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Sermons from 
 Shakespeare 
 
 By FATHER L. J. VAUGHAN 
 
 PUBLISHER 
 
 C. H. BARTLETT CO. 
 Janesville, Wis. 
 
LOAN STACK 
 
Vi 
 
 '* J?ote 
 
 We feel that we are to be congratulated in 
 being at last able to answer the insistent demand 
 of the students and instructors in literature, and 
 give to the public Father Vaughan's "Sermons 
 from Shakespeare" in book form. 
 
 We feel that few men, if any, has done so 
 much to stimulate an interest in Shakespeare 
 amongst the American public as Father Vaughan 
 in his public lectures. Certainly no student of 
 our times has excited more favorable comment 
 for the originality of his treatment, and illumi- 
 nating and simplifying of what has always ap- 
 peared a most difficult study. 
 
 If we needed any proof of his value as an 
 illuminating influence in the study of the Im- 
 mortal Bard the greatest proof would be his 
 wonderful success and rapid growth in popu- 
 larity, which has made him, in the course of a 
 few years, acquire an international reputation 
 which has caused so great a demand for his lec- 
 tures that he can no longer answer that demand 
 in person. And so the requests for his lectures 
 in printed form make us feel ourselves espe- 
 cially favored in being able to present his works 
 to the public. 
 
 497 
 
preface 
 
 Since we are about to discuss the workfcof 
 a great genius, it seems to me that in order to 
 appreciate them at their proper value, and place 
 them where they belong in the world of art, our 
 first step should be to form some clear idea in 
 our minds as to just what constitutes genius as 
 applied to art. 
 
 To me genius is that indefinable sensitiveness 
 of a great soul that causes him to see the spirit 
 of the Creator in every created thing, and, em- 
 bodying that spirit into his work, gives to the 
 work of his hand a soul. This is what makes the 
 work of genius art. The great artist is there- 
 fore always a student of nature a lover of God's 
 great world. To him the universe is a living 
 thing. He communes with nature as with a 
 friend. The sighing trees, moaning and whis- 
 pering as they bend their heads together, tell 
 to his soul the mysteries of nature. The light- 
 ning flash and the thunder roll is the groan of 
 the universe at outraged nature. The varied 
 
flowers, nodding and bending as he passes by, 
 read to his eye a story in colors. In this close 
 communion with nature he learns many laws, un- 
 earths mysteries, finds a void in the heart of 
 nature, and with the yearning of a genius, he 
 longs to disclose to others the knowledge he has 
 gained. Now, how may he do this? If he be a 
 painter he paints a picture; if he be a poet he 
 weives a verse; if he be a musician he builds 
 a theme. But the painting, the poem, the musical 
 tones are neither his end nor his object. The 
 material work is but the medium to convey a 
 mighty thought to teach a lasting lesson gen- 
 ius is but laboring to put into imperishable form 
 the vapory images of his soul. 
 
 The true work of art, then, is never a mere 
 copy of nature the reproduction of an existing 
 thing. This would be but mimicry, requiring 
 rather the animal propensity of the barbarian 
 than the crucial judgment of cultured intelli- 
 gence. No ! Art does, if you will, mimic nature. 
 Art does, if you insist, reproduce existing im- 
 ages; but it does more. It idealizes nature, it 
 clarifies the material form, that looking beyond 
 we may see the id_eal. Nature presents for 
 our consideration always the particular thing. 
 Art never the particular, always the universal. 
 Nature holds up for our study the person, the 
 
individual. Art never the person, but always 
 the type, the species, the genus. 
 
 Nature is an analysis, art is a synthesis. 
 
 It is necessary to keep this principle before us 
 if we would understand the works of genius. 
 And in no work will we find this more neces- 
 sary than in the Immortal works of Shakespeare. 
 
 L. J. VAUGHAN. 
 
ftermon* from 
 
 It is with a sense of deep responsibility that I 
 venture to speak to you on an educational subject. 
 I say educational, because to me Shakespeare is 
 a liberal education. For, after all, when we 
 come to understand education properly, it means 
 something- more than a knowing of dates and 
 facts and figures, something more than a memor- 
 izing of rules and formulas. Education, when 
 you come to understand it truly, means taking 
 the first steps out into God's great world; it is 
 getting our bearings aright on the sea of life. 
 
 To me education is the lighting of a lamp, 
 by which we may read aright the enigma of life ; 
 the unfolding of the human soul, whereby we 
 may drink in the wonders and the mysteries and 
 the laws and the beauties which the hand of 
 God has painted all o'er the face of nature. 
 
 True education- is to know something of the 
 heart-aches, the death-pangs, the anxious seek- 
 ings, the bitter disappointments and the soul's 
 yearning of the human race, and so be able to 
 attune our own hearts to be in harmony with 
 God's great world around us. 
 
 And I know of few means that God has given 
 us more powerful in arriving at that happy point 
 
10 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 of education than the books which we read. 
 ^ Books ! what a part they play in the life of the 
 ' intelligent man ! They influence our morals, they 
 tinge our character, they stimulate our ambi- 
 tions ; they frame, and they color our whole life's 
 great picture. 
 
 Have you not marked it, how the book of the 
 boy becomes the guide of the youth, the com- 
 panion of the man, the friend and consolation of 
 old age? It is a grand thing when you are 
 growing old, when the burdens of many years are 
 bending down your shoulders, and the snows of 
 many winters have whitened your hair, when 
 you sit alone, and yet you are not alone when 
 you are surrounded by the ghosts of the mighty 
 dead. And sitting in your library, leaning back 
 in your chair, you may shake hands with the 
 old friends of your childhood the authors on 
 the shelves. They never leave you; they stay 
 with you when every other memory of a long 
 and eventful life seems like the vapory figures 
 of a dream that has long since passed. 
 
 It seems to me that the first great book was 
 written by the hand of God written in letters 
 of light across the scroll of chaos. It was a 
 wondrous book; it was God's book to man, the 
 great book of nature, that wondrous world that 
 was to unfold before us page by page and chap- 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 11 
 
 ter by chapter, wherein the hand of the Eternal 
 God had written the laws and the lessons and 
 the mysteries and the wonders and the beauties 
 that would bind the human soul for ever to the 
 great white throne of God. 
 
 And in order that man might read that book 
 of nature, and reading it aright might find there- 
 in the mystery of his being, God gave to every 
 man a wondrous mind an almost divine intellect 
 That as that book of nature unfolds before him 
 he might read aright the lessons that are writ- 
 ten there. 
 
 But when man sinned when man stood up 
 twixt heaven and earth and hurled back in the 
 face of the great Creator his pledge of love and 
 immortality in that instant the God-like mind 
 was darkened. Sin heaped up and repeated 
 through generation after generation, dwarfed 
 the body, weakened the physical structure, and 
 dragged man down to almost the level of brute- 
 life. The God-like mind was still there, but all 
 in a chaos of confusion. The splendid intellect 
 was buried within, but could not manifest itself 
 through this sin-abused and much debased body. 
 Man was buried in material things, seeking his 
 happiness in the world, and he could not reach 
 to, nor grasp, nor read aright the supernatural 
 

 12 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 lessons that the hand of God had written all 
 o'er that book of nature. 
 
 And for a little while it seemed as though 
 God's work was lost. For a little while it seemed 
 as though that book of nature had become a 
 book of cipher that man would never read aright, 
 a book of wonders that man could never under- 
 stand. 
 
 But to a few gifted minds, to a few men of 
 genius, God seems to have given the key to that 
 wondrous book of nature, that as it unfolds 
 before them page by page and chapter by chap- 
 ter, with the light of genius given them by 
 heaven, they may read aright the lessons that 
 are written there, and put them into language 
 that you and I can understand. 
 
 We call these great minds, we call these men 
 of genius, authors. We love them, friends, and 
 why? We love them most of all because they 
 take up that great book of nature, that work of 
 God, and turning o'er its pages they find the 
 mysteries that are hidden there, and translate 
 them into language that the sons and daughters 
 of men can understand. 
 
 They lie out in the summer time under the 
 beautiful green trees, they listen to the love 
 songs of the birds, and in the love songs of 
 the birds there is whispered to the soul of genius 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 13 
 
 something more than sweet music, something 
 more than trembling tones. In the love songs 
 of the birds there is whispered to the soul of 
 genius something of the mysterious anthems that 
 angels sing around the throne of God. 
 
 They lie down by the babbling brooks, they 
 listen to the silvery waters rippling in soft mu- 
 sic o'er the white pebbles as they march onward 
 to their beds in the lakes. And in the murmur 
 of the waters, in its rippling and its roar, there 
 is something more than rushing water it is the 
 voice of Divinity whispering of the mysterious 
 powers that the hand of the Creator has buried 
 away down deep in the bosom of mother nature. 
 
 They pause these men of gifted minds 
 pause o'er the tiny flowers that you and I would 
 pass thoughtlessly by, and looking down into 
 their soft, velvety petaled hearts the soul of 
 genius sees something more than the pretty 
 flowers, something more than the splendid shape, 
 something more than the marvellous coloring: 
 Out of the heart of the beautiful flower a soul 
 steals forth that whispers to genius the mysteries 
 of life and death. 
 
 Amongst such authors Shakespeare stands 
 alone. He seems to occupy an unique position 
 not only in the language and the literature of 
 our own tongue, but, for that matter, in the 
 
14 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 language and the literature of the world. He 
 differs e'en from the greatest authors. Why, 
 e'en the greatest authors, as I read them, study 
 them, and analyze them attentively, I feel, in- 
 deed, with that mighty genius given them by 
 Heaven, they have read that great book of nature 
 as it unfolded before them, they have drunk 
 in her wonders and her mysteries and her laws 
 and her beauties, and then out of their own 
 minds they want to imitate God. They would 
 create build up marvellous characters; wonder- 
 ful indeed, but they are man-made. And when 
 they have built up their little characters, into 
 their mouths they put set phrases and analyzed 
 sentences. Shakespeare differs from all this. 
 
 We can seldom say, truly, that Shakespeare 
 creates. With a master hand he draws back the 
 curtain from the stage of life and shows us men 
 and women, not the creatures of his brain, but 
 God's men and women men and women as we 
 know them in everyday life. He puts into their 
 mouths no set phrases, no analyzed sentences, but 
 coming down to the footlights, the men and 
 women of Shakespeare speak forth their hearts 
 and their souls to us. 
 
 E'en the greatest authors, as I read them I 
 seem to feel, with their mighty genius, they have 
 grasped the world of nature as it flew on before 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 15 
 
 them, that they have become so enraptured with 
 a single page of the book of life, so lost in the 
 study of a single human joy or a single human 
 passion, that they spend their whole lives in 
 translating one little page of God's great work, 
 in giving expression to a single soul's joy or a 
 single heart's yearning. 
 
 And so the danger to a man of one book, or 
 of one author, is that he will judge God's whole 
 world from the coloring of his favorite book, 
 or from the standpoint of his favorite author. 
 
 These men of gifted minds delve down into 
 the very bosom of mother earth ; they felch forth 
 the heart-drops of humanity; they crystalize 
 them into beautiful literary gems, set them in 
 wonderful settings, and send them forth for the 
 admiration of the world. 
 
 Again, Shakespeare differs from all this. He 
 never translates in part, he never delves down, 
 nor digs, nor seems to seek for his material. 
 With the genius of a master he holds the mirror 
 up to nature and gives us a reflex, not of one 
 page, not of a part, but of God's whole great 
 scheme of existence every human joy and every 
 human passion from the cradle to the grave. 
 
 He is the one author that, as I read him, I feel, 
 with a yearning of a genius he has thrown his 
 arms out to the world, he has grasped the hand 
 
16 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 of humanity, and he has counted the pulse of 
 the human race. He is the one author who seems 
 to have thrown himself prone down on the bosom 
 of mother nature and listened until he has caught 
 the heart-throbs of humanity. 
 
 It is this very massiveness, this very complete- 
 ness of Shakespeare, which has made his work 
 even like the book of nature : a book of cipher 
 that men cannot read aright ; a book of wonders 
 that men study all their lives, and dying admit 
 that they know little or nothing of the wonders 
 or the mysteries or the beauties that are buried 
 away in that matchless work. 
 
 It is this very massiveness this very com- 
 pleteness of Shakespeare which has caused the 
 greatest critics in our language, after years of 
 study, to conclude that, after all, the work is 
 too gigantic, too complete for any one mind to 
 have conceived, or any one hand to have fin- 
 ished in detail, but, after all, many minds and 
 many hands were engaged upon the master- 
 work. 
 
 Why, even the lovers of Shakespeare are 
 forced reluctantly to admit that at least two 
 minds and two hands are evident in the struc- 
 ture of the work. And the question ever recur- 
 ring is "why?" Why do you believe that you 
 can distinguish the evidence of different minds 
 
SERMONS FROM SPIAKESPEARE. i? 
 
 and different hands in the structure of the 
 work? You will see clearly in a moment's con- 
 sideration. 
 
 When Shakespeare speaks of the unknowable 
 world, when he would inculcate a great moral 
 principle, when he speaks of the supernatural he 
 rises to the dignity of the sublime. 
 
 He is indeed, then, the divine poet. But, as 
 every student of Shakespeare will remember, in 
 the details of his work, in finishing scenes, and 
 closing acts, and frequently in his comedy, he 
 falls below the standard of the mere mediocre; 
 and why? Because Shakespeare cared little or 
 nothing for laws or words or technique. 
 
 And it is this very masterly disregard for law 
 and usage that has caused him to incorporate 
 into the very body of his matchless composition 
 these glaring grammatical English mistakes, 
 which, since his time, have become master-pieces 
 of English expression. 
 
 We study the words of Shakespeare, and yet 
 the words of Shakespeare were but the tools of 
 his craft, which he used as he saw fit. Words 
 were but the material with which he would build 
 up a great temple of literary thought, and where 
 the word did not fit he cut it off or elongated its 
 meaning that it might fill in the space for which 
 he designed it/ Words were but vehicles to carry 
 
18 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 his thoughts on down through the annals of time. 
 
 As he sat there and spun out the matchless 
 music of his verse, verse was neither his end 
 nor his object. As he sat there and spun out 
 the matchless music of his verse^he was merely 
 weaving a garment with which he would clothe 
 the child of his soul and send her forth for the 
 admiration of men. 
 
 The truth is Shakespeare, with that wondrous 
 genius given him by Heaven, has read the great 
 book of nature as it unfolded before him. Like 
 thousands of other authors he has drunk in her 
 wonders and her beauties and her mysteries. But, 
 then, from that book of nature he has turned to 
 the written book of God the inspired scrip- 
 ture the scripture which is so evident in the 
 structure of his work. It forms the very bone- 
 work the skeleton of his master-concepts and 
 he finds therein the same wonders, the same 
 mysteries, the same heart-aches, the same death- 
 pangs, the same soul yearnings of the human 
 race that he finds all around him in God's great 
 book of nature. And taking from that written 
 book a text he sat down, not to write mere plays 
 to while away the hours, not mere poems to sat- 
 isfy a vulgar rabble, but to give to the world 
 some of the greatest sermons ever conceived by 
 
 -' 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 19 
 
 a human mind or executed by a merely human 
 hand. 
 
 At first glance it may seem this is an odd 
 view to take of Shakespeare. At first glance 
 it may appear as an unique treatment of the 
 Mighty Bard, but in order to appreciate the full 
 motive and value of his work we must realize 
 that it was written for people of the world 
 for men and women of mature minds and mature /" 
 knowledge. Hence, the many delicate questions 
 touched are not to be viewed as opening up for- 
 bidden grounds to immature minds, but rather 
 assisting developed intellects to better under- 
 stand the forces operating to make human life 
 what it is. For unless you so study Shakespeare, 
 unless you seek the ideal in his work, unless you 
 judge him strictly from the standpoint of art, 
 many of his compositions which have for years 
 been accepted as master-pieces, when judged 
 strictly from the standpoint of technique, will 
 sink below the level of the mere mediocre. On 
 the other hand many of his works that have been 
 thrown aside by the critics as second rate pro- 
 ductions, as mere bids to the vulgar rabble, 
 studied in the light of art will be raised to the 
 dignity of master-pieces. 
 
