The moral system of Shakespeare;

Front matter

m

The /^

Moral System of Shakespeare

Preface

The purpose and scope of this work are fully set forth in the introductory section. A preface is desirable only for explanations upon two points of detail.

My former book, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist^ originally published (by the Clarendon Press, Oxford) in 1885, is now (third edition, 1893) in extensive use amongst private readers and in schools and universities. This present work illustrates an entirely different view point of literary study. Necessarily, however, two books treating the same author must have some points in common. Where this is the case, I have usually in the present work given the briefest treatment consistent with clearness, the reader being referred by footnotes to the other book for fuller discussion.

In what is intended primarily for the general reader I have wished to exclude technical discussion from the text. Believing, however, that precise analysis of structure is the best foundation for the fullest appreciation of literary beauty, I have added an Appendix, which gives formal schemes of plot for each of the Shakespearean plays. In these analyses I have broken away altogether from the current schemes of plot analysis. These, however able in detail, appear to me to be in method no more than adaptations of Aristotle's principles to new matter ; they are thus survivals of the Renaissance criticism, in which all that might be newly created must be surveyed from the one standpoint of Greek art. But Greek Drama and Shakespearean Drama — of equal importance in universal literature — stand nevertheless at opposite poles of dramatic structure ; the one vi PREFACE

rests upon the severe simplicity of the unities, the other reaches after free play and fulness, rejoicing to draw the most complex material into artistic harmony. Accordingly, I have adopted a method of dramatic analysis which allows dramatic movement to fall into the second place, while the chief prominence is given to the multiplication of stories which is the essence of the Romantic Drama, and to the exquisite effects of balance and symmetry which make its artistic glory. We moderns pay the best tribute to the Founder of Criticism when we imitate, not his results, but his spirit, and interrogate the new literary material, as Aristotle interrogated his Greek Drama, for the principles which best explain the literary product.

By this combination of general discussion in the text with formal analysis in the Appendix I have tried to make what may serve as a text-book of Shakespeare for students of literary clubs or scholastic institutions. And I would say to the reader who is conscious to himself of being no more than a pleasure seeker in his reading, that he will consult best for his own pleasure if he will give attention to the foundation iriterest of dramatic structure, as enhancing beauties of effect which lie more upon the surface.

RICHARD G. MOULTON.

Introduction

PAGE

What is implied in "The Moral System of Shakespeare" . i

BOOK I Root Ideas of Shakespeare's Moral System

CHAPTER

I. Heroism and Moral Balance : The first four Histories . . 13

n. Wrong and Retribution : The second four Histories ... 33

in. Innocence and Pathos : The Tragedy o( J^omeo and /u/ie^ . 46

IV. Wrong and Restoration : The Comedies of Winter^ s Tale and

Cymbeline 65

V. The Life Without and the Life Within : The Mask-Tragedy of

Henry the Eighth. 89

BOOK II Shakespeare's World in its Moral Complexity

VI. The Outer and Inner in Application to Roman Life . . .Ill

VII. Moral Problems Dramatised 141

VIII. Comedy as Life in Equilibrium 158

IX. Tragedy as Equilibrium Overthrown 185

X. The Moral Significance of Humour 195

vii viil CONTENTS

BOOK III The Forces of Life in Shakespeare's Moral World

CHAPTER

XI. Personality and its Dramatic Expression in Intrigue and Irony

XII. The Momentum of Character and the Sway of Circumstance

XIII. The Pendulum of History

XIV. Supernatural Agency in Shakespeare's Moral World . XV. Moral Accident and Overruling Providence

209 242 269 297 311

Appendix

Plot Schemes of Shakespearean Dramas 327

Index to the Plays 375

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS IMPLIED IN "THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE "

