The same lines occur in Tamburlaine, Part I. Act iii. Sc. 2, with the variation : Before such hap fall to Zenocrate. Tamburlaine says (Part I. Act i. Sc. 2) to Zenocrate :— Thy garments shall be made of Median silk, Ferando says to Kate in The Taming of A Shrew, Act iii. Thou shalt have garments wrought of Median silk, The rhetorical extravagance of Marlowe and Peele often runs through a whole speech, as in this of Ferando in The Taming of A Shrew: Tush, Kate! these words addes greater love in me, Or icie haire that grows on Boreas' chin. Than silver Zanthus when he doth embrace The ruddie Simois at Ida's feete. And care not thou, sweete Kate, how I be clad; Shakespeare not only copied the external manner of Marlowe : he felt profoundly the dramatic force of the Machiavellian principle that determined the conception of character and action in Marlowe's plays. The character of Aaron in Titus Andronicus, doubtless Shakespeare's earliest pure tragedy, is founded on that of Barabas: the former's revelation of his character is almost identical with that of the latter in The Jew of Malta : LUCIUS. Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds? Even now I curse the day—and yet I think As kill a man, or else devise his death, In the same spirit is written the opening soliloquy of Gloucester in Richard III., a play which of course is closely connected with the cycle beginning with The Contention of the Houses of York and Lancaster. The character of York in this play (now the Second Part of Henry VI.) is also conceived on the Machiavellian principle, and resembles the parts of Mortimer in Edward II., and of Guise in The Massacre at Paris. From all this, and many other features of the same kind in the early plays of Shakespeare, it is easy to understand why Greene should have spoken of the latter as an upstart crow beautified with our feathers," without intending to accuse him of stealing plays that were largely the property of other dramatists. The expression "an absolute Johannes Factotum" doubtless implies that—as was the case-Shakespeare was ready to write in any style, tragic, historic, or comic. But however much the spirit of the imitator prevails in Shakespeare's early dramas, it is not their most characteristic feature. I confess that I find, in these comparatively rude and defective works, matter of scarcely less interest than in some of his maturer performances. Here is to be seen the first stirring of a mighty intelligence, capable of forming a mental view of the complexity of human society; the earliest efforts of an incomparable dramatic skill, seizing with lightning intuition on the meaning of conflicting principles in art and nature, and blending them into one harmonious whole. Something of the doctrine of Vanity taught by medieval theology pervades them, something of the moral revolt of the Reformation against external authority, something of the contemplative philosophy of the Renaissance; we see not only the crimes and selfishness of man, but his aspirations after goodness, the pangs of his penitent reflection, the scruples 1 Titus Andronicus, Act v. Sc. 1. of religion in his guilty soul. In Andronicus a villain, as black as Barabas, moves among scenes of horror, as intricate as the plot of The Spanish Tragedy; but the tone of the play is to some extent elevated and made pathetic by the figure of Titus, a lofty and patriotic mind pushed from its base by the extremes of treachery and ingratitude. In The Troublesome Raigne of King John, the central character of the tyrant is contrasted with the interesting persons of the Bastard, Hubert, and Arthur, so admirably developed in the later version of the play. But it is in his representation of political storm and chaos, in The Contention and The True Tragedy, that the comprehensive grasp of Shakespeare's genius is most apparent. Here, besides the ambitious Machiavellism of York and Gloucester, we have, in the dying Beaufort, the remorse of conscience prefigured by Sackville in The Mirror of Magistrates; the pious weakness of Henry; the mutual passion of Suffolk and Margaret; the perpetual conflict of the well-discriminated representatives of the rival factions; while, mingling with the whole, and mitigating the sense of horror and blood, appear the rich humours of the populace, the coward Peter, the impostor Simpcox, the braggart Cade. Already we have before us all the elements of that marvellously blended conception of historic action, heroic resolution, and mortal frailty, in a word, of human life, which, in King Henry IV. and King Henry V., transports the imagination to the varied scenes of the Archdeacon's house at Bangor, the Boar's Head, and the Battle of Agincourt. Even more interesting is The Taming of A Shrew. Johnson has been reproached for maintaining that Shakespeare had a greater native inclination to comedy than to tragedy; and indeed, in so far as his criticism is intended to disparage the merit of Hamlet and Macbeth, it is very ill-founded.1 Nevertheless, I think it is a question whether Shakespeare's comic style does not afford proof of more original genius than even his tragic inventions. In the latter he had at least before him the great example of Marlowe; but the only models of English comedy to which he could look were the later Moralities, with their imitation of manners; Lyly's Court comedies, which were little more than witty dialogues; the buffooneries of Greene in his romantic plays; and a rude imitation of Plautus, like Ralph Roister Doister. In the early draft of The Taming of A Shrew we have the first refined English comedy, and we may observe in it the earliest movement of invention which led Shakespeare, step by step, first to the fairy machinery of A Midsummer-Night's Dream, and afterwards to the romantic plot and character of such mixed compositions as Twelfth Night and Much Ado about Nothing. 1 See his Preface, Malone's Shakespeare, vol. i. pp. 70-71. Finally, the reasoning that is here offered to the reader as to the authorship of these early tragedies and comedies has its bearing on a question, or, as I should prefer to call it, a mania, which continues to agitate the mind of literary society, with regard to the authorship of all the plays generally believed to be Shakespeare's. There are some persons-I do not think that among them are included any serious students of Shakespeare-who start with the assumption that the production, by a lowly native of a provincial English town, of plays which rival or surpass the works of Eschylus and Sophocles, is a miracle too great to be believed. To point out that to Shakespeare's contemporaries there appeared nothing miraculous in the fact; that in 1592 Shakespeare was regarded by Greene merely as a rival; that in 1598 he was recognised by Meres as the foremost writer of the time in tragedy and comedy; that in 1612 he was classed by Webster with other playwrights like Dekker and Heywood; that in 1623 the characteristics of his genius are critically described in the edition of his dramatic works published by his intimate friends and fellow-actors, Heminge and Condell; that neither of his great poetical eulogists-Ben Jonson, his contemporary and rival, and Milton, who was born while he was yet alive-entertained the slightest doubt that he was the author of the works ascribed to him ;-to argue in this elementary manner with the persons I am speaking of is of course perfectly useless. Since they begin with the assumption that Shakespeare could not have been the author of the plays which appeared under his name, they proceed at once to the proof of the particular paradox they wish to establish, and all considerations of common sense are soon lost sight of in the midst of a maze of cryptograms and other hieroglyphics. Far be it from me to dispute their premises. If any man is so intent on proving that a great genius could not have come out of Stratford-on-Avon as to prefer to believe in the much greater miracle that Bacon, the translator of Psalm xc. into English verse, was capable of writing Hamlet or Macbeth, it is idle for any student of poetry to question his conclusion. But to the reasonable reader of Shakespeare who, while filled with admiration for his stupendous genius, marvels how such vast results can have been produced with such slender external resources, I would fain hope that the historical method I have adopted may prove useful, by showing, however imperfectly, that the poet's art was of gradual development. It will be seen from the body of this History that, instead of springing, Minerva-like, into sudden and complete perfection, his matured dramatic style was the result of growth and experience; that his own poetic architecture was largely based on foundations laid by his predecessors; and that his mode of dramatic expression, far from being uniform, varied greatly from period to period, according to the diversities of his own spiritual conception. And these being unquestionable facts, ought to destroy many edifices of capricious fancy. END OF VOL. IV. Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh. |