 If we would ever understand the true meaning, 
 or properly appreciate the work of genius we 
 
20 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 must be able to distinguish in literature, as in- 
 deed we do in all the other works of man, the 
 difference between mere manufactory and real 
 art. Let us just for a moment consider this 
 point manufactory. I care not in what depart- 
 ment of man's work; I care not how beautifully 
 it is done; I care not how wonderfully it is con- 
 trived; I care not how exquisitely executed, 
 manufactory is always the work of the human 
 hand. It caters to the present time, to the age 
 and the place in which it is manufactured. It 
 caters to the styles of the day and the fads of the 
 hour, and it will be thrown aside or be forgotten 
 as time rolls on and the styles change and the 
 fads are forgotten. But art never dies; it is 
 immortal. It belongs to no time, no place, or no 
 people; it lives for ever, and why? Because 
 art is a child of the human soul ; it is an outcome 
 of the human intellect. It caters to no time, no 
 place, or no people. It is universal. It lives 
 for ever because it embodies the grand ideals of 
 the human soul. They will not die. They will 
 live on for ever as long as the human intellect 
 yearns after or seeks divinity. 
 
 Would you then know the beauty of Shakes- 
 peare? Would you ever understand the inner 
 meaning of his matchless verse you must study 
 him as art. You must seek the presence of the 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 21 
 
 ideal in his work; you must find the soul, that 
 underlying principle, that irresistible power that 
 forced his genius to build up these literary struc- 
 tures, that he might send down into other hearts 
 and other minds the grand ideals of his own 
 soul. 
 
 However much knowledge, then, you may ac- 
 quire by parsing or phrasing or tearing asunder ; 
 however much knowledge may come to you from 
 your scientific analysis, if you would ever know 
 the beauty of Shakespeare you must study him 
 as art. 
 
 The great mistake of our English critics, and, 
 for that matter, I might say the great mistake of 
 our English readers in general, in the study of 
 Shakespeare is this: you are so busy studying 
 the mere technique, so enraptured with the ma- 
 terial structure that you never delve down un- 
 derneath and seek for the soul. The great trou- 
 ble is that you are so lost in the music of his 
 matchless verse, so enraptured with the mere ma- 
 terial structure that you have never grasped the 
 soul, never identified the immortal principle that 
 rolls on from play to play and from poem tc 
 poem, identifying each great work, not merely 
 as a work of art, but, as it were, giving to each 
 great concept the stamp of a family resemblance, 
 identifying each master-work as a child of that 
 
22 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 divine genius, with the mighty Master as the 
 Father of them all. 
 
 It seems to me that the great mistake of our 
 English critics, again let me say it, the great 
 mistake of our English readers in general in the 
 study of literature is this : you insist upon using 
 the method of a scientist in the study of an art. 
 Now science, as we all know, pulls down, tears 
 asunder in order that it may find the grain of 
 truth or beauty that is buried within. But art 
 differs from all this. Art builds up ; art frames ; 
 art forms; art colors in order that truth and 
 beauty may stand before us a living and lasting 
 reality. 
 
 Without truth and beauty exemplified there is 
 no real work of art. No hand of man has ever 
 given birth to art. ( The hand is but the instru- 
 ment that moulds into imperishable form the 
 creations of the intelligent soul. To make this 
 clear let us take, then, an example. Take for 
 instance Julius Caesar, the great tragedy of 
 Roman life. Let us ask ourselves the question, 
 "Is Julius Caesar a work of art? Is it a mas- 
 ter-piece?" Now, before we can answer this 
 question intelligently we must call back to our 
 minds what we understand when an intelligent 
 man speaks of art. Art is that which elevates, 
 which refines, is it not? Art is that which ap- 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 23 
 
 peals to the better elements in a man ; art is that 
 which stimulates the intellect; art is the sensi- 
 ble expression of the ideal. 
 
 Now, from this standpoint is Julius Caesar 
 art? As it is studied in the schools today is Jul- 
 ius Caesar a master-piece? Is there anything in 
 Julius Caesar that will elevate or refine? Is 
 there anything in Julius Caesar that appeals t( 
 the better elements in a man? Is there anything 
 in Julius Caesar that stimulates the intellect? 
 Where is the ideal? It is all blood and greed 
 and avarice and hate. There is not a single ray 
 of light from the opening to the closing of the 
 play. The truth is if Julius Caesar were writ- 
 ten today, without the name of the Immortal 
 Bard before it, the play would not be admitted 
 a work of art. Today, analyzed and parsed, 
 judged strictly from the standpoint of English 
 composition, Julius Caesar would be classed with 
 such works as Hall Caine's Deemster. We would 
 call it the child of a diseased brain, the outcome 
 of a morbid imagination. 
 
 But, perhaps you will say, Julius Caesar is an 
 historic drama, and we must expect the bloody 
 atmosphere of that historic period. My dear 
 people, this is the very thought in my own mind. 
 But is Julius Caesar historic? Is the play of 
 Julius Caesar an historic play? If I were to 
 

 24 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 admit, with the average critic or reader of 
 Shakespeare, that the play of Julius Caesar is 
 intended as an historic picture of Rome, then 
 I would feel myself forced to call Shakespeare 
 a bungler in his craft. He has distorted time and 
 place and incident. He has destroyed the historic 
 character of Caesar, and for what? Would he 
 teach us history by destroying and distorting 
 what little we know of that historic period ? The 
 truth is the play of Julius Caesar will not stand 
 the test of an historic analysis. There must be, 
 then, lying beyond that splendid technique, hid- 
 'den within these master-lines, there must be a 
 central thought, a single motive which has 
 escaped our readers and our critics in their his- 
 toric analysis of the work. 
 
 It seems to me the whole secret lies in this: 
 The work of Shakespeare is today universally 
 admitted as literature. Well, if you admit that 
 the work of Shakespeare is literature, I shall ask, 
 "is not literature an art?" It is the great art of 
 arts. Then, why do you not study it as an art? 
 Is it not strange that our English students today 
 insist upon using one method in the study of lit- 
 erature and an entirely different method in the 
 study of the other arts? Why do you not study 
 literature as you study architecture, as you study 
 sculpture, as you study painting? The author, 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 25 
 
 instead of using canvas or color and brush, uses 
 words living, vivified words in order that he 
 may impress upon your very soul the picture of 
 his own mind. Now, if this picture, instead of 
 being merely impressed upon your mind in 
 words, were painted on canvas how would you 
 study it now? Take, for example, a great art- 
 ist who has just finished his master-piece, and he 
 wishes to disclose it for your admiration or your 
 condemnation. Will the great painter put the 
 picture low down on the floor, so that each one ^ 
 may come up and study the technique, see every 
 trick of his art, and the stroke of his brush, and 
 the bunching of coloring, and the texture of the 
 canvas ? Oh, no ! Any artist who would fol- 
 low this method in disclosing his work to the 
 world would never be recognized as a master, 
 for having studied the picture in detail your mind 
 would be blurred with the technique you would 
 never feel the spirit, the soul of the composition. 
 No, when a great artist has finished his master- 
 piece and he wishes to disclose it for the intelli- 
 gent judgment of the world, he hangs the pic- 
 ture high on the wall, he cunningly shades the 
 light, so that it strikes the central figure, and 
 then he asks you to stand far back not where ^ 
 you may study the picture in detail, but where 
 the whole composition bursts upon you as a unit, 
 
26 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 where the background throws out the central 
 figure into bold relief, and there in the central 
 figure you catch the ideal, the key to the whole 
 mental picture. Now, as you stand there gazing 
 upon the silent picture, out of the silent can- 
 vas you read the master-story. Just in like 
 manner when you read a great play, a splendid 
 poem, a mighty story you should be able to close 
 your eyes and find impressed upon your soul a 
 master-picture ; and that picture within your soul, 
 that is the very picture that was in the mind of 
 genius that forced him to build up his literary 
 structure that he might send that picture down 
 into other hearts and other minds. 
 
 And therefore I feel that the first steps in the 
 study of literature must be the study of the men- 
 tal picture, instead of the analysis of the empty 
 shell which has carried the picture down to us. 
 When we understand the picture, when the soul 
 of the composition has touched our own, then 
 the analysis of the mere material structure will 
 become a labor of love. 
 
 Now you have read your Shakespeare, you 
 have analyzed, you have parsed and phrased. 
 I beg of you to throw aside your scientific analy- 
 sis, and let us for once study Shakespeare from 
 the standpoint of art, as a mighty word painter 
 of mental pictures. 
 
Julius! Caegar 
 
 Let us take first the great tragedy, Julius Cae- 
 sar. The popular impression of this great acting 
 play is that it was written and presented to the 
 public as an historic drama. The truth or fal- 
 lacy of this estimate of the play must be cleared 
 up before we can thoroughly appreciate its 
 beauty or its true meaning. 
 
 I believe all doubt as to the intention of the 
 author may be cleared up in regard to this play, 
 and, for that matter, in regard to any other well 
 constructed drama, by adhering closely to the old 
 classical laws of dramatic construction. 
 
 A play, like any other work of art, cannot be 
 constructed at haphazard. The material form 
 must preserve the unity, the conciseness or the 
 clearness of the mental impression, otherwise the 
 mental picture will be lost in a labyrinth of the 
 material. Therefore, in the writing of a drama 
 five acts are considered necessary to harmon- 
 iously work out the theme. Shakespeare has 
 carefully adhered to this classical law, and in 
 order that the five acts may be properly bal- 
 anced each act has its function in unfolding the 
 story of the play. 
 
 The function of the first act is the presentation 
 
28 SERMONS FROM SPIAKESPEARE. 
 
 of the theme, and the introduction of the heart- 
 fyji interest, as no drama can be called a work of art 
 unless it has a defined theme and appeals to the 
 heart as well as to the intellect. This accom- 
 plished, the first act should close. 
 
 The function of the second act is the introduc- 
 ing of the dramatic incident that is, the pre- 
 senting of a conflict between two principles, good 
 and evil. This is what makes the composition a 
 drama. This dramatic incident thoroughly es- 
 tablished, the second act should close. 
 
 The function of the third act should be the 
 development or working out of this dramatic 
 conflict. And it is in the third act that the most 
 liberty is given to the author. 
 
 The fourth act brings the climax or dramatic 
 action the poetic retribution. 
 
 And the fifth act is merely the denouement, 
 or equalization, restoring the picture to the har- 
 mony of the first act. 
 
 With these laws it becomes clear to any mind 
 that if Julius Caesar were intended by the author 
 to be an historic work we must find the historic 
 theme in the first act, for the function of the 
 first act is the unfolding of the theme and the 
 introduction of the heart-interest. But we seek 
 in vain in the first act of Julius Caesar for an 
 historic incident. We find a picture of discon- 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 29 
 
 tent. We find jealousy and hatred and distrac- 
 tion in unexpected places. We find the supersti- 
 tions of paganism brought forth most vividly. 
 We find the feast of the Lupercal as a reflection 
 of pagan Rome. We find the heart-interest in 
 the love of Caesar's wife, and in spite of our- 
 selves we become interested in Caesar this puny, 
 infirm god of the Romans. 
 
 It is evident, then, that since no historic inci- 
 dent is enunciated in the first act, that Shakes- 
 peare did not intend an historic treatment of the 
 play. Had the assassination of Caesar been in- 
 troduced in the first act, then, indeed, we could 
 no longer question the intention of the author to 
 produce an historic picture, for he would be 
 obliged in the four following acts to develop 
 the historic theme which he presented for our 
 consideration in the first act. 
 
 I am sure, therefore, that we will be able 
 to catch the true meaning of Shakespeare more 
 quickly, and more clearly, if we study the play 
 as a great word painting. In order to do this 
 we must construct our picture. Take first the 
 background. But where will we find the back- 
 ground? If you were painting this picture of 
 Julius Caesar where would you find the back- 
 ground? My dear friends, you will always find 
 the background of a literary picture in the open- 
 
30 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 ing scenes of a play or in the opening chapters of 
 a book. What I call the background of a pic- 
 ture is, after all, simply what you call the at- 
 mosphere of a literary composition. The author 
 must create his atmosphere before he can intro- 
 duce the characters who are to live in that at- 
 mosphere. Hence, the background of the picture 
 of Julius Caesar rolls out before us like a great 
 panorama in the opening scenes of the play. It 
 is Rome, pagan Rome ; Rome the mistress of the 
 world, with all the arts, and all the sciences, and 
 all the wealth, and all the culture of the world 
 concentrated to and centered in Rome ; and Rome 
 is rolling in her luxury and power. Every na- 
 tion is lying at her feet; every people! pay her 
 tribute. The imperial foot of Rome is on the 
 neck of the civilized world. And imperial Rome 
 in an hour of pride and of greed stoops down 
 into the gutter, picks up a little man of clay 
 one of her own sons raises him up, puts him on 
 a pedestal, drapes him with the imperial purple, 
 and Caesar is a god; and Rome, that demands 
 the homage of the world, bows down before this 
 little god of clay. They put his statues in the 
 public squares; the statues are draped with the 
 national colors; the laurel wreath is placed upon 
 his brow ; women and children shower down 
 flowers and perfume as the Divine Caesar passes 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 31 
 
 by. They strew their garments in the dust that 
 the imperial Caesar may tread upon them. Cae- 
 sar is a god, and Rome, that demands the hom- 
 age of the world, bows down before the little 
 god that she herself has made. See ! he stands in 
 the very center of the picture; he dominates 
 every line in the play. Out of his own mouth 
 you get the key to the whole picture. He says : 
 
 "I could be well moved, if I were as you; 
 
 If I could pray to move, prayers would move me : 
 
 But I am constant as the northern star, 
 
 Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality 
 
 There is no fellow in the firmament. 
 
 The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks; 
 
 They are all fire and every one doth shine ; 
 
 But there's but one in all doth hold his place: 
 
 So in the world ; 'tis furnish'd well with men, 
 
 And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive; 
 
 Yet in the number I do know but one 
 
 That unassailable holds on his rank, 
 
 Unshaked of motion : and that I am he, 
 
 Let me a little show it, even in this ; 
 
 That I was constant Cimber should be banish'd, 
 
 And constant do remain to keep him so." 
 
 No sooner have you heard this blasphemy 
 from the mouth of this little shivering man of 
 rlay saying he is a god he is like the northern 
 
32 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 star, immovable than the very hand that has 
 made him a god reaches up and catches the hem 
 of his garment, and drags him down. There's 
 your pagan god, a handful of bleeding clay, and 
 around him stand the foremost men of Rome 
 the very men who yesterday swore by the divine 
 name of imperial Caesar there they stand today 
 with their bloody hands and their dripping dag- 
 gers. And as they stand see ! the motive of the 
 play unfolds! There enters the slave of An- 
 tony Antony who hung upon the neck of this 
 Roman god Antony who was more to Caesar 
 than a son or a brother. But no sooner has this 
 fickle pagan world dragged down her god than 
 Antony sends his slave. Is it for revenge ? No ; 
 to beg, to cringe, to plead that he may have a 
 part in the new world, that he may come on the 
 stage in the new drama of life, and with his 
 cap and bells play the fool to the new god 
 to the new god this pagan world may rear up 
 and it is only when he is assured of his own per- 
 sonal safety; it is only when he knows that his 
 own miserable body is freed from the hand of 
 the assassin, that Antony dares to come out from 
 his own home. Yesterday he was master, today 
 he must rush through the streets of Rome to 
 save himself from bodily harm. And as he 
 rushes along, at the very door of the senate 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 33 
 
 house he is stopped by the bleeding body of 
 
 Caesar, the god. Oh! it is no set phrases, no 
 
 analyzed sentences; but spontaneously bubbling j 
 
 forth from the bursting heart of Antony comes 
 
 that splendid sermon on the vanity of a world 
 
 without a God. 
 
 "O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low? 
 
 Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, 
 
 Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well. 
 
 (And he leaves the dead to seek the living) 
 I know not, gentlemen, what you intend, 
 Who else must be let blood, who else in rank : 
 If I myself, there is no hour so fit 
 As Caesar's death's hour, nor no instrument 
 Of half that worth as those your swords, made 
 
 rich 
 
 With the most noble blood of all this world. 
 I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard, 
 Now, whilst your purpled hands do reek and 
 
 smoke, 
 
 Fulfil your pleasure. Live a thousand years, 
 I shall not find myself so apt to die: 
 No place will please me so, no mean of death, 
 As here by Caesar, and by you cut off, 
 The choice and master spirits of this age." 
 