The title of this work, The Moral System of Shakespeare, is not intended to suggest that the man Shakespeare had formed in his mind a certain system of morals, which he proceeded to put into his plays. Indeed, this book does not concern itself in any way with the man Shakespeare ; if any of my readers inclines to the view that the plays of Shakespeare were written by Lord Bacon, or, for that matter, by Queen Elizabeth, he will find nothing in the pages that follow to disturb his faith. ' Shakespeare ' is only used as a convenient name for the whole body of thirty-six dramas usually attributed to William Shakespeare, by whomsoever these dramas may have been composed, in whatsoever way they may have been put together. The contents of these thirty-six plays make a world of their own, a world of personages, of incidents, of story. It is surely possible to survey this im.aginary world from the same standpoint from which the moralist surveys the world of reality : the result of such a survey, put together with some degree of methodical order, will give us the moral system of the Shakespearean Drama.

At the outset of our task a word of disclaimer must be said against what may be called the Fallacy of Quotations. Nothing is commoner than the attempt to convey the mind of Shakespeare by passages from his plays. Yet this is obviously delusive. If we were to select a large number of moral topics, if we were to arrange these in alphabetical order from Atonement to Zeal, if under each heading we were diligendy to collect extracts from the thirty-six dramas, pointed sayings and passionate outpourings, we should at the end of our labour be no nearer than we were at the beginning to the moral system of Shakespeare. For dramatic differs from other literature in this, that quotations from a play can never reveal either the mind of the author or the spirit of the drama. " Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward, as the Bible says." But the Bible does not say so. The words are found in the dramatic Book of Job as part of what is spoken by Eliphaz the Temanite ; and the same Book of Job represents God as declaring that Eliphaz has not said the thing that is right. Is the Bible to be held responsible for the sentiment of one whom it represents God as repudiating ? In one of Shakespeare's plays is found this sentiment :

Conscience is but a word that cowards use,

Devised at first to keep the strong in awe. '

In another play appears this other saying —

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all !

For which of these contradictory sentiments is Shakespeare to be held responsible ? He is responsible for neither. The first extract represents nothing but the opinion of such a man as the imaginary Richard ; the second gives us only the opinion of the imaginary Hamlet. For every word in a play some imaginary speaker, and only he, is responsible ; and thus in dramatic hterature no amount of quotations can give us the mind of the poet or the meaning of the poem.

In what way then are we to seek the moral significance of the Shakespearean Drama? In the first place, the principle must be consistently followed that all the speeches of a play must be read with regard to the character of the speaker, and to the circumstances in which he speaks. But to this principle another may be

INTRODUCTION 3

added. The treatment of the subject in the present work assumes as its basis the study of plot. Plot is the reduction of all the details of a poem to a unity of design. It is in fiction what providence is in the world of reality. As we contemplate the vast universe we delight to believe that —

All are but parts of one stupendous whole :

the religious mind instinctively feels this ; science is occupied in taking the phenomenal universe to pieces and tracing the parts of which it is made up. So in the mimic world of a drama or story, all are but parts of one artistic whole : the cultured mind has an instinctive sense of such plot ; criticism takes the drama or story to pieces and analyses the parts which have been moulded into a unity. Every single play of Shakespeare will be a microcosm, of which the author is the creator, and the plot is its providential scheme. When analysis of the various plays has put together results drawn from each, then we have a body of material sufficient for the study of underlying principles, and — so far as may be — for the coordination of principles into something of a moral system.

But is such work worth doing? it will be asked. Plays are a form of human amusement ; in the case of Shakespeare, no doubt, the enjoyment will be of an elevating character, still it will be in the category of amusement. If we go beyond this, are we not in danger of spoiling good sport in order to make doubtful philosophy?

