 evident that the latter fact flowed justly, and with 
 some purpose, from the first, or at least that the 
 first gave rise to some intermediate power that in its 
 turn was sufficient to produce the other. For all 
 that the short-sightedness of scientific specialists
 
 HIS LIFE 29 
 
 has obscured the fact, it is a safety in thinking to 
 know that each effect must have its sufficient cause. 
 
 In such a way, and by such methods, it should be 
 possible to construct Shakespeare's life with convic- 
 tion and clarity. It may not contain all that is true, 
 but all that is contained in it should be true. The 
 rumours that have been handed down concerning 
 him have been many and varied. They may all be 
 true ; but it is at least safe to say that some of them 
 are true. And if the sequence of his life demands 
 that some one or other of them be brought to apply 
 at some particular moment, and if it be found that 
 that rumour both can apply and is also of honest 
 repute as to its sources, then it is just to procure its 
 aid. Its selection from among its companions need 
 be no imputation on their fair fame and veracity, 
 but can only mean that it, at least, is buttressed and 
 supported by a collateral requirement. It has its 
 place in an entity that may or may not cast its 
 raiment over its companions. 
 
 There are certain facts, truly enough, that 
 admit neither of evasion nor inference : such as the 
 stupendous fact of his birth. They who desire to 
 believe that he was born on the same date of the 
 year as his death, injure none by their conviction. 
 That this was also St George's Day is a very 
 pleasant sop to a patriotic conviction that regards 
 the poet as a national dispensation, a sign of favour 
 with the Most High. But, at any rate, if he was 
 not born on April 23, 1564, he was born there-
 
 30 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 abouts, for the Stratford parish registers proclaim 
 him as having been baptized on April 26 of that 
 year ; and it seemed as though the hazard of birth 
 had seen fit to cast his lines in pleasant places, for 
 both his father and his mother were of influence and 
 property in the neighbourhood. 
 
 It is not only the inevitable human ambition to 
 discover the antecedents to any event that leads the 
 biographical instinct to recount a man's parentage. 
 It falls to it to cast the lot of his life. Even 
 after he has assumed stature it awakes crises in 
 his life that decide the whole course of his work. 
 It certainly was so with Shakespeare. That he was 
 on excellent terms with his father appears from the 
 fact that the latter is reported to have said that 
 "Will was a good honest fellow, but he darest 
 have crackt a jest with him at any time." x The 
 indication so given of easy and amicable relations finds 
 its place in more than one event of importance in 
 Shakespeare. Not only, however, was John Shake- 
 speare a " merry-cheeked old man," but he was a 
 burgher of good repute and standing in the town of 
 Strat ford-on- A von. His wife, Mary Arden, was a 
 woman of fortune ; and, on her marriage, brought 
 to the union the property of Asbies, which comprised 
 a house and fifty acres of land, and which she held 
 in fee-simple. Asbies was situated at Wilmcote, near 
 Stratford, which not only was the home of the 
 Ardens, but is also one of the three places that vie 
 each with the other as having supplied the ale that
 
 HIS LIFE 31 
 
 was responsible for the good slumber that befell 
 Christopher Sly in the Taming of the Shrew. John 
 Shakespeare himself, doubtless partly owing to his 
 wife's property, filled a position of importance in 
 Stratford. He was a trader of sorts, handling 
 most things that were apt to be required in the 
 town ; and his career was prosperous. In 1556 he 
 purchased two freehold properties in the town one 
 in Henley Street and the other in Greenhill Street. 
 The following year he was elected to the pleasant 
 task of ale-tasting. In the two years that followed 
 he was twice appointed one of four petty constables. 
 Twice also he exercised the office of affeeror, when 
 it fell to his task to decide what fines should meet 
 such offences as had no penalties apportioned by 
 statute. Three years before the birth of his son 
 Will, in 1561, he rose to be one of the two 
 chamberlains of the borough; on July 4, 1565, he 
 achieved the further dignity of an alderman ; and 
 finally, in 1568, he reached the height of civic glory 
 in being elected as the bailiff of the town. 
 
 But the summit of achievement was the prelude 
 to disaster. Some further purchase of property in 
 1575 is proof that he hung at the summit awhile 
 ere he swept to his declension. But on November 
 14, 1578, a somewhat sharp catastrophe was struck 
 when he mortgaged Asbies to his wife's brother-in- 
 law, Edmund Lambert, of Barton-on-the-Heath the 
 Burton Heath whence Christopher Sly hailed. There 
 is no doubt that this mortgage rankled in John Shake-
 
 32 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 speare's pride; for two years after we find him 
 offering to pay off the mortgage, to meet the retort 
 that there were also other debts which must first 
 be met. Moreover, creditors began a long assault 
 on him from this time onwards ; and to such a pass 
 had he arrived that in 1586 one of his creditors, 
 John Brown, having obtained his writ of distraint, 
 found that there remained no goods to levy on. In 
 the same year he was stripped of his alderman's 
 gown because he had so long absented himself from 
 the meetings of the council. 
 
 All this has a close bearing on Will Shakespeare's 
 affairs. Later, in London, he was to be brought 
 into close contact with " the law's delay, the in- 
 solence of office " ; but now, here, at the very 
 threshold of life, he was to have his first taste of 
 it. But it was also coincident with the second event 
 in his personal life that leaves its print in public 
 records. Speculation and conjecture have made 
 merry over the somewhat curious evidences that 
 attest and attend his marriage. They not only 
 yield conflicting inferences, but they are in them- 
 selves conflicting. For example, it is recorded that 
 on November 27, 1582, a William Shakespeare was 
 granted a licence by the Bishop of Worcester to 
 marry an Anne W T hately of Temple Grafton. But 
 on the following day Fulk Sandells and John 
 Richardson, "husbandmen of Stratford," the former 
 of whom at least being a considerable friend of 
 a certain Richard Hathwey, entered into a formal
 
 HIS LIFE 33 
 
 surety of 40 in the Consistory Court of Worcester 
 to free the bishop from any liability, " by reason of 
 any precontract or consanguinity," in the marriage 
 of a William Shakespeare and an " Anne Hathwey " 
 of Shottery, the daughter of Fulk Sandells' friend. 
 To explain this curious juxtaposition there have 
 been several theories put into the field. It has been 
 suggested, the names Whately and Hathwey not 
 being so very dissimilar, that a clerkly error is 
 responsible for the confusion, and that both Annes 
 referred to are one and the same person. It is true 
 that even in this more literate age stranger things 
 have happened in the annals of clerkship; but the 
 fact that the several patronymics hail from different 
 neighbourhoods does not give much countenance to 
 this theory. It has also been suggested that different 
 William Shakespeares were involved in each event ; 
 and to this it must be agreed that William 
 Shakespeare does not appear to have been a very 
 rare name in the somewhat extensive diocese of 
 Worcester. 
 
 Another theory has been put forward, however, 
 that is supported by several lines of independent 
 evidence. In this it is claimed that Shakespeare 
 desired to wed Anne Whately, but had incurred an 
 earlier responsibility with Anne Hathaway : in view 
 of which situation Sandells and Richardson came 
 vigorously forward and compelled Shakespeare to 
 complete his honourable obligations by marrying 
 their friend's daughter. That this seems the likelier
 
 34 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 hazard is doubly supported by the birth of a 
 daughter, Susanna, on May 16 of the following 
 year, and by the many references throughout his 
 work that hold out solemn warnings against pre- 
 nuptial intimacy. Moreover, in Twelfth Night, the 
 Duke gives it as his counsel that " woman " should 
 u take an elder than herself " : which cannot but 
 remind us that Anne Hathaway was Shakespeare's 
 elder by some years. It has also been said that his 
 marriage brought unhappiness in its train ; and that, 
 in consequence of this, he avoided Stratford as 
 much as possible. Whether his marriage was or 
 was not unhappy is another consideration. But it 
 will be seen that he was far from avoiding Stratford 
 in future years ; in fact, that up to the end of his 
 days he always spent at Stratford all the time he 
 could well spare from his theatrical duties, and that 
 he ever elected to be known as an inhabitant of 
 Stratford. 
 
 That is to anticipate, however. The more 
 immediate fact is, that now, as a youth of nineteen, 
 he found himself burdened with the responsibility 
 of both wife and child. Nor could his father aid 
 him. Indeed, his father was himself in penury and 
 perplexity ; and so he was frustrated of such employ- 
 ment as might have aided him from that quarter 
 in an earlier day. It was at best a sufficiently diffi- 
 cult situation. Rowe stated, in 1709, that Shake- 
 speare about this time fell into evil company, and 
 " made a frequent practice of deer-stealing " ; and
 
 HIS LIFE 35 
 
 this is supported by the local testimony of Arch- 
 deacon Davies, who declared that he "was much 
 given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and 
 rabbits, particularly from Sir Thomas Lucy, who 
 had him oft whipt, and sometimes imprisoned, and 
 at last made him fly his native county to his great 
 advancement." If this was so, it might well have 
 been due as much to penury as roguery. 
 
 At any rate, his worldly position, whatever he 
 turned his attention to, whether schoolmastering, as 
 the seventeenth century William Beeston would have 
 us believe, or not, was at least perplexing if not 
 precarious. And if his reported deer-stealing was 
 not the result of penury, it certainly added to his 
 difficulties in the harassing Sir Thomas Lucy gave 
 him. Yet, as though these things were not in them- 
 selves sufficient, further difficulties brought their visi- 
 tation upon him, through his own affairs and through 
 his father. Within two years of the birth of his 
 first child, on February 2, 1585, he had his respon- 
 sibilities further added to by the birth of twins, 
 Hamnet and Judith. Moreover, John Shakespeare, 
 harassed and perplexed beyond measure, sought at 
 last to sell the fee-simple of his wife's estate, 
 Asbies, to his brother-in-law, Lambert, for another 
 20, over and above the initial mortgage of 40. 
 But to this it was necessary that William's per- 
 mission should first be sought, he being his mother's 
 heir. Though this was given without demur, the 
 transaction does not seem to have been completed,
 
 36 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 for in his later days of prosperity Shakespeare 
 sought to recover the property by an action at law. 
 
 Thus the sequence of facts in Shakespeare's life 
 may be set out thus: In 1564 he was born, in 1582 
 he married, 1583 saw the birth of his first child, 
 early in 1584 twins were born, and in 1587 he 
 agreed to part with his right in his mother's 
 hereditament so as to ease his parents' distress ; all 
 of which points to a fairly continuous life in Strat- 
 ford, culminating in distress in the year 1587. 
 Here the sequence breaks; and Stratford records 
 nothing more of him for another ten years. So the 
 eye looks ahead for the next event that seems to 
 indicate Shakespeare's presence anywhere in the 
 field of action, that thus, thinking backward and 
 forward, it may seek to establish the necessary 
 sequence between the two dates. 
 
 Such an event appears in 1592; on March 3 of 
 which year we find a company of players, under the 
 direction of Edward Alleyn, and claiming patronage 
 from the Earl of Derby, producing a play at the 
 Rose in Southwark, which Henslowe, financier of 
 the company, and father-in-law to Alleyn, enters in 
 his diary as " harej the vj." Were there any doubt 
 that this was the play that Shakespeare wrote a 
 large part of, Greene's famous reference to the 
 "absolute Johannes factotum," who "is, in his own 
 conceit, the only Shake-scene in a country," coupled 
 * kite *w with his perverted quotation from the Henry VJ. 
 that has come down to us as Shakespeare's own
 
 HIS LIFE 37 
 
 product, should be sufficient to dissipate it. The 
 year 1592, and the events that belong to it, are a 
 matter for subsequent examination. It is only 
 sufficient now to say that, to establish a complete 
 sequence for Shakespeare's life, it will be necessary 
 fitly to bridge the darkness between the years 1587 
 and 1592. 
 
 Happily, this is not difficult of achievement. In 
 the first place, there is this hint cast us, that Shake- 
 speare in 1592 seems little likely to have been a 
 newcomer to Lord Derby's company. It was the 
 custom of the time to. entrust the more experienced 
 copyists of a company with the revision of any old 
 play that had been chosen for revival ; and Henry VI. 
 was such a play. It had been written by Marlowe 
 and Greene (probably Kyd, too, had participated 
 in its collaboration), and had been already staged 
 by a company wholly separate from Alleyn's con- 
 trol. So that, in seeking to discover a fit and apt 
 sequence for the five years thrust between 1587 
 and 1592, it will be necessary that such a sequence 
 should embrace in its explanation three things : 
 firstly, how Shakespeare came to be connected with 
 the Earl of Derby's company ; secondly, how Alleyn, 
 the director of that company, came to choose 
 Shakespeare for the responsible task of revising a 
 play by such admitted masters as Marlowe and 
 Greene, he being, so far as records may guide us, an 
 author yet unacted, if an author at all ; and thirdly, 
 how a play that had been written for a wholly
 
 38 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 different company ever came into Alleyn's possession. 
 In this manner, such a sequence should not only 
 explain Shakespeare's doings in the lapse of time, 
 but should also explain much else of interest in the 
 dramatic history of the day. 
 
 Late in 1585, the very year, in fact, in which 
 Anne Shakespeare presented her husband with 
 further responsibilities in the shape of twins, a 
 company gathered itself together under the patron- 
 age of the Earl of Leicester for the purposes of 
 continental and provincial travel. This company 
 had probably no connection with the company that 
 two years previously had passed from his care to 
 the Queen's patronage. Assuredly it matters little. 
 The more substantial fact is that they left London 
 in December for a prolonged tour. Early the 
 following year they were in Denmark, having been 
 commended by Leicester to the King ; in the autumn 
 they were in Saxony; in the spring of 1587 they 
 came to London, and passed on a provincial tour 
 that carried them to Stratford in the autumn of that 
 year. 2 Or, in other words, in the very year that 
 Shakespeare's affairs had tied themselves into the 
 most tortuous perplexity, a player's company visited 
 his native town with all the glamour of travel on 
 them. If he fled his distresses, fled, too, Sir Thomas 
 Lucy's persecution, by joining such a company, it 
 could be but little wondered at in him. 
 
 Assuming, then, that this was veritably the case, 
 the sequence would necessarily be taken up by this
 
 HIS LIFE 39 
 
 company of Leicester's. The Earl of Leicester 
 himself was not long to remain patron of it, for in 
 September of the following year he died, and the 
 company had therefore to seek elsewhere for some 
 patron who would provide them with the necessary 
 licence to play. So Edward Alleyn, who till then 
 had been playing with Worcester's men, left his old 
 company, gathered Leicester's men together, and 
 procured the patronage of Ferdinando Stanley, Lord 
 Strange, who, on September 25, 1592, shortly 
 before his men went to the Rose in Southwark, 
 duly became the Earl of Derby. In other words, 
 the darkness is bridged by an inevitable sequence. 
 Shakespeare must have joined the company at its 
 visit to Stratford in 1587, and have worked his way 
 up from impotence to importance till he emerged to 
 notice in 1592. Rowe, writing in 1709, says that 
 Shakespeare "was received into the company then 
 in being at first in a very mean rank." Malone, in 
 1780, stated that a tradition existed that his "first 
 office in the theatre was that of prompter's attend- 
 ant." This seems likely enough, for Shakespeare's 
 position was such in 1587 that he would necessarily 
 have had to make shift as best he could. 3 
 
 The intervening history of the company seems 
 only to confirm the inference. For the company on 
 its return to London played at none of the regular 
 playhouses. Edward Alleyn's father had been a 
 " Citizen and Innholder " of London, and his brother 
 had succeeded his father, the inn itself being situate
 
 40 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 in Bisbopsgate. So that Edward Alleyn's first in- 
 clinations would probably lead him to fix his dramatic 
 abode in an innyard. This, in point of fact, he did. 
 In the Cross Keys Tavern in Gracechurch Street some 
 manner of permanent stage, it would appear, was 
 erected,* and to this he therefore repaired. Now 
 some two hundred years after this a tradition was 
 passed on by Rowe, and printed by Jordan, to the 
 effect that when the gallants of the time came to see 
 the play, Shakespeare's "business was to take their 
 horses to the inn and order them to be fed until the 
 play was over, and then see that they were returned 
 to their owners"; and to this it has been objected 
 that stables and sheds were scarcely of such vital 
 importance during a two or three hours' perform- 
 ance. 5 But if Shakespeare's company was play- 
 ing, not at a playhouse, but at an innyard, what more 
 likely than that the gallants coming to witness an 
 afternoon's performance should have their horses 
 housed in the usual way ? And what more likely 
 than that an eager, pushful spirit, zealous of greater 
 things, should undertake this task by the novel 
 method, as rumour records it, of organising a 
 brigade of boys under him ? Moreover, the remote 
 ends of knowledge that Shakespeare shows through 
 his plays is also largely accounted for. There could 
 be few better places to acquire such knowledge than 
 a tavern in the restless Elizabethan days. The fact 
 that Shakespeare appears at any early period of his 
 life in London to have resided in the parish of St
 
 HIS LIFE 41 
 
 Helens in Bishopsgate Ward, or, in other words, 
 quite near to Gracechurch Street, wears at once a 
 new interest. 6 An "absolute Johannes factotum" 
 would require to be at near call. 
 
 For some four years, thus, Lord Strange's men 
 played irregularly and intermittently at the Cross 
 Keys innyard under Alleyn's direction. Then, in 
 the closing days of 1591, a couple of circumstances 
 arose that both made it advisable for him to move 
 to more ambitious quarters, and also provided the 
 quarter to which a move would be desirable. Fitly 
 to understand the manner of Shakespeare's life, it 
 will be necessary to furnish the anterior history of 
 these circumstances. 
 
 When, in the early months of 1587, the Queen 
 decided to become patron of a company of her own, 
 in characteristic manner she swept down upon all 
 that was best in some of the companies then exist- 
 ing. Thus it came about that stout James Burbage, 
 who seven years previously had built a playhouse in 
 Holywell, and entitled it prophetically the Theater, 
 passed, with the best portion of his company, to her 
 care. In this first and most notorious of playhouses 
 he held direct patronage from the Sovereign. Yet 
 these joint distinctions were not without their attend- 
 ant disadvantages. On the one hand, Giles Allen 
 was, as ground landlords are wont to be, a fastidious 
 and somewhat obstreperous person. Either he was 
 envious of Burbage's profit ; or else pulpit rhetoric 
 at, and mayoralty and shrievalty denunciation of,
 
 42 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the godless audiences that frequented the Theater 
 fetched a wholesome fear into his soul. Anyway, 
 he was an element sufficiently perturbing on the 
 one hand. On the other hand, Burbage was in a 
 far more intimate complication with his brother-in- 
 law, John Braynes, over the actual management of 
 the playhouse. Seeing that when the lease had 
 first been acquired, and the Theater built, in 1576, 
 the money for the venture had been provided by 
 Braynes, the main direction lying in Burbage's 
 hands (" who," says a Lord Mayor's flunkey, u was a 
 stubborn fellow "), it was little likely that the lion 
 lay down peaceably with the lamb in the years that 
 followed. But when Braynes died, in 1586, a veri- 
 table host of legal suits were unloosed. Certain 
 persons to whom he had made over deeds of gifts 
 yielding them some hold on the Theater, together 
 with his widow Margaret, proceeded against Bur- 
 bage forthwith. He, with characteristic energy, 
 was first in the field against them all. Thus lawsuit 
 followed lawsuit : cross-suit met suit : and pleadings 
 and hearings mingled with each other. It is not in 
 the purse of man to meet many years of this ; and 
 so, in the closing days of 1591, the Theater was 
 closed and the Queen's men largely disbanded. 
 
 Thus plays and players were unloosed from 
 their sometime moorings. Such players as John 
 Hemings and Richard Burbage were without occu- 
 pation. Also certain plays seem to have been put 
 into the market, probably to raise capital for the
 
 HIS LIFE 43 
 
 Burbage lawsuits ; plays by Greene, Marlowe, 
 Kyd, and Lodge, done severally, or in collaboration ; 
 not to speak of Tarleton's Seven Deadly Sins, the 
 particular worth of which is that in the list of actors 
 serving in its subsequent portrayal the history of 
 events can clearly be traced. 
 
 Meanwhile, one Philip Henslowe had since 1586 
 been building, or contemplating, a playhouse in 
 Southwark. 7 Early in 1592 this was completed, 
 and called the Rose. Exactly what preceded, it is, 
 of course, impossible to say. But the main facts stand 
 thus : Henslowe and Alleyn joined forces, Henslowe 
 as financier, and Alleyn as director, of a company that 
 opened a season at the Rose on February 1 9 of the 
 year 1592; and, further, probably to cement the part- 
 nership, later in the year Alleyn married Henslowe's 
 heiress daughter-in-law, Joan Woodward. The com- 
 pany that they took with them to the Rose still owned 
 the patronage of Lord Strange, now Earl of Derby ; 
 but it was more extended than formerly, including, 
 as it did, some of the disbanded Queen's company. 
 Five of the players figuring in this amalgamation, and 
 illustrating the amalgamation as in a microcosm, are to 
 play a very significant part in Shakespeare's subse- 
 quent life : Richard Burbage, Will. Kempe, John 
 Hemings, Augustine Phillips, and Thomas Pope. 8 
 Moreover, a number of plays that had anciently been 
 done by the Queen's company also make appearance : 
 among others a play in which Marlowe and Greene, 
 and probably also Kyd, had participated : Henry VL,
 
 44 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 to wit. Whether Alleyn, being approached by 
 Henslowe, sought to procure such plays and players 
 as the closing of the Theater had disbanded, or 
 whether having the offer of such plays and players, 
 he approached Henslowe, matters little. The 
 substantial concern is that an important move 
 forward was achieved in which Shakespeare was 
 to play a part. 
 
 The situation is an interesting one. Internal 
 literary evidence leads to the almost inevitable 
 conclusion that Loves Labour's Lost, in its original 
 form, was written first of all Shakespeare's plays, 
 and prior to the year 1592. With all its lack of 
 form, its precocity, its hard cleverness, it belongs 
 obviously to prentice days. Whether it was acted 
 at all before 1598, when it was revised and repub- 
 lished for a Court performance, it is impossible to 
 say, as no record of it exists. But if one may 
 imagine it being shown to Alleyn in 1590 or 1591, 
 it suggests a curiously interesting position. Alleyn 
 was a generous, big-souled man ; yet it would 
 require no call on his greatness of heart to perceive 
 that he had in his company an ambitious and 
 supremely able man, if withal a man whose work 
 wanted discipline. What more likely then, if he 
 were preparing for a strong occupancy of a new 
 playhouse, that he should turn his original-minded 
 copyist on to some of the plays that had come into 
 his hand, that thus they might present some point of 
 distinction to win them to newer attention :
 
 HIS LIFE 45 
 
 In his later days Shakespeare spoke of the tide in 
 the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on 
 to fortune ; and the words ring like the metal struck 
 from experience. Such a tide was setting in for him 
 now. What his earlier years had brought to him of 
 bitterness and frustrated ambition, we cannot know, 
 though there do not lack indications in his plays 
 that their brackish taste had gone to his lips. But 
 the breath of change had come down on the wind to 
 him. In the Christmas festivities at Court for the 
 year 1591, the Queen's men, in witness of their 
 trembling fall, appear only once, giving place to Lord 
 Strange's men. This meant much. It meant that the 
 stream of lordly gallants would follow the bent of 
 royal favour. Since Shakespeare achieved the per- 
 sonal patronage of the Earl of Southampton about 
 this time, it is not too much to assume that this was 
 so, and that it was thus that Shakespeare made the 
 friendship that was to mean so much to him. And 
 it is additionally interesting to note that he seems, 
 from two lines of evidence mutually independent, to 
 have moved from his lodging in St Helens, Bishops- 
 gate, to the liberty of the Clink in Southwark, in 
 the shrievalty of Surrey and Sussex, where Alleyn 
 and Henslowe lived, so as again to be near and ready 
 to his work. Apparently he left some debts behind 
 him in Bishopsgate, which in his later days of 
 prosperity seem to have been duly cleared up. 
 
 Henry VI. was a sudden projection into a placid 
 pool. Previously all had been unperturbed; but
 
 46 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 now eddies ring round about in witness of a new 
 event. When Nash in his "Pierce Pennilesse" 
 speaks of " ten thousand spectators at least " as 
 having witnessed it, we are doubtless on the path 
 of wholesome exaggeration ; but when he says, 
 u How it would have joyed brave Talbot (the terror 
 of the French) to thinke that, after he had lyen two 
 hundred yeare in his tomb, he should triumph againe 
 on the stage," we hear him praising those parts of 
 the play that were indubitably Shakespeare's, even 
 though the maturing author of the future Macbeth 
 did dip his pen in Marlowe's ink for awhile. Yet 
 Greene's abuse is even better tribute. It is cer- 
 tainly a notable contribution to biographical know- 
 ledge ; for its wording throws up into relief 
 Shakespeare's earlier occupation with quite menial 
 tasks, and his consequent inferiority of rank beside 
 the dramatists of the day. In his " Groatsworth of 
 Wit bought with a Million of Repentance," he 
 addresses Marlowe, Nash, and Peele, and bids them 
 be warned by him concerning " antics garnished in 
 our colours." And when he proceeds to speak of 
 " an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, 
 that, with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Player s hide, 
 supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke 
 verse as the best of you," we hear his anger at 
 meeting power when he least expected it, and we hear, 
 too, perhaps a far echo of some line that Shakespeare 
 had ruthlessly altered of his, or some line that had 
 awoken debate at the collaborator's table, and in
 
 HIS LIFE 47 
 
 which he had been bested. But when he further 
 writes of " an absolute Johannes factotum " who " is in 
 his owne conceit the only Shakescene in a countrie," 
 we hear two things : first, that an angry dramatist 
 is taunting Shakespeare with his late lowly and 
 varied part in matters dramatical ; and second, that 
 Shakespeare, however "gentle," was probably not 
 above the mortal frailty of preening his pride a little 
 in his new glory. The first of these we hear again 
 when Greene goes on to speak in snorting contempt 
 of "rude groomes," "buckram gentlemen," "such 
 peasants " : all of which do not fail to depict the man 
 whose father fell from splendour, and who came up 
 from the country to tend horses, as tradition has it, 
 in a player's company. 
 
 Yet, however noteworthy this increase was in 
 worldly position, it neither seems to have been 
 maintained nor made good. The season at the Rose 
 opened on February 19, and on March 3 Henry VI. 
 was played. During the days that followed he had 
 an opportunity of hearing, and participating in, plays 
 by Marlowe, Lodge, Greene, Kyd, and Peele, but 
 never, apparently, by himself. Meanwhile, the 
 plague, the interrupter of most playhouse pro- 
 grammes at the time, stepped in, and, after June 
 10, the company had to remove to Newington Butts 
 at the order of the Archbishop of Canterbury, where 
 an innyard was probably reopened for stage per- 
 formances. 9 There was no return to the Rose 
 till the following year; and even then the plague
 
 48 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 and the playhouse waged war, with alternate and 
 intermittent predominance for awhile, and with final 
 victory to the former. 
 
 But he had come to know the Earl of Southamp- 
 ton, and this was to mean much to him. He had 
 also come to learn something of his power ; and he 
 seemingly determined that in the intermittences of 
 acting (lengthy intermittences, owing to the plague) 
 he would achieve something he could fitly dedicate 
 to the young Earl in the manner of the time. It has 
 sometimes been assumed that when Shakespeare, in 
 the dedication of "Venus and Adonis," spoke of that 
 poem as the " first heire of my invention," he thereby 
 indicated it as first fruits of all his work, dramatic 
 or otherwise. Seeing that as yet, so far as records 
 may guide us, he had undertaken no independent 
 work of his own, apart from revision, and, perhaps, 
 collaboration, this may well have chanced to be the 
 case. But that the poem was written immediately 
 prior to its publication early in 1593 ' s c l eai> ly indi- 
 cated by the fact that in the selfsame dedication he 
 proceeds to register a "vowe to take advantage of 
 all idle houres, till I have honoured you with some 
 graver labour." And promptly the following year 
 "The Rape of Lucrece " appears. But apart from 
 the fact that "Venus and Adonis" shows as clear 
 an advance on those portions of Henry VI. we know 
 for Shakespeare's, as " The Rape of Lucrece " does 
 upon "Venus and Adonis," thus pointing a clear 
 progression in writing, there stands out this fact :
 
 HIS LIFE 49 
 
 that, having come to know Southampton, he was 
 desirous of winning that young nobleman's favour. 
 If his Court reputation belies him not, few things 
 could have been better calculated to that end than 
 the subjects of the two poems in question. 
 
 The year in which he published "Venus and 
 Adonis " is one worthy of note. It was in this year 
 that Edward Alleyn's company, being forbidden to 
 play " within seven miles of London or of the Court," 
 that is to say, either at the Rose or at Newington 
 Butts, took its way on travel. They proceeded to 
 Bristol and other places : but, though several of 
 the old Queen's company formed part of the tour, 
 Shakespeare remained in London. Moreover, 
 Richard Burbage was also in London. The former 
 had business on hand in the publication of his book, 
 whereas the latter must needs have been occupied 
 with the litigation concerning the Theater. Know- 
 ing the affection that later arose between these 
 two, not to speak of their intimate relations in 
 matters dramatical, this is a matter that cannot but 
 arouse interest. It means that whereas Shakespeare, 
 who only the year before had arisen from obscurity, 
 was laying the basis of a wealthy patronage, the 
 Burbages were in fierce litigation over the play- 
 house that had brought them fame, and that there- 
 fore their exchequer was in depletion. 
 
 A review of Shakespeare's position at this moment 
 is interesting. Marlowe's death on June i, 1593, 
 meant that the three dramatic giants of the previous
 
 50 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 era, the era of glory for the Theater Marlowe, 
 Greene, and Kyd were no longer able to compete 
 against any rising dramatist. Moreover, to such a 
 state of distress had the Burbages arrived that the 
 final remnants of the old Queen's company were now 
 finally disbanded. And Shakespeare stood in the 
 newly-won friendship of a singularly wealthy patron 
 in the Earl of Southampton. A juncture such as 
 this needs only some stirring event to awaken its 
 potentiality into activity ; and, in view of Shake- 
 speare's subsequent financial success, it is at least 
 remarkable that such an event was to arrive in the 
 following year. 
 
 Yet as a dramatic author, Shakespeare had won 
 no fame as yet. The following year, on the return 
 of Edward Alleyn to the Rose, Titus Andronicus was 
 played at that playhouse. Titus Andronicus is at best 
 but slender argument for Shakespeare's dramatic 
 fame, for while it is certain that he had some part 
 in it, seeing it was mentioned later by Meres and 
 included in the First Folio, it is also as certain that his 
 part was no very large one. That his part, however 
 great or little, had nothing to do with the structure 
 and plot of the play is seen partly by the fact that 
 it is so unlike his usual method of work, and partly 
 by the fact that, however gory it be, in structural 
 skill at least it shows a far more masterly experience 
 than do his other plays of the period. Such plays 
 were Love's Labour's Lost and Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona, must have been written at this time ; which
 
 HIS LIFE 51 
 
 is to say that they must have been written before 
 other plays that appear immediately after this time. 
 That there is no trace of their having been acted 
 seems to drive one to the conclusion that at the 
 opening of the year 1594 he had revised two plays 
 by other hands Henry VI. and Titus Andronkus 
 and possessed one or two other plays for which he 
 had not found an outlet. They may have been 
 produced in the old days at the Cross Keys ; but, in 
 that case, had they been successful, Alleyn would 
 scarcely have neglected them in his present larger 
 scope of management. 
 
 Thus in the early months of 1 594 all things stood 
 in perplexed poise, awaiting some stroke that should 
 resolve the issue. The stroke came on the i6th of 
 April; for on that day Lord Strange, the Earl of 
 Derby, died, and a new patronage had to be devised. 
 It is usually said that the patronage of his company 
 passed on to Henry Carey, first Lord Hunsdon, and 
 Lord Chamberlain ; but this is a somewhat careless 
 statement of the position of affairs. For Edward 
 Alleyn had been the leader of the Earl of Derby's com- 
 pany. But he had also been, in his proper person, the 
 u Lord Admiral's servant " ; and we find him, conse- 
 quently, opening a season at the Rose on May 14 
 with a company that is called the Lord Admiral's 
 company, but which, in directorship, financial con- 
 trol, and largely in personnel, is the same as that 
 which had served him two years previously, and 
 which he had taken on tour with him. A company
 
 52 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 under the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain does 
 indeed come into existence at this time ; but we find 
 it owing leadership to Burbage and Shakespeare, 
 if not others. In the early days of this company, 
 from June 3 to 13, we find it sharing a season with 
 the Lord Admiral's men at Newington Butts : which 
 at least is an evidence of equable goodwill ruling 
 between them. But later in the year we find the 
 Lord Chamberlain petitioning the Lord Mayor to 
 permit his men to play at the Cross Keys, guarantee- 
 ing that they shall study a more orderly behaviour, 
 and observe more convenient hours, than seem to 
 have been the rule with players' companies at the 
 time. They do not seem to have received the 
 necessary permission, for they promptly, in the same 
 month of October, reopened the old Theater a 
 move that was to bring back in splendour the great 
 days of that first of playhouses. What had hap- 
 pened to account for all this ? It had required 
 money, as it had required influence. 
 
 The procuring of the patronage of Lord Hunsdon 
 we can readily understand. That that came from 
 old James Burbage there can be no doubt. An old 
 document exists declaring that, some ten years prior 
 to this, when the Lord Mayor had commanded James 
 Burbage to attend before him, to account for the 
 disorders prevailing at and about the Theater, the 
 stout old man had sent back word that he would 
 not, and that he was "the Lord of Hunsdon's man." 
 This could only have been in personal capacity, for
 
 HIS LIFE 53 
 
 at that time he was in control of the Queen's 
 company. So it would seem that on the death of 
 the Earl of Derby, whereas Alleyn turned to his 
 proper patron, the Burbages also turned to their 
 proper patron. But to what end could they have 
 done so? How came it that the Burbages so 
 suddenly recovered from the financial embarrass- 
 ments that beset them so short a time before ? 
 Moreover, how came it that Shakespeare should so 
 suddenly and unaccountably rise to this position of 
 trust and power ? His fame as a dramatist was not 
 high ; yet he seems to have been the only dramatist 
 at first in the new company. Only a few years 
 before he had been in penury, tending horses and 
 giving prompter's calls ; yet now he is called in to 
 take part in the control of the most famous of the 
 playhouses. Such things, in an earth of cause and 
 effect, do not spring up by chance. 
 
 There is one, and, it would seem, only one, 
 possible cause to account for so noteworthy an 
 effect. It might be put thus : it, of course, is 
 evident that when the Burbages reopened the 
 Theater, it meant that money from somewhere 
 had been called on to achieve that desirable end ; 
 but if it so happened that Shakespeare could have 
 procured that money, it is obvious that he could 
 have claimed his subsequent position of power as a 
 natural and proper return for that service. Did he 
 procure that money ? If he did so, he could only have 
 procured it from his patron, the Earl of Southampton.
 
 54 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Now it is in this connection an interesting, 
 though late, tradition comes to light. Sir William 
 D'Avenant, who took great pride in the rumour 
 that he was Shakespeare's proper son, and who was 
 reputed as being " very well acquainted with Shake- 
 speare's affairs," informed Rowe, "that my Lord 
 Southampton at one time gave him a thousand 
 pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase 
 which he heard he had a mind to." He adds that 
 this is "a bounty very great and very rare at any 
 time"; and, seeing that a thousand pounds of 
 Elizabethan money may be taken as worth between 
 eight and ten thousand pounds of modern, he may 
 be judged as being pretty accurate in his remark. 
 It has been suggested that Shakespeare's purchase 
 of New Place was being referred to thus. But if 
 it was this gift that Shakespeare had in mind when, 
 in the dedication to " The Rape of Lucrece," in this 
 very year of 1 594, he spoke of " the warrant I 
 have of your honourable disposition," this may at 
 once be set aside. He did not purchase New Place 
 till 1597, and he was little likely to have let the 
 money lie idle in the meantime. If the tale of the 
 gift be true, however tradition may or may not have 
 puffed out the amount, then his sudden rise to 
 power becomes intelligible and reasonable. Cer- 
 tainly the tradition has excellent antecedents ; cer- 
 tainly Shakespeare's increase of temporal power 
 demands some apt explanation ; and certainly Shake- 
 speare's dedication to "The Rape of Lucrece" in
 
 HIS LIFE 55 
 
 this important year of 1594 implies that he had 
 received some or other welcome and noteworthy 
 assistance from a very wealthy patron. It is very 
 difficult to avoid the pure, clear inference that the 
 events themselves supply. The matter itself is 
 wrapt in a great darkness ; but other and lesser 
 facts stand out in the light and point where it lies. 
 
 The very wording of the D'Avenant story is 
 significant. It states that the thousand pounds was 
 to enable Shakespeare u to go through with a pur- 
 chase which he had a mind to." Now, since we know 
 that at a further remove of years the Globe was 
 held by five others besides the Burbages, of which 
 five Shakespeare was one ; and since we know, too, 
 that all these five were with Edward Alleyn in the 
 season he opened at the Rose early in 1592 : it is no 
 very wide conjecture to assume that the opening 
 of the Theater in 1594 was the result of a general 
 rally, and that Shakespeare was anxious, if possible, 
 to purchase some share in the new management. 
 If such a rally prevailed, it would not only have a 
 very fair inducement to urge it by attraction before ; 
 it would have had a very powerful discomfort to 
 prick it from behind. Alleyn, it would seem, was a 
 man of a great and generous soul. But not so his 
 father-in-law Henslowe. His diary reveals him as 
 one who had brought to a fine art the system of 
 employing methods of usury so as to hold his actors 
 in his power ; and he had his skill in this deftly 
 blent with sanctimony withal. Whereas a man of
 
 56 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 intelligence finds it a quite sufficient indignity to 
 work for any man on hire without having that 
 obligation hasped in shackles on his wrists. 
 
 If it be true that Shakespeare had some such sum 
 given him, and if it be true, moreover, that he em- 
 ployed it to purchase a holding in a reconstituted 
 company, it would be interesting to discover what a 
 thousand pounds (to take the figure at its full state- 
 ment) would mean as against what the Burbages 
 had to offer from their side. We know, for ex- 
 ample, that when James Burbage first built the 
 Theater, he did so chiefly on moneys borrowed from 
 his brother-in-law Braynes. What portion he himself 
 contributed is not known ; yet it is known that he 
 borrowed about 600 from Braynes. This was all 
 capital outlay ; yet, even so, it was only part of the 
 capital outlay, for actors had to be engaged and 
 equipped, advertising by bill and procession had to 
 be organised, and the ordinary business of the play- 
 house had to be proceeded with. Probably in all 
 this Braynes bore the lion's share of expenditure, 
 even as Burbage bore the lion's share of initiative 
 and work. Nevertheless, on Braynes' death, if not 
 during the whole course of business, the substantial 
 benefit of the continuous expenditure would fall 
 due to Burbage, even as if Burbage had died 
 first the substantial benefit of his initiative would 
 have fallen due to Braynes and not to Cuthbert and 
 Richard Burbage. The man in possession would 
 have benefited. In truth, this formed the whole
 
 HIS LIFE 57 
 
 basis of the litigation that arose out of Braynes' 
 death. Not to go into details of what such con- 
 tinuous expenditure would have meant (which could 
 approximately be arrived at from the details supplied 
 in Henslowe's diary concerning the business of 
 another company), we know that the Burbages up 
 to this time had made about two thousand pounds, 
 from their own declaration. In other words, the 
 Burbage interest would be : two thousand pounds 
 (whether sunk in litigation, as seems likely, or 
 still standing, is not material) ; a playhouse that 
 originally cost some 700, and on which a further 
 200 had since been expended ; stage properties of 
 a highly expensive character, and actors' gear even 
 yet more expensive (how expensive let Henslowe 
 testify ! ) ; and a goodwill, or what was of the same 
 benefit, an evil-will, that was of considerable value, 
 since the Theater was notorious all over London, 
 having had the free and excellent advertisement of 
 several sermons preached against it at St Paul's 
 Cross. Thus, if Shakespeare had indeed come 
 forward with a full thousand pounds in the year 
 1594, that sum would only be able to purchase him 
 some or other fractional holding. This being so, it is 
 interesting to find that subsequently, in later years, 
 his share in the Globe was a tenth, and his share in 
 the Blackfriars a seventh. And, in support of the 
 fact that something of this kind must needs have 
 happened at this time, it is even more interesting to 
 note old James Burbage, to judge from a statement
 
 58 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 made by his ground landlord, Giles Allen, made over 
 his property to his sons. 10 This he was likely 
 enough to do, so as to simplify matters, if other 
 interests had entered on the scene. 
 
 However that be, most surely Shakespeare's 
 position at the Theater was a matter of pivotal 
 function in his life. Up till now he had moved in 
 darkness, shrouded with obscurity. Henceforward 
 he is to step in the light of public importance and 
 the fame of his increasing achievement. In the 
 Court performances of this year, 1594, he figures 
 for the first time, and his companions are Richard 
 Burbage and Will. Kempe, the successor in broad 
 comedy and general clownage to the celebrated 
 Tarleton. For this they were well paid, though it 
 was not till March 1 5 of the following year that they 
 received their moneys. Probably one of the plays 
 acted on this occasion was the Comedy of Errors, 
 since it was also acted earlier the same day at Gray's 
 Inn. Moreover, as it is indubitable that he must 
 have followed Henry VI. at once with its meet con- 
 tinuation in Richard ///., this was probably also done 
 at the same time. Thus Shakespeare's acknowledged 
 achievement at thirty years of age would be, his two 
 poems, " Venus and Adonis " and " The Rape of 
 Lucrece," and his acted plays Henry VI, Titus 
 Andronicus, Richard III., and the Comedy of Errors, 
 in the first two of which he was not so much an 
 author as a refurbisher. To these must be added 
 Love's Labour 'j Lost and Two Gentlemen of Verona,
 
 HIS LIFE 59 
 
 which cannot but have preceded the others, but 
 concerning the staging of which there is no possible 
 trace. 
 
 He must have been very busy writing, however. 
 There is no record of any other dramatist with his 
 company at this time, and thus a considerable body 
 of work would devolve on him. It is here a very 
 interesting question arises. For the company owned 
 a good number of plays ; most of which had belonged 
 originally to the Burbages, and which seem to have 
 returned naturally to them when some of the old 
 Lord Derby's company, with Shakespeare, broke from 
 the Alleyn control and established the new Lord 
 Chamberlain's company. In his earlier work, when 
 he had not the structure of a previous play, he had 
 not been very strong in the technique of dramatic 
 invention. But as the reviser of the work of others he 
 had won sudden fame, bestowing power and beauty 
 on scenes that had hitherto altogether lacked in 
 ability, and giving such slight turns and twists to the 
 plan of a play as gave quick life to dead tissues. It 
 now became his function to continue in this task : 
 to overhaul the company's stock, and to refurbish it 
 for new presentation. For he would scarcely have 
 the time to provide them with a series of new plays, 
 despite the fact that the Chamberlain's company 
 never appear to have averaged more than four plays 
 annually. Since it it well known to have been 
 Shakespeare's habit as a playwright to derive his 
 plots from well-known sources, this may well have
 
 60 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 been the origin of the practice. Indeed, it is an 
 interesting enough study to note how frequently he 
 derives even from himself, continually repeating 
 stock scenes and accustomed devices. He worked 
 largely on stock themes ; and in revising the stock 
 plays of the Lord Chamberlain's company he came 
 finally to writing out all in them that did not derive 
 from his own pen. In some his work is confined to 
 specific portions, as, for example, The Taming of the 
 Shrew ; in most his work is complete ; yet, even to 
 the end, even in plays like Macbeth and King Lear, 
 there are passages embedded in his work that we 
 scarcely recognise as his. This treatment of old 
 plays and old themes became habitual, except for 
 some striking defections from his practice. There- 
 fore it becomes of more than ordinary interest when 
 we discover that the old play on Hamlet, perhaps by 
 Kyd, was acted at the Theater shortly before 
 1596." 
 
 Yet, however busy he was as a playwright, he 
 cannot have been so busy acting. The fact that in 
 the two years following his presence at the Court, 
 that is to say in 1595 and 1596, his company played 
 again before the C)ueen, but this time without him, 
 would seem to argue his absence from London. 
 And this is supported in several ways. For example, 
 Ben Jonson's reference to FalstafF in Every Man Out 
 of His Humour proves that Henry IV. was written 
 at any rate before 1599 ; whereas the textual 
 argument places it early in 1 596 or 1 597. But it is
 
 HIS LIFE 6 1 
 
 full of references to Stratford and its neighbourhood ; 
 not only topographically, but in speaking of definitely 
 traceable families, such as "William Visor of Woncct," 
 and " Clement Perkes of the Hill." Other plays, too, 
 of this time, such as The Taming of the Shrew, are 
 not less redolent of home memories. Not to speak 
 of the fact that Bardolph and Fluellen in the follow- 
 ing play of Henry V., are both names familiar in the 
 Warwickshire of his day. 12 Thus the attention 
 turns to Stratford-on-Avon, and at once the full 
 significance of his new importance at the Theater 
 shines out with full meaning, 
 
 For affairs with Shakespeare's father had become 
 increasingly parlous. Creditors ringed him with 
 their importunity ; and from this lamentable position 
 he had only learnt one relief, this being the eager 
 adoption of a creditor attitude towards some one 
 solitary man who chanced to be in debt to him. 
 Indeed, his son William had scarcely established him- 
 self at the Theater than, on March 9, 1595, 
 creditors assailed him again. Here he was joined as 
 defendant with two others, a chandler Phillip Green, 
 and a butcher Henry Rogers, in a suit for the 
 recovery of five pounds. But in this a curious fact 
 arises. For during the course of the action his name is 
 dropped out of the defence altogether, the suit pro- 
 ceeding only against his late colleagues in unhappiness. 
 Moreover, as though this were not enough, to it 
 must be added the still stranger fact that in the fol- 
 lowing year we find him actually seeking a coat-of-
 
 62 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 arras for himself, and claiming that his " parentes and 
 late antecessors were for theire valeant and faithfull 
 service advanced and rewarded by the most prudent 
 prince, King Henry the Seventh, of famous memory, 
 sythence which tyme they have continued at those 
 partes (in Warwickshire, that is) in good reputation 
 and credit." Seeing that the previous year he had 
 to dispose of even the little land attached to his 
 dwelling-house in Henley Street, to a George Badger, 
 and that his wife had had occasion lately to borrow 
 forty shillings from Thomas Whittington, lately her 
 father's shepherd, this latter claim reads strangely 
 humorously even. A change so sudden and 
 so marked demands the intervention of some 
 external aid ; and it needs no excess of wit or wisdom 
 to seek for that intervention in the dramatist son 
 that had lately established himself at the Theater. 
 Anyway, William Shakespeare must have been at 
 Stratford the following year, for on August n, 
 1596, his son Hamnet was buried at the parish 
 church. 
 
 Whether his father's appearance at the court, or 
 whether his hour of prosperity waking memories of 
 home in him, coupled with the desire to establish 
 his worldly position, brought him to Stratford, 
 does not greatly matter. Certain it is that he 
 utilised his visits to the latter end. It is to the 
 son's ambition that his father's application to the 
 College of Heralds for a coat-of-arms must be 
 ascribed, since it would be necessary for him to
 
 HIS LIFE 63 
 
 apply through his father, his father being living. 
 The fact that the reply to his application was sus- 
 pended for awhile did not deter him, however, from 
 setting his house in order in other and various ways. 
 The application itself was actually granted in 1599 : 
 indeed, it was not granted then; but it was taken 
 by the College of Heralds as having duly been 
 assigned to John Shakespeare when he was bailiff of 
 Stratford, which may be read as a heraldic device 
 for saying both yea and nay in the same breath. 
 Having received it thus, the Shakespeares asked 
 further that the father should impale, and the son, 
 with his brothers, should quarter, the Arden coat- 
 of-arms with their own. Since in this case it was 
 rather more difficult to devise a means of blowing 
 both hot and cold at once, the application does not 
 seem to have been persisted in, and the noble efforts 
 of the heralds went consequently for nought. 
 
 In the meantime, Shakespeare proceeded with 
 other matters. On May 4, 1597, he purchased 
 New Place, which was the largest house in Strat- 
 ford, and possessed two barns and two gardens. 
 He paid .60 for it in money of that time ; and later 
 on added to it steadily, at annual average of 
 70. 13 Noting this fact, and observing its year, it 
 is curious to think how much had happened in ten 
 years. In 1587 he had been compelled to flee the 
 town ignominiously, and had engaged himself to a 
 player's company as " Johannes Factotum." Five 
 years after, in 1592, he emerged from obscurity as
 
 64 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the popular emendator of an historical play. Again, 
 five years later, he rescues his father from his parlous 
 affairs, and becomes one of the chief inhabitants of 
 Stratford. What his importance was can best be 
 judged from the way in which his fellow-inhabitants 
 regard him. For example, early the following year a 
 famine ravaged Stratford, and only two of its inhabi- 
 tants were credited with a large holding of corn. One 
 of these was Shakespeare, who is stated as the posses- 
 sor of ten quarters. In this year, moreover, we find 
 him rebuilding New Place, and establishing an 
 orchard to it. A certain Stratfordian, Richard 
 Quiney, appeals to him by letter as a " loving country- 
 man " for the loan of 30 ; though he might, had 
 he been blest with prophetic sight, have appealed as 
 the father of a son who should later marry one 
 of Shakespeare's daughters. Another Stratfordian, 
 Abraham Sturley, writing to his brother, says that 
 "it seemeth," by his father's motion, "that our 
 countryman, William Shakespere, is willing to 
 disburse some money upon some odd yardland or 
 other at Shottery, or near about us : he thinketh it 
 a very fit pattern to move him to deal in the matter 
 of our tithes. By the instructions you can give him 
 thereof, and by the friends he can make therefor, 
 we think it a fair mark for him to shoot at, and 
 would do us much good." Writing to Richard Quiney, 
 the same writer says later that since the town could 
 not meet a certain subsidy demanded of it (that Quiney 
 was in London to seek remission of), owing to
 
 HIS LIFE 65 
 
 the corn famine, he hoped "that our countryman, 
 Win. Shak., would procure us money, which I will 
 like of, as I shall hear when, and where, and how." 
 That Shakespeare himself esteemed these Stratford 
 connections, and wished himself to be regarded as 
 primarily an inhabitant of that town, is evident in 
 other ways ; for hereafter he is always designated 
 as "William Shakespeare of Stratford, Gentleman." 
 
 All this points to prosperity with Shakespeare ; 
 and so permits us to see how important was the 
 position he had lately acquired at the Theater. For 
 he certainly could not have achieved so much when 
 with Edward Alleyn. Yet it points to more than 
 mere prosperity. It indicates with sure digit Shake- 
 speare's determination absolutely to sever all links 
 with his earlier years of stress. They who see in 
 these things signs of mundane proclivities can never 
 have had to undertake the keen bitter struggle, such 
 as was his prior to 1592. A man need not neces- 
 sarily be mundane to raise bulwarks betwixt himself 
 and a proved bitter experience. 
 
 Yet it was not only in Stratford that he sought 
 to establish himself. The manner of procedure 
 with Elizabethan players' companies helps to account 
 largely for his movements between London and Strat- 
 ford. The playhouses being circular and roofless 
 enclosures, even a substantial portion of the stage 
 being without cover, it was impossible for a perform- 
 ance to take place in very inclement weather. Each 
 playhouse had a flagstaff, up to which a pennon was
 
 66 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 run to advertise the fact that a play was to proceed. 
 Thus winters would not be the best of occasions 
 for playhouse performances, although winters, as 
 Henslowe's diary is itself sufficient to show, were 
 by no means precluded. In this way a number of 
 opportunities presented themselves to Shakespeare 
 for a journey to Stratford ; and it is curious to note 
 some of his appearances in his native town at such 
 months and during such times as inclement weather 
 may be presumed. 
 
 After his purchase of New Place, however, his 
 return to London would be imperious ; and, human 
 nature being what it is, a perplexity consistent in its 
 inconsistencies, it would perhaps be not altogether 
 likely that a man coming from the new glory of his 
 position in Stratford would return to his some- 
 time lodging in the liberty of the Clink. Now, 
 according to the Mountjoy documents, 14 it would 
 appear from Shakespeare's own depositions that he 
 lodged at the house of one Christopher Mountjoy, 
 at the corner of Mugwell Street and Silver Street, 
 in Cripplegate, onwards from about the year 1597. 
 A certain Stephen Bellott had been apprenticed to 
 Mountjoy, in the fashionable task of making head- 
 dresses and wigs, in the year 1598, having been 
 persuaded to this by Bellott's step-father, Humphrey 
 Fludd, whose wife, like Mountjoy, was a French 
 citizen. It is worthy of note that at the time 
 Bellott had already been resident with Mountjoy 
 a year. Subsequently Bellott married Mountjoy's
 
 HIS LIFE 67 
 
 daughter, being promised certain advantages with 
 the contract in the shape of a dower, useful house- 
 hold properties, and the promise of a legacy. In 
 1612 Bellott brought a suit against Mountjoy, 
 alleging that those fair promises had not properly 
 been ratified. He cited several to testify their 
 relation of the events in question, among them a 
 certain " William Shakespeare, gent." Thus Shake- 
 speare is brought into the field of action ; and thus 
 it is not only assured that he did indeed reside at 
 Mount] oy's house, but it is possible to discover when 
 he first began to do so. 
 
 At first flush the quest is discouraging ; for, 
 deposing in 1612, he declares he has known the 
 parties "tenne yeres or thereabouts." Yet, under 
 a further head, he proceeds to declare that "he did 
 know the complainant when he was servant with 
 the deffandant, and that duringe the tyme of his the 
 complainantes service w th the said deffandant he the 
 said Complainante to this deponentes knowledge did 
 well and honestly behave himselfe." In other words, 
 this carries back the date of his knowledge of Bellot 
 and Mountjoy, and therefore presumably the matter 
 of his indubitable residence with the latter, to 1598, 
 or, if Bellott did any manner of service in the year 
 prior to his actual articles of apprenticeship, to 1597 ; 
 which is the very date, on the grounds of the 
 plausibility and consonancy of human action, that 
 it was suggested Shakespeare, on his return from 
 the purchase of New Place, would desire to move
 
 68 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 from his lodging at Southwark, seeking more spacious 
 and appropriate quarters. But, apart from such 
 sentimental promptings as urge the overwhelming 
 majority of human actions, there are not wanting 
 other, and more empirical, motives for such a move. 
 For Silver Street would be at near call to the 
 Theater, even as the Clink was near the Rose, and 
 St Helens was near the Cross Keys Tavern. In 
 addition to this, in coming to Cripplegate he was 
 entering the neighbourhood where several writers 
 and dramatists clustered. Ben Jonson, either now 
 or later, lived here ; so also Thomas Dekker and 
 Nathaniel Field ; to say nothing of John Heminges 
 and Henry Condell, fellow-members of his company, 
 and subsequently the editors of the First Folio. 
 The neighbourhood preserved something of this 
 character right down to the days when the strident 
 Samuel Johnson declared that Grub Street was 
 "much inhabited by writers of small histories, 
 dictionaries, and temporary poems." Moreover, 
 Silver Street was near the Mermaid Tavern ; being, 
 indeed, situate betwixt the Theater and the Mermaid. 
 Not to speak of its being, as Ben has it in his 
 Staple of News, "the region of money," a com- 
 modity that Shakespeare was now becoming more 
 happily familiar with. 
 