 Then Brutus speaks: 
 "O Antony, beg not your death of us. 
 Though now we must appear bloody and cruel, 
 
34 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 As, by our hands and this our present act, 
 You see we do; yet see you but our hands 
 And this the bleeding business they have done : 
 Our hearts you see not ; they are pitiful ; 
 And pity to the general wrong of Rome 
 As fire drives out fire, so pity pity, 
 Hath done this deed on Caesar." (Antony easily 
 appeased, answers) 
 
 " I doubt not of your wisdom. 
 
 Let each man render me his bloody hand: 
 First, Marcus Brutus, will I shake with you; 
 Next, Caius Cassius, do I take your hand; 
 Now, Decius Brutus, yours; now yours, Metel- 
 
 lus; 
 
 Yours, Cinna, and, my valiant Casca, yours; 
 Though last, not least in love, yours, good Tre- 
 
 bonius. 
 
 Gentlemen all, alas, what shall I say? 
 My credit now stands on such slippery ground, 
 That one of two bad ways you must conceit me, 
 Either a coward or a flatterer. (Seeing the 
 upturned face of Caesar his better nature over- 
 comes him) 
 
 That I did love thee, Caesar, O, 'tis true: 
 If then thy spirit look upon us now, 
 Shall it not grieve thee dearer than thy death, 
 To see thy Antony making his peace, 
 Shaking the bloody fingers of thy foes, 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 35 
 
 Most noble! in the presence of thy corpse? 
 Had I as many eyes as thou hast wounds, 
 Weeping as fast as they stream forth thy blood, 
 It would become me better than to close 
 In terms of friendship with thine enemies. 
 Pardon me, Julius! Here wast thou bay'd bra 
 
 hart; 
 
 Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand, 
 Sign'd in thy spoil and crimson'd in thy lethe. 
 O world, thou wast the forest to this hart ; 
 And this, indeed, O world, the heart of thee. 
 How like a deer striken by many princes 
 Does thou here lie !" 
 
 (But self conquers, and again the politician 
 
 speaks) 
 
 "Pardon me, Caius Cassius : 
 The enemies of Caesar shall say this ; 
 Then, in a friend, it is cold modesty." 
 
 (Then Cassius speaks) 
 "I blame you not for praising Caesar so; 
 But what compact mean you to have with us? 
 Will you be prick'd in number of our friends, 
 Or shall we on, and not depend on you?" 
 
 "Therefore I took your hands, but was 
 
 indeed 
 Sway'd from the point by looking down on 
 
 Caesar. 
 Friends am I with you all and love you all, 
 
36 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Upon this hope that you shall give me reasons 
 Why and wherein Caesar was dangerous." 
 
 (And then alone with Caesar) 
 
 "O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, 
 That I am meek and gentle with these butchers I 
 Thou art the ruins of the noblest man 
 That ever lived in the tide of times. 
 Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood ! 
 Over thy wounds now do I prophesy, 
 Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips 
 To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue, 
 A curse shall light upon the limbs of men ; 
 Domestic fury and fierce civil strife 
 Shall cumber all the part of Italy ; 
 Blood and destruction shall be so in use, 
 And dreadful objects so familiar, 
 That mothers shall but smile when they behold 
 Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war ; 
 All pity choked with custom of fell deeds : 
 And Caesar's spirit ranging for revenge, 
 With Ate by his side come hot from hell, 
 Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice 
 Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war; 
 That this foul deed shall smell above the earth 
 With carrion men, groaning for burial." 
 
 This is your picture. It is not the literary 
 structure ; it is the dramatic picture of blood and 
 greed and avarice and hate. Caesar is a god, and 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 37 
 
 they drag him down. Brutus makes his own 
 moral law. Antony justifies his own ends. There 
 is no law ; there is no morality ; there is no God. 
 Each man strives and grasps for his own. It is 
 the picture of a world without a God. 
 
 Now we see why Shakespeare has painted a 
 puny, egotistical fatalist, tinged with all the 
 superstitions of paganism, instead of the mighty 
 Caesar of history. Caesar is presented to us, not 
 as the mere historic personage, but as paganism 
 personified, and he falls in ruin, leaving desola- 
 tion on all sides. 
 
 This idea of Shakespeare seems to be carried 
 out in the four great characters of the play. He 
 presents to us in no instance the historic person- 
 ages known by their respective names used in 
 the play. We have four characters upon which 
 the play moves Caesar, Cassius, Brutus and 
 Antony; and Shakespeare has carefully drawn, 
 in these four characters, four types of paganism 
 as clearly and as distinctly as it is possible to 
 embody a type in an individual. He has given 
 us the four great ages of Rome in his four great 
 characters. Cassius "is the Roman barbarian; 
 honest, sincere, self-reliant, with the spirit of 
 battle and war. He worships physical power 
 and physical strength; he sneers at Caesar be- 
 cause of his infirm body and his puny constitu- 
 
38 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 tion ; he glories in his own physical strength and 
 
 superiority as a soldier. His is the spirit of the 
 
 Roman barbarians who conquered the world. 
 
 This is clearly exemplified in his one great 
 
 speech : 
 
 "I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus, 
 
 As well as I do know your outward favour. 
 
 Well, honour is the subject of my story. 
 
 I cannot tell what you and other men 
 
 Think of this life, but, for my single self, 
 
 I had as lief not be as live to be 
 
 In awe of such a thing as I myself. 
 
 I was born free as Caesar ; so were you : 
 
 We both have fed as well, and we can both 
 
 Endure the winter's cold as well as he: 
 
 For once, upon a raw and gusty day, 
 
 The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores, 
 
 Caesar said to me 'Barest thou, Cassius, now 
 
 Leap in with me into this angry flood, 
 
 And swim to yonder point?' Upon my word, 
 
 Accoutred as I was, I plunged in 
 
 And bade him follow: so indeed he did. 
 
 The torrent roar'd, and we did buffet it 
 
 With lusty sinews, throwing it aside 
 
 And stemming it with hearts of controversy ; 
 
 But ere we could arrive the point proposed, 
 
 Caesar cried, 'Help me, Cassius, or I sink !' 
 
 I, as Aeneas our great ancestor 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 39 
 
 Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder 
 The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of 
 
 Tiber 
 
 Did I the tired Caesar: and this man 
 Is now become a god, and Cassius is 
 A wretched creature, and must bend his body 
 If Caesar carelessly but nod on him. 
 He had a fever when he was in Spain, 
 And when the fit was on him, I did mark 
 How he did shake: 'tis true, this god did 
 
 shake ; 
 
 His coward lips did from their colour fly, 
 And that same eye whose bend doth awe the 
 
 world 
 
 Did lose his lustre : I did hear him groan : 
 Ay, and that tongue of his that bade the 
 
 Romans 
 Mark him and write his speeches in their 
 
 books, 
 
 Alas, it cried, 'Give me some drink, Titinius/ 
 As a sick girl. Ye gods ! it doth amaze me 
 A man of such feeble temper should 
 So get the start of the majestic world 
 
 And bear the palm alone" 
 
 "Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world 
 Like a Colossus, and we petty men 
 Walk under his huge legs and peep about 
 To find ourselves dishonourable graves. 
 
40 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Men at some time are masters of their fates : 
 The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
 But in ourselves, that we are underlings. 
 Brutus, and Caesar: what should be in that 
 
 Caesar ? 
 Why should that name be sounded more than 
 
 yours ? 
 
 Write them together, yours is as fair a name; 
 Sound them, it doth become the mouth as 
 
 well; 
 
 Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em, 
 Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar. 
 Now, in the names of all the gods at once, 
 Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, 
 That he is grown so great? Age, thou art 
 
 shamed ! 
 
 Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods! 
 When went there by an age, since the great 
 
 flood, 
 But it was famed with more than with one 
 
 man? 
 When could they say till now that talk'd of 
 
 Rome 
 
 That her wide walls encompass'd but one man ? 
 Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough, 
 When there is in it but one only man. 
 O, you and I have heard our fathers say 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 41 
 
 There was a Brutus once that would have 
 
 brook'd 
 
 The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome 
 As easily as a king." 
 
 He is the one honest character in the play. He 
 is jealous of Caesar; he admits it in his own 
 mind, but justifies his jealousy in his own fitness 
 and Caesar's physical inferiority. He says: 
 "Well, Brutus, thou art noble; yet, I see, 
 Thy honourable metal may be wrought 
 From that it is disposed : Therefore, it is meet 
 That noble minds keep ever with their likes; 
 For who so firm that cannot be seduced ? 
 Caesar doth bear me hard ; but he loves Brutus: 
 If I were Brutus now and he were Cassius, 
 He should not humour me. I will this night, 
 In several hands, in at his windows throw, 
 As if they came from several citizens, 
 Writings, all tending to the great opinion 
 That Rome holds of his name, wherein 
 
 obscurely 
 
 Caesar's ambition shall be glanced at: 
 And after this let Caesar seat him sure ; 
 For we will shake him, or worse days endure." 
 Cassius is the barbarian. He uses craft, but 
 knows it, and is honest with himself. Brutus is 
 the Greco-Roman, who has borrowed the philos- 
 ophy and the literature of Greece; the Roman 
 
42 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 satiated with conquests, and with the Greek phil- 
 osophy and eastern training, feels himself a 
 superior sort of creature. Like the sophistry of 
 his philosophy, he is false to the core, not even 
 honest with himself. With his false philosophy 
 he would drug his own soul into peaceful slum- 
 ber. 
 
 Had Shakespeare devoted an entire play to the 
 development of the character of Brutus alone 
 he could not have more strongly accentuated the 
 falseness of the man, the danger of a character 
 nourished and upheld by false philosophy, than 
 he has disclosed in the one soliloquy, where Bru- 
 tus, speaking to his own soul, judges his dearest 
 friend. 
 
 "It must be by his death: and, for my part, 
 I know.no personal cause to spurn at him, 
 But for the general. He would be crown'd: 
 How that might change his nature, there's the 
 
 question : 
 
 (It is not the fact, but the speculative question 
 that he would judge) 
 
 It is the bright day that brings forth the 
 
 adder ; 
 And that craves wary walking. Crown him? 
 
 that; 
 
 And then, I grant, we put a sting in him, 
 That at his will he may do danger with. 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 43 
 
 The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins 
 Remorse from power: and, to speak truth of 
 
 Caesar, 
 
 I have not known when his affections sway'd 
 More than his reason. But 'tis a common 
 
 proof, 
 
 That lowliness is young ambition's ladder, 
 Whereto the climber-upward turns his face ; 
 But when he once attains the upmost round, 
 He then unto the ladder turns his back, 
 Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees 
 By which he did ascend: So Caesar may; (So 
 might any man; even the honourable Brutus) 
 Then, lest he may, prevent. And, since the 
 
 quarrel 
 
 Will bear no colour for the thing he is, 
 Fashion it thus ; that what he is, augmented, 
 Would run to these and these extremities: 
 And therefore think him as a serpent's egg 
 Which hatch'd would as his kind grow mis- 
 chievous, 
 
 And kill him in the shell." 
 In all the literature of the English tongue, I 
 doubt that such another hellish bit of reasoning 
 can be found. Were you to try your own mother 
 by this method of reasoning you must make her 
 an unnamable thing. 
 
 Perhaps the most artistic touch which Shakes- 
 
44 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 peare has given in this drama, is where he makes 
 this Brutus, the man of literature, the scholar 
 open his sentence with relative pronoun it with- 
 out an antecedent. "It must be by his death." 
 What is this it? Brutus dares not mention, even 
 to his own soul, the antecedent of that it. "It 
 must be by his death." Brutus, the noble Brutus, 
 shrinks from putting into words the thought that 
 is uppermost in his mind. We must supply the 
 sentence which Brutus will not speak. "It must 
 be." What is the advancement of Brutus the 
 ambition of Brutus can be only by the death of 
 Caesar. This character of Brutus is carried out 
 in his speech to the Romans 
 
 "Be patient till the last. 
 
 "Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me 
 for my cause, and be silent, that you may hear: 
 believe me for mine honour, and have respect to 
 mine honour, that you may believe : Censure me 
 in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you 
 may the better judge. If there be any in this 
 assembly, any dear friend of Caesar's, to him 
 I say that Brutus' love to Caesar was no less 
 than his. If then that friend demand why Bru- 
 tus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: not 
 that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome 
 more. Had you rather Caesar were dead, to 
 live all freemen? As Caesar loved me, I weep 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 45 
 
 for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as 
 he was valiant, I honour him; but as he was 
 ambitious, I slew him. There are tears for his 
 love; joy for his fortune; honour for his valour; 
 and death for his ambition. Who is here so base 
 that would be a bondsman? If any, speak; for 
 him have I offended. Who is here so rude that 
 would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him 
 have I offended. Who is here so vile that will 
 not love his country? If any, speak; for him 
 have I offended. I pause for a reply/' 
 
 "None, Brutus, none." 
 
 "Then none have I offended. I have done no 
 more to Caesar than you shall do to Brutus. The 
 question of his death is enrolled in the Capitol; 
 his glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy, 
 nor his offenses enforced, for which he suffered 
 death. Here comes his body, mourned by Mark 
 Antony; who, though he had no hand in his 
 death, shall receive the benefit of his dying, a 
 place in the commonwealth; as which of you 
 
 shall not? with this I depart, That, as I 
 
 slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have 
 the same dagger for myself, when it shall please 
 my country to need my death." 
 
 Carefully framed and balanced, cold as a block 
 of marble, chiseled with the care of a consum- 
 mate master, he holds up to the Romans, not 
 

 46 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 their wrongs, not Caesar's faults, but the honour, 
 the righteousness of Brutus. He is, in my mind, 
 the villain of the play; the scoundrel who would 
 justify all his actions on his assumed virtue. He 
 is the same character which runs through every 
 age of history, which has been so conspicuous 
 in the Christian church; the character who has 
 deluged the world with blood for the honour of 
 a merciful, loving God. 
 
 It is worthy of marked attention that Shakes- 
 peare has, in Brutus and Cassius, shown us the 
 danger of dreamers meddling in public affairs; 
 the danger in men of practical experience ally- 
 ing themselves with, or allowing themselves to be 
 governed by theorists. In every incident of the 
 play where there is a question of conflict of 
 opinion Cassius is right, Brutus is wrong, and, 
 still, in every instance Cassius gives way to the 
 theorizing of Brutus. 
 
 Perhaps the strongest argument for the fal- 
 lacy of Brutus is in the fact that the spirit of 
 Caesar haunts him. Twice he sees, or fancies he 
 sees, the ghost of Caesar. No one else sees the 
 spirit ; it is only a figment of the guilty mind of 
 Brutus; it is his conscience crying out against 
 his intellect. Again, the last words he utters are 
 a confession of his guilt : "Caesar now be still ; 
 I killed not thee with half so good a will." As 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 47 
 
 if even then in the hour of his death, the spirit 
 of Caesar mocked him. 
 
 Caesar is the triumphant Roman, the ruler of 
 the world, the fatalist that feels himself deified; 
 while Antony is the modern Roman, the diplomat, 
 the Italian that turns all things to his own pur- 
 pose. If he were living today he would be a 
 great politician, a mighty political boss. His 
 speech to the Romans is perhaps the best example 
 of diplomatic oratory which we can find in the 
 language. His hatred for Brutus, his grief for 
 Caesar, his fidelity to Octavius, never, for one 
 instant, makes him forget the interests of An- 
 tony. I believe in no part of Shakespeare has 
 the actor so sinned against the spirit of Shakes- 
 peare as in the reading of this speech of An- 
 tony. 
 
 "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your 
 
 ears; 
 I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. (A 
 
 first bid for the favor of the rabble) 
 The evil that men do lives after them ; 
 The good is oft interred with their bones; 
 So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus 
 Hath told you Caesar was ambitious : 
 If it were so, it was a grievous fault, 
 And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it. 
 (Veiled accusation of Brutus.) 
 
48 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Here under leave of Brutus and the rest, 
 
 For Brutus is an honourable man; 
 
 So are they all, all honourable men. (More 
 play to the rabble.) 
 
 Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral. 
 
 He was my friend, faithful and just to me : 
 
 But Brutus says he was ambitious ; 
 
 And Brutus is an honourable man. (Now he 
 has gained the attention of his hearers, 
 and before they realize it he presents the 
 case of Caesar.) 
 
 He hath brought many captives home to Rome, 
 
 Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: 
 
 Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? 
 
 When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath 
 wept: 
 
 Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: 
 (But he must not yet offend the Brutus 
 swayed mob. Hence) 
 
 Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; 
 
 And Brutus is an honourable man. (Now for 
 the clinching of Caesar's case.) 
 