The answer to this question will depend upon the meaning the particular reader attaches to the word poetry. The tyranny of words is great : the fact that the word prose has a double usage, contrasting sometimes with poetry and sometimes with verse, has brought it about that in many minds poetry has come to mean verse, or, at least, poetry is conceived as only a mode of expression. But poetry is also a mode of thought : its root significance is creation. The philosopher and the poet are alike thinkers, but they express their thinking in different forms; the philosopher thinks in abstract principles and arguments, the poet expresses his thoughts in the concrete, in the illustrative examples he creates. The two types meet in physical science. Now, the physicist is a philosopher, conveying what he has observed of nature in laws and inductions. At another time, in what he calls experiments, the physicist creates : he contrives, at his arbitrary will, peculiar combinations, which would not be brought into existence but for him, and obedient nature exhibits what her working would do under these conditions. In a similar way poetry and fiction are an experimental side to the philosophy of human life. History, biography, psychology, ethics, correspond to the physicist's mere observation of nature ; these studies limit the material they use to what happens to have happened. Poetry and fiction use the same material of human life without limiting it to what has chanced actually to occur ; all that would naturally happen in the conditions contrived makes the material of creative literature, which can thus give to its treatment of human life all the range of crucial experiment.

I say boldly, that the study of human life will never hold its own, in comparison with the study of physical nature, until we recognise the true position of poetry and fiction in philosophy. Our present confinement of moral studies to histories and abstract ethics holds the humanities back in the elementary stage of observation without experiment. More than this, the survey of life that bounds itself by facts is not even the best kind of observation : it is like the timid examination of nature by one who will use nothing but the naked eye. The Ufe that is close around observers is an eddying whirl of unrelated particulars ; what more is wanted to make particulars into the general ideas we call truth is either too far off to be seen, or so near as to be out of perspective. The same difficulty in the observation of nature we meet by the use of the telescope and the microscope ; it is true that when we look through these we do not see things but the images of things, yet it is only by aid of such images that we can get nature at the proper distance for observation. The poetic mind is the lens provided by nature for human life ; ' works of imagination ' are so

INTRODUCTION 5

called because they give us the * images ' of human things, cleared from the vagueness of too great distance, or the obscurity caused by irrelevant details. The Shakespearean Drama constitutes a vast body of such creative observations in human hfe, made through a peerless instrument ; they invite arrangement and disposition into general truths.

Objections felt in some quarters against the sort of study here attempted will often be found to resolve themselves into misconception of poetry and its creative function. Men of affairs often make themselves merry at the expense of the scholarship that brings elaborate discussion to bear upon what after all is purely imaginative material. "If Shakespeare be not" — I quote in substance a newspaper article — " the most muddled, unintelligible and inchoate genius that ever handled a pen, why should he need by way of explanation commentaries in volume far exceeding the whole volume of the plays ? " The writer of these words has not seen that only an infinitesimally small portion of Shakespeare commentaries — and that, in my judgment, the portion which could best be spared — is commentary on Shakespeare. The vast proportion is comment upon human life itself, touched as life is at myriad points by the creations of the Shakespearean Drama. Discussion of human life is likely to go on gathering both volume and value to the end of time.

Other objectors readily admit the general principle; but, they ask, is Shakespeare up to date in his psychology and ethics ? Similarly, I imagine, many a tailor, visiting a public gallery of paintings, is convinced in his heart that Vandyck was not up to date in his fashions. For there is even in grave studies an element of fashion ; particular problems have prominence at particular times, and the technical terms associated with them recur with insistent emphasis ; the fascination of being up to date somewhat disturbs perspective, and the psychology that does not run into current moulds seems to be no psychology at all. But the important point is that Shakespeare is not a psychologist, elementary or advanced, in the sense in which the word is used by the objector ; Shakespeare's work is to project upon the screen of our imagination pieces of human life, which it is for general psychology and ethics to analyse. And if any student has a system of psychology and ethics which will not bear confronting with the life revealed by Shakespeare, it might be well for him to doubt whether his system may not be one-sided, rather than that the insight of Shakespeare should be antiquated.