 Having moved his lodging near the Theater, it 
 was perhaps only a fitting irony that the tenure of 
 the Burbages at that famous playhouse should fall 
 into insecurity. Giles Allen, the ground landlord,
 
 HIS LIFE 69 
 
 had ever been a thorn in its side. Now he swelled 
 to something more than a thorny inconvenience. 
 He rose to active importance. In the spring of this 
 very year, 1597, the lease had fallen due; and, try 
 as the Burbages would, they could wake no^favour- 
 able renewal out of him. What to do became a 
 very earnest matter. To proceed, in the teeth of 
 a lapsed agreement, was not only unwise, but was 
 to play into Allen's hands. As a preliminary move, 
 therefore, and probably as a hint to Allen that they 
 were in no way dependent on him, it was decided 
 to close the Theater. This was done accordingly 
 on July 28 ; and the whole company moved to the 
 Curtain, near by, also within the precinct of the 
 sometime Priory of Holywell. Being settled here, 
 they opened their season with Romeo and Juliet. 
 The inner evidence of the play leads to the con- 
 clusion that this was a revision ; yet this is the first 
 record of it. It was hither Ben Jonson (not less 
 dissatisfied than others with Henslowe's usurious 
 soul, of which this year he had thrice been a victim) 
 brought his play, Every Man in His Humour. The 
 story runs, in proof of Shakespeare's authoritative 
 importance, that it had already been refused, when 
 Shakespeare, hearing its dismissal, took it, read it, 
 and duly accepted it. 
 
 All this year this unsatisfactory position continued: 
 and all the next. In the meantime, in the midst of all 
 these perplexed negotiations, old James Burbage died. 
 He bequeathed the Theater to his son Cuthbert, and
 
 70 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the Blackfriars, an indoor playhouse he had just 
 built within the liberties, to Richard. The fact 
 that these separate distinctions of ownership were 
 never rigidly observed is a hint that there were 
 other interests observed. For example, the Theater, 
 as already said, was Cnthbert's property ; yet 
 Cuthbert was not the only one concerned in the 
 present responsibility. Firstly, his brother Richard 
 was also interested ; but, in addition to his concern, 
 there were also Shakespeare, Will. Kempe, John 
 Heminges, Augustine Phillips, and Thomas Pope ; 
 all of whom had been with Alleyn in 1592, and who 
 had joined the Lord Chamberlain's company on its 
 formation. Their interest in the present situation 
 transpires in what follows. 
 
 In the later legal suits that succeeded the im- 
 mediate perplexity, Giles Allen declared that it had 
 been his intention, "seeing the greate and greevous 
 abuses that grewe by the Theater, to pull downe the 
 same and to converte the wood and timber thereof 
 to some better use." But in the original lease 
 granted to James Burbage it had been stipulated 
 that if he or his successors or assigns were to expend 
 200 in building on the property at any time sub- 
 sequent to their initial tenure, they would then be 
 entitled to pull down the Theater and remove it 
 elsewhere. What "better use " Allen had in mind for 
 the " wood and timber thereof" can never be known, 
 for the step he meditated was put into execution 
 by the other side. First of all, however, now that
 
 HIS LIFE 71 
 
 it was intended to move out of the field of leases 
 held by the Burbages, it was dedicated to formulate 
 a legal position accurately. The question of any 
 earlier arrangement can only be a matter for in- 
 ferential reasoning ; inductions from certain patent 
 facts that carry their own necessary implications : 
 the subsequent arrangement comes into the clearer 
 atmosphere of legal definition. Yet the fact that 
 this legal definition should first be drawn up, that it 
 should be distinctly articulated before any move 
 should be effected, is its own hint of an earlier 
 understanding. 
 
 As the matter was finally drawn out, it was 
 decided that all subsequent responsibilities and 
 profits should be defined into two clear halves : one 
 half being taken by the two Burbages, and divided 
 equally between them ; the other half being taken 
 by Shakespeare and his four companions, and divided 
 equally between them. The latter half-holding was 
 created into a legal tenancy-in-common by the whole 
 five granting their half to two outsiders, Thomas 
 Savage and William Levison, and receiving it back 
 from them in fifth shares. It was intended by this 
 that each man should hold his right as distinct and 
 individual, in fair hereditament : a matter that was 
 to mean trouble to them subsequently. 15 
 
 Three days after they had legalised this arrange- 
 ment, on the 28th December 1598, they hired a 
 builder and carpenter named Peter Street, and, 
 with a goodly company, forthwith proceeded to
 
 72 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 pull down the Theater, so as to erect its materials 
 on a site they jointly leased from Sir Nicholas 
 Brend between Maiden Lane and Bankside in 
 Southwark. From the subsequent action that arose 
 out of this arbitrary act, it appears that these 
 " divers persons, to the number of twelve," were not 
 permitted to proceed unmolested with their task. 
 They had to arm " themselves with dyvers and 
 manye unlawfull and offensive weapons, as namlye, 
 swordes, daggers, bills, axes, and such like." They 
 had to proceed " in verye ryotous, outragious, and 
 forcyble manner " apparently. At any rate, they 
 did manage to " take and carry e awaye from thence 
 all the wood and timber thereof unto the Banksyde 
 in the parishe of St Marye Overyes, and there erect 
 a newe playhouse with the sayd timber and wood." 
 This " newe playhouse " they called the Globe, of 
 great memory. 
 
 If the unprofitable method of dividing Shake- 
 speare's life into sections be adopted, the first 
 section would be occupied by his life in Stratford, 
 continuing to the visit of the Earl of Leicester's 
 company in 1587. The next period would embrace 
 the years of his obscurity, until his emergence early 
 in 1592 as a reviser of plays at the Rose in South- 
 wark, and extend beyond to cover the subsequent 
 two years, completing the term of his connection 
 with Edward Alleyn's directorship. His work for 
 this period has been seen already. The next section 
 would discover his sudden rise to power and oppor-
 
 HIS LIFE 73 
 
 tunity at the Theater (or, more strictly, perhaps, a 
 little earlier, at the establishment of the Lord 
 Chamberlain's company), and would extend to the 
 razing of that famous playhouse for the erection of 
 the Globe, covering the intercalatory season at the 
 Curtain. His production for this period of time is 
 readily discoverable. For the previous year a divine 
 schoolmaster, by the name of Francis Meres, had 
 published a general collection of apophthegms under 
 the title of " Palladis Tamia." In this he speaks of 
 Shakespeare as a noteworthy person indeed. Says 
 he: "The Muses would speak Shakespeare's fine 
 filed phrase if they could speak English " ; and goes 
 on to speak of his excellency " in both kinds for 
 the stage," instancing them thus : Gentlemen of 
 Verona, Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, Love's Labour's 
 Won, Midsummer Night's Dream, and Merchant of 
 Venice, for the comedies ; and Richard II., Richard III., 
 Henry IV., John, Titus Andronicus, and Romeo and 
 Juliet, for the tragedies. To these he adds mention 
 of the poems, " Venus and Adonis " and " Lucrece " ; 
 speaking also of his "sugred sonnets among his 
 private friends." If from these we abstract the 
 plays that Shakespeare would appear to have written 
 prior to his establishment at the Theater, his labour 
 for what has roughly been termed the third 
 period of his life would be : Love's Labour's Won, 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, Merchant of Venice, 
 Richard II, Henry IV., John, and Romeo and Juliet. 
 Love's Labour's Won is hard to decide on, since it was
 
 74 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 largely rewritten later even than this, and called 
 Airs Well that Ends Well even as Love's Labour s 
 Lost was rewritten, to a lesser extent, for the 
 Christmas festivities at the Court for 1597, and 
 printed (for the company's use, if the Cutbert Burby 
 of the title-page be taken as Cuthbert Burbage) the 
 following year. Yet, apart from this, the growth of 
 power in this later text is very marked and distinct. 
 The erection of the Globe opened the next period 
 in Shakespeare's life, and rang the dominant to 
 which he could not fail to respond. For he was 
 now, for the first time as far as we may judge, a legal 
 partner of a playhouse; with the settlement of which 
 event he duly received his coat-of-arms. Power 
 was on him ; and responsibility. Yet, more than 
 this, a newer opportunity lay to his hand. The 
 playing fields of Finsbury, near which the Theater 
 had lain, were notoriously the resort of the hurly- 
 burly apprentices. The Bankside, however, on 
 which the Globe was built, housed the tennis- 
 courts, to which a gentler congregation was wont to 
 resort. On the first, the higher subtleties of drama 
 would be lost ; with the second, they would have a 
 more obvious appeal. In tragedy, the first would 
 demand the trial-scene in The Merchant of Venice, 
 with its somewhat obvious stagecraft and its rather 
 fustian appeal ; whereas the latter would best appre- 
 ciate the nunnery-scene in Hamlet, with its terrible 
 exposure of ruined faith and sexual abhorrence. 
 In comedy, it would be difficult to imagine As Ton
 
 HIS LIFE 75 
 
 Like //, which he was just about to write, being 
 produced, as we have it, before the apprentice of 
 Finsbury playing fields. It cannot but be owned 
 that his newer opportunity came fortunately to hand 
 with his growth of power. 
 
 His prosperity at this time is evidenced from 
 without and from within. Stratford that had seen 
 creditor after creditor assail the father, now saw 
 debtor on debtor assailed by the son. It is not 
 possible to define his annual earnings at a date so 
 early as this, but his annual profit from his share in 
 the Globe, apart from his similar subsequent share 
 in the Blackfriars, apart, also, from what would be 
 excellent remunerations as actor and playwright, has 
 lately been estimated at the outside figure of 300 
 in money of the present day. 16 Several reasons 
 weigh against this estimate ; yet, even so, it would 
 probably have meant more in Stratford than in 
 London, a matter that is apt to be forgotten. 
 Nevertheless, it is in happy opposition to the con- 
 ception of Shakespeare as a man whose god was 
 mammon. Yet, with all that, his outward prosperity 
 at this time is not without its proof. The land he 
 had purchased at Stratford was yielding its due of 
 harvest ; and we find him, therefore, in July of 1604, 
 suing Phillip Rogers, a fellow-inhabitant of Strat- 
 ford, who had failed to make payment for malt 
 purchased of him. Other similar litigation between 
 1600 and 1610, in London and Stratford, stands in 
 witness of his fair worldly estate : a worldly estate
 
 76 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 that had been added to by the death of his father 
 in 1 60 1, and the passing of the houses in Henley 
 Street to the son. 
 
 The inward evidence is not less authentic, yet was 
 soon to be clouded. He had no sooner been settled 
 at the Globe than Much Ado about Nothing, As lou 
 Like It, and Twelfth Night, flowed from his pen. 
 Yet these flowed on into the bitter revision of 
 Love's Labour's Won to Alfs Well that Ends Well (for 
 which possible development Jaques in Arden and 
 Malvolio in the mad cell gave more than hints), 
 the cynic Troilus and Cressida, the tragic Julius 
 Ctesar, and Hamlet, and the angry Measure for 
 Measure. It is curious to note that all the three 
 comedies of this period appear to have been revisions 
 of earlier work of his. It is as though, finding a 
 mordaunt and tragic mood eruptive in him, a mood 
 that seems to touch with a dark abhorrence full of 
 shudders the whole thought of sex, he would not 
 trust himself to structure comedy ; and, when he 
 sought to refurbish some earlier work of his in that 
 manner, the darkness swept through him, and, 
 snatching his pen, wrote what it would, and not 
 what he would. Yet this, and what may have 
 caused it, belongs, not to his biography, but to a 
 later framing of the manner of man he was ; and 
 may be dismissed for the nonce. 
 
 Two matters, however, were to throw a tem- 
 porary shade over Shakespeare and the affairs at 
 the Globe. The first was the famous " War of the
 
 HIS LIFE 77 
 
 Theatres." The rare, yet choleric and furious, Ben 
 Jonson was the chief origin of this. Since Shake- 
 speare had accepted his play, Every Man in His 
 Humour, in the summer of 1598, he had continued 
 with the company. But in the meantime a fellow- 
 playwright, John Marston, lampooned him on the 
 stage ; and won a whipping reply in Every Man Out 
 of His Humour. This led to Ben leaving the Globe 
 for the Blackfriars, and the adoption of a cross 
 fusillade of plays. 
 
 Yet this was not all. Indeed, it but gave sting 
 to a deeper trouble. For the Blackfriars had been 
 built in 1596 by James Burbage, and leased to a 
 Henry Evans. He installed a company of children's 
 players there, that began straightway to win new 
 favour from the Queen. Thus the Blackfriars was 
 not only the centre from which Ben Jonson waged 
 a war of bitter personalities (in all of which his 
 tenderness for Shakespeare peeps out, even if the 
 latter had indeed caused him to choose some base for 
 his campaign other than the Globe) ; but the Queen's 
 patronage of that more private playhouse threw the 
 Globe into disfavour. In truth, the Globe had to 
 be closed, and its company had to proceed on travel. 
 
 So far as posterity is concerned there is no great 
 cause of complaint in this. For the company pro- 
 posed to visit the universities ; and thus Shake- 
 speare took up the old play on the question of 
 Hamlet's revenge, recasting and rewriting it for that 
 purpose. Hamlet was imbued with profound philo-
 
 78 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 sophic thought, being tragic withal, and he and his 
 friend Horatio are seen as students of the Univer- 
 sity at Wittenberg. In fact the play bears within 
 itself the causes of its origin. For when the players 
 in it arrive at Elsinore, Hamlet at once enquires : 
 "How chances it they travel?" Rosencrantz replies: 
 " I think their inhibition comes by the means of the 
 late innovation," adding, "There is, sir, an eyrie of 
 children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of 
 question, and are most tyrannically clapped for't: 
 these are now the fashion, and so berattle the 
 common stages as they call them that many 
 wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills, and dare 
 scarce come thither." 
 
 There is probably a deeper cause for this than 
 appears at first flush : deeper than any mere change 
 of fashion in Court or Queen. For the Essex con- 
 spiracy had lately been afoot, and Shakespeare and 
 the Lord Chamberlain's Company had permitted 
 themselves to take an aloof part in it. His play, 
 King Richard IL, had been acted prior to 1597, hav- 
 ing had two editions published in that year. Yet on 
 none of these occasions had there been pourtrayed 
 the scene in which Richard is deposed. But now, 
 on the testimony of the Queen herself, "This 
 tragedy was played forty times in open streets and 
 houses " ; and the deposition scene was played in 
 full. The reason for it was very obvious ; for 
 Shakespeare's benefactor, the Earl of Southampton, 
 was involved in the plot ; and some such deed by
 
 HIS LIFE 79 
 
 Shakespeare would be in some manner of exchange 
 for the earlier kindness done him by the Earl. The 
 Queen, however, had not been slow to see the 
 reference ; nor had she failed to flash out her anger. 
 " I am Richard II. ; know ye not that ? " she is 
 reported to have said. Her patronage of children's 
 companies in preference to men's companies, after 
 this, is a very intelligible progression of mind 
 in the irate old Queen, with all that it meant to 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 But with the ascension of James in 1603, all this 
 was changed. It now fell to the men's companies 
 to receive the good things of the earth. Back in the 
 year 1599 a party of English players had visited 
 Scotland ; and the four Sessions of the Kirk in 
 Edinburgh had met in solemn conclave and " enacted 
 their flocks to forbear and not to come to or haunt 
 profane games, sports, or plays." Whereupon 
 James had promptly summoned the Sessions before 
 him in Council, compelling them, however recalcitrant 
 withal, to withdraw their enactions. Now, as King 
 of England, he had a wider opportunity in which to 
 display his dramatic interest ; and he was not slow to 
 take advantage of it. Indeed, he threw his cloak of 
 patronage over as wide a field as it well could cover. 
 The company acting at the Fortune playhouse came 
 under the Prince's patronage ; those at the Red Bull 
 passed to the Queen's care ; while Shakespeare's 
 company at the Globe became known as the King's 
 men. Nor was this an idle honour. It carried with
 
 8o SHAKESPEARE 
 
 it for each player a representation as a member of 
 the King's household. It meant that they held 
 official position as Grooms of the Chamberlain, with 
 official fees attached to that honour. It involved 
 attendance at Court, and it led, in 1604, to the whole 
 company being summoned to attend the Spanish 
 Embassador Extraordinary at Somerset House on 
 the occasion of his peace mission. For this Augustine 
 Phillips and John Hemynges, as treasurer and 
 manager of the company, received the official fees in 
 the name of their fellows. These honours, such as 
 they were, were probably the reflex of Shakespeare's 
 earlier disfavour, in more senses than one. For, with 
 the ascension of the King, Southampton was released, 
 and received into high favour. 17 
 
 Yet it meant, not alone a swift ascension for men 
 players, but no less a sharp declension for the children 
 players. So poignant was the case with the latter 
 that Evans was compelled to forego his lease. 
 Thereupon Richard Burbage stepped in. He and 
 the "householders" of the Globe (changed now 
 somewhat from its original holding; for Kempe, 
 clutching at too much, missed all, returning to 
 Henslowe's company at the Globe, whereupon a re- 
 constitution took place) took over the control of the 
 Blackfriars in shares of an equal seventh apiece. 
 Thus again Shakespeare's power was extended, with 
 attendant increase of remuneration. 
 
 This was not, however, till 1608. In the mean- 
 time the influence of the King had been extended
 
 HIS LIFE 8 1 
 
 for the fullest advantage of the drama. Faults 
 enough he had ; yet his interest in playhouses was 
 not the interested pursuit of personal pleasure it had 
 been with Elizabeth, He was concerned seriously 
 with Dramatic Art. Dramatists were encouraged 
 now to touch loftier and supremer heights, irre- 
 spective of puzzled and unappreciative audiences. 
 Jonson, for one, turned now from his Comedies of 
 Manners and his Satires to his Volpone, his 
 Alchemist, his Epicozne. Chapman, too, turned 
 from his comedies to his ponderous, gloomy tragedies. 
 The trend was every where. Seeing it, and noting it, 
 it throws a strange illumination over the fact that 
 Shakespeare no longer, now, sought to write 
 comedies, with disastrous effect, as in Troilus and 
 Cress ida and Measure for Measure ; no longer 
 held his tragedy in relief, as in Julius Ctesar, or 
 endeavoured to mingle it with sardonic humour, 
 as in Hamlet: but gave himself over to the full 
 fury and darkness of Othello, Lear, Macbeth, 
 Timon. These coincidences of Shakespeare's ripe- 
 ness of mind with external promptings are curiously 
 interesting. 
 
 It has generally been assumed, chiefly on the 
 authority of Nicholas Rowe, that, in the closing 
 years of his life, Shakespeare retired to Stratford, 
 weary and prematurely aged. There is no reason, 
 however, to think this. As has been seen, ever 
 since 1595 he had spent a varying portion of most 
 years at Stratford ; and this he continued to do to
 
 82 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the end. He had a considerable amount of property 
 there, which would necessarily argue an increasing 
 attention. The sleek unction of Rowe's own words 
 should suggest that his sense of fitness, he being 
 the originator of the idea, stood in function of 
 paternity to the thought. Yet there do not want 
 indications that Shakespeare seemed to feel towards 
 the end that he had filled his round of speech, and 
 wished to make conclusion. His mighty tragedies 
 flowed into a richness of gentle fantasy, mature with 
 wisdom and untroubled in blood, such as bespeak 
 the topmost stones in an arch. Having in mind the 
 whole output of his brain, it is difficult to imagine any 
 further work as succeeding to such plays as Winters 
 Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest. It is no fantasy to 
 see in Prospero, in this last of plays, Shakespeare's 
 whimsical suggestion of himself. For Prospero had 
 to be done with enchantments, or tell his tale 
 twice over. So it was with Shakespeare. He had 
 said his say. More would be a superfluity which 
 he was too good an artist to desire. 
 
 Also, there are inner indications of this. Cym- 
 beline could only have been written by a man of 
 power who no longer found any inducement to be 
 powerful. Prospero's account of his earlier life to 
 Miranda flows not so much from a weary pen, as 
 from a pen too slothful for care and craft. All this 
 latter work bears on its face the appearance of 
 having passed through a mind that was full of vitality, 
 whose vitality burst forth ever and anon in sweeping
 
 HIS LIFE 83 
 
 effortless power to lapse again into contented 
 indolence, like some strong-winged gull on a summer's 
 noon. 
 
 It was such a mood that probably led him to take 
 up his residence in New Place, which he did at 
 some date prior to 1611. In 1608 his mother had 
 died, the year after his eldest daughter Susanna's 
 marriage with a physician of the name of John 
 Hall. In 1613, during the festivities for the 
 marriage of Princess Elizabeth, seven of his plays 
 were given at Court, Much Ado about Nothing, 
 Tempest, Winter s Tale, Sir John Fa/staff (prob- 
 ably Merry Wives of Windsor), Othello, Julius Ctesar, 
 and Hotspur (probably Henry IV.}. During the 
 same year, in proof of his buxom interest in this 
 earth, he bought some property, in the form of a 
 house and yard, within a short distance of the 
 Blackfriars playhouse. 
 
 All this argues, indeed, an increase of leisure with 
 him. Something of the reason was doubtless, as 
 has been suggested, that he felt he had reaped his 
 harvest of thought. Such moments may be traced 
 in the maturer years of many artists and thinkers. 
 Then there remain but three alternatives : repetition, 
 which the many do ; cessation, which the few adopt, 
 among them Shakespeare; and a new fierce burst 
 of exhausting thought, and a reconstruction of all 
 things a high, but a heroic, thing. Shakespeare 
 left the hero's task to others, and turned to easier 
 ways. It may be, had he lived, he would have
 
 84 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 re-arisen and wrought anew, for he died in the 
 height of mental power. 
 
 Yet the reason for this was not wholly inward. 
 Once again there came the strange outward induce- 
 ment to synchronise with his mental mood. For 
 the ravages of the plague were heavy in the latter 
 years of his work. Playhouses had continually to 
 be closed for lengthy periods. On one occasion, 
 indeed, they had to be closed for no less a length 
 of time than seventeen months continuously. More- 
 over, in June of 1613, the Globe was burnt down, 
 and its re-erection caused delay. Very naturally, 
 these things made a considerably lighter call on his 
 pen. It would be unlike human experience if this 
 lengthy taste of ease, coming at the time it did, 
 did not awake in him a sudden desire to continue 
 its peaceful succession. Harness once laid by is not 
 easily taken up again. Moreover, he was pros- 
 perous, too, though perhaps not so prosperous as 
 he once was thought to have been : and prosperity 
 and high ideals do not usually cleave fast together. 
 Besides which, the inhabitants of Stratford, finding 
 in him an ease of purse and an indulgent disposition, 
 were not slow, as there wants not evidence to show, 
 to demand local function of him, implying local 
 expenditure. 
 
 On April 23, 1616, he died: suddenly. Not 
 altogether unexpectedly, however, for earlier in the 
 year he had drawn up his will, and married his 
 daughter Judith to Thomas Quiney. Tradition has
 
 HIS LIFE 85 
 
 it that Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton were 
 visiting him at the time, and that they "had a 
 merry meeting," whereat " itt seemes " they " drank 
 too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there 
 contracted." On the 25th he was buried in Strat- 
 ford Church. So the clay of him passed to dust, 
 leaving the fervour of the spirit of him beating 
 quickly in works, that he wrote for his age truly, 
 but which other and all ages have thought to be of 
 vital and perpetual moment with what cause is the 
 present question. Yet before the permanent matter 
 of his achievement can be touched, it will be neces- 
 sary to note the temporal conditions to which he had 
 to conform, and the stage which made and marked 
 him.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 HIS STAGE 
 
 DR JOHNSON declared of Shakespeare that "he has 
 scenes of undoubted and perpetual excellence, but 
 perhaps not one play, which, if it were now ex- 
 hibited as the work of a contemporary writer, would 
 be heard to the conclusion." A statement such as 
 that throws one back on thought. What does it 
 mean? There is a certain thing that is Drama. 
 It is a thing apart by itself: apart from the telling 
 of a tale, apart from the depicture of characters, 
 apart from the discoveries, or recoveries, of Poetry, 
 apart from the striking of Wisdom, apart from any 
 enunciation of Truth ; however much it may include 
 any and all of these, it is not so much a thing above 
 all these as it is a thing apart from all these. It is 
 a thing in itself. Therefore, if a man should once 
 have created this thing in itself, and if his creation 
 be recognised as indisputably genuine, how comes 
 it, then, that the age that gives the recognition 
 should declare in the same breath that a similar 
 creation in its own day would not be tolerated? Is 
 it false, then, to say that Drama is a thing in itself? 
 Or does Dr Johnson mean that Drama is indeed a 
 thing in itself, but that Shakespeare did not achieve 
 it, but wrought something else i If so, is he to be 
 
 86
 
 HIS STAGE 87 
 
 interpreted as implying that his own age has the 
 monopoly of such creation ; or, at least, a monopoly 
 as opposed to the Elizabethan age ? Because, if 
 that be the case, it is obvious that the Elizabethans 
 have a precisely similar retort on Johnson, or on any 
 other age that would wish to employ the same 
 argument. 
 
 The stout doctor, however, goes on to say : "I 
 am indeed far from thinking, that his works were 
 wrought to his own ideas of perfection ; when they 
 were such as would satisfy the audience, they satis- 
 fied the writer. It is seldom that authors, though 
 more studious of fame than Shakespeare, rise much 
 above the standard of their own age." Despite the 
 fact that it would be quite possible for the Eliza- 
 bethans to speak with similar condescension with 
 regard to the eighteenth century, and with a great 
 deal more reason, it is in this, nevertheless, that 
 the thought strikes something, which, if faithfully 
 followed out, would solve the perplexity. For it 
 seems that whatever Drama be in itself, the manner 
 of its appearance depends upon the age which seeks 
 to render it in its own language. When Johnson, 
 that is to say, declared that " perhaps not one play, 
 . . . exhibited as the work of a contemporary 
 writer, would be heard to the conclusion," he meant 
 that his age lacked something that the Elizabethans 
 possessed, a something that won Shakespeare's plays 
 to their whole-hearted attention. Whether that y 
 something were good or foolish can very easily be
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 discovered from a comparison of the respective 
 ages. 
 
 Yet it means more than merely this. Shakespeare 
 spoke not only a certain emotional language. He 
 had to translate Drama in certain terms of the stage. 
 Even as ancient jEschylus had of need to employ 
 certain mechanisms to render the thing called Drama, 
 for it to have intelligible approach to his audience, 
 so, too, Shakespeare had other mechanisms that he 
 was compelled to use, under pain of silence. It was, 
 indeed, a greater compulsion on Shakespeare than on 
 a dramatist in most other ages ; for in his day the 
 appeal of the printed page for dramatic matter 
 was somewhat lightly esteemed. It is not to be 
 imagined that this did not lay its restrictions on 
 him. It harassed him in many ways ; but it con- 
 veyed a challenge to him. It demanded of him that 
 he should not merely, and grudgingly, employ such 
 conditions as an Elizabethan playhouse and an 
 " Elizabethan audience, but that he should so use 
 these things that they should be turned from restric- 
 tions to beauties. It asked of him such craftsman- 
 ship, that Drama should not be weakened in its 
 translation through conditions, but that it should be 
 strengthened, even as some uncouth word may be 
 turned to music by a richened modulation of voice. 
 
 Thus, before any approach can be made to an 
 understanding of Shakespeare, it will be necessary 
 to perceive the stage for which he wrote and the 
 audience he addressed. He must be heard, that is,
 
 HIS STAGE 89 
 
 in the terms of his own speech ; and, if possible, it 
 would be well could we discover how some one or 
 other of his plays was organised throughout on his 
 actual stage. 
 
 Fortunately it is not impossible for us to recreate 
 in general effect the structure of an average play- 
 house of the time. For when Shakespeare and his 
 companions erected the Globe, his one-time leader, 
 Edward Alleyn, removed from the Rose near by, 
 and built another playhouse north of the river, in 
 Golden Lane, west of the Curtain, which he called 
 the Fortune. The building contract of this we 
 possess. Moreover, besides providing us with the 
 plans for the building of the Fortune, we have hints 
 in it as to the scheme of the Globe ; for it is stipu- 
 lated continuously that several items are to be struc- 
 tured in the same manner as they are "made and 
 contryved in and to the late-erected Play-house on 
 the Bancke in the said parish of Saint Saviours, 
 called the Globe." Also, there are odd sketches and 
 illustrations in divers places; most of which, to be 
 true, appear to be of doubtful value when tested by 
 internal and external evidence. And there are plays 
 innumerable, some of which do not lack for full and 
 specific stage instructions. 1 
 
 Reconstructed in this way, an Elizabethan 
 playhouse appears as a wooden frame-structure 
 surrounding a yard that lay open to the sky. 
 Seeing that playhouses derived largely from the 
 innyards that preceded them for dramatic display,
 
 90 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the origin of this can easily be understood. Thus, 
 too, even as the rooms of the inn surrounded its 
 yard, so here other " rooms " surrounded the yard. 
 The enclosing woodwork, whether circular, as in the 
 Globe, or square, as in the Fortune, was fitted up 
 with chambers, to which access could only be made 
 from the yard. Right on into modern conditions have 
 these rooms prevailed, leaving their last evidence in 
 the " boxes " of the present day ; only, with the 
 Elizabethans, the " rooms " ran completely round 
 the frame in three tiers. 
 
 So far, so good. In this general scheme of the 
 building there can be no difficulty, so united is all 
 authority. It is when the attention approaches the 
 stage itself, with all the appurtenances thereof, that 
 difficulties begin to arise ; and with difficulties, oppo- 
 sitions. There being no obtrusion in the external 
 structure of the building, the actual stage itself lay 
 in the yard, obtruding from the actors' tiring house, 
 and thrust forward like a snout towards the public 
 entrance. Initially, perhaps, it was a mere platform, 
 similar to, though not so lofty as, the platforms 
 that were drawn about the countryside in the old 
 Moralities and Mysteries. Indeed, if one could ima- 
 gine such a platform set down at one end of an inn- 
 yard surrounded by the rooms of the inn, one could 
 well discover the birth of the idea for a playhouse. 
 Only, unlike an open platform such as that would 
 have been, the stage in a playhouse was boarded to 
 the ground, and stood scarcely so high as a man's
 
 HIS STAGE 91 
 
 shoulder. Thus, thrust out as it was, it would be 
 surrounded on three sides by those standing in the 
 yard ; and actors in the delivery of their lines would 
 often enough be standing right amid their audience 
 within easy striking distance, be it noted, of a 
 disapproving apple-core. 
 
 To the very joints of the stage with the rondure 
 of the house ran the surrounding " rooms " ; and 
 behind the stage lay the actors' apartments, with 
 the doors leading from one to the other. If one 
 were to imagine a circular structure (since the Globe 
 certainly was such), an important matter would reveal 
 itself here. For just where the stage joined the 
 building the last room finished. So that if the 
 suggestion of the inner curve of the building was 
 continued on to the stage for a while, and doors cut 
 in it on each side, the result would be that the doors 
 would half face each other and half face outward. 
 This is worthy of notice and attention. For, on 
 general grounds of visual satisfaction, if these doors 
 were now to be used as doors to a building, as often 
 they were, it would be necessary for them to be in 
 sight of the audience. That is to say, they could 
 not face each other. But, on the other hand, Shake- 
 speare, and other dramatists, often cause bodies of 
 soldiers to enter at one door, pass across the stage, 
 and out through the other ; as in the first scene of 
 the fourth act of Hamlet, and in many other places. 
 Now, if the doors faced foursquare to the audience, 
 this would be at best but a cumbersome proceeding.
 
 92 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Therefore it would be necessary for such doors to 
 lie diagonally, which, it is seen, the very inner curve 
 of the building itself would demand. 
 
 How far the curve was continued beyond the 
 doors is immaterial. Probably a space sufficient to 
 attain a general symmetry of design was given before 
 a curtain was hung across from side to side covering 
 a small inner stage. To this inner stage there were 
 also doors ; but how many there were cannot be 
 said. If there were three, one at each side, out of 
 sight of the audience, and one in front, then with 
 the curtains drawn the whole stage would have five 
 entrances ; whereas with the curtains closed there 
 would be three, the curtain itself being one. It was 
 on this inner stage that Hamlet set his play " where- 
 in to catch the conscience of the king." Above 
 the broken curve provided by the outer entrances 
 and the closed curtains ran a gallery ; so that stand- 
 ing on the extreme ends of such a gallery, over the 
 doors, that is to say, it would be possible to see 
 within the inner stage once the curtains were 
 drawn r Within this gallery lay casements : such 
 casements as Romeo leaned out of to view the 
 "jocund day stand tiptoe on the misty mountain- 
 tops." The gallery itself served divers and many 
 purposes. To Romeo it was a window balcony. 
 In Timon of Athens it was the top of the wall on 
 which the senators of Athens appeared on the 
 summons of Alcibiades, the closed curtains beneath 
 them being the gates of the city.
 
 HIS STAGE 93 
 
 Over these casements went a shade, spoken of in 
 the Fortune contract as a " shadow," and frequently 
 referred to as the " heavens." It stretched out over, 
 and probably covered about half of, the outer stage, 
 serving the double purpose of a shelter in inclement 
 weather, and, as one of its names implies, a repre- 
 sentation of the dome of heaven. This " shadow " 
 was supported at its extreme ends by carved pillars, 
 topped with satyrs' heads, that rested not on the 
 stage, but continued through the stage to the 
 ground. How high this " shadow " was cannot 
 be said ; but over it, and extending above the 
 surrounding frame-structure so as to form a turret, 
 the crown of the building lifted its head. This 
 turret, too, served a double purpose. On it was 
 mounted the flag that proclaimed to all and sundry 
 that a play was in progress, or about to begin. 
 Moreover, it would seem that some portion of it 
 extended out over the "shadow." For through the 
 " shadow," or " heavens," heavenly beings were 
 wont to descend on the mortals on the stage below ; 
 such as when, in Cymbeline, "Jupiter descends in 
 thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle." 
 Now, if the turret did not extend out over the 
 " shadow," those standing at the back of the yard, 
 and most of those in the rooms, would be able to 
 see the scene-shifters leaning out of the turret 
 working the pulley apparatus through a hole in 
 the " heavens " ! They would even be able to see 
 Jupiter getting on to his eagle, and arranging a
 
 94 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 flaming appearance ! Surely this is scarcely likely 
 to have been the case, since a slight structural device 
 could so easily have obviated it. 
 
 Somewhere on the stage, doubtless below the 
 "shadow," a trap-door was cut, leading to the space 
 beneath. Up through this infernal beings rose to 
 the earth above, in contrast to the descent of the 
 heavenly creatures already mentioned. It was thus 
 the various apparitions rose before the conscience- 
 riven Macbeth in his dark consultation with the 
 witches. And in the space beneath walked Hamlet's 
 unhappy forbear, pricking him to resolution. It is 
 worthy of passing note that not all the supernatural 
 beings spurned the five possible entrances available 
 to ordinary mortals ; yet there were occasions 
 enough, then as now, on which it was necessary 
 for their manner of appearance to give dramatic 
 pungency to their origin. 
 
 In this way it is possible to discover the stage 
 conditions for which Shakespeare wrote. The 
 advantages are obvious. Instead of his characters 
 having to group themselves artificially as in a framed 
 picture, as now, they were enabled to mingle freely 
 as the clash of emotions demanded. Moreover, 
 instead of having to shout out to the audience from 
 an encompassed box, they could speak their lines, 
 as Hamlet demanded they should, " trippingly on the 
 tongue," in something of the swift, earnest speech 
 of daily life, right amid the audience. The test was 
 more natural; and, being more natural, healthier.
 
 Oy PJ (jesjain Sca
 
 HIS STAGE 95 
 
 One of the results was, what has been called, and 
 much miscalled, Rhetoric. 2 Othello, for instance, 
 expresses himself freely and fully, and with a certain 
 energy that demands a fullness of emotion. Those 
 who say that this energy and fullness are unlike 
 life (which is the only meaning of Rhetoric, 
 Rhetoric being artificiality of speech) can have little 
 knowledge of life. Men under violent stress of 
 emotion do not express themselves in the brevity of 
 the modern dramatist : they express themselves fully, 
 or not at all. If they express themselves fully, they 
 express themselves violently ; if they do not speak, 
 they think the more. And to the dramatist the 
 silence means not less than the energy ; for, speech 
 being the only agency of drama, it is the business 
 of the dramatist to make the silence voiceful, 
 and fitly voiceful. Not to forestall the deeper 
 discussion that this demands, it is obvious that 
 whereas such energy of speech would necessarily 
 sound pompous spoken from a shut-in box through 
 a picture-frame at the audience, it need not at all be 
 so when spoken on a stage surrounded on three sides 
 by the audience. The very choice of poetic speech 
 is rendered intelligible. For poetry is the most 
 intimate of all things. Nothing evidences this more 
 than the instinctive diffidence of men to utter or 
 recite poetry each to the other. Poetry is the 
 confidence of soul to soul. And when confidences 
 are given they are not hailed out from a distance. 
 They are spoken earnestly at close quarters. It
 
 96 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 would be difficult to speak such intimacies out 
 through a frame, across an orchestra ; but it would 
 be very possible to deliver them at near call. 
 Indeed, the intimacy of distance would demand the 
 intimacy of emotion. For it must ever be remem- 
 bered that, whereas characters in drama speak to 
 each other, or to themselves, and not to the audience, 
 they speak for an audience to overhear. Moreover, 
 the very spaciousness of the conditions gave its own 
 spaciousness to the drama framed for them, even as 
 the modern confinement of the stage has confined 
 the structure of a modern play. 
 
 All this, truly enough, spelt its bondage as well 
 as its liberty, as will be seen. It held the play- 
 wright more at the whim of his audience, seeing 
 it was so nigh at hand. Yet it is the present 
 matter, having discovered the structure of Shake- 
 speare's stage, to learn both its manner of manipula- 
 tion and the use to which he put it. For it has 
 been seen that such a stage consisted of two 
 portions, an outer stage, some portion of which 
 was covered by the "shadow," and an inner stage; 
 between which two a curtain intervened, hanging 
 from the balcony above, and running between the 
 diagonal doorways. At once, then, these interesting 
 questions arise : What distinct purposes did outer 
 and inner stages serve ? What was the precise 
 function of the curtain ? And what did its drawing 
 or closing imply ? 
 
 Some confusion has been imported into the ques-
 
 HIS STAGE 97 
 
 tion of Shakespeare's stage by the matter of his 
 gentle mockery of the stage conditions of Bottom 
 and his histrionic confederates in Midsummer Nighfs 
 Dream. By some extraordinary mental confusion it 
 has been assumed that the conditions he spun his 
 gentle laughter around were the conditions that 
 prevailed on his own stage ; forgetting that in 
 mocking them he implied his height above them. 
 In point of fact there is no reason to suppose that 
 his stage was other than a highly finished and 
 thought-out product. For instance, we know from 
 Henslowe's diary that certain sceneries were em- 
 ployed. We read of his expending money on cloths 
 on which were painted various representations. Yet 
 it is obvious that, on a stage three sides of which 
 were unenclosed, it would be impossible to hang 
 such cloths anywhere save at the back. Properties, 
 even expensive properties, might be placed, and 
 were placed, on the stage, but painted scenery could 
 only be hung at the back. Moreover, since a 
 curtain already hung there in full sight of the 
 audience, such scenery could only be hung behind 
 the curtain, at the back of the inner stage. And 
 thus an important principle appears. 
 
 It is clear that if a painted scene hung across the 
 back of the inner stage, and the curtains were drawn, 
 inner and outer stages would not only fall into one, 
 but that the whole would take its character from 
 the scene represented at its far end. It would at 
 once become localised. Whereas, if the curtains
 
 98 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 were closed, it would simply lose its localisation, and 
 become whatever the dramatist chose to imagine. 
 Obviously localised scenes would more probably be 
 interiors, even as scenes that were not localised 
 would probably be exteriors ; but this need by no 
 means have always been the case. In fact, it was 
 not always the case. Yet in the main it was so. 
 When in The Merchant of Venice the court of 
 justice was represented, the scenery and properties 
 would be placed on the inner stage, being discovered 
 by the drawing of the curtains ; whereupon the 
 whole stage would promptly become the court of 
 justice, and wherever the characters stood, even at 
 its utmost edge, they would yet be in the court. 
 This would not mean that the characters, at the 
 close of the scene, would necessarily have to leave 
 the scene by means of the inner stage doors. For, 
 on a principle that has been excellently stated, 3 
 it is clearly one matter for a number of characters 
 to emerge naturally from the confined space of the 
 inner stage to fill the whole stage, outer and inner, 
 but quite another matter for them to crowd back 
 together again. In truth, it would not be necessary ; 
 for on the drawing of the curtain the two outer 
 doors would become a natural function of the one 
 scene ; and characters could issue thereby, one way 
 and another, in as well as out. 
 
 This threw another challenge to Shakespeare. It 
 was not possible for him, save on the rarest occa- 
 sions, to evade half the apt difficulties of a scene by
 
 HIS STAGE 99 
 
 ringing down the curtain at its crucial moment. It 
 was not possible for him to shut off the audience 
 with the hated rivals in a deadly grip, and the 
 agonised maiden gazing on in silent sorrow. 
 Possessing no such cowardly subterfuge, he had to 
 make the rivals make an end of the business ; for 
 the fortunate victor to face the agonised maiden 
 with a death on his hands ; and for dead and living 
 to be disposed of so as to leave a clean stage. No 
 slight task ! Thus it is that we find Fortinbras 
 closing the play of Hamlet with the instruction to 
 his soldiers to " Take up the bodies " ; with many 
 enough other such instructions in other plays. On 
 the rare occasions, however, on which it was possible 
 for his characters to die on the inner stage, a 
 simpler matter met him. Desdemona's bed, for 
 instance, was an interior property on the inner stage, 
 though most of the characters that later entered the 
 scene, entered by the outer doors, and stood and 
 spoke outside the limits of the curtain. But it was 
 on her bed that she was smothered ; and it was 
 across her bed that Othello fell after he had stabbed 
 himself; and thus it is that Lodovico, pointing to the 
 sight, should bid lago " Look on the tragic loading of 
 this bed " ; adding, "Let it be hid," meaning thereby 
 that the curtains should be closed across it. 
 
 This principle of localised and unlocalised scenes, 
 or interiors and exteriors, is very important to a 
 right intelligence with regard to Shakespeare. It is 
 not generally remembered that in the plays, as we
 
 ioo SHAKESPEARE 
 
 have them from Shakespeare's hands, there are no 
 scene specifications at all. These are all additions 
 by later officious editors, of whom not a few have 
 hung between Shakespeare and his readers their 
 numerous misunderstandings. In some cases in the 
 First Folio there are not even any indications of scenes 
 where modern editing has interpolated them. For 
 example, one instance will serve ; and that an 
 instance where modern editing is enabled to justify 
 itself from the text. In the second act of Julius 
 Casar the whole act is given on the stage as one 
 continuous scene. The words, Scene I., Scene II., 
 Scene III., and Scene IV., to say nothing of the 
 specifications that follow these instructions, have 
 nothing to do with the text. All four scenes 
 appear as a continuous text under the common 
 heading " Actus Secundus." 
 
 The reason for this is obvious. Shakespeare was 
 not concerned with events in Rome. His concern 
 was with the stage of the Globe ; on which there 
 could appear no such mimicry of ancient Rome as 
 would enable him to lean on it instead of on 
 powerful writing and forceful acting. All we are 
 permitted to know is that as the act opens we 
 are to be transported to Brutus' orchard, for here 
 we have the more than usually explicit stage 
 instruction, "Enter Brutus in his Orchard." The 
 curtain would be closed across, and Brutus would 
 enter the outer stage from one of the diagonal 
 doorways. Some properties would be distributed
 
 HIS STAGE 10 1 
 
 about the stage in the shape of chairs and tables ; 
 but little else. This must be remembered, not 
 only for a complete understanding of the con- 
 ditions that beset Shakespeare, but for a right 
 understanding of the very text of the scene in ques- 
 tion. The audience would see Brutus enter on to 
 the stage ; but they would know nothing further. 
 They would neither know where he was supposed to 
 be, nor whether it was supposed to be day or night. 
 They would only know that an actor had appeared 
 on an open platform stage, around three parts of 
 which they themselves surged ; and that the after- 
 noon sun shone about him and them in an open 
 theatre. At one time nuncupation signs were 
 used. It is unlikely that they were ever at any 
 time used regularly ; but it is fairly certain that 
 they were seldom, if ever, employed in the maturer 
 days of splendour at the Globe. Thus it lay 
 with Shakespeare so to saturate his dialogue with 
 the necessary environment that the audience would, 
 subconsciously, follow the action in the terms of the 
 imagined scene. 
 
 It is interesting to notice with what promptness 
 Shakespeare does this ; and how naturally. First, 
 and directly he enters, Brutus calls Lucius. " What, 
 Lucius, ho ! " Then he puckers his brow and gazes 
 upward, saying puzzledly : 
 
 I cannot by the progress of the stars, 
 Give guess how near to day. 
 
 Immediately, with the intentness of minds that did
 
 102 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 not think, but perceived only, the audience was aware 
 that the scene was night, and towards dawn. 
 Breaking off impatiently, having, be it noted, con- 
 veyed the information quite tersely and naturally, 
 Brutus calls Lucius again : 
 
 Lucius, 1 say ! 
 
 I would it were my fault to sleep so soundly. 
 When, Lucius, when ? Awake, I say ! What, Lucius ! 
 
 Then Lucius enters through the closed curtains, 
 rubbing his eyes ; and if the previous hint had failed, 
 the emotion of night is now unavoidable. It surges 
 about the imagination, and the whole scene is steeped 
 in darkness and mystery and stealthiness. 
 
 Nor is the conjured mood permitted to slip back 
 into daylight. Brutus immediately orders Lucius to 
 get him a taper in his study against his coming (a 
 quiet insistence of darkness) ; and when Lucius 
 returns to tell him it is ready Brutus bids him get 
 back to bed again, because "it is not day." Then 
 when the conspirators knock, and Lucius returns to 
 inform Brutus that Cassius and some others are at 
 the door, but that who the others are he cannot say 
 since " their hats are pulled about their ears, and 
 half their faces buried in their cloaks," Brutus im- 
 mediately exclaims : 
 
 O conspiracy, 
 
 Sham'st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night, 
 When evils are most free ? O then, by day 
 Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough 
 To mask thy monstrous visage ?
 
 HIS STAGE 103 
 
 How appropriate to the occasion it all is ! Yet how 
 telling ! It progresses the matter in hand, yet con- 
 veys the atmosphere. Similarly, later, when it is 
 desirous that Brutus and Cassius should consult 
 privately together, that thus Cassius should convey a 
 swift information to him concerning the plot in hand, 
 while the two retire to the back of the stage, the 
 others come forward and consult together thus : 
 
 Decius. Here lies the east : doth not the day break here ? 
 
 Casca. No. 
 
 Cin. O, pardon, sir, it doth ; and yon grey lines 
 
 That fret the clouds are messengers of day. 
 Casca. You shall confess that you are both deceived. 
 
 Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises ; 
 
 Which is a great way growing on the south, 
 
 Weighing the youthful season of the year. 
 
 Some two months hence, up higher toward the north 
 
 He first presents his fire, and the high east 
 
 Stands, as the Capitol, directly here. 
 
 Here is exemplified one of the things that pricked 
 Shakespeare into his many vivid nature touches. 
 Where, in those parts of all drama that demand 
 more or less of crafty filling-out, the modern dramatist 
 is so often engaged in would-be small talk, Shake- 
 speare was busy conveying his atmosphere. It had 
 its disadvantages. There is more than a hint often 
 of artifice ; but there is no dramatist in which this is 
 not the case. And with Shakespeare it is far less 
 so than with others, since Nature is more natural 
 than small talk : happily so. But what gold ore it 
 has given us ! For to this selfsame need of atmo-
 
 104 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 sphere conveyed by the lips of the characters are due 
 the many inimitable dawn scenes : such as Romeo's 
 exquisite and " envious streaks that laced the severing 
 clouds in yonder east " ; or, when Hamlet, standing 
 on the bare platform of an Elizabethan stage, 
 suddenly exclaimed : 
 
 But see, the morn in russet mantle clad 
 Walks o'er the dew on yon high eastern hill, 
 
 and so whipped the minds of his listeners to the 
 requisite excitement. All drama is illusion ; and 
 illusion of such a nature as this is infinitely more 
 potent than the child's illusion of paints and tinsel, 
 because it operates even there where the conflict 
 ; itself is occasioned in the minds of the audience. 
 Not only was this necessity pressed upon Shake- 
 speare by the needs of his stage conditions ; there is 
 no doubt it even led him to more intimacy with, and 
 desire for, a knowledge of Nature, so enriching 
 his work in innumerable ways. 
 
 To cleave fast, however, to the more immediate 
 matter: When, after Portia has visited Brutus, 
 Lucius and Ligarius enter to him, he bids them go 
 with him that thus, as they go together, he may 
 make them aware of the plot in hand to slay Caesar. 
 They go ; and the stage is left empty. There is 
 no indication in the original text that there is any 
 change of scene ; because, in fact, there is indeed no 
 change of scene. The stage is even as it was before. 
 Brutus went off by the left or right door ; and, even
 
 HIS STAGE 105 
 
 as he went off, or, more probably, soon after, Ccesar 
 entered by the opposing door or through the centre 
 curtain to the same stage. It lay obviously to 
 Shakespeare's responsibility by some sudden means 
 to convey to the mind of his audience that Caesar 
 does not enter to Brutus' orchard. And he does 
 it. He does it with such boldness as to startle 
 and arrest. The stage-instruction reads : " Enter 
 Julius Caesar in his nightgown" ! The imaginative 
 readjustment is inevitable ; and far more successful 
 than elaborate scenery could have effected. Even as 
 Caesar started to speak, the privacy of his own house 
 is at once accepted by his hearers. And it is not less 
 swiftly confirmed, for in the tenth line Calphurnia 
 says, " You shall not stir out of your house to-day " ; 
 to meet the reply, " Caesar shall forth." 
 
 Similarly when Publius and the conspirators have 
 come to fetch Caesar to the Capitol, and they all 
 leave the scene for the purpose, Shakespeare has 
 to convey the sense of a different location to the 
 audience by other means than artificial scenery. 
 Again he achieves his end consummately. Previously 
 he had employed the agency of a nightgown. Now 
 he avoids so direct a system : he employs an agency 
 subtler far ; but not less successful. Artemidorus 
 enters the scene reading a note of warning he had 
 just penned for Caesar ; and when he has read it, he 
 folds it, saying : 
 
 Here will I stand till Caesar pass along, 
 And as a suitor will I give him this.
 
 io6 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 So he passes off, while Portia and Lucius enter to 
 the same location. 
 
 In this way a complete act, which modern editions 
 have subdivided into four scenes, passed off without 
 let or hindrance in the way of curtain interruptions. 
 The action took place, not on the boards of an 
 Elizabethan stage, but in the minds of the spec- 
 tators ; and when a change of location had to be 
 wrought there, it was struck swiftly, or conveyed 
 subtly, but always achieved successfully. " All Art 
 is a collaboration," a great mind has said; and in 
 this case the collaborators were Shakespeare and 
 his audience. Moreover, dramatic Art is an illu- 
 sion : and therefore is it the stronger for not being 
 buttressed with mimic reality ; it is the nobler for 
 striking to the centre of illusion in the mind of the 
 audience. 
 
 It will be noticed, however, that in all this the 
 inner stage had never occasion to be employed. 
 That is to say, no furniture or tapestries were used 
 to localise the scene. How came they to be em- 
 ployed ? Moreover, it would be well to discover, 
 if one may, in what manner Shakespeare conveyed 
 an entire play through its course. By such a 
 method it would be possible to search the 
 possibilities of his stage, and also to discover how 
 Shakespeare turned them to service. Yet it is 
 sufficiently difficult to come to a decision. The 
 folly and ineptitude of much editing, in seeking 
 to visualise the imaginary sites instead of seeking to
 
 HIS STAGE 107 
 
 visualise Shakespeare's own stage conditions, has 
 left so broad a scar over all his works that play after 
 play rises insurgent for attention. There are, how- 
 ever, two plays that suggest peculiar complication, 
 because in each of them Shakespeare had thought 
 fit to intertwist a double plot. These are The 
 Merchant of Venice and King Lear. If the first 
 of these be examined in detail, therefore, Shake- 
 speare will be discovered, not alone in the presenta- 
 tion of one of his dramas, but in one of the most 
 complicated of them. 
 
 Nevertheless, before this be done, an instance 
 may be chosen from Romeo and Juliet to point the 
 moral and to indicate the procedure. If the fourth 
 scene of the first act in all modern editions be 
 turned to, it will be discovered that " Romeo, Mer- 
 cutio, Benvolio, with five or six Masquers, Torch- 
 bearers, and others," enter on what is declared to be 
 "A Street." Having concluded their dialogue, and 
 having heard Romeo's " On, lusty gentlemen ! " we 
 learn that they make their Exeunt. The next scene 
 in its turn is declared to be "A Hall in Capulet's 
 House " ; and in the midst of it we learn that there 
 " Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet, Juliet, Tybalt, and 
 others of the house, with the Guests and Masquers." 
 There is no hint of Romeo, be it noted. He, being 
 a Montague, obviously could not enter with the 
 Capulets' private company. Since he made his 
 departure from the previous "scene" we have not 
 heard of him. Nevertheless, in line thirty-nine of
 
 io8 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 this present " scene," suddenly we discover him 
 asking one of the servants, "What lady's that, 
 which doth enrich the hand of yonder knight?" 
 How he made his entrance we are not informed ; 
 and it is not customary in such matters to think him 
 dropped by an angel there. It is strange. It is 
 perplexing. Turning, however, to the First Folio, 
 to the text uncontaminated by modem editing, the 
 whole perplexity resolves itself into a matter of ease 
 and simplicity. We learn there, that in the middle 
 of the first act, the stage being empty, there 
 "Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or 
 six other Maskers, Torchbearers." And when 
 Romeo calls his " On, lusty gentlemen," they do 
 not pass from the stage at all. The word Exeunt 
 is lacking. Instead, we read (what modern editing 
 has thought fit altogether to delete) : " They 
 march about the stage, and servingmen come forth 
 with their napkins." In other words, while Romeo 
 and his comrades retain possession of the outer 
 stage, the curtains are drawn aside, revealing the 
 equipment for a feast. The scene thus is swiftly 
 converted into an interior; and out from the inner 
 stage issue the servingmen. When they in their 
 turn have accomplished their task of moving the 
 trenchers, joint-stools, court-cupboard, plate, and 
 provender from the inner stage to the outer, as 
 their chatter together indicates, they pass oft' the 
 stage by one of the doors. Directly they have 
 done this, we read, "Enter all the Guests and
 
 HIS STAGE 109 
 
 Gentlewomen to the Maskers " a stage instruction 
 that makes ironical comparison with the emendation 
 of modern editors. Thus it is simplicity itself to 
 account for Romeo's appearance. He was all the 
 time on the stage ! It is all so simple that one can 
 but marvel at the ineptitude displayed in modern 
 texts. But the height of very humour is reached 
 when one remembers that the text has to be muti- 
 lated to achieve it. Yet now an important con- 
 sideration asserts itself. For the whole stage, both 
 inner and outer portions of it, is full. Tables, and 
 the general equipment of a feast, bestrew it. How- 
 ever much the players may leave the stage, it is 
 obvious that there can be no further acting on it 
 till there has been a general clearance. Then we 
 discover that the act closes here, so that an oppor- 
 tunity might be afforded to this end before another 
 act should occupy the stage. And since the next 
 act is opened by a chorus, in function of Prologue, 
 it is easy to see that this is to cover the operations 
 of the removers, for there very likely was no cessation 
 in the acting from beginning to end of a play. 
 