 You all did see that on the Lupercal 
 
 I thrice presented him a kingly crown, 
 
 Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambi- 
 tion? 
 
 Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; 
 
 And, sure, he is an honourable man. (No 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 49 
 
 longer veiled, but open scorn) 
 I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, 
 But here I am to speak what I do know. 
 You all did love him once, not without cause: 
 What cause withholds you then to mourn for 
 
 him? 
 
 O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, 
 And men have lost their reason. (He has the 
 
 mob now, and will play upon them. Tears 
 
 and pathos are his instruments) 
 
 Bear with me; 
 
 My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, 
 And I must pause till it come back to me." .... 
 
 (Low and pleading now, like 
 
 a mother to her child) 
 "But yesterday the word of Caesar might 
 Have stood against the world; now lies he 
 
 there, 
 And none so poor to do him reverence. 
 
 masters, if I were disposed to stir 
 Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, 
 
 1 should do Brutus wrong and Cassius wrong 
 Who, you all know, are honourable men. 
 
 (Deep, hissing scorn) 
 
 I will not do them wrong; I rather choose 
 To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you, 
 Than to wrong such honourable men. (Flung 
 
 at the crowd as a reproach) 
 
50 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 But here's a parchment with the seal of Caesar ; 
 I found it in his closet ; 'tis his will : 
 Let but the commons hear this testament 
 Which pardon, me, I do not mean to read 
 (Isn't this cleverly timed; just to the im- 
 pulse of the crowd? Of course he will 
 read it. Tis for that he is here) 
 And they would go and kiss dead Caesar's 
 
 wounds 
 
 And dip their napkins in his sacred blood, 
 Yea, beg a hair of him for memory, 
 And, dying, mention it within their wills, 
 Bequeathing it as a rich legacy 
 
 Unto their issue." (He must still 
 
 further work them to curiosity.) 
 "Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read 
 
 it; 
 
 It is not meet you know how Caesar loved you. 
 You are not wood, you are not stones, but 
 
 men; 
 
 And, being men, hearing the will of Caesar, 
 It will inflame you, it will make you mad : 
 'Tis good you know not that you are his heirs, 
 (Apparently by accident, but most cleverly 
 by design) 
 For if you should, O, what would come of it !" 
 
 "Will you be patient? Will you stay awhile? 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 51 
 
 I have o'ershot myself to tell you of it; 
 
 I fear I wrong the honourable men 
 
 Whose daggers have stabb'd Caesar; I do fear 
 
 it." (Now the crowd goes mad, 
 
 and Antony is the wild fanatical orator.) 
 "You will compel me then to read the will? 
 Then make a ring about the corpse of Caesar, 
 And let me show you him that made the will. 
 Shall I descend? and will you give me leave?" 
 
 "If you have tears, prepare 
 
 to shed them now. 
 
 You all do know this mantle: I remember 
 The first time ever Caesar put it on, 
 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent, 
 The day he overcame the Nervii : 
 Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger 
 
 through : 
 
 See what a rent the envious Casca made : 
 Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb'd; 
 And as he pluck'd his cursed steel away, 
 Mark how the blood of Caesar follow'd it, 
 As rushing out of doors, to be resolved 
 If Brutus, so unkindly knock'd, or no: 
 For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel : 
 Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved 
 
 him. 
 
 This was the most unkindest cut of all ; 
 For when the noble Caesar saw him stab, 
 
52 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, 
 
 Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty 
 heart ; 
 
 And, in his mantle muffling up his face, 
 
 Even at the base of Pompey's statue, 
 
 Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar 
 fell. 
 
 O, what a fall was there, my countrymen! 
 
 Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, 
 
 Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us. 
 
 O, now you weep, and I perceive you feel 
 
 The dint of pity : these are gracious drops. 
 
 Kind souls, what weep you when you but 
 behold 
 
 Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you 
 here, 
 
 Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with trait- 
 ors." "Good friends, sweet 
 
 friends, let me not stir you up 
 
 To such a sudden flood of mutiny. 
 
 They that have done this deed are honourable ; 
 
 What private griefs they have, alas, I know 
 not, 
 
 That made them do it: They are wise and 
 honourable, 
 
 And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you. 
 
 I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts : 
 
 I am no orator, as Brutus is; 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 53 
 
 But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man, 
 That loved my friend ; and that they know full 
 
 well 
 
 That gave me public leave to speak of him: 
 For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, 
 Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, 
 To stir men's blood : I only speak right on ; 
 I tell you that which you yourselves do know ; 
 Show your sweet Caesar's wounds, poor poor 
 
 dumb mouths, 
 And bid them speak for me; but were I 
 
 Brutus, 
 
 And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony 
 Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue 
 In every wound of Caesar, that should move 
 The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.". . . . 
 
 "Why, friends, you go to do 
 
 you know not what : 
 
 Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your 
 
 loves ? 
 
 Alas, you know not; I must tell you then: 
 You have forgot the will I told you of." .... 
 
 "Here is the will, and under 
 
 Caesar's seal. 
 
 To every Roman citizen he gives, 
 
 To every several man, seventy-five drach- 
 mas." "Moreover, he hath 
 
 left you all his walks, 
 
54 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 His private arbours, and new-planted orchards, 
 On this side Tiber; he hath left them you, 
 And to your heirs forever ; common pleasures, 
 To walk abroad and recreate yourselves. 
 Here was a Caesar! when comes such an- 
 other?" "Now let it work. Mis- 
 chief, thou art afoot, 
 Take thou what course thou wilt." 
 The average actor insists upon reading this 
 speech with much the same elegance and polish 
 with which Brutus has delivered his oration, 
 utterly forgetful of the fact that Antony was not 
 an orator, that he was merely one of the young 
 satellites revolving around the mighty Caesar. 
 They bring into it little of the craftiness, little of 
 the trickery, with which he throws to the people 
 thoughts which they would not permit him to 
 utter if spoken out in a straight-forward, manly 
 fashion. Indeed, I believe that Shakespeare, with 
 his love of drajiia^ic__cjQntrast, has purposely put 
 these two speeches so closely together that one 
 may be a perfect offset for the other. Brutus' 
 speech well prepared, elegantly balanced, a per- 
 fect specimen of Roman oratory. Antony's an 
 almost extempore talk, working upon the pas- 
 sions of the people as they are manifested before 
 his very eyes. This seems evident from his 
 words to the slave of Octavius Caesar: 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 55 
 
 "Post back with speed, and tell him what hath 
 
 chanced : 
 
 Here is a mourning Rome, a dangerous Rome, 
 No Rome of safety for Octavius yet; 
 Hie, hence, and tell him so. Yet stay awhile ; 
 Thou shalt not back till I have borne this corse 
 Into the market-place there shall I try, 
 In my oration, how the people take 
 The cruel issue of these bloody men; 
 According to the which, thou shalt discourse 
 To young Octavius of the state of things. 
 Lend me your hand." 
 
 Had the crowd sided with Brutus, Antony 
 would have followed Brutus as readily as he 
 fought against him; but seeing his own inter- 
 ests farthered by the people, he used the body of 
 Caesar, and the honour of Brutus, as a stepping- 
 stone to the throne. 
 
 It is a wondrous picture of a mighty world 
 without a God. 
 
 Shakespeare has given us four examples of 
 men ; each one mighty in his way, but no one of 
 the four able to rise above himself. They were 
 products of paganism ; their gods were men. 
 No man can rise higher than his ideal. JThe 
 ideal of pagan Rome was a man-made god. 
 Each man made his own little god an image of 
 himself, and in his god judged himself. 
 
56 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 So Cassius sneered at all that was not physi- 
 cally perfect, and material power; Antony, 
 swayed by his own selfish desires ; Brutus, a vic- 
 tim of his false philosophy and intellectual pride 
 -f- it is a picture of a world without God. 
 
Masterly as is his word picture of a world 
 without a God, had Shakespeare stopped there I 
 would not be ready to argue him the great 
 genius of our language. Any other great author 
 that I know of, if he had once caught the spirit of 
 paganism, would have gone on multiplying pic- 
 ture after picture, and copy after copy, until 
 his whole life's work would reek with the blood 
 and the greed and the perfidy and the avarice of 
 Rome. But herein does Shakespeare show his 
 master-hand. He has grasped the spirit of pa- 
 ganism; he has painted his picture of pagan life, 
 and with the yearning of a genius he turns the 
 canvas, and begins to paint anew a new picture, 
 a new world and yet no! as you look closer, 
 it is the same old world, but O! how different. 
 Years, centuries seem to have trembled o'er that 
 world of vice. The golden sunlight of Christian- 
 ity has mounted up into the bosom of the heav- 
 ens, throwing out her jeweled arms in benedic- 
 tion o'er the world, and in spite of the greed and 
 the avarice and the grossness and the perfidy of 
 men, the whole picture scintillates with the spirit 
 of Christ. 
 
 J find this companion picture of Julius Caesar 
 
58 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 in Henry VIII. To my mind neither one nor the 
 other can be accepted as historic. They were 
 intended as two ideal pictures. Julius Caesar is 
 the world dark, vain, bloody, empty a picture 
 / of the world without a God. 
 
 Henry VIII., the same world, the same greed, 
 the same avarice, but God is in the picture. Just 
 for a moment study them together. Take first 
 the background of the picture of Henry VIII. 
 It is the same background you found in Julius 
 Caesar a world of hate, a world of greed, a 
 world of war and contention, a world just peep- 
 ing out of the barbarism that has swept down 
 over Europe. And this vain and fickle world in 
 an hour of pride, and of greed, stoops down into 
 the gutter, picks up a little shivering man of 
 clay one of her own sons raises him up, puts 
 him on a pedestal, drapes him with the imperial 
 purple, and Wolsey is a god, more powerful 
 than the king, rich beyond computation, 
 the king-maker of his day. He rules his little 
 world a god. But see ! in an hour of pride and 
 of lust the very hand that made him a god, 
 reaches up, and catches the hem of his garment, 
 and drags him down, and there is your little god 
 lying in the dust. 
 
 It is the same picture as Julius Caesar; the 
 same picture, but O ! how different. Not an out- 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 59 
 
 cry for revenge, not a thirsting for blood, not 
 a sentence of hatred: Grander now in the hour ^ 
 of his degradation than in all his princely ele-^ 
 gance is Wolsey, when his conscience finds his 
 God: 
 
 "So farewell to the little good you bear me. 
 Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness! 
 This is the state of man : today he puts forth 
 The tender leaves of hopes; tomorrow blossoms, 
 And bears his blushing honours thick upon him ; 
 The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, 
 And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely 
 His greatness is a riping, nips his root, 
 And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, 
 Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, 
 This many summers in a sea of glory, 
 But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride 
 At length broke under me, and now has left me, 
 Weary and old with service, to the mercy 
 Of a rude stream that must forever hide me. 
 Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye : 
 I feel my heart new open'd. O, how wretched ' 
 Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors! 
 There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, 
 That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, 
 More pangs and fears than wars of women have : 
 And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, 
 Never to hope again. 
 
60 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Why, how now, Cromwell!" . . . 
 . . . "What, amazed 
 
 At my misfortunes? Can thy spirit wonder 
 A great man should decline ? Nay, and you weep, 
 I am fall'n indeed/' . . . 
 . . . Why, well ; 
 
 Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell. 
 I know myself now; and I feel within me 
 A peace above all earthly dignities, 
 A still and quiet conscience. The king has cured 
 
 me, 
 I humbly thank his grace ; and from these shoul- 
 
 ders, 
 
 These ruin'd pillars, out of pity, taken 
 A load would sink a navy, too much honour. 
 O, 'tis a burden, Cromwell, 'tis a burden 
 Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven!" 
 
 . "I hope I have: I am able now, me- 
 
 thinks, 
 
 Out of a fortitude of soul I feel, 
 To endure more miseries and greater far 
 Than my weak-hearted enemies dare offer. 
 What news abroad?" . 
 . . . "God bless him !" 
 . . . "That's somewhat sudden: 
 But he's a learned man. May he continue 
 Long in his highness' favour, and do justice 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 61 
 
 For truth's sake and his conscience; that his 
 bones, 
 
 When he has run his course and sleeps in bless- 
 ings, 
 
 May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on 'em ! 
 
 What more?" . . . 
 
 . . . "That's new indeed." . . . 
 
 . . . "There was the weight that pull'd me 
 down. O Cromwell, 
 
 The king has gone beyond me : all my glories 
 
 In that one woman I have lost forever: 
 
 No sun shall ever usher forth mine honours, 
 
 Or gild again the noble troops that waited 
 
 Upon my smiles. Go, get thee from me, Crom- 
 well; 
 
 I am a poor fall'n man, unworthy now 
 
 To be thy lord and master : seek the king ; 
 
 That sun, I pray, may never set ! I have told him 
 
 What and how true thou art: he will advance 
 thee; 
 
 Some little memory of me will stir him 
 
 I know his noble nature not to let 
 
 Thy hopeful service perish too: good Crom- 
 well, 
 
 Neglect him not ; make use now, and provide 
 
 For thine own future safety." 
 
 . . . "Cromwell, I did not think to shed a 
 tear 
 
62 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 In all my miseries ; but thou hast forced me, 
 
 Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman. 
 
 Let's dry our eyes: and thus far hear me, 
 Cromwell ; 
 
 And, when I am forgotten, as I shall be, 
 
 And sleep in dull cold marble, where no men- 
 tion 
 
 Of me more must be heard of, say I taught 
 thee; 
 
 Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory, 
 \ And sounded all the depths and shoals of 
 honor, 
 
 Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in ; 
 
 A sure and safe one, though thy master miss'd 
 it. 
 
 Mark but mv fall and that that ruin'd me. 
 W ' ^^ 
 
 Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition ; 
 
 By that sin fell the angels ; how can man then, 
 The image of his Maker, hope to win by it? 
 Love thyself last : cherish those hearts that 
 
 hate thee; 
 
 Corruption wins not more than honesty. 
 Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, 
 To silence envious tongues. Be just and fear 
 
 not: 
 
 Let all the ends thou aim's at be thy country's, 
 Thy God's, and truth's; then if thou fall'st, O, 
 
 Cromwell, 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 63 
 
 Thou fall'st a blessed martyr! Serve the king; 
 
 And prithee, lead me in: 
 
 There take an inventory of all I have, 
 
 To the last penny ; 'tis the king's : my robe, 
 
 And my integrity to heaven, is all 
 
 I dare now call mine own. O, Cromwell, 
 
 Cromwell ! 
 
 Had I but served my God with half the zeal 
 I served my king, he would not in mine age 
 Left me naked to mine enemies." 
 
 There is your picture; the same picture as 
 Julius Caesar, but what a different spirit. In 
 spite of the greed, and the avarice, and the 
 lust of men, the whole picture scintillates with 
 the spirit of Christ. Grander now, in the hour 
 of his helplessness, is Wolsey when his soul 
 turns back to his God. 
 
 Friends, this is the genius of Shakespeare; 
 this is the immortal spirit that cannot die. It 
 is not his splendid lines that make him the 
 master; it is not his matchless verse that 
 makes him live; it is the soul's ambitions, the 
 heart's yearnings, the highest ideals painted 
 by his master-hand. Right here you may, if 
 you wish, catch the genius of Shakespeare in 
 Wolsey, in Katherine, in Henry, in Caesar, 
 and the Romans. Other authors really create ; 
 
64 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 they build up marvelous characters; men and 
 women of clay. Shakespeare creates nothing. 
 He takes your breast, or my heart, and tear- 
 ing them open shows a soul a living soul 
 trembling under the eyes of God. 
 
's Woman 
 
 To me the great world of Shakespeare is 
 like a mighty garden a wonderful garden 
 of the human soul where numberless flowers 
 of thought bloom in profusion. In the little 
 time that you and I may walk together we 
 could not pause for an instant o'er each of the 
 many flowers of thought blooming in this gar- 
 den of the mind. At most we can, as it were, 
 but rush through the pathways and the by- 
 ways of that garden of thought, and inhale en 
 masse the fragrance of the flowers. But there 
 is one flower growing in that garden of 
 thought that I would not have you pass un- 
 noticed by a tall and stately lily, trembling 
 on the stem Shakespeare's woman. Woman! 
 I often wonder do we half realize the real 
 meaning of the word. Is there anything in 
 the world that has made man better, that has 
 pushed on progress, that has made us men 
 what we are, that we do not owe to woman. 
 
