Biographical Essays
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Thomas de Quincey >> Biographical Essays
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Fourthly, we shall indicate (and, as in the last case,
_barely_ indicate, without attempting in so vast a field to
offer any inadequate illustrations) one mode of Shakspeare's
dramatic excellence, which hitherto has not attracted any special
or separate notice. We allude to the forms of life, and natural
human passion, as apparent in the structure of his dialogue. Among
the many defects and infirmities of the French and of the Italian
drama, indeed, we may say of the Greek, the dialogue proceeds
always by independent speeches, replying indeed to each other, but
never modified in its several openings by the momentary effect of
its several terminal forms immediately preceding. Now, in
Shakspeare, who first set an example of that most important
innovation, in all his impassioned dialogues, each reply or
rejoinder seems the mere rebound of the previous speech. Every form
of natural interruption, breaking through the restraints of
ceremony under the impulses of tempestuous passion; every form of
hasty interrogative, ardent reiteration when a question has been
evaded; every form of scornful repetition of the hostile words;
every impatient continuation of the hostile statement; in short,
all modes and formulae by which anger, hurry, fretfulness, scorn,
impatience, or excitement under any movement whatever, can disturb
or modify or dislocate the formal bookish style of commencement,
--these are as rife in Shakspeare's dialogue as in life itself; and
how much vivacity, how profound a verisimilitude, they add to the
scenic effect as an imitation of human passion and real life, we
need not say. A volume might be written illustrating the vast
varieties of Shakspeare's art and power in this one field of
improvement; another volume might be dedicated to the exposure of
the lifeless and unnatural result from the opposite practice in the
foreign stages of France and Italy. And we may truly say, that were
Shakspeare distinguished from them by this single feature of nature
and propriety, he would on that account alone have merited a great
immortality.
The dramatic works of Shakspeare generally acknowledged to be
genuine consist of thirty-five pieces. The following is the
chronological order in which they are supposed to have been
written, according to Mr. Malone, as given in his second edition of
Shakspeare, and by Mr. George Chalmers in his Supplemental Apology
for the Believers in the Shakspeare Papers:
Chalmers. Malone.
1. The Comedy of Errors, 1591 1592
2. Love's Labors Lost, 1592 1594
3. Romeo and Juliet, 1592 1596
4. Henry VI., the First Part, 1593 1589
5. Henry VI., the Second Part, 1595 1591
6. Henry VL, the Third Part, 1595 1591
7. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1595 1591
8. Richard III., 1596 1593
9. Richard II, 1596 1593
10. The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1596 1601
11. Henry IV., the First Part, 1597 1597
12. Henry IV., the Second Part, 1597 1599
13. Henry V., 1597 1599
14. The Merchant of Venice, 1597 1594
15. Hamlet, 1598 1600
16. King John, 1598 1596
17. A Midsummer-Night's Dream, 1598 1594
18. The Taming of the Shrew, 1599 1596
19. All's Well that Ends Well, 1599 1606
20. Much Ado about Nothing, 1599 1600
21. As you Like It, 1602 1599
22. Troilus and Cressida, 1610 1602
23. Timon of Athens, 1611 1610
24. The Winter's Tale, 1601 1611
25. Measure for Measure, 1604 1603
26. King Lear, 1605 1605
27. Cymbeline, 1606 1609
28. Macbeth, 1606 1606
29. Julius Caesar, 1607 1607
30. Antony and Cleopatra, 1608 1608
31. Coriolanus, 1619 1610
32. The Tempest, 1613 1611
33. The Twelfth Night, 1613 1607
34. Henry VIII., 1613 1603
35. Othello, 1614 1604
Pericles and Titus Andronicus, although inserted in all the late
editions of Shakspeare's Plays, are omitted in the above list, both
by Malone and Chalmers, as not being Shakspeare's.
The first edition of the Works was published in 1623, in a folio
volume, entitled Mr. William Shakspeare's Comedies, Histories, and
Tragedies. The second edition was published in 1632, the third in
1664, and the fourth in 1685, all in folio; but the edition of 1623
is considered the most authentic. Rowe published an edition in
seven vols. 8vo, in 1709. Editions were published by Pope, in six
vols. 4to, in 1725; by Warburton, in eight vols. 8vo, in 1747; by
Dr. Johnson, in eight vols. 8vo, in 1765; by Stevens, in four vols.