 In similar manner, in the next act, there is neither 
 orchard nor wall, nor climbing of walls, nor leaping 
 down from them. These are all the fanciful 
 exploits of middle-aged gentlemen in search of 
 excitement as editors. The simple stage instruction 
 is, " Enter Romeo, alone." He enters by one 
 doorway, or from the balcony, and, as he speaks 
 the two lines apportioned to him, he steps to the
 
 no SHAKESPEARE 
 
 back of the stage. When he has made his way 
 there, and spoken his two lines, Benvolio and 
 Mercutio enter by the opposite doorway (it is well 
 to remember that these doors were probably always 
 open, unless certain effects were to be achieved) 
 and proceed at once to the front of the stage calling 
 for Romeo ; who, they declare, had " run this way 
 and leapt this orchard wall." The wall was imagined 
 as off the stage. If they both came down from the 
 balcony above, that might truly have been imagined 
 as the wall ; but this is unlikely for several reasons, 
 the chief of which being that the balcony in ques- 
 tion is forthwith to figure as the balcony of Juliet's 
 room. Yet, wherever the orchard wall was, it is at 
 least certain that they are all on the same side of it : 
 that is to say, they are all on the one common stage, 
 Romeo at the rear, and Benvolio and Mercutio in 
 front calling for him. Nor were the audience called 
 upon to imagine anything save such as the stage 
 itself suggested. For example, Romeo being to the 
 rear of them, they might well not see him the 
 more so as he would obviously desire them to miss 
 him, and would therefore not obtrude his presence. 
 He could see them, however. And he could hear 
 them. For Mercutio jests shrewdly to Benvolio on 
 love's wound ; and when they both have gone, 
 Romeo comes forward, saying: "He jests at scars 
 that never felt a wound." In truth, and indeed, 
 it is actually suggested that Romeo deliberately 
 avoided them. For Benvolio, as they go, says :
 
 HIS STAGE in 
 
 " Go, then, for 'tis in rain to seek him here, that 
 means not to be found." There was never any 
 attempt on Shakespeare's part to mar likelihood. 
 It was all clean and straightforward, in the full view 
 of his audience; a continuous, complete, plausible, 
 united scene ; till after Juliet's appearance at her 
 casement. Then when she has retired, and he has 
 passed out the way he came, the curtains of the 
 inner stage are drawn aside to discover the Friar's 
 apartment, and the Friar alone there with a basket 
 before him. 
 
 Thus, the Merchant of Venice, with its continuous 
 employment of inner and outer scenes, is arrived at. 
 With all its complexity of plot, with all its ramifica- 
 tion in detail, it is nevertheless doubtful if there 
 need have been any halting or abeyance in the con- 
 tinuous acting of this play. The words would be 
 spoken " trippingly on the tongue " : swiftly, that is, 
 eagerly, and with zest, such as the intimacy with 
 the audience would permit. Never would the 
 interest be permitted to flag. Never would the 
 quickening plot abate from its gathering intensity. 
 Never would the moment of momentum be lost by 
 the need for scenic alteration. Once the interest 
 is struck in the minds of the audience, it is con- 
 tinued swiftly to the end of all. 
 
 As the first act opens, the curtains are closed 
 across, and the two outer doors are open. To the 
 outer stage, then, there enter Antonio, Salarino, 
 and Salanio, speaking together. With Antonio's
 
 ii2 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 gentle melancholy the mind is made ready for a 
 tenderness in him for friendship ; and with the 
 entrance of Bassanio, with his declared wish to court 
 the fair Portia, and Antonio's offer to him to pledge 
 his credit to the utmost to find the money withal, 
 the whole business of the play is set afloat. Then 
 they leave the stage together ; and as they do so, 
 the curtains of the inner stage are withdrawn, and 
 Portia is either found, or enters, within, speaking 
 with her maid Nerissa. In fine, by the drawing of 
 the curtains the whole stage is forthwith converted 
 into an interior, in keeping with whatever scenery 
 and furniture chances to be found on the inner 
 stage. As Portia and Nerissa speak together the 
 general question of her courtship, the formidable 
 obstacle of the casket is broached, and we are given 
 to learn that Bassanio's courtship will be no trite 
 affair. Yet they passed off; and as they do so, the 
 curtains are closed across at once, and the stage is 
 again unlocalised. No sooner has this been done, 
 however, than Shylock walks through one of the 
 outer doorways, followed by the supplicating Bassanio, 
 and, later, the gentle Antonio. In three swift 
 scenes, so, with neither stay nor hesitation, the act 
 closes, and the whole business of the play is before 
 us, with its possible perplexities and complexities 
 hinted in the ear. 
 
 Yet it is extremely doubtful if there were any 
 halt at the conclusion of the act. Certainly there 
 need not have been. As Antonio and Bassanio
 
 HIS STAGE 113 
 
 follow Shylock to the Notary's, and proceed off the 
 outer stage, the curtains could be drawn aside at 
 once, making the stage once more an interior, with 
 the memory in the mind of the audience that it had 
 last been identified with Portia's room. As the 
 curtains are drawn, there is a flourish of cornets, 
 and Portia and Morocco appear, followed by their 
 several trains. She leads him to the Caskets, across 
 the inner stage, where the dialogue takes place. In 
 fact, the scene is as though it were a sudden arrest 
 of their progress to the Caskets, in order that the 
 audience may learn that the judgment of the stipu- 
 lated formula is already proceeding. The curtains 
 are closed again, and Launcelot Gobbo enters the 
 outer stage. After his soliloquy his antique father 
 enters to him. Indeed, Bassanio, Leonardo, Gratiano, 
 and the two Gobbos pass off and on throughout the 
 scene ; but the chief matter is, and the most 
 important, that the audience is clearly informed (or 
 as clearly, that is to say, as the two Gobbos have 
 power to render their interesting suit) that Launcelot 
 is to leave Shylock's service in order to enter 
 Bassanio's so soon as he can take leave of his old 
 master. This may seem a simple matter. It is. 
 Yet it is subtle withal. For, apart from the fact 
 that the interchange of service is to bring him more 
 before the attention of the audience in his capacity 
 as Clown, the hint thrown out is to obviate any 
 possibility of confusion in the next scene. When 
 Bassanio and Gratiano pass off, the curtains again
 
 ii4 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 are drawn aside. When last this happened the 
 interior suggested was Portia's, and the audience 
 might well think, in the continuity of imagination, 
 that this again was so. But they cannot. There is 
 Launcelot ; and the scene is fixed forthwith, and 
 surely, as an interior in the Jew's house. There is no 
 deliberation demanded of the audience ; the thing is 
 wrought imaginatively for them with no possibility 
 of failure. The subconsciousness has been smitten. 
 Furthermore, by the same means the young girl 
 who enters with him, and who has not previously 
 been seen, is also fixed forthwith, and surely, as Shy- 
 lock's daughter. And as she tells of her love for 
 Lorenzo, who, she declares, is Bassanio's guest, 
 another knot is tied in the plot, and the perplexity 
 still further ravelled. 
 
 Nor is it permitted to remain at that. She passes 
 off, and, the curtains being closed, the scene is 
 again an exterior. To this there enter four men, 
 three of whom have already been seen, Gratiano, 
 Salarino and Salanio, and one who is a stranger. 
 Then there enters Launcelot with the letter Jessica 
 has lately entrusted to him. This he hands to 
 the stranger ; who therefore is known for Lorenzo. 
 Never once, thus, is the attention of the audience 
 permitted to slip from the criss-cross texture of the 
 plot. No stitch is dropped. All is gathered up, 
 and presented as a complete whole, however in- 
 volved. And there are those who say that Shake- 
 speare had no skilled craftsmanship !
 
 HIS STAGE 115 
 
 Yet they, too, go their way ; and as they go, 
 Lorenzo informs Gratiano that Jessica is to flee 
 with him, with what of the Jew's money she may 
 be able to bring with her. Two things are wrought 
 thereby. The first is that Shylock, through his 
 daughter, Lorenzo, Gratiano, and Bassanio, in link 
 on link, is now joined up in unity with Portia and 
 the casket. The second is that in the scene to 
 follow the whole interest is made poignant and vivid. 
 For there we learn that it is Shylock's intention to 
 be away from home that evening ; and that so an 
 opportunity is hung out for Jessica's escape. 
 
 Be it noted that as Gratiano and Lorenzo issue 
 off by one doorway the other door might well be 
 closed. Or the door they pass through may be 
 closed after them. Either of which doors, as 
 Shylock, with Launcelot, enters the outer stage 
 after them, might serve as the door for his house. 
 Yet it is more likely that both doors are left as 
 before, and that the closed curtain is made to serve 
 that purpose. Through this, as he hails her, she 
 issues to him, to receive the keys of the house, with 
 his charge to guard it zealously : she who is pledged 
 to Lorenzo. Says he : 
 
 Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum 
 And the vile squeaking of the wry-neckt fife, 
 Clamber not you up to the casements then, 
 Nor thrust your head into the public street 
 To gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces : 
 But stop my house's ears, I mean my casements,
 
 n6 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Let not the sound of shallow fopperie enter 
 My sober house. 
 
 Even as he speaks Lorenzo's last words are up- 
 called : " Fair Jessica shall be my torch-bearer." 
 So he passes off, and she enters the house, while 
 after them both enter the various maskers. Among 
 them comes Lorenzo, who at once hails her. She 
 appears to him at the casement above. Throwing 
 down to him the casket containing the ducats and 
 jewels of much subsequent lament, she disappears ; 
 to appear again below, finally to pass off with the 
 maskers as Lorenzo's torch-bearer. 
 
 The next scene demands attention. The stage 
 instruction reads : " Enter Portia with Morocco, 
 and both their trains." The first words of the 
 excellent Portia are : " Go, draw aside the curtains, 
 and discover the several caskets to this noble 
 Prince." The suggestion is clear, though it calls 
 for understanding. When Lorenzo and Jessica, 
 with the others, have passed on one side, Portia 
 and Morocco enter on the other. At her first 
 words the curtains are flung aside. The casket on 
 a table, with the other requisite furniture, are 
 discovered within, and the scene becomes an in- 
 terior. It will be noticed that for one brief moment 
 the scene is neither exterior nor interior. Yet this 
 would be little likely to win notice. It would 
 assuredly not swing the attention aside. And at 
 worst, it would not intrude artificiality more than 
 can often enough be noticed on a modern stage.
 
 HIS STAGE 117 
 
 Yet, be that as it may, the caskets are discovered to 
 Morocco, and he makes his fatal choice and passes 
 to oblivion. " A gentle riddance," says Portia : 
 " draw the curtains, go : let all of his complexion 
 choose me so." With the word the curtains are 
 drawn to a flourish of cornets, and the stage appears 
 again as an exterior. To this Salarino and Salanio 
 enter to tell of Shylock's mingled grief for his 
 stones, his ducats, and his daughter, with the hint 
 of a possible failure of Antonio to the Jew's bond. 
 Their business done, the curtains are again drawn, 
 this time at Nerissa's desire : 
 
 Quick, quick I pray thee, draw the curtain strait, 
 The Prince of Arragon hath ta'en his oath, 
 And comes to his election presently. 
 
 The servitor she has with her draws the curtains, 
 and Portia is now discovered entering the inner stage, 
 with the Prince of Arragon for his ill-fated choice. 
 When he has gone, she says, " Come, draw the 
 curtain, Nerissa," and passes on to the outer stage 
 to learn that Bassanio has arrived. 
 
 So closed the second act. Then to the open 
 stage left by the passage of Portia and Nerissa 
 came Salanio and Salarino, with Shylock following 
 them, in order that the Jew's claim for the redemp- 
 tion of his bond may now loom as a possibility. 
 Again the alteration of scenes is adopted, and the 
 inner stage reveals the casket - scene again, with 
 Bassanio to make his happy decision and choice.
 
 n8 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 When he has made his choice through the front 
 doorways, there enter Lorenzo, Jessica, and Salerio, 
 bearing a letter that informs Bassanio that Shylock 
 has now indeed claimed his bond. Away speeds 
 Bassanio to attend to it ; the curtains are drawn ; 
 and to the outer stage enters the Jew, with a 
 following and supplicating Antonio : the pathos fol- 
 lowing hard on the heels of the hint of it. 
 
 The next scene again, in its turn, employs the 
 inner stage, when Portia determines to proceed to 
 Antonio's assistance. Then the curtains are drawn, 
 while Launcelot and Jessica, with subsequently 
 Lorenzo, enter to an outer and unlocalised scene. 
 While this is taking place the inner stage is rapidly 
 being altered ; so that, on its conclusion, the 
 curtains may be withdrawn again to display the 
 Duke and the Magnificoes entering to a scene that 
 has been set out as a Court of Justice. Now in 
 this scene Shakespeare's deft manipulation of his 
 stage conditions is somewhat finely exemplified. In 
 the earlier interior scenes it is doubtful whether or 
 not the characters flowed out from the exact pro- 
 perties of the inner stage to the outer stage. There 
 certainly was no need for them to have done so ; yet, 
 had they done so, it would not have been very difficult 
 for them to return thither whence they came. The 
 very lack of necessity for such an overflowing would 
 have made its rectification easy. The few characters 
 deployed would have obviated difficulty in both 
 cases though it should always be borne in
 
 HIS STAGE 119 
 
 memory that, with the curtains withdrawn, the 
 doors of the outer stage became doors leading to 
 and fro from an interior scene, so that the scene 
 could always have been emptied with ease. But 
 in the present instance there are many manifest 
 difficulties. Be it noticed how they are overcome. 
 The curtains being drawn, the Duke and the 
 Magnificoes enter by the doors of the inner stage 
 and take their seats. This being done, Shylock 
 enters by one of the doors of the outer stage ; from 
 which doors enter Nerissa and Portia in their turn. 
 Both stages are now fairly full, though it must 
 needs be emphasised that the court properties are 
 placed behind the curtain opening on the inner 
 stage. It would, therefore, not be possible for him 
 to adopt the modern subterfuge of dropping a 
 curtain on a stage full of characters standing in the 
 artificial proportions of an effective picture. Had 
 the curtains been closed over, the stage properties 
 and fittings, the Duke and the Magnificoes, and 
 probably Portia and Nerissa, as the Doctor of Laws 
 and his attendant, with perhaps also Antonio, would 
 have been shut off, and the rest would have been 
 left, sans occupation and sans justification, on a 
 scene unqualified. Manifestly, this would never 
 do. Note how the difficulty is overcome. 
 
 First, Shylock is dismissed. The subsequent com- 
 pany to be left must be one of mutual gratulation ; 
 and so he certainly cannot be permitted to remain. 
 Therefore he must go before the Duke and his
 
 120 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 company. This is a matter of absolute necessity ; 
 yet, therewithal, with what splendid psychology and 
 with what aptness his dismissal is effected. He being 
 gone, however, there remains the inner stage to clear. 
 So the Duke and his train pass through the doors 
 of the inner stage. After them go Portia and 
 Nerissa. Persistently thus, and unobtrusively, the 
 number of characters are reduced to manageable 
 proportions. Then Gratiano is sent after them ; and 
 when he is gone, Antonio, Bassanio, and their friends 
 pass out through one of the outer doorways, while 
 with their going the curtains are drawn, and the 
 whole stage is again clear. For the sake of 
 argument it may be imagined the Duke and his train, 
 followed by Portia and Nerissa, after whom speeds 
 Gratiano, have all issued out by the left door of the 
 inner stage, while Antonio and Bassanio take their 
 ways by means of the right door of the outer stage. 
 When the curtain is drawn, then, what better and 
 more natural sequence could be imagined than 
 Portia and Nerissa, followed by Gratiano, should 
 enter the now empty stage by the left door of the 
 outer stage ? The very fact would suggest a con- 
 tinuity of action between their exit in the previous 
 scene and their entrance in this : such a continuity of 
 action as it is obvious Shakespeare had in mind. 
 The subtlety of Elizabethan stage management will 
 never be understood unless such swift ellipses be 
 received into the imagination. Surely they had their 
 counterpart in the mind of the audience. An ellipsis
 
 HIS STAGE 121 
 
 is always the product of imaginative excitement : and 
 to such an excitement an audience was inevitably 
 wrought. For example : if the curtains were drawn, 
 and a man were thus discovered sitting in a furnished 
 room ; and if then he were to rise and pass to the 
 outer stage, while the curtains were closed behind 
 him obviously, and without any lack of propriety, 
 even without thinking of it any receptive audience 
 would construe him as having passed out of the 
 house into the street. And the Elizabethans were 
 full of this. 
 
 To conclude, however ! There is but one scene 
 in the fifth act. While Gratiano was engaged in 
 delivering his own and Bassanio's rings to Portia and 
 Nerissa, behind the curtains the scene is being 
 rapidly altered. The court properties are removed. 
 Then, when Portia, Nerissa, and Gratiano have 
 passed off, the curtains are drawn, and the whole 
 scene becomes a garden, since garden properties, 
 including a grassy bank, are discovered on the inner 
 stage. Thus passes the whole play in one unruffled 
 movement, with neither catch, hitch, nor halt. 
 
 Such an achievement for such a play is not only 
 noteworthy, but was possible only on such a stage as 
 Shakespeare wrote for. Doubtless the stage was 
 largely framed for the conditions of such plays. Yet, 
 even so, it demanded a skilled craftmanship. Other 
 playwrights there were, writing for the same con- 
 ditions ; and an attentive examination of their plays 
 seems to indicate that so smooth and complete a move-
 
 122 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ment would call for not a little ingenuity in presenta- 
 tion, if indeed it were possible at all. Others, too, 
 such as Ben Jonson, who in their infinite love for classic 
 conditions framed the action of their plays in such a 
 way that they offered little variety of position. It 
 was left to Shakespeare to open wide the range of 
 his play and yet pass it off in one complete move- 
 ment, like some wave of the sea swelling, rising, and 
 passing away in easy grace of action. In truth, the 
 very variety was wrung from him by an imperious 
 necessity. It is obvious that an audience put to the 
 task of attending so long a performance, unbroken 
 withal, would discover an intolerable strain in too 
 fierce an insistence on the dominant. This Shake- 
 speare speedily perceived. So he passed from 
 anxiety to humour; returning to anxiety anon, 
 knowing that his audience would follow him now 
 with quick memories and refreshed thews. Had an 
 audience dispersed to regather at the conclusion of 
 each act or scene, it would have dissipated the 
 sequence of their memory. Had he compelled their 
 attendance, and not have given them relief, the tense 
 and continued strain of emotion would have wearied 
 and exhausted them. But his stage permitted him 
 to do both ; and he seized on the proffered advantage 
 eagerly, using it to the full. This, in its turn, held 
 out to him another possibility which he was not slow 
 to see. 
 
 It has ever been the desire of dramatists to 
 achieve the fine irony of simultaneous actions
 
 HIS STAGE 123 
 
 working in unknown opposition to each other. In 
 ancient Greek drama the remote action, whether of 
 gods or mortals, was hinted obscurely in the chants 
 of the chorus. In the artificial conditions of modern 
 drama this end is sought by passing deadly enemies 
 alternately across a common room; for changes 
 of location being infrequent, owing to cumbrous 
 scenery, either the irony must be lost or the con- 
 flicting agencies must be brought to a common 
 centre at all cost of probability. But Shakespeare 
 had only deftly to use the inner and outer stages, 
 arresting one action for the due display of the other ; 
 and if he chose, or created, suitable moments for 
 each action to give place to the other, so that they 
 might almost seem to pass each into the other, the 
 effect of mutually interdependent action suggested in 
 this way would be tremendous. Such a thing may 
 be discovered in the famous third act of King Lear, 
 At the conclusion of the second act the tempest-driven 
 King has virtually been expelled from the castle that 
 contains the daughters who have flaunted him. We 
 would follow them both, the daughters and the 
 father. If we followed the father to the end of his 
 urgent grief, then our thoughts would seek to learn 
 what should befall the daughters at the consum- 
 mation of their desires, not to speak of old Gloster 
 left in their untender care. Similarly, had we con- 
 tinued in Gloster's castle, our thoughts must inevit- 
 ably have hungered after the King in his sorrow. 
 But we are doomed to neither; we go with them
 
 124 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 both. The inner stage becomes the castle's interior; 
 the outer stage is the storm-tost heath, with one 
 of its doorways serving for the entrance to the 
 requisite hovel. And when at last the King, in Scene 
 VI., is brought out of the storm, in his opening words 
 Gloster is careful to indicate that the outer stage is 
 no longer the furious heath, saying : " Here is better 
 than the open air." Moreover, it is worthy of note 
 that this is one of the rare places in the plays as they 
 came from Shakespeare's hands that the scenes are 
 definitely indicated as Scene Prima, Scene Secunda, 
 and so forth. 
 
 Many things fall into orderly understanding once 
 such fundamental principles of stage organisation 
 are clearly perceived. Asides, for example, the 
 derision of many a critic, can very properly be 
 understood. When in the third scene of the first 
 act of Macbeth, that aspiring chieftain declared 
 that " this supernatural soliciting cannot be ill ; 
 cannot be good," there was nothing in it that could 
 not have been dramatically probable. Ross and 
 Angus had entered to the stage by the door 
 opposite to that by which Macbeth and Banquo 
 had entered, soon after the witches disappeared 
 down the opening in the stage. Such an open- 
 ing would probably have been within the line 
 leading from entrance to entrance. The four of 
 them Macbeth, Banquo, Ross, and Angus had 
 spoken awhile together ; and then Banquo took the 
 latter two aside a moment for a word, saying,
 
 HIS STAGE 125 
 
 " Cousins, a word, I pray you." Musingly there, 
 Macbeth, left alone, ejaculates his wonder at the 
 coincidence he was after having revealed to him. 
 Then, with a courteous bow, and " I thank you, 
 gentlemen," he walks to the front of the stage, a 
 matter of some fifteen to twenty feet, to struggle 
 with the thoughts that arise in him. Nor need he 
 thus have spoken so loudly that his three friends 
 behind him could have heard more than a mere 
 murmur of his speech. 
 
 The far more dramatic matter of soliloquies is 
 expounded too. And here an important reference 
 asserts itself for more adequate interpretation. The 
 visit of Shakespeare and his company to Oxford with 
 Hamlet, and other plays, moved some unknown but 
 worthy person there to display the chief of these 
 actors in cavalierly derision of university methods in 
 drama. Whether he wished to display the amazing 
 ignorance of such heroes as these travelling actors, 
 or to scoff at his magisterial colleagues, is immaterial ; 
 but the following passage is famous : 
 
 Ktmpe. The slaves are somewhat proud, and besides it is a 
 good sport in a part to see them never speake in their 
 walke, but at the end of the stage, just as though in walk- 
 ing with a fellow we should never speake but at a stile, a 
 gate, or a ditch, where a man can go no farther. 
 
 Burbage. A little teaching will mend these faults, and it may 
 bee besides they will be able to pen a part. 
 
 Kempe. Few of the University plaies well, they smell too much 
 of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis, and 
 talke too much of Proserpine and Juppiter. Why heres our
 
 126 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 fellow Shakespeare put them all downe, I and Ben Jonson 
 too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he brought 
 up Horace, giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shake- 
 speare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his 
 credit. 
 
 Kempe's later speech has formed the base of 
 many an edifice that struck at the stars. It has, 
 indeed, withdrawn attention from his earlier com- 
 ment ; which is not less important. There he says 
 that ambitious university actors never deliver their 
 speech save " at the end of the stage." the implica- 
 tion being, obviously, that actors at the Globe spoke 
 all the way. What he is concerned with, it seems, 
 is that a speechless walk of this description (the 
 distance from curtain to stage front being, at the 
 Fortune, for example, nearly thirty feet) could not 
 help but be an awkward and stilted proceeding. 
 In other words, an earnest conversation would cover 
 and give grace to such a walk across a bare stage. 
 Now this would be admirable if two or more were 
 to enter together. But how if occasion required 
 that one should enter alone, and hold the dramatic 
 situation in reception of others? He too would 
 need to cover the walk across the stage, from the 
 entrance to the audience, with the grace of speech. 
 And so soliloquy would be thrust upon the drama- 
 tist, to grow in his hands to richer subtlety of 
 usefulness. 
 
 Far more so than with the stage of a later day 
 the audience held the mastery of the situation.
 
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 HIS STAGE 127 
 
 And this had its vices with its virtues. It has 
 already been indicated that, however Shakespeare's 
 genius was riper for greater things than his wont 
 had been, he was yet held back until either a 
 different audience, or a loftier authority, flung 
 loose the reigns upon him. Whatever strength he 
 achieved, he achieved not by escaping difficulties 
 but by solving them. He could not withdraw 
 himself into the remoter security of an aloof 
 stage. He could not write a choice and select 
 drama for a few sympathetic souls. If he rose to 
 heights, he had to carry the groundlings with him. 
 If he chose to wing the blue, he had to make this 
 course in the empyrean very clear to the general. 
 It was the Titan's task that was given him. That 
 is to say, he had to lift as well as to mount : he had 
 to strike an apprentice's imagination aflame with his 
 own ere he could proceed. His Joy was indeed in 
 widest commonalty spread : and his Terror also. 
 
 How he turned their demands into dramatic 
 beauty, and how he failed therein, is itself a study. 
 For example, near to the Globe was a Bear Garden, 
 where sturdy wrestling was to be beheld. So to 
 win an audience to view his drama he gave them 
 the further addition of wrestling (and manful 
 wrestling be very sure it was) in As Tou Like It. 
 Fencing, too, they could see: and so plot and 
 counterplot in Hamlet culminate in the foils. It 
 has also been said that the continual use of music 
 throughout all the plays, and the continual firing of
 
 128 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ordnance, as twice in Hamlet, and repeatedly in the 
 historical and other plays, were to the same end. 
 But this is surely to misunderstand. Not that the 
 audience failed to appreciate them. In truth it may 
 be said that they would be urgent for them were 
 they baulked of them. But the primary purpose 
 was surely a far more insidious matter. For the 
 playhouses were open structures ; and thus the 
 effect of music and ordnance would be to advertise 
 the playhouse in question, with its postered play, 
 far and wide. And this was a thing a dramatist, 
 who also happened to be householder in a playhouse, 
 could not afford to neglect. 
 
 Topical allusions, too, could not fail to find ready 
 acceptance at the attention of such an audience. 
 With what deftness they are thrown about the plays 
 the textual critic can speedily tell : for by means of 
 them has he often been enabled to date the writing 
 of a play. For example, the nurse says of Juliet, 
 " 'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years, and 
 she was weaned." By such a clue we may discover 
 when Shakespeare first drew out the play he sub- 
 sequently largely rewrote. But as the lines were 
 spoken there would not fail to be reminders from the 
 wiseacres in the yard of a remembered earthquake 
 in 1580 ; and such a hint would give not less assist- 
 ance to a play than a turn of humour in passing. 
 Such an allusion, it is true, would be remote. Yet 
 a more direct illusion is furnished in The Tempest, 
 and was actually the origin of one of Shakespeare's
 
 HIS STAGE 129 
 
 strangest creations. In 1600 certain sailors returned 
 to England with an extraordinary account of a ship- 
 wreck on one of the islands in the Bermudas " the 
 still-vexed Bermoothes." They spoke of " the fairies 
 of the rocks " being like " flocks of birds," and " the 
 devils that haunted the woods " like " herds of 
 swine." While this was fresh and still wonderful 
 in the minds of the people, Shakespeare gave them 
 Ariel and Caliban. 
 
 Yet, with whatever skill Shakespeare could turn 
 to beauty the cravings of his audience they irked him 
 not the less. We know, for instance, that soon 
 after the Globe was built Kempe, who had continued 
 with Shakespeare since the old days at the Rose in 
 Southwark, and who was now a "householder" in 
 the Globe, disassociated himself from his company 
 and returned to Edward Alleyn, relinquishing his 
 shares jointly to Shakespeare, Heminges, and 
 Phillips. No doubt this was because in the opinion 
 of his copartners he was ambitious for too much 
 power. But that it was traceable to Shakespeare's 
 distaste to subserving the groundlings is evident in 
 several ways. For Kempe's fame as a comedian was 
 not wholly dramatic. His famous dance from Lon- 
 don to Norwich in 1600, with a large and unwieldy 
 audience following him, is itself sufficient to prove 
 that, were there not other indications also. This 
 we know. And we know, too, that Hamlet spoke 
 to the players that had come to Elsinore in this 
 wise : " And let those that play your clowns speak no
 
 130 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 more than is set down for them : for there be of 
 them that will themselves laugh, to set on some 
 quantity of barren spectators to laugh too ; though, 
 in the meantime, some necessary question of the 
 play be then to be considered : that's villainous, and 
 shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses 
 it." It demands but little perception to see the 
 connection between this and the dissatisfaction of so 
 famous an extempore wit as Kempe ; and so, too, 
 one sees how grudgingly Shakespeare regarded these 
 fools that the people demanded of him in his plays. 
 The whole thing irked him ; and in his hour of pro- 
 founder gloom, it disgusted him. In Touchstone, 
 and the fool in King Lear, he might turn this craving 
 on the part of his audience to triumphant account ; 
 but how grudgingly he regarded the necessity may 
 be known by the fact that it is with surprise and 
 mystification one learns that there is a clown in Othello. 
 It was peculiarly characteristic of Shakespeare that, 
 even while he despised the demand, he should grant 
 it. Ben Jonson would have none of it. He 
 despised fools ; and he dismissed fools. But Shake- 
 speare, if he could find a function for them, made 
 splendour out of them ; and if he could wake no 
 splendour from them, thrust them into Othello to 
 fare as they might, gave them over to disgust and 
 bitterness with Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, 
 made them supererogatory in Twelfth Night, and 
 even threw a sop to the audience by making the fool 
 in King Lear recite doggerel at the conclusion of
 
 HIS STAGE 131 
 
 some of the scenes, when his own interest had con- 
 cluded, and while his characters were withdrawing 
 from the stage. 
 
 Moreover, his audience demanded of him a thing 
 that his stage peculiarly fitted him to give ; which, 
 indeed his temperament was by no means averse to. 
 The passage already referred to, in which Hamlet 
 advises the chief of the players as to how his sub- 
 ordinates should comport themselves on the stage, 
 has a many-hued importance. His ideas of dramatic 
 practice are there clearly communicated ; and thus 
 his ideas of dramatic creation may also be dis- 
 covered. We hear Hamlet say, for instance, " In 
 the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the 
 whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a 
 temperance that may give it smoothness. O," he 
 adds, " it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious 
 perriwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to 
 very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings ; who, 
 for the most part, are capable of nothing but inex- 
 plicable dumb-shows and noise." Now such a 
 passage demands grave attention. For it is obvious 
 that, however much it wounded his own soul, it very 
 well suited the groundlings. Apart from his own 
 testimony to that effect, the groundlings of the 
 present and every age arise in proof of that. This 
 being so, it being undeniable that they did demand a 
 passion that loosed itself to the full in free declama- 
 tion, and it being as undeniable that Shakespeare 
 was himself, in his plays, not less fond of a fury of
 
 132 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 passionate utterance, it is an easy deduction that the 
 first, if not the cause of the latter's being, was at 
 least the vice that tempted the latter to exert and 
 exercise itself. 
 
 We think of Marlowe's Tambourlaine, of the 
 Spanish Tragedy and so through Shakespeare's own 
 histories, through Juliet, on to Othello, Lear, Macbeth, 
 and Timon, and we discover how the free declamation 
 that an intimate stage permitted, could be demanded 
 by an audience that was but crude, and turned finally 
 to terror and beauty. This Shakespeare seems very 
 well aware of. It was the very freedom of declama- 
 tion that called up a passion of speech. But now he 
 turns about and demands that declamation should be 
 dismissed since the passion of speech was in itself 
 sufficient : though he is careful to add, " Be not too 
 tame neither, but let your own discretion be your 
 tutor." 
 
 This freedom of emotional stress in speech merits 
 its subsequent examination ; but at the moment it is 
 necessary only to point out the temptations to tumid 
 language that his stage gave him, and to discover 
 with what ruthlessness his audiences could demand it 
 of him. The ill portion of an apple was probably 
 one of the most gentle methods of enforcement. 
 Bombast they asked, and bombast they would have : 
 so, in the manner of him, he gave it them, and reviled 
 at them for their evil taste. One goes far from 
 understanding Shakespeare until one realises that 
 probably he would be the first himself to condemn
 
 HIS STAGE 133 
 
 much of his own work. In his full tragic strength 
 his speech rarely, if ever, loses touch with a full flow 
 of passionate emotion, however much it would seem 
 to toss at the stars. That is to say, even as when the 
 audience demanded them a fool, and he could give 
 them the fool in Lear, so when they demanded 
 bombast he could give them Othello's farewell to all 
 that till then had made life for him. But, on the 
 other hand, and particularly in his earlier days, in 
 gratifying the demand on the part of his audience, he 
 filled his plays only too often with some most 
 intolerable fustian. 
 
 There was the fustian of conceit : such as the 
 passage already quoted from Romeo's love-lorn dis- 
 cipline. Indeed, so much of Romeo and Juliet as 
 seems clearly to belong to the first draft of that 
 play, is full of it. So, also, is the inflated Lows 
 Labour's Lost, and all the early plays ; for it was 
 the first folly Shakespeare had to rid himself of. 
 Also there was the fustian of fury. Perhaps the 
 prime example of this is King Henry's 
 
 Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more ; 
 
 Or close the wall up with our English dead ! 
 
 In peace there's nothing so becomes a man 
 
 As modest stillness and humility : 
 
 But, when the blast of war blows in our ears, 
 
 Then imitate the action of the tiger ; 
 
 Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, 
 
 Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage : 
 
 Then lend the eye a terrible aspect ; 
 
 Let it pry through the portage of the head 
 
 Like the brass cannon ;
 
 134 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 and so forth ; in the midst of a battle ; while the 
 soldiers arrange themselves round to hear him. Of 
 this the whole play reeks ; as do the histories. 
 A subtler manifestation is the fustian of sentiment. 
 For man very properly recognises that senti- 
 mentality is a saving grace in him against brutality. 
 He recognises sentiment as emotion gone astray, or 
 strangled by convention ; and he knows emotion to 
 be the divine in him. So he holds sentimentality 
 in tender regard ; and is moved by its display in 
 drama. More of this anon. Let it now only be 
 seen that sentiment, while good in default of better, 
 is yet not the most excellent. For example, the 
 whole trial-scene of The Merchant of Venice merits 
 examination. It is full of the fustian of sentiment. 
 Very little springs from the reality that constitutes 
 the base of drama. The whole figure of Portia 
 as a doctor of laws is an appeal merely to the 
 picturesque. We know all the time that the whole 
 thing is make-believe ; and that neither the Duke 
 nor the Magnificoes, nor any of them, would have 
 accepted her in her proffered capacity, or have 
 relegated to her the whole conduct and business of 
 the trial. And when she gives vent to the most 
 famous 
 
 The quality of mercy is not strained ; 
 It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
 Upon the place beneath : it is twice blessed ; 
 It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes, 
 
 with all that follows why, then we smile, for we
 
 HIS STAGE 135 
 
 cannot but perceive that the words are directed, 
 not to Shylock, but to the susceptibilities of the 
 audience ; that, in fact, the whole play is stayed in 
 its course, while a little gentle and admirable 
 preachment goes forward. It was in his later days 
 of power that Shakespeare developed his extra- 
 ordinary faculty of making his characters search all 
 moral depths in some weighty apophthegm that lay 
 in, and progressed, the strict dramatic sequence that 
 was toward. 
 
 Shakespeare has expressed himself with no little 
 vehemence with regard to these groundlings that 
 made such urgent demands of him. Their desires, 
 that sped hither and thither in the craving for 
 change, and their offensive breath, seemed to have 
 been the chief things that stirred disgust in him. 
 This latter attribute is suggestive. It bespeaks the 
 fact that he, probably as an actor, came sufficiently 
 near them in their collective capacity for it to make 
 itself urgent upon his olfactory senses. This means, 
 too, that he had to come into closer contact \vith their 
 desires than he would have done merely as a play- 
 wright. And thus they were even more able to 
 enforce their wishes and requirements upon him. 
 It was for them he wrote ; and though we shall see 
 later that he was not a man void of the ambitions 
 that wing for loftier aims than merely monetary gain, 
 we shall also see that there was a somewhat in his 
 philosophical aspect of life that caused him to dis- 
 cover that no pedant was a wise man, but that
 
 136 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 wisdom, rather, was a synthesis and not a thesis. 
 And if synthesis be a god with his brow in the 
 heavens, then compromise are the feet thereof. 
 
 Even while he wrote for a stage of a certain 
 structure, it was this element that ever entered into 
 the emotions that influenced him. And this element 
 must ever be borne in mind by us. Yet his con- 
 cession to the demands of his audience did not 
 preclude his making the deftest use of them for the 
 mightiest ends ; any more than his adoption of the 
 Elizabethan stage precluded his demonstration of 
 its utmost possibilities. It was in this he displayed 
 his craftsmanship, since an artist is conditioned by 
 his craft. And so it must needs be that the craft 
 of him shall next engage attention in the sequence 
 of this study.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HIS CRAFT 
 
 IT has been contended, or assumed, that, whatever 
 Shakespeare had or had not, at least he was no 
 skilled craftsman. Detractors and eulogists alike 
 have proceeded on this assumption. And, to be 
 sure, play after play arises to the memory in explana- 
 tion of the fact that such an assumption should have 
 been made. Nevertheless, it seems incredible that 
 all should have agreed to such an assumption, and 
 yet that none should have arisen to argue out the 
 basis of its contexture. There was only Coleridge 
 who flung out his challenge to the contrary, stating 
 that the judgment of Shakespeare was at least equal 
 to his genius. And it is at least singular that it 
 shoild have been given to him to make one of the 
 mos" penetrating remarks on the subject. Said he : 
 " No work of genius dares want its appropriate form, 
 neitier indeed is there any danger of this. As it 
 must not, so genius cannot, be lawless ; for it is 
 even this that constitutes its genius the power of 
 acting creatively under laws of its own origination." 
 A renark such as that is worth whole libraries of 
 eulogy or denunciation, for it does indeed definitely 
 advan:e the matter. Yet it is somewhat too para- 
 doxically stated to be of eventual value. It is 
 
 137
 
 138 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 suggestive and indicative rather than radical, for all 
 that the suggestion proclaims him as one who had 
 an eye to see withal. 
 
 Partly, the assumption, right or wrong, has arisen 
 from impatience. There has been no attempt to 
 visualise one of Shakespeare's own plays on to the 
 stage for which he made them. Craftsmanship is 
 the adaptation of Beauty to certain formal conditions, 
 without which it could not be expressed, and n 
 which it must be contained. A sculptor has his 
 clay, his marble, his mouldings ; a painter his pig- 
 ments and his canvas. A poet has the use of worcs 
 around which memories cling, in history or euphony ; 
 words which seek to find their linear and paragraphic 
 structure -according to their theme and the tone in 
 which they are uttered. A dramatist has not only 
 words, but a stage. His words are not expressive 
 only of Beauty, but also of emotions that in tieir 
 total effect are the framing of eternal personages ; 
 but his stage is what he may please to make it. 
 Thus dramatic rules may differ widely. ArisDtle, 
 for example, framed his famous rules having the 
 conditions of the Athenian stage before his mind ; 
 and, if he be the wise man his works would de:lare 
 him to be, he would decry their enforcement, or their 
 attempted and impossible enforcement, on the con- 
 ditions of a stage widely different in fashion. It is 
 obvious that in a theatre holding some tventy 
 thousand spectators, if the action of a play were 
 not hedged by as many unities as possible, it would
 
 HIS CRAFT 139 
 
 be quite impossible for its spectators to receive any 
 impression at all from it. There is only one unity in a 
 play ; there is, indeed, only one unity in all Art : and 
 that is the unity of effect. But under conditions so 
 diffuse as provided by an open amphitheatre holding 
 twenty thousand spectators, from which, at best, it 
 would be but difficult to follow the significance of 
 words and actions of players at a far remove, the 
 achievement of that unity would require the col- 
 lateral support of several subservient and wholly 
 artificial unities, such as the unities of space and 
 time. In an Elizabethan playhouse, however, where 
 the audience surged round three sides of the stage, 
 and had the stage and themselves enclosed together, 
 the theatrical conditions being no longer diffuse, the 
 play itself could be diffuse, and yet the same unity of 
 effect be attained. 
 
 Now, if Shakespeare had, conceivably, being 
 enamoured of the formal conditions of the Athenian 
 stage, chosen to write for those remoter conditions, 
 his King Lear obviously would have worn a fashion 
 wholly different from that which it now wears. He 
 might well have done so, and yet, being the genius 
 he was, have won a wider audience in the end than 
 some more topical penman of the day to whose 
 plays the rabble flocked. In such a case, Gloster, 
 Edmund, Edgar, Albany, Cornwall, Burgundy, 
 France, Oswald, and the Fool would all have gone. 
 The story of the division of the property would 
 have been taken up as a retrospect by the chorus ;
 
 140 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 whose song would have been steeped in all the 
 satire, and bitterness, and pity that the Fool pro- 
 vides, in that and in their recital of the further woes 
 that befell the King. Lear, Regan, Goneril, Cordelia, 
 and Kent, with perhaps Cornwall as male antagonist, 
 would alone have been presented ; and the action 
 would have commenced at the moment when Cordelia 
 is expecting Lear to awake, and hoping for his sanity. 
 Such would have been the play had Shakespeare 
 elected to display the action of his drama in the 
 formal conditions of an ancient day. But he did not 
 so elect. In truth, he had no election at all in 
 the matter. Penury may not elect ; it may only 
 select, with but a limited selection at best. The 
 formal conditions of the Elizabethan stage offered 
 themselves to him ; and into these he bent his Art. 
 Those who desire to say that the formal conditions 
 of the Elizabethan playhouse were not so apt to 
 enshrine the living Beauty of Drama as the formal 
 conditions of an Attic amphitheatre or a modern 
 theatre, have their own argument before them, and 
 a difficult argument it will be found to be. That 
 is one thing. But if Shakespeare's craftsmanship 
 is rightly to be apprehended the conditions that 
 presented themselves to him must first be under- 
 stood, on the principle that, however much more 
 Beauty be than its continent, we may yet not advance 
 to that " Furthermore '' except only by means of and 
 through the continent. 
 Even the very extent of his knowledge of con-
 
 HIS CRAFT 141 
 
 ditions other than his own has been ignored. It 
 is forgotten that the conditions of classic drama 
 lacked not their lusty protagonists in Shakespeare's 
 own circle. In his later conversations with William 
 Drummond, Ben Jonson declared that " Shakspeer 
 wanted arte," meaning thereby his inability or refusal 
 to express his matter in certain formulated conditions, 
 or what, in contradistinction to that matter which 
 itself is Art, is best called Craft. Fuller, among his 
 " Worthies," gave an account of the wit-contests 
 betwixt Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, "which two," 
 says he, " I behold like a Spanish great galleon and 
 an English man-of-war; Master Jonson (like the 
 former) was built far lighter in learning, solid but 
 slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the 
 English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in 
 sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and 
 take advantage of all winds by the quickness of 
 his wit and invention." There would not want 
 subject-matter of a various order for such combats ; 
 for there were interests quick and throbbing 
 on all hands. Yet assuredly Shakespeare's own 
 plays did not fail to provide their meet and due 
 occasion. Armed with his classical lore Ben would 
 not fail to bear mightily down upon Shakespeare 
 on those nights when players and playwrights 
 gathered at the Globe after a performance of 
 the latter's plays. In fact, there remains one 
 definite trace of such an occasion, when Shake- 
 speare, having heard his blunt friend's searching
 
 142 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 criticism, admitted its justice, and altered his play 
 accordingly. 
 
 The whole of the note, De Shakespeare Nostrati, 
 from his Timber or Discoveries, in which this trace 
 may be found, demands inclusion ; for what of it 
 may not bear on the immediate matter nevertheless 
 has its fit application to the larger interest here. 
 " I remember," says Ben, "the players have often 
 mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in 
 his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted 
 a line. My answer hath been. ' Would he had 
 blotted a thousand,' which they thought a malev- 
 olent speech. I had not told posterity this but for 
 their ignorance who chose that circumstance to com- 
 mend their friend by wherein he most faulted ; and 
 to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, 
 and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as 
 much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an 
 open and free nature ; had an excellent fantasy, 
 brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he 
 flowed with that facility that sometimes it was 
 necessary he should be stopped. ' Sufflaminandus 
 erat^ as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was 
 in his own power ; would the rule of it had been so, 
 too! Many times he fell into those things, could 
 not escape laughter, as when he said in the person 
 of Caesar, one speaking to him, ' Caesar, thou dost 
 me wrong.' He replied, ' Caesar did never wrong 
 but with just cause ' ; and such like, which were 
 ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his
 
 HIS CRAFT 143 
 
 virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised 
 than to be pardoned." 
 
 Now, two observations rise up here. One is, 
 that a man wont to speak of his candour is also 
 infallibly a man wont to exercise it. The second 
 is, that when such a man speaks of another's 
 honesty, and open and free nature, he is probably 
 not only praising the other's general attributes, but 
 specifically referring to his reception of the afore- 
 said candour. In other words, there lurks proof 
 even here that Jonson had borne home on Shake- 
 speare his armoury of criticism. But it is in his 
 closing sentences the proof is found. For the line 
 that he quotes from Julius Casar is not to be found. 
 Instead of it the passage reads thus : 
 
 Know, Cassar doth not wrong, nor without cause 
 Will he be satisfied. 
 
 Caesar's speech concludes here ; and Metellus begins 
 his speech with a new line. That is to say, there 
 is half a line wanted to complete the space : and, 
 be it noted, to complete the sense and cadence 
 moreover. Whereas if the first line were as Jonson 
 gives it, all this would at once be remedied, and the 
 passage would read : 
 
 Know, Caesar doth not wrong but with just cause, 
 Nor without cause will he be satisfied. 
 
 What Jonson, in fact, couched his lance at, was not 
 the apparent folly it seems, but a somewhat awkward
 
 144 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ellipsis ; seeing which, Shakespeare, rather than 
 phrase it anew, struck it out altogether. But the 
 essence of the matter is this, that at the Mermaid 
 Tavern of a merry evening the robustious periwig 
 of the classicists made no small assault on the major 
 portion of Shakespeare's plays for this lack of form 
 and craftsmanship, even to the minute criticism of 
 abrupt ellipses ; and that consequently whatever 
 Shakespeare did, he did deliberately, willingly, and, 
 if not on a reasoned scheme, at least with a sufficient 
 intuition of what he was about. 
 
 In this regard there are two fundamental consider- 
 ations that range themselves opposite one another, 
 each of them finding their embodiment in the two 
 personalities engaged. On the one hand there is 
 the fact that most of the criticisms that later days 
 have levelled at Shakespeare were ably, forcibly, 
 and cogently put by Ben Jonson himself; and since 
 they can be discovered in his writings, verse and 
 prose, it is not too much to suppose that they were 
 stated by him in proper person with forceful ampli- 
 fication of detail. On the other hand lies a matter 
 so obvious that it should not need statement, for all 
 that it is so calmly and frequently overlooked. It 
 is, that the author of King Lear, Hamlet, Othello, 
 and Macbeth was not a man deficient in perception. 
 Therefore, if Ben Jonson flaunted some or other 
 classic saw before his eyes with regard to the logic 
 of construction in drama, or the importance of the 
 unity of Time, and if he, having this before him,
 
 HIS CRAFT 145 
 
 deliberately departed from it, then, by the very 
 greatness of his achievement, he is entitled to more 
 than equal consideration ; he is entitled to the 
 demand that his very achievement has annulled the 
 antique rule for his instance. His is the right of 
 the Creator. He has enriched the experience of 
 Drama. 
 
 For example, in Jonson's Prologue to the revision 
 in English characters of Every Man in His Humour, 
 when he speaks in shrewd contempt of the 
 
 Three rusty swords 
 
 And help of some few foot and half-foot words, 
 Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars, 
 And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars 
 
 his reference to Shakespeare is obvious. But he 
 also speaks of " a child new swaddled to proceed 
 Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and 
 weed " ; and this very evil Shakespeare exemplified 
 later in the Winter's Tale. There is also contempt 
 for the "creaking throne comes down the boys to 
 please " ; and Shakespeare not only did this in 
 Cymbeline, but even went on to make the throne 
 an eagle. Similarly there is mention of " the rolling 
 bullet heard to say, it thunders," and " the tem- 
 pestuous drum " that " rumbles to tell you when 
 the storm doth come " ; all of which expedients were 
 later employed in King Lear. On the one hand, 
 thus, Shakespeare is discovered openly disregarding 
 the contempt of the learned ; and on the other
 
 146 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 hand, as already seen, he is discovered speaking 
 himself in considerable contempt of the many- 
 headed multitude : which can only indicate that 
 he had some or other definite idea of the illusion 
 which it was the business of his craft to convey, 
 as opposed to the crystal and strictly defined 
 principles of Jonson's conception of a dramatist's 
 ideal of workmanship. 
 
 Yet. for all that this Benjamin would not have his 
 dramatic coat woven of many colours, he was not 
 blind to the fact that the rules of an ancient day 
 could not, by the very nature of them, express all 
 the possibilities of drama. He was convinced, truly 
 enough, that the main outlines laid down were per- 
 durable ; yet he could say : " I know nothing can 
 conduce more to letters than to examine the writ- 
 ings of the ancients, and not to rest in their sole 
 authority, or take all upon trust from them. . . . 
 For to all the observations of the ancients we have 
 our own experience : which, if we will use and apply, 
 we have better means to pronounce. It is true they 
 opened the gates and made the way, that went 
 before us, but as guides, not commanders : Non 
 domini nostri, sed duces fuere. Truth lies open to 
 all ; it is no man's several." l Manly words such 
 as these were finely characteristic of Ben ; and to 
 Shakespeare such an attitude cannot but have added 
 greatly to the general strength of his dramatic 
 criticism. When it is remembered that, in addition 
 to all this, Jonson was demonstrably on terms of
 
 HIS CRAFT 147 
 
 more than ordinary friendship with Shakespeare, the 
 whole force of the opposition between them as to 
 dramatic conception is made apparent. 
 
 Nothing could better instance the sharp cleavage 
 between them than their very methods of work. If 
 there were not the testimony already adduced from 
 the players of Shakespeare's company that he rarely 
 if ever blotted a line, it would yet not need a diligent 
 study of Shakespeare's work to discover that there 
 hung no intermediate effort between its final product 
 and the heat it awoke in his imagination. He 
 probably travelled to and fro over the ground of 
 a projected play before he committed it to ink. As 
 has already been seen, with a large number of his 
 plays, he probably had a previous play on the 
 subject before him, that had fallen to his lot to 
 revise and refurbish for newer presentation. Or his 
 imagination has been smitten by an old poem, as in 
 Romeo and Juliet, or by an Italian novel, as in Othello, 
 or by a stirring biography by the garrulous Plutarch, 
 as in the Roman plays, or by some succulent legend 
 in the rich pages of Holinshed, as in Cymbeline 
 or Macbeth, not to speak of the Histories. In one 
 or two instances, in Midsummer Nighfs Dream and 
 The Tempest, for example, neither plot nor theme 
 can be found in the way of imaginative prompter to 
 him. But, even when he was most derivative as to 
 idea, the deeper the examination and comparison of 
 his final product with that which preceded it, the 
 more evident it becomes that Shakespeare imagina-
 
 148 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 lively mastered the whole field before he committed 
 any portion of it to writing. That is to say, he 
 would pass the various scenes, always with his stage 
 before his mind's eye, pictorially before him, adjust- 
 ing the opening of the narrative, its swell to its 
 apex of interest, its pause awhile, and its concluding 
 climax and gradual close, seeing his characters in all 
 this not so much voiceful as brimmed with those 
 emotions that it was his business to render into 
 speech. Then when he came to write, these 
 characters of his at once spoke into swiftly rushing 
 verse unless, that is, they were conceived as prose 
 characters. They were conceived as being urgent 
 with verse : indeed, it may well be that in the days 
 of their conception they actually broke into verse in 
 his mind, for there are many lines in his work that 
 convey the idea that they preceded, and gave rise to, 
 the rest of the speech in which they are to be found. 
 His was the true way of the poet and artist : he 
 conceived his work in its final form, whatever might 
 have been his difficulty in realising his conception. 
 
 With Jonson, however, the matter was wholly 
 different. He declared, near the end of his days, to 
 Drummond that he wrote all his verses "first in 
 prose." That fact, indeed, might almost have been 
 guessed. Even the best of his lines wear the sem- 
 blance of having been passed through some foreign 
 medium : they read rather as translations than as 
 creations, having none of the heat of new and urgent 
 matter. He has even declared it as a principle of
 
 HIS CRAFT 149 
 
 style that " ready writing makes not good writing, 
 but good writing brings on ready waiting " ; and, as 
 though the latter admission seemed too great a con- 
 cession to the pen of the ready writer, he was quick 
 to add to it, "yet, when we think we have got the 
 faculty, it is even then good to resist it." 2 
 Nothing more remote from Shakespeare's own 
 manner of procedure than this could very well be 
 imagined. Shakespeare can certainly not be thought 
 of as resisting his faculty for ready writing ; though 
 he must have heard this precept of Jonson's laid 
 down many a time and oft, in some such similar 
 terms, over pipes and canary at the Mermaid 
 Tavern, if not in fact in his own lodgings with 
 good Master Mountjoy. 
 
 The matter comes closer home when we remember 
 that Jonson declared himself against " the obstinate 
 contemners of all helps and arts ; such as presuming 
 on their own naturals (which, perhaps, are excel- 
 lent), dare deride all diligence, and seem to mock at 
 the terms when they understand not the things." B 
 There is a passage in Shakespeare that links up so 
 inevitably with this that it is hard to resist the 
 thought that each in its turn sprang out of some 
 discussion on the subject. It is when Polixenes 
 and Camillo enter to Perdita and Florizel, and 
 Perdita declares she will not have anything to 
 do with " streaked gillyvors," they being but 
 "nature's bastards." The scene then continues 
 thus :
 
 150 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Polix. Wherefore, gentle maiden, 
 
 Do you neglect them ? 
 Per. For I have it said, 
 
 There is an art which, in their piedness, shares 
 
 With great creating Nature. 
 Polix. Say there be ; 
 
 Yet Nature is made better by no mean, 
 
 But Nature makes that mean : so, even that art 
 
 Which you say addi to Nature, is an art 
 
 That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry 
 
 A gentler scion to the wildest stock ; 
 
 And make conceive a bark of baser kind 
 
 By bud of nobler race : this is an art 
 
 Which does mend Nature change it rather ; but 
 
 The art itself is Nature. 
 Per. So it is. 
 
 Polix. Then make your garden rich in gillyvors. 
 
 And do not call them bastards. 
 Per. I'll not put 
 
 The dibble in earth to set one slip of them. 
 
 So she says ; and forthwith proceeds to distribute 
 lavender, mint, savory, marjoram, and the marigold, 
 even as her creator himself would not set his dibble 
 in earth to bring forth one of those disciplined 
 products that his friend Ben extolled, preferring the 
 abandon and the miscalled waste of Nature's own 
 way. It would not be unlike Shakespeare gently to 
 laugh at Jonson in this way ; and, in any case, 
 Jonson's remark seems to be levelled very obviously 
 at Shakespeare. It may be nothing, though it seems 
 to be much, that it immediately follows the paragraph 
 De Shakespeare Nostrati ; but when he scoffs at those 
 who, by " a cunning protestation against all reading,
 
 HIS CRAFT i si 
 
 and false venditation of their own naturals, think to 
 divert the sagacity of their readers from themselves, 
 and cool the scent of their own fox-like thefts ; when 
 they are so rank, as a man may find whole pages 
 together usurped from one another," whoever be or 
 be not meant, it is impossible not to think of Shake- 
 speare and his wholesale importations from Plutarch, 
 with, on occasion, the slightest of metrical adjustmt-nt. 
 
 In all this it is very obvious that Shakespeare had 
 the virtues of discipline in conception and construc- 
 tion emphasised with some pungency at a very near 
 call ; and that in turning from it he did so with some 
 kind of a definite ideal before him, consciously held 
 or subconsciously perceived. It need not be said 
 that he failed often enough to fulfil his own ideal. 
 Failure is mortal. And it came even more aptly to 
 Shakespeare to fail betimes, since the loftiest is 
 never achieved save at the risk of the most abysmal. 
 It is only mediocrity, in ambition and in talent, that 
 is infallible within its limited scope. As we shall 
 see later Shakespeare was not a man unacquainted 
 with the pangs of the loftiest ambition in his art. 
 It is sufficient at the moment to quote him when he 
 speaks earnestly of himself as " desiring this man's 
 art, and that man's scope." This being so, he was 
 but little likely to withhold himself from every 
 attempt to apply Jonson's classic lore without a very 
 clear idea as to what he was about. 
 