A more reasonable doubt is, how far such study of the dramas can be reduced to a system. Indeed, I cannot help thinking that the drawback to most of the existing commentaries on Shakespeare is that they lean towards over-systematisation ; with full intention of inductive examination, investigators have nevertheless approached their work with an unconscious bias towards neat generalisations and rounded coordinations.^ For myself, I am content to draw nothing more of system out of the world of Shakespeare's creations than may be drawn from the world of real hfe. None of us believe the world about us to be a mere chaos. The sifted life that is held up for our observation by Shakespeare will similarly show underlying principles ; every degree of success in discovering and coordinating moral ideas in the Drama may lay claim to the broad sense of the word system.

It remains to ask, how far we are to extend the range of the word moral in treating the moral system of Shakespeare. In the first place, we are open to consider all that touches character, the ways of men, the aims, motives, impulses, whether of individuals or classes : all that is covered by the Latin word mores. So far as this goes we are on the same ground as the science of ethics. But, though it would seem as if the Latin word morals and the Greek word etJiics were exact counterparts one of the other, yet in usage and common thought the conception of morals extends much beyond the science of ethics.

1 Professor Dowden's Mind and Art of Shakspere is an exception. I entirely concur in the spirit of his remark (page 429) : " Let us not attenuate Shakspere to a theory " : though my title may seem a contradiction. The question is simply how far the word system is to be pressed.

INTRODUCTION 7

We think of a moral system as including, not only the aspect which the individual shows to the universe, but also the aspect which the course of events in the universe shows to the individual. Varieties of character, and variations of fortune or fate, are elements which must combine to give the idea of a moral order in the world. It is here that the great questions of a moral system arise. An influential school of commentators on drama, corresponding to a school that has always existed among thinkers on real life, stand for the rigid connection of men's moral natures with their fortunes : that a man's character determines his fate. This they bring as an axiom to their analysis of drama, and insist on discovering their axiom, as a self-evident principle, in every story. They even quote Scripture for it : Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. But this last is another example of the Fallacy of Quotations. The words appear in Scripture as a gnome or proverb, which is the Hterary form devoted to expressing partial truths ; it is misquotation to cite a proverb as if this were intended for a universal truth. It is of course one of the many tendencies observable in life that what is sown in conduct is likely to be reaped ; such reaping of what has been sown always strikes the beholder with profound moral impressiveness. But it is only one tendency out of many : the facts of human life also reveal men failing to reap what they have sown, or again being forced to reap what others have sown. The same Bible which gives us at one point the impressive proverb of sowing and reaping, gives us at another point the not less impressive parable of the sower who goes forth to sow, and tells how some of his seed fell by the wayside, and some into stony ground or among thorns : warning us that what is sown is not always reaped. I touch on this point only to insist that we must come to our study of Shakespeare with an open mind, and gather from each story as it presents itself whatever shall appear as to the connection between character and fate.

When we thus consider side by side the characters of men and the course of events another branch of inquiry will naturally suggest itself. What, in the moral system of Shakespeare, appear to be the forces behind hfe, determining its issues? Are the consequences of our actions regulated only by general laws, such as those we recognise in the reaction of physical forces? While I hold a ball in my hand, I may choose whether I will throw it to the right or to the left ; but when once the ball has left my hand it is seized upon by the law of gravitation and the laws of friction and of projectile curve ; nothing but the play of such laws determines where the ball will touch the ground. Is it so with the actions of the moral life ? Or is it — as when Arthur threw away Excalibur and a hand appeared from the lake to seize it — that there is an external Will at times interfering with natural consequences of men's acts? Or again, have we assumed too much in saying that while in my hand the ball is in my control ? and is it that unconscious forces from within us may have interfered even with the actions we call voluntary? Such questions suggest that the forces of life, so far as they find dramatic expression in Shakespearean plot, make a natural part of his moral system.