8vo, in 1766; by Malone, in ten vols. 8vo, in 1789; by Alexander
Chalmers, in nine vols. 8vo, in 1811; by Johnson and Stevens,
revised by Isaac Reed, in twenty-one vols. 8vo, in 1813; and the
Plays and Poems, with notes by Malone, were edited by James
Boswell, and published in twenty-one vols. 8vo, in 1821. Besides
these, numerous editions have been published from time to time.
NOTES.
NOTE 1.
Mr. Campbell, the latest editor of Shakspeare's dramatic works,
observes that "the poet's name has been variously written
Shax-peare, Shackspeare, Shakspeare, and Shakspere;" to which
varieties might be added Shagspere, from the Worcester Marriage
License, published in 1836. But the fact is, that by combining with
all the differences in spelling the first syllable, all those in
spelling the second, more than twenty-five distinct varieties of
the name may be expanded, (like an algebraic series,) for the
choice of the curious in mis-spelling. Above all things, those
varieties which arise from the intercalation of the middle _e,
_(that is, the _e_ immediately before the final syllable
_spear,_) can never be overlooked by those who remember, at
the opening of the Dunciad, the note upon this very question about
the orthography of Shakspeare's name, as also upon the other great
question about the title of the immortal Satire, Whether it ought
not to have been the Dunceiade, seeing that Dunce, its great author
and progenitor, cannot possibly dispense with the letter _e._
Meantime we must remark, that the first three of Mr. Campbell's
variations are mere caprices of the press; as is Shagspere; or,
more probably, this last euphonious variety arose out of the gross
clownish pronunciation of the two hiccuping _"marksmen"_ who
rode over to Worcester for the license; and one cannot forbear
laughing at the bishop's secretary for having been so misled by two
varlets, professedly incapable of signing their own names. The same
drunken villains had cut down the bride's name _Hathaway_ into
_Hathwey._ Finally, to treat the matter with seriousness,
Sir Frederick Madden has shown, in his recent letter to the Society
of Antiquaries, that the poet himself in all probability
_wrote_ the name uniformly _Shakspere._ Orthography, both
of proper names, of appellatives, and of words universally, was
very unsettled up to a period long subsequent to that of
Shakspeare. Still it must usually have happened that names written
variously and laxly by others, would be written uniformly by the
owners; especially by those owners who had occasion to sign their
names frequently, and by literary people, whose attention was
often, as well as consciously, directed to the proprieties of
spelling. _Shakspeare_ is now too familiar to the eye for any
alteration to be attempted; but it is pretty certain that Sir
Frederick Madden is right in stating the poet's own signature to
have been uniformly _Shakspere._ It is so written twice in the
course of his will, and it is so written on a blank leaf of
Florio's English translation of Montaigne's Essays; a book recently
discovered, and sold, on account of its autograph, for a hundred
guineas.
NOTE 2.
But, as a proof that, even in the case of royal christenings, it
was not thought pious to "tempt God," as it were, by delay, Edward
VI., the only son of Henry VIII., was born on the 12th day of
October in the year 1537. And there was a delay on account of the
sponsors, since the birth was not in London. Yet how little that
delay was made, may be seen by this fact: The birth took place in
the dead of the night, the day was Friday; and yet, in spite of all
delay, the christening was most pompously celebrated on the
succeeding Monday. And Prince Arthur, the elder brother of Henry
VIII., was christened on the very next Sunday succeeding to his
birth, notwithstanding an inevitable delay, occasioned by the
distance of Lord Oxford, his godfather, and the excessive rains,
which prevented the earl being reached by couriers, or himself
reaching Winchester, without extraordinary exertions.
NOTE 3.
A great modern poet refers to this very case of music entering "the
mouldy chambers of the dull idiot's brain;" but in support of what
seems to us a baseless hypothesis.
NOTE 4.
Probably Addison's fear of the national feeling was a good deal
strengthened by his awe of Milton and of Dryden, both of whom had
expressed a homage towards Shakspeare which language cannot
transcend. Amongst his political friends also were many intense
admirers of Shakspeare.
NOTE 5.
He who is weak enough to kick and spurn his own native literature,
even if it were done with more knowledge than is shown by Lord
Shaftesbury, will usually be kicked and spurned in his turn; and
accordingly it has been often remarked, that the Characteristics
are unjustly neglected in our days. For Lord Shaftesbury, with all
his pedantry, was a man of great talents. Leibnitz had the sagacity
to see this through the mists of a translation.