 It was, indeed, to his considerable credit that this 
 was so. He had his own task to achieve ; and he
 
 152 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 set about it, scoffing gently at the other by putting 
 into his senile old statesman's lips the praise of 
 " tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, 
 historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical- 
 historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem un- 
 limited." Depression fell on him awhile, as it falls 
 on all artists who set out, not to fulfil the precepts 
 of others, but to discover themselves. He could 
 say of his own work in the hour when the strain of 
 other things wrought havoc with his nerves, " With 
 what I most enjoy, contented least." Yet he con- 
 tinued with the work that fell to him ; and from his 
 earliest achievements till near the end of his days 
 this work grew comelier and shapelier in his hands. 
 The peculiar difficulty that fronted him, and which 
 he alone of all the dramatists of his day truly solved, 
 is not generally recognised. For the heritage that 
 passed to him in the tradition of dramatic practice 
 was that of five-act drama or what would probably 
 be more accurate a statement, regarded from the 
 standpoint of Elizabethan empiric, five main move- 
 ments in a play, each of which averaged a half hour, 
 that thus the mass of them should fitly fill out the 
 space of time generally required by an afternoon's 
 entertainment. How this came to be the acknow- 
 ledged practice would make a sufficiently interesting 
 study. The more material question at the moment, 
 however, is to note the difficulties that this involved. 
 For the natural movements of drama would seem to 
 be not five but three. In general terms these are, the
 
 HIS CRAFT 153 
 
 Introduction, the Action, and the Climax : the first of 
 which is occupied, with as swift a procedure as 
 possible, with the task of setting out and rendering 
 intelligible the Action, which in its turn, through 
 plot and counterplot, takes forward the interest to 
 the concluding crisis, this being the Climax; at the 
 moment of which the play may cease, with its interest 
 suspended in mid-air, or it may perhaps continue to 
 a gentler adjustment of the matter. This does not 
 at all necessarily imply that the logical construction 
 is in three acts, each act being occupied severally 
 with each movement. In point of fact, it is far 
 otherwise. For, by the very nature of the case, the 
 first movement, the Introduction, were best done 
 briefly, and the last movement, the Climax, demands 
 incision of treatment under penalty of losing its 
 title. Thus there would be an exceedingly brief 
 first act, a ponderous second act, and a succinct third 
 act, and the play would go forward hunched ungainly 
 like a camel. Indeed, there is not even the obliga- 
 tion to treat the three movements in their logical 
 sequence. Henrik Ibsen, for example, in Rosmers- 
 holm y after an opening which is no introduction, 
 plunges straightway in an action that opens up its own 
 introduction pace by pace with itself in the way of 
 retrospective dialogue, until, in fact, the most vital 
 piece of information, that which alone makes 
 Rebecca West's whole action intelligible, is not 
 revealed till the very eve of the climax. The more 
 general practice of this dramatist in his most note-
 
 154 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 worthy achievements, however, was to start the 
 action, holding it in poise awhile as he engaged on his 
 retrospective introduction : then when he was more 
 or less quit of the incubus of this, to let the action 
 proceed simply to a climax, short and sharp, or 
 gentle and prolonged. 
 
 Yet to say that these three general movements 
 were otherwise negotiated is to admit their real 
 existence. And to Shakespeare they constituted a 
 very urgent difficulty, for it fell to him not to 
 negotiate them as he might himself best devise, but 
 to negotiate them in an accepted structure. His 
 first plays, to our knowledge, being Histories, con- 
 stituted no difficulty ; for the Histories being but 
 pageants, with neither co-ordination nor scheme in 
 them save such a robustious display of energy and 
 pomp as the chronicles vouchsafed, permitted them 
 to be cut into whatever sized portions a dramatist 
 might fasten his whim on. It is, in fact, an interest- 
 ing speculation to imagine that he would not have 
 held so resolutely to his heritage had not his first 
 discipline in drama accustomed his imagination to its 
 exactions. It is, of course, only a speculation ; but 
 it becomes luminous with interest when we 
 discover that, at a time when he had wellnigh 
 perfected his instrument, in the high-day of his great 
 tragedies, he departed from the principle that under- 
 lay his achievement, in Othello. But apart from 
 the Histories, which, with some possible exceptions 
 to be mentioned later, flowed from start to finish
 
 HIS CRAFT 155 
 
 with no pretence of structure, Shakespeare in his 
 early plays was not a little perplexed at the difficulty 
 thus presented to him. When he could, he leant on 
 the work of earlier playwrights. The Comedy of 
 Errors, for instance, was a play that probably 
 demanded no very great skill on his part, seeing 
 that the comedy by Plautus, from which it is derived, 
 the Manacbmti was undoubtedly before him in some 
 form or other. He added new features to it, 
 noteworthily in giving the twin brothers accessories 
 in mystification in the shape of twin servants ; but it 
 did not fall to him so to cast the story in such a way 
 that a five-act construction came inevitably to it. 
 The very nature of it obviated that; for a farce 
 needs but one swift flow from its outset to its 
 conclusion. 
 
 It was in such plays, therefore, as Love's Labour's 
 Lost, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, and Romeo and Juliet, that we should expect 
 to discover him in grapple with this perplexity that 
 had been presented him, in the effort to evolve 
 from it that construction, that craftsmanship, which 
 should best express himself, and enable him to add 
 to the achievements of drama instead of being 
 compelled to echo an elder achievement. And we do 
 discover him so. It is a grapple, in truth and in deed. 
 But in order to see exactly what the grapple implied, 
 and what its significance was, it will be well to view 
 it in the light of the answer he finally evolved from 
 it, and which he exhibited in fullest power when he
 
 156 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 shed himself of the artifice of Comedy, and stood in 
 the exacting franchise of Tragedy. 
 
 His perplexity was a perplexity indeed : for 
 while to express five movements in three need be no 
 great exploit, demanding only an economy of pro- 
 cedure, to express three movements in five, and that 
 adequately, is a task indeed. Yet Shakespeare 
 achieved it ; and not only achieved it, but added 
 considerably to the strength of Drama in the achieve- 
 ment. For whereas in the ordinary course of Drama 
 the Action mounts to its Crisis in a final Climax, he 
 altered the movement from a logic of three to a logic 
 of five by dividing and distributing the Crisis and the 
 Climax, leading to the concluding Climax through a 
 Crisis that was in the nature of an antithesis to it. 
 By this means, as is obvious, he not only answered 
 his riddle successfully, but he increased the dramatic 
 interest that he was engaged in by a suspense that 
 brought the whole imagination of his audience 
 fiercely into play. The method offered its difficulties. 
 For instance, the Crisis having occurred three-fifths 
 through the play, that is to say in or about the Third 
 Act, the interest would have to pall for awhile, 
 since the contrary action that is to take it to its 
 Climax would require to be set in motion. But this 
 was not necessarily a vital difficulty (particularly 
 v hen, as on Shakespeare's stage, the play continued 
 through without halt or cessation) ; for the excite- 
 ment engendered by the Crisis might safely be relied 
 on to project the interest past the inevitable slacken-
 
 HIS CRAFT 157 
 
 ing of tension in the Fourth Act ; and by the time 
 such an excitement might in the ordinary course of 
 events have subsided, the concluding interest would 
 be well afoot. Before examining the procedure in 
 Shakespeare's own practice, it would be well to raise 
 the caution that the action of a play takes place 
 strictly not on the boards of a stage, nor in some 
 imaginary scene, but in the mind of its spectator. 
 Therefore, when the word Crisis is used it does not 
 mean that all such Crises were of the same nature. 
 They were not. In one case Macbeth might be at 
 the very zenith of success, in another Hamlet or Lear 
 might be at the very nadir of ill-fortune. That 
 mattered little. The matter of more moment was 
 that in each case a Crisis was achieved that was the 
 culminating effect of the previous action, and which 
 suggested a further Climax that was to be achieved 
 anew by means of a Counter-action. 4 
 
 In all this Shakespeare worked on his own inde- 
 pendent lines, even as he was occupied with his own 
 independent problem. It is all the more fascinating, 
 then, to find that in solving his own difficulty he did 
 indeed strike in this way on the very principle of 
 construction that the ancients themselves discovered 
 while occupied with wholly different conditions. 
 They, even as he, mounted to a Crisis some three- 
 fifths of the way through a play; but while they 
 declined the action with some steadiness to the con- 
 clusion, with a renewed yet not over-abrupt tightening 
 of interest prior to the final subsidence, he had to
 
 158 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 mount again to a higher height than they in his 
 Climax, and therefore it was incumbent on him, for the 
 attainment of an adequate balance, to drop the action 
 somewhat suddenly on the attainment of the Crisis 
 by turning its course aside and engaging himself with 
 a remoter interest. Similarly, too, Ibsen, a latter-day 
 dramatist, when writing a five-act play had to adopt 
 the same construction, for all that his usual method 
 was to mount rapidly to a Crisis that was both Crisis 
 and Climax, being the end of all things. In The 
 Lady from the Sea, the Stranger enters only twice : 
 firstly in the Third Act to make the Crisis, and lastly 
 in the Fifth Act to make the Climax. With Ibsen 
 this was probably less of a discovery than an imita- 
 tion : yet, even so, it is all the more a tribute to 
 Shakespeare's independent discovery or recovery, 
 since Life is but one, and all its discoveries are after 
 all only recoveries. With Ibsen, however, the 
 division between the Crisis and the Climax was a clear 
 and unequivocal division. With Sophocles, that is 
 to say, what we have termed the Climax was a gentler 
 reflection of the Crisis, being a remoter echo of it. 
 With Shakespeare it was in a sense antithetical to it. 
 In both, therefore, there was a definite connection 
 between Crisis and Climax : they were both logical 
 and apt parts of an orderly structure. But in Ibsen 
 they are two definite, distinct, and constructionally 
 unrelated emotional blows repeated in precisely the 
 same manner. Or it may be put this way. In 
 (Edipus the same action that carried the emotion to
 
 HIS CRAFT 159 
 
 the height of the Crisis carries it over and downward 
 to a lower and less strenuous Climax ; in Hamlet 
 the action that achieved the Crisis culminated there, 
 while a newer action, that had hitherto lain embedded 
 in the Introduction, woke to a contrast of power in 
 order to mount to the Climax ; in The Lady from the 
 Sea the action that carried the emotion to the Crisis, 
 hung there awhile, till the selfsame blow was 
 repeated long after in the Climax. In the first the 
 Climax was a reverberation of the Crisis, and there- 
 fore the fourth movement was necessarily merged in 
 with the fifth ; in the second it came with contrasted 
 power, and therefore the fourth movement was in 
 the nature of a contrast with the second ; in the last 
 it was but repetition, with, if anything, an increase of 
 tension, and therefore the fourth movement was but 
 a halt between two emotions. And this raises the 
 question of Shakespeare's use of the fourth move- 
 ment or, to speak in terms of his own drama, his 
 Fourth Act. 
 
 With Shakespeare there were obvious difficulties 
 with his Fourth Act : constructionally, for the 
 reasons already intimated, and actually, as reference 
 to any of his tragedies will at once demonstrate. 
 But these difficulties belong so vitally to his whole 
 method of dramatic procedure that it will be neces- 
 sary to turn to this in order to see the Fourth Act 
 in its proper relation. For, as has already been 
 seen, the stage of Shakespeare being what it was, 
 it was necessary to relieve the attention of the
 
 160 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 audience by a calculated variety of interest. Tragedy 
 had to be varied by comedy ; and bitterness had to 
 make way for mirth, lest the very capacity for 
 bitterness should be ruined. But it was also neces- 
 sary that the variations should progress the action. 
 In his earlier plays it is easy to see that he met 
 considerable difficulty in this ; in fact, it is too often 
 evident that he even dismissed all attempts in that 
 direction, as, for example, in Henry IV., where 
 the variations imply no progress. As he grew 
 in power, however, this became more and more 
 possible to him ; until he came finally to achieve 
 this same end by means of the very conflict that his 
 drama was engaged with. In Hamlet, for instance, 
 once his Introduction was completed (and among all 
 dramatists Shakespeare stands supreme in the subtle 
 faculty of conveying requisite information in apt and 
 natural dialogue), the King and Hamlet are seen in 
 a covert but none the less strenuous conflict. Hamlet 
 was ever suspicious of his uncle ; but now, since 
 the revelations of the Ghost, despite his persistent 
 incredulity with regard to that phantasmal apparition, 
 he is alert to seek confirmation of his suspicion. 
 But suspicion is a thing swiftly communicable. 
 Moreover, Hamlet's manner is strange ; nor will the 
 plea of insanity wholly cover the many evidences of 
 a shrewd and penetrating sagacity that the King can- 
 not but notice. Polonius was right in saying that if 
 this was madness there was truly method in it ; and 
 the King, in his turn, was suspicious of that method.
 
 HIS CRAFT 161 
 
 Before the First Act is over this conflict is well 
 afoot. The antagonists are obviously watching each 
 other shrewdly, with no advantage as yet to either. 
 It is the King that takes the first move in the con- 
 flict ; and he does so by sending Guildenstern and 
 Rosencrantz to Hamlet, that they might discover for 
 him precisely what it is that ails his moody nephew. 
 That very fact puts him upmost in the conflict. 
 And when Hamlet sees through the emissaries to 
 the probing mind that sent them, he not only sets 
 himself equal again, but gains a very emphatic ad- 
 vantage, for now he knows what his adversary is 
 after. Furthermore, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, 
 and, later, Polonius, tell him of the coming of the 
 players ; and forthwith a plan for making the King 
 prove his own guilt seizes fast hold of his mind. 
 The King has struck at him ; and though he has 
 foiled the lunge, he has not yet had an oppor- 
 tunity of lunging back. This, it is, will give it him. 
 And thus the ascendance now lies emphatically with 
 Hamlet. No sooner has this advantage been won 
 by him than it is quickly lost again. The King, 
 overhearing his conversation with Ophelia in the 
 famous nunnery scene, sees at once that "there's 
 something in his soul, o'er which his melancholy sits 
 on brood," and that that something is striking at 
 himself. He decrees that Hamlet shall be sent to 
 England. Yet since he decides that the decree 
 shall not come of effect till after the play, the situa- 
 tion is once more held as near poise as is possible.
 
 1 62 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Each adversary has a fell blow pending ; and though 
 Hamlet's is bound to fall first, in the face of the 
 King's resolve it is very doubtful what advantage he 
 will be able to gather from it. 
 
 After the stupendous success of the play, Hamlet's 
 advantage is unquestionable. But, again, he has no 
 sooner won it than he is to lose it again. That he 
 should abstain from executing his revenge while the 
 King is at prayer is nothing ; with the power that 
 lies now in his hands it is not necessary to pluck at 
 such specious advantages. Indeed, his very neglect 
 of the opportunity is as much a tribute to his power 
 as an evidence of his introspective thought. But 
 when he slays Polonius his advantage is at once 
 gone, and the King is both upmost in the conflict 
 again, and provided with a suitable excuse for 
 putting his resolve to banish Hamlet into effect. 
 With the achievement of this resolve the Crisis is 
 complete. The whole play has been wrought to as 
 acute a pass of perplexity as it well could have 
 been ; for, while the King is in complete ascendance, 
 it is yet manifest that there is more to follow. 
 
 Now, in all this Shakespeare has achieved two 
 things. Firstly, he has achieved, in the very alter- 
 nation and see-saw of the conflict that was the very 
 essence of the action, the deft variation of theme 
 that the attention of his audience demanded. Also, 
 he achieved his required Crisis by taking his initial 
 action up to its utmost limit of progress along that 
 line. Therefore, with his Climax in view, yet to be
 
 HIS CRAFT 163 
 
 attained, he must now, on the consummation of his 
 Crisis and the conclusion of his Third Act, take up 
 some or other wholly new action to begin his Fourth 
 Act. 6 But he had prepared for this far back in 
 the Introduction of the play. There Laertes had 
 been seen with both his father and his sister. Now, 
 therefore, he enters the scene as their joint avenger; 
 and we are carefully permitted to learn that Hamlet 
 has two enemies instead of one, and they in league 
 together, before Horatio is permitted to read a letter 
 informing us that Hamlet is back again in Denmark, 
 to take up the issue against them. In this it is 
 patent that the eager flow of the main action has 
 been suspended awhile for a new matter to be 
 rolled forward. But this is even as it should be. 
 The very balance and symmetry of the play demands 
 it. For a new height to be reached a new ascent 
 must be made; and while it is being begun, the 
 impetus given by the perplexity of the Crisis is more 
 than sufficient to project an intensity of interest well 
 into the gathering movement of the counter-action. 
 To say nothing of the fact that such counter-actions 
 almost inevitably are actions that themselves lay 
 suspended in the Introduction, growing out of 
 thence even as did the action that led to the Crisis, 
 with the mind fully prepared to seize up the interest 
 at once. 
 
 One of the advantages that this principle of con- 
 struction offers can very readily be seen. In Hamlet, 
 for instance, the tragedy being one of thought, the
 
 1 64 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 whole movement of the play had necessarily to be 
 somewhat lethargic and laboured. In Macbeth, the 
 tragedy being one of action, the whole movement 
 had to wear something rapid and cataclysmic in 
 its appearance. Now, it is true that Hamlet is, in 
 point of fact, lengthy, whereas Macbeth is, in point 
 of fact, considerably briefer ; but this does not affect 
 the real difference in appearance between the two 
 plays, v/hich is, that, whatever be their respective 
 lengths, Hamlet is slow in its actual movement, 
 whereas Macbeth is swift and rapid. A little 
 thought is sufficient to show the simple yet subtly 
 effective cause of this. For if Shakespeare had to 
 convey the effect of rapidity, as in Macbeth, it was 
 but necessary for him to draw the Crisis nearer 
 towards the Introduction, to shorten the Action, and 
 to lengthen the Counter-action ; whereas, had he 
 to suggest the slow poise of irresolution, as in 
 Hamlet, he had only to thrust the Crisis further 
 towards the Climax, to lengthen the Action, and to 
 abbreviate the Counter-action : which is precisely 
 what he happens to have done in each of the 
 examples chosen. 
 
 A man's characteristics may be best discovered in 
 his best work ; and it is therefore to the mighty 
 series of his tragedies that one naturally turns to 
 discover Shakespeare's method or principles of dra- 
 matic procedure. In the light of that discovery, 
 looking before and after, one can see Shakespeare 
 finding his way with some difficulty to the elucida-
 
 HIS CRAFT 165 
 
 tion of the problem set him, and then triumphantly 
 ringing the changes on the principle he had achieved, 
 in Comedy and Tragedy, with what skill he might 
 employ, never owning fealty to any bondage that 
 might harass his freedom. In his first of plays, 
 Love's Labour's Lost, for example, we find him frankly 
 puzzled by these five acts required of him. Having 
 started his play swiftly and promptly by letting us 
 know, in Act I., the resolve of the King and his 
 nobles, and illustrating that resolve in the situation 
 as regards Costard, Jaquenetta, and Armado, and 
 having shown us, in Act II., the dissipation of that 
 resolve, he is now confronted by the main difficulty 
 of the play. In a later hour he would have led up 
 to some or other critical juncture in the Third Act 
 (as, for instance, a witnessing, and repudiation, by 
 the Count of the love-making of Armado, they being 
 already half-entrapped themselves), with a Counter- 
 action in the Fourth Act that should lead to the in- 
 evitable general discovery in the Fifth Act. Instead 
 of which, he is all the while seeking to fend off the 
 concatenation that would itself conclude the play. 
 All through the Third Act he does this, and suc- 
 cessfully withal, though at the cost of interest. Yet 
 he cannot fend it off any longer; and so in the 
 Fourth Act it compels its arrival. The Climax at 
 the end of this Act is so obvious, it rings the note of 
 general conclusion so clearly that it is difficult to 
 think of another Act to succeed. Yet another Act 
 is required of this pupil at the feet of Drama ; so a
 
 1 66 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 part of the matter proper to the Climax is held over 
 and expanded, while the wholly extraneous additions 
 of Holofernes and the acting of the "Nine Worthies" 
 is brought in to puff out its proportions. Thus, in 
 this first of plays, despite the fact that it was re- 
 written so late as 1598, the playwright confesses in 
 his shifts of perplexity that he has yet to learn his 
 craft. 
 
 As has been said, the Histories, by the very 
 nature of them, are negligible from the standpoint 
 of Shakespeare as a playwright in search of a vital 
 principle of construction. Even where, in Richard 1L 
 and King John, the chronicular form is turned away 
 from in favour of a more definite plot, he is yet 
 frustrated of the skill his hand is growing to by the 
 ruthless nature of his historical sequence. Never- 
 theless, even here the principle that we have seen 
 indicative of his method can distinctly be perceived 
 raising its brow through the intractable matter with 
 which he is beset. Even in a play like Midsummer 
 Nighfs Dream, demanding as it does an unruffled 
 progression of simplicity wrought to intricacy and 
 resolved again into simplicity, the antithetical prin- 
 ciple is asserting itself on his instinct. It cannot be 
 forgotten that the Third Act concludes with all the 
 harassed lovers asleep on the dew-wet soil, and that 
 with the Fourth Act Theseus and Hippolyta re- 
 emerge on the scene, having been wrapt from us 
 since the Introduction. 
 
 But in Two Gentlemen of Verona, Roineo and Juliet,
 
 HIS GRAFT 167 
 
 and The Merchant of Venice, the principle has both 
 emerged and developed into full recognition and 
 power. The very suggestion of artificiality it wears 
 in the first is more than a hint that, in coming thus 
 to the growing craftsman, it came not unknown nor 
 unrecked of. But Two Gentlemen of Verona was, in 
 more senses than one, a practice ground for Romeo 
 and Juliet ; and in Romeo and Juliet the clear division 
 of the five Acts is an indication not less clear of a 
 craftsman glorying in his newly-won craft. Each 
 Act is occupied with its own movement, Introduc- 
 tion, Action, Crisis, Counter-action, and Climax; 
 and the closing scene of each Act rings the dominant 
 of the Act to follow ; save in the sole instance of the 
 Crisis, which, to be a Crisis, demands isolation and 
 surprise. Moreover, it is clear to see that he has 
 also begun to master many of the difficulties pre- 
 sented by the very nature of the Fourth Act. The 
 sudden strokes of alternation introduced by the 
 wooing of County Paris, or the Trial Scene in the 
 Merchant of Venice, are not so subtle as the various 
 devices he employed to grip attention in his later 
 tragedies, such as the madness of Ophelia, the 
 tremendous pity engendered by the meeting of 
 Edgar and blind Gloster, or the murder of Macduff's 
 young son in which last the cause of its being 
 accomplished on the stage, which so stumbled 
 Coleridge, is seen. Yet what they lose in subtlety 
 they gain in vigour: and a growth from vigour to 
 subtlety is the very legitimate growth of Wisdom.
 
 1 68 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 For a more emphatic antithesis to the Second Act of 
 the Merchant of Venice than the Trial Scene could 
 not well be imagined. In the Second Act it was 
 Antonio's power that was decadent and Shylock's 
 ascendant ; in the Fourth it was Shylock's that was 
 decadent and Antonio's ascendant. 
 
 A somewhat quaint fact emerges here. Comedy 
 is the crown on the head of artifice ; and therefore 
 in the period that followed the Merchant of Venice, 
 in Much Ado, As 7ou Like It, Twelfth Night, All's 
 Well, though his principle of procedure is clear in 
 each, it seems as though ofttimes the tendency was 
 to obscure its more resolute lines of development. 
 So when he turned to the more authentic fashion of 
 drama, to Tragedy, that is, in Julius Casar, it is 
 almost as if he broke out into a sudden shout of joy 
 and a most unfortunate shout, it must be admitted, 
 it was. For in wishing to emphasise his Crisis, he 
 does so in no less a way than by killing off his 
 Protagonist. 
 
 It is Othello, however, that makes one of the 
 profoundest studies in Shakespeare's dramatic 
 method. As will be seen more particularly later, 
 he was never concerned with construction as a 
 thing in itself. It was never he himself that 
 wrought the construction wherein to place his 
 characters ; he created the characters that should 
 themselves achieve their destiny, weaving it in a 
 certain fashion according to the impulsion of life that 
 drove them forward. Rumour has it that he declared
 
 HIS CRAFT 169 
 
 that it was necessary for him to kill the eager Mer- 
 cutio, for fear lest he should take matters into his own 
 hands and ruin the play. Whatever the rumour be 
 worth, it is apparent in his plays that the very 
 vitality of his characters was often enough a matter 
 of serious concern to him. In Measure for Measure, 
 for instance, it is quite clear that not only the 
 Provost, but Shakespeare moreover, had made up 
 their several minds to kill Barnardine instead of 
 Claudio. But by very virtue of the principle of 
 independent volition that he received from his 
 creator, Barnardine would have none of it. He 
 swept them both aside imperiously. " I swear I 
 will not die to-day for any man's persuasion," is his 
 surly response ; " if you have anything to say to 
 me, come to my ward ; for thence will not I to-day": 
 and so Shakespeare has make shift with " one 
 Ragozine, a most notorious pirate," whom he puts 
 up finally for the occasion, and whom he might have 
 put up much earlier had he any conception that his 
 first scapegoat would have proved so unruly. 
 
 The same principle is to be found at work in 
 Othello, At first it is apparent that Shakespeare is 
 shaping his play on his usual lines of development. 
 The First Act is given over completely to the 
 Introduction, and it closes in the ordinary way with 
 the clear hint of the Action to proceed in the next 
 Act, from the mouth of lago. Similarly the Second 
 Act is occupied with the Action, and the famous 
 and wonderful Third Act (in which, if ever, the wit
 
 1 70 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 of creation was at full race) is very clearly shaping 
 for the Crisis. But the very wonder of the third 
 scene of that Act transformed everything. It 
 frustrated its own end. It burked its own con- 
 clusion. Its swell and its power to mount are such 
 that it would be quite impossible to turn it aside for 
 the introduction of a Counter-action. We have seen 
 that a Counter-action has usually its roots in the 
 Introduction, even as its antithesis, the Action itself, 
 had ; and consequently we can perceive the remnants 
 of Shakespeare's original intention in the arrival of 
 Lodovico and the Venetians in the Fourth Act. But 
 the emotion he has conjured is urgent beyond that. 
 Unlike other dramatists, he did not require that his 
 characters should play attendant on his construction, 
 or struggle against it. The whole action is imperious 
 to amount to the conclusion of all things ; and the 
 news of Othello's recall to Venice adds fury to empire. 
 So Shakespeare opens the sluice-gates of his con- 
 struction, letting the whole matter boil fiercely to 
 the end of all in Desdemona's death and Othello's 
 self-destruction. And if, as it seems, the affair as 
 touching Cassio and Bianca was the original portion 
 of the Counter-action, be it noted, then, with what 
 skill and deftness it is ordered in with the new swell 
 of the initial action ! This was no man, this Shake- 
 speare, to have construction taught him by any ! 
 
 Even in the smaller movements of his plays, as has 
 already been seen, his arrangement of his alternations 
 was not less deft. In both small and great, it is true,
 
 HIS CRAFT 171 
 
 however, that his pen hung ofttimes listless in his 
 hand. The palpable device of Prospero's opening con- 
 versation with Miranda ; much of Cymbeline ; much, 
 indeed, of many of his later plays, when the effort for 
 skill seemed often scarcely worth while, he being 
 at a height of achievement and fortune, and spoilt, 
 maybe, by worldly prosperity and success arise to 
 witness to his failures. Moreover, there were other 
 failures that seemed forced from him, such as the 
 effort to shape the mood for Tragedy into the 
 fashion of Comedy the cause of which has its 
 place in later examination. Yet, despite these, his 
 craftsmanship cannot be impeached of much in the 
 way of failure. 
 
 Not a little of the criticism of Shakespeare has 
 arisen from a profound misunderstanding of his idea 
 of the occasion and situation of Drama. Drama is 
 not a reproduction or criticism of Life. That is 
 rather the business of the Novel. Drama is a 
 transfiguration of Life ; and therefore, instead of 
 being the conveyance of a philosophy or criticism, 
 it is itself part of the substance that philosophy 
 must explain and criticism examine, as best they 
 may. Shakespeare did not expound philosophy in 
 his tragedies, however much they were bathed in 
 thought. Philosophy must expound his tragedies, 
 or stand condemned of having neglected some of 
 the matter essential to the synthesis it would 
 achieve. In this way his characters were more 
 than men and women: they were of heroic
 
 172 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 stature. In their very transfiguration they be- 
 came symbolic of Life itself. In this way, too, 
 the scenes in which they contended were not 
 streets, hostelries, or drawing - rooms : they were 
 any such confined or unconfined spaces in which 
 great issues might be fought. The stage of the 
 Globe was a convenience for the conflict. Even as 
 the characters were Ideal, so the scenes were Ideal. 
 It was something of this that the ancients sought 
 to express by their exactions of a unity of Time 
 and Space. It was not Realism they sought, but 
 Idealism. The imposition of the conditions pur- 
 ported to achieve a state of mind in the spectator 
 in which the sense of Time and Space held no 
 sway ; and in which, therefore, mundane circum- 
 stance being dismissed, the mind might move 
 unhampered through scenes where Death, Life, 
 and Love, Passion, Fate, and Beauty, the great 
 realities of existence, hold unfettered sway. 
 Mundane limitations are ever a shock to Drama. 
 For instance, that Antony should be at Athens in 
 one scene, and five minutes thereafter at Alexandria, 
 is undeniably an unhappy shock. But the reason 
 for the shock is somewhat subtler than is usually 
 stated to be the case. It is not merely, that is to 
 say, that we are irked, knowing full well that so 
 swift a transition in so short a period of time is not 
 possible. Rather, we are irked because we feel 
 deeply that it ought to be possible, and are revolted 
 at having the impossibility brought so nigh us. We
 
 HIS CRAFT 173 
 
 recognise Illusion ; we hail it, and are content to be 
 subdued by it, knowing that Illusion is Eternity 
 translating itself in terms of Time. But we demand 
 that it shall indeed subdue us, and not awake our 
 revolt. In all of which the chief matter is that it is 
 Illusion we worship, and not Realism : Eternity and 
 not Time. We do not demand Illusion in a Novel, 
 for in a Novel we seek Relation : but we demand 
 Illusion in Drama, for in Drama we seek Contention 
 and a Reaching-after. 
 
 Now Shakespeare had his own way of achieving 
 this Illusion ; and it is our modern elaboration of 
 scenery that has obscured his dramatic mode. For 
 whereas the Greeks banished Time and Space by 
 recognising them, he banished them by not recog- 
 nising them. Antony did not go from Athens to 
 Alexandria in five minutes : he merely went out 
 from the stage by one door and entered by another. 
 Athens and Alexandria were never in the matter. 
 The whole concern was with the stage of the Globe, 
 where the action did indeed take place, and from 
 whence it was transported to the spectator's mind. 
 Yet in this he dismissed Time and Space not less surely 
 than did the ancients. Thus the numerous short scenes 
 in Antony and Cleopatra but very little obscured the 
 issue. In fact, numerous short scenes did not 
 actually have any existence. The scene was one 
 and indivisible, whereto all might have their free 
 entrance. 
 
 Those who think that this assumption of ideality
 
 174 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 in the stage on which the action took place, was 
 confined to Shakespeare, and is happily (or unhappily) 
 dismissed from modern times, can surely not have 
 noticed some startling instances of it in the heart of 
 nineteenth-century realism. Impermanent Drama 
 may always be summarily dismissed ; but in Ibsen 
 there is presented the figure of one who is in issue 
 with posterity, with results scarcely yet to be fore- 
 seen. And who ever saw drawing-rooms like his 
 drawing-rooms? Most drawing-rooms, in houses 
 possessed by the type and position of people whom 
 he depicts, are content with one door. But one 
 door will not suffice for the free access and conten- 
 tion of Drama, and so another door at least is provided. 
 Moreover, in The Doll's House, one of those doors 
 has a somewhat astonishing position with regard to 
 the outer door of the hall, a position certainly not 
 dictated by the comfort (particularly in winter) of 
 the inhabitants, but demanded imperiously by the 
 exigencies of the play. In the opening scene of 
 The Master Builder there are three doors. But 
 where Ibsen provided doors for the accessibility of 
 new entrances, it is important to notice, Shakespeare's 
 new entrances are marked by modern editors as 
 different scenes, the main matter being that both 
 stages were more or less idealised. This very 
 accessibility of entrance in Ibsen does in fact often 
 convey a shock, because of the very definition of 
 his furniture and scenery, whereas Shakespeare, 
 by his dismissal of definition of scenery (leaving
 
 HIS CRAFT 175 
 
 it to be conveyed by his dialogue) dismissed the 
 sense of shock. Who, for example, in a room with 
 any pretensions to mundane actuality, ever saw the 
 like of the Rat-Wife's entrance in Little Eyolf, or, 
 for that matter, the second entrance of UlricBrendel 
 in Rosmersholm ? It is to be feared an irate dismissal 
 of domestics would succeed to the coming and going 
 of wild strangers in so free a manner in, say, Ibsen's 
 own homestead. But Drama, nevertheless, demands 
 such free access, which in its turn demands an 
 ideality of stage conditions ; and even he who 
 strangely chose to be haltered by realism had 
 to make his concessions to the urgency of this 
 demand. 
 
 This principle of stage utility must necessarily be 
 clearly held in view before any separation can be 
 made between Shakespeare's vices and virtues in the 
 practice of it. That is to say, a swift removal of 
 Antony from Octavia's side to Cleopatra's bed may 
 quite fitly be achieved even were these two sites 
 separated by a world's distance. The only question 
 is whether Shakespeare has duly achieved without 
 conveying a sense of shock. And here the maj ority 
 of those who weigh and consider the matter will 
 surely declare that the achievement is adequate and 
 complete. The shock is dismissed (or, as a minority 
 would say, only diminished) by the very subtle use 
 of Caesar's conversation with Octavia, on the one 
 hand, and Cleopatra's conversation with Enobarbus, 
 on the other hand, intruding between, covering, and
 
 176 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 conveying, the transposition of scene. A matter of 
 far more concern are the years of Hermione's disap- 
 pearance. Yet even this proves that, however much 
 we may happen to disapprove, or wonder at, his 
 result, he himself knew very well what he had in 
 mind to do. The interposition of the Florizel and 
 Perdita scenes, from within, and the fanciful glamour 
 suggested by the title, A Winters Tale, from without, 
 helps to aid to the unity of effect, the unity that 
 embraces all other unities. Nevertheless, the 
 questionable success conveyed by these deft expe- 
 dients is implied by Shakespeare himself in his 
 introduction of Time as a chorus at the opening of 
 the inevitably crucial Fourth Act. And when one 
 speaks of deft expedients, it is noticeable that most 
 of Shakespeare's quiet removals of Space and Time 
 are under cover of the excitement engendered by the 
 break of the Crisis. 
 
 Yet through the question of Shakespeare's crafts- 
 manship and architectonic skill one consideration ever 
 projects itself. As has already been said, Shakespeare 
 was never concerned with construction as such. It 
 was not he that reared the structure of a play. It was 
 his characters that took it, built it, and moulded it. 
 Consequently they were never at war with it. A 
 certain prolific writer has stated that Shakespeare's 
 " plot means mainly not entirely the evolution of 
 character." 6 But this scarcely states the truth of the 
 situation. It would be more accurate to say that the 
 evolution of Shakespeare's characters mould and
 
 HIS CRAFT 177 
 
 frame his plot. Hence they were the plot ; and the 
 construction was made by them. 
 
 In this, again, new light may be thrown on the 
 subject by the comparison of Ibsen's method. 
 Ibsen, succeeding to the glacial influence of Scribe 
 and the Parisians, was deeply interested in construc- 
 tion, even as though it were a matter wholly separate 
 from the people of his plays. He framed his con- 
 struction, and placed his people in it, not to fare as 
 they themselves would, but to be ordered as the 
 plot should direct. One of his noteworthy characters, 
 Hedda Gabler, is struggling, ever struggling, not 
 chiefly against her foolish husband, nor against her 
 circumscribed home, but against the cast-iron con- 
 struction with which her creator has beset her. She 
 longs to live, and to be herself ; but she has to 
 obey her ruthless master, and pass through the 
 course he has ordained for her. Nora and Torvald, 
 in A Doll's House, are by no means ready for, have 
 by no means progressed to, the profound conversation 
 each side of a table that is required of them at the 
 conclusion of the play. Ibsen, before they had even 
 begun to frame their own characters in speech, had 
 had that scene in mind : he had ordained that they 
 should pass through that momentous scene at that 
 momentous moment : so down they have to sit, 
 ready or unready, and speak the words appointed 
 for them. So it is in many other of Ibsen's plays ; 
 after he sought preoccupation with construction as 
 an entity, a thing in itself, which it neither is nor
 
 178 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 can be. It is a strange and interesting spectacle, 
 this ; and perplexed withal. For it is not as though 
 Ibsen's characters had not Life. They are not 
 puppets pushed about at their author's whimsey. 
 They are warm with Life ; but they are in war, with 
 more or less of energy, against their author's architec- 
 tonic desire. It is as though, in vulgar simile, Ibsen 
 had corseted the rich outlines of life. The lines of 
 such a corset might indeed have been possessed of 
 an exquisite sense of curve and general symmetry ; 
 but it nevertheless rudely crushed the warm flesh 
 and the healthier beauty. Whatever be the skill 
 that may achieve " the glass of fashion and the 
 mould of form," it is yet rather the Venus de Milo 
 on which we choose to feast our eyes. 
 
 Now, this Shakespeare never did. Whatever be 
 the faults that characterise his work, never did he 
 crumple the flesh of the people of his imagination 
 with the imposition of a preconceived architectonic. 
 It need scarcely be said how infinitely his drama 
 gained from this. One can gather some sense of 
 his gain from the loss of others : from the mind's 
 revolt, for instance, at Hedda Gabler's suicide, or the 
 table conference of Nora and Torvald ; for from 
 both of these, so crucial are the situations, and so 
 vital is it that our conviction in the truth of them 
 should be complete, we are compelled to turn away 
 in angry complaint. Distressed as we may be, in 
 Shakespeare, at the conclusion of Othello, there is 
 this ever to be said, that we know lago, being what
 
 HIS CRAFT 179 
 
 he was, had always to act even as he did, and that 
 Othello was compelled to no deed save on the com- 
 pulsion of his own character. 
 
 There are, however, one or two cases in which 
 the requirements of the plot afoot and the exu- 
 berant life of one of the characters in it, fell into 
 warfare. It has already been seen, for example, 
 how Shakespeare had to wake a broil in which to 
 dismiss the obstreperous and exuberant Mercutio ; 
 though it is interesting to notice how craftily he 
 used this very thing as the agency for the attain- 
 ment of his Crisis. But the outstanding example is 
 Hamlet. There, if ever, Shakespeare had to keep 
 his whole wit and imagination at full play in order 
 to maintain Hamlet as a living soul, urged only by 
 his own self to his course of action, or inaction, and 
 yet to maintain what may be called the required 
 plot intact and complete. He succeeded : he suc- 
 ceeded triumphantly : and yet the eye is puzzled 
 often, thinking it has caught some lack of agree- 
 ment in the perfect working of the machine. No 
 sooner seen than gone again, it perplexes and 
 mystifies, taunts and defies ; and it is greatly owing to 
 this that the problem of Hamlet has arisen, adding 
 to the making of books of which there is no end. 
 For instance, it is impossible to say that his 
 irresolution does not bear the conviction of a 
 consistent character ; and yet it is equally im- 
 possible to deny that his irresolution is vital and 
 necessary to the making of the play. This is only
 
 i8o SHAKESPEARE 
 
 to say that the cornerstone of this tragedy, as of 
 all Shakespeare's tragedy, was the ancient saying 
 that " Character is Fate." Yet, more than once, 
 when his irresolution becomes particularly difficult 
 to understand, there comes some sudden hint and 
 reminder that the plot at that moment is in risk of 
 ruin save for the aid of such irresolution. It is so 
 in the celebrated scene when Hamlet finds the King 
 at prayer. It is so, indeed, always in Hamlet's 
 course of action after the play-scene till his dismissal 
 to England. It is especially so in the fact of his dis- 
 missal to England ; for had he not been dismissed at 
 that moment, the play, or his characterisation, would 
 have come to a pretty pass indeed. And yet, having 
 seen so much, we see more, and are reassured. For 
 the King ordered the dismissal to England prior to 
 the play-scene. Moreover, the very trait that Hamlet 
 demonstrated when he found the King at prayer 
 we remember as having earlier been characteristic 
 of him. And thus we see Hamlet still as a living 
 being, working out his own destiny. We are still 
 able to think objectively of him as a full-orbed man. 
 But we cannot sometimes help feeling how fortunate 
 it was for the dramatist that Hamlet, consistent soul 
 as he is, should have been so fully swayed by his 
 tenderness of thought and perplexity of introspec- 
 tion at so opportune a moment. Yet it is this that 
 is the intellectual feat in the making of him. 
 
 It is for this very reason, truly, that Hamlet was 
 made so full-orbed and multi various of attribute. A
 
 HIS CRAFT 181 
 
 man of lesser complexity could not have borne the 
 weight of the plot. It was the conclusive test of 
 the magnificent ability of Shakespeare that this was 
 so: on the side of his craftsmanship this was the 
 proof of his exceeding skill, even as on the side of 
 his art it was the triumph of his imagination. But, 
 although the aspect of this from the standpoint of 
 his craft cannot be forgotten, the fuller and com- 
 pleter understanding of it belongs more strictly to a 
 consideration of his art.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HIS ART 
 
 DEFINITIONS inevitably become partisan. In their 
 effort to reduce the subject of their choice to the 
 margins of logical expression, they almost inevitably 
 leave wide regions on each hand that belong truly to 
 the subject and yet escape the definition. And if 
 they endeavour to swing so widely that they embrace 
 the circumambient borders, then they escape that 
 logical precision that seems so proper to a definition. 
 Therefore to speak of Art as the attempt of the 
 individual to relate his vision of life, is not to define 
 Art, but rather to attempt to express it. The indi- 
 vidual is necessary ; not only because of the palpable 
 fact that without the individual there could be none 
 to achieve Art, but chiefly because Art seems dis- 
 tinctively to be the expression of some or other 
 individual's mind. Subjective Art and objective 
 Art are merely academic phrases to distinguish 
 the qualities of mind at work: the sympathetic 
 mind being termed subjective, and the aloof mind 
 being objective, whereas the qualities of sympathy 
 and aloofness are central properties of the indi- 
 vidual. When JEschylus sought to render intelli- 
 gent the actions of gods to men, while Sophocles 
 depicted the action with neither comment nor
 
 HIS ART 183 
 
 warmth, it was not that the latter escaped us while 
 the former laid his soul bare to us. They both 
 equally, in their several manner of procedure, gave 
 us to know what sort of men they were. Each of 
 them expressed the vision that their moods, and 
 minds, and temperaments, conveyed to them of a 
 multifarious life. It may happen that the with- 
 drawal necessary to aloofness may cause a wider 
 field of view to be embraced in the vision; and if 
 this be at no loss to the intensity of vision, then, 
 naturally, the Art so achieved will be greater than 
 the other. It will not, however, be any the less 
 indicative of the artist. 
 
 Life, its vision by the individual through the 
 medium of his temperament, and its expression in 
 terms of that individuality, are thus, in its widest 
 and most accurate sense, the constituents of Art. 
 Everything appertaining to the conception of the 
 thing to be expressed belongs, therefore, to that 
 which it is necessary to call Art in contradistinc- 
 tion (partly a true, and partly an artificial, contra- 
 distinction) to the craft which renders it in some 
 or other form. Even the matter of the form is 
 embraced in these wide arms. The form of an ode 
 is proper to the matter and conception of an ode. 
 There are dramatic themes, and there are epic 
 themes ; and if Milton had expressed his " Paradise 
 Lost " in a dramatic form, the fault would have been 
 one of his Art, not his craft. But had he chosen 
 the apt form, and expressed it ill in that form, then
 
 1 84 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the fault would have been one of his craft. As 
 already said, this is partly an artificial distinction, 
 since it is true that an adequate vision so burns and 
 thrills the soul that it inflames the tongue to a 
 passion of adequate speech. Yet there is truth in 
 the distinction, despite the fact that there cannot be 
 set a border-line to it. 
 
 So, when Ben Jonson said that "Shakespeare 
 wanted arte," he ruined the value of his criticism for 
 us by his fundamental confusion of thought. Indeed, 
 it is likely enough that Shakespeare himself saw the 
 confusion in much of old Ben's thinking, and there- 
 fore bantered the bluff old pedant easily, and went 
 peaceably on with the thing he had to do. It is 
 impossible to say exactly what was meant by that 
 famous remark that the precise Drummond so 
 sedulously made a note of : probably, had Ben been 
 asked, he would have made his confusion clear by 
 thundering out a lengthy repetition of the remark. 
 Judging from his carefully recorded criticisms, how- 
 ever, it would seem that the major portion of his 
 fault-finding was with Shakespeare's craft ; in which 
 matter a fair number of his barbs find lodgment, and 
 the flinging of a number more of them proved his 
 own lack of imaginative sympathy, without which all 
 criticism is void. And that this was so seems 
 evident by the following lines, " To the Memory of 
 My Beloved, The Author, Mr William Shakespeare, 
 and what he hath left us," from the Preface to the 
 First Folio :
 
 HIS ART 185 
 
 Yet must I not give Nature all : Thy Art, 
 My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. 
 
 For though the Poet's matter, Nature be, 
 His Art doth give the fashion. 
 
 Now, strictly speaking, the Poet's matter is not 
 Nature, but his reproduction of Nature : or, more 
 loftily and truly, his re-creation of symbols to take 
 their place beside the appearances of Nature as 
 clues to the colossal powers behind them both : in 
 short, his Art. Shakespeare's various descriptions 
 of sunrises, for instance, do not so much put us in 
 mind of sunrises, as they put us in memory of those 
 things that the splendour of sunrises themselves 
 remind us of. They both prompt us to thoughts 
 of Eternity; they both wake in us our divine 
 hunger. Yet this Art needs to be given its fashion : 
 and it is the Poet's craft that must needs achieve 
 this end. 
 
 How difficult it is to disentangle the involutions 
 of the two can be seen from the fact that, in a 
 certain sense, versification is a matter of crafts- 
 manship, whereas characterisation is a matter of 
 artistic conception. Yet, in Shakespeare's drama, 
 characterisation is, and can only be, expressed in 
 versification, and cannot be known outside of it. 
 Hamlet, for us, is what he says ; and what he says 
 depends on the skill with which Shakespeare was 
 able to employ the medium of words. To say, 
 therefore, that Shakespeare's characters at the 
 outset of his dramatic career tended to artificiality,
 
 1 86 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 growing to a height of power at the later midmost of 
 his course, and concluding with a subtlety and mental 
 energy difficult to understand, is truly another way 
 of saying that this was the course taken by his 
 powers of versification : and contrariwise. This is 
 not sufficiently taken into consideration when think- 
 ing of Shakespeare's work. The criticism is often 
 levelled at him that he is too fond of an elliptical 
 construction of sentence. Yet how otherwise was 
 he to express a character, such as Hamlet, whose 
 stormy passion of thought was such that his very 
 ideas merged into one another, losing their logical 
 sequence and method. And to fault Hamlet for an 
 elliptical way of thinking would be rather like 
 faulting him for the Destiny into whose toils he 
 had been caught. 
 
 Nevetheless, it is true that Shakespeare's use of 
 emotional stress in speech (what is meant when 
 he is spoken of as overfond of elliptical construc- 
 tions, bombast, an eager leaping from metaphor to 
 metaphor, and vivid imagery) serves other turns 
 than merely to express abnormal characters. It is 
 a thing exceedingly difficult to say, and yet not over- 
 say; but often it is evident that a violence of mono- 
 logue or dialogue has a certain business to achieve 
 in the mind of the spectator, over and above its use 
 as an expression of a character. Were this regarded 
 as Shakespeare's deliberate preparation for some or 
 other urgent scene, it might perhaps legitimately be 
 considered as a function of his craft; but it is actually
 
 HIS ART 187 
 
 Shakespeare's subconscious method of striking us to 
 emotional sympathy with the Action, and thus it is 
 more truly a matter of his Art, belonging, as it does, 
 to his very conception of things. 
 
 A very noteworthy instance of this is the following 
 passage, spoken by Macbeth, so often, so keenly, 
 and so adversely criticised. It begins, u If it were 
 done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done 
 quickly," and proceeds to a rapid statement of his 
 responsibilities touching the king, who has honoured 
 him, and who is now his guest. Then it flies off 
 thus : 
 
 Besides this Duncan 
 
 Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
 So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
 Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
 The deep damnation of his taking-off; 
 And pity, like a naked new-born babe 
 Striding the blast, or Heaven's cherubim horsed 
 Upon the sightless couriers of the air, 
 Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye 
 That tears shall drown the wind. I have no *pur 
 To prick the sides of my intent, but only 
 Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, 
 And falls on th' other side. 
 
 What is the function of this ? Metaphor to 
 metaphor succeeds in violent alternation; and the 
 mind is whipped to an extraordinary passion of 
 excitement. An examination of the scene soon dis- 
 covers the cause of this. For immediately prior to 
 this Duncan had been seen arriving at Macbeth's
 
 1 88 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Castle; and in the succeeding scene it is ordained 
 that Macbeth shall slay the ancient king. To pass 
 from one directly to the other would be to create a 
 mental revulsion that could not help destroying the 
 sympathy with Macbeth that is so essential to our 
 interest in the play. Moreover, it would ruin those 
 smoother modulations of rising and fluctuating in- 
 terest that Shakespeare so largely employed in order 
 to achieve his unity of effect. That is to say, a scene 
 should intervene in which nothing material should 
 happen, but which should yet attune our minds to the 
 tragic happenings about to arrive. How this could 
 be done better than Shakespeare does it, it would 
 be difficult to say. Angels that plead, " trumpet- 
 tongued, against the deep damnation" of Duncan's 
 taking-off; "pity, like a naked new-born babe striding 
 the blast"; "Heaven's cherubim horsed upon the 
 sightless couriers of the air": what are these but 
 so many flails that whip the mind into a foaming ex- 
 citement, preparing it to receive any terrible thing ? 
 When Lady Macbeth proceeds: 
 
 I've given suck, and know 
 How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me : 
 I would, while it was smiling in my face, 
 Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, 
 And dashed the brains on't out, had I so sworn 
 As you have done to this : 
 
 what is this again but a further scourging of the 
 mind to excitement? The effect of it all is to attune 
 our minds to the dominant that shall pervade the
 
 HIS ART 189 
 
 ensuing scene, and to lead us away from the gentler 
 dominant that pervaded the preceding scene. Perhaps 
 in all things, but certainly in drama, nothing is good 
 or excellent in itself; it has its value from the service 
 it fulfils in procuring the total effect. It is beside 
 the point to say that the whole scene in question 
 is so oversaturated with splendour and rapidity of 
 metaphor that it is overweening and bombastical. 
 The only question is, what would be the result if 
 the whole scene were eliminated? And then, surely, 
 the question answers itself. 
 
 To judge the value of this, it is only necessary to 
 read a modern dramatist in translation. Ibsen, for 
 example. The fault that characterises him in trans- 
 lation may also characterise him in his original 
 tongue : or it may not : but phrased in the English 
 speech, with metaphors few, or none, it is exceed- 
 ingly difficult to realise sometimes, in the acting or 
 the reading, that the scene before us is indeed 
 momentous and vivid. Our emotions do not spring 
 to the scene, simply because the speech of the 
 characters does not attune us to their mood. 
 
 A similar use of the same agency is to be found in 
 the scene where Hamlet and his comrades are await- 
 ing the coming of the ghost on the battlements. 
 The opening comments on the nipping and the eager 
 air are strangely pent with emotion; while the subse- 
 quent shooting of ordnance within, with Hamlet's 
 answer to Horatio's inquiry as to the cause of it, do 
 charge the mind, for some strange and inexplicable
 
 1 90 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 reason, with a nervous tensity, well calculated to 
 make the subsequent coming of the ghost a thing 
 of terror. If drama be a mere sequence of happen- 
 ings, then, truly enough, these turnings aside from 
 the strict, severe sequence, are not dramatic. But if 
 drama be not merely a sequence of happenings, but 
 a sympathetic conveyance of these happenings into 
 the mind of the spectator, then such turnings aside 
 are of the very stuff of drama. To succeed in this 
 prime end, Shakespeare had to employ his only 
 medium Words : and he charged them, therefore, 
 with an eager and rapid use of metaphor. 
 
 This question of dramatic expression, or speech 
 in drama, has other bearings too, in elucida- 
 tion of Shakespeare, and in illumination of much 
 else. For only by dramatic speech can dramatic 
 thoughts and emotions be conceived. Now drama is 
 concerned with the great moments of existence. On 
 the stage of drama characters play in which the 
 many may see themselves depicted, not in the sordid 
 round of their lives, nor with the wearied pulse of 
 their aspirations, but at their greatest, noblest, and 
 terriblest moments, at such hours when they know 
 themselves most themselves, the memory of which 
 may rescue them, and keep them aloof, from that 
 littleness which alone is failure. Clearly, then, 
 drama, to realise itself, must express in correspond- 
 ing speech. If it employ the language of everyday 
 life, the language of the ordinary habits of con- 
 versation, straightway, then, it falls beneath its
 
 HIS ART 191 
 
 own level. It denies itself in that very act. It is 
 in this the clear, sharp cleavage announces itself 
 between Reality and what is termed Realism. 
 Realism is ever sordid : Reality is air taken on 
 great heights. The husband that slew his wife 
 when wild with liquor, is Realism: the splendour of 
 first love, bringing thoughts of divinity, is Reality. 
 It may so chance that disillusion may strike past all 
 sordid accidentals to Reality; but then there would 
 need to be involved in it some great ideal. There is 
 Reality in Hamlet ; there is also Reality in Timon, and, 
 in a lesser degree, in Troilus. But to the realisation 
 of all this there is needed a purging, a chastening, 
 an exaltation, and, at times, a sheer splendour, of 
 speech. 
 
 Therefore those who will have it that Shakespeare's 
 employment of language is unnatural, have still to 
 define what is meant therein by the word natural. 
 Who has not felt, at some supreme moment of 
 existence, Sandra Belloni's impetuous outcry to be 
 permitted to speak in Shakespeare's speech, meaning 
 thereby some speech equally exalted and adequate ? 
 The graces of conversational speech are an imper- 
 tinence to such moods. They are more than an 
 impertinence : they are simply unnatural. The 
 rarity of words can alone bear such rarities of 
 passion : even what is known as slang may be 
 employed with vivid and startling effect, like 
 Henry V.'s reference to the devils that "do 
 botch and bungle up damnation with patches."
 
 192 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Words full of colour can alone convey the colour 
 of such moods; and the cadences of music and 
 song can alone sing out the lyric of such intensities 
 of thought. In simple ungarnished fact, these are 
 the only expressions natural to such moods ; and it 
 is only in the memory of such moods and moments 
 as these that we pass bravely through the jolts and 
 bars of existence. 
 
