I

THE GENIUS OF SHAKSPEARE

If Shakspeare were less than Shakspeare, the world would weary of his oft-repeated praises. As subject for essayist, poet or orator he is unequalled among men, save only, Jesus of Nazareth.

No other literary work, the Bible excepted, can justify the many commentaries, concordances, essays and lectures which have evolved from the dramas and poems of the bard of the Avon.

His genius is as a mountain which, like Mont Blanc of the Alps, overtops all others. But, for this very reason, he has often been viewed out of perspective. Perhaps, more frequently, the eye has been too much attracted toward some towering peak or projecting rock, to the exclusion of a more important or essential feature of the mountain.

This may explain why it is that the recognition of the Divine Being, the profound reverence for the Saviour of men, the assumption of the fundamental doctrines of the Bible, the prophetic utterances on moral evils and social vices, the inculcation of Christian faith, practice and judgment, the frequent reference to and the dependence upon the Scriptures, all so conspicuous and pervasive in Shakspeare,-are yet often ignored by literary critics, or treated with contempt by public teachers and lecturers. A prominent magazine writer tells us that "Shakspeare is remarkable among the poets for being without a philosophy and without a religion," Is not this the expression of those who look, not too much, but too exclusively, upon the genius of the drama and so overlook its spirit and the sources of its inspiration? If Shakspeare be Shakspeare because of that transcendent genius which was in him like the "wind which bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh" it is yet true that great geniuses, like great planets, are lighted by other and sometimes lesser stars than their own.2

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1G. Santayana in "The New World," Dec., 1896.

"Whether it was by accident, or in some happy hour, we know not, that Shakspeare in conning the manuscript of some wretched drama, felt the glorious impulse which prompted the pen to strike out whole passages, and to interpolate whole scenes: that moment was the obscure birth of his future genius. "Amenities of Literature," Disraeli, Vol. II, p. 193.

What may be called the " Mystery of Shakspeare" is one of the most interesting and also one of the most puzzling of literary problems. How can we reconcile what little is known of William Shakspeare with the present universal sweep of his fame and the acknowledged supremacy of his works in the world of literature? How can we recognize in the young man of Stratford-on-Avon, whose education was hardly up to the present day grammar school standard, the author of the thirtyseven great dramas, which, together with the poems constitute not only, one of the greatest, but the greatest works of literary art ever evolved from the mind of any one man? How can we, in this twentieth century, acknowledge a strolling play-actor of three centuries ago, who never attained unto the literary circles of his own day, as the king whom we delight to crown the greatest of all in the literary world?

These questions stand in the light of the following facts:

(a) Not a scrap of all the original manuscripts of all the works that bear the name of Shakspeare is known to exist.

(b) There is nothing in the records of Stratford-on-Avon, either in the local registers of events, in the records of the Courts or the Church, or in the known circumstances of the man to identify William Shakspeare with these works.

(c) The only original document we have as unquestionably Shakspeare's is his "Will;" yet this "Will" does not make the slightest allusion to the manuscripts or printed copies of these works, or to any value or interest that might accrue from them to his heirs.

Briefly stated, this is the back-ground against which is thrown, the general announcement of the works which bear his name, as the products of William Shakspeare.

Against this back-ground, however, we are confronted with certain other facts, no less significant and still more definite and arbitrary.

1. These works are here. The plays and poems which the literary world and the publishers of his times, or shortly after, by common consent accredited to Shakspeare and which have been generally accredited to him, for nearly three hundred years, are not myths but facts. They are in our possession,— treasures of incomparable value. The Tempest, Winter's Tale, Midsummer Night's Dream, Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Macbeth, Cæsar, Othello, Romeo and Juliet and the history plays of England: all these are present day possessions. They are tangible and real,-the monumental mountains of some great genius,—an inheritance that wasteth not, is not subject to moth, or rust, or decay of time, but continues to grow like an eternal Banyan tree with multiplying greatness and value.

2. Nor are they a miracle. Great and superlative as they are, they do not belong to the realm of the supernatural. They are beyond all question, the products of human genius. While they sometimes mount up as on the wings of eagles and soar to realms of fancy and vision, they take their flight, like the English lark, from the ground. They are of the earth,-earthy: of the human,-humanly.

3. Nor are they of any other age than that attributed to them. No student of English history can, by any stretch of time or facts, place these works in any other period than that of the last quarter of the sixteenth and the first quarter of the seventeenth century.1 Any denial therefore of Shakspeare as the author of these works must substitute the name of some other genius of the same period of time. To do this does not seem to have occurred to the literary men who were contemporary with Shakspeare, or who followed in a close line of succession. They had all the tradition and evidence of the times and, whatever else they thought of the plays, they regarded them, beyond doubt, as substantially the work of Shakspeare. Seven years after his death four booksellers formed a syndicate to publish an edition of the plays as the plays of William Shakspeare. Fifty years later Dryden mentions that "the plays of Shakspeare have become a little obsolete." For nearly a hundred years these plays lay almost wholly neglected owing in part to the immediate revolution and rebellion and partly to the licentious tastes encouraged in Charles the Second's time and perhaps partly to the incorrect state of his (Shakspeare's) works." 2 At the expiration of this period a revival of literary interest again occurred. Samuel Johnson and Alexander Pope each wrote an extended preface to their editions of Shakspeare and while they, especially Johnson, criticised them severely, it did not seem to enter their minds that there could be any doubt as to the authenticity of the works in general, although they questioned many parts of them as Un-Shakspearian.