 I care not how great man may become 
 through power; I care not how low he may 
 sink in his weakness; I care not what honors 
 the world may have showered upon him, there 
 is one word in our language that makes us 
 
66 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE, 
 
 all akin that word is mother. Mother! In 
 all the glory of honors and riches, in all the 
 plaudits that the world gives to fame, if each 
 and every man that has known greatness were 
 to open his heart, and speak the truth, he 
 would tell you that when the burdens of life 
 seemed hard to bear, and the shadows passed 
 for a moment o'er the sun, there were moments 
 when he would give all the honors of the 
 world, all the plaudits of men, for just five 
 minutes to clasp again an old withered form, 
 to hear an old familiar voice, and look into the 
 time-dimmed eyes of mother. Well has the poet 
 said, "the hand that rocks the cradle is the 
 "/"power that rules the world." 
 
 And where in God's world will we find the 
 golden sphere of. woman so clearly defined as 
 in the works of Shakespeare. It seems to me 
 as if he had ever before his mind's eye that beau- 
 tiful picture in the golden dawn of creation, 
 when Adam, sleeping amidst the flowers, was 
 awakened by the voice of God, and, starting 
 to his feet, saw before him a beautiful creature, 
 half human, half divine, and as he stood in 
 open-mouthed wonder looking upon her, God 
 took her hand and placed it in his, and said: 
 "Adam, she is a woman, and she will be your 
 helpmate," and from that hour man and worn- 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 67 
 
 an have gone on through the world, hand in 
 hand, so different, and still so necessary to 
 one another. 
 
 Man is strong and bluff, and sometimes 
 rough. Wornan is gentle, timid, kind; one an 
 offset for the other. Man is the pioneer; he 
 goes through the world tearing down the 
 mountains of opposition, rilling in the plains 
 of difficulty, and with his sturdy stroke 
 brings down the mighty oaks, and builds up 
 the temples of civilization. Woman comes 
 after with her songs of love, and scatters the 
 beautiful flowers, and smiling angels whisper 
 home sweet home. Man is made up of conceit, 
 selfishness, conscious power. Woman, forgiving, 
 loving, helpful ; each for the part he or she is to 
 play in the drama of life. 
 
 The story of woman as told in Shakespeare 
 is_a_stpry of love. God or man, a woman's 
 life is a woman's love. Shakespeare makes 
 the song of woman a melody of love, 
 rippling with tones of affection. She is 
 never the center of his picture. No; man 
 is always the center of the picture, and 
 woman is like a satellite that revolves for- 
 ever around her little world, which is man. I 
 do not mean to say that Shakespeare makes 
 woman the inferior of man. O, no. We find 
 
68 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 her there as we find her in the world of life 
 infinitely grander, infinitely superior to man, 
 but not in herself. Woman becomes grand in 
 that God-like elevating influence which she ex- 
 ercises on the God-creature, man. 
 
 It does not seem to me that there are many 
 women in Shakespeare. It seems to me it is 
 always the same woman, but in a different 
 position, under different circumstances, fight- 
 ing against different forces, always a creature 
 of her love. God or man a woman's love is 
 a woman's life. 
 
 Is it a pure innocent maiden standing on 
 that mystic line trembling between maiden- 
 hood and womanhood? She loves, and still 
 she scarcely knows the meaning of that word 
 love. She has never dreamed of the mysteries 
 of a mother or a wife. She meets in life her 
 ideal, her prince; she loves him, not realizing 
 the burden of love; and still she will throw 
 away home and friends and gold and the 
 world, and cling, God only knows how she 
 clings, to the man she loves. Is not that 
 Juliet? Sweet and tender Juliet; only an in- 
 nocent, trembling child who has never learned 
 the mystery of life, yet she lives or dies with 
 the fortunes of her love? 
 
 Is it a woman older grown? She has crossed 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 69 
 
 that mystic line between maidenhood and 
 womanhood; she has met her affinity in life; 
 she has married and settled down to the hum- 
 drum life of rearing a family; and all her life, 
 all her world is encompassed in the four walls 
 of the home of the man she loves. And all of 
 a sudden there conies a change, she becomes 
 a woman of the world; she throwis open the 
 doors of her home; entertains lavishly; be- 
 comes deeply interested in every public affair. 
 There is a chair vacant in the affairs of men, 
 and there is only one man in God's world that 
 can fill that chair her man the man she 
 loves. Is not that Lady Macbeth? 
 
 Think what you will of woman in the day 
 of sunshine or the hour of glee, but in the hour 
 of pain, and the day of distress, in the moment 
 of pressing needs, grander, stronger than all 
 the men in the world is the heart and soul of 
 one true, loving woman. This is the philoso- 
 phy of Shakespeare : ^ One bad woman can 
 grasp the soul of a man and drag him down 
 until he stands knocking at the gates of hell. 
 But e'en at the gates of hell, a woman purer 
 than she can grasp the soul of a man and 
 drag him back again until she binds his soul 
 for ever to the great white throne of God. J 
 
 And nowhere in the literature of the world 
 
70 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 will we find this golden sphere of woman so 
 clearly marked out as in Shakespeare. We 
 find it in every play that he has written. In^ 
 deed so strongly was this power of woman im- 
 pressed upon the mind of Shakespeare that it 
 has become the distinguishing mark of his 
 work. Indeed so clearly defined is the power 
 of Shakespeare's woman that she makes his 
 plays what they are, either comedies or trage- 
 dies. If the woman be a bad woman, the play 
 is always a tragedy. If the woman of the play 
 be a good woman, it is always a comedy. 
 Hence the philosophy of life: "It is woman 
 that saves or damns the world." This is clear- 
 ly brought out in A Winter's Tale, where for 
 four acts we are lead to expect a tragedy, but 
 the woman is a good woman Hermione 
 and Shakespeare can only make the drama of 
 life end in a burst of sunshine. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet has all the marks of a 
 comedy. There is no reason in God's world 
 why these two young, honest, loving people 
 should find life a tragedy. But Juliet forgets 
 the sacred dignity of her womanhood ; she dis- 
 regards the laws of conventionality; she for- 
 gets the sacredness of parental authority; she 
 is not, in the strict sense of the word, a good 
 woman; and with all her sweet qualities she 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 71 
 
 reaps the reward of a woman who fails trag- 
 edy and death. 
 
 Measure_jQr..M&asure cries out for tragedy 
 in every line as the plot progresses, but Isa- 
 bella, with her pure, angelic soul draws good 
 from all around her, and the play is a comedy. 
 
 Desdemona, sweet as an angel, pure as even 
 woman should be; but she forgets the sphere 
 of woman she seeks man. She steps down to 
 one beneath her; she defiles her father's house 
 with deceit, and because she deceived her 
 father Othello lets the devil of jealousy in: 
 "She deceived her father, she may deceive me/' 
 and tragedy is the result. 
 
But, perhaps, nowhere do we find this power 
 of woman so strongly brought forth as in the 
 tragedy of Hamlet. Hamlet is diswrought; 
 he has seen the ghost of his father; it is dis- 
 closed to him that his father is murdered; 
 that his uncle is a traitor; that his mother is 
 a dishonored woman. His brain is reeling, 
 his heart is bursting; his soul yearns for a 
 friend, a counsellor; he must have advice; he 
 must confide in some one. In this crisis where 
 does he go? Does he rush back to the univer- 
 sity to the learned professors that talk philoso- 
 phy and theology, as if they knew the mind 
 of Deity? No ! he does not even think of them. 
 Where then does he seek advice and consola- 
 tion, in his soldier friends? He leaves them 
 and flees alone through the night. Flying 
 from men where does Hamlet go? He does 
 what every man does in the crisis of his life, 
 in the hour of need; he seeks the one woman 
 that he loves, whether it be the faithful wife, 
 the loved mother, or the trusted sweetheart. 
 
 Ophelia is alone in her chamber; she hears a 
 commotion without; in through the casement 
 Hamlet bursts. His doublet is open ; his kerchief 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 73 
 
 torn loose; his hair flying wildly in the wind. 
 Silently he stands, and gazes upon her as one 
 gone mad. Then rushing across the room he 
 grasps her by the hands ; he looks down into her 
 great blue eyes as if he would read her very 
 soul. Not a word is spoken; but it needs no 
 words. In that silent picture every student of 
 human life will hear the soul of Hamlet cry out, 
 "My mother is a dishonored woman; Ophelia, 
 will you be true, will you be true." And Ophelia, 
 poor Ophelia, a mere child, hemmed away from 
 the world, guarded by a suspicious old father, 
 without a mother to rear her into womanhood; 
 she is unformed. She looks up into the eyes of 
 the man whom she loves like a child. She loves 
 him! What does she know of love? She has 
 never dreamed of the mysteries of motherhood, 
 or womanhood. She looks up into the eyes of 
 the distracted Hamlet with a smile of love; 
 but it is the love of a child, of a girl; and 
 Hamlet, seeking the woman, finds only a child 
 as he looks into her great blue eyes. And 
 casting her from him, backward, his eyes still on 
 her, he passes out into the night. "Get thee to 
 a nunnery, get thee to a nunnery, get thee to a 
 nunnery." He realizes that she is not ready to 
 bear the burdens of womanhood, or motherhood, 
 or a wife. He must bear his burdens alone. And 
 
74 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 broken-hearted Hamlet goes out into the night. 
 In the crisis of his life, in the hour of his need, 
 the helpmate that God gave him is not ready. Is 
 not this the tragedy of human life? God help 
 the man, when the world turns against him, in 
 the hour of need, rushing home with a breaking 
 heart to find that he has married a wife, but she 
 is not a woman she is not God's noble helpmate. 
 Had Ophelia been three years older the tragedy 
 of Hamlet would never have been written. Had 
 Ophelia been three years older she would have 
 been a woman a woman with all that mysteri- 
 ous strength that comes to a woman in the hour 
 that she loves. Had Ophelia been three years 
 older, when Hamlet rushed in upon her, in the 
 hour of his need, he would have found a woman 
 ready to share his burden. She would have looked 
 up into his eyes with a glance as firm, as fearless 
 as his own, for her heart was pure. She would 
 have grasped his hand with a grasp as firm as 
 his; she would have answered with a fearless 
 heart of a woman, "Yes, Hamlet, I will be true. 
 The sorrows of your life for love's sake I will 
 bear; the burdens of your life for love's sake I 
 will share. Yes, Hamlet, I will be true." With 
 the tender instinct of a woman she would have 
 brushed back the hair from his fevered brow; 
 she would have whispered calm words of solace 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 75 
 
 into his distracted brain; and, with the better 
 instinct of a woman, she would have pointed 
 heavenward and cried, "God is the avenger," 
 and Hamlet would have been saved. 
 
 Indeed to me this is the whole story of Ham- 
 let. Not so much the story of the man as the 
 story of woman. I cannot feel that the play 
 was ever intended as the mere narrative of the 
 woes of the individual Hamlet, but rather as a 
 great allegory on human life man a puppet, be- 
 tween woman, good and bad. He is what she 
 makes him, a great success or an awful failure. 
 So with Hamlet in the play; he is the product 
 of two women ; a good woman, and a bad woman, 
 and the stronger succeeds the evil queen domi- 
 nates his life. But had Ophelia been fully ma- 
 tured, had she been a woman in the strict sense 
 of the word, her love would have made her 
 stronger than all the evil queens in God's crea- 
 tion, and the play would be what it should be 
 a beautiful comedy with love dominating. 
 
 I have never been able to sympathize with 
 the question of Hamlet's madness. It seems to 
 me absurd to bring up the question at all. If 
 the play is viewed as an allegory on life all men 
 are mad. "The number of fools is infinite. 
 'Omnis homo mendeax est/ " If viewed as 
 merely the narrative of Hamlet the individual, 
 
76 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 and his trials, it would be absurd to suppose that 
 the greatest author in our language asks intelli- 
 gent people to sit in front of the footlights, and 
 listen to the vagaries, or gaze at the antics of 
 a madman. What could there be to the intelli- 
 gent mind, in the ravings of a madman, more 
 than in the antics of a monkey, unless he be a 
 specialist on brain diseases or a student of psych- 
 ology. The truth is that Hamlet, as presented 
 by Shakespeare, is predisposed to hysterical ac- 
 tion. He is by nature moody and melancholy; 
 of a deep poetic, and, at times, philosophical turn 
 of mind. He is inclined to take himself and the 
 world much too seriously; and Shakespeare has 
 carefully prepared us for this view of Hamlet. 
 Hence he brings him home in the first act clad 
 in mourning, wearing a solemn visage, though 
 the court is full of merriment. His answers to 
 his mother are more like the private utterances 
 beside the bier of his father, than the public con- 
 versation of a court. 
 
 "Seems, madam! nay, it is; I know not 'seems.' 
 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, 
 Nor customary suits of solemn black, 
 Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, 
 No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, 
 Nor the dejected haviour of the visage, 
 Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 77 
 
 That can denote me truly: these indeed seem, 
 For they are actions that a man might play : 
 But I have that within which passeth show; 
 These but the trappings and the suits of woe." 
 
 After his first entrance we can scarcely be sur- 
 prised at any show of extreme sentiment. How- 
 ever, the key note of Hamlet, and his nature, is 
 best discovered by studying the folk-lore on 
 ghosts and ghost-men. 
 
 In England, Scotland and Ireland, where 
 Shakespeare found the traditions on ghosts, we 
 find that once a man sees or speaks to a ghost he 
 is a marked man ; he becomes the creature of the 
 message that the ghost conveys. He is never 
 again like his fellow men; at least not until the 
 behest of the ghost is fulfilled. This popular 
 idea is carefully carried out by Shakespeare in 
 the person of Hamlet. Hamlet acts exactly as 
 the popular belief of England, Ireland, and Scot- 
 land would have demanded of him after having 
 received a behest from a departed spirit. He 
 must do the unexpected; he must at times be 
 entirely controlled by the supernatural visitant. 
 He is no longer merely Hamlet, the Dane; he is 
 Hamlet, bearing a burden from the dead; domi- 
 nated by a spirit; living in a dream. And this 
 must continue until he has fulfilled the behest of 
 the spirit, or found peace in the grave. 
 
78 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Had Shakespeare allowed Hamlet to act other- 
 wise than he does he would have outraged every 
 idea of ghost and its effects on human beings as 
 then held, and is still extant in the folk-lore of 
 Ireland and Scotland. However, the great beauty 
 of the piece is not in the psychological study of 
 the individual, but rather in viewing the composi- 
 tion as a whole a philosophical treatise on hu- 
 man life. It seems to me to express thoroughly 
 Shakespeare's philosophy of life the question of 
 men and women, and their respective places in 
 determining human happiness. 
 
 
iWercftant of 
 
 However, we may view the respective merits 
 of the various plays of Shakespeare, perhaps 
 none furnishes a more interesting study to the 
 real student of literature than does The Mer- 
 chant of Venice, or Shylock. Whether we look 
 upon it as a play with some deep hidden mean- 
 ing, or as a bid for the applause of the vulgar 
 rabble; whether we judge it as a meaningless 
 comedy or a bitter arraignment of the Jew, the 
 play furnishes perplexing questions, which makes 
 its study fascinating and mystifying. 
 
 The Merchant of Venice is presented to the 
 student in English literature as the work of a 
 genius. But no sooner does he begin to study 
 it according to rule, to analyze it according to 
 the principles of dramatic composition, than he 
 finds that Shakespeare has violated in this com- 
 position almost every known law of dramatic 
 composition. And the inquiring student is forced 
 to join with many more learned and deep critics 
 in the opinion that our mighty genius, Shake- 
 speare, has, in The Merchant of Venice, stooped 
 from the heights of his genius, thrown aside the 
 models of his art, to tickle the ears of the 
 groundlings with fantastic comedy, or cater to 
 
80 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 the lowest prejudices of his time and people, 
 sacrificing even the unity of his composition to 
 this ignoble purpose, utterly unmindful of the 
 fact that a dramatic genius can no more throw 
 aside the requirements of dramatic art, to gain 
 applause of his auditors, than could a gram- 
 marian write gutter English because his epistles 
 were directed to one of the lower strata. 
 
 Who argues that Shakespeare prostituted his 
 art for public applause or public sentiment for- 
 gets the law that he himself laid down for the 
 artist: "Suit the action to the word, the word 
 to the action; with this special observance, that 
 you o'erstep not the modesty of nature : for any- 
 thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, 
 whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, 
 to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to 
 show virtue her own feature, scorn her own 
 image, and the very age and body of the time 
 his form and pressure. Now this overdone or 
 come tardy off, though it make the unskillful 
 laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve: the 
 censure of the which one must in your allow- 
 ance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others." 
 