 It is this that explains Shakespeare's choice of 
 verse for the speech of his dialogue. That it was 
 not, as it seems with Ben Jonson, merely a varied 
 form of his prose, can be seen from even a cursory 
 examination of his alternation from one to the other. 
 As has already been pointed out, it is evident that 
 Shakespeare's characters did not speak verse by 
 accident or from discipline : they were conceived 
 as speaking verse. In a sense, they came into 
 Shakespeare's imagination speaking verse, even 
 before he discovered, by dint of intellectual labour, 
 precisely what verse it was they spoke. Take, for 
 example (cleaving still to the play already spoken 
 of), the supreme and solitary instance when Lady 
 Macbeth leaves the use of verse for prose. It has 
 been suggested 1 that the matter of the scene is 
 "too sublime, too austerely grand, to admit of any- 
 thing so artificial as the measured language of verse, 
 even though the verse were Shakespeare's." But 
 what actually is the scene ; and with what does it 
 deal ? When Lady Macbeth was urging her 
 husband to the murder of Duncan, being who
 
 HIS ART 193 
 
 and what she was, was she more unnatural then, 
 or when she was sleep-walking ? Urging the 
 contemplative Macbeth to the determined deed, 
 she was in full possession of all her faculties and 
 energy ; and so she gave expression to her whole 
 nature in verse that concentrated its imagery around 
 the one definite goal she had set herself. The 
 deed done, the goal achieved, the horror of the 
 thing swept on her and broke her. She was no 
 longer herself. In her waking hours she might 
 gather herself together, and defy the ruin of her 
 mind. But when the Self sleeps, the agent of the 
 Self, the Will, sleeps also. And then her broken 
 being found its expression in broken and disjointed 
 language, in broken and disjointed pictures and 
 memories. Clearly verse was no agent for such a 
 moment. Prose, the Johannes factotum of all save 
 the peaks of existence, had of necessity to step 
 in, and convey the droning querulous monotone, 
 so wrung with pity as it is. 
 
 So it is with the terrible moment prior to Othello's 
 swooning. The grossness of lago's pictures, striking 
 on the centre of his being, had shivered his mind. 
 His being reeled at the blow. Was he then most 
 himself, or least himself? The clear fact is that 
 he then fell away from himself: and as he fell 
 precipitously from the clear light in which he might 
 have knowledge of things, to the darkness where 
 all things were blotted, he ejaculated brokenly the 
 sight he had had of the things that had stricken
 
 194 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 him down. How different the mood when he 
 
 cried : 
 
 O, now, for ever 
 
 Farewell the tranquil mind ! farewell content ! 
 Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars, 
 That make ambition virtue ! O, farewell ! 
 Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, 
 The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife, 
 The royal banner and all quality, 
 Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war ! 
 
 In one he was broken and shattered. In the other 
 sorrow has sharpened his senses so that the very 
 smell of grasses and of distant herbs was snuffed 
 clearly by him, and the noise of the creeping things of 
 the earth smote on his ear with a several and distinct 
 impact. It was not a moment that could in the 
 nature of things last long ; but while it lasted it 
 was vivid and keen beyond expression of language. 
 And thus it voiced itself in the rhythm and beat 
 of verse, and a cry of poetry. It was a splendid 
 moment, a vivid moment, a poetic moment. But in 
 the other he rambled and stumbled through prose 
 to silence. 
 
 Shakespeare's use of prose is very subtly indica- 
 tive of his dramatic method. There are occasions 
 when the high emotional tension caused, not by the 
 verse, but by the employment of moods that com- 
 pelled the use of verse, are so exhaustive to the 
 attentive mind that a relief must be created some- 
 how or somewhere. It is so after the lengthy 
 murder-scene in Macbeth. The very exhaustion
 
 HIS ART 195 
 
 of the mind would have caused a continuance of 
 that tense mood to fall into utter bathos. The 
 knocking on the outer door, too, works the 
 mind up to its final limit of tension. So in comes 
 the Porter: a positively prose character, speaking 
 the natural prose of his mind in the famous 
 devil-portering monologue. It might be imagined 
 that the entrance of Macduff and Lennox would 
 resume the tension. But no ! the prose mood and 
 the prose diction continue awhile in the interlocutory 
 with the Porter : and a little reflection shows why. 
 For on their entrance the spectators at once prepare 
 to resume the tension. Plainly, therefore, if Shake- 
 speare refused to resume the higher mood on the 
 instinct of their preparation, the additional half-relief 
 this would convey to them would be so grateful that 
 when later he did indeed reintroduce the tension he 
 could not fail to carry with him a rested and eager 
 audience. And be it noted how the tenser mood 
 is resumed. After their parley with the Porter, 
 Macduff asks, " Is thy master stirring ? " and the 
 words are easy and negligent in cadence. Then 
 the whole mood is tightened and braced by the 
 firm step of metrical tension : " Our knocking has 
 awaked him ; here he comes " : and forthwith the 
 mood flames high again. 
 
 In Hamlet, again, it is obvious that when he 
 speaks to the Gravedigger, or with the Players, he 
 should speak in prose. The matter is prose. They 
 are of a piece with the many prose characters in
 
 196 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Shakespeare who speak their native language. A 
 far subtler matter is the well-known Nunnery-scene. 
 For what is the scene ? Ophelia has been won by 
 that effete old intriguer, her father, to play a part, 
 and to demonstrate to the watchers behind the 
 curtains that it is Hamlet's love for her that has 
 distracted him. Naturally she is anxious to lift 
 the mood to poetry : and in so far as she truly loved 
 Hamlet it would be true poetry, though in so far as 
 she remembered the part she had to play it would 
 have to be a bastard and mock poetry. For his 
 part, Hamlet loved her : and so as he opens the 
 dialogue he speaks at once in the purity of the 
 loftier mood : " Nymph, in thy orisons be all sins 
 remembered." Naturally she turns to him and 
 speaks in the same tongue, though it rings on the 
 false note of formality : " Good, my lord, how does 
 your Honour for this many a day ? " But he had not 
 expected this : she had withheld him from her, by 
 her father's edict, " this many a day," and he half 
 expected a rebuff from her. He is preplexed. Yet 
 he continues the mood with " I humbly thank you." 
 Then all at once his perplexity breaks into suspicion : 
 for some strangeness in her manner, some rustle of the 
 curtain, has caught his attention. At once the poetic 
 mood in his mind is broken ; and the metrical march 
 of his sentence subsides into a " Well, well, well." 
 There is no more poetry in the scene for him : it is 
 flat prose, coarse prose, brutal, disillusioned prose ; 
 but always prose. It is not so with her, however ;
 
 HIS ART 197 
 
 and she seeks to resume the mock poetry. But 
 with a ruthless blow he crumbles the poetic edifice 
 to the dust, it being but a mock, sordid thing. 
 11 Ha, ha ! are you honest ? " asks he ; and with that 
 word the poetry is gone, till, on his exit, she resumes 
 it in a very tender and frailly genuine concern at his 
 ruin of mind. There is probably no scene in all 
 Shakespeare in which this exquisite adjustment of 
 prose and metre express so truly the inner realities 
 of the minds at work in the dialogue. 
 
 There are, indeed, a lengthy procession of 
 characters in Shakespeare, the natural speech of 
 whose mouths is prose. Headed, it is, by fat Sir 
 John, and brought up gallantly by honest, if some- 
 thing obtuse, Dogberry and Verges, Sir Toby Belch, 
 own cousin to Sir John Falstaff, though without 
 the philosophy, his dupe, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, 
 the egregious Malvolio, Bottom, and his histronic 
 confederates, Bardoph, Nym, Pointz (not Pistol, 
 for he was a would-be poetic, a strutting braggadocio, 
 discontented with his prose estate), Parolles, Lafeu, 
 Launcelot Gobbo, Launce, Touchstone, Autolycus, 
 and many another rogue, and many another clown, 
 to say nothing of the more stolid characters strewn 
 about, to support the action at awkward moments ; 
 and they are all conceived in prose, born in prose, and 
 urgent with life in prose. There are two, however, 
 that must be withheld from their place in the com- 
 pany: and these are Benedick and Beatrice. To 
 these a rebirth is granted. Born in prose, Love
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 visits them ; and they pass to poetry. But the rest 
 are born in prose, and live all their lives in that 
 medium. In the case of those who have no lives to 
 live, but only parts to play, the servitors, soldiers, 
 and other such accessories, it is easy to understand 
 why they should stand so completely in prose. As 
 said, they have no lives to live, and therefore have 
 never the opportunity of springing to the intensity 
 of poetry, whatever their potentialities be. But the 
 others awake a matter of deeper interest. 
 
 It is to be noted that nearly all of these are either 
 humour in themselves, or the cause that humour is 
 in other men. Now while it is possible that wit 
 may on occasion rise to intensity, humour is broad 
 and relaxing. Humour lays its arms akimbo and 
 laughs merrily out ; or it holds itself strangely 
 aloof, while soft lightnings play through the mind. 
 Humour does not knit the brow, or hold the passion 
 in suspense. Humour is stranger to all the deeper, 
 fiercer throes : and at their faintest touch it is fled 
 past all recall. So it was with Benedick and 
 Beatrice. When Love finally came to them, it 
 became necessary at once to draw them up into the 
 general plot of the play, for, not being the central 
 interest, there was a fear of their being of no interest 
 at all, the interest of humour having departed from 
 them. Even the suspicion (frail suspicion though it 
 was) of a deeper interest is sufficient to empty half 
 the splendour out of Falstaff in The Merry Wives of 
 Windsor. Wisely, and on an excellent instinct,
 
 HIS ART 199 
 
 Shakespeare kept the fat old knight free from 
 love itself, even though his monarch might have 
 wished to see him smitten thus. But the suggestion 
 of love was there : and by that token we know the 
 Falstaff of Windsor for a slender mockery of the 
 unquenchable Falstaff of Eastcheap. 
 
 Humour being, then, the thing it is, its expression 
 must needs be prose. This is not necessarily the 
 case with other phases of comedy. Mercutio, for 
 instance, is an example of a comic character ; but 
 with him the comedy is that of wit, in which it 
 might be said that the humour is neither broad nor 
 tender, but light, compact, and brilliant. There is also 
 a comedy that is light, subtle, or graceful ; for the 
 expression of which the nimbler tread of metre must 
 be invoked, as Moliere well knew. Melancholy, too, 
 demands the compactness that slow verse can give 
 it : as is exemplified in the case of Jaques, for all 
 that his melancholy was couched in humour. But 
 humour, humour intact and pure, is conceived in the 
 breadth and ease of prose, and must therefore be ex- 
 pressed in that medium. The Art of all Drama is to 
 express each emotion in its natural and apt diction ; 
 and even as passion in Tragedy, or beauty and 
 intensity in Comedy, the peaks of existence, demand 
 Poetry, so the laughing, sleek, undulating valleys of 
 humour, broad as they are, and relaxing withal, seek 
 to find their vent in Prose. 
 
 It is here a proper distinction suggests itself, both 
 from the inherent nature of the matter, and from
 
 200 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Shakespeare's practice in it. Humour, be it said, is 
 one of two things : or rather, humour is to be 
 gleaned from two manners of people. They are 
 those who are themselves the genuine creators of 
 humour ; and there are those who, unhappily for 
 themselves, are the cause of humour in others. 
 Falstaffmost justly claimed to be both : "I am not 
 only witty in myself," said he, "but the cause that 
 wit is in other men." Of the former kind are the 
 clowns who wag their baubles through the plays : of 
 the latter kind are Pistol and Parolles. There is 
 no humour in either of the latter; but they are 
 the abundant cause of humour in other men. For 
 the cause of humour in other men is their very 
 pretension. They would be other than they are. 
 They would eschew prose, and speak poetry. They 
 would mimic the high and heroic ; and the humour 
 in others is to expose their pretension ; to prick 
 the bubble of the would-be poetry, and expose them 
 for frail prose-creatures after all. 
 
 Thus it can be seen what accord there is, in the 
 main, between the proper conception of Shake- 
 speare's characters and the language in which they 
 speak. How much this truth of conception meant 
 to his work may be discovered from a reading of his 
 historical plays. Their interest is at best remote. 
 Many of the kings are very far from being kingly per- 
 sons unless there be the cynic to respond that kingly 
 persons are of a truth habitually of this wise. But 
 poetry is lofty speech ; and since, therefore, Shake-
 
 HIS ART 201 
 
 speare puts into their mouths such diction as should 
 have characterised them, they and their matter are 
 exalted into interest. For, from the standpoint of 
 Drama, neither kings nor commoners are of interest, 
 save in the light of the destiny, tragic or comic, in 
 which they are framed, and to which they contribute. 
 Bombast is all too often on their lips, and the speech 
 of their mouth is frequently a fustian ambition ; 
 but bombast and fustian are an indication, if an 
 inverse indication, of the things of which they are 
 bombast or fustian. Indeed, the points require only 
 to be shifted a little, and what had seemed bombast 
 and fustian before, is at once to be seen interlaced 
 and intertwined with the deeper matter. Poetic 
 speech on the lips of an unpoetic person is compact 
 of that pretension we call either bombast or fustian. 
 But it needs only a slight reconstruction for the mind 
 to see the person through his speech, and to identify 
 him with his speech ; in which case the thought of 
 fustian is lost. And it is such an interest as this 
 that saves the latter part of Richard II. 
 
 This question of diction in Drama is the prime 
 matter of all interest, since it is words, and words 
 alone, that form the expression of Drama. And 
 when, therefore, we find such a man as Shakespeare, 
 so subtle in his choice of medium and character, and 
 so pure in his conception of both, couching the more 
 noteworthy of his characters infallibly in poetry, the 
 situation is one that demands investigation. One 
 cannot help remembering that the earlier splendour
 
 202 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 of Drama with the Greeks was also couched in poetry. 
 And one cannot help being struck by the fact that, 
 in modern days, the chief fact that hampers Ibsen in 
 his struggle with permanent fame, is just this, that 
 his characters are couched in prose. He himself felt 
 this. If The Master Builder contains any allegory of 
 his own dramatic architecture (and the suggestion 
 seems too obvious to be missed), even as the Master 
 Builder deliberately turned from the building of 
 churches to the erection of humble dwellings, so 
 Ibsen turned from poetic conception in Drama, in 
 Peer Gynt, and Brand to the prose conception of 
 The League of Touth, The Doll's House, and Ghosts : 
 and even as the Master Builder determined thence- 
 forward to put spires on to his dwellings, so Ibsen 
 determined to put poetic meanings, by the agency of 
 symbolism, on to his prose plays, with the result of 
 Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman, and When We 
 Dead Awaken. 
 
 Now, symbolism is but a mechanical conveyance 
 of the poetic idea. It is not Poetry. It is not Life. 
 In symbolism, understood as such, the thing sym- 
 bolised never happens : it is only symbolised. 
 Symbolism is generally a confession of failure on 
 the part of the artist, as though he had not enough 
 emotional power to give us actuality. In the realm of 
 pigment both the failure and strength of symbolism 
 is very clear. For the sudden passionate ardour of a 
 kiss, is Love. It needs no symbolism to convey the 
 idea of Love : it is the warm, tremendous reality : it
 
 HIS ART 203 
 
 is Love itself. But such portrayal of a kiss needs to 
 bring conviction in every line and colour of it ; it 
 must fail nowhere, at peril of our disgust and 
 contempt. Obviously, then, a single maiden, with 
 red roses wreathed in her hair (the red rose being 
 the symbol of love), is an unspeakably simpler task ; 
 and so it can easily be seen how the latter method 
 could rapidly amass a numerous school unto itself, 
 energy and strength of imagination being gifts 
 spread neither widely nor freely on the earth. 
 Nevertheless, the limitation of pictorial art is such 
 that symbolism not only has its place, it has its 
 abundant excuse. But in Drama it is different. 
 Drama so freely invites the hot pulse of Life that 
 the mechanical conveyance of ideas is at once felt to 
 be a frigid impertinence. It might be said that there 
 is no one symbolic idea ever used in Drama, or ever 
 likely to be used in Drama, that could not be better 
 conveyed by the direct presentation of actuality. 
 Would a dramatist convey the futility of Man in 
 the toils of Woman ? What need, then, to suggest 
 it by the aid of external hints when the tremendous 
 thing itself can be seen in Antony and Cleopatra. Is 
 it the external encompassing and futility of Death ? 
 What, then, of the end of King Lear ? Would we 
 know what transpires when we dead awaken ? Then, 
 if we thought aright, the fact that we stand and 
 approve the dead Desdemona, failure though she be, 
 and reject and spurn lago, were he never so success- 
 ful, would provide us the clue to this. For, since it
 
 204 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 is apparent that we do not approve and condemn 
 according to the finding of this world, it is equally 
 apparent that we are taking our stand according to 
 the finding of another world. 
 
 But it is noticeable that what is called sym- 
 bolism is nearly always imposed on a prose 
 medium. It is as though, the poetic actuality be 
 missing, the dramatist must convey it by the hints 
 and mechanism of symbolism ; as though, the 
 stronger lineaments being missing, Drama is driven 
 to the necessity of tricking itself out in the mere- 
 tricious habiliments of artifice. It is to the credit 
 of Ibsen to say (what cannot be said of other of his 
 contemporaries) that he ever avoided the weakness 
 of making his whole play dependent of symbolism. 
 He employed it, whether freely or scarcely, rather 
 in the way of adventitious aid. But he was driven 
 to it, as he himself seems to have seen, by the very 
 fact that he had earlier foresworn the poetic con- 
 ception of Drama, and scarce knew what to do in 
 face of his later discovery that it is the seemingly 
 useless cathedrals that man cleaves fast to, as the 
 perpetual poetry of his soul, rebuilding and dis- 
 carding his dwelling-houses even as he lightly 
 esteems his prose. He placed steeples on his 
 dwelling-houses ; he kept his prose conception, and 
 decked it with poetic additions : and in that act he 
 stood out in sharp contradistinction to Shakespeare, 
 the very body of whose conception was poetic, 
 and who therefore had no need of poetic adjuncts.
 
 HIS ART 205 
 
 In all this the meaning given by its adherents 
 themselves to the word symbolism had been 
 adopted. In a sense it is of course true that 
 Shakespeare is full of symbolism. The picture of 
 Lear faced and thwarted by the strength which he 
 himself has brought into the world ; Cordelia first, 
 then Goneril and Regan, defying him just as he had 
 often defied his enemies, even because they were 
 his daughters and had his blood in their veins that 
 is a fine symbolic idea. Hamlet, placed in midst of 
 a perplexity where not only was his own character his 
 undoing, but where he was chiefly futile through his 
 very virtues, not his vices that, too, is superb 
 symbolism. But, in that sense of the word 
 symbolism, they are symbolical in precisely the 
 same way as the mighty curve of a horse's neck 
 is symbolical of strength : simply because it is 
 strength. Which is quite another thing from the 
 symbolism, technically so-called, which is so little 
 identified with the thing it would express that it 
 often demands a considerable initiation into the 
 symbols it employs. Nor must the method be 
 confused with the suggestion of autobiographic 
 parallels with the action afoot. No one would con- 
 fuse David Copperfield with symbolism ; and no one 
 may therefore confuse The Tempest with symbolism. 
 Symbolism, like Poetry, is only concerned with 
 abstract ideas : only, while Symbolism seeks to 
 suggest them by mechanical contrivance, Poetry is 
 conceived and born of them.
 
 206 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Thus it is interesting to see a later age reaching 
 after the greatness of Attic and Elizabethan Drama, 
 and failing simply because it either had not the 
 courage or the strength to conceive of Drama 
 poetically. Shakespeare so conceived. He might 
 strew his plays with prose characters. Many of his 
 purely poetic characters might fall into prose moods. 
 Both were very fitting ; and both showed a very 
 shrewd insight into the nature of the poetic : but 
 the major portion of his creations thought, spoke, 
 and lived in the strength of poetry. And to say so 
 much of him is to say that he struck past the toys 
 of Time to the substance of Eternity, past im- 
 permanencies to the permanent. It only remains 
 to see how he treated the permanent. 
 
 A little reflection soon shows both why and how 
 it has come about that great Drama has ever ex- 
 pressed itself in the music of Poetry. Psychologies 
 apart, the constitution of man's expression divides 
 itself mainly into two wide divisions : intellectual 
 and emotional. The distinctions are real in spite 
 of the fact that they often intermingle ; and inter- 
 mingle not only in substance but in function also. 
 That is to say, not only is emotion often cast in the 
 form of intellectual pain and joy, and not only does 
 intellect know its own emotional throbs and excite- 
 ments, but emotion may be compact of itself and 
 yet have the option of expressing itself by its own 
 medium or by the medium of intellect. Anger, for 
 example, is the emotional expression of a man's soul.
 
 HIS ART 207 
 
 But in translating itself into action it may employ 
 one of two methods : it may choose its own 
 emotional method by means of a straight and lusty 
 blow ; or it may choose the intellectual method of 
 a stinging phrase. Similarly an intellectual con- 
 ception, such as the equality of the sexes, may 
 express itself in the forms of its own medium, in 
 argument, or in the forms of an emotional medium, 
 in strife. 
 
 But though they intermingle, as all things in Life 
 are compelled to mingle and lose their entities, the 
 distinction between the emotional and the intellectual 
 is not artificial, but very real. It is possible for 
 them each to have its function unimpinged from 
 start to finish by contact with the other : or rather, 
 to put it more accurately, since the basis of a man's 
 life is emotion rather than intellect, while it is 
 possible for emotion to move through its whole 
 ambit without contact with the intellectual, it is 
 only rarely and remotely possible for intellect to 
 have its being apart from emotion. Nearly every 
 intellectual conception first started in the emotions. 
 Also nearly every intellectual conception concludes 
 in, or produces, a desire that derives its weight and 
 power from the emotions. Man is a creature of 
 emotion. He trusts, and believes in, his emotions. 
 He may be convinced of the logical truth of an 
 intellectual conception ; he may believe himselt 
 securely housed in the faith of it ; but in the 
 moment of crisis he will always act on the instinct
 
 208 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 of his emotions, even though these rebut his 
 intellectual beliefs at every point. It is true, he 
 may not happen so to act, on rare occasions ; but 
 then he forthwith becomes the more a machine and 
 the less a man ; he stands in peril of alienating 
 himself from humanity. He may even be right in 
 so acting ; but then the general acclamation will be, 
 and his own subconscious discomfort will attest, that, 
 were he right never so much, he was yet right in a 
 wrong way. Which is another way of saying that 
 the thing of health in a man is his emotion and not 
 his intellect. 
 
 Drama, therefore, being concerned with the 
 conflict of men, whether among themselves, or 
 against Fates, Destinies, and Systems, is built out 
 of the emotions that rule men. Drama being a 
 microcosm of Life, must be true to the powers 
 that impel and sway Life. It may be possible for 
 Drama to depict the primal and ever-potent emotion 
 of some man or men insurgent against the cold 
 chains of intellectual conception. But it is not 
 possible for Drama to be built out of purely in- 
 tellectual conceptions, because then the oppositions 
 and conflicts that would arise would not be the 
 oppositions and conflicts of Life but of Argument. 
 Moreover, the intellectual conception that won in 
 the end of all would at once be suspect, because the 
 conclusion would be unavoidable that the dramatist 
 had conspired to its victory having in mind a subtle 
 didactic axe to be ground. Whereas the exaltation
 
 HIS ART 209 
 
 at the end of the greatest Drama arises from the 
 fact that, the assortment of factors being what they 
 were, the conclusion in question was inevitable. 
 Which can only arise from the free impact of the 
 emotions, even though in their expression they saw 
 fit to employ the highest intellectual refinement and 
 subtlety. 
 
 Now, the obvious speech of the emotion is 
 Poetry. It is even the habit of men when some 
 or other prose is largely suffused with emotional 
 power and colour, to speak of it as poetical 
 prose, or, maybe, the prose of a poet ; as though, 
 in the manner of Milton of old, the writer has 
 forsaken his authentic method of expression and 
 written with his left hand awhile. In such prose, 
 the greater the stress of emotion the more marked 
 are the rhythms that beat through it ; for the voice 
 of emotion cannot but speak in its true numbers 
 even though it has to force them through the 
 hindrances of an alien bondage. The long, stress- 
 ful lives of men themselves could well provide the 
 text for the fitness of this. In the great and 
 critical moments of their lives, in the moments 
 when they most realise themselves, that is to say 
 their high, dramatic moments, the moments when 
 their lives become Drama, such as puberty, first- 
 love, marriage, child-birth, death, what an over- 
 whelming mass of men take either to the writing 
 of Poetry or the reading of Poetry ! Therefore, 
 to say that Drama has expressed itself in Poetry
 
 210 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 is only to say that Drama has expressed itself in 
 its apt and natural language. And it is this that 
 explains the incontestable fact that Drama, frail 
 in dramatic power but couched in Poetry, is 
 acclaimed as more notable than Drama strong in 
 dramatic power but framed in Prose. It is the instinct 
 of men discerning the fitness between manner and 
 material. 
 
 This being so, it is more than interesting to find 
 that the historic origin of Drama is in support of its 
 identity with Poetry and the Emotions. Whether 
 or not Greek Tragedy is to be identified with the 
 Dionysian revels,* it is at least evident that it 
 largely arose thence, being an expansion of the 
 dithyramb composed for that occasion. And it is 
 singular to note how, if it sprang not from a direct 
 connection with Dionysus, it sprang at least from 
 some sort of opposition to Apollo. Now, Apollo 
 was god of the reason, even as Dionysus was god 
 of the impulses ; or, to maintain the distinction 
 given already, Apollo was god of the intellect as 
 Dionysus was god of the emotion. And the 
 emotion in this case ranged itself in conscious or 
 subconscious hostility to the intellect (let the 
 Dionysian revelry declare with what abandon !) ; 
 Poetry ranged itself against Prose, took up the 
 wild tumult of the dithyramb, expanded a plot 
 about it, and so reached forward to its amazing 
 blossom of glory in jEschylus, Sophocles, and 
 Euripides.
 
 HIS ART 211 
 
 Such an attestation of Shakespeare's truth of 
 instinct in conceiving of Drama poetically would 
 be difficult to overvalue. There is no doubt that 
 he gave not a little thought to the subject, for 
 some of his passages from prose to poetry, and 
 from poetry to prose, point with more than ordinary 
 clearness to the transitions of a thinking mind ; yet 
 in the main it was instinct rather than thought that 
 led him to it. With a mind such as his, probably 
 the thinking mind followed up the discoveries of the 
 instinct, enlarging, expanding, and experimenting on 
 them. Moreover, a further curious result of such an 
 attestation arises in the fact that whereas Shake- 
 speare's poetic characters are nearly always and 
 inevitably dramatic, his prose characters are seldom 
 so. Falstaff is not, strictly speaking, dramatic. 
 The interest in him is the interest of a jolly inter- 
 lude. When he became more dramatic, in the 
 Merry Wives, he became less FalstafF. Nor was 
 good Sir Toby ; nor was Bottom, despite his 
 histrionic ambitions; nor were the many Clowns, 
 with a wonder of exception in the Fool attendant 
 on Lear. In truth, it was Shakespeare's own 
 peculiar discovery that the deft distribution of un- 
 dramatic matter through a tense dramatic interest, 
 strengthened the movement tremendously by vary- 
 ing its rate of pace especially under the special 
 conditions of the stage for which he wrote. 
 
 At the cost of reiteration it seems necessary to 
 repeat that the question at the moment is not
 
 212 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 merely, if even mainly, one of characters into 
 whose mouths poetry or prose is put. With 
 nearly all Ben Jonson's characters we cannot but 
 feel that it is largely immaterial as to whether 
 they spoke verse or prose. The Alchemist, for 
 example, was, we feel, the Alchemist much as he 
 now is, in the initial prose that Ben told Drummond 
 he always first " wrote his verses in." King Lear, 
 Hamlet, and Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, even Beatrice 
 and Benedick, are, however, of a wholly different 
 nature. In prose they would simply not be the 
 people we know them now to be. It is a thing 
 impossible to define ; but it is a thing quite un- 
 mistakably real to the imagination. The essence 
 of the matter lies in the conception of the thinking 
 mind. Shakespeare conceived poetically or in prose, 
 as the case may be ; with the result that his charac- 
 terisation rings inevitably, in the main, in the 
 language chosen. Ben Jonson, on the other hand, 
 conceived in prose, the final verse form being a 
 transliteration from the original ; and it is possible, 
 therefore, for the imagination to put its penetrating 
 edge between the characterisation and the language 
 it is framed in. And it has been seen that ./Eschylus, 
 Sophocles, and, in a lesser degree, Euripides, con- 
 ceived as Shakespeare conceived and not as Jonson 
 conceived ; and of them one could say, as one could 
 not say of Jonson, that their power was compact of 
 the tense power and stuff of Drama. That is to 
 say, whereas in Jonson one is striking the hardness
 
 HIS ART 213 
 
 of the intellect the whole time, in Shakespeare one 
 is impressed by the full-orbed power of the emotion. 
 It is ever so, turn where one will. It might 
 perhaps be thought that there could be no higher 
 achievement of the intellect than Hamlet. Yet the 
 problem of Hamlet is not an intellectual one, but 
 one deriving from his emotions. All Hamlet's acute 
 mental stress was an appearance in the mind of the 
 storm-tost emotion below. On the one hand, there 
 was the acute grief arising from the death of his 
 father, the suspicions that his quick intuitions sprang 
 to from the strangeness of the event, the deep 
 sexual abhorrence caused by 'his mother's speedy 
 marriage with her own brother-in-law, with the 
 final enormity in the course of nature caused by his 
 father's appearance to him in ghostly shape. These 
 were in themselves sufficient so to overwhelm his emo- 
 tions, as a son and a man, that his brain reeled under 
 the effort to express, and, at the same time, restrain, 
 the urgent fury that it had to form in language, and so 
 convey into the field of Drama. But to these things 
 there were added further difficulties that assailed 
 him on the other hand. Honour is a function of 
 the emotion ; and Hamlet was instinct with honour 
 the very violence of his behaviour sometimes only 
 attesting it the more. In striking at the King 
 without a full assurance of his guilt, was to him not 
 only to strike at the legal monarch of the realm, 
 but also to seem as though he was seizing a pretext 
 to strike for the throne, he being the next in
 
 214 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 succession. Even when he knew that he could no 
 more be called to account by the people, at the 
 moment of death, he yet took up the responsibilities 
 a susceptible honour laid on him, and bade Horatio 
 "report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied." 
 Moreover, to strike at the King was to strike at 
 his mother ; and, apart from the fact that she was 
 yet his mother, he knew not whether or not she was 
 involved in his father's death. 
 
 To speak of Hamlet as being either sane or mad, 
 therefore, is much to misconceive him. If to be 
 mad means to be mentally deranged, then he cer- 
 tainly was not mad. But if to be mad mean to be 
 mentally overburdened, then he certainly was mad : 
 and the overburdening came from his overwrought 
 emotions. It is in this sense madness always comes 
 to the men of Shakespeare's mind ; and, it may be 
 said, it is in this sense that madness comes upon a 
 good many men that people the broad earth. But 
 to confuse it with insanity is a confusion indeed. 
 Insanity is an intellectual derangement ; while such 
 madness is a storm waked in the mind by a gusty 
 and perplexed passion. The former has a distinct 
 and sharp cleavage from, it is even violently opposed 
 to, a condition of health : the latter grows out of a 
 normal condition as inevitably as a mountain may 
 ascend from a valley ; and it may even be evidence 
 of a condition of health. With Hamlet it was so. 
 The poignancy of his position arose from the fact 
 that his perplexity dated from the very fineness
 
 HIS ART 215 
 
 of his susceptibilities. He falls in and out of 
 normality, like a wave in and out of the sea, accord- 
 ing to the stress of the conditions about him. The 
 contending passion of his emotions hold a poise in 
 his mind ; on the one hand, an insurgent filial 
 affection, with its attendant grief and emotion of 
 revenge ; and, on the other hand, his honour, and 
 the doubt it raises as to the necessity of a clear, 
 undeniable proof of guilt : with the result that, 
 whether his mind flame high as the result of an 
 abnormal excitement, or subside into its normal 
 tenour of passion, the balance of contention makes 
 it impossible for him to take action one way or 
 another. 
 
 For this poise to be removed, that is to say for 
 action to become possible to him, it is necessary, 
 firstly, that he should prove the King's guilt upon 
 him, or let the King prove it himself, and, secondly, 
 that he should prove his mother's innocence. With 
 these emotional restrictions removed on the one 
 side and the other, it would then be possible for 
 the passion for revenge to rush forward and trans- 
 late itself into action. And this was just what 
 transpired in the event. When the King had proved 
 his guilt, not alone to Horatio and himself, but 
 before the whole Court, it is Hamlet's thought at once 
 to discover if his mother had been an accomplice 
 in the guilt. It is this that explains his seeming 
 hesitancy when he sees the King on his knees. A 
 good deal of the misunderstanding that Shake-
 
 216 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 speare has met has arisen from the fact that his 
 critics have omitted to take into consideration 
 the fundamental factor swaying the action of his 
 characters ; and that is, the great emotional waves 
 that fill them to overflowing. There are many such 
 instances ; and this is one of them. For instance, 
 what is the emotion swaying Hamlet at the moment 
 he sees the King on his knees ? Whence has he come? 
 Whither is he going? Then the truth transpires. 
 He has just come from the scene in which the King 
 has convicted himself; and he is actually on the 
 way to discover whether his mother was an accom- 
 plice in the crime that so stinks in his nostrils. 
 That is to say, a continuous act is proceeding in his 
 soul, that act being the clearance of the double 
 obstruction between his urgent passion of revenge 
 and its fulfilment. His mind is, therefore, impetuous 
 to conclude its business ; whereas to slay the King 
 would not only impede the conclusion, perhaps 
 frustrate it for ever, but would, moreover, be to 
 take action before the moment was ripe for it. Yet 
 he is also in a tense state of excitement ; and so, in 
 in the manner of him, his abnormality flames high, 
 and he unpacks his soul with words whose very 
 hideousness and abandon of pictorial imagination 
 are a proof of the wild flames surging through him. 
 It is not that he is indecisive. It is rather that the 
 moment for decision is not yet, a further clearance 
 of obstruction being forward. u My mother stays," 
 he says : " this physic but prolongs thy sickly days."
 
 HIS ART 217 
 
 And so he goes out to shed his soul of its emotional 
 mood; intending later to return and complete the 
 business in orderly fashion. 
 
 Once in his mother's presence, however, action is 
 thrust upon him. He is not ripe for the action ; 
 and yet the unripeness is not so much. For it is 
 plain in her manner and her speech that, however 
 guilty she be of weakness and indecency, she is yet 
 innocent of complicity in her husband's murder. So 
 when he thinks the King is hidden behind the arras, 
 he does not hesitate to lunge at him with intent to 
 kill him. But it is not the King who lurks there. 
 It is Polonius, the would-be astute old schemer. 
 He had slain an innocent man. That very fact, with 
 the extraordinary excitement it produces in his sensi- 
 tive mind (an emotional stress that has the very 
 shape and colour of madness), threw him into the 
 King's power ; and so the intended action is made 
 impossible for him, firstly, because his strangeness 
 of behaviour has discredited him, and, secondly, 
 because, before this moment of discredit has passed, 
 the King has dismissed him to England. 
 
 Thus, by regarding this crucial part of the play 
 from the standpoint of Hamlet's emotion, a perfect 
 and intelligible sequence evolves itself. Viewed 
 from the intellectual standpoint it seems indeed 
 criss-cross, strange, and contradictory. But when 
 it is once seen that there is one complete emotional 
 wave at work, uttering itself in its own elliptical 
 poetry, a wave that must spend itself before other and
 
 218 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 more purposeful emotions take its place, the mental 
 sequence is clear to the understanding. And how 
 true this is may be seen from an examination of 
 Hamlet's behaviour on his return to Denmark. It is 
 no more abnormal : for the emotional stress is over. 
 Emotional obstructions, too, ot honour and filial 
 kindliness are gone ; and there is only the relentless 
 destiny to be achieved. Therefore he is quite calm 
 about it, seeking only to find the occasion. 
 
 Poetry is infinitely true to life in this very fact 
 that it springs from the emotion and not from the 
 intellect. Intellectual action always has an inward 
 coherence and compactness, while emotional action 
 has this only from without. In recalling his actions 
 to memory man is, more frequently than not, in 
 perplexity at them. And for an exceedingly simple 
 reason. When his actions were achieved his whole 
 being was tense with emotion, suffusing his intellect 
 with its own co-ordination. At the moment of 
 recollection the emotion has passed away, and the 
 alert intellect can only see the outstanding dis- 
 crepancies of conduct with consequent wonder 
 and perplexity. It is this very process that is 
 repeated in intellectual criticism of plays, such as 
 Shakespeare's, that are compact of emotion. The 
 only just rectification of this is to dismiss the 
 intellectual analysis and to recover the emotional 
 sympathy. 
 
 A strange and outstanding example of this proffers 
 itself, of even greater illumination than the case of
 
 HIS ART 219 
 
 Hamlet. A poet, whose calm mind is, perhaps, 
 little apt to enter into or understand the emotional 
 storms of Shakespeare's mind, has but recently given 
 it as an example of Shakespeare's faultiness of detail 
 that Othello should have been permitted to give 
 credit to lago's suggestion of Desdemona's infidelity, 
 when it was obvious that there had been no time for 
 her hinted intimacy with Cassio. 3 The criticism, 
 as criticism, is well placed. There certainly was no 
 time for such infidelity, much less for the grossness 
 of desire with which lago painted it. There was 
 not even any colour in circumstance for him to base 
 his charges on. All this is admitted. It is even 
 in this wise that the mass of men look back upon 
 their lives and regard some strange inexplicable 
 crisis when actions were taken that later hours fail 
 even to conceive. 
 
 What, however, were the factors in the case? 
 Here was a great Moor, strong, virile, and gross 
 withal, who for the first time in a well-lived life 
 had been brought into the closest daily contact with 
 a young beautiful girl, who was pure, and without 
 knowledge in the ways of men. He was full of 
 vigour and health, with even an exalted nobility 
 of character, yet, by the nature of him, gross and 
 passionate. She was tender, sensitive, and pure. It 
 would be invidious to elaborate the situation further. 
 It is sufficiently obvious to see that in the early 
 days of these new conditions he would necessarily 
 be sexually raw and inflamed. This was the
 
 220 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 emotional mood of him : one of the factors of 
 the situation. The other factor was a man who 
 reveals throughout the play that extraordinary 
 divination of moods and men that characterises 
 the rare men of this earth ; men whose intuition 
 is like a reflex of the mind. Moreover, he was 
 a man who, before ever Othello appeared on the 
 scene, proved to us that he delighted to paint in 
 words the filthiest and most vivid pictures. Now 
 men who have this first attribute, the mystical quality 
 of divination, are inevitably men with an irresistible 
 instinct for power; and it was this instinct for power 
 that made it almost inevitable that he should seek 
 to trip up so superb a specimen of humanity as 
 Othello. He might not see it himself; he might 
 even seek to find other explanations for his conduct; 
 but, the conjunction of circumstances being what 
 they were, he being who he was, and Othello being 
 in the mood he was, he had to assert himself and 
 claim the prey given him. It was as instinctive as 
 the swift glance and unerring accuracy of a hawk, 
 past all reason of restraint or explanation. 
 
 Thus lago never once sought to prove his case. 
 He was never once concerned with linking up a 
 circumstantial chain of evidence. The whole bent 
 and power of his mind was exercised in keeping 
 the inflammation he had produced in Othello's 
 imagination from dying away. This was the 
 task he set himself; not the proving of Desde- 
 raona's guilt If once Othello's raw emotions
 
 HIS ART 221 
 
 relapsed from their passion of excitement, then, 
 not only had the whole plot failed, but lago 
 stood in actual peril of his life the spice of 
 adventure that gave the whet of excitement to 
 his mind. Whereas, if he could but manage to 
 maintain this abnormal inflammation, then it was 
 as sure as the sequence of inevitability that 
 Othello, being the man he was, would either slay 
 himself or Desdemona. Violence of some kind 
 would be the only means of relief. 
 
 Note lago's method of procedure in that wonderful 
 third scene of the third act. When he first broaches 
 a faint hint of infidelity in Desdemona, Othello is 
 harassed and perplexed indeed, but yet master of 
 himself. He remains so till lago does the one thing 
 that in his present mood is so deadly: the one thing, 
 too (and this is the bitter irony and terror of it), 
 that lago was of all men the most fitted to give, as 
 his earlier conversations indicate so terribly. lago 
 becomes gross. He suggests that Desdemona in 
 marrying a black man gave proof of her indecent 
 desires. His own choice of words suggests gross- 
 ness. 
 
 Not to affect many proposed matches 
 Of her own clime, complexion and degree, 
 Whereto we see in all things nature tends ; 
 Foh ! one may smell, in such, a will most rank, 
 Foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural. 
 
 Thus his grossness has struck Othello's sexual raw- 
 ness. At once he bids lago go from him ; for a
 
 222 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 terrible fire has spung up in his blood, that wants, 
 not proof, not evidence, but only time to subside. 
 But it is lago's business to see that it never has time 
 to subside. 
 
 We have already seen that in Othello Shake- 
 speare largely departed from his usual framing of 
 the five-act construction. Here we have the reason 
 for it. An antithetical movement in the Fourth Act 
 would mean that lago would not be enabled to keep 
 at full heat of passion this hideous fire that he 
 has waked in Othello's mind. So the construction 
 is thrown aside in order that the issue between lago 
 and Othello should be waged to the finish. 
 
 When next the two meet Othello has largely 
 recovered himself. That is to say, his passion has 
 turned from sexuality to red anger against lago. 
 He demands proofs. Does lago give them? Not 
 a bit of it ! That is not his line of procedure. 
 He has to strike Othello's grossness again ; and 
 so, in answering his impetuous demand for proofs, 
 he says : 
 
 Would you, the supervisor, grossly gape 
 Behold her tupp'd ? 
 
 on 
 
 " Death and damnation ! O ! " cries Othello, as 
 his whole soul sickens at the picture, and his blood 
 flames higher than ever. But lago is not a man to 
 leave his renewed advantage at that. He goes on 
 coldly to describe the imagined bedding of the two 
 with the utmost detail of circumstance and description.
 
 HIS ART 223 
 
 It is all over with Othello at this. lago had described 
 Desdemona and Cassio as being " as prime as goats, 
 as hot as monkeys"; and long after, after the visit 
 of the Venetians, after his striking of Desdemona, 
 he calls out wildly " Goats and monkeys ! " 
 
 All this is not a matter for proof. Even the 
 handkerchief is not used so much as proof as a 
 suggestion of great intimacy. It is lago's terrible 
 insistence, apt and natural as it is to his mind, on 
 this theme that makes it so impossible for Othello's 
 brain to hold his emotion that he falls into a swoon. 
 And lago's conversation with Cassio while Othello 
 looks on, is only intended to inflame further this 
 sexual mood by the function of suggestion. To say 
 that there is no proof of, nor time for, infidelity, is 
 to say truly ; but it is to touch the play nowhere. 
 Drama, like life, is compact of emotion, and while 
 the intellect requires proof and plausibility, the 
 emotion only requires a sufficient actuation. And 
 the combination of circumstances provided more 
 than a sufficient actuation for Othello's character. 
 
 When Shakespeare built character he always 
 built thus save, of course, in his earlier days of 
 experimentation. He conceived the inmost of his 
 characters, and, holding truly to that, let their 
 outward consistency fall in order as it might. In 
 this, as is plain, he was true to life which is to 
 say that he was true to that larger than a merely 
 logical synthesis that life represents. Such a 
 character as, for instance, Brutus is paradoxically
 
 224 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 conceived : but the paradox is not one of perversity, 
 it is one of truth ; that is to say, it is not one of 
 restlessness, but rather one of repose. 
 
 Not that he was always thus. In fact, he grew 
 into it as he grew in imaginative power. In Love's 
 Labour's Lost there is but little emotion, and there- 
 fore but little poetry, and therefore but little drama : 
 what there is being, as clearly as one may discover, 
 due rather to the 1597 revision than the much 
 earlier original. Most of the Biron and Rosaline 
 scenes, for example, belong to the later revision, as 
 can be seen not alone from their general temper as 
 opposed to their context (which argument, though 
 fair, would seem at the moment somewhat like 
 special pleading), but also from much internal 
 evidence. One such instance is provided in the 
 Fifth Act, following on from line 827. There is, 
 to begin with, a five-line question and answer 
 between Biron and Rosaline as to the nature of 
 his punishment. Then when this is concluded, 
 and a similar business has proceeded between 
 Dumain and Katharine, and Longaville and Maria, 
 the original question and answer between Biron 
 and Rosaline is resumed, only now considerably 
 amplified with emotional matter. In which, it is 
 clear, we have the two separate layers of the 
 two separate writings. 
 
 In its original form the hard intellectuality of 
 Loves Labour's Lost is obvious. In fact, it has 
 been well called the characteristically intellectual
 
 HIS ART 225 
 
 effort of a clever young man, meaning thereby 
 that inexperience caused him rather to rely on 
 brain-function without the suffusion of emotion, than 
 on brain-function as the wise and deliberative shaping 
 of a rich and powerful emotion. So, too, in The 
 Comedy of Errors. Critics have fluctuated between 
 the several appellations of comedy and farce for 
 this play. And with justice. In the adjustment 
 and movement hither and thither of the two pairs 
 of twins the play relies on a purely intellectual 
 ingenuity, whereas when the deeper interest of 
 Adriana and Luciana, or j?Egeon and ./Emilia, in- 
 trudes on the scene, the emotion is carried far 
 nearer comedy. In the other play which was 
 probably acted at the same occasion at Court, 
 Richard III., we can see Shakespeare working away 
 from this artificiality in a truly characteristic way. 
 To break the bonds that tie him in this his first 
 really individual effort, he relies on a sheer excess 
 of strength in his chosen monarch. He does not 
 wholly succeed ; though he does indeed convey a 
 strong impression of emotional power in Richard's 
 very fury of intellectual strength. But he does so 
 far succeed that Midsummer Night's Dream is 
 coloured with emotion. Indeed, he succeeds in 
 breaking his bonds only too well, for in Richard II 
 the emotion is somewhat over-maudlin to be wise. 
 But in King John, chiefly in the last two acts, 
 strength has reasserted itself; and in Romeo and 
 Juliet it stands out in such full power and splendour
 
 226 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 that there can no more be any fear for the future of 
 this dramatist, the more particularly when it is seen 
 that he has also acquired the subtlety of letting 
 his prose characters have their say in their native 
 tongue. 
 
 He could not yet, however, permit his conceptions 
 to have their free and unfettered sway. He had 
 still to discipline his characters to convention, for 
 he had elected to frame them in the ways of 
 comedy. Orlando and Rosalind could not love like 
 Romeo and Juliet, for there was the gentle divinity 
 of pastoral comedy over their heads to subdue them 
 to itself. Nor could Orsino and Viola, Sebastian 
 and Olivia, prove too resolute a quartet, for the 
 divinity of the comedy of manners hung overhead 
 with main intent to expose so fatuous an egoist as 
 Malvolio. But the mood could not last long. With 
 Hero a stronger note already comes in, curbed and 
 stifled though it be on one hand by the immortal 
 Dogberry and on the other hand by Beatrice and 
 Benedick. In his next play, All's Well that Ends 
 Well, the volume of emotion has grown so insurgent 
 in Helena that it makes mockery of the intellectual 
 artifice of Comedy, ruining the play, and holding 
 itself up to more than the possibility of misrepre- 
 sentation. It is for this reason, looking at the play 
 from one standpoint, that Coleridge could speak of 
 Helena as Shakespeare's "loveliest character," and 
 later, regarding the play from another standpoint, 
 declare that " it must be confessed that her character
 
 HIS ART 227 
 
 is not very delicate, and it required all Shakespeare's 
 consummate skill to interest us for her." The truth 
 is that what happened to Helena might very easily 
 have happened to Hero in Much Ado about Nothing. 
 In the earlier play the artificial divinity of comedy 
 was sufficient to subdue Hero, whereas in the latter 
 play it was not sufficient to subdue Helena. The 
 emotional strength of Shakespeare's characters was 
 rising in power, and was throwing down a very 
 severe challenge to the god of Comedy. 
 
 In Comedy the destiny of the characters lies 
 outside of themselves, in an intellectual conception 
 called the Comic Spirit. However powerfully they 
 may be actuated by emotional power, their characters 
 must nevertheless be subdued to the requirements 
 of the divinity they are called upon to serve. In 
 Tragedy, on the other hand, the destiny lies in the 
 characters themselves ; or, rather, in the emotional 
 concatenation that their coming together has awaked. 
 Looked at thus, it is easy to see that a strong emo- 
 tional concatenation might very easily, in fact would 
 most indisputably, pluck the destiny away from an 
 artificial conception, and carry it forward itself. 
 And this is exactly what happens. Hero is as much 
 as Comedy may subdue. Helena is somewhat too 
 much. Whereas Isabel in the next comedy that 
 follows, Measure for Measure, is altogether too 
 much. In feet the day of emotional freedom had 
 already dawned, for Hamlet had in actual sequence 
 of writing already preceded Measure for Measure.
 
 228 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 In the latter play the artifice of Comedy raised its 
 brow in a final effort to reassert its sway. Futilely, 
 however. When in his last of days Shakespeare 
 returned to what seemed like Comedy, in Winter's 
 Tale, Cyjnbeline, and The Tempest, it was yet not 
 Comedy he returned to. It was rather Tragedy, in 
 the end of which Fortune graciously interposed, and, 
 without too undue a disturbance of the conditions 
 the characters themselves has brought into being, 
 adjusted a gentle conclusion to all things. 
 
 In the meantime, however, right on from Hamlet 
 to Coriolanus, there was neither a Deity of artifice 
 to serve, nor the possibility to be entertained of the 
 intrusion of a gentle Fortune. In its stark strength, 
 in this his height of achievement, Destiny was neither 
 above nor beyond, but with the characters. Emotion 
 had asserted itself in full power ; and therefore, in 
 the truth of the ancient saying, "Character was 
 Destiny." 
 
 Yet the elaboration of this belongs rather to a 
 consideration of what may be called Shakespeare's 
 Thought, which lies behind his Art even as his Art 
 lay behind his Craft.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 HIS THOUGHT 
 
 WHATEVER its origin in history may be, whether it 
 sprang from the Dionysian revelry, or whether it 
 sprang from the ancient instinctive desire for 
 ancestor worship, or whether, as is more likely, 
 the latter was its mental origin and the former its 
 effective origin, it nevertheless remains a fact that 
 Tragedy, and particularly Shakespearian Tragedy, 
 is a supreme and strange paradox. The persistent 
 instinct of man regards it as the highest of all Art, 
 despite the fact that, seemingly, Beauty, the first in- 
 stinct and last goal of Art, is continually frustrated 
 in it. It regards it, too, as the highest of morality, 
 in spite of the fact that Righteousness, even as 
 Loveliness, is ever subdued, or baffled, by malice or 
 distortion. The paradox it presents may well be 
 seen when it is contrasted with Melodrama, in the 
 present meaning of that word. In Tragedy, Othello 
 and Desdemona die, while lago lives ; if Edmund 
 dies, Lear and Cordelia die too, while Goneril 
 and Regan live ; Hamlet dies, to be succeeded 
 by a man in whom our interest is of the 
 slightest ; and in each of them, what may be called 
 the moral problem seems to remain as unsolved 
 as at the outset of the play. In Melodrama, the 
 
 229
 
 230 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 hero triumphs gloriously, while the villain meets 
 his more than well-merited judgment. Moreover, 
 in Melodrama the villain is as much of vice compact 
 as the hero is of virtue compact, and thus there 
 is no possibility of moral indecision. In Tragedy, 
 however, the hero may be a Macbeth, who, for all 
 his deeds, compels our sympathy, and demands our 
 unity of interest with him. In a word, in Melodrama 
 the moral issue is clear, whereas in Tragedy it 
 seems perplexed and inexplicable : in Melodrama, 
 right is ever triumphant, while wrong is ever punished, 
 and the conclusion is therefore such as our moral 
 instincts would desire, whereas in Tragedy right is ever 
 conquered by an evil that may even happen to win 
 gloriously. And yet Melodrama is held to be the 
 lowest of Art and the lowest of Morality, whereas 
 Tragedy cries out undeniably as the highest of Art 
 and the loftiest of Morality. The first does not 
 impress us, and may even move us to expressive 
 mirth, whereas the latter ever purges and exalts and 
 refines our truest emotions. And yet the first gives 
 us a clear and patent morality, whereas the latter 
 baffles us at every point. 
 
 It is in Shakespeare's main tragic period that this 
 is best seen: that is to say, as already stated, when 
 his creations swelled to such strength of emotion 
 that they firmly took their Destiny out of the hands 
 of the artificially created Divinity that rules Comedy, 
 to work it out themselves. For reasons shortly 
 to be examined, Romeo and Juliet, his only other
 
 HIS THOUGHT 231 
 
 tragedy, has nothing of the baffling perplexity that 
 dominates all the plays from Julius Ctesar up to, 
 and including, Coriolanus though the latter play has 
 already a hint of the settlement that is to ensue and 
 manifest itself in Shakespeare's concluding period 
 of thought, in Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and The 
 Tempest. It is not possible to say of Romeo and 
 Juliet, as one must inevitably say of the later plays, 
 that the tragedy is not so much in the disastrous end 
 as in the portentous conjunction of characters. In 
 Romeo and Juliet the catastrophe might have been 
 avoided by a variety of possible methods ; it would 
 even never have arrived save for an extraordinary 
 sequence of accidents and coincidents. Therefore it 
 is not so much baffling as merely calamitous. The 
 sorrow of a calamity is direct and sudden ; it may 
 wound the whole being, but its nature is not such 
 that the soul is driven into an examination of the 
 profound perplexities of Life, Death, and Destiny. 
 If a soul does so, it is because that soul is given to 
 doing so. A calamity is as sharp as a blow ; but it 
 does not haunt the mind like a situation. Now, the 
 later tragedies are not calamities ; they are situations. 
 The tragedy there is not so much in the end of all, 
 as in the terrible conjunction of characters at the 
 beginning and all through the play. 
 
 It is this that harasses the thought. It would do 
 so even if the conjunction were such that some or 
 other vice was awaked in what may be called pivotal 
 character of the situation, so fetching a house of ruin
 
 232 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 about his ears. It is something of this that creates 
 the tragedy of Macbeth. But when it happens, as 
 repeatedly it does happen, that the house of ruin 
 owes its downfall, not to an active vice but to an 
 active virtue, then the perplexity is supreme. Some- 
 thing of this is to be discovered in Hamlet. If the 
 habitual reading of this play be accepted, that 
 Hamlet was ruined by a fateful and inherent lack 
 of decision in his character, the tragedy is not the 
 less terrible. But there is another reading of the 
 play. Those who insist on the customary reading 
 forget that in all circumstances other than that of 
 his revenge he has decision enough and to spare. 
 There is no lack of decision when the Ghost appears 
 to him. There is no lack of mental decision in his 
 handling of Polonius, or Rosencrantz and Guilden- 
 stern. There is no lack of decision either in the 
 matter of the King's letter, or when the ship that 
 was to convey him to his death had to " put on a 
 compelled valour " with the " pirate of very warlike 
 appointment." Above all, there is no indecision in 
 his deportment or procedure when safely back in 
 Denmark. He knows then what he has to do; and, 
 with the melancholy characteristic of him, he is firmly 
 resolved to complete it. From this it appears that 
 what seems like indecision in the early portion of the 
 play, is really the honourable desire not to let his 
 mere hatred of the King prick him into a capital 
 action against an innocent man, to prove that the 
 apparition of his father was no heated fantasy,
 
 HIS THOUGHT 233 
 
 and, above all, not to take action till he was 
 assured that his action would not involve his mother. 
 In other words, what ruined him was not a weakness, 
 but rather a thing of strength, not a vicious inde- 
 cision but an honourable sensitiveness. And this 
 makes Tragedy terrible and bewildering. 
 