NOTE 6.
Perhaps the most bitter political enemy of Charles I. will have the
candor to allow that, for a prince of those times, he was truly and
eminently accomplished. His knowledge of the arts was considerable;
and, as a patron of art, he stands foremost amongst all British
sovereigns to this hour. He said truly of himself, and wisely as to
the principle, that he understood English law as well as a
gentleman ought to understand it; meaning that an attorney's minute
knowledge of forms and technical niceties was illiberal. Speaking
of him as an author, we must remember that the _Eikon
Basilike_ is still unappropriated; that question is still open.
But supposing the king's claim negatived, still, in his controversy
with Henderson, in his negotiations at the Isle of Wight and
elsewhere, he discovered a power of argument, a learning, and a
strength of memory, which are truly admirable; whilst the whole of
his accomplishments are recommended by a modesty and a humility as
rare as they are unaffected.
NOTE 7.
The necessity of compression obliges us to omit many arguments and
references by which we could demonstrate the fact, that
Shakspeare's reputation was always in a progressive state; allowing
only for the interruption of about seventeen years, which this
poet, in common with all others, sustained, not so much from the
state of war, (which did not fully occupy four of those years,) as
from the triumph of a gloomy fanaticism. Deduct the twenty-three
years of the seventeenth century, which had elapsed before the
first folio appeared, to this space add seventeen years of
fanatical madness, during fourteen of which _all_ dramatic
entertainments were suppressed, the remainder is sixty years. And
surely the sale of four editions of a vast folio in that space of
time was an expression of an abiding interest. _No other poet,
except Spenser, continued to sell throughout the century_.
Besides, in arguing the case of a _dramatic_ poet, we must
bear in mind, that although readers of learned books might be
diffused over the face of the land, the readers of poetry would be
chiefly concentred in the metropolis; and such persons would have
no need to buy what they heard at the theatres. But then comes the
question, whether Shakspeare kept possession of the theatres. And
we are really humiliated by the gross want of sense which has been
shown, by Malone chiefly, but also by many others, in discussing
this question. From the Restoration to 1682, says Malone, no more
than four plays of Shakspeare's were performed by a principal
company in London. "Such was the lamentable taste of those times,
that the plays of Fletcher, Jonson, and Shirley, were much oftener
exhibited than those of our author." What cant is this! If that
taste were "lamentable," what are we to think of our own times,
when plays a thousand times below those of Fletcher, or even of
Shirley, continually displace Shakspeare? Shakspeare would himself
have exulted in finding that he gave way only to dramatists so
excellent. And, as we have before observed, both then and now, it
is the very familiarity with Shakspeare, which often banishes him
from audiences honestly in quest of relaxation and amusement.
Novelty is the very soul of such relaxation; but in our closets,
when we are _not_ unbending, when our minds are in a state of
tension from intellectual cravings, then it is that we resort to
Shakspeare; and oftentimes those who honor him most, like
ourselves, are the most impatient of seeing his divine scenes
disfigured by unequal representation, (good, perhaps, in a single
personation, bad in all the rest;) or to hear his divine thoughts
mangled in the recitation; or, (which is worst of all,) to hear
them dishonored and defeated by imperfect apprehension in the
audience, or by defective sympathy. Meantime, if one theatre played
only four of Shakspeare's dramas, another played at least seven.
But the grossest folly of Malone is, in fancying the numerous
alterations so many insults to Shakspeare, whereas they expressed
as much homage to his memory as if the unaltered dramas had been
retained. The substance _was_ retained. The changes were
merely concessions to the changing views of scenical propriety;
sometimes, no doubt, made with a simple view to the revolution
effected by Davenant at the Restoration, in bringing
_scenes_(in the painter's sense) upon the stage; sometimes
also with a view to the altered fashions of the audience during the
suspensions of the action, or perhaps to the introduction of
_after-pieces,_ by which, of course, the time was abridged for
the main performance. A volume might be written upon this subject.
Meantime let us never be told, that a poet was losing, or had lost
his ground, who found in his lowest depression, amongst his almost
idolatrous supporters, a great king distracted by civil wars, a
mighty republican poet distracted by puritanical fanaticism, the
greatest successor by far of that great poet, a papist and a
bigoted royalist, and finally, the leading actor of the century,
who gave and reflected the ruling impulses of his age.
NOTE 8.