 It seems to me that if we could for a few 
 moments forget the critics of the past, and with- 
 out bias or prejudice take up the study of The 
 Merchant of Venice strictly as a work of art, 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 81 
 
 most, if not all, of the difficulties would disap- 
 pear. 
 
 Our critics tell us that The Merchant of 
 Venice, or Shylock, is a comedy. Some go still 
 farther and say that it is a fantastic comedy. It 
 is a point worthy of serious consideration to any 
 student to remember that not a single one of 
 our great English actors, whatever his private 
 opinion may have been, has ever produced The 
 Merchant of Venice with any other idea than that 
 of a fantastic comedy, until in our own day Sir 
 Henry Irving, after many years of careful study, 
 decided that no intelligent actor might produce 
 The Merchant of Venice as a comedy, for the 
 simple reason (and I beg you to notice that he 
 has studied this play just as I want you to study 
 English literature) that Shylock, who is the 
 center of the dramatic picture, does not speak 
 a single comedy line from the opening to the 
 closing of the play. It is evident, then, that 
 Irving would judge the motive of the entire com- 
 position from the central figure of the dramatic 
 picture. And indeed if we read the play care- 
 fully, and without bias, we will find that Irving 
 speaks the truth. 
 
 Shylock is not a comedy character, nor is there 
 any comedy in his lines, nor in his make-up. It 
 is true we laugh at him at his mannerisms, at 
 
82 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 the intonations of his speeches, but never at his 
 lines. His lines are tragic; they reek of blood, 
 they smell of the fumes of the infernal. Indeed 
 the more closely we study the play the more we 
 are convinced that the whole composition is built 
 upon the plan of a tragedy instead of the outlines 
 of comedy. Heinrich Heine dwells particularly 
 upon this point. He says: "The Merchant of 
 Venice is undoubtedly built upon the plan of a 
 tragedy, nevertheless Shakespeare intended it as 
 a comedy." 
 
 Now could you think of a more thorough im- 
 peachment of the genius of Shakespeare, than 
 this estimate of The Merchant of Venice. To 
 say that Shakespeare, our great genius, tried to 
 write a comedy, but really left us a tragedy, at 
 least in form. Indeed, it is said that when Hein- 
 rich Heine first saw the play in England, he 
 could not remain in his chair, but passed back 
 and forth within the precincts of his box. In the 
 fourth act, when Shylock, shuffling off the stage, 
 cries out, "I pray thee, let me go from hence. I 
 am. not well," a young English woman, sitting 
 down in one of the stalls, began to weep, and, 
 speaking aloud to her companion, said, "The ould 
 man is grieved, the ould man is grieved." And 
 completely forgetting himself, Heine cried out 
 to the audience, "This is not a comedy, this is a 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 83 
 
 tragedy." And this statement, forced from Heine 
 in an unguarded moment, has been voiced by 
 many an intelligent reader of Shakespeare, in 
 spite of the fact that he finds himself at variance 
 with most of the accepted critics and commenta- 
 tors. 
 
 The whole trouble is that our English critics 
 have been making blunders generation after gen- 
 eration in the estimate of authors and their 
 works, because they have never studied literature 
 as_an_art. Our English critic has never had before 
 his mind's eye a criterion of art, by which he 
 would judge each literary composition as a single 
 mental impression. He has analyzed it, he has 
 parsed it, he has torn asunder, and in the pro- 
 cess of dissection the soul of literature has ex- 
 caped. 
 
 No wonder, then, studying The Merchant of 
 Venice in lines and sentences and speeches, the 
 English critic tells us that it is a patchwork 
 several stories patched together merely to amuse 
 the rabble. Had our critics studied The Mer- 
 chant of Venice as a work of art, as it should 
 be studied ; had they put Shylock in the center of 
 the picture, and studied each character in its 
 relation to Shylock, they might have discovered 
 in the unity of art, that instead of a patchwork, 
 The Merchant of Venice is a magnificent literary 
 
84 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 mosaic, made up, it is true, of several different 
 parts, each story like a beautifully colored stone, 
 so splendidly dove-tailed and hair-lined to its 
 fellow, in order to bring out the central thought 
 that runs like a golden thread through the fabric 
 of the several different stories of the play. 
 
 The truth is, studied as a work of art, The 
 Merchant of Venice is neither a comedy nor a 
 tragedy. It is a grand satire on professed Chris- 
 tianity without the spirit of Christ. To me the 
 play is a mighty protest against the Christian 
 bigots that professed the faith of Christ and then 
 tore out the hearts of their brothers in the name 
 of the Christ that died for all men. To me The 
 Merchant of Venice is a magnificent satire, a 
 stinging protest on the Christian bigots who, in- 
 sead of raising men to the dignity of sons of 
 God, have debased them below the level of brute- 
 life. It is an outcry against the Christian society 
 that instead of producing saints has produced 
 that devil, that immoral wretch, that pervert, 
 that monstrosity that stands there in the center 
 of the picture and dominates every line of the 
 play. 
 
 At first glance this seems like a startling decla- 
 ration, and the only way to determine the value 
 of this opinion is to systematically study the work 
 from the standpoint of art. It would be useless 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 85 
 
 to express any opinion, or try to form any esti- 
 mate of this work, The Merchant of Venice, or 
 for that matter, of any other work of art, with- 
 out first determining what was the motiof 
 the author in the building up and the perfecting 
 of the work, for on this rests the whole question 
 of his success or his failure. What was he trying 
 to do? What did he wish to accomplish? If he 
 has accomplished his motif in a credible manner, 
 then his work is a successful work ; it has con- 
 veyed the idea of the author. Inasmuch as he 
 may have failed to accomplish the object on 
 which he started out, in that much is his work 
 a failure. 
 
 Our first step, then, must be to determine what 
 was the object of Shakespeare in the writing of 
 the play The Merchant of Venice. How will we 
 determine this? As there have been so many 
 conflicting systems and haphazard methods of 
 studying literature, perhaps the quickest way to 
 arrive at a true opinion would be to forget that 
 we are studying merely a work of literature, 
 and keep in mind, strictly, that we are studying 
 a work of art. 
 
 There is a unity in art that makes all arts one. 
 The musician is enraptured with the harmony 
 of color in the work of a painter; the painter is 
 enthralled with the unity of a work in literature ; 
 
86 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 the poet finds his soul expressed in the rhythmic 
 beat of a musical composition. Hence if you 
 find difficulty in one of the arts the surest method 
 for its solution is to call in the other arts to aid 
 in clarifying the obscurity. This is exactly what 
 I would ask you to do in studying The Merchant 
 of Venice. We wish to determine what was the 
 object of Shakespeare in the writing of the play. 
 Now, if this were a musical composition instead 
 of a work in literature, what is the first step that 
 a student would take? Any musician will tell 
 you that he first determines what is the motif of 
 the composition, and then according to the de- 
 velopment, to the variation ; according to the dif- 
 ferentiation of the motif or theme does he deter- 
 mine whether or no the composition is a work 
 of art or a meaningless jumble of sounds. 
 
 Let us follow this method with The Merchant 
 of Venice. What is the theme or the motif of 
 this composition ; that is, what is the thread that 
 runs continuously from beginning to end, 
 throughout the composition? Some readers of 
 Shakespeare claim that the theme of The Mer- 
 chant of Venice is the story of Antonio, the mer- 
 chant. This, indeed, the name suggests, for An- 
 tonio is unquestionably the merchant of Venice. 
 But if Shakespeare intended Antonio to be the 
 theme of the composition, the play must end in 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 87 
 
 the fourth act, for the story of Antonio ends 
 there, and his appearance in the last act has no 
 bearing whatever on the action of the piece. In- 
 deed his presence in the last act seems uncalled 
 for, as Portia and Bassanio dominate the scene. 
 It seems scarcely possible that a great genius 
 would take as his central theme a story ending 
 in vital interest in the fourth act and prop up 
 the last act with a secondary story in order to 
 hold us to the curtain. This is exactly why so 
 many critics call the play a second rate produc- 
 tion, and argue that Shakespeare was catering to 
 the crowd instead of the critics, or the learned 
 few. 
 
 Other students, finding this difficulty, have 
 avoided it by claiming that while Antonio is an 
 important factor in the play, the real story or 
 theme of the composition is the love story of 
 Portia and Bassanio. But if the love story of 
 Portia and Bassanio is the theme of the play, 
 then The Merchant of Venice is a misnomer. 
 We can scarcely believe that the great genius 
 would start to tell the love story of Portia and 
 Bassanio and then deliberately give it a name 
 that would carry the mind of the reader off the 
 main story. Not only this difficulty, but a greater 
 one presents itself. If the love story of Portia 
 and Bassanio is really the object of the play, why, 
 
88 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 then, would Shakespeare, or any other author 
 of experience, introduce a second love story, 
 that of Jessica and Lorenzo, which for whole 
 scenes o'ershadows the story of Portia and Bas- 
 sanio? This would seem like working to cross 
 purposes, and striving to ruin the interest in his 
 own drama. I cannot believe that any, man who 
 knew the first law of dramatic construction would 
 make such a blunder as to divert the attention 
 of his audience from the main theme. 
 
 With these difficulties before their eyes many 
 students particularly the students of our age 
 have determined that the play, the real central 
 figure, is Shylock. But if the story of Shylock 
 is the object or the theme of the composition, 
 then, again, The Merchant of Venice is a mis- 
 nomer, and, again, a greater obstacle the play 
 must unquestionably end in the fourth act, for 
 Shylock does not even appear in the last act. 
 This would seem to leave us practically without 
 a theme, and indeed as long as we stick to the 
 idea of individuals we will find no theme in The 
 Merchant of Venice. 
 
 I said in my introduction to this work that in 
 the study of art we must keep in mind that art 
 presents not the individual, but the type, and it 
 is from the light of this principle that we will find 
 the theme of The Merchant of Venice not an 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 89 
 
 individual, but a type. Neither Shylock, nor An- 
 tonio, nor Bassanio, nor Portia as individuals, 
 but each and all of them as types form the theme 
 of The Merchant of Venice. You will see clearly 
 what I mean if you will form in your mind's eye 
 a picture of the play. 
 
 Shylock and Antonio dominate the stage, and 
 their spirit permeates every line. Around them 
 are grouped the various characters different 
 groups in the same picture ; each group animated 
 and moved by the spirit of the two central figures 
 Shylock and Antonio. Neither Shylock nor 
 Antonio as individuals form the theme of the 
 play. The real theme developed and differentiated 
 in the movement of the composition is that spirit 
 of bigotry that binds Antonio and Shylock to- 
 gether, and still, forever keeps them apart. 
 
 The theme of the play, then, is bigotry hatred 
 from religion or so-called religion. You will 
 notice that this spirit of bigotry is what makes the 
 unity of the composition. Bigotry it is that 
 makes the relation between Shylock and An- 
 tonio ; bigotry it is that dominates the love story 
 of Jessica and Lorenzo ; bigotry it is that enters 
 into the love story of Portia and Bassanio, and 
 makes Bassanio a raving, rabbid Jew-hunter. 
 While Portia, freed from the taint, pleads like 
 
90 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 a sister of the Christ for the down-trodden and 
 despised Jew. 
 
 That the play is intended as a satire on pro- 
 fessed Christianity without the spirit of Christ 
 becomes more evident the longer and the more 
 closely we study it as a great word picture. Shy- 
 lock and Antonio form the center of the mental 
 picture. They dominate the stage from the be- 
 ginning of the play to the end of the fourth act, 
 and the fifth act is simply added as a seal to the 
 sneer at the followers of Christ, who, all unmind- 
 ful of the sufferings of the old Jew, receive his 
 daughter joyously into their company. 
 
 Neither the story of Shylock nor the story of 
 Antonio as individuals dominated the mind of 
 Shakespeare as he built up the play, but rather 
 the two men as distinct types of the bigot. An- 
 tonio is the bud of bigotry, young and unformed 
 in his prejudice. He hates Shylock for no deal- 
 ings that he has had with him, on account of no 
 injustice suffered at his hand, but, as it were, 
 from an inborn prejudice, simply and solely be- 
 cause he is a Jew. Shylock is the fruit of bigotry, 
 planted in the fertile ground of Christian intoler- 
 ance, grown strong on persecution, nourished by 
 injustice, ripened by oppression and scorn a hol- 
 low, empty fruit full of bitterness and ashes. 
 
 Around these two central figures are grouped 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 91 
 
 the personae of the play. Each and every per- 
 son is a Christian with the exception of Shylock's 
 daughter. And still as we examine the characters 
 we find that each and every one of the professed 
 Christians lack the one spirit which should dis- 
 tinguish a Christian broJtjierly_loyje^-and charity. 
 All save Portia, she alone pleads for the despised 
 Jew, even as she pleads for the friend of her be- 
 loved: "What mercy can you show him, An- 
 tonio?" 
 
 Let us take up the characters one by one and 
 see how they present themselves when stripped 
 of mere lines and judged solely by their action 
 in the play. Take, for instance, Antonio. As 
 we first read over the lines of the play our im- 
 pression of Antonio is rather pleasant. He is 
 presented as an amiable, good-natured young 
 man; he is a professed Christian, a good citizen 
 of a Christian state; a generous friend. Indeed 
 he takes particular pains in almost every scene 
 to profess his Christianity. Each and every per- 
 son in the play who mentions him comments 
 upon his virtue until scene by scene our admira- 
 tion grows, until finally in the fourth act, when 
 for a moment, it seems that the trial is going 
 against him, and the young doctor turns to him 
 asking, "Have you anything to say," we are 
 scarcely surprised at his angelic demonstration 
 
92 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 as lifting his eyes to Heaven he clasps his hands 
 and says with the air of a martyr : 
 "But little : I am arm'd and well prepared. 
 Give me your hand, Bassanio: fare you well! 
 Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you; 
 For herein Fortune shows herself more kind 
 Than is her custom: it is still her use 
 To let the wretched man outlive his wealth, 
 To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow 
 An age of poverty ; from which lingering penance 
 Of such misery doth she cut me off. 
 Commend me to your honourable wife : 
 Tell her the process of Antonio's end ; 
 Say how I loved you, speak me fair in death ; 
 And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge 
 Whether Bassanio had not once a love. 
 Repent but you that you shall lose your friend, 
 And he repents not that he pays your debt ; 
 And if the Jew do cut but deep enough, 
 I'll pay it presently with all my heart/' 
 
 ^^X Then the ladies in the audience break into 
 tears and cry out: "Isn't he lovely?" Nor can 
 we blame them for this gushing expression of 
 admiration. They have heard so much during 
 four long acts of the virtues of Antonio, the Chris- 
 tian, that now when they find him in imminent 
 danger of death, they expect to see the wings 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 93 
 
 sprout. But remember this impression is created 
 by the lines, by the beautiful speeches of An- 
 tonio, and Antonio's friends. Throw aside the 
 mere lines and judge Antonio solely by the part 
 that he plays in the great dramatic picture of the 
 play, and his character suddenly assumes a guise 
 that we little dreamed of from the mere lines. 
 This young man who says he is a Christian, well 
 prepared, and ready to meet his God, is what? 
 A young man in the prime of life who spit in 
 the face of an old man sixty years and more, who 
 kicked him and called him a dog, and pulled 
 him by the beard, and all for what ? For no rea- 
 son than that he was a Jew. Take Shylock's 
 own words to Antonio's face : 
 
 "Signior Antonio, many a time and oft 
 
 In the Rialto you have rated me 
 
 About my moneys and my usances : 
 
 Still have I borne it with a patient shrug ; 
 
 For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. 
 
 You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, 
 
 And spit upon by Jewish gaberdine, 
 
 And all for use of that which is mine own. 
 
 Well then, it now appears you need my help : 
 
 Go to, then ; you come to me, and you say 
 
 'Shy lock, we would have moneys' : you say so ; 
 
 You that did void your rheum upon my beard, 
 
94 
 
 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 
 And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur 
 Over your threshold : moneys is your suit. 
 What should I say to you ? Should I not say 
 'Hath a dog money ? Is it possible 
 A cur can lend three thousand ducats?' or 
 Shall I bend low and in a bondsman's key, 
 With bated breath and whispering humbleness, 
 Say this, 
 
 'Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last ; 
 You spurn'd me such a day ; another time 
 You called me dog ; and for these courtesies 
 I'll lend you thus much moneys' ?" 
 