 The tragic quality of the situation may be dis- 
 covered by placing a man like Othello in Hamlet's 
 position. Here was a man of camps rather than of 
 courts and universities. The subtler virtues have 
 long since been whelmed in him by the necessity for 
 bold decisive acts. He could well say of himself 
 that "to be once in doubt is once to be resolved," 
 for his resolute and various way of life had demanded 
 such an attitude of him at peril of very existence. 
 In the issue, the finer things of thought and tender- 
 ness had gone from him. The man who could be 
 raised to such a passion that to slay his newly-wed 
 wife was the only way of relief for him, was little 
 likely to have held his hand at shaming his mother 
 or weighing the chances of guilt when his instinct 
 of wrong done summoned his hatred against a man. 
 Knowing the people of Denmark behind him, one 
 swift blow furiously struck would have ended the 
 matter for him. Even so would King Lear, too, 
 have dealt with the situation. Or imagine Hamlet 
 in Othello's position ! His sensitive instinct would 
 at once have recoiled from a man of lago's cast of 
 thought, and so the Ancient would forthwith have 
 stood revealed for what he was. Furthermore, that
 
 234 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 sensitive instinct would never have doubted a man 
 like Cassio, to say nothing of Desdemona. To say 
 that Hamlet would have unravelled and exposed lago's 
 intrigue is to say far too much. The truth is that, 
 with the leading character in each play transposed, 
 the several situations would never have arisen. Long 
 before the elder Hamlet has even thought of revisit- 
 ing the glimpses of the moon, his brother would 
 have gone to meet him in the shades. And Hamlet 
 would even have preferred a perfumed Osric, though 
 he were civet cat twice over, to a man of lago's 
 outlook on life. 
 
 It is impossible to believe that a man could have 
 merely put out a continuous bundle of cross purposes 
 and correspondences such as this without any sup- 
 porting thought in them all, something that ran 
 through them with a linking unity. And this is 
 made all the more impossible of belief when, amid 
 all this seeming rage of cross purposes, one character 
 here is heard crying out in startled wonder : 
 
 Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well 
 When our deep plots do pall ; and that should teach us 
 There's a Divinity that shapes our ends, 
 Rough-hew them how we will ; 
 
 or when another can be heard declaring stoically, 
 " The wheel has come full circle : I am here " ; or 
 when some further one, in a vivid light of new 
 illumination on the ways of men as compared with 
 the way of God, can be heard crying out on those 
 that " play such fantastic tricks before high Heaven
 
 HIS THOUGHT 235 
 
 as make the angels weep." The man who wrote 
 such tragedies, strewing them with such vivid per- 
 ceptions of life and after-life that they have become 
 texts for philosophers and thinkers, must needs have 
 been a man who had thought long and deep, and 
 whose thoughts must have been occupied with 
 matters of far more moment and permanence than the 
 pleasure of an Elizabethan audience, important 
 though that might have been. It is not likely that 
 he crushed his thinking into a co-ordinate scheme. It 
 is certain that he did not do so in his dramatic prac- 
 tice : which is as much as to say that he did not do 
 so in his private opinions. One way or another this 
 is so. If it be said that it is quite possible for a man 
 to cleave fast mentally to certain opinions, and yet 
 pourtray wholly different matters in his dramatic 
 practice, then the contrary principle comes into 
 operation : that it is impossible for a man to pass his 
 being through the severe mental discipline of such 
 a creation as the tragedy of King Lear without it 
 leaving an effect upon his private opinions. An 
 identity of dramatic and personal thought would soon 
 be achieved by this inverse method, after the writing 
 of several forceful plays, even if it were not already in 
 existence. 
 
 Yet, though this thought may not have been 
 framed in an arbitrary co-ordination, it nevertheless 
 is by no means devoid of system. It has that sure 
 sign of an organic constitution : its growth can be 
 traced. It is possible to discover an orderly evolution
 
 236 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 of thought, a systematic progression of ideas, passing 
 up from the immaturity, the straightforward crudity, 
 of the early plays, through an increasing involution 
 to a perfection of subtlety in his fullness of intel- 
 lectual power, and then a gradual coming of roundness 
 to the parts, till the whole thought seems burdened 
 with such a feeling of ripeness that the reader, even 
 before he learns that the Magician has decided to 
 bury his wand, has it borne inevitably upon his 
 thought that there is coming an end to things. And 
 yet, through it all, there can be seen a single domin- 
 ating thought from his first of plays even to his last, 
 however it may have developed in subtlety by reason 
 of the journey it has had to pass through. 
 
 For example, it has been seen that the earliest 
 play of his that can definitely be traced is Henry VI. , 
 which Edward Alleyn produced at the Rose in 
 Southwark early in 1592. That he mainly served a 
 patriotic purpose in it is obvious both from the con- 
 duct of the historical matter in it, and from its recep- 
 tion with the people, to which Nash bears testimony. 
 It was this same patriotic purpose, probably, that led 
 to the continuation of the historical series. It was 
 but little likely that a rising dramatist would, even 
 if he could, afford to neglect the fact that he had 
 struck on a dramatic vein of richest ore ; and when, 
 in addition to this probability, it is seen that he did 
 indeed actually prosecute the series that he had 
 begun, and that he concluded it with a play such as 
 Henry V., it is clear that the mundane motive was not
 
 HIS THOUGHT 237 
 
 lacking. And in Richard //., where the weakness of 
 the King might seem to make such an appeal a matter 
 of doubt, there is given to Gaunt some lines touching 
 " this little isle, this England," that cannot have 
 failed to have stirred the blood of yard and room 
 alike. 
 
 But that this was not wholly dictated by patriotic 
 purposes is equally clear from his choice of material. 
 Indeed, as one traces the actual line of subjects 
 chosen, it is at times almost possible to see 
 his development of idea. The continuation of the 
 three parts of Henry VI. into Richard III. requires no 
 explanation, the latter play being virtually a continu- 
 ation of the one interest, with its proper conclusion 
 at the threshold of Tudor ascendancy. Yet Shake- 
 speare goes out of his way to demonstrate that these 
 four plays are linked together in his mind by more 
 than a merely historical sequence. Through them 
 all, in sheer defiance of historical truth, Margaret 
 flits to and fro like a figure of doom. As she passes 
 in and out she is more than merely Margaret, Queen 
 to the sixth Henry, King of England. She is a 
 symbol in Shakespeare's hands, indicating that 
 through all those constant fluctuations of interest 
 there is a Destiny that has a goal to achieve. Kings 
 may come and kings may go, York and Lancaster 
 may vary the interest of mundane affairs by a see-saw 
 that advances the real sequence in no way, but 
 Margaret remains as proof of a deeper and more 
 real progression. The waves of the sea only rise and
 
 238 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 fall, they do not progress : it is the water that pro- 
 gresses through them, utilising them. And so it is 
 here, Margaret being the symbol of that progression. 
 It is impossible to read the third scene of the First 
 Act of Richard III. without feeling that this thought 
 was forcibly present in Shakespeare's mind. He was 
 not unaware, of course, that after the battle of Tewkes- 
 bury she was imprisoned in the Tower till she was 
 ransomed by her father, in 1475, when she removed 
 to France to live with him till her death. He knew 
 that her intrusion to Richard's altercation with 
 Elizabeth was impossible ; but he had need of her ; 
 and so she comes in, not as a woman, but as a symbol 
 of an implacable Destiny. Thus her curses are not 
 the curses merely of an angry woman, they are the 
 pronouncements, as she says herself, of a prophetess ; 
 and as she passes out we are not surprised to hear the 
 cool diplomat, Hastings, say, "My hair doth stand 
 on end to hear her curses," for somewhat of the 
 same thing is in our own thought. Her own phrase 
 for the situation is given in that famous fourth scene 
 of the fourth act. "Right for right," says she; and 
 later : 
 
 I had an Edward, till a Richard kilFd him ; 
 I had a Harry, till a Richard kill'd him : 
 Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard kill'd him ; 
 Thou hadst a Richard, till a Richard kill'd him. 
 
 And as the three women sit and lament together, 
 the whole scene is an allegory. We can see very 
 evidently Shakespeare's thinking on the subj ect ; and
 
 HIS THOUGHT 239 
 
 we know that in all the resounding history he is 
 seeing not men as men only, but men as pawns 
 moved hither and thither by fates and destinies. 
 Already we can hear the unripe dramatist hinting 
 the Divinity that shapes men's ends, even though the 
 men in question, in their effort to rough-hew them 
 as they would, stay not at violent resolves, but 
 actually take in hand sword and halbert, and press 
 matters to the issue of bloody battles. 
 
 In this Shakespeare's thought (and such gropings 
 are clearly the result of conscious thinking) is neither 
 complex nor subtle ; it is even a little crude and 
 obvious, though it wears the semblance of subtlety 
 from the fact that it has to be worked into the 
 history by way of a manner of allegory. Yet it is 
 sufficient to indicate that something in his subject 
 had struck a secret affinity in him, and that he was 
 awake and alert for an interest deeper than that of 
 the mere historical pageant. There were two things 
 in this that had caught his attention : one was the 
 destiny that set about to achieve its own end in 
 calm contempt of, or even by the use of, the little 
 querulous men who struck for themselves and them- 
 selves only ; and the other was the figure of Mar- 
 garet that moved hither and thither, in defiance of 
 historical likelihood, as a kind of symbol of that 
 destiny. Now criticism is divided in its voice as to 
 which was the next play in his historical series that 
 Shakespeare put his hand to. Some stand forward 
 for Richard II. , and some for King John. The
 
 240 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 masterly characterisation of King John in the con- 
 cluding two acts of the play bearing his name, 
 under the influence of an avenging conscience, as 
 contrasted with the altogether more straightforward 
 characterisation of Richard II., serves to lead to the 
 conviction that Richard II. preceded King John. In 
 the former play the characterisation is subtler than 
 that of Richard III., but it has not the complexity 
 of the last two acts of King John (the first three acts 
 being no more than a varied chronicle), which there- 
 fore leans forward in the direction of the yet distant 
 Macbeth. But whichever of the two be taken, its 
 derivation from Henry VI. and Richard III. may be 
 seen without difficulty. 
 
 If it be King John, then Constance is seen at once 
 in direct relation with Margaret. Mothers both of 
 them, whose sons have had their lineal rights to 
 kingship baffled, with consequent imprisonment and 
 violence to their bodies, their lives are spent in 
 curses on the several usurpers that have something 
 dark and prophetic about them. That is to say, 
 they both are clothed in the likeness of fate, though 
 one is wild and dark like a fork of lightning, as 
 Margaret, or furious and implacable like a tropic 
 sun, as Constance. Both of them, in temporal 
 power, are helpless; but both of them shine with 
 victory in the end, even though they themselves are 
 not in presence to wear the laurels of victory, because 
 they both have been robed in the priestly vestments 
 of real authority by that Destiny that never swerves
 
 HIS THOUGHT 241 
 
 in the goal it strikes forward to achieve. Of what 
 sort that Destiny is may be gathered from the later 
 development of this central thought of Shakespeare's ; 
 but to see that it sprang, in these early plays of his 
 dramatic range, from the womb of mother love, is to 
 see that it is moral, not in the untender, colourless 
 meaning of a much abused word, but in the full 
 lustrous beauty of its inward expression. The impulse 
 is seen as humane, not mechanical; generous and 
 splendid, not utilitarian. It is vital to have this 
 said : for it is necessary to see that in Shakespeare 
 morality was an impulse, not a system, and more a 
 passion than a fascination. 
 
 This is seen if Richard II. be turned to. Even as 
 King John dated from one of the two things that 
 had caught Shakespeare's attention in Henry VI. 
 and Richard ///., so Richard II. dates from the other. 
 King John had dated from the symbolic figure of 
 Margaret ; Richard II. dates from the Destiny that 
 Margaret stood for. In the Henry VI. sequence 
 and Richard III., Shakespeare had seen Red Rose 
 and White Rose rise and fall like alternate puppets, 
 while a single wave of Destiny flowed on through 
 it all to a conclusion seemingly preordained; and 
 therefore, looking before and after, he searches 
 back to see whence these strange things began. He 
 found it in a figure where weakness was gifted with 
 the power of charm. It is not the present business 
 at all to discover if Shakespeare's interpretation of 
 Richard's character accords with the relation of
 
 242 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 history though in this Shakespeare has his right 
 to his interpretation as we to our judgment. Even 
 if his characterisation seemed wholly wrong it 
 would demand careful examination, for it is seen 
 to be the base of every one of his historical dramas 
 save King John. And as we examine it we see that 
 its principle of interest is one that he seems as yet 
 unconscious of, but which is to develop into a factor 
 of considerable importance in his later work : for 
 Richard, a figure not without his graces, is placed in 
 a position in which those graces appear as vices, and 
 actually develop into pronounced vices. As king, 
 Richard is unlovely enough; maudlin even, though 
 that is graced over by the pseudo-poetry in which 
 it seeks to express itself: but as a private citizen he 
 rises often to the pathos, and even awhile to a manner 
 of true dignity. 
 
 He was wholly unfitted for power. That is 
 to say, he was misplaced ; and thence arose a coil 
 that it became Shakespeare's business to follow out 
 to the end that he had already depicted on Bosworth 
 Field. In contradistinction to Richard, Henry of 
 Bolingbroke arose ; a man eminently fitted to com- 
 mand. In truth, he was so well fitted to his place 
 that there was no dramatic interest at all in him 
 once he had obtained the throne he struck for. 
 Therefore when he was taken up in the play in 
 two parts bearing his name, Hotspur had to be 
 developed to sustain the interest, and the good fat 
 knight, Sir John FalstafF, had to drink sack, and
 
 HIS THOUGHT 243 
 
 hold Reality at bay with the nimble spirit proper to 
 him, or waked by that beverage of his choice. But 
 even here Shakespeare cannot avoid the deeper 
 interest sprung in him. Who can help but think 
 of the Destiny working through men, when we hear 
 this man, who through sheer fitness for the place he 
 claimed, had snatched it for his right, exclaim : 
 
 Can'st thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose 
 To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude ; 
 And in the calmest and most stillest night, 
 With all appliances and means to boot, 
 Deny it to a king ? Thou, happy lowly clown ! 
 Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ! 
 
 Throughout the whole of the scene that this in- 
 troduces, it is easy to see Shakespeare looking 
 beyond men, and their qualities and ambitions, and 
 exclaiming in the words he puts into Henry's 
 mouth : 
 
 O God ! that one might read the book of fate, 
 
 And see the revolution of the times 
 
 Make mountains level, and the continent, 
 
 Weary of solid firmness, melt itself 
 
 Into the sea ! and, other times, to see 
 
 The beachy girdle of the ocean 
 
 Too wide for Neptune's lips ; how chances mock, 
 
 And changes fill the cup of alteration 
 
 With divers liquors ! 
 
 It was in some such words as these that Prospero 
 afterwards spoke, in that rich cadence of his that has 
 rung itself to perpetual memory ; and in one, as in the
 
 244 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 other passage, it is possible to discover the obtrusion 
 of Shakespeare's personal preoccupation with the main 
 problem of his thought. Mutation and permutation 
 were all about him, in men and in things ; and he 
 grappled with it ever in the effort to see the drift 
 of it, and to embrace it in a synthesis that should give 
 it meaning. In a sense, and more actively than is 
 frequently thought, all his Drama was an attempt 
 to " read the book of fate." 
 
 It is impossible to turn aside to Falstaff, who 
 roves this play with broad philosophy. Yet his 
 attitude to life, as the reverse reading of the 
 shield, has an importance too obvious to be missed. 
 Destiny may drive its chariot through the ways of 
 men to its allotted goal, but the ways of men are 
 not less important in themselves because they seem 
 to serve as means to further ends. As will be seen 
 more clearly later, it was just this constitutional 
 balance of Shakespeare's mind that makes his 
 thinking carry so far. Fate, as the expression of 
 the prescient will of God, preoccupied him; he 
 " took upon him the mystery of things " ; yet if 
 he became thereby one of "God's spies," his spying 
 was not in the council-chamber of the Most High, 
 nor did he pretend to unravel the secrets of the 
 Almighty. When he spied, he spied on earth. 
 He only took reckoning of the counsels when they 
 worked themselves out in the ways of men. That 
 is to say, his preoccupation never became an ob- 
 session ; for as he looked upon earth to see the
 
 HIS THOUGHT 245 
 
 " mystery of things " work its way out through the 
 aspirations of men, it was quite possible that some 
 man should usurp his attention. It was even possible 
 that such a man might usurp his attention by a buxom 
 endeavour to hold that fate, with all the reality it 
 brought into life, at bay. And such a man was 
 Falstaff. He might be so close to the fate, the 
 Destiny, that wrought its end unperturbedly, that 
 his very companion, Prince Hal, was marked out 
 as the prime pivot of its movement. But that 
 did not disturb him. His whole wit was employed 
 in the effort to keep reality at bay, Destiny or no 
 Destiny ; and he cracked his laughter at the hounds 
 of wit with such unerring deftness that he made the 
 steeds of the Car of Fate to seem like antics of folly 
 by contrast. He was the balance of earth against 
 the Destiny of Heaven ; and it was peculiarly 
 characteristic of Shakespeare that when Prince 
 Hal was required to step into the higher chariot 
 and turn away from his good abdominal companion 
 on the earth below, it is with Falstaff that our 
 sympathy remains, not with Henry, for all that 
 Shakespeare was occupied tracing out the higher 
 Destiny. 
 
 If in Henry IV. Shakespeare was hard put-to to 
 maintain the interest, what can be said of such a 
 subject as Henry V. ? Hotspur has gone, Falstaff 
 is dying, and though Pistol remains, he is not, like 
 Falstaff, a centre of humour, but only a target for 
 humour. But there is one obvious method of
 
 246 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 attaining interest, a method that the subject invites, 
 if not demands and that is Patriotism. But what 
 is this Patriotism? What bearing has it on Shake- 
 speare's tracing out of the Destiny that was evoking 
 itself out of these historic portents ? It is very unde- 
 sirable to place thoughts in Shakespeare's mind, and 
 then extract them thence as his. Yet it cannot be 
 forgotten that Shakespeare had already completed 
 the step in history succeeding to this. He has 
 already shown us the frail weakly thing that lost 
 all the glory and territory won in France, won by 
 his warlike father. There is no doubt that the 
 patriotic appeal to the audience was both genuine 
 and effective. It is impossible to think of the charac- 
 terisation of King Henry in this play bearing his 
 name, and forget that Shakespeare had his audience 
 very definitely in mind. Yet, on the other hand, 
 who that has read the earlier plays of Henry VI. 
 and Richard 11L can miss the bitter irony of the 
 vigorous patriotism of Henry V. ? Is it likely that 
 Shakespeare failed to see it ; or that, seeing it, he 
 failed to emphasise it? If this be thought, then 
 what shall be said of the climax of Henry V.'s rolling 
 patriotism and triumphant procession of victory? 
 Let it be remembered the character Shakespeare 
 had already given the sixth Henry, and then hear the 
 fifth Henry woo Catherine thus : " shall not thou and 
 I, between Saint Denis and Saint George, compound 
 a boy, half French, half English, that shall go to 
 Constantinople and take the Turk by the beard?
 
 HIS THOUGHT 247 
 
 Shall we not ? What say'st thou, my fair flower-de- 
 luce ? " Patriotism or not patriotism, those words are 
 almost sardonic in their ringing confidence ; and thus 
 again we see into Shakespeare's mind ; and, in this the 
 least likely of places, discover him again thinking past 
 men to God. Indeed, his process of work has been 
 such, the end of the sequence having come at the 
 outset of his labour, that now, at the crest of 
 culminating movement, there is almost something 
 godlike in these hints of prescience, ironic though they 
 be, and given amidst all the flavour of enthusiasm. 
 
 Yet while this historic sequence was in process of 
 achievement Shakespeare had not been idle in other 
 fields. Tentative endeavours of various sorts had 
 flowed from his pen, in farce, comedy, and tragedy ; 
 and in the majority of them it would be clearly 
 foolish to look either for the evidences of direct 
 thinking (such as some swift perception expressing 
 itself in a memorable phrase), or that instinctive 
 framework of Drama which is the most delicate 
 evidence of a subconscious progression of thought. 
 For example, in the Comedy of Errors it would be 
 manifestly out of the way to desire constructive 
 thought ; though even there, so ripe already is his 
 mental outlook, more than once or twice the thought 
 overburdens the structure of the play. In Love's 
 Labour's Lost his thinking is hard and unavoidable : 
 the young man conscious of ability (as ability must 
 always be conscious of itself), and consequently more 
 than a little contemptuous of mere academic learning,
 
 248 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 is seen declaring his patent opinion that Life and 
 Love are the grand Tutors, not aloof Academies and 
 Booklore. While it is true that this has not in 
 itself that cosmic suggestion we call moral thinking, 
 it has, nevertheless, not a little influence in that 
 direction. For if it be true that men are not all 
 that comprise Life, but that there are Fates and 
 Destinies, expressions of a High God's will and 
 purpose, inextricably bound up with it, then Life 
 has come to wear a new meaning. Academies, most 
 surely in such a case, can never give us what vivid 
 living and eager thinking can give us, for in Life we 
 are contending with, and being moulded by, the 
 powers that urge the cosmic Destiny. This, to be 
 sure, is not expressed by Shakespeare ; yet it is 
 more than interesting to note how complementary 
 his statement of belief in Love's Labour's Lost is 
 with the speculative thinking in his historic 
 sequence. 
 
 It is this speculation, these cosmic suggestions of 
 thought, and the subconscious, or half-conscious, 
 framework of Drama that he phrased it in, with the 
 instinct of Art, that has the deeper interest at the 
 moment. Therefore such a play as Two Gentlemen 
 of Verona is at once withdrawn from attention. And 
 in similar manner it would seem at first thought that 
 the Midsummer Nighfs Dream equally well would 
 be withdrawn from attention ; but here a somewhat 
 subtle connection between that play and Romeo and 
 Juliet emerges to light, throwing a new significance
 
 HIS THOUGHT 249 
 
 into each play a connection whose value is the 
 better seen when it is remembered that both plays 
 belonged to the same period of workmanship. 
 
 It has already been noted that the tragic interest 
 of Romeo and Juliet differs totally in conception from 
 that of the tragedies Shakespeare wrote in the 
 splendour of his powers. In Romeo and Juliet the 
 tragedy is that of an accident, or of a series of 
 accidents : in the later tragedies it is that of in- 
 evitability. In the later tragedies, too, it seems as 
 though the whole of the action suggests a conclusion 
 that is not to be found in the play, lying beyond. 
 But Romeo and Juliet is self-contained. The general 
 release from the tragic climax, inevitable to Shake- 
 speare, is, in the later plays, a general gathering 
 together of the tissue that hints an unseen solution 
 to all the evil and fury that has been abroad ; but 
 in Romeo and Juliet the solution is clear-set and un- 
 equivocally expressed in the amity between the rival 
 houses, with even the promise of a pledge in gold 
 for an eternal symbol of its perfection. A difference 
 so radical as this can only arise from a difference of 
 conception ; and that is as much as to say that 
 Shakespeare in his later plays had progressed beyond 
 the axioms of thought that had stood symbolical of 
 his mental progress in his earlier days. Or to put it 
 otherwise : the problem of Hamlet is conterminous 
 with that of King Lear, while the problem of Romeo 
 and Juliet is conterminous with that of Midsummer 
 Nighfs Dream, assuming the Dream to have its problem.
 
 250 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 What, then, is the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet ; 
 and what is the element in it that relates it to a play 
 that seems so remote from it as the Dream? The 
 loves of the two immortal lovers striking athwart the 
 hereditary hates of their respective families is a tale 
 that needs no relation ; yet a little reflection shows 
 that the tragedy that befell them only remotely arose 
 from the larger hate in which their love was framed. 
 It was the killing of Tybalt (or, deeper still, the 
 killing of Mercutio, a man who could give vent to 
 an impartial " plague o' both your houses ") that led 
 to Romeo's banishment ; and this, in circuitous 
 fashion, led to his death. We never know what 
 would have chanced if Romeo had not been banished, 
 and the lovers had been able to face the enmity 
 of the Montagues and Capulets with the accom- 
 plished fact of their marriage. One may be 
 pardoned the belief that it was thus Shakespeare 
 would have wrought the tragedy in his later 
 strength. But, as it is, it is not the strength of 
 their mutual love being overcome by the strength 
 of the mutual hate opposing them, that makes the 
 tragedy now; it is rather the uncanny malignity 
 of side issues. It was malignity, not inevitability, 
 that caused so gay a wit as Mercutio to take up the 
 fight Romeo had refused ; it was very malignity that 
 caused Tybalt to return back along that very road 
 " alive, in triumph ! and Mercutio slain," while 
 Romeo lamented his friend. It was no more than 
 a kind of malign chance that thus caused Romeo to
 
 HIS THOUGHT 251 
 
 be banished on the very eve of his wedding with 
 the rapid pressure of Paris' suit immediately he had 
 gone. 
 
 But this was not all. It is possible to see no more 
 than luckless accidents in these things. But who 
 that has read the closing act the fact that 
 Balthazar should have so narrowly outsped Friar 
 Laurence's message, the fact that Friar Laurence's 
 message should have so closely missed Romeo, the 
 fact that Juliet's potion should have lapsed its power 
 immediately after instead of immediately before 
 Romeo's death, and all of these not only in the mere 
 happening, but in their cynic precision of mistiming 
 but has had his mind oppressed with the thought of 
 sardonic spirits hovering around these luckless mortals 
 and bringing all their plans to nought ? As will 
 later be seen, the characters in the maturer tragedies 
 were responsible beings working out their own ends 
 according to the pre-allotted destiny of the situation 
 in which they were placed. But in Romeo and Juliet 
 there are no responsible beings. All of them, but 
 chiefly the lovers themselves, seem led aside by the 
 course they would take, by mischievous spirits that 
 frustrate their clearest plans. How much this is 
 so can be seen if it be remembered that when old 
 Capulet heard that Romeo was a masker in his house, 
 early in the play, he takes it peacefully enough, and 
 will not have the general gaiety disturbed. It is 
 hard to think that such a man (or Montague, for 
 that matter) would have made a very effectual pother
 
 252 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 with an accomplished marriage before him. But it 
 lay not in his charge to do much. He, with his hate 
 or goodwill, and the lovers, with their love or folly, 
 seem only like puppets moved hither and thither at 
 the direction of the nimble spirits that haunt the air, 
 or the Destiny whose agents such spirits may chance 
 to be. 
 
 Seen thus, the connection with the Midsummer 
 Nighfs Dream is clear ; for in that play the whole 
 basis of the action is not the responsible volition of 
 the mortals who find the interest, but the aerial 
 spirits that hover about them, directing them, chiefly 
 the satirically mischievous Puck. Helena and 
 Hermia, Demetrius and Lysander, even a substantial 
 portion of good clay such as Bottom, all matter 
 nothing ; the action is invested not in them, but in 
 the Fairies that trick them about to fulfil their 
 stranger ends. Whatever they do or say we can 
 hear a song, merry, but not free of satire, floating 
 above them : 
 
 Up and down, up and down, 
 I will lead them up and down : 
 I am feared in field and town; 
 Goblin, lead them up and down. 
 
 Demetrius may think he loves Hermia ; but it is 
 decreed that he shall love Helena, and therefore it 
 must be so. It is all a very merry sport, laughter- 
 making withal : but there is all the time a keen 
 edge running through it ; as though the creator of 
 this wild dream had seen things that he chose to
 
 HIS THOUGHT 253 
 
 drape thus in the semblance of fantasy. It is not 
 strange to remember that even at this time he was 
 working out a historic sequence in which much the 
 same kind of futile volition on the part of mortals 
 was proceeding ; and it needs but a darker outlook 
 for the whole action to devolve itself into drama like 
 Romeo andJuliet, where the satire of the immortals 
 becomes tragic instead of playful. Well might 
 Theseus, the cold man of reason, who can see no 
 further than human beings, and who therefore 
 cannot apprehend the immortals that trick them into 
 their pre-allotted destinies, declares in his amaze- 
 ment : 
 
 I never may believe 
 
 These antique fables, nor these fairy toys. 
 Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, 
 Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend 
 More than cool reason ever comprehends. 
 The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, 
 Are of imagination all compact : 
 One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, 
 That is the madman : the lover, all as frantic, 
 Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt : 
 The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 
 b JBoth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven ; 
 And, as imagination bodies forth 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name. 
 
 It was so he dismissed it, bewildered at the wildness 
 of the tale he had heard ; but even through his own 
 speech we can catch a sight of the dramatist who
 
 254 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 was regarding him whimsically, and who saw more 
 than he did, not being preoccupied with mortal men 
 merely, seeing beyond to fates and destinies. 
 
 In all this it is important to notice that a Divinity 
 mingles freely with the characters deployed in the 
 action. All Drama is concerned with a Divinity by 
 the very needs of the case ; for it is impossible to 
 depict the fortunes of a combination of characters 
 without giving the whole the purposeful direction of 
 a Divinity above them. It may be possible to call 
 that purposeful direction the dramatist's conscious 
 philosophy : yet this is only to phrase the same 
 thing otherwise, for a philosophy purports to be the 
 apprehension of God and His working. Didacticism 
 apart, whether the philosophy be within the limits 
 of a conscious synthesis, or whether it be too vast 
 for a mental synthesis, it is nevertheless a fact that 
 in serious Drama it is impossible for a dramatist to 
 depict his action without introducing into it some- 
 what of his own attitude towards God. In ancient 
 Drama the God was not so much identical with the 
 machine of the play, but rather at the end thereof. 
 Speaking generally, the action in Greek Drama began 
 long prior to the actual opening of the play ; and the 
 play might be said to begin when the action came 
 within striking distance of the Divinity that was to 
 conclude it. The God was within the machine ; 
 but being at the end of it, he seems to sit there in 
 function as a j udge, one who was to apportion praise 
 and blame, and generally to adjust the necessary equity.
 
 HIS THOUGHT 255 
 
 Now, in the plays of Shakespeare already con- 
 sidered, in the historic sequence, and in Romeo and 
 Juliet and Midsummer Night's Dream, the Divinity is 
 not only in the play, but contained within the limits 
 of it. That is to say, the action in Romeo and Juliet 
 does not begin prior to the opening of the play ; 
 the opening of the play opens the action. Perhaps 
 it is for this reason that the action is interfered with 
 all through by the Divinity above it. An illus- 
 tration may make this clear. The conclusion of a 
 Greek Drama may be said to be caused by the God 
 suddenly stepping out of the machine, and adjusting 
 and apportioning judgment for an action with which 
 he has had more or less to do. But in Shakespeare's 
 plays hitherto it is rather that the Divinity at all 
 times actively promoted an end he had ever had in 
 view. Therefore, even in a tragedy like Romeo and 
 Juliet, the play is concluded with itself : the interest 
 is not projected into the infinite Beyond, as in King 
 Lear. The play, that is to say, is not so much 
 cosmic as mundane. Romeo might "shake the yoke 
 of inauspicious stars from this world-wearied flesh," 
 but the conclusion of the play is, nevertheless, that 
 the houses of Montague and Capulet are henceforth 
 to live at peace, and that he and Juliet are to lie 
 beside each other in golden effigies for all Verona 
 to wonder at. 
 
 In this, it is to be noted, the play is shaped more 
 like a comedy than a tragedy. The action is con- 
 cluded at the limit of the play ; and though we turn
 
 256 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 away sorrowful, we turn away with our interest 
 completed: we are not left baffled with a strange 
 exaltation as at the end of the later tragedies. 
 Something had to transpire in his workmanship and 
 thought 1 before Hamlet and King Lear could be 
 achieved. And the first thing toward this end had 
 to be that the Divinity no longer should arbitrarily 
 interfere in the action. He might hover above the 
 action ; the action might always suggest him, as it 
 was necessary that it should always work in the 
 sight of him ; but he and the action must be things 
 separate. For if he and the action be identical, 
 then misfortune in one will appear like malice in the 
 other ; as in the case of Romeo when Friar Laur- 
 ence's letter missed him. If they be separate, 
 however, then misfortune and temptation will not 
 be malign, but rather a test of virtue; as when a 
 clean heart and a vicious intellect were tested by a 
 witch's word in Banquo and Macbeth. For there 
 to be any interest in God there must be free-will in 
 Man, would be a philosophic statement of the case. 
 And Drama is philosophy in action. 
 
 Now, if Shakespeare's next period of work be 
 examined it will be found that this was just what is 
 in process of evolution. His two years at the Rose, 
 and his four years at the Theater and Curtain, 
 cannot be said to be much more than his dramatic 
 pupilage ; even though it rose to triumph, as pupil- 
 age is wont to rise, in Falstaff, Romeo and Juliet, and 
 The Merchant of Venice. It was not till the erection
 
 HIS THOUGHT 257 
 
 of the Globe that he might be said to have turned 
 mannerism to manner ; although in the early days of 
 the Globe he still clave more or less closely to 
 inspiration provided by older plays. At the Globe 
 he began the series of comedies that opened with 
 Much Ado about Nothing, and afterwards, under 
 compulsion of a swelling stress of emotion, ushered 
 in the later tragedies. It becomes urgent, therefore, 
 to discover how the Divinity that was active in its 
 direct intrusion in the first period, withdrew itself 
 from such intrusion to become the ultimate goal of 
 the action in the second period. 
 
 Precisely what this meant may be seen by com- 
 paring The Merchant of Venice with Much Ado about 
 Nothing. Demarcations of intellectual territory are 
 ever artificial, and this is no exception. Yet it has 
 this virtue, that The Merchant of Venice is perhaps 
 the greatest of the plays prior to the erection of the 
 Globe, and one of the last of them, moreover ; 
 whereas Much Ado about Nothing, while much 
 inferior as a play, yet dates forward, not backward. 
 What, then, form the Crises in the two plays ; for 
 as the Crises are, so shall the plays be also? 
 And thus a curious difference transpires, almost 
 bewildering in its fitness with a preconceived expect- 
 ancy. For the Crisis of The Merchant of Venice 
 is the reported loss of all Antonio's ships at sea, 
 which is just such a malign stroke from the Divinity 
 in charge of the play as one might expect from the 
 author of Romeo and Juliet, and the Midsummer
 
 258 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Night's Dream : whereas the Crisis of Much Ado is 
 the strange villainy of Duke John. One arises from 
 circumstance ; the other from character. It is true 
 enough that the character is so strange and un- 
 accountable that its interference seems almost a 
 mechanical irruption of circumstance ; but this is 
 even what one might expect in view of the fact that 
 the Duke John is Shakespeare's first farewell to the 
 older order of things. He is the first step away 
 from the mechanical identity of Divinity and action ; 
 that is to say, he is the first step toward human 
 purposefulness : and therefore it can easily be under- 
 stood if in his human purposefulness there was not 
 a little of mechanical intrusion. But when attention 
 is turned to those worthy citizens Dogberry and 
 Verges, his unwitting abettors in the Crisis, it can 
 be seen at once that the step forward is not inde- 
 cisive but vital : that beyond doubt we are to be 
 done with malign intrusions from above, and that 
 the future is to lie with the purposes and characters 
 of humanity, with its frailties and follies, with its 
 vices, and even perhaps its virtues, for the achievement 
 of Destiny; even though Divinity may lift human 
 action into strange significance by the throb of its 
 pervading Will. 
 
 Once this is seen, however, the question imme- 
 diately arises : Where, then, is this Divinity to be 
 found, if it is thus to be dismissed from the course 
 of the action by the purposeful acts of humanity 
 depicted in varying characters ? And the answer to
 
 HIS THOUGHT 259 
 
 such a question comes from a consideration of the 
 type of play that now engaged Shakespeare's atten- 
 tion. For it is to Comedy he turns ; and in Comedy 
 the presiding Divinity has imposed upon him the 
 function of conclusion. He, it must be admitted, is 
 but a frail Divinity at best. There is very little 
 cosmic or actual about him. He is half of social 
 grace compact : sometimes, even, wholly so com- 
 pounded. Moreover, by the laws of Comedy that 
 govern his existence, it is required of him that he 
 smile perpetually ; and sometimes this is a very 
 painful effort. His rulings are the rulings of artifice; 
 and so it comes about that too often he robs of 
 vitality and power the characters whose arbitrament 
 he is charged with. If their actions seemed to 
 be so full of earnestness and power that they are 
 like to escape past his place on earth to a higher 
 heaven, and so to scorn his adjudication that all 
 things shall end happily, then he strikes them down 
 to earth, within the scope of his voice ; and too 
 often, then, the characters whose actions are thus 
 treated have difficulty in maintaining the unity that 
 compels our interest. Sometimes a character bests 
 him (as did Shylock), and then his play is undone 
 as Comedy. More often he succeeds in besting a 
 character (as with Helena), when his Comedy is 
 saved at the expense of its interest. 
 
 Yet, however artificial he may be, and therefore 
 however unreal his interest may be for awhile, it is 
 important to notice two things about this presiding
 
 260 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Divinity : firstly, that his place is now, even as in 
 ancient Greek tragedy, at the conclusion of the play ; 
 and secondly, that his function there is as a Judge. 
 No longer is he permitted to intrude arbitrarily with 
 the action of a play, as with Romeo and Juliet : 
 he may only influence it by the fact that it must 
 conclude itself where he sits at the termination of 
 the five acts. Everything must synchronise there. 
 Nothing must escape beyond, under penalty ot 
 failure. 
 
 What this meant will be seen shortly, when 
 failure is to be recorded. But a caution imperiously 
 raises itself to insist that Shakespeare's thoughts 
 upon Life and Destiny can never be conveyed in 
 anything so artificial as Comedy -such comedies, 
 for instance, as Much Ado about Nothing or As Tou 
 Like It. That is undoubted. The fact of an 
 expectant Divinity at the conclusion of the five 
 acts, waiting for all the issues awakened to con- 
 verge at his feet, must needs so foreshorten the 
 psychology, and so restrict the characters thereby, 
 that unreality is supreme : whereas the business of 
 Thought, whether conscious or instinctive, is the 
 quest of Reality. That has already been seen. 
 Which is to say that the true worth of these inter- 
 vening Comedies is the linking up of the reading of 
 Life in the historic sequence and Romeo and Juliet on 
 the one hand, and the great tragedies on the other. 
 Nevertheless, there are certain aspects of Life that 
 can only be rendered in the stiff fashion of such
 
 HIS THOUGHT 261 
 
 artifice. What else had so mordant a philosopher 
 as Jaques in mind when he declared roundly : 
 
 All the world's a stage, 
 And all the men and women merely players : 
 They have their exits and their entrances ; 
 And one man in his time plays many parts, 
 His acts being seven ages ; 
 
 and thus on ? To a full vision of Life such Comedy, 
 however artificial, was necessary; particularly when 
 it is remembered that without it the flagellation of 
 such fatuous egoism as that of Malvolio's would be 
 impossible. It was not only the transition from one 
 direct reading to another direct reading; it was, in 
 As Tou Like //, the relief of overburdened earnestness, 
 and in Twelfth Night a corrective of pompous folly. 
 
 Yet it is true that the chief interest at the moment 
 of such plays as Much Ado, As Tou Like It, Twelfth 
 Night, and Alts Well that Ends Well, in the direct 
 progress of Shakesperian thought, is to demonstrate 
 the change that has befallen the function of the 
 Divinity of Drama. Previously the Divinity had in- 
 truded in, and had even actively propelled, the action 
 that was forward. Now, however, he awaits the 
 action at the conclusion of the play ; not interfering 
 with it, but demanding that it shall converge at his 
 feet. Yet it is to be noticed that his place at this end 
 of the five acts is held on a very precarious tenure. In 
 truth, it becomes more and more precarious as play 
 succeeds play. As has already been seen, emotion 
 and power of character are swelling apace. In
 
 262 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Much Ado there is but little thought ; and thus the 
 Divinity is enabled to settle all things, and conclude 
 the interest satisfactorily. In As Tou Like It Orlando 
 takes the place of Claudio ; and therefore the action 
 is driven forcefully so near the conclusion that 
 Oliver and the Duke Frederick have to make some 
 lightning changes of disposition to get it through in 
 time. Whereas by the time we reach All's Well, the 
 patchwork at the conclusion is so disastrous that 
 it is clear to see that the Divinity must soon be 
 thrust forward by the swelling strength of the 
 characters of the play, and driven off his post at 
 the end of the five acts to some position in the 
 further Beyond. In this way the Divinity would 
 no more be within the play. The characters would 
 be free to swell great and strong, to play out their 
 destinies as they might ; and as the play with 
 untrammelled vigour concluded its visible course, 
 it would reach forward to, and suggest, the adjudi- 
 cation of the Divinity that stood beyond, waiting 
 with penalty and bounty in his hands. And whatever 
 was thus suggested as the judgment to be given 
 Beyond would be purging and exalted inasmuch as it 
 would be the achievement of untrammelled and un- 
 hindered reality in the course of the action. 
 
 In the great tragedies this is just what happens. 
 It cannot be too strongly enforced that in all this 
 there is no hint that Shakespeare consciously was 
 achieving all this. That he was consciously occupied 
 with thoughts on Destiny (Destiny being Divinity
 
 HIS THOUGHT 263 
 
 in action), there can be no doubt. But whether he 
 consciously removed the Divinity from his identity 
 with the action to a situation at the conclusion of 
 the action ; and whether he consciously made 
 strength of character so to thrive that the Divinity 
 was thrust forward to his place in Eternity is 
 not the question at the moment. He may have 
 wrought his work so. It is infinitely more likely 
 that he did not ; for an artist is far more moulded 
 by his work than an active moulder of it. What 
 he does is generally not known by him till after he 
 has done it. His doing of it makes him aware of 
 what he has done. The more important matter at 
 the moment is that Shakespeare's work did indeed 
 take this course : it is a subsequent matter to 
 discover how far he was aware of his achievement. 
 To cite four examples in evidence of the procedure : 
 in Romeo and Juliet it is clear that the Divinity of 
 Drama was identical with the action of it ; in Much 
 Ado it is equally clear that human agency was 
 responsible for the action, and that the Divinity 
 awaited the action at the conclusion, somewhat 
 in the manner of Greek Drama, to adjust and 
 finish it; in All's Well it is as clear that a certain 
 fierce strength in Helena has given so powerful a 
 drift to the action that for the Divinity to retain 
 his place he had to make a considerable patchwork 
 of the conclusion, and that if Bertram had only had 
 the strength, ungainly though it seem to be, of 
 Helena, instead of being the puppet he is, no con-
 
 264 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 elusion could have been adjusted, which is to say 
 that the Divinity would either have been dissipated 
 or thrust forward beyond the limit of the action ; 
 and it is equally clear that this is just what has 
 happened in Hamlet. To Hamlet there is no con- 
 clusion. There only remains to see whether the 
 Climax suggests a conclusion, that is to say an 
 adjudicating Divinity beyond, or whether it is 
 mere dramatic anarchy. 
 
 Before this can be done, however, and as intro- 
 ductory to it, it is more than interesting to note the 
 precise position that Hamlet occupies. It is the 
 chief landmark that points the end of a series that 
 has its Divinity within the limits of the play, and 
 indicates a newer series in which the Divinity is 
 relegated elsewhere. Nevertheless, it must be 
 noted, in the chronological order of writing, it was 
 undoubtedly immediately preceded by a tragedy, 
 Julius Ctzsar, and it was probably, if not imme- 
 diately, at least very shortly after, followed by a 
 comedy, Measure for Measure. An examination of 
 these reveals a very curious state of affairs. For 
 while Julius Ctesar is in strict sense a tragedy, that 
 is to say while in it the resolution of the issues in 
 contest are in fact relegated to a higher Court, yet 
 it has a strange affinity with the comedies it suc- 
 ceeded to, in the fact that the conclusion is far more 
 complete than in any of the tragedies it was destined 
 to usher in. Partly this was achieved by the fact 
 that the last two acts, that is to say, the Counter-
 
 HIS THOUGHT 265 
 
 action and the Climax, are in such marked contrast to 
 the opening three acts, that they may be said to set-off 
 and balance the initial interest. There is indeed the 
 suggestion of a higher Court ; but then there is also 
 the satisfaction of a lower Court. The death of 
 Brutus may call in the necessity of a further settle- 
 ment ; but the adequate revenge of Cassar is the very 
 thorough prosecution of a present settlement : 
 whereas in Hamlet there is no vestige of present 
 settlement : Hamlet's death, with the deaths of his 
 uncle and his mother, waive the whole issue away 
 to further fields. But similarly, even as the preced- 
 ing Tragedy has part of the settlement of Comedy 
 in it, so the ensuing Comedy is ruined by the fact 
 that it is Tragedy undilute turned arbitrarily to 
 Comedy. It is not too much to say that the con- 
 clusion of Measure for Measure is incomparably 
 worse than the conclusion of any reputable drama 
 yet conceived. And why ? Simply because the 
 Divinity is forcefully dragged in from his position 
 beyond the play (a position lately acquired) to his 
 sometime position at the limit of the five acts. 
 The result is a psychological foreshortening in the 
 concluding movement so inconceivable as to be 
 absolutely unreal. The characters were shaping 
 their destinies for a far-seen and dimly-glimpsed 
 Divinity : but the Divinity suddenly appeared 
 immediately before them; and so they dropped 
 their destinies, and became merely puppets. The 
 action had in prospect a distant settlement ; but an
 
 266 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 immediate settlement was violently demanded of it ; 
 and so it gave over Reality, and botched up the 
 necessarily violent conclusion. Nothing could 
 better prove the real nature of the change that 
 had preceded. 
 
 But this is to say that there is indeed a further 
 Divinity : a Divinity in the Beyond. This is to 
 say that it is not dramatic anarchy that has 
 appeared ; but that the action contains within itself 
 hints of the Divinity it serves under. And the 
 question arises : Is it possible to discover from the 
 tragedies of what sort that Divinity is? In what 
 may arbitrarily be called the first stage, the Divinity 
 was, from his identity with the action afoot, either 
 mechanically righteous, in the Histories, or mis- 
 chievous, in Midsummer Night's Dream, or malign 
 in Romeo and Juliet so far as the lovers were con- 
 cerned, though it had an ultimate goal in the union 
 achieved between the Montagues and the Capulets. 
 In the second stage, by reason of his arbitrary 
 position at the termination of the action, and his 
 consequently automatic demand of the characters 
 that created and propelled the action, he was 
 artificial. But now the action is free, the characters 
 are unhindered, with permission to what of power 
 they may desire; and the Divinity is relegated to 
 some point beyond the limit of the earthly accent. 
 In all of which the action is, as Drama should be, 
 an allegory of Life ; and we already begin to see 
 why it is that the persistent instinct of Man has
 
 HIS THOUGHT 267 
 
 ever regarded such Tragedy as the highest of 
 Reality, meaning thereby the highest of Beauty 
 and the highest of Morality. 
 
 In Othello, for instance, the tragedy that succeeded 
 Hamlet, there is never any anarchy; we are never 
 out of the eye of a Divinity. So pure a flower as 
 Desdemona may be crushed in the ruin of sexual 
 rage. A man with such an extraordinarily fiendish 
 cast of mind as lago may live to think in triumph of 
 the ruin he has caused. He may even be given, to 
 close our memory of him, six short words in such 
 superb defiance of danger that we are won to a 
 kind of admiration of him. 2 Nevertheless, we are 
 never left in doubt of the Divinity that rules the 
 play. In the light shed about the play we feel that 
 an appeal has been made to something in us that we 
 call our faith ; and so we take our stand with, or 
 accord our sympathy to, Desdemona and not lago. 
 If the play were all, then we should have to take 
 rank with lago against Desdemona; for the play 
 shows him to be in unchallenged victory over her. 
 But the play is not all ; the play but shapes for 
 something beyond ; and so we take our stand 
 according to the judgment of the Divinity beyond- 
 We believe what we cannot see ; we trust what we 
 cannot prove : and so we are exalted and purged in 
 our outlook on life. 
 
 It is this that finds the centre of interest for the 
 period of Shakespeare's great tragedies. No doubt 
 it had its roots in the tough business of his life.
 
 268 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 There are not wanting varied indications of this. 
 The man who made a prince to say, 
 
 For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
 TV oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
 The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay, 
 The insolence of office, and the spurns 
 That patient merit of th' unworthy takes, 
 
 even at the risk of dramatic impropriety, was mani- 
 festly one who had received the rancour of this 
 earth's moral topsy-turveydom into his soul. It is 
 this topsy-turveydom that provides the very stuff of 
 his tragedy. Through all his plays, from Julius Ctesar 
 onward, he wrestles with it; and his reply is never 
 that of evasion. If we hold fast by Desdemona 
 and reject lago, it is not that their common Creator 
 gave us a patent and unavoidable clue as to which 
 way his affections lay. Indeed, it is lago that engages 
 Shakespeare's utmost power and sympathy. Desde- 
 mona is in no way elaborated. The whole situation 
 is faced with an unswerving allegiance to Life. 
 Villains and heroes are banished as the fictions of 
 cowardice ; and men and women appear, compact of 
 many parts. Virtues and vices are disregarded in 
 favour of complex psychologies ; and judgments give 
 place to sympathy. Even the utmost rigour of the 
 earth is faced in a tempest of tears. " Patient 
 merit " is overwhelmed terribly, while " the un- 
 worthy " stands by with words of courage and 
 superb defiance on his lips. Yet the issue is really 
 never in doubt with us. We rank ourselves as of
 
 HIS THOUGHT 269 
 
 the host of Desdemona, for all that she is strangely 
 frail and ignorant, and for all that lago is somewhat 
 superb in his triumph. Hamlet's failure to conclude 
 the thing he had set his hand to, may exasperate us ; 
 and we may admire the decisive attitude of Claudius 
 as an effective contrast : moreover, in so far as the 
 course of the action may aid us, they both may pass 
 from our sight in the ruthless equality of death : 
 yet it is Hamlet we esteem, not Claudius. Whether 
 or not Shakespeare was himself " grappling amid 
 the eternal verities," the issue to us is not un- 
 certain. The very perplexity seems to make it 
 clearer. Through all the smoke and dust a light 
 shines ; and then we begin to see that the ray is 
 cast through the play by some lustrous glory 
 beyond it. 
 
 It is in this connection an axiom of Shakespearian 
 criticism takes a new significance. More than once 
 it has been pointed out that Shakespeare, through- 
 out all his tragedies, refuses to conclude at the 
 moment of the climatic outbreak ; and we have seen 
 that the conditions of his stage demanded of him 
 that he should remove living and dead from the sight 
 of his audience, except when such exceptional con- 
 ditions as befell Othello enabled him to withdraw the 
 Climax behind a curtain. Now, it is improbable 
 that so astute a craftsman as he should fail to 
 perceive the excellent opportunity this gave him of 
 hinting the Divinity he would not introduce on to 
 the arena. And in his practice we find that this is
 
 270 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 even so. "Now cracks a noble heart," says Horatio. 
 " Good night, sweet Prince, and flight of angels 
 sing thee to thy nest." " O Spartan dog," says 
 Lodovico to lago ; " more fell than anguish, hunger, 
 or the sea ! Look on the tragic loading of this bed." 
 And to us the contrast is an effective clue. " This 
 was the noblest Roman of them all," says Antony. 
 But stout, faithful old Kent is even more explicit. 
 Says he of Lear : 
 
 Vex not his ghost : O let him pass ! He hates him 
 That would upon the rack of this tough world 
 Stretch him out longer. 
 
 And as we hear such words, we cannot but remember 
 that other man who had just said, " The wheel is 
 come full circle : I am here." Similarly, the unity of 
 soul that mocks at all ill, and provides the centre of 
 interest, in Antony and Cleopatra, is very clearly chosen 
 by Csesar for our last memory of the two great lovers : 
 
 She shall be buried by her Antony : 
 No grave upon the earth shall clip in it 
 
 A pair so famous 
 
 Our army shall 
 
 In solemn show attend this funeral. 
 
 So he speaks ; and in his words we catch the con- 
 science of the play. In fact, it is not Csesar that 
 speaks. Caesar would not so have spoken. He is 
 only indicating the judgment of the further Divinity. 
 He is doing what other characters, with more or 
 less of actuality, are doing throughout all the
 
 HIS THOUGHT 271 
 
 tragedies. He is not gathering together the stray 
 issues of an unconcluded play ; but he is showing 
 how they might be gathered together in a judgment 
 that waits beyond. It is this that gives the true 
 calm to the mind ; not merely the relief of tension. 
 And it is a calm born of thought and patience ; a 
 fortifying calm. By it we are transported above the 
 fury of circumstance. 
 
 It can very easily be seen, then, how it is that 
 Shakespeare avoids that simplicity of issue charac- 
 teristic of Melodrama. Such simple issues are born 
 of the need for a settlement within the limits ot 
 a play. It is only complex issues that demand an 
 exalted and prophetic outlook. One is crude, and 
 therefore subject to derision; whereas the other is 
 purging and stimulating morally, because it demands 
 the faith of something that does not appear. It is 
 not that in one Morality is present, and that in the 
 other Morality is dismissed (although, in a sense, 
 and inverted from its present application, this is 
 so) : it is rather that in one there is no occasion for 
 Morality, since all things are so patent and mechanical, 
 and that in the other there is always an appeal for 
 Morality in the teeth of circumstance. For without 
 faith there can be no morality in action. 
 
 With what vigour and equity indeed, with what 
 penetrating insight this is couched in Shakespeare's 
 Tragedy can be seen by an appeal to King Lear. 
 We pity Lear, we love Cordelia, as we are revolted 
 by Goneril and Regan. Yet when we come to
 
 272 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 reflect on the play it is with something of mystifi- 
 cation that we discover that what has urged our 
 pity, our love, and our revulsion is all one and the 
 same thing. For what is King Lear but a man full 
 of bodily vigour, strength of will and superb self- 
 confidence ? He is great and strong ; and well he 
 knows it. It was certainly with no thought of 
 abnegating his prerogative of command that he 
 desired to make over his kingdom to his daughters. 
 He intended still to rule ; and his sway was to 
 be all the supremer since it was not bothered by 
 the adventitious trappings of power. And so it 
 would have been : save for one thing he had not 
 thought to reckon on. There was not a man or 
 woman in the kingdom but would have bowed to 
 the empire of his will, were they clothed in kingship 
 never so much. But what he omitted to think of 
 was the fact that even as he was strong so were 
 they strong who had sprung from his loins. He 
 had not thought of that. He had reckoned without 
 himself in his daughters ; and what broke him was 
 that they, beginning at the strongest and concluding 
 with the weakest, defied him and pitted themselves 
 against him. First came fearless and crystal-clear 
 Cordelia ; then came crafty Goneril ; and wild-cat 
 Regan concluded the action. It is true to say 
 that King Lear himself broke himself; and that 
 there was none other that could have done it. Yet 
 it is bewildering to notice this same instinctive 
 defiance of authority translate itself into such a
 
 HIS THOUGHT 273 
 
 variety of effective action. Nothing could better 
 frustrate a simple adjustment of vices and virtues ; 
 and so equal is the vigour with which the father 
 and each of the daughters is depicted that the 
 initial bewilderment gives place to a subsequent 
 poise of thought that baffles any pert adjudication 
 of thought. The whole various family bundle is 
 so tied together by this one uniting strand of tem- 
 perament that it becomes impossible so to separate 
 it that judgment may easily follow the separation. 
 Thus our sympathy is attained. We are enabled 
 to understand the founts of action in each of them ; 
 we recognise how inevitable it all seems to be ; 
 and so we are saved a trite allotment of moralities. 
 Nevertheless we are never once in doubt as to the 
 main lines of a further adjudication: which is as 
 much as to say that we attest the truth in it by the 
 truth in us, and we approve them both by their 
 agreement. 
 
 A distinct difficulty, therefore, was presented 
 to Shakespeare by his choice of subject in 
 Macbeth. Here the central act in the character 
 of his interest is one of crime : a crime, moreover, 
 the more revolting in that it demanded violence by a 
 man awake to a man asleep, by a man full of vigour 
 and strength to a man old, gentle and tenderly 
 attractive, kindly intentioned withal. Were Duncan 
 the centre of interest the perplexity would not be 
 so deep. But Macbeth is the centre of interest ; 
 and so we notice that Shakespeare begins by
 
 274 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 bringing in a subsidiary aid, and concludes by 
 departing in large measure from the practice 
 prevalent in his other Tragedies in truth, it is 
 doubtful if the strangely hesitating conclusion to 
 this tragedy has ever yet met the attention it 
 deserves. 
 