One of the profoundest tests by which we can measure the
congeniality of an author with the national genius and temper, is
the degree in which his thoughts or his phrases interweave
themselves with our daily conversation, and pass into the currency
of the language. _Few French authors, if any, have imparted one
phrase to the colloquial idiom;_ with respect to Shakspeare, a
large dictionary might be made of such phrases as "win golden
opinions," "in my mind's eye," "patience on a monument,"
"o'erstep the modesty of nature," "more honor'd in the breach than
in the observance," "palmy state," "my poverty and not my will
consents, "and so forth, without end. This reinforcement of the
general language, by aids from the mintage of Shakspeare, had
already commenced in the seventeenth century.
NOTE 9.
In fact, by way of representing to himself the system or scheme of
the English roads, the reader has only to imagine one great letter
X, or a St. Andrew's cross, laid down from north to south, and
decussating at Birmingham. Even Coventry, which makes a slight
variation for one or two roads, and so far disturbs this
decussation, by shifting it eastwards, is still in Warwickshire.
NOTE 10.
And probably so called by some remote ancestor who had emigrated
from the forest of Ardennes, in the Netherlands, and _now_ for
ever memorable to English ears from its proximity to Waterloo.
NOTE 11.
Let not the reader impute to us the gross anachronism of making an
estimate for Shakspeare's days in a coin which did not exist until
a century, within a couple of years, after Shakspeare's birth, and
did not settle to the value of twenty-one shillings until a century
after his death. The nerve of such an anachronism would lie in
putting the estimate into a mouth of that age. And this is
precisely the blunder into which the foolish forger of Vortigern,
&c., has fallen. He does not indeed directly mention guineas; but
indirectly and virtually he does, by repeatedly giving us accounts
imputed to Shakspearian contemporaries, in which the sum total
amounts to 5L 5s.; or to 26L 5s.; or, again, to 17L 17s. 6d. A man
is careful to subscribe 14L 14s. and so forth. But how could such
amounts have arisen unless under a secret reference to guineas,
which were not in existence until Charles II.'s reign; and,
moreover, to guineas at their final settlement by law into
twenty-one shillings each, which did not take place until George I.
's reign.
NOTE 12.
Thomas Campbell, the poet, in his eloquent Remarks on the Life and
Writings of William Shakspeare, prefixed to a popular edition of
the poet's dramatic works. London, 1838.
NOTE 13.
After all the assistance given to such equations between different
times or different places by Sir George Shuckborough's tables, and
other similar investigations, it is still a very difficult problem,
complex, and, after all, merely tentative in the results, to assign
the true value in such cases; not only for the obvious reason, that
the powers of money have varied in different directions with regard
to different objects, and in different degrees where the direction
has on the whole continued the same, but because the very objects
to be taken into computation are so indeterminate, and vary so
much, not only as regards century and century, kingdom and kingdom,
but also, even in the same century and the same kingdom, as regards
rank and rank. That which is a mere necessary to one, is a
luxurious superfluity to another. And, in order to ascertain these
differences, it is an indispensable qualification to have studied
the habits and customs of the several classes concerned, together
with the variations of those habits and customs.
NOTE 14.
Never was the _esse quain videri_ in any point more strongly
discriminated than in this very point of gallantry to the female
sex, as between England and France. In France, the verbal homage to
woman is so excessive as to betray its real purpose, viz. that it
is a mask for secret contempt. In England, little is said; but, in
the mean time, we allow our sovereign ruler to be a woman; which in
France is impossible. Even that fact is of some importance, but
less so than what follows. In every country whatsoever, if any
principle has a deep root in the moral feelings of the people, we
may rely upon its showing itself, by a thousand evidences amongst
the very lowest ranks, and in their daily intercourse, and their
_undress_ manners. Now in England there is, and always has
been, a manly feeling, most widely diffused, of unwillingness to
see labors of a coarse order, or requiring muscular exertions,
thrown upon women. Pauperism, amongst other evil effects, has
sometimes locally disturbed this predominating sentiment of
Englishmen; but never at any time with such depth as to kill the
root of the old hereditary manliness. Sometimes at this day a
gentleman, either from carelessness, or from overruling force of
convenience, or from real defect of gallantry, will allow a female
servant to carry his portmanteau for him; though, after all, that
spectacle is a rare one. And everywhere women of all ages engage in
the pleasant, nay elegant, labors of the hay field; but in Great
Britain women are never suffered to mow, which is a most athletic
and exhausting labor, nor to load a cart, nor to drive a plough or
hold it. In France, on the other hand, before the Revolution, (at
which period the pseudo-homage, the lip-honor, was far more
ostentatiously professed towards the female sex than at present,) a
Frenchman of credit, and vouching for his statement by the whole
weight of his name and personal responsibility, (M Simond, now an
American citizen,) records the following abominable scene as one of
no uncommon occurrence. A woman was in some provinces yoked side by
side with an ass to the plough or the harrow; and M. Simond
protests that it excited no horror to see the driver distributing
his lashes impartially between the woman and her brute yoke-fellow.