 It is not, then, the Jewish blood of Shylock 
 that has hardened his heart; it is not his Hebrew 
 religion that makes him the devil that he is ; but 
 it is the Christian people around him who lack 
 the spirit of Christ the spirit of brotherly love. 
 Lest there should be any doubt about the cause 
 of Shylock's hate Shakespeare makes it still more 
 obvious in the scene with the jailer when he says : 
 
 "He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half 
 a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my 
 gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, 
 cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and 
 what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a 
 Jew eyes ? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimen- 
 sions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 95 
 
 same food, hurt with the same weapons, sub- 
 ject to the same diseases, healed by the same 
 means, warmed and cooled by the same winter 
 and summer, as a Christian is ? If you prick us, 
 do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not 
 laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? and 
 if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we 
 are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in 
 that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his 
 humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a 
 Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian 
 example ? Why, revenge. The villany you teach 
 me, I will execute; and it shall go hard, but I 
 will better the instruction." 
 
 Moreover it is significant that while Shylock 
 admits a deep hatred for the Christians as Chris- 
 tians, his hate never reaches the point of frenzy 
 until he finds that his daughter has fled with 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 "The curse never fell upon our nation till now ; 
 I never felt it till now, two thousand ducats in 
 that ; and other precious, precious jewels. I would 
 my daughter were dead at my foot, and the 
 jewels in her ear ! would she were hearsed at my 
 foot, and the ducats in her coffin !" 
 
 Take up the next important character in the 
 play,, Bassanio. What do we find here ? An- 
 other professed Christian. A man presumably 
 
96 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 a little older than Antonio. From his lines one 
 can scarcely help loving him. The genial, big- 
 hearted, loud-spoken fellow. But the more close- 
 ly we study his position in the picture, his action 
 in the movement of the play, the less respect we 
 have for him. It is Bassanio who brings An- 
 tonio and Shylock together, though he knows 
 they hate and despise one another. His object 
 in bringing them together is selfish; he wants 
 to borrow money. There is only one word that 
 would express the character of Bassanio today 
 we would call him a roue. He has run the gamut 
 of his vices, he has squandered his patrimony, 
 and now if he can find a good, virtuous, Christian 
 woman, who has money enough to support two, 
 he is ready to settle down and become a pillar 
 of the church. 
 
 He would borrow money that he might go and 
 sue for the hand of Portia, the heiress ; and while 
 it is true he protests, nevertheless he permits his 
 dear friend, Antonio, to pledge his very life that 
 the money may be secured. This is the man that 
 raves at the Jew, that calls him beast because 
 the Jew demands his bond ; but when, by a mere 
 technicality he gets the better of the Jew he 
 would crush the very life out of him; rejoices 
 that he is deprived of all means of living; of 
 his very faith that he values really more than 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 97 
 
 life. This is another specimen of the Christian 
 that made Shylock what he was. 
 
 Take another example, Lorenzo. He too is a 
 Christian, much professed. He will not marry 
 Jessica unless she throws aside her Jewish faith, 
 but it is very significant that his Christian scruples 
 do not extend to the Jew's money. He accepts 
 that without any qualms of conscience or violence 
 to his professed Christianity. 
 
 Another splendid example is Launcelot Gobbo, 
 who is so dreadfully shocked at the possibility of 
 a Christian marrying a Jew. Professed Chris- 
 tianity is made evident in his every speech, still 
 he is the young man who meets his blind father 
 in the roadway and jokes with him, the butt of 
 the jest being the purity o'f his own mother. 
 
 But perhaps the most striking example of 
 satire woven by Shakespeare into this picture of 
 professed Christianity without the spirit of Christ 
 is in the daughter of Shylock. In the opening 
 of the play Jessica is a Jew, during the action of 
 the play she becomes a Christian she steps from 
 the synagogue into the Christian church. What 
 has caused this change of heart? What remark- 
 able illumination has been going on in the mind 
 of this young girl to lead her from the synagogue 
 into the church of Christ? I have read the play 
 over many times looking for some preparation on 
 
98 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 the part of Jessica to change her from a Jew 
 to a Christian, and about the only preparation I 
 can find is that she robbed her father, stole even 
 his marriage ring, a thing sacred in the eyes of 
 every Jew, and peddled it away for a monkey. 
 She runs away with her lover in the darkness 
 of the night, she dressed in boy's clothing, and 
 there is no mention made of when he married 
 her. According to the laws of Venice, then in 
 force, she could not have been married in Venice, 
 and Shakespeare is discreetly silent as to when 
 the ceremony took place. And still the Christians 
 receive her in open arms, welcome her into their 
 homes and their families. Not one word is said 
 of the obligation, according to the law of God 
 and the law of the church, of which she is now a 
 member, that she restore the ill-gotten goods, and 
 pay back what she has stolen from her father 
 it is all right; she has robbed a Jew. 
 
 This is to me the whole significance of the last 
 act the picture of Shylock's daughter received 
 with open arms by the Christians who have ruined 
 and degraded her father. The old man is cast 
 out, the daughter that robbed her father and 
 desecrated her father's house is received in and 
 exalted, and smiles, and is joyous though her 
 father is an outcast. 
 
 If we need any further marks of the true mean- 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 99 
 
 ing of the play we need only turn to the casket 
 scene. This scene has always been the mystery 
 of the play. It does not belong to the play when 
 viewed as a comedy. It mars the dramatic ac- 
 tion; it destroys the literary unity of the com- 
 position. It is, as it were, a little play within a 
 play, and has always been looked upon as one 
 of the blunders of Shakespeare. But the very 
 moment we realize that satire is the theme of 
 the play satire on the Christian society that dis- 
 regarded the spirit of Christ at once the casket 
 scene has a connecting link with the rest of the 
 play, and holds a meaning, and significance, and 
 a value in the development of the theme which 
 would justify Shakespeare in retaining it in the 
 composition. 
 
 "I may neither choose whom I would, nor re- 
 fuse whom I dislike; so is the will of a living 
 daughter curbed by the will of a dead father. Is 
 it not hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose one, nor 
 refuse none?" . 
 
 "Your father was ever virtuous ; and holy men, 
 at their death, have good inspirations ; therefore, 
 the lottery, that he hath devised in these three 
 chests of gold, silver, and lead, whereof who 
 chooses his meaning chooses you, will, no 
 doubt, never be chosen by any rightly, but one 
 who shall rightly love. But what warmth is 
 
100 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 there in your affection towards any of these 
 princely suitors that are already come ?" 
 
 In the casket scene we have a dutiful daughter 
 bound by the superstitious mandate of a dead 
 father. The great crucial question of her life 
 must be decided, not by her own judgment, or 
 the common sense of her superiors, but by the 
 binding chance of a choice of caskets. And she, 
 poor child, bound in an almost superstitious awe 
 of the dead father's wish is ready to submit to 
 the ordeal. This gives Shakespeare an opportun- 
 ity to present before his audience a representa- 
 tive of each civilized nation, and when the rep- 
 resentative has presented himself, and sued for 
 the hand of Portia, what is her estimate of these 
 Christian gentlemen : 
 
 "Ay, that's a colt indeed, for he doth nothing 
 but talk of his horse ; and he makes it a great ap- 
 propriation to his own good parts, that he can 
 shoe him himself. I am much afeard my lady 
 his mother played false with a smith." . 
 
 "He doth nothing but frown ; as who 
 should say, 'if you will not have me, choose': he 
 hears merry tales and smiles not: I fear he 
 will prove the weeping philosopher when he 
 grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness 
 in his youth. I had rather be married to a 
 death's-head with a bone in his mouth than to 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 101 
 
 either of these. God defend me from these two !" 
 . "God made him, and therefore let him 
 pass for a man. In truth, I know it is a sin to be 
 a mocker : but, he ! why, he hath a horse better 
 than the Neapolitan's; a better bad habit of 
 frowning than the Count Palatine : he is every 
 man in no man ; if a throstle sing, he falls straight 
 a capering: he will fence with his own shadow: 
 if I should marry him, I should marry twenty 
 husbands. If he would despise me, I would 
 forgive him, for if he love me to madness, I 
 shall never requite him." . . . "You know 
 I say nothing to him; for he understands not 
 me, nor I him : He hath neither Latin, French 
 nor Italian; and you will come into court and 
 swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the 
 English. He is a proper man's picture; but, 
 alas, who can converse with a dumb-show? How 
 oddly he is suited ! I think he bought his doub- 
 let in Italy, his round hose in France, his bon- 
 net in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere." 
 
 "That he hath a neighborly charity in him; 
 for he borrowed a box of the ear of the English- 
 man, and swore he would pay him again when 
 he was able. I think the Frenchman became 
 his surety, and sealed under for another." . . 
 
 "Very vilely in the morning, when he is so- 
 
102 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 ber; and most vilely in the afternoon, when he 
 is drunk: when he is best, he is a little worse 
 than a man; and when he is worst, he is little 
 better than a beast : and the worst fall that ever 
 fell, I hope I shall make shift to go without him." 
 
 "Therefore, for fear of the worst, I pray thee, 
 set a deep glass of English wine on the con- 
 trary casket ; for, if the devil be within and that 
 temptation without, I know he will choose it. I 
 will do anything, Nerissa, ere I'll be married to a 
 sponge." 
 
 "If I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die 
 as chaste as Diana, unless I be obtained by the 
 manner of my father's will. I am glad this par- 
 cel of wooers are so reasonable; for there is 
 not one among them but I dote on his very 
 absence; and I pray God grant them a fair de- 
 parture." 
 
 This is surely a strong picture which Shakes- 
 peare presents before us. Shylock and Antonio 
 stand in the center and around them grouped 
 the personae of the play, all Christians. The at- 
 mosphere from the first to the closing line is 
 distinctly Christian, and still we find not a sin- 
 gle person in the play possessed of the spirit of 
 Christianity charity, with the exception of Por- 
 tia. She, indeed, is not a perfect Christian, but 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 103 
 
 in her simple way exemplifies the spirit of char- 
 ity. 
 
 Shakespeare was too great a genius to leave 
 the entire picture lacking that spirit of Christ. 
 Such an arrangement of characters would be in- 
 explicable viewed in any other light than as a 
 sneer at professed instead of practical Christian- 
 ity. Moreover, the very lines of the composi- 
 tion seem to favor my view of the piece rather 
 than the accepted idea of comedy. 
 
 If Shakespeare intended the play for a com- 
 edy, then Shylock would naturally be presented 
 as a type of the Jew to be laughed at, and 
 sneered upon, whilst as a fact he has presented 
 a character in Shylock which, despite its moral 
 monstrousness, compels our admiration and, at 
 times, wonder. Take for instance the Rialto 
 scene. Read carefully the lines and you will see 
 that the Shylock presented is not a weak fool 
 to be laughed at, but a most shrewd and far- 
 seeing business man, in touch with every move- 
 ment in the world of commerce: 
 
 "Ten thousand ducats for three months three 
 months from twelve and then the rate." Care- 
 fully he calculates the risk of the loan, and the 
 possible loss from short time placing. He knows 
 each venture of Antonio in the business world, 
 he estimates the chances of venture by sea, he 
 
104 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 calculates the significance of each vessel and port 
 of destination. In every way keen, intelligent, 
 and quick-witted. In the age of slow communi- 
 cation no telegraphs, no shipping reports, no 
 mail system it is simply marvelous the grasp he 
 has of affairs. He sneers at the ventures of An- 
 tonio, and his judgment in later events is veri- 
 fied. Doubtful of Antonio's safety he throws 
 away business, and craftily seeks to entangle the 
 Christian in an obligation to the Jew. To induce 
 his enemy to accept favor at his hands, he an- 
 gers Antonio, and when his judgment is weak- 
 est from passion presents his plea of friendship. 
 The old Jew plays with the educated, intelligent 
 Christian merchant. If there be a laugh in this 
 scene it is on the Christian entrapped by the su- 
 perior craftiness of the Hebrew. 
 
 But the most convincing argument against the 
 accepted theory of comedy is in the fact that close 
 study of Shylock convinces us that no author, 
 who pretended any knowledge of the Hebrew 
 race, would build up such a character as Shylock 
 as a typical Jew. It is true he is born of a Jew- 
 ish mother, Hebrew blood flows in his veins, he 
 swears by the faith of Abraham, but he utterly 
 lacks the national characteristics of his race. As 
 a miser Shylock might indeed stand for an in- 
 dividual Jew, but as the individual he would be 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 105 
 
 false to his blood. "Art presents for our con- 
 sideration, not the individual, but the type, the 
 species, the genus." 
 
 When a true artist wishes to create a charac- 
 ter he studies not a single person. He would 
 reproduce not a mimic, a counterpart of one man, 
 for such a character would be intelligible only 
 to such as would know, or had met the individ- 
 ual. The true artist studies the whole class, or 
 nation, or species from which he would take his 
 character. He notes not the peculiarities of in- 
 dividuals, but the common traits, the national 
 characteristics, the universal tendencies, and in- 
 corporates as much or as many of these general 
 traits into one person; he builds up the char- 
 acter that must live and be intelligible to all times 
 because it is typical. 
 
 So with Shakespeare. If he intended Shylock 
 to stand for the Jewish people we must find in 
 the character as presented the accepted traits, the 
 national characteristics of the Hebrew people. 
 Now, do we find these in Shylock? 
 
 Let us take up just three of the most noted and 
 commonly accepted characteristics of the Jew. 
 
 1st. He is essentially a commercial man. Bar- 
 ter is to him a pleasure, not a burden. He will 
 buy and he will sell. If there be one chance in 
 a hundred in a business deal the Jew will take 
 
106 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 that chance, and strangest of all he will come out 
 benefited. He will buy anything you have to 
 sell, and he will sell it back to you at a profit. 
 They have dominated the commerce of the world. 
 Most of the so-called religious persecutions of 
 the Jew were, and are really the Christian plod- 
 der's frantic effort to wreck the chariot of Jew- 
 ish commercial craft to save himself from being 
 crushed under its rushing wheels. 
 
 We see none of these in Shylock. He will not 
 buy, he will not sell. He laughs at the chances 
 of trade; he is a miser. He holds the dollars in 
 his hands, and he will make one dollar breed 
 another. 
 
 2nd. The hospitality of the Hebrew is pro- 
 verbial. A Jew will share his last dollar with a 
 brother Jew. His home life is, perhaps, the most 
 perfect of any nation. A Jew will never turn 
 away a fellow Jew in need. If he has but one 
 meal he will take his fellow Jew in. If you doubt 
 this take experience as the proof. Have you 
 ever seen a Jew beggar, unless in the days of 
 actual persecution? I can safely say no, never. 
 You may open your door any morning and find 
 a Christian catholic, methodist, baptist beggar for 
 a meal, but never a Jew, and why? Because the 
 Jew is hospitable; the Jew home is an open house 
 to his kind. Hospitality is the tradition of the 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 107 
 
 race. Abraham entertained angels unawares; 
 they were strangers in the city, and he took them 
 in and found them the messengers of God. This 
 tradition is handed down from father to son, and 
 so no Jew needs seek help from the "unclean" 
 gentile. 
 
 3rd. The crowning glory of the Jew is his 
 pride of blood: "We are the people of God; 
 we are the elect of nations. In our veins flow 
 the blood of Abraham, of David, of Solomon, 
 and of Christ." A Jew without the pride of 
 blood, without the arrogance of his nation would 
 be but the caricature of a man, lacking the very 
 love of living. 
 
 Do you see any of these characteristics in Shy- 
 lock? With all his hatred of the Christians, with 
 all his frenzy at the flight of his daughter, his 
 ducats, and his jewels are the subject of his lam- 
 entations. He values his gold, and his gems more 
 than the desecrated blood of a Jewish virgin. "I 
 would my daughter were dead at my foot, and 
 the jewels in her ear! would she were hearsed at 
 my foot, and the ducats in her coffin! . 
 I know not what's spent in the search : why, thou 
 loss upon loss! The thief gone with so much, 
 and so much to find the thief." He would have 
 the jewels even in the dead girl's ears. He would 
 grasp the ducats even from her coffin. Why, 
 
108 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 this would be blasphemy to the mind of a Jew. 
 "Unclean is the gold, and cursed is the jew- 
 els in a dead woman's hands." Why, this man 
 is no Jew; he lacks every national characteristic 
 of the Hebrew people, and any true Jew would 
 shrink from him with horror. He is not the 
 product of Hebrew blood, not a child of Jew- 
 ish faith. He is the product of the tainted at- 
 mosphere he breathes of the false Christian 
 world that lacks the spirit of Christ. 
 