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1" Shakspeare came at the last hour which could have made room for him; twenty-five years later he would have been denied expression, or his free and comprehensive genius would have suffered serious distortion. The loveliness of Milton's earlier lyrics reflect the joyousness and freedom of the golden age of English dramatic poetry. The Puritan temper was silently or noisily spreading through the whole period of Shakspeare's career; within twenty-five years after his death it had closed the theaters and was making a desperate fight for the right to live according to conscience. Shakspeare arrived on the stage when the great schism which was to divide the English people had not gone beyond the stage of growing divergence of social and religious ideals; there was still a united England." "Shakspeare, Poet, Dramatist and Man." Hamilton W. Mabie. *"Life of Shakspeare." By Dr. Alex. Chalmers, 1823.

The attempt, in recent years, to substitute the name of a scholar and a philosopher for that of Shakspeare as the author of these works has fallen and will soon be forgotten. A great scholar, like Bacon, could not have written these dramas even had he possessed the genius as well as the scholarship. As a scholar he could not have made the mistakes of Shakspeare.

As to the absence of the manuscripts, the perplexity is not removed but deepened, if it be deemed supposable that the works were written by Bacon instead of by Shakspeare. It is conceivable that a man of Shakspeare's habits and environment might place no value upon the written plays, except as stage property for which they were exclusively written. But we cannot conceive of a great scholar and philosopher working out from his intellectual consciousness so magnificent a work, as for example the play of Hamlet, without perceiving its literary merit and placing a value upon the manuscript for preservation and inheritance. We can see why Shakspeare might attach no value to those manuscripts for his heirs but it is not supposable in regard to a man who appreciated his own literary attainments, who was in a position to estimate their future value and who was so careful of the fame and reward which his talents and labor might bring.

Had Bacon written the masterpieces of poetic genius which are found in all the greater plays he could have found means to introduce them. to his own world of literature and secure their recognition as such. But to Shakspeare this was a closed door. Plays written for the stage were not recognized in the realm of literature. When in 1586 (or thereabouts) Shakspeare went to London he found many plays in the green-room of the theater. Mr. Mabie has told the story of the public attitude towards such plays so well that we take the liberty to quote him again:

"These plays were drawn from many sources; they were often composite; in many cases individual authorship had been forgotten, if it had ever been known; no sense of personal proprietorship attached to them; they belonged to the theater; many of them had been revised so many times by so many hands that all semblance of their first forms had disappeared; they were constantly changed by the actors themselves. These plays were, in some instances, not even printed; they existed only as unpublished manuscripts; in many cases a play did not exist as an entirety even in manuscript; it existed only in parts with cues for the different actors. The publication of a play was the very last thing desired by the writer, or by the theater to which it was sold and to which it belonged, and every precaution was taken to prevent a publicity which was harmful to the interests of author and owner. The exclusive ownership of successful plays was a large part of the capital of the theaters. Shorthand writers often took down the

speeches of actors, and in this way plays were stolen and surreptitiously printed; but they were full of all manner of inaccuracies, the verse passages readily becoming prose in the hands of unimaginative reporters, and the method was regarded as dishonorable. Reputable playwrights, having sold a work to a theater, did not regard it as available for publication."1

This interesting page of history sufficiently explains the little esteem in which the manuscripts were held as literature. In view of all these considerations the wonder is, not that we know so little, but that we know so much of Shakspeare and his works.

Here is the marvel! Out of virgin soil there sprang one who, by his genius, unconsciously raised the whole stage-world unto the realm of literature. The drama, in his hand, became the greatest expression of human life and experience. His works were the masterpieces of literature. If the new intellectual world of his day was incapable of perceiving it, nevertheless it supplied the material and awakened the spirit that made a Shakspeare possible. "At the critical moment Shakspeare appeared as the Columbus of that new world. Pioneers had gone before and in a measure prepared the way, but Shakspeare still remains the discoverer, occupying a position of almost lonely grandeur in the isolation and completeness of his work."2

Whence then hath this man these great things? If he is the world's greatest literary fact, in what consists his superior power?

There is one word which has been used of late in reference to Shakspeare and which is ascribed to him alone. It is the word "universality." Many men have done great things along some one line. They have shown themselves masters of some one form of art. To quote the words of an able writer "Rembrandt must teach us to enjoy the struggle of light with darkness, Wagner to enjoy peculiar musical effects; Dickens gives a twist to our sentimentality, Artemus Ward to our humor; Emerson kindles a new moral light within us." And it might be added, Mozart and Handel have taught us that religion may find its loftiest expression in music. Of many writers it has been said "that each did his own one thing better than any other" but, as Keats said of Shakspeare, "he did easily all men's utmost."

This Shakspeare touches every shore of human experience. He appropriates every element and product of nature,-all the trees and all the flowers and the birds of the air are his by acquaintance. Nothing escapes him. "He touched life at so many points and responded so

'Shakspeare, Poet, Dramatist and Man.

'Encyclopedia Britannica. Article on Shakspeare. "The Will to Believe." William James.