So much for the wordy pomps of French gallantry. In England, we
trust, and we believe, that any man, caught in such a situation,
and in such an abuse of his power, (supposing the case, otherwise a
possible one,) would be killed on the spot.
NOTE 15.
Amongst people of humble rank in England, who only were ever asked
in church, until the new-fangled systems of marriage came up within
the last ten or fifteen years, during the currency of the three
Sundays on which the banns were proclaimed by the clergyman from
the reading desk, the young couple elect were said jocosely to Le
"hanging in the bell-ropes;" alluding perhaps to the joyous peal
contingent on the final completion of the marriage.
NOTE 16.
In a little memoir of Milton, which the author of this article drew
up some years ago for a public society, and which is printed in an
abridged shape, he took occasion to remark, that Dr. Johnson, who
was meanly anxious to revive this slander against Milton, as well
as some others, had supposed Milton himself to have this
flagellation in his mind, and indirectly to confess it, in one of
his Latin poems, where, speaking of Cambridge, and declaring that
he has no longer any pleasure in the thoughts of revisiting that
university, he says,
"Nee duri libet usque minas preferre magislri,
Coeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo."
This last line the malicious critic would translate--"And other
things insufferable to a man of my temper." But, as we then
observed, _ingenium_ is properly expressive of the
_intellectual _ constitution, whilst it is the _moral_
constitution that suffers degradation from personal
chastisement--the sense of honor, of personal dignity, of justice,
&c. _Indoles_ is the proper term for this latter idea; and in
using the word _ingenium,_ there cannot be a doubt that Milton
alluded to the dry scholastic disputations, which were shocking and
odious to his fine poetical genius. If, therefore, the vile story
is still to be kept up in order to dishonor a great man, at any
rate let it not in future be pretended that any countenance to such
a slander can be drawn from the confessions of the poet himself.
NOTE 17.
And singular enough it is, as well as interesting, that Shakspeare
had so entirely superseded to his own ear and memory the name
Hamnet by the dramatic name of Hamlet, that in writing his will, he
actually mis-spells the name of his friend Sadler, and calls him
Hamlet. His son, however, who should have familiarized the true
name to his ear, had then been dead for twenty years.
NOTE 18.
"I have heard that Mr. Shakspeare was a natural wit, without any
art at all. Hee frequented the plays all his younger time, but in
his elder days lived at Stanford, and supplied the stage with two
plays every year, and for it had an allowance so large, that he
spent at the rate of 1,000 guineas a-year, as I have heard.
Shakespeare, Dray ton, arid Ben Jonson, had a merie meeting, and it
seems drank too hard, for Shakespear died of a feavour there
contracted" (Diary of the Rev John Ward, A M Vicar of Stratford
upon Avon, extending from 1648 to 1679, p 183 Lond. 1839, 8vo)
NOTE 19.
It is naturally to be supposed that Dr Hall would attend the sick
bed of his father in law, and the discovery of this gentleman's
medical diary promised some gratification to our curiosity as to
the cause of Shakspeare's death. Unfortunately, it does not
commence until the year 1617.
NOTE 20.
An exception ought perhaps to be made for Sir Walter Scott and for
Cervantes, but with regard to all other writers, Dante, suppose, or
Anosto amongst Italians, Camoens amongst those of Portugal,
Schiller amongst Germans, however ably they may have been
naturalized in foreign languages, as all of those here mentioned
(excepting only Anosto) have in one part of their works been most
powerfully naturalized in English, it still remains true, (and the
very sale of the books is proof sufficient,) that an alien author
never does take root in the general sympathies out of his own
country, he takes his station in libraries, he is lead by the man
of learned leisure, he is known and valued by the refined and the
elegant, but he is not (what Shakspeare is for Germany and America)
in any proper sense a _popular_ favorite.
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