 For it is noteworthy that Shakespeare evades the 
 responsibility of criminal decision in Macbeth by 
 throwing it on to his wife, who thereafter figures 
 little in the play. It is true enough that in 
 succulent Holinshed it is carefully stated that 
 Lady Macbeth burned " with unquenchable desire 
 to bear the name of queen"; but this scarcely 
 accounts for so extraordinary a scene as the 
 seventh in the First Act. For Lady Macbeth so 
 to have burned it was not necessary that Macbeth 
 should have looked before and after with such 
 imaginative fury. Moreover, it is also true, and 
 deeply true, that in this Shakespeare struck one 
 of his most startling intimacies with human nature. 
 For Lady Macbeth's strength was just the feminine 
 strength of seeing the one thing before her; and 
 that one thing so fiercely and intensely that all 
 things else were banished from existence. There- 
 fore when, after the deed was done, she broke, 
 she broke fiercely and sharply, like a tense string 
 snapt. But Macbeth's weakness was just his masculine 
 strength of seeing not only the one thing, but a 
 thousand things besides. Therefore he never 
 broke : he was haunted and hunted to mental ruin.
 
 HIS THOUGHT 275 
 
 Yet in this very fact it is easy to see that our 
 sympathy with Macbeth is largely achieved by the 
 fact that he was pricked to his deed by one who 
 thereafter leaves him the centre of interest. Subtly 
 and deftly, yet undeniably, the centre of interest 
 is shifted in the course of the action ; and by this 
 fact our sympathy is achieved and retained. 
 
 Thus too with the conclusion. Even as in the 
 course of the Action the centre of interest is shifted 
 from Lady Macbeth to Macbeth, so in the Counter- 
 action and Climax the centre of interest is gradually 
 shifted from Macbeth to Macduff. For if Macbeth 
 was not wholly responsible for the death of Duncan, 
 he certainly, and he alone, was responsible for the 
 deaths of Banquo and Macduff's wife and children ; 
 and therefore he cannot retain our sympathy, for all 
 his subsequent torture of imagination. It is for just 
 this reason that we are not permitted to behold the 
 deaths either of Lady Macbeth or her husband : a 
 thing not often remembered. It is not difficult to 
 discover why. When we see Hamlet, or Desdemona, 
 or Lear, die, our thoughts are at once projected to 
 the ruling Divinity beyond the play ; but to see 
 Macbeth die would be to see the Divinity standing 
 within the limits of the play. So we are refused 
 the sight; and instead of the sight we have the 
 memory of words which serve instead to signify the 
 further things. 
 
 To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
 Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
 
 276 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 To the last syllable of recorded time ; 
 And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
 The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle ! 
 Life's but a walking shadow ; a poor player, 
 That walks and struts his hour upon the stage, 
 And then is heard no more : it is a tale 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
 Signifying nothing. 
 
 Such words, with their utter world-weariness, grip 
 our sympathy far more effectually than the sight of 
 his death ; moreover, they project the interest more 
 surely beyond : and since their utterance makes his 
 death sympathetically imperative, the sight of his 
 head awakes memory of them, and they therefore 
 come to us as a closing note. 
 
 Yet it is clear the interest is quite different 
 from that of Shakespeare's other tragedies ; which 
 may cause us to wonder how Shakespeare came 
 to choose the subject. Then we remember that 
 Middleton co-operated in the writing ; and an im- 
 mediate question is started as to whether Middleton 
 has anything to do with the choice of theme. It 
 is certainly far more a Middleton subject than a 
 Shakespeare subject. 
 
 Nevertheless, even here the action does not meet 
 its settlement within the borders of the play. By 
 just so much as Macbeth wins our sympathy and 
 tenderness, by just so much do we require a subse- 
 quent judgment to balance the interest he has 
 awoken. Yet as the tragedies proceed in their 
 course a change can be noticed coming over them ;
 
 HIS THOUGHT 277 
 
 and it is Macbeth that makes the border-line of 
 distinction. In Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear the 
 conclusions are about as perplexing as they well 
 may be. Everything ends in disorder and disaster ; 
 scarce anything is resolved on this earth, all things, 
 even subsidiary perplexities, being dismissed to a 
 further court for settlement. But in the tragedies 
 that succeed Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, 
 the ends are far more peaceful owing to the fact 
 that they fall to more of a conclusion. They are in 
 no way so perplexed. In Antony and Cleopatra the 
 judgment beyond, as has been seen, is plainly hinted 
 at, and so in a measure achieved. In Coriolanus the 
 end is not one of perplexity but one of rest : Tullus 
 Aufidius' words, together with something in Coriolanus 
 that altogether loses our patience, make the end 
 seem something complete in itself. And this gives 
 us the clue as to wherein the difference exists, and 
 how Macbeth contributes towards it. For Hamlet, 
 Othello, and King Lear are compact of a deep irony; 
 they are the subjects of an extraordinary cast of 
 Fate. What brings them to ruin is not the vice 
 in them, but rather something that might well have 
 been the agencies of nobility and virtue on all 
 occasions other than the situations that faced them. 
 Hamlet's honour it is that trips him ; with Othello 
 his undoing springs from a splendour of passion that 
 was untimely touched to sexual rage ; and Lear 
 comes to nought because he has brought daughters 
 into the world that partake of his own defiant blood.
 
 278 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 But Macbeth falls through crime ; Antony is undone 
 by a viciousness in his blood ; and Coriolanus is so 
 unbearably haughty that he scarce ever achieves 
 our sympathy. Therefore the end of these last 
 three has something of present judgment in it. Yet it 
 is not a whole solution. It is as though the Divinity 
 were half seen, half wrapt in mist. 3 
 
 The connection, thus, between the onward course 
 of the great tragedies and the concluding period 
 of Shakespeare's work is not difficult to see. It 
 needed but a very little tenderness of circumstance 
 for Coriolanus to have avoided his seeming Destiny ; 
 whereas neither Hamlet, Othello, nor Lear could 
 have come to any other end than they did, the 
 circumstances being what they were. The Divinity 
 being beyond the action it is possible for viciousness 
 or weakness to avoid judgment within the action ; 
 whereas a virtue so caught between the forks of 
 perplexity that its very exercise is to plunge itself 
 further into difficulty, is foredoomed to catastrophe. 
 Moreover, our very sympathy with the nobler part 
 of a vicious character, that was one of the very 
 agencies in propelling the Divinity beyond the play, 
 calls out in demand of the possibility of a kindly 
 destiny for him. 
 
 Nevertheless, Coriolanus does not escape his doom. 
 But Leontes, in A Winter s Tale, does. So, too, 
 does the somewhat less faulty Pisanio in Cymbeline. 
 And it is interesting to notice how, in each case, this 
 is done. For the Divinity beyond seems now to
 
 HIS THOUGHT 279 
 
 have its representative participant in the very action. 
 In the opening of Shakespeare's work the Divinity 
 itself intruded in the action ; and its intrusion wore 
 by necessity somewhat of a malign or mischievous 
 aspect. Now, in the close of his work, it does 
 not intrude in the action ; but in each of the two 
 plays mentioned appears a character so rich in 
 forgiveness, and so fully and perfectly orbed, that 
 there seems only the word Divine to suit the 
 occasion. Hermione in the Winter's Tale, and 
 Imogen in Cymbeline may, in a workaday hard 
 world, move us to wonder or impatience ; but 
 their perfect poise and serene beauty are glimpses 
 caught on earth of a Divinity beyond. And thus, 
 by them, the fury of occasion is avoided for Leontes 
 and Pisanio. 
 
 It is as though Shakespeare's mind became so 
 absorbed with the preoccupation with his Divinity 
 (and Destiny, which is Divinity in action), that 
 all the shows of Time became merged in it. All 
 the fury of circumstance became swallowed up of 
 Beauty, whether it expressed itself in the mature 
 experience of Hermione and Imogen, or whether it 
 emerged in the tender wonder of Perdita and 
 Miranda. It was indeed a " fierce abridgment," or 
 rather a mellow abridgment, having " to it circum- 
 stantial branches, which distinction should be rich 
 in " ; but it was the abridgment that occupied him 
 now, not the distinctions that engaged him in 
 Hamlet. There is something rich and matured in
 
 280 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 it ; and we can already catch hints of the vision in 
 which he seems to have framed somewhat of a personal 
 message and a closing expression. 
 
 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, 
 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. 
 
 In such words as those the Divinity is already 
 become a Reality ; and the Earth is seen as a 
 transient show merged in an eternal Destiny : a 
 Destiny that seems more patent to Shakespeare's 
 thought than the present and frail example of its 
 course. It is difficult to imagine anything more 
 complete than this ; and therefore it is difficult 
 to imagine anything that could be added to it. 
 Shakespeare's Thought has taken its complete 
 course from its early efforts to find Reality to a 
 fully-orbed expression of it : and it only remains 
 to see in how far this expressed the maturing 
 character of the man as he moved through his 
 days on the earth.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 
 
 IN the course of the present Study it has been 
 possible, having once set out the nature of its in- 
 quiry, firstly to trace out the tenour of Shakespeare's 
 life. In this the necessity of logical sequence made 
 it imperative that it should be set out in lines, and 
 taken through courses that have not hitherto been 
 usually associated with it ; and it was found that all 
 the side issues of circumstantial evidence joined in 
 approving the sequence that was chosen. Having 
 seen so much, it became necessary at once to seek 
 behind this for that which provided the pivot and 
 zest for the life that was lived ; and so the Stage 
 for which he wrote was examined with some care 
 in the light of the work he placed on it. Similarly, 
 behind his Stage lay the Craft with which he used it 
 and its possibilities : a Craft which moulded his work 
 in certain fashions and certain forms. This, too, 
 was studied ; and it was discovered that, far from 
 being the careless craftsman that modern criticism 
 would report him to be, he was, in truth, deeply 
 occupied with the fundamental questions of con- 
 struction and dramatic sequence. It was seen that 
 he had a firm principle on which he modelled his 
 Drama : a principle that he clave to, and often 
 
 881
 
 282 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 wrought to surpassing beauty, despite many seeming 
 failures ; and a principle, moreover, that the highest 
 modern craftsmanship has failed to achieve, despite 
 its thought for technique. Again, behind this 
 lay the Art with which he filled his craft ; and it 
 became evident that his choice of Poetry for the 
 phrasing of his characters was no mere chance, but 
 the very essence of his Drama. Then, since it 
 seems impossible to couch Drama without conveying 
 something in the nature of a philosophy or, to 
 phrase it otherwise, since it seems impossible to 
 envisage life without giving it a form and fashion 
 indicative of reflection, conscious or sub-conscious 
 it became necessary to proceed once more further 
 behind his Art to the Thought that gave it its 
 outline. Then, also, it was seen that his Thought 
 flowed in orderly sequence from first to last ; from 
 tentative immaturity to full-orbed ripeness. And 
 thus we have approached so closely to the man 
 himself, that it has become necessary to take the 
 only step further back that it is possible to take, and 
 to discover of what sort he was, what was his 
 character, and how it shaped and moulded his life 
 and his work. 
 
 Truly speaking, we have been clinging on the 
 borders of Shakespeare's personality through the 
 major portion of this Study ; so that now it becomes 
 only necessary to speak the thing that the ac- 
 cumulation of facts has hinted. It is this fact 
 that is missed by those who would have it
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 283 
 
 that Shakespeare's work is no indication to this 
 character. The leading, if not the only, lance in 
 this camp declares that " an author gives in his 
 written page an expression of what is in him. He 
 can have nothing else to give." 1 Precisely ! If an 
 author were enabled to give other than that which 
 is in him, then difficulties might arise. But since 
 an author does give " an expression of what is in 
 him," then we may know what is in him by the 
 expression that he gives. He does not " summon 
 out of nothingness all manner of emotion " ; he 
 summons out of himself just that manner of emo- 
 tion proper to himself. And it is by this we know 
 Shakespeare. Even those who are most vociferous 
 in denial are yet most assured of the manner of 
 man he was. They would unhesitatingly deny the 
 ascription to him of "The Canterbury Tales," on 
 the one hand, and " Epipsychidion," on the other. 
 That is to say, their attitude against such an ascrip- 
 tion would be that the manner of emotion in such 
 poems was not proper to Shakespeare, and that, 
 therefore, he could not call it into being : in fact, 
 that, whoever or whatever he was, he was neither 
 like Chaucer nor like Shelley. Yet how is it 
 possible to assert what a man was not like except 
 on the basis of a more or less clear knowledge as to 
 what he was like ? And such knowledge is gained 
 by an acquaintance with the distilled idiom of his 
 mind in his work. 
 
 This distinction between what a man is, and what
 
 284 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 he is not, has in fact been the basis of a consider- 
 able part of the misunderstanding. It is said, for 
 example, that we cannot know Shakespeare from his 
 works, because in his works he gives us no clearly- 
 cut or sharply-defined philosophy of the universe. 
 But this is not a denial of his personality : it is an 
 expression of it. He gave no clearly-cut or sharply- 
 defined philosophy of the universe simply because, 
 to the exceeding enrichment of his life and thought, 
 he had no clearly-cut or sharply-defined philosophy 
 of the universe, which is another way of saying that 
 he was of a nature opposed to a hard dogmatism 
 of thought; and thus, that he either perceived a 
 synthesis too vast to define, or that he dismissed 
 syntheses altogether. 
 
 Similarly, it is sometimes forgotten that attri- 
 butes are not characteristics, though they may 
 indicate the presence of characteristics. For 
 instance, it is a fact that throughout the great 
 tragic period of Shakespeare's work, one of the 
 prevailing notes towards the whole sex-question is 
 of an absolute nausea and abhorrence. It is the 
 keystone of Othello's tragedy; Hamlet is saturated 
 with it ; Lear in his madness reverts continually to 
 it ; and there is a variation of it underlying Antony 
 and Cleopatra. It is also a fact that in Shakespeare's 
 concluding period the prevailing note is an exalta- 
 tion of woman so pronounced as to be almost 
 precious. Coriolanus' "gracious silence," as has 
 been seen, led to Hermione and Imogen, to Perdita
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 285 
 
 and Miranda. Now, were one to regard these 
 several attitudes as characteristics of Shakespeare, 
 they might well be found so contradictory as to 
 defeat the possibility of a union between them ; 
 such a union as would be necessary for them both 
 to consort in one personality. Then it would be 
 necessary to say that Shakespeare chose them from 
 without instead of producing them from within. 
 But if they be regarded, not as characteristics, but 
 as attributes of a characteristic, then they at once 
 fall into unity and perspective ; indeed, they become 
 the revelation not only of a personailty, but they 
 also hint the development of a personality. The 
 characteristic in this case would be an extreme 
 sensitiveness to the subject of sex : a nature that 
 could rapidly be attuned to all musics wherein sex 
 was the dominant. Then both the abhorrence and 
 the exaltation become phases of the one thing, 
 and are seen as clear indications of the character 
 of the man behind them. Something sexually 
 obnoxious to the man, in the earlier of the two 
 periods, has evidently touched his extreme sensitive- 
 ness ; and he has as evidently in the later period 
 found refuge from his revulsion in letting the same 
 sensitiveness lift woman into some rarer glory, in 
 which she may realise her sex without exercising its 
 functions. 
 
 This in its turn raises another important fact in 
 the estimation of Shakespeare's personality. It must 
 not be forgotten that Shakespeare was not only a
 
 286 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 man who lived upon earth, but also a man who grew 
 upon earth. As he lived his life experience befell 
 him, moulding and altering him. He was not at the 
 time when the Globe was built what he had been 
 when he and his companions reopened the Theater in 
 the autumn of 1594. Therefore if his works are to 
 be searched for an indication to his personality their 
 chronological sequence must carefully be borne in 
 mind. It would be manifestly absurd to discover 
 some or other trait that seems clearly to hint the 
 man iu, say, Love's Labour s Lost, and then to decide 
 that it obviously cannot hint the man inasmuch as 
 some other such evidence has been discovered in 
 The Tempest which seems to point in the opposite 
 direction. It must be remembered that the writer 
 of Love's Labour's Lost was a young man full of 
 eagerness for life, and almost propagandist in his 
 faith of the tuition of Life ; whereas the writer of 
 The Tempest had had his tuition of Life, and there- 
 fore had his attention fixed, not on Life, but on the 
 great sleep that rounds our little Life. 
 
 An instance where the force of this might aptly 
 be remembered is in the ascription of the word 
 " gentle " with regard to him. If Ben Jonson be 
 the foremost to apply the word, he is far from being 
 the only one. Too much has been made of the use 
 of the word " sweet." On most of the occasions on 
 which this epithet is used, it seems rather to apply 
 to his versification than his personality ; where it 
 has an obvious reference. Yet its use certainly
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 287 
 
 tends to bear out the application of the word 
 "gentle." Nevertheless such an ascription might 
 be applied in a very confused way if its correlations 
 were forgotten, or if its biographical application 
 were not taken into account For example, for a 
 man at the crest of success to be described as gentle 
 is one thing ; but for a young man, full of vitality, 
 eager with ability, and in conflict for an adequate 
 recognition, it would be quite another. In the first 
 instance the attribute of gentleness would be a very 
 proper proof of his nobility and true dignity ; in the 
 latter instance it might smack somewhat of syco- 
 phancy ; it would certainly wear an aspect perilously 
 like those acts of ingratiation that Shakespeare him- 
 self was not slow to condemn in his later work. 
 Yet, however this be, the fact is that there is no 
 proof that in his early days he won a name for 
 gentleness. There is rather proof to the contrary. 
 
 This first hint we have as to Shakespeare's per- 
 sonality is in Greene's famous reference already 
 treated of. And this is instructive in many ways. 
 For a man's character may often be discovered when 
 it is seen how he strikes his contemporaries. But 
 to this it is necessary that the character of the con- 
 temporaries be known. It is a strange earth this ; 
 and it takes many kinds to fill it ; but it may fre- 
 quently chance that one man's hatred may be not 
 less a proof of excellency than another's love. Now 
 we have a conceivably fair idea as to Greene's char- 
 acter ; and we have a rough, yet workable, idea of
 
 288 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the other participant in this 1592 fray, Henry 
 Chettle. We know the first as being irritable, 
 quick-tempered, and irascibly insistent on his rights 
 as a dramatist known and approved , and we know 
 the latter for a somewhat genial, good-humoured 
 man, in no way mightily convinced of his own 
 prowess, and therefore the more apt easily to admit 
 the prowess of others. It was the first who, in his 
 quick anger, spoke of Shakespeare as an " upstart 
 crow beautified in our feathers " : in which words 
 can be heard very distinctly the reverberation of 
 some controversy over the play Henry VI. in which 
 Greene had been worsted. It was Chettle who, 
 later that very year, expressed his regret at having 
 been the publisher of this evidence of Greene's 
 biting hatred, with the declaration, u I am as sorry 
 as if the origmall fault had beene my fault, because 
 myself have scene his demeanour no lesse civill than 
 he is exelent in the qualitie he professes, besides 
 divers of worship have reported his uprightness of 
 dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious 
 grace in writing that aprooves his art." Now, 
 apart from the direct reference given here as to 
 Shakespeare's "uprightness of dealing," the situation 
 thus created between Shakespeare, Greene, and 
 Chettle throws quite another, and probably more 
 valuable, light on Shakespeare's personality in the 
 days prior to his recognition and prosperity. For it 
 would appear that to a man like Greene, who seemed 
 desirous of setting him back whence he came, Shake-
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 289 
 
 speare's manner was that of an " upstart crow." 
 That is to say, gentle or ungentle, Shakespeare had 
 no intention of being put down by any man ; 
 for if he had not stoutly opposed Greene's attitude 
 the elder dramatist would have found no cause of 
 anger. He probably withstood him to the face, 
 seeming not a little bumptious in the proceeding. 
 But to a man like Chettle, who probably readily 
 admitted him to terms of equality, his demeanour 
 seemed "no less civil than he is excellent in the 
 quality he professes," meaning thereby his acting. 
 Which is an allegory of his life. When Shakespeare 
 had won to terms of at least equality with all, he 
 displayed his true instinct of honourable courtesy 
 and an easy and tender grace. But while he was 
 kept out of his own, there is no doubt he displayed 
 all that consciousness of ability, and anger at baulk- 
 ing, which in a young man wins the name, not of 
 gentleness, but of bumptiousness. 
 
 There are other evidences of this : evidences that 
 stretch through the course of his life. If the tale 
 be true, for instance, that Shakespeare organised a 
 company of boys at the Cross Keys to tend horses 
 during a performance, which company came to be 
 known as "Shakespeare's boys," this does not alto- 
 gether suggest mere gentleness. It, to be true, is 
 no proof to the contrary ; but it certainly is proof of 
 an instinct for command and authority, not to say 
 consciousness of ability. Moreover, in the years 
 immediately following this the Sonnets came to be
 
 290 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 written ; and who that has read them can have 
 failed to notice the continuous hints of Shakespeare's 
 disgust at seeing ability and work kept out of its 
 own : 
 
 As, to behold desert a beggar born, 
 And needy nothing trimmed in jollity, 
 And purest faith unhappily foresworn, 
 And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, 
 And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, 
 And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, 
 And strength by limping sway disabled, 
 And art made tongue-tied by authority, 
 And folly, doctor-like controlling skill, 
 And simple truth miscalled simplicity, 
 And captive good attending captain ill. 
 
 These are not the words of a merely gentle character, 
 nor are they the words of a snob bowing down to all 
 that calls itself authority. They are the words of 
 a man strong in himself, conscious of his worth, and 
 conscious, too, of the excellence of the art he pro- 
 fesses, in something very like anger and indignation 
 at seeing inability reposing on authority. We are 
 reminded inevitably of two other passages written 
 subsequent to this, each unsuitably phrased by the 
 character who speaks them. We have already seen 
 that it is not Hamlet but Shakespeare who speaks of 
 
 The whip and scorns of time, 
 
 The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
 The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay, 
 The insolence of office, and the spurns 
 That patient merit of the unworthy takes.
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 291 
 
 Similarly, it is not Isabella but Shakespeare who 
 gives out this splendid scorn: 
 
 Man, proud man, 
 Drest in a little brief authority, 
 Most ignorant of what he's most assured, 
 His glassy essence, like an angry ape, 
 Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven 
 As make the angels weep. 
 
 He himself said of himself, in Sonnet 62, that " sin 
 of self-love possesseth all mine eye " ; yet, even if 
 this be set aside as poetic mannerism, there is no 
 reason to doubt but that he was quite sufficiently 
 self-assertive where his worth was not recognised. 
 In his later days this was probably allied to the 
 wisdom and dignity born of experience ; but in his 
 younger years it doubtless did not scorn ungentler 
 methods. 
 
 In addition to this, there are not wanting signs 
 to show that he had a severe, even inexorable, sense 
 of fitness. The argument for this from his works 
 may be a doubtful quantity to rely on. But there 
 is no doubt the argument is sound, one way or 
 another. For example, it might be possible to say that 
 a man could cause the death of Lear, despite the fact 
 that the King was so near a deep joy in his old age, 
 and yet not be inexorably minded. Yet it would not 
 be possible for a man to achieve this without some 
 manner of bent in that direction; and it would be 
 yet more impossible for him to complete the achieve- 
 ment without being influenced in a relentless direc-
 
 292 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 tion. And when one remembers that it was not 
 only Lear who failed so pitifully, but Desdemona, 
 Hamlet, Ophelia, and a number of others, who cannot 
 have failed to win their Creator's love, the feeling 
 that there was something severe and inexorable 
 present, but not generally recognised, in Shake- 
 speare, is intensified. Then one remembers that 
 there is a certain episode in Shakespeare's life that 
 has not received the attention it deserves. The 
 facts surrounding the episode, and from which it 
 may be derived, are these. We know that in 1598 
 Ben Jonson, who for some years previously had 
 written for the company managed by Alleyn and 
 Henslowe, had the first play we now know of, 
 his Every Man in his Humour, acted by the Lord 
 Chamberlain's company at the Curtain ; and the story 
 goes that the author had already been turned away, 
 when Shakespeare, hearing the altercation, inter- 
 vened, read the play, and accepted it for the com- 
 pany. The story rings true to what we imagine 
 Shakespeare to be, and not less true to the fact that 
 we know that subsequent to this a warm friendship 
 existed between the two. Be this as it may, how- 
 ever, the second fact is, that Ben Jonson's next play 
 Every Man Out of his Humour was acted the follow- 
 ing year at the Globe by the same company. Now, 
 this play was a somewhat acrimonious attack on 
 certain playwrights, and ushered in what has come 
 to be known as " The War of the Theatres." We 
 know, too, that after this play Ben Jonson left the
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 293 
 
 company, and wrote for the children's players at the 
 Blackfriars. We cannot say of a surety that this 
 arose because Shakespeare, one of the householders 
 of the Globe, came forward firmly to his friend 
 saying that brawling must cease, and that if Ben 
 wished to continue it he must be gone. But we 
 do know that a play called The Return from Par- 
 nassus was written a few years after this, and we 
 have already heard its reference to Ben Jonson as 
 a " pestilent fellow," and the apparent zest with 
 which it records the fact that "our fellow Shake- 
 speare hath given him a purge that made him bewray 
 his credit " ; we know, moreover, that Shakespeare 
 acted in Every Man in his Humour, but made no 
 appearance in the later play ; and it is an inference 
 hard to overlook that something of this kind occurred. 
 It is to the lasting credit of both Shakespeare and 
 Jonson that it does not seem to have left any 
 permanent stain on their friendship. Jonson was 
 one of the two who saw the last of Shakespeare ; 
 and stout Ben left the record behind him that he 
 " loved the man, and did honour his memory on this 
 side idolatry as much as any." But it is fairly clear 
 that in this whole episode Shakespeare proved him- 
 self to be firm, inexorable, and masterful ; and when 
 it is remembered that the object of his attentions 
 was a man who had slain a man in duel the previous 
 year, the matter is thrown into yet clearer relief. In- 
 deed, a somewhat penetrating light is thrown thereby 
 on to two phases of Shakespeare's personality. For
 
 294 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 he is seen as a lover of peace and concord, of gentle 
 means to the end of amity ; but he is also seen as a 
 man who could be quite relentless in insisting on his 
 gentle desires. It is a rare combination. And taken 
 in conjunction with such things as the death of Lear, 
 it is peculiarly arrestive. 
 
 One remembers, for instance, how remorseless was 
 Hamlet in the cross-examination to which he sub- 
 mitted his mother : how almost ruthless he is in his 
 dismissal of frail Ophelia. One remembers with 
 what pitiless decision Othello goes to the immolation 
 of his lily-fair wife, with the severe words held 
 before him, "It is the cause, it is the cause, my 
 soul." One remembers Macbeth's words when he 
 hears that his " dearest chuck " is dead : strange 
 words, "she should have died hereafter; there 
 would have been a time for such a word " : quite 
 intelligible at so stressful a moment ; yet severe, 
 nevertheless. In the Ben Jonson episode, and the 
 death of Lear, it is Shakespeare himself who is 
 relentless ; in these several instances it is his creations 
 that are relentless; but viewing them together, it 
 is easy to see his characters dating this attribute 
 in themselves from a similar attitude in him. 
 
 There is another characteristic in many of his 
 characters that can definitely be traced back to their 
 creator. We remember that lago speaks scoffingly 
 of Othello thus : 
 
 The Moor is of a free and open nature, 
 
 That thinks men honest that but seem to be so.
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 295 
 
 Hamlet, with all his swift penetration into the 
 motives of men pitted against him, and with all 
 the mordant humour with which he could thwart 
 guile with guile, was also a man of this nature. It 
 does not need his wholly different uncle to tell 
 us that 
 
 he, being remiss, 
 
 Most generous and free from all contriving, 
 Will not peruse the foils. 
 
 It is not much that Hamlet shares with the Moor : 
 yet he certainly shares this. We feel that it is just 
 how Othello would have behaved himself: care- 
 lessly to accept the first rapier, and say negligently, 
 " This likes me well. These foils have all a length ? " 
 It is this " free and open nature " that provides the 
 whole base of Timon's tragedy. In fact, it would 
 seem that when Shakespeare desired to phrase any 
 character that should inevitably enlist our sympathy, 
 he could not help but give him firstly and foremostly 
 this indescribable nobility, this "free and open 
 nature." A lengthy list arises to instance the asser- 
 tion : Romeo, Falstaff, Henry IV., Henry V. (apart 
 from his dastardly rejection of FalstaiF, and his some- 
 what priggish appearances in Henry 7F.), Antonio, 
 Orlando, Brutus, Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Timon, 
 Antony, Coriolanus (in fact, and necessarily, all the 
 heroes of the tragedies), Posthumus, and Prospero, 
 not to speak of many minor yet lovable characters. It 
 is therefore not surprising, though it is illuminating, 
 to hear Ben Jonson say of Shakespeare, in lago's
 
 296 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 very words regarding Othello, that " he was, 
 indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature." 
 Now, even as it was necessary to point out that 
 Shakespeare's "gentleness" did not at all imply 
 that he lacked self-assertion, bitterness or extreme 
 severity, so here it is necessary to insist that Shake- 
 speare's " open and free nature " does not at all 
 mean that he failed to remember an injury that had 
 been done him. There is somewhat of a confusion 
 of thought in this regard, owing to the fact that 
 men find it difficult to think of more than one 
 thing at a time. It is forgotten that human char- 
 acter is not only complex in its construction, but 
 paradoxically conceived. To understand it, there- 
 fore, the intelligence must needs think paradoxi- 
 cally : must, in fact, in no way be distressed at 
 finding seeming contradictions consorting happily 
 together. For example, there is no doubt that 
 when Brutus describes himself to Cassius we are 
 enabled to overhear Shakespeare in self-revelation. 
 
 O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb, 
 That carries anger as the flint bears fire, 
 Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark 
 And straight is cold again. 
 
 But this does not mean that, if Brutus and Cassius 
 had both survived the battle, the former would have 
 turned quite so much to the latter's judgment in 
 later affairs in Rome. And if Cassius had not shown 
 a contrition somewhat difficult to understand by reason 
 of its violence, Brutus might have been a lamb never
 
 HIS PERSONALITY . 297 
 
 so much, and yet Cassius have been given cause, at 
 some later date, to remember their quarrel. So with 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Several incidents in his life serve to illustrate this. 
 Perhaps the chief is his attitude with regard to his 
 wife. Yet, since this depends on indirect, and un- 
 circumstantially supported, inference from facts, that 
 might perhaps be made to yield remote inferences, 
 it would be well to turn first to another method that 
 gives a lesser latitude of deduction. It has already 
 been seen that when Shakespeare left Stratford in 
 1587 the causes that induced him to this step were 
 several. The prime cause seems certainly to have 
 been his indigence. The active cause, if adequate 
 weight be given to several independent traditions, 
 would seem not less certainly to have been the fact 
 that he fell foul of Sir Thomas Lucy, who owned 
 extensive game-preserves near Stratford ; which pre- 
 serves, or rather the " venison and rabbits " on which 
 preserves, had received Shakespeare's predatory atten- 
 tion. " For this," we have already heard Rowe say, 
 "he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he 
 thought, somewhat too severely; and in order to 
 revenge that ill-usage, he made a ballad upon him, 
 and though this, probably the first essay of his 
 poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very 
 bitter that it redoubled the prosecution against him 
 to that degree that he was obliged to leave his busi- 
 ness and family in Warwickshire and shelter himself 
 in London." The good purport of that shelter in
 
 298 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 London was a considerable artistic and earthly 
 prestige ; and it might therefore be thought that 
 Shakespeare would good - humouredly waive the 
 memory of past bitterness. Not so. Some fourteen 
 years thereafter he was back in Stratford to set up 
 his own earthly tabernacle at New Place. And 
 memories were stirred in him. Moreover, at that 
 time he was occupied with the varied adventures of 
 a certain Sir John Falstaff; and so when it came to 
 the turn of that fat knight to gather levies for the 
 northern campaign, nothing would suit Shakespeare 
 but that he should go into the West country, not 
 so much for the purpose of gathering together " the 
 cankers of a calm world and a long peace," but 
 rather that he should meet there a certain Justice 
 Shallow. All through the latter part of Henry IV,, 
 whenever Master Shallow puts in an appearance, 
 there is the subtle feeling that there is a caricature 
 afoot. From that play it is, however, impossible 
 to say whom the caricature is driven at: though 
 doubtless good Stratfordians, such as saw the play, 
 were never in much doubt over the matter. But 
 when Justice Shallow appears again in The Merry 
 Wives of Windsor, all doubt is set at rest. Sir 
 Thomas Game-Preserving Lucy had on his coat-of- 
 arms "three luces hauriant argent," luces being an 
 ancient name for pike-fish. Therefore Justice 
 Shallow's coat is described as having a " dozen 
 white luces in it," whereat Sir Hugh Evans com- 
 ments more sagely than civilly that a "dozen white
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 299 
 
 louses do become a coat well." Thus the caricature 
 is fixed beyond reasonable question ; and doubtless, 
 if we had any discovery of Sir Thomas Lucy's 
 private character, we would find the portrait of 
 Justice Shallow quite sufficiently cutting to ease 
 Shakespeare's shrewd memory. Certainly to speak 
 of such reprisal as revenge would be much to mis- 
 interpret Shakespeare's mood. It was probably too 
 equable for revenge ; it was rather such a keen 
 sense of equity as humour itself depends on ; but 
 therewithal it is another testimony to the inexorable 
 severity that blent with the other things, with the 
 gentleness, good-humour, and free and open nature 
 that went to the construction of Shakespeare's 
 personality. 
 
 It is this strange balance and proportion of 
 qualities that is so baffling in any examination into 
 the constituents of Shakespeare's personality. The 
 qualities are themselves by no means indefinable. 
 The stouter difficulty is to discover how far they 
 are contributory to the higher unity compact of 
 them. For example, there is a species of mind cast in 
 a contradictory mould. Whatever the enunciation 
 be, in possession of an argument, they may safely be 
 trusted to oppose it. Often this is no more than 
 whimsey or perversity ; yet often it is unwisely mis- 
 taken for such. It is as though the enunciation of 
 an argument, rendered partial by the very necessity 
 of economy in statement, brought to such a mind 
 the proper complement of that point of view in the
 
 300 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 larger truth we all serve. At once, therefore, it 
 was induced to violent opposition for the maintenance 
 of equity. Now, in Shakespeare's mind and person- 
 ality these opposing complements were not asserting 
 themselves in these alternations either of struggle 
 or perversity. They proceeded forward equally 
 together. The total result might have been gracious 
 or ungracious (judging from the attitude of his con- 
 temporaries, it was, on the whole, exceedingly 
 gracious); but the deeper importance is that the 
 man was neither one-sided nor swayed violently to 
 alternative issues ; rather, he was, through the 
 general tenour of his days, variously compounded ; 
 which is to say, that he was equably poised. In 
 arguments at the Mermaid, for instance, he would 
 probably either be silent, because he saw the wider 
 issues of the debate, or, if good sack were in him, 
 engaged in the lighter word-play that Fuller credited 
 him with, because over-earnestness in discussion could 
 but inevitably narrow the issue, and so destroy the 
 truth of it. 
 
 Surely this is very often and very unwisely omitted 
 from the calculation of critics. For example, we 
 have knowledge of cases where Shakespeare has 
 seemed to be entirely severe in enforcing legal 
 measures for the collection of debts owing him. 
 This is entirely in accord with what we have seen of 
 certain aspects of his character ; and it is quite 
 probable that in some of the cases his levy imposed 
 hardship. Yet we know that he was also gentle
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 301 
 
 and of a kindly disposition : therefore, knowing this, 
 we would do well not to give an overweight of 
 attention to these cases. It would be salutary, not 
 to say fair, to remember that by the nature of the 
 case we can have no knowledge of any remission of 
 debt, or of any passage of money that took the form 
 of gift instead of debt. And this is even more 
 important in another regard. Certain criticisms have 
 been responsible for the impression that Shakespeare 
 in his private life was dominated, in somewhat of 
 the same manner as Walter Scott, by the thought of 
 establishing a worldly position of good prestige and 
 comfortable esteem ; and that, to this end, he was 
 willing to give the public what it demanded, and 
 what it would pay for most liberally, with no thought 
 of artistic truth. 2 In short, that he was not so much 
 an artist as a tradesman. 
 
 Now, we have already seen the life of the man, 
 and we have therefore seen precisely what this 
 criticism has had for its basis of operation. We 
 have seen him rise from obscurity to prominence, 
 and from penury to what has well seemed like 
 opulence. We have seen him purchasing a con- 
 siderable holding of real estate at Stratford, estab- 
 lishing himself as a householder both in the Globe 
 and in the Blackfriars, and, finally, near the end of 
 his days, buying some property near the latter play- 
 house. All this has seemed highly prosperous ; it 
 has all hinted the man engrossed in the ways of 
 sleek success. Yet actually what is the real signifi-
 
 302 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 cance of these various facts ? Even were they what 
 at first sight they seem to be, they would yet not 
 wholly imply the man engrossed in material success. 
 It cannot be forgotten that for the better part of 
 twenty years, both as boy and man, he had had his 
 life searched by the necessities of penury. It would, 
 therefore, be but natural if, while pursuing deeper 
 ambitions, he was carefully to erect safeguards 
 against a possible declension into those unhappier 
 ways. But are the facts what at first sight they 
 seem to be ? In the first place, there are two out- 
 standing misapprehensions that have hitherto ever con- 
 fused the issue. One is that calculations hitherto made 
 of Shakespeare's probable earnings as householder, 
 dramatist, and actor, have been much in excess even 
 of likelihood; 3 and the other is that the story 
 of Shakespeare's retirement to Stratford to settle 
 down as a respectable urban gentleman, is found to 
 subsist rather more on imagination than on fact. 
 But there are a variety of ways of regarding the 
 facts, that are not usually employed. For example, 
 it is true that he purchased New Place in 1597. 
 Yet, beside this fact, it is well to have in memory 
 the equally important fact that he did not elect to 
 occupy it till another fourteen years had passed. It is 
 also true that he bought property in Blackfriars some 
 time during the year 1613. Yet, if he were so 
 wealthy as is sometimes said, how came it that at 
 this late date in his life he covenanted to pass nearly 
 half of the purchase money into a mortgage, which
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 303 
 
 mortgage remained unredeemed at his death ? For 
 money was not then, as now, so irremovable a 
 product. 
 
 Yet the light shed by his Book, direct and indirect, 
 is of surer value. Take, for example, the parallel 
 so often and so unhappily put forward between 
 Shakespeare and Walter Scott. 4 The very citation 
 should be its own answer. There are surely none 
 who can fail to be caught by the healthy charm of 
 Scott. Yet it is a first axiom in criticism to dis- 
 tinguish things that differ. Where is the affinity 
 between Scott and the author of Hamlet, Othello, 
 Lear, and Timon, or Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 As Tou Like It, and The Tempest ? It is as though 
 one would ask the affinity between Dumas and 
 Sophocles. To be told that the Waverley Novels 
 were so many bids for remuneration is not to be 
 told anything incredible. But can this be said of 
 Shakespeare's tragic series ? If so, then how came 
 it that he should make lament in Hamlet over the 
 children players that " are now the fashion " and 
 who " so berattle the common stages " ; that he 
 should go on to praise plays that " pleased not the 
 million," and that are "caviare to the general"; 
 and then, having said so much, that he should 
 proceed to write a series of mighty plays that were 
 in the last remove unlike those done by the children 
 players that " berattled the common stages," and 
 that precisely were conceived in the fashion of the 
 plays praised by Hamlet that " were caviare to the
 
 304 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 general" and that "pleased not the million"? For 
 if one thing above another be clear, it is that in 
 giving Hamlet speech upon matters dramatical, it 
 was not the Prince of Denmark who was speaking, 
 but Shakespeare in his own proper person. And 
 these utterances are surely proof enough that 
 Shakespeare's first concern was to achieve an Art 
 worthy of himself, and that it irked him ill to do 
 anything that would huckster his pen. Yet if they 
 were not sufficient, the precise accord of such 
 sentiments with the tragedies he immediately set 
 his hand to, should set the matter at rest. For in 
 one he is seen enunciating his critical principles, 
 with a great scoff at the demands of his public ; and 
 in the other he is to be discovered achieving in 
 practice the principles he had set out in theory. 
 
 But the matter wants not a reference yet more 
 direct. There are continued passages throughout 
 the Sonnets in which Shakespeare declares that the 
 friend he addresses is sure of perpetual memory by 
 reason of the verse in which he is proclaimed. The 
 theme is rung to many changes. It may be self- 
 effacing ; as thus in Sonnet 16 : 
 
 But wherefore do not you a mightier way 
 Make war upon this bloody tyrant Time ? 
 And fortify yourself in your decay 
 With means more blessed than my barren rhyme ? 
 
 It may rise to greater assurance in the next sonnet. 
 In the nineteenth sonnet it may ring out a triumphant 
 challenge :
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 305 
 
 Yet, do thy worst, old Time : despite thy wrong, 
 My love shall in my verse ever live young. 
 
 Or again in Sonnet 107 : 
 
 And thou in this shall find thy monument, 
 When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent. 
 
 Now to dismiss these Srs. customary conceits, be- 
 cause they chance to appear in Daniel, Drayton, and 
 other English, not to include French, sonneteers, 
 is rather too abrupt a method of procedure to com- 
 mend itself to sane thought. To call a manner of 
 expression a customary conceit is not to say that 
 it has no root in personal conviction. To prove that 
 every Elizabethan sonneteer declared his faith in 
 the eternal laurels his verses were destined to pluck 
 from the brows of Time, would seem rather to prove 
 that the Elizabethan age was one in which poetry 
 was held in high esteem, not that it was an age in 
 which all the poets were fashionable rhymsters 
 vaunting things they did not themselves believe. 
 One would have imagined that the actual poetic 
 achievement of the Elizabethan age would have 
 been enough to establish that. One might have 
 imagined, too, that it was scarcely necessary to point 
 out that words, even the phrases of conceit, are not 
 devoid of meaning ; that they must have meant 
 something to begin with ; and that their constant 
 exercise in the emotional labour of poetic conception 
 would have made them, to such a man as the author 
 of Hamlet, mean even more to conclude with. And
 
 306 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 certainly it should not be necessary to remark that 
 a certain expression, repeatedly employed, from the 
 pen of the author of King Lear, is likely to have 
 a more considerable weight of meaning than a similar 
 expression from Drayton or Daniel. 
 
 Yet if they all were dismissed, there remains the 
 strange earnestness of such a sonnet as the twenty- 
 ninth, part of which has already been quoted : 
 
 When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 
 I all alone beweep my outcast state, 
 And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries, 
 And look upon myself, and curse my fate, 
 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
 Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, 
 Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, 
 With what I most enjoy contented least ; 
 Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 
 Haply I think on thee ; and then my state, 
 Like to the lark at break of day arising 
 From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate ; 
 For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, 
 That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 
 
 There are none who have lived, and not evaded, 
 this doughty life of Man on the Earth, but must 
 recognise in this the delineation of indubitable 
 experience. Overwrought and overstrained, melan- 
 choly has swept the skies of thought, with the 
 result that one by one the soul has examined all its 
 imagined wealth, the truth of its friends, the security 
 of its earthly achievement, the value of its hold on 
 deeper things, and has turned it all aside as dross,
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 307 
 
 even that which was red gold. It has compared its 
 possessions with this man's and that other's, with 
 despair and disgust. At such times the melancholy 
 has either been complete ; or, in casting here and 
 there, it has struck on something fair and pure : 
 some treasured and stalwart friend, or some fair- 
 cheeked child : when a soft gentle glow has thrilled 
 the being with an impalpable calm. All this is to 
 be found in the sonnet. 
 
 But there is to be found another thing that is 
 more than significant. When such moods befall a 
 man his thought flies to closest investigation of the 
 thing most near the priceless to him. A lover 
 questions his love ; a tradesman (in the true sense 
 of that word, as implying one who has first thought 
 of gain) doubts the security of his profits ; an 
 artist doubts the beauty of his vision or the skill of 
 his utterance. Now, where throughout this sonnet 
 is Shakespeare to be discovered doubting if he 
 had indeed " provided permanently for himself and 
 his daughters " ? Even the line which might seem 
 to suggest this, "Wishing me like to one more rich 
 in hope," implies the opposite in truth, since it looks 
 to the future rather than to the present for gain. 
 On the other hand, however, on what does his 
 melancholy most securely fasten ? Hear him then ! 
 
 Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, 
 With what I most enjoy contented least. 
 
 Who is it can think of these words that they were
 
 308 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 written by a man who had no other thought for the 
 work of his brain than that it should pay him well ? 
 Yet, especially when the likely date of their writing 
 be remembered, they concur precisely with his 
 dramatic achievement. Few will question that the 
 Sonnets were begun after Shakespeare's establish- 
 ment at the Theater in 1594, probably in 1597; 
 and thus the twenty-ninth sonnet would come some- 
 where about the year 1597-8. Now this was the 
 time when Shakespeare had most cause to enter 
 the dissatisfaction in question. He had just com- 
 pleted what was probably the second draft of 
 Romeo and Juliet. He had lately left Marlowe's 
 leading-strings in Richard III, to attempt plays in his 
 own manner in Richard II. and King John. He had 
 completed Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which he is 
 manifestly at a loss to achieve certainty of charac- 
 terisation ; and he was probably occupied in learning 
 his art by rehandling the plays of the old Burbage 
 company as the Queen's men for the present Bur- 
 bage company as the Lord Chamberlain's men. In 
 other words, the plays manifest uncertainty and 
 tentative trial on every hand ; while the sonnet 
 manifests the realisation of this in the hour of 
 melancholy. Nevertheless, he may be "contented 
 least " with his art and his scope, yet it is note- 
 worthy that he " enjoys it most " : in which the true 
 signature is given of the man for whom the creation 
 of beauty and power is a joy; the artist, that is to 
 say, irrespective, though not necessarily indepen-
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 309 
 
 dent, of gain. And the result was that thence- 
 forward he never turned back as an artist : his 
 scope became the more, till it embraced King Lear, 
 and his art became intenser, till it flamed to wonder 
 in Othello. 
 
 Of the fact that he had to write for his audience, 
 there is no question; nor that it influenced and 
 cheapened his work. So much has already been 
 seen. Yet he was fortunate in that his dealings 
 were directly with his audience. He did not labour 
 under the misfortune of later days, in having to deal 
 with intermediaries in the shape of actor-managers 
 and directors. This is to say, he could be true 
 to his ambitions in Art, and temper them directly 
 through the ordeal of the " yard." One of the 
 results of this, in the way of instance, was Hamlet. 
 So far as may be judged from contemporary evi- 
 dence, Hamlet was a considerable success, though 
 it is doubtful if any director or actor-manager, of 
 that day, or any other day, would have dared to venture 
 it as an unknown quantity. And yet there is little 
 in it in which Shakespeare was not true to his con- 
 ception of dramatic Art. The infinite pains with which 
 he tended it, as manifested in the various versions it 
 underwent at his hands, proves that he esteemed it 
 highly, and meant loftily by it. Moreover, that he 
 intended it for a more substantial end than the stage 
 of the Globe is seen from the fact that, judging from 
 a collation of the various Quartos with the Folio, it 
 never seems to have been acted in Shakespeare's
 
 3io SHAKESPEARE 
 
 own day in the full form that we have it now. 
 There is no such proof with regard to King Lear ; 
 but contrasting it and Hamlet with the average 
 length of the other tragedies, it would seem prob- 
 able that it also was not acted in the full form as 
 now read. 6 That is to say, Shakespeare intended a 
 wider appeal for such work than that afforded by his 
 stage, however much he wrote for his stage, and held 
 it before his eye as the scene on which his characters 
 moved, thought, and spake ; and in this, it is to be 
 seen, he foreshadowed Charles Lamb's famous enun- 
 ciation of dramatic creed. Yet, whether he bravely 
 ventured the full strength of ambition, or whether 
 he withheld part of it, giving only a shorter version 
 of it on the stage, or whether he tempered his 
 strength with the devices his audiences demanded of 
 him, and which, as seen in our study of the con- 
 ditions of his stage, he gave grudgingly as a thing 
 apart, or transmuted to power, it is evident that 
 Shakespeare was no mean playwright producing 
 matter to the requirements of purse and audience, 
 but an eager Artist, very much absorbed in the 
 production of such power and beauty as should 
 not readily be suffered to perish from memory. 
 Probably Hemings and Condell in publishing the 
 Folio edition were only fulfilling a charge entrusted 
 to them by their friend when living. Indeed, it is 
 surely preposterous that the opposite conception 
 could have ever so far found credence as to need 
 repetition.
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 311 
 
 How then came such a faith to win its way ? And 
 here one strikes a very subtle phase of Shakespeare's 
 personality. He has been seen as a man quick and 
 generous, open-hearted and free, yet with a certain 
 aloof dignity that could be stern and severe, ruth- 
 less even to the remembrance of ancient wrongs, if 
 occasion evoked it to activity. He has been seen as 
 a man very apt to take his line of conduct from his 
 opposite : to the hard man he was hard, to the 
 gentle, gentle, to the noble, noble, and to the 
 overbearing, revengeful : to honest Ben, even when 
 honest Ben was most severe in his strictures on him, 
 "he was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free 
 nature," to cantankerous Greene he was an "upstart 
 Crow," to buxom Chettle he was of civil demeanour 
 and honest repute, to pompous Sir Thomas Lucy a 
 broad and ruthless lampooner. His attitude in the 
 Mountjoy-Bellott lawsuit bears out this impression. 6 
 In bringing about the marriage between Bellott and 
 Mount] oy's daughter he appears as only too anxious 
 to render a service that may bring general happiness. 
 In the lawsuit that finally arose, his attitude is that 
 of a man who will answer his interrogatories no more 
 fully than he is bound to do ; and who will remain 
 at Stratford out of all broils, leaving justice or in- 
 justice to take its own course. In his life at the 
 Cross Keys he was seen as industrious to succeed. 
 His progress from the Rose to the Theater showed 
 him as one quick to see, and strike at, a passing 
 prospect, and. convert it into a permanent success.
 
 3 i2 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 In the building of the Globe, and the subsequent 
 continual changes in the householders' shares, he 
 appears like a man who, having won his advantage, 
 was not fretful to push it further, though fully 
 resolved to maintain it. In other words, the pre- 
 vailing note in him is one of extreme sensitiveness 
 to influence and environment. This is seen in a 
 variety of ways. Take his attitude to the com- 
 monalty. He is often spoken of simply as either 
 democratic or, more frequently, undemocratic ; 
 when in fact this very sensitiveness in him denied 
 simplicity in him, and made him complex. What 
 are the facts ? When he regards the sufferings of the 
 poor and the erring, he is angry and bitter, as in 
 King Lear ; when he is presented with their bodily 
 presence he is offended at their breath and odour ; 
 and when he sees them in the " yard " from one of 
 the " rooms," he describes them in Coriolanus as 
 " many-headed." So with men of rank. If they 
 accord him gentleness, and treat him frankly, he 
 will grant them fully, only too fully, the esteem of 
 their fortuitous dignity. If they slight him, he can 
 be very stiff. It was this sensitiveness that made 
 him in the Sonnets (as will later be seen more fully) 
 so quick and fond with the grace and beauty of a 
 young man. And when his mistress submitted to 
 the caress of his friend, the sensual disgust stirred 
 in him reeks through play on play. 
 
 Now, with a man of this nature there is one 
 quality that is bound to emerge in his work. An
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 313 
 
 element will appear that will look much like mental 
 sloth ; and which, though primarily not mental sloth, 
 might finally produce it. He will revolt at detailed 
 attention. To work, he will need to work at pressure 
 of imaginative heat ; but having once written a thing 
 it will jar on him after to endeavour to recover the 
 similar heat necessary to its detailed examination. It 
 will be easier for him to scheme in large than to 
 work in small. A King Lear will come more apt to 
 his mind than a polished lyric : and if a lyric came 
 not complete in a single wave of emotion, he would 
 dismiss it and proceed with other matters. Thus a 
 scene will engage him more than a speech of it ; and 
 this speech than one of its lines. Not that fine 
 speeches and memorable lines are foreign to him. 
 In truth, they are his abundant riches. But they 
 came not of themselves so much as in the course of 
 a larger endeavour. They were not wrought : they 
 were pulled-off. They were the result of a sudden 
 flame in the imagination on its way to a further goal. 
 In other words, we have returned to the criticism 
 with which this study launched itself, having tracked 
 it to its source. Shakespeare's personality was such 
 that he could not work in detail : his way of work 
 had to be in large ; it had to be prodigal ; it had to 
 be wasteful. It might look like sloth ; but it was 
 in reality the result of an excess of mental activity. 
 In a sense, so complex is personality, it was both, 
 even as a man may continue to walk because he is 
 too fatigued to make_the mental decision to hail a
 
 3H SHAKESPEARE 
 
 passing conveyance. He was too slothful to take 
 pains because he was too urgent to proceed. In 
 time this would grow to a philosophy with him. 
 Even as he gave contending forces fullness of power 
 in faith of a loftier synthesis, so he may have come 
 to see that waste was functional. His later plays 
 certainly seem to hint this. It may even be that he 
 passed such dramatic faults as Prospero's explanation 
 of their appearance on the island to Miranda, in the 
 half-thought that some strange and hidden beauty 
 might emerge from it. 
 
 Yet, whether it grew to a philosophy or not, 
 it is plain that Shakespeare was very prone to 
 such carelessness. And it is clear to see that 
 this way of work was a strict function of 
 his personality. He was ambitious ; but he was 
 more ambitious to conceive largely than to polish 
 infinitely. It revolted him to turn back and face 
 a completed piece of work. It dissatisfied him for 
 further work. If he ever rewrote a play, it was 
 after a considerable space of time ; and then, instead 
 of repassing it all through the alembic of his imagina- 
 tion, he altered here a little and there a little, leaving 
 old and new in a mingled indiscrimination some- 
 times, indeed, as in Love's Labours Lost, even putting 
 down a refurbished speech to follow the speech it 
 was a refurbishment of. Now, while critically and 
 truly this is seen to be a strict function of his 
 personality, it is obvious to see that, were it not 
 examined critically, it might easily seem like the care-
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 315 
 
 lessness of a man concerned, not with an Art worthy 
 of himself, but with the gain to accrue from any 
 work that was good enough to find favour. And as 
 the bulk of men are zealous to seek an excuse for 
 mental sloth, such criticism, once pronounced, would 
 very soon find a general acceptance. 
 
 This sensitiveness in him, however, explains not 
 only much that is perplexing in his work : it 
 explains the course and tenour of his life. He 
 had once tasted of an acute poverty ; and it must 
 needs have struck something like a fear through his 
 blood. This very sensitiveness would make him 
 subject to acute waves of melancholy; and at such 
 times he would fear above all else a reversion to 
 such ancient unhappiness. It might even paint his 
 dreams. Hence he would be careful to secure him- 
 self against this in a variety of ways. He would 
 seek varied investments, so that no single catastrophe 
 might possibly whelm him : which is precisely what 
 we find Shakespeare doing continually. But it would 
 not only affect him negatively : it would affect 
 him positively. Comfort would affect him ; the 
 entertainment of friends would make a sure appeal 
 to him ; the amenities and dignities of station could 
 not fail to flatter his emotion, even while he searched 
 their lack of reality. And all these things he strives 
 for. If to put a fool in a play would aid such an 
 end, he will put the fool there ; but he will not 
 account the fool as part of the play if he does not 
 catch his imagination. He will give him separate
 
 3 i6 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 scenes, as in Othello ; or he will find him tags at the 
 end of scenes, as in parts of King Lear. But he 
 will not suffer him to mar his work in any essential. 
 In all this a very clear and engaging personality 
 presents itself. And as we examine his plays we find 
 that precisely such a personality is ever emerging in 
 them. Romeo, for example, is such a man ; so is 
 Hamlet ; and in those two, as criticism has not been 
 slow continually to aver, Shakespeare has probably 
 put more of himself than in any of his characters. 
 Both of them may be called sensual : though, while 
 with the earlier character it is, as we should expect, 
 tender, eager and melancholy, with the latter the 
 tenderness is painful and the eagerness and melan- 
 choly have turned to disgust and morbidity. Yet to 
 speak of them as sensual is not so much to speak of 
 a characteristic, as to mention the attribute of a 
 characteristic. They are sensual because they are 
 both highly sensitive ; and because, therefore, the 
 beauty and love of women have power to sway 
 them absolutely. They are both sensitive to friend- 
 ship : quick Mercutio in the one case, and firm Horatio 
 in the other, staunch hearts both of them, call out 
 in each something that is more like love than mere 
 friendship. Both are melancholy; both are highly 
 susceptible to honour. Both, be it particularly 
 noted, have also something ruthless in their 
 outlook on life. In Romeo this is decidedly felt, 
 though it makes no more emphatic an appear- 
 ance than the prompt dismissal of Rosaline and his
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 317 
 
 impatience with the somewhat fatuous Count of Paris. 
 With Hamlet, however, this takes a very emphatic 
 appearance. With a foolish old man like Polonius 
 he is impatient and cynical ; with a frail flower like 
 Ophelia, inasmuch as she has failed him, and become 
 the dupe of her diplomatic father, he is ruthless and 
 bawdy ; with his mother he is dignified though 
 earnest, and honourable though determined, but 
 he is quite inexorable in searching her soul for 
 guilt ; he is ironical always with two such dunces as 
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and when he dis- 
 misses them to their death at his ordaining, it perturbs 
 him not at all ; for, says he, 
 
 Why, man, they did make love to this employment ; 
 
 They are not near my conscience ; their defeat 
 
 Does by their own insinuation grow : 
 
 'Tis dangerous when the lesser nature comes 
 
 Between the pass and fell incensed points 
 
 Of mighty opposites. 
 