 If this talk could do you no more good I would 
 beg of you to read over once more The Merch- 
 ant of Venice, not as a comedy, but as a great 
 satire. Put Shylock in the center of the pic- 
 ture, study each character in relation to the cen- 
 ter, and the characters will take on a covering 
 never dreamed of before, the lines will flow with 
 a new meaning; instead of a second rate play, 
 instead of a mere bid to the vulgar rabble you 
 will find in The Merchant of Venice the master- 
 piece of Shakespeare the one work in the En- 
 glish language where the author has carefully 
 differentiated between the spoken lines and the 
 action of the individual in the play. To me it 
 is the greatest satire in the language or litera- 
 ture of the world. 
 
 Any student who will take up this method of 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 109 
 
 studying the works of literature as word pic- 
 tures, as a single mental impression, worked out 
 in dialogue, and seek the central, dominating 
 thought, not only The Merchant of Venice, but 
 most of the plays of Shakespeare will take on 
 a new charm and a deeper significance. 
 
l\tng Hear 
 
 For example, King Lear is persistently pre- 
 sented and spoken of as the tragedy of ingrati- 
 tude, and still viewed as a picture the ingrati- 
 tude of Lear's daughters is only a detail in the 
 great composition. Lear himself dominates the 
 play completely to the exclusion of everybody 
 and everything else. Place him in the center 
 of the picture, grouping his daughters and the 
 other characters of the play around him, and 
 we find that Lear has made the tragedy just 
 what it is. Lear himself first shows ingratitude 
 when he banishes Kent, thus giving the example 
 of ingratitude to his daughters. It is Lear who 
 first shows cruelty and vindictiveness in his treat- 
 ment of Cordelia. It is Lear who from the very 
 opening lines of the play, and afterwards in his 
 conduct of himself and his men, who shows the 
 self-willed tyrant, who has never learned the les- 
 son of considering others. From this central fig- 
 ure of the picture we find these various vices 
 reflected in his children, and the tragedy is really 
 the tragedy of "The sins of the father visited 
 unto the third and fourth generation." From out 
 of his loins his vices hath gone forth, and live 
 again in his ofifspring. Even the savage love of 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. Ill 
 
 Lear is reproduced in Cordelia. Stubbornly she 
 refuses to boast of a love that is really the con- 
 suming passion of her life. She would not bend 
 even in her love to curb the anger of a father 
 king. She is truly and pre-eminently the daugh- 
 ter of Lear, as indeed are Goneril and Regan, 
 but in a lesser degree. Goneril, the older daugh- 
 ter, by her headstrong determination to rule in 
 her own house, and Regan by her cold and heart- 
 less cruelty of her father. It is to enunciate this 
 that Shakespeare drags in the story of The Earl 
 of Glaucester, who finds, like Lear, that the sins 
 of his youth find him in his old age, and the 
 offspring of his vices begotten in joy is like the 
 sins that begot it, perfidious and selfish. 
 
jHadbetf) 
 
 Again, in Macbeth, we are constantly study- 
 ing the tragedy of ambition, while as a fact 
 Julius Caesar is the tragedy of ambition. It is 
 not ambition that starts moving or makes pos- 
 sible the tragedy of Macbeth. Macbeth, like 
 every other man in his position, has always had 
 hopes and longings and ambitions, but it is only 
 when superstition enters into his life, when the 
 witches send forth their prophecy, that Macbeth 
 and his lady, fired with superstition, feel them- 
 selves strong enough to cope with the genius of 
 the king: 
 
 "Two truths are told, 
 As happy prologues to the swelling act 
 Of imperial theme. I thank you, gentlemen. 
 
 This supernatural soliciting 
 Cannot be ill; cannot be good; if ill, 
 Why hath it given me earnest of success, 
 Commencing in a truth ? I am thane of Cawdor : 
 If good, why do I yield to that suggestion 
 Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair 
 And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, 
 Against the use of nature? Present fears 
 Are less than horrible imaginings: 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 113 
 
 My thought, whose murder yet is but fanatical, 
 Shakes so my single state of man that function 
 Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is 
 But what is not." 
 
 Had Macbeth turned a deaf ear and a smile 
 of scorn upon the witches and their prophecy, 
 the awful tragedy would never have transpired. 
 Macbeth, then, is really the tragedy of supersti- 
 tion. That as Banquo says: 
 "That, trusted home, 
 Might yet enkindle you unto the crown, 
 Besides the thane of Cawdor. But 'tis strange: 
 And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,, 
 The instrument of darkness tell us truths, 
 Win us with honest trifles, to betray's. 
 
 It is true I love Shakespeare, perhaps more 
 than any other great author, but not alone for 
 his splendid lines, not because of his matchless 
 verse I love him because, to me, he is the one. 
 autljpr who understands the human soul. He 
 is the one author who carries out the true philos- 
 ophy of human life in the drawing of his charac- 
 ters. 
 
 I can remember myself as a young man in 
 the world, and I thought I knew men, and in 
 my inexperience believed they were bad just be- 
 
114 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 cause they wanted to be bad. I can remember 
 the day when, in my simplicity, I believed that 
 thousands of women were grabbed by the arms 
 of hell, and dragged down into that maelstrom 
 of vice in our land, out of very viciousness of 
 spirit. But I have grown older since then; I 
 know the world far better today: I have been 
 a priest and a doctor of souls long enough to 
 be able to say to you tonight that in all this 
 wicked world I do not believe there is any man 
 or any woman who is all bad. I care not how 
 deep he has sunken into crime; I care not how 
 far she may have wandered away from the law, 
 God knows that at some hour in each sinner's 
 life he stands down there in the valley of sin 
 and looks up at the mountain of God's right- 
 eousness, and yearns, God only knows how that 
 sinner is yearning, to get back to the life that 
 seems lost forever. 
 
 O ! how truly Shakespeare brings this out in 
 his plays. No man in our language has painted 
 more deep-dyed villains than has Shakespeare. 
 He has spared nothing to make his sinners dev- 
 ils in human guise, and still, perhaps with the 
 single exception of lago, there is not a villain 
 in Shakespeare that at some hour in his life his 
 bosom is not thrown open, and you see a soul 
 quivering under the eyes of God. 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 115 
 
 Take for example Macbeth. He has murdered 
 the king; he has grasped the crown, and still in Jf 
 the midst of lights and flowers and music, and 
 women in festive attire, he sees the ghost the 
 shadow of his conscience. See ! Lady Macbeth, 
 she seeks her couch after the turmoil of the day, 
 and all night long acts over the scene of the 
 murder. 
 
 Look at the king in Hamlet. He has murdered 
 his brother; he has married his brother's wife; 
 he has grasped the crown ; even now he is plot- 
 ting the murder of the young Hamlet; and still 
 at midnight hour, when the world has left him 
 and his courtiers are gone and he enters his 
 own room,, casts aside his kingly garments he 
 is a man, alone with the Eternal God. How he 
 trembles like a coward, and like a child down on 
 his knees ; he wants to pray, the murderer wants 
 to pray: 
 
 "But O, what form of prayer 
 Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul mur- 
 der?' 
 
 That cannot be, since I am still possessed 
 Of those effects for which I did the murder, 
 . . . What then? What rests? 
 Try what repentance can : what can it not ? 
 Yet what can it when one can not repent? 
 
116 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 O wretched state ! O bosom black as death ! 
 O limed soul, that struggling to be free 
 Art more engaged ! Help, angels ! Make assay ! 
 Bow, stubborn knees, and, heart with strings of 
 
 steel, 
 
 Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe! 
 All may be well." 
 
 A sea of blood rolls between his guilty soul 
 and the merciful eyes of God. 
 
 See Richard III, that devil in human form. 
 " He has sailed his craft of state on a sea of blood 
 up to the English throne. Men, women and chil- 
 dren have been thoughtlessly cast aside that he 
 might sit upon the English throne, and still on 
 the last night of his life, when alone in his tent, 
 he throws himself on his couch and tries to sleep. 
 See how Shakespeare makes him moan and groan 
 and cry out in his sleep the names of the mur- 
 dered dead: "Mercy, Clarence, mercy," until, 
 springing from his couch in a very fever of fear, 
 he cries out : 
 
 "Shadows tonight 
 
 Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard, 
 Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers 
 Armed in proof, and led by shallow Richmond." 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 117 
 
 What is all this? Can't you see it is the con- 
 science? It is the soul of man made to the im- 
 age and likeness of the Eternal God. You may 
 cover it over with the dirt of sin ; it may be cov- 
 ered with the cobweb of damnation; you may 
 sear it and mark it, but underneath it all lives 
 the image of God. It is like the coal smolder- 
 ing down there under the ashes when you think 
 the fire is all burnt out it only needs a Christian 
 hand to brush away the ashes of sin one breath 
 of God's divine love and it flares up again into 
 a living fire, the image of the great Creator. 
 
 This is the genius of Shakespeare. This is 
 the immortal spirit that will not die. It is not 
 his splendid lines; it is not his matchless verse, 
 for Shakespeare has been translated into every 
 language on the continent, and he lives immor- 
 tal in each and all, because language was not 
 his power, words were not his genius. 
 
 Indeed, I think our English reader seldom 
 makes a greater mistake than when he calls 
 Shakespeare the great poet. He is not the great 
 poet. It is true Shakespeare is a great poet, but 
 he is not the poet par excellence. Poetry is es- 
 sentially creative. Poetry lives in the realms of 
 the imagination. Poetry does depend upon 
 words, and music, and measure, and rhyme. 
 Poetry may instead of does. As a poet Shakes- 
 
118 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 peare would not compare with either Schiller or 
 Goethe. He has left us no purely poetic work 
 that would compare with Faust, and no man who 
 understands the genius of poetry will mention 
 the name of Shakespeare in the same sentence 
 with that of the immortal Dante. The best poetic 
 work of Shakespeare is really in his comedies, 
 and perhaps for this reason has been least appre- 
 ciated by the English public. 
 
 But though I am not willing to grant him the 
 title of the poet par excellence, to me he is per- 
 haps more. He is the interpreter of God's great 
 book of nature. He is the portrait painter of 
 the human soul every heart's desire, every soul's 
 ambition, every mighty ideal from the cradle to 
 the grave. 
 
 I would not have you believe that I do not 
 advocate or admire the close study and analy- 
 sis of a work of literature. Indeed, I question 
 if any man more highly prizes the value of an- 
 alysis or the intellectual pleasure to be derived 
 therefrom, but I firmly hold that such study be- 
 longs to the advanced student, and not to the 
 beginner; to the matured thinker, and not to the 
 student groping in the dark. Let the student 
 first see the beauty of the work as a whole. Let 
 him become familiar with the style and when he 
 
SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 119 
 
 knows its beauties, when he understands some- 
 thing of the material he will instinctively yearn 
 to study deeper, and learn every detail of the 
 thing which he loves. 
 
 Were a child to gain its knowledge of flowers 
 merely from the analysis of the class in botany 
 we would have few lovers of nature and her beau- 
 ties. So in the garden of literature. Let the 
 young mind first see the flowers blooming glori- 
 ously in the sunshine ; let them drink in the frag- 
 rance, let them view the coloring, let them thrill 
 with the delicate shades, and forms, and then, 
 with love and reverence, pluck the flower from 
 its stem, and sitting down with microscope and 
 lens seek the mysteries of its being. And no- 
 where will they find more pleasure in this analy- 
 sis than in the beautiful flowers of Shakespeare. 
 ****** * 
 
 Kipling says that the works of great men are 
 windows through which we may look down into \/ 
 their souls. If this be true, and I know it is, 
 think of the possibilities for you and me to take 
 up once more our volumes of Shakespeare great 
 Gothic windows through which we may look 
 down into the soul of the greatest author that 
 ever lived and you will find him there today, 
 as in the years gone by, writing not mere plays 
 to while away the hours, not mere poems to sat- 
 
120 SERMONS FROM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 isfy a vulgar rabble, but to give to the world 
 some of the greatest sermons ever conceived by 
 a human mind or executed by a merely human 
 hand. You will find what I have found, and 
 thousands of other beauties in these hidden ser- 
 mons in Shakespeare. 
 
on 
 
 If my estimate of Shakespeare and his works 
 and motives needs support, I could scarcely 
 find a stronger confirmation than has been af- 
 forded in the widely discussed, and much mar- 
 velled at essay on Shakespeare by Count Leo 
 Tolstoy. 
 
 He has set himself up as the iconoclast of 
 the theories of commentators on Shakespeare. 
 He tears into shreds the traditions of genera- 
 tions ; he scoffs at what he calls quasi-hypno- 
 tism of the admirers of the Bard of Avon. He 
 declares Shakespeare gross, unnatural, false, 
 insincere, and lacking in ideals ; (ideals as Tol- 
 stoy understands ideals) and why? Because 
 Tolstoy has sought for realism in Shakespeare, 
 and does not find it. He seeks a photograph 
 of life and finds an ideal picture, which Tolstoy 
 can never understand. 
 
 Shakespeare is not a photographer of the 
 mere material forms of life as they passed be- 
 fore him. Shakespeare paints souls. He moves 
 the lips that hearts may speak. Tolstoy says 
 Shakespeare exaggerates, and this is because 
 he (Tolstoy) does not understand that it is the 
 soul that Shakespeare presents, and not the 
 
122 A WORD ON TOLSTOY. 
 
 mere materialized person, who, in life, masks 
 his soul with his face of clay. 
 
 Tolstoy wants realism. He would give us 
 the face of clay at any cost, even though it 
 hides the living, pulsing heart beneath. Shake- 
 speare, yearning for truth, would distort the 
 face in order that we may see the cringing soul 
 beneath. 
 
 Tolstoy would convict our Master of false- 
 ness, and unchristian faith, because he deifies 
 action as opposed to inaction; (which in spite 
 of Tolstoy's objection, is very good philoso- 
 phy) because he finds himself compelled to 
 distinguish between the abstract Christian 
 love, and love as existed in the hearts of so- 
 called Christian people. 
 
 Tolstoy is, and has ever been, an extremist. 
 He is never satisfied with striving for ideals. 
 He wants every principle, and every ideal real- 
 ized in the concrete. When Tolstoy is not a 
 dreamer, he is a materialist. He can never 
 conceive an ideal as ideal or abstract. He 
 wants it materialized. He can never fully 
 understand that the ideal, whilst indeed 
 merely possible of realization, would cease to 
 be an ideal when grasped, and moulded into 
 material form. The Christian ideal is super- 
 
A WORD ON TOLSTOY. 123 
 
 natural, and therefore unobtainable by natural 
 effort. Shakespeare knew this, and made his 
 people strive after, but seldom reach, their 
 ideals. 
 
 Tolstoy cannot appreciate this viewpoint. 
 He cannot grasp the value or beauty of an ab- 
 stract, or love merely the ideal. 
 
 No wonder, then, that he is disappointed in 
 Shakespeare, who does exaggerate, who does 
 distort the natural picture in order to bring 
 -more clearly before us the minds, the souls, the 
 hearts of the people, that through the material 
 picture we may see the intellectual vision, 
 the true picture of life. 
 
 Tolstoy's declaration enunciates exactly what 
 I have been claiming throughout my lec- 
 tures on Shakespeare, that if we judge the 
 Great Master solely from the standpoint of 
 technique he will fall below the measure of 
 the mediocre. Tolstoy's objections and criti- 
 cisms deal entirely with the material form 
 the word, the expression, because, like thous- 
 ands of other readers, he has been so busy 
 with the material structure that he has failed 
 to catch the soul. 
 
 Tolstoy, from his viewpoint, is right in his 
 estimate of Shakespeare, but his viewpoint is 
 wrong. If art is a child of the animal-man ; if 
 
124 A WORD ON TOLSTOY. 
 
 art is merely a material copy, then indeed has 
 Tolstoy struck the chord of truth in his criti- 
 cism. But if art is a child of the God-man; 
 if art is purely, or even quasi-intellectual, then 
 is Shakespeare the master, and the work is 
 true. 
 
 It is simply a matter of viewpoint, Tolstoy 
 standing at one extreme, and "Sermons from 
 Shakespeare" at the other. 
 
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