 In contrast to this, with Laertes he is open and 
 hearty, affectionate even ; for Laertes may be a 
 foe, yet he has cause for enmity, and he is 
 honest withal. It was not so with the others ; 
 and so they never show the tenderness which was 
 ever his first instinct, and which he gave in such 
 abundant measure to stout Horatio. In this he was 
 Romeo grown older, and embittered by experience ; 
 which is to say that in the meantime Shakespeare 
 himself had grown older, and had been embittered 
 by experience. For Romeo, though he never had
 
 3i 8 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 occasion so to act, was yet capable of all this. 
 The capability in him, even as the actuality in 
 Hamlet, was again not a characteristic, but the 
 attribute of a characteristic ; that characteristic 
 being a certain aloof dignity, which we have seen 
 to be so severe a line in Shakespeare's own 
 character. 
 
 In yet later years, when the storm that had 
 broken through the Tragedies had made an end, 
 a gentler mood came over him. This is only to 
 say what can clearly be seen, and what has already 
 been discovered, in the general aspect of the plays 
 that succeeded to the Tragedies. Yet it is only 
 fair to say that this must needs have been the 
 result of a definite softening of this same severity 
 in Shakespeare's mind. The question may be put 
 in this way : How would Hamlet (Hamlet being 
 Shakespeare's fullest discovery of himself) have 
 acted toward one who had severely wronged him, 
 had he struggled through his hour of strife to a 
 later serenity? Now in his later plays there is 
 to be found a character who wears Shakespeare's 
 portrait upon him ; and since he is not only symbolic 
 of Shakespeare in other ways, but had actually had 
 a grievous wrong done him, which he is discovered 
 as being in the power to revenge, it should be 
 interesting to note his course of action. Prospero 
 is sensitive, frank, and melancholy, with ever a 
 strain of severity ; also, even as he bade farewell to 
 his magic, so Shakespeare, in the play in which he
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 319 
 
 appears, also completed his Book. Moreover, having 
 been deeply wronged, he now holds his malignants 
 in his power. How, then, does he define his atti- 
 tude? Note the following dialogue, and see how 
 aptly, in the progress in the characterisation from 
 Hamlet to Prospero, the progress in Shakespeare's 
 emotional outlook is declared. It is Ariel who tells 
 him of his enemies. 
 
 Your charm so strongly work 'em, 
 That if you now behold them, your affections 
 Would become tender. 
 
 Prospero. Dost thou think so, spirit ? 
 
 Ariel. Mine would, sir, were I human. 
 
 Prospero. And mine shall. 
 
 Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling 
 
 Of their afflictions, and shall not myself, 
 
 One of their kind, that relish all as sharply, 
 
 Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art ? 
 
 Tho' with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick, 
 
 Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury 
 
 Do I take part : the rarer action is 
 
 In virtue than in vengeance : they being penitent, 
 
 The sole drift of my purpose doth extend 
 
 Not a frown further. Go, release them, Ariel : 
 
 My charms I'll break, their senses I'll restore, 
 
 And they shall be themselves. 
 
 It is to be noticed that such relenting sprang 
 not from instinct, but came of reflection; and we 
 feel that it was thus, if at all, that Hamlet would 
 have found it possible to forgive such a knave as 
 the King, or such a very old fool as Polonius. 
 Moreover, with this breaking in severity there is
 
 320 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 to be noticed in Prospero a feature new in 
 Shakespeare's characterisation : and that is a quick 
 irritability, born of over-strained nerves, at sudden 
 intrusions or interruptions. Apparently the tempest 
 that had whelmed through Shakespeare's life had 
 not left his health untouched. 
 
 Yet, taking the Prince of Denmark as Shake- 
 speare's completest declaration of himself, there is 
 a side of Hamlet's character that we find neither 
 in Romeo nor Prospero. It is, in fact, in few other 
 characters, simply because there is sufficient timber 
 in it for the separate creation of whole characters. 
 Whenever, for example, Hamlet handles Polonius 
 there is always the hint in the air of Falstaff. 
 Sometimes there is the very Falstaffian cadence ; 
 as thus : " Let her not walk i' the sun : conception 
 is a blessing ; but as your daughter may conceive, 
 friend, look to 't." Once at least it is almost 
 startling. It is when Hamlet mock-seriously hales 
 Polonius to and fro, beginning thus : " Do you 
 see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a 
 camel?" There is a mordancy in Hamlet that is 
 never in Falstaff; but it is just so that we feel 
 Falstaff, in the melancholy that afflicted him after 
 Henry's rejection, would have searched the secrets 
 out of men. Hamlet is more than Falstaff; for he 
 includes Falstaff more than Falstaff includes him. 
 Yet they each have much of the other in them. 
 What they do not share in common is Hamlet's 
 sensitive nobility on the one hand, and Falstaff's
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 321 
 
 robustious search for pleasure and defiance of 
 reality on the other. This is only as we should 
 expect it to be in the course of Shakespeare's life. 
 Yet it would be interesting to conceive a character 
 whose conception stood midway between Falstaff 
 and Hamlet : a character that, as it were, had half 
 shed Falstaff and half grown into Hamlet. Such a 
 character demands no imagining, however. His 
 prototype exists in Jaques. Then we remember 
 that the creation of Jaques was just about midway 
 between Falstaff and Hamlet in order of writing. 
 And so again we are enabled to see Shakespeare 
 recording in the creation of his characters the 
 growth and development of his own personality 
 through the course and tenour of his life. 
 
 At once, therefore, the question is raised as to 
 what it was that produced this singular line of 
 development in Shakespeare : a line that takes, from 
 one aspect, its course through Romeo, to Hamlet, 
 and so on to Prospero; and, from another aspect, 
 through Falstaff, to Jaques, and on to, and past, 
 Hamlet. And seeing that this question has raised 
 itself from the plays, it is obvious that it must find 
 its answer outside the plays. That is to say, it 
 must seek its answer in the Sonnets. Now, it is 
 neither fitting nor necessary to examine the Sonnets 
 with elaboration or detail. That has already been 
 done more than adequately : they have been exa- 
 mined minutely, they have caused derision, they 
 have ruffled perplexed brows, they have been harried
 
 322 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 to and fro, up and down, they have been chased 
 through and through in the search for new portents 
 and strange chimeras, until interest in them has been 
 wellnigh whipped flaccid. 7 
 
 Nevertheless, a clear and continuous story emerges 
 from them. It is true that no positive proof exists 
 that this story is the story of Shakespeare's own 
 life ; though there is collateral proof that it must 
 needs have been. That sonneteering was a con- 
 ventional exercise is true enough ; but that Shake- 
 speare's sonneteering was no conventional exercise 
 is sufficiently obvious from the fact that the story it 
 tells is no conventional story. The same argument 
 dismisses the thought that the Sonnets, if not con- 
 ventional, were at least occupied with a fiction ; for 
 the story is not only unconventional, it is decidedly 
 unpleasant ; and therefore it was little likely to have 
 provided the burthen for a sequence of Sonnets, unless 
 that sequence were indeed occupied with an undeni- 
 able, if undesirable, relation of actual life. But 
 when it is found that the story provided by these 
 Sonnets is precisely what is needed to render in- 
 telligible the progress of Shakespeare's personality 
 as evidenced in his characterisation, then surely it 
 is evident that both the characterisation and the 
 sequence in the Sonnets are both parts of one whole, 
 that one whole being Shakespeare's expression of 
 himself. 
 
 The first series of Sonnets, that is to say, all the 
 Sonnets 1-126, in the unfolding of such a story,
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 323 
 
 become of value primarily as the basis on which the 
 remaining Sonnets (save the last two, which are 
 perfunctory) erect their interest. In them, in one 
 way and another, Shakespeare is heard addressing 
 himself to a man very much his junior, who is so 
 beautiful that Shakespeare's susceptibility has been 
 awoken to an ardency of affection not so rare on 
 this earth as may be thought, and certainly not 
 unexpected of the creator of Antonio and Sebastian 
 in Twelfth Night, or Antonio and Bassannio in the 
 Merchant of Venice. The first sequence (1-19) 
 rings perfunctorily in its appeal to this young man 
 to marry. He may have been urged to this by the 
 young man's parents ; but it is clear that he is not 
 much concerned in the matter. But suddenly a 
 change occurs. It is as though his first sequence 
 was his introduction to the young man ; who now 
 captured a sudden and fierce affection in him. For 
 no sooner are we clear of the last of the perfunctory 
 Sonnets than we plunge into a series in xvhich the 
 poet begins by hailing his friend with the following 
 strange and complete abandon : 
 
 A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted, 
 Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion. 
 
 After this there is only this one note. Whether he 
 has to send his affection from a distance (26), 
 whether melancholy (29), or the silent thought that 
 succeeds to melancholy (30), immerses him, or 
 whether he goes out with his company on tour
 
 324 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 (43-52), it is all the same. Even if the young 
 man disappoints him grievously by some or other 
 "sensual fault" (33-5), it makes no difference; 
 he is soon brought to the acceptance of all 
 blame, or at least to the acquittal of his friend 
 (36-42). 
 
 Now, it is here we strike the first hint of the 
 trouble. His friend may leave him awhile (56 and 
 onwards) ; some other poet may win the attention 
 and favour of him (78-86), and it may bring coldness 
 between them (87 and onwards) ; it may even bring 
 so deep an estrangement that Shakespeare may cease 
 writing these Sonnets to his friend for awhile (see 
 100-103), and have subsequently to pen something 
 like an apology (109 and onwards): but it is here 
 the centre of difference is discovered. The first 
 sequence is dismissed with Sonnet 126, and the 
 subsequent sequence (127-152) is addressed to a 
 woman, dark and hot, who was Shakespeare's 
 mistress, and who has played him false. Contrast- 
 ing this latter sequence with the Sonnets 33-42 
 and especially 40-42 the strange story is easily 
 discoverable. Apparently Shakespeare's fair young 
 friend and his dark, hot mistress have met, and, 
 apparently at her instigation, they have each played 
 him false with the other. And it is this that revolts 
 his whole being. 8 
 
 Thus we see that it was in the mood of Romeo 
 and Falstaff that Shakespeare loved his young friend. 
 Soon after the unfaithfulness occurred we find
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 325 
 
 Jaques ; and when Shakespeare's naturally reflective 
 nature has carried the mischief through his whole 
 blood in sheer disgust, we find Hamlet. Moreover, 
 it would seem that the silence and estrangement that 
 is conveyed in Sonnet 100 was caused by the young 
 man rejecting Shakespeare in favour of Shakespeare's 
 mistress ; and, therefore, that it is this that is 
 occupying Shakespeare's thought when he depicts 
 Henry's harsh and inexplicable rejection of Falstaff. 
 Certainly the unfaithfulness of his friend created a 
 bitter melancholy in his mind, even as the lustful- 
 ness of his mistress created a sexual abhorrence in 
 his emotion. The two things were doomed for ever 
 to banish from Shakespeare's personality the possi- 
 bility of another Romeo or another Falstaff. Things 
 have changed the earth for him ; and there are 
 hints enough to indicate the change. There is the 
 rejection of Falstaff, for instance. There is also the 
 fact that at this time Shakespeare took up his old 
 play Love's Labour's Lost, rewriting it, and describing 
 the cruel Rosaline in it precisely as we find the dark 
 mistress described in the Sonnets. Moreover, there 
 appears a brooding power of thought and emotion 
 rising in the plays. 
 
 Reading the Sonnets together with the Plays in 
 this manner it is possible not alone to discover 
 Shakespeare's personality in his characters, but also 
 to discover it all the more surely inasmuch as we 
 are enabled to see the tragic happenings that are 
 moulding and embittering it. The two lines of pro-
 
 326 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 gress through Romeo andFalstaffto Hamlet come to 
 wear a vivid significance ; and we can understand now 
 what seemed perplexed before, the meaning of this 
 rising tide of sexual abhorrence through the plays. 
 " To a nunnery go ! " can be heard remotely through 
 Jaques, and actually through the strange interest he 
 has chosen for plot in All's Well. In what Hamlet 
 terms the incest of his mother we can hear an echo 
 of the intimacy of relation that his own mistress has 
 sought and permitted. His own sexual tenderness 
 is the centre of power in Othello's mood. In Lear's 
 madness this same thought haunts his mind. And in 
 Antony and Cleopatra we find Shakespeare describing 
 his dark mistress, in Cleopatra, precisely as he had 
 described her in the Love's Labour's Lost of 1598, 
 and the last sequence in the Sonnets ; even as in 
 Antony he describes his own helpless bondage at the 
 wiles of his mistress, a matter to which he gives a 
 more explicit reference in Sonnets I37-I38. 9 
 
 The storm that this woke in Shakespeare's mind 
 was too terrible long to continue. It wore itself to an 
 end ; and as it dies low we are enabled to hear the 
 echo of it in that strange characteristic we have 
 already noticed dominating the later plays : the 
 insistence of woman's faithfulness and truth in 
 Imogen and Hermoine, and the exquisite delight in 
 girlish purity in Perdita and Miranda. It is Shake- 
 speare's method of recalling health to his blood 
 and beauty to his mind. It is his recovery of his 
 soul.
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 327 
 
 So Shakespeare stands revealed to us, not only as 
 an ambitious and earnest Artist who mastered his 
 craft with careful thought and unflinching zeal, for 
 all the prodigal bounty of his way of work, but also 
 as an eager susceptible man to whom friendship 
 might be a passion and love a torment, and who, when 
 these failed him, and failed him with one another, 
 was torn by a tempest of fury. The natural 
 melancholy, to which his brooding temperament was 
 so often subject, only abetted this the more; and 
 thus it took more than the form of distress, for it 
 was endued with bitterness. Yet it permitted him to 
 swell to a height of passion and power that enabled 
 him to take in his imaginative grasp such mighty 
 tragedies as those that stretch from Hamlet to Antony 
 and Cleopatra. We have seen him come up to 
 London as a young man overburdened with poverty, 
 the weight of family responsibilities, and, it may be, 
 bitter prosecution. He wrought hard, and he 
 worked diligently, and as he wrought and worked it 
 was evident to see that this was no common Artist. 
 Yet his very careless abandon, his large wasteful- 
 ness, and his aversion to detailed workmanship, filled 
 his work full of faults. What he needed was some- 
 thing that should give his mind concentration. 
 Something was required in order that his personality 
 should gather its breadth together to flame to a 
 towering height. This his private tragedy gave 
 him ; and so, in play on play, he demonstrated not 
 power only but achievement also, not only space and
 
 328 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 possibility, but might and magnificence. And yet, 
 when he flamed to his height, he took all his breadth 
 with him : which enables him therefore to remain 
 the perpetual and profitable study of the artists of 
 all time.
 
 NOTES 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 i. G. B. Shaw, "Authorised Biography, 1911," p. 268 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HIS LIFE 
 
 1. Maldon MS. See " Life," by Sir Sidney Lee. 6th edition, 
 
 p. viii. 
 
 2. This seems a fitting place to speak of the indebtedness every 
 
 student of the stage history of that time must owe to the 
 labours of Frederick Card Fleay. His " History of the 
 English Stage, 1559-1642," in particular, is more valu- 
 able than repeated citation can ever exemplify ; and this, 
 despite ofttimes its strange disorder, despite at times its 
 unverifiable untrustworthiness, and its capricious whimsey. 
 Fleay had, what Shakespeare has not often been blest with 
 in his biographers, and what is of the highest moment in 
 all biography, an extraordinary sense of divination, a sense 
 that he supported with indefatigable labour, but not always 
 with judgment. 
 
 3. Sir Sidney Lee, with others, declares that Shakespeare 
 
 "naturally drifted to London " in the year 1586 (op. tit., 
 circa, p. 32), looking for work; that he probably lived 
 with a native of Stratford for a time; and also probably 
 joined the players at " The Theater or The Curtain." 
 There is not a vestige of proof for all this ; nor a hint of
 
 330 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 reasonable inference. The account as given in the text, 
 therefore, is an entire reconstruction of this whole period, 
 among others, and is taken directly from the accessible 
 facts. Why a web of fancy should ever have been spun 
 when a clear and logical sequence links up the reputable 
 facts, must remain a mystery. 
 
 4. This is obvious from the " Short Treatise of the English 
 
 Stage" that Richard Flecknoe adds to his "Love's 
 Kingdom" (1664). It is interesting in itself; but as a 
 side-support to the reconstruction given in the text it is 
 peculiarly luminous. 
 
 5. See Halliwell-Phillipps' " Illustrations," p. 7. To speak in 
 
 praise of Halliwell-Phillipps at this time of day would seem 
 as much an impertinence as to condemn him. Yet when 
 one comes to consider in him the utter lack of that divina- 
 tion without which biography is void, his discovery of the 
 rarest facts without any appreciable idea of their relation, 
 not to speak of his sentimental judgment, it is not so easy 
 always to give fit weight to his patience of discovery. 
 
 6. See the Athenxum, March 26, 1904. 
 
 7. See " Memoirs of Edward Alleyn," by T. Payne Collier, 
 
 Shaks. Socy. Pubs. 
 
 8. See "History of the Stage," by F. G. Fleay, pp. 83-4. 
 
 9. See Ibid., p. 86. Also " Early London Theatres," by T. F. 
 
 Ordish, pp. 147 and 164. 
 
 10. See Halliwell-Phillipps' "Outlines," 6th edition, 1-332. 
 
 11. "History of Stage," Fleay, p. 134; and " Early London 
 
 Theatres," Ordish, 68. 
 
 12. H. C. Beeching in " Stratford - on - Avon Shakespeare," 
 
 vol. x., Appendices. 
 
 13. See " Life," Sir Sidney Lee, circa, pp. 200 and 210. 
 
 14. These were discovered by the inexhaustible patience of 
 
 Professor C. W. Wallace, and published in flarfier's 
 Magazine, March 1910. 
 
 15. Here again one has to rely on Professor Wallace. See 
 
 Century Magazine, August 1910. All this matter is
 
 NOTES 331 
 
 shortly to be published by him in a book " entitled Shake- 
 speare, the Globe and Blackfriars." 
 
 1 6. Professor Wallace again. See the Times, October 2, 1910, 
 
 and also the Century Magazine, August and September 
 1910. 
 
 17. See " Shakespeare as a Groom of the Chamber," by Ernest 
 
 Law. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 HIS STAGE 
 
 I. It is strange that one should have to dismiss the only sketch of 
 an Elizabethan stage that purports to derive itself from a 
 contemporary account. I am referring, of course, to what 
 is generally known as the De Witt sketch, but what 
 should more accurately be called the Van Buchell sketch, 
 since it was drawn by Arend van Buchell from the account 
 given him from memory by his friend Johannes de Witt, 
 the latter having been on a visit to England. Apart from 
 the fact that we have no guarantee that Van Buchell faith- 
 fully rendered De Witt's idea, the latter himself has laid 
 himself open to serious question. He declared that the 
 subject of the sketch in question, the Swan playhouse, was 
 " built of flint . . . and as to shape seems to be an imita- 
 tion of Roman work," whereas it is as sure as any can be 
 sure that no Elizabethan playhouse (with the possible 
 exception of the private Blackfriars, which was in fact, in 
 its exterior semblance, akin to a large dwelling-house) 
 was built of stonework, however much the wood was 
 painted to resemble stonework. But when, in addition to 
 this general insecurity, we find the sketch itself self-contra- 
 dictory, and, moreover, that it fails to take account of, or 
 render intelligible, many of the plays that have come down 
 to us, while we cannot but value many of the hints it gives
 
 332 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 us, we must dismiss its total or general claim to accuracy. 
 This is not the occasion to place the arguments against it. 
 Two, however, may be mentioned. Firstly, for reasons 
 mentioned in the text, it is obvious that the outer doors 
 should in some way face each other. In the sketch they 
 are cut in a level wall facing the audience ; so that, when 
 soldiers were required to pass from one to the other, to 
 complete this manoeuvre they would have fetch an ungainly 
 circle on the stage. Secondly, the audience is represented 
 as being in the gallery. Would they, then, be required to 
 make room for Romeo and Juliet when the lovers came 
 out with the dawn ; or would they be specially cleared for 
 the occasion ? 
 
 Apart from a somewhat careful examination of this 
 question from an independent standpoint, I must confess 
 and very gratefully confess my indebtedness to Dr Victor 
 E. Albright's book, " The Shakesperian Stage " (Columbia 
 University Press, 1909), and to Mr Archer's article on 
 "The Elizabethan Stage," in the Quarterly for April 
 1908. The first of these, except for some points of 
 difficulty, gathers together a fund of detail, the importance 
 of which it would be very difficult to exaggerate, whereas 
 the latter has all the perspecuity one is accustomed to 
 associate with that author's way of thought. Other books 
 and articles that render important aid, even though that 
 aid cannot always be accepted, are : " Some principles of 
 Elizabethan Staging," by G. F. Reynolds (Chicago, 
 1905); "Trees on the Stage of Shakespeare," by the 
 same author, in Modern Philology (October 1907), and 
 the article in Modern Philology for June 1905, on which 
 Dr Reynold's book was based ; " Elizabethan Stage 
 Scenery," by Mr C. C. Slopes, in the Fortnightly Review 
 for June 1907. Also Fleay's various works, to which 
 reference has already been made. 
 
 2. I need scarcely say that I refer to that brilliant and astute 
 journalist, A. B. Walkley, who, in his " Drama and Life,"
 
 NOTES 333 
 
 seems to be grieved to think that dramatists should be so 
 retrogressive as to think of reverting four hundred years 
 back to the conditions of Shakespeare, and who, when he 
 has sufficiently recovered from his grief and horror, arrays 
 himself in all his urbane and witty charm for the purpose 
 of taking dramatists back well over two thousand years 
 to Aristotle. 
 3. William Archer, vide supra. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HIS CRAFT 
 
 1. See Ben Jonion's "Timber and Discoveries," xxi.. Temple 
 
 Edition. 
 
 2. Do. do. cxvi. 
 
 2. Do. do. Ixv., Note 9. 
 
 4. This is the fundamental point of view that Dr Bradley over- 
 looks in hit treatment of the subject in his " Shake- 
 spearian Tragedy." Hence he is driven to the anomaly 
 of regarding Goneril, Regan, and Edmund as, construc- 
 tionally, the leading characters in King Lear. To those 
 familiar with Dr Bradley's work I need scarcely express 
 my indebtedness to his pellucid thinking on this whole 
 matter, though, in fairness to myself, I am obliged to 
 insist on my independent point of view. Professor Baker's 
 objection to Dr Bradley, in his " Development of Shake- 
 speare as a Dramatist," is surely beside the point. A 
 good story well told means an arrangement of weights ; 
 and an arrangement of weights implies places where the 
 weights are not. 
 
 It will be noticed that I have used the words Intro- 
 duction, Action, Crisis, Counter-action, and Climax, 
 employing them in their usual meanings as typical of the 
 five movements of Shakespeare's Drama. Professor
 
 334 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Lewis Campbell would call them Opening, Climax, Acme, 
 Sequel, and Close. (See his "Tragic Drama in 
 ./Eschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare.") Were one to 
 revert to the stricter meaning of the words, and were the 
 confusion that this would engender desirable, I imagine it 
 would be necessary to phrase the five movements thus : 
 Introduction, Climax, Crisis, Anti-climax, and Catas- 
 trophe though this would perhaps tempt some or other 
 wit to rejoin that an Anti-climax always leads to a 
 Catastrophe. 
 
 5. Perhaps it is necessary to point out that in none of the editions 
 
 of Hamlet that have come to us from Shakespeare, neither 
 in the several Quartos nor in the Folio, is any demarcation 
 set between the Third and Fourth Acts of Hamlet. There 
 is no doubt that this is owing to the fact that the play was 
 subject to more than one revision at Shakespeare's hands. 
 Yet, whatever be the cause, the result is that most modern 
 editions have various opinions as to where the boundary 
 line should be placed. If Shakespeare's general method 
 of construction offers any solution, however, there seems 
 very little reason to doubt that Hamlet's exit with the 
 words, " My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth," is 
 also the exit of the Third Act, and that therefore the 
 new act opens with the entrance on to the scene of the 
 new protagonist, Laertes. 
 
 6. Professor Saintsbury. See " Cambridge History of English 
 
 Literature," vol. v. Article on Shakespeare. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 1. See Professor W. H. Hudson's note to the scene in the 
 
 " Windsor Edition " of Shakespeare, Macbeth, page 90. 
 
 2. See Nietzsche's " Birth of Tragedy," Professor Ridgeway's
 
 NOTES 335 
 
 " Origin of Tragedy," and the review of the latter in the 
 Times, with the correspondence that followed. 
 I refer to Mr Robert Bridges' article in the Appendices to 
 vol. x. of the " Stratford-on-Avon Shakespeare." 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 HIS THOUGHT 
 
 1. I need scarcely say that, all through, I am concerned with 
 
 Shakespeare's thought rather as expressed in, and fashioned 
 by, his workmanship, than as embedded in it. The highest 
 value of artistic achievement is that it is a spiritual discip- 
 line to its workman : it teaches the Artist infinitely more 
 than it may ever teach readers or spectators. 
 
 2. How splendid they are in their self-command ! ' I bleed, sir; 
 
 but not killed." 
 
 3. I have omitted Timon of Athens in this, for the obvious reason 
 
 that Shakespeare's portion in it is so small that it seems 
 impossible to credit him with part or lot in its architecture. 
 He seems only to be concerned with blowing to fury 
 Timon's bitter disillusionment with life, leaving the play 
 otherwise as it came from other hands. Perhaps it was 
 done by another hand for his company ; and when he saw 
 it, it touched a kindred mood in him, with this result. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 HIS PERSONALITY 
 
 I. The quotation is from Sir Sidney Lee's Address to the Eng- 
 lish Association in 1909, entitled " The Impersonal Aspect 
 of Shakespeare's Art." The best substantiation of the 
 claim that Shakespeare's character cannot be known is, of 
 course, the same author's " Life."
 
 336 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 2. It is to be feared that Professor Dowden's " Shakespeare : 
 
 His Mind and Art," was chiefly responsible for this. But 
 it is a principle that dominates the writings of most Eng- 
 lish critics, the attribution being an English characteristic. 
 
 3. See Sir Sidney Lee's prodigal surmises in his "Life" (p. 203 
 
 and following), and compare it with Professor Wallace's 
 more careful calculation from authentic documents in his 
 articles in the Times (October 2 and 4, 1910) and the 
 Century Magazine (August and September 1910). 
 
 4. Perhaps the least disingenuous instance is the delightful close to 
 
 Chapter xvi. of Sir Sidney Lee's "Life," from which my 
 quotations are made. 
 
 5. In this I should perhaps be careful to point out, what ought to 
 
 be obvious, that the structure of the play was not altered. 
 The deletion of a passage here and there for the purposes 
 of shortening, is one thing ; to make nonsense of the 
 gradual crescendo of the plot the construction, that is as 
 done on the modern stage, is quite another. And this 
 holds good despite the fact that minor alterations of the 
 crescendo seem to have taken place in the Third Act of 
 Hamlet under Shakespeare's own hand. But this was not 
 alteration : this was polishing. 
 
 6. See Professor Wallace in Harper's Magazine, March 1 9 [ o. 
 
 7. The editions of the Sonnets that a reader will have chiefly in 
 
 mind are, perhaps, those entrusted severally to the following 
 care : Thomas Tyler, Samuel Butler, H. C. Beeching, 
 George Wyndham, and Edward Dowden. Of these 
 Tyler's is the most expansive and comprehensive, in 
 analysis and hypothesis ; one wonders if Butler sometimes 
 had not his tongue in his cheek ; Mr Wyndham's is closest 
 in literary analysis ; and Professor Dowden's is learned and 
 analytical. But for balance, judgment, and careful exam- 
 ination, one turns most to Mr Beeching. The older 
 editions, such as Massey's, are generally comprised in 
 these. Yet an unedited edition most frequently proves the 
 truest guide.
 
 NOTES 337 
 
 8. It is difficult to see how the matter is materially aided by 
 
 saying that the young man was William Herbert, Earl of 
 Pembroke (the W. H. of the Dedication) and the woman 
 Mistress Mary Fitton. I myself am of opinion that 
 Pembroke was the young man. I also think that the first 
 perfunctory nineteen sonnets had something to do with the 
 effort by Pembroke's parents to induce their son to wed 
 the Earl of Oxford's daughter, and that these were the 
 base of Meres' reference in 1598. But I do not think the 
 Mary Fitton theory seems likely of truth ; it certainly has 
 no proof. Both the Pembroke and the Fitton ideas are 
 chiefly and primarily indebted to Tyler, who worked up 
 the suggestion thrown out by the Rev. W. A. Harrison. 
 
 This would give 1596-7 as an approximate date for the 
 beginning of the sonnets, and would bring the meeting of 
 the young man and the dark mistress to the year 1597-8. 
 (Compare the opening of Sonnet 33 with the first part of 
 Henry 77^., Act I. scene ii. line 221 and onward.) This 
 would establish Frank Harris' suggestion that the 1597-98 
 redaction of Love's Labour's Lost had for its primary 
 object the setting-out of the cruelties of the dark mistress, 
 who was satirised and described in detail in Biron's 
 "Rosaline." See " The Man Shakespeare." And this 
 is the date on which the argument in the text is based. 
 
 9. See, again, '* The Man Shakespeare," by Frank Harris, who 
 
 treats this matter fully, in fact so fully as almost to turn the 
 mind against his own thesis. The interest is, doubtless, 
 important ; but it is by no means all of Shakespeare. He 
 wrongs Shakespeare much who thinks so. Nor surely 
 does it absorb the number of plays that Mr Harris would 
 seem to suggest.
 
 INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 ADRIANA, 225 
 
 ./Emilia, 225 
 
 JEgeon, 225 
 
 JEschylus, 182, 210, 212 
 
 Aguecheek, Sir Andrew, 197 
 
 Albany, 139 
 
 Albright, Dr Victor E., 332 
 
 Alchemist, 8l, 212 
 
 Alexandria, 172 
 
 Allen, Giles, 41, 58, 68, 69, 70 
 
 Alleyn, Edward, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 
 
 43 44, 45. 49 5, S 1 , 55> 6 5> 7, 
 
 72, 76, 129, 236, 292 
 AlFt Well that Ends Well, 74, 76, 
 
 168, 226, 261, 262, 263, 326 
 Angus, 124 
 Anne Shakespeare (nee Hathaway), 
 
 3 
 
 Antonio, in, 112, 117, 120, 295, 
 
 3*3 
 Antony, 3, 172, 173, 175, 270, 278, 
 
 326 
 Antony and Cleopatra, 173, 203, 270, 
 
 277, 284, 326, 327 
 Apollo, 210 
 
 Archer, William, 332, 333 
 Arden (Forest), 76 
 Arden, Mary, 30 
 Ariel, 129, 319 
 Armado, 165 
 Arragon, Prince of, 117 
 Asbies, 30, 35 
 At You Like It, 74, 76, 127, 1 68, 
 
 260, 261, 262, 303 
 Athens, 172, 173 
 Augustus, 142 
 Autolycus, 197 
 
 BADGER, George, 62 
 Baker, Prof., 333 
 Balthazar, 251 
 Bankside, 72 
 Banquo, 124, 256, 275 
 Bardolph, 61, 197 
 
 V* 
 
 Barnardine, 169 
 
 Bassanio, 112, 113, 115, 117, iiS, 
 
 120, 323 
 
 Barton -on-the-Heath, 31 
 Beatrice, 197, 198, 212, 226 
 Beeching, H. C., 330, 336 
 Beeston, William, 35 
 Belch, Sir Toby, 197, 211 
 Belloni, Sandra, 191 
 Bellott, Stephen, 66, 67 
 Benedick, 197, 212 
 Benvolio, 107, 108, no 
 Bermuda Islands, 129 
 Bertram, 263 
 Bianca, 170 
 Biron, 224, 337 
 Birth of Tragedy, 334 
 Bishopsgate, 39, 45 
 Bishopsgate Ward, 41 
 Blackfriars Theatre, 51, 70, 75, 77, 
 
 83, 2 93> 3i, 3 02 , 33 1 
 Bottom, 97, 197, 2n, 252 
 Bradley, Dr, 333 
 Brand, 2O2 
 
 Braynes, John, 42, 56 
 Braynes, Margaret, 42 
 Brend, Sir Nicholas, 72 
 Brendel, Ulric, 175 
 Bridge, Robert, 335 
 Bristol, 49 
 Brown, John, 32 
 Brutus, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104. 
 
 105, 265, 295, 296 
 Buchell, Arend van, 331 
 Burbage, Cuthbert, 56 
 Burbage, James, 41, 42, 43, 51, 56, 
 
 69, 7, 77 
 Burbage, Richard, 42, 43, 49, 50, 
 
 56, 58, 69, 70, 80 
 Burbage, T., 52 
 Burby, Cuthbert, 74 
 Burgundy, 139 
 Burton Heath, 31 
 Butler, Samuel, 336 
 
 339
 
 34 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 C->AR, 1O5, 175, 265, lyO 
 
 Calphurnia, 105 
 
 Cambridge History of English Literature, 
 
 334 
 
 Camillo, 149 
 
 Campbell, Prof. Lewis, 334 
 Canterbury Tales, The, 283 
 Capitol, 105 
 
 Capulet, 107, 241, 250, 255, 266 
 Carey, Henry, ist Lord Hunsdon, 
 
 5>i 5* 
 
 Cassio, 170, 219, 223, 234 
 
 Cassius, 102, 103, 296, 297 
 
 Catharine, 246 
 
 Century Magazine, 330, 331, 336 
 
 Chapman, 81 
 
 Chaucer, 8, 283 
 
 Chettle, Henry, 288, 289, 311 
 
 Claudio, 169, 262 
 
 Claudius, 269 
 
 Cleopatra, 175, 326 
 
 Clink, 45, 66, 68 
 
 Coleridge, 6, 7, 16, 17, 19, 137, 
 
 167, 226 
 
 College of Heralds, 62, 63 
 Collier, T. Payne, 330 
 Comedy of Errors ; 58, 155, 225, 247 
 Condell, Henry, 68, 310 
 Constance, 240 
 Constantinople, 246 
 Cordelia, 140, 205, 229, 271, 272 
 Coriolanus, 228, 231, 278, 284, 295 
 Coriolanus, 277, 312 
 Cornwall, 139, 140 
 Costard, 165 
 Count of Paris, 317 
 Cripplegate, 66, 68 
 Cross Keys Tavern, 40, 41, 51, 52, 
 
 68, 289, 311 
 Curtain Theatre, 69, 73, 256, 292, 
 
 329 
 
 Cymbeline, 145, 147, 171, 228, 231 
 Cymbcline, 82, 278, 279 
 
 DANIEL, 305, 306 
 D'Arenant, Sir William, 54, 55 
 David Copperfeld, 205 
 Dead Hand, 10 
 Dekker, Thomas, 68 
 Demetrius, 252 
 Denmark, 38, 163, 233 
 Derby, Earl of, 36, 37 
 
 Desdemona, 99, 170, 203, 219, 220, 
 223, 229, 234, 267, 269, 275, 292 
 
 De Shakespeare Nostrati, 142, 150 
 
 Development of Shakespeare as a 
 Dramatist, 333 
 
 De Witt, Johannes, 331 
 
 Dionysus, 210 
 
 Discoveries, 142 
 
 Dogberry, 197, 226, 258 
 
 Doll's House, The, 174, 177, 2O2 
 
 Dowden, Prof. Edward, 336 
 
 Drama and Life, 332 
 
 Drayton, Michael, 85, 305, 306 
 
 Drummond, William, 12, 141, 147, 
 184, 212 
 
 Dumain, 224 
 
 Dumas, 303 
 
 Duncan, 187, 188, 192, 273, 275 
 
 Early London Theatres, 330 
 
 Eastcheap, 199 
 
 Edgar, 139, 167 
 
 Edinburgh, 79 
 
 Edmund, 139, 229, 333 
 
 Elizabeth, 238 
 
 Elizabeth, Princess, 83 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 38, 41, 77,79, 81 
 
 Elizabethan Stage, 332 
 
 Elizabethan Stage Scenery, 332 
 
 Elsinore, 77, 129 
 
 England, 17, 161 
 
 Enobarbus, 175 
 
 Epicttne, 8 1 
 
 Epipsychidion, 283 
 
 Errors, 73 
 
 Essex Conspiracy, 78 
 
 Euripides, 210, 212 
 
 Evans, Henry, 77, 80 
 
 Evans, Sir Hugh, 298 
 
 Every Man in Hit Humour, 69, 77, 
 
 145, 292, 293 
 Every Man Out of His Humour, 60, 
 
 77> *9* 
 
 , SIR JOHN, 60, 197, 198, 
 
 199, 200, 211, 242, 244, 245, 256, 
 
 2 95> 2 9 8 > 3 20 3 2I > 3H, 3*5 
 Field, Nathaniel, 68 
 Finsbury, 74, 75 
 Fitton, Mistress Mary, 337 
 Fleay, Frederick Card, 329, 330, 
 
 332
 
 INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 Flecknoe, Richard, 330 
 Florizel, 149, 176 
 Fludd, Humphrey, 66 
 Fluellen, 61 
 Fortnightly Review, 332 
 Fortinbras, 99 
 Fortune Theatre, 79 
 France, 139, 238 
 Frederick, Duke, 262 
 Fuller, 141 
 
 GABLER, HEDDA, 177, 178 
 Gaunt, John of, 237 
 Gentlemen of Verona, 73 
 Ghosts, 2O2 
 
 Globe Theatre, The. 8, 55, 57, 72, 
 73, 75, 76, 80, 84, 100, 101, 126. 
 
 127, 129, 141, 257, 286, 292, 293, 
 301, 309, 312, 331 
 
 Gloster, 139, 167 
 
 Gobbo, Launcelot, 113, 114, 115, 
 
 118, 197 
 Goneril, 140, 205, 229, 271, 172, 
 
 333 
 
 Gracechurch Street, 40, 41 
 Gratiano, 113, 114, 115, 120, 121 
 Greece, 17, 1 8 
 Greene, 36^37, 43, 46, 47, 50, 287, 
 
 288, 311 
 
 Greenhill Street, 31 
 Groats-worth of Wit Bought -with a 
 
 Million of Repentance, 46 
 Grub Street, 68 
 Guildenstern, 161, 232, 317 
 
 HALLI WELL- PHILLIPS 330 
 
 Hall, John, 83 
 
 Hamlet, 3, 4, 9, 14, 77, 129, 130, 
 160, 161, 162, 163, 179, 180, 185, 
 186, 189, 191, 195, 196, 205, 212, 
 213, 215, 216, 219, 228, 229, 232, 
 233, 234, 265, 269, 275, 277, 278, 
 284, 294, 295, 303, 304, 316, 317, 
 318, 3!9, 320, 321, 325, 326, 334 
 
 Hamlet, 60, 74, 76, 81, 99, 125, 127, 
 
 128, 144, 157, 160, 163, 164, 179, 
 7, 232, 249, 256, 264, 265, 267, 
 277 279, 33. 35 39> 3', 3*7, 
 334, 336 
 
 Hamnet, 35, 62 
 
 Harper's Magazine, 330, 336 
 
 Harris, Frank, 337 
 
 Harrison, W. A., 337 
 
 Hastings, 238 
 
 Haterius, 142 
 
 Hathwey, Anne, 33 
 
 Hathwey, Richard, 32 
 
 Hazlitt, 19, 20 
 
 Helena, 226, 252, 259, 263 
 
 Heminges, John, 42, 45, 68, 70, 80, 
 
 129, 310 
 
 Henley Street, 31, 62, 76 
 Henry of Bolingbroke, 242 
 Henry IV., 295 
 Henry IV., 60, 73, 160, 245, 295, 
 
 298, 337 
 
 Henry V., 133, 191, 246, 295 
 Henry V , 61, 236, 245, 246 
 Henry VI,, 50, 240 
 Henry VI., 36, 37,43, 45. 47, 4 8 5 8 , 
 
 2 36, 237, 241, 2 46, 288 
 Henry VII., 62 
 Henslowe, Philip, 36, 43, 44, 45, 
 
 55, 57, 97, 292 
 Herbert, William, Earl of Pern- 
 
 broke, 337 
 Hermia, 252 
 
 Hermione, 176, 279, 284, 326 
 Hero, 227 
 
 History of the Stage, 330 
 Holinshed, 147, 274 
 Holywell, 41 
 Horatio, 78, 163, 215, 270, 316, 
 
 3'7 
 
 Hotspur {probably Henry IV.}, 83 
 Hudson, W. H., Prof., 334 
 
 IAGO, 169, 178, 220, 221, 223, 229, 
 
 269, 270 
 Ibsen, Henrik, u, 153, 158, 174, 
 
 177, 178, 189, 202 
 Imogen, 279, 284, 326 
 Impersonal Aspect of Shakespeare 1 s Art, 
 
 The, 335 
 
 JAMES I., 79, 80 
 
 Jaquenetta, 165 
 
 Jaques, 76, 261, 321, 325, 326 
 
 Jessica, III, 114, 115, 116 
 
 John, Duke, 258 
 
 John Gabriel Bar km an. 202 
 
 John, King, 240
 
 34 2 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, 13, 15, 16, 17, 68 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 12, 60, 68, 77, 81, 85, 
 122, 130, 141, 142, 143, 144. i45> 
 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 184, 192, 
 212, 286, 292, 293, 294, 311, 333 
 
 Jordan, 40 
 
 Judith, 35, 84 
 
 Juliet, 6, 107, 212, 226, 241, 255, 
 
 33* 
 
 Juliut Casar, 76, 8 1, 83, IOO, 143, 
 168, 231, 264, 268 
 
 KATHARINE, 224 
 
 Kempe, Will, 45, 58, 70, 80, 126, 
 
 129, 130 
 Kent, 140, 270 
 
 King John, 73, 166, 225, 239, 241, 
 
 242, 308 
 King Lear, II, 13, 60, 8l, 107, 123, 
 
 130, 132, 133, 139, 144, 145, 157, 
 
 135, 249, 255, 256,271,277,303, 
 309, 312, 313,316, 333 
 > 37> 43> 47 5 6o 
 
 LAMB, CHARLES, 310 
 
 Lady from the Sea, The, 158, 159 
 
 Laertes, 163, 317 
 
 Lafeu, 197 
 
 Lambert Edmund, 31 
 
 Launce, 197 
 
 Laurence, Friar, 251, 256 
 
 Law, Ernest, 331 
 
 League of Youth, The, 2O2 
 
 Lear, King, 3, 14, 17, 140, 203, 212, 
 
 229, 233, 270, 271, 272, 277, 278, 
 
 284, 292, 294, 295, 326 
 Lee, Sir Sidney, 329, 330, 335, 
 
 33 6 
 
 Leicester, Earl of, 38, 39 
 Lennox, 195 
 Leonardo, 113 
 Leontes, 278, 279 
 Leviion, William, 71 
 Ligarius. 104 
 Little Eyolf, 175, 202 
 Lodge, 43, 47 
 Lodovico, 170, 270 
 London, 38, 129 
 Longaville, 224 
 Lorenzo, 114, 115, 116, 118 
 Love's Kingdom. 330 
 
 Love's Labour't Lost, 44, 50, 58, 73, 
 
 133. 155. l6 5> "4, 2 47> M 8 , 86 > 
 3>4, 3 2 5> 3 26 > 337 
 
 Love'j Labour's Won, 73 
 
 Luciana, 225 
 
 Lucius, 101, 102, 104, 1 06 
 
 Lucy, Sir Thomas, 35, 38, 297, 311 
 
 Lysander, 252 
 
 MACBETH, 124, 125, 147, 187, 188, 
 192, 193, 194, 212, 230, 240, 256, 
 2 73. 2 74, 2 75> 2 7 6 > 2 77> Z 7 8 
 
 Macbeth. 46, 60, 8l, 124, 132, 144, 
 
 157, 164, 232, 273,277, 334 
 Macbeth, Lady, 188, 192, 274, 275 
 MacdufF, 167, 195, 275 
 Maiden Lane, 72 
 Maldon M.S., 329 
 Malone, 39 
 
 Malvolio, 76, 197, 226, 161 
 Manechmi, 155 
 Man Shakespeare, The, 337 
 Margaret, Queen, 237, 238, 240, 
 
 241 
 
 Maria, 224 
 Marlowe, 37, 43, 46, 47, 49, 50, 
 
 132, 308 
 
 Marston, John, 77 
 Massey, 336 
 Master Builder, 202 
 Master Builder, The, 174, 2O2 
 Measure for Measure, 76, 8l, 169, 
 
 227, 264, 265 
 
 Memoirs of Ed-ward Alley n, 330 
 Merchant of Fcnice, 73, 74, 98, 107, 
 
 III, 133, 167, 168, 256, 257, 
 
 323 
 Mercutio, 107, 108, no, 179, 199, 
 
 250, 316 
 
 Meres, Francis, 50, 73, 337 
 Mermaid Tavern, 12, 68, 144, 149 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, 15, 198, 
 
 211, 298 
 
 Metellus, 143 
 
 Middleton, 276 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, 15, 73, 
 
 97. 47 '5S> l66 , 22 5. 2 4 8 > 2 49> 
 2 S 2 , 2 55. 2 S7. 2 66, 303 
 
 Milton, 183, 209 
 
 Miranda, 82, 171, 279, 285. 314, 
 326 
 
 Modern Philology, 332
 
 INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 343 
 
 Moliere, 199 
 
 Montague, 250, 251, 255, 266 
 Morocco, 113, 116 
 Mountjoy-Bellott lawsuit, 311 
 Mountjoy, Christopher, 66, 149 
 Much Ado About Nothing, 15, 76, 
 
 83, 168, 227, 257, 258, 260, 261, 
 
 262, 263 
 Mugwell Street, 66 
 
 NASH, 46, 236 
 
 Nerissa, 112, 117, 119, no 
 
 Newington Butts, 47, 52 
 
 New Place, 54, 63, 64, 66, 67, 83, 
 
 302 
 
 Nietzsche, 334 
 Nora, 177, 178 
 Norwich, 129 
 Nym, 197 
 
 OcTAVM, 175 
 
 CEdipus, 158 
 
 Oliver, 262 
 
 Olivia, 226 
 
 Ophelia, 161, 167, 196, 292, 294, 
 
 3'7 
 
 Origin of Tragedy, 335 
 Orlando, 226, 262, 295 
 Orsino, 226 
 Osric, 234 
 Oswald, 139 
 Othello, 7, 9, 99, 133, 170, 179, 
 
 193, 219, 22O, 221, 222, 223, 229, 
 
 233, 267, 269, 277, 278, 284, 295, 
 
 296, 326 
 Othello, 81, 83, 130, 132 144, 147, 
 
 154, 168, 169, 178,222,303,309, 
 
 316 
 
 Oxford, 125 
 Oxford, Earl of, 337 
 
 Palladit Tamia, 73 
 
 Paradise Lost, 183 
 
 Paris (Romeo and Juliet), 25 1 
 
 Parolles, 179, 200 
 
 Peele, 46, 47 
 
 Peer Gynt, 2O2 
 
 Perdita, 149, 176, 279, 284, 326 
 
 Perkes, Clement, of the Hill, 61 
 
 Phillips, Augustine, 70, 80, 129 
 
 " Pierce Pennilesse," 46 
 
 PUanio, 278, 279 
 
 Pistol, 197, 200 
 
 Plautus, 155 
 
 Plutarch, 147, 151 
 
 Pointz, 197 
 
 Polixenes, 149 
 
 Polonius, 160, 161, 162, 217, 232, 
 
 3*7* 3*9, 3*o 
 Pope, Thomas, 43, 70 
 Portia, 104, 106, 112, 113, 114, 116, 
 
 117, 119, 120, 133 
 Posthumus, 295 
 Prospero, 82, 171, 295, 314, 319, 
 
 320, 321 
 Publius, 105 
 Puck, 252 
 
 QUINEY, RICHARD, 64 
 Quiney, Thomas, 84 
 
 RAOOZINE, 169 
 
 Rape of Lucrece, The, 48, 54, 58, 73 
 
 Rat-Wife, 175 
 
 Red Bull Theatre, 79 
 
 Regan, 140, 205, 229, 271, 272 
 
 Return from Parnassus, 293 
 
 Reynolds, G. F., 332 
 
 Richard II., 237 
 
 Richard II., 75, 78, 166, 201, 225, 
 
 239, 240, 241, 308 
 Richard III., 238, 240 
 Richard III., 58, 73, 225, 237, 238, 
 
 241, 246, 308 
 Richardson, John, 32, 33 
 Rideway, Prof., 334 
 Robinson, Crabb, 19 
 Rogers, Henry, 61 
 Rogers, Philip, 75 
 Rome, 100, 296 
 Romeo, 6, 19, 107, 108, no, 212, 
 
 226, 250, 251, 256, 295, 316, 317, 
 
 320, 324, 332 
 Romeo and Juliet, 73, 107, 132, 133, 
 
 i47 I S5> l66 > l6 7 "5> 2 3. 2 3'> 
 
 241, 248, 249, 250, 253, 255, 256. 
 
 2 57> 2 59 ^63, 266, 308 
 Rosalind, 226 
 Rosaline, 224, 337 
 Rose Theatre, 36, 43, 47, 50, 55, 68, 
 
 72, 129, 236, 256, 311 
 Rosencrantz, 161, 232, 317 
 Rosmersholm, 175
 
 344 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Ross, 124 
 
 Rowe, Nicholas, 39, 40, 81, 82, 
 297 
 
 SAINTSBURY, Prof., 334 
 
 Salanio, HI, 114, 117 
 
 Salarino, HI, 114 
 
 Salerio, 1 18 
 
 Sandells, Fulk, 32, 33 
 
 Savage, Thomas, 71 
 
 Saxony, 38 
 
 Scotland, 79 
 
 Scott, Walter, 301, 303 
 
 Sebastian, 226, 323 
 
 Seven Daily Sins, 46 
 
 Shakespeare as a Groom of the Chamber, 
 
 33' 
 
 Shakespeare; His Mind and Art, 336 
 Shakespeare, John, 30, 31, 35, 63 
 Shakespearian Stage, The, 332 
 Shallow, Justice, 298 
 Shallow, Master, 298 
 Shelley, 283 
 Short Treatise of the English Stage, 
 
 330 
 
 Shottery, 33, 64 
 Shylock, ii2, 113, 115, 117, 118, 
 
 '35. 259 
 
 Silver Street, 66, 68 
 Sir John Falstaff {probably "Merry 
 
 Wives of Windsor "), 83 
 Sly, Cristopher, 31 
 Some Principles of Elizabethan Staging, 
 
 332 
 
 Somenet House, 80 
 Sophocles, 158, 182, 210, 212, 303 
 Southampton, Earl of, 45, 48, 49, 
 
 50, 54, 78, 80 
 
 Southwark, 36, 40, 43, 72, 129, 236 
 Spanish Ambassador Extraordinary, 
 
 80 
 
 Spanish Tragedy, 132 
 St Helens, 41, 45, 68 
 St Marye Overyes, 72 
 St Paul'* Cross, 57 
 Stanley, Ferdinando; Lord Strange, 
 
 39 
 
 Staple of Ne-ws, 68 
 
 Stopes, C. C., 332 
 Strange, Lord, 41,45, 51 
 
 Stratford, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 61, 62 
 63, 64, 65, 72, 75, 81, 297, 298, 
 301, 302, 311, 329 
 
 Street, Peter, 71 
 
 Sturley, Abraham, 64 
 
 Sufflaminandus erat, 142 
 
 Surrey, 45 
 
 Sussex, 45 
 
 Swan Playhouse, 331 
 
 Swinburne, 20 
 
 TALBOT, 46 
 
 Tambourlaine, 132 
 
 Taming of the Shrevi, 31, 60, 6 1 
 
 Tarleton, 43 
 
 Tempest, The, 82, 83, 128, 147, 205, 
 
 228, 231, 286, 303 
 Temple Grafton, 32 
 Tewkesbury, Battle of, 238 
 Theater, The, 8, 41, 42, 49, 52, 53, 
 
 55,56, 58,61, 62,65, 68, 69, 70, 
 
 7 2 73 74. *5 6 > 286 , 3o g 3". 
 
 3 2 9 
 
 Thersites, 130 
 
 Timber, or Discoveries, 12, 142, 333 
 Timon, 295, 303 
 Timon of Athens, 81, 132, 191, 335 
 Times, The, 336 
 
 Titus Andronicus, 50, 51, 58, 73 
 Touchstone, 130, 197 
 Torvald, 177, 178 
 Trtgic Drama in JEschylut, Sophocles, 
 
 and Shakespeare, 334 
 Trees on the Stage f Shakespeare, 332 
 Troilus, 191 
 
 Troilus and Cresida, 76, 8 1, 130 
 Twelfth Night, 34, 76, 130, 168, 
 
 261, 323 
 Ttvo Gentlemen ofPerona,$o, 58, 155, 
 
 166, 167, 248, 308 
 Tybalt, 107, 250 
 Tyler, Thomas, 336 
 
 VENICE, 170 
 
 Venus and Adonis, 23, 48, 58 
 Verges, 197, 258 
 Verona, 255 
 Viola, 226 
 
 Visor, William, of Wincot, 61 
 , 8 1
 
 INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 345 
 
 WALKLEY, A. B., 332 
 Wallace, C. W., 330, 336 
 ' War of the Theatres," 76, 291 
 Warwickshire, 61, 297 
 West, Rebecca, 153 
 Whately, Anne, 32, 33 
 When We Dead A-wakcn, 2O2 
 Whittington, Thomas, 62 
 Wilmcote, 30 
 Windsor, 199 
 
 Winter's Tale, A, 15, 82, 83, 145, 
 
 176, 128, 231, 278, 279 
 Wittenburg, 78 
 Woodward, Joan, 43 
 Worcester, 33 
 
 Worcester, Bishop of, 32, 33 
 Worcester, Consistory Court of, 33 
 Worcester, Earl of, 39 
 Wyndham, George, 336
 
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 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
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 Times. "Mr Figgis's former volume, 'A Vision of Life,' 
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 has an abundant gift of poetic eloquence, which enables him to 
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 vehemence, are its chief qualities." 
 
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 work, * A Vision of Life.' The present collection contains 
 a remarkably fine poem the chief one in which is handled 
 with poetic power the story of Job and his tribulations. Indi- 
 viduality is stamped on every line, and readers of Mr Figgis 
 will find in this volume a characteristic selection." 
 
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 in the heavens the perfect round." It is this line that gives 
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