One more principle must be indicated as defining the field of the present inquiry. I have so far spoken as if there were no difference between life as it is depicted in the drama and the life of reality. And indeed the common idea that the two are identical has been assisted by a certain image — attributed, by the usual Fallacy of Quotations, to Shakespeare, but in reality carrying only the authority of Hamlet — the description of the stage as " holding up the mirror to nature." The comparison is apt enough for the purpose of Hamlet's speech. But that the drama is not merely a reflection of real life every reader may satisfy himself, by imagining his own life and the Hfe of his household on the day on which he reads these lines reproduced — by phonograph and kinetograph — without any flaw upon some stage : would this be drama ? Obviously something would be lacking to make the reproduction of real life into drama, something of the nature of sifting^ selection, adaptation. It appears then that drama is not a reflection, but an arranged spectacle. Now a spectacle implies a spectator ; and the

INTRODUCTION 9

whole arrangement is contrived with regard to the spectator's point of view. This standpoint of the spectator enters fundamentally into all dramatic analysis. When we use such elementary terms as * tragic,' ' comic,' we assume in their use the spectator's view point ; we call the experience of MalvoHo comic, yet it would be the reverse of comic to Malvolio. When Aristotle gives his famous definition of tragedy, as purifying the emotions of pity and terror by a healthy exercise of them, it is obviously the spectator's emotions with which his definition is concerned. Similarly the present inquiry, besides plot, must give attention to dramatic * tone ' — the technical expression for such differences as tragic, comic, humorous, and all their varieties and shadings. The moral system of Shakespeare will be traced alike in plot, the course of events appearing in the play, and in tone, the sympathetic response of the spectator.

With these preliminary observations the chapters that follow may be left to explain themselves. The inquiry falls into three natural parts. In the first, particular dramas will be presented to illustrate what may be recognised as root ideas in the moral system of Shakespeare. Then the inquiry will widen, and survey the world of Shakespeare's creation in its moral complexity. In the third part will be considered the forces of life in Shakespeare's moral world, so far as these express themselves in dramatic forms, from personal will at one end of the scale to overruling providence at the other end.

Chapter V: The Life Without and the Life Within: The Mask- Tragedy of Hemy the Eighth HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE : THE FIRST FOUR HISTORIES

Without doubt Henry of Monmouth is to be regarded as the grand hero of the Shakespearean world. It is in approaching this theme that the dramatist feels the limitations of dramatic form.

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene !

Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,

Assume the port of Mars ; and at his heels,

Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire

Crouch for employment.

The historic materials hmit what follows to a picture of war. But wise counsellors of the King — not speaking in the presence, which might suggest flattery, but in secret conference with one another — indicate the universal genius of Henry. ♦'

Hear him but reason in divinity.

And all-admiring with an inward wish

You would desire the King were made a prelate :

Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,

You would say it hath been all in all his study :

List his discourse of war, and you shall hear

A fearfiil battle render'd you in music :

Turn him to any cause of policy,

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,

Familiar as his garter : that, when he speaks,

The air, a chartered libertine, is still.

And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears.

To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences. ^

1 Henry the Fifth ; L i. 38. 13

Thus the great dramatist must needs borrow from a sister art, and narrative poems fill up the intervals between the acts, epic combining with drama to make a medium wide enough for the presentation of the complete hero.

Yet at first sight it might seem as if a great exception would have to be made to the moral greatness of Henry. This kingly figure has been, in his youth, the grief of his father's heart, the prodigal son of court life ; affections holding a wing " quite from the flight of all his ancestors " have kept him wasting his years in the riotous living of low taverns and street brawls. But a closer examination of Henry as he is seen developing through the series of plays will put quite another face upon this matter. The truancy of the prince is no more than the wider and fuller nature rebelling against the limitations of worn-out ideals. Bohngbroke and those about him belong to the past ; theirs is a life bounded by the narrow horizon of feudalism. Their business is war, and their justice is judicial combat ; the war moreover is a war of feudal parties for feudal power. The divinity of kingship is a sentiment with them, but only while it is on their side. Bolingbroke, while he is weak, bends the knee before Richard ; when unexpected powers have flocked to his standard he overturns Richard's throne and appropriates the divine kingship to himself. The Percies have been his chief backers in this ; the moment the new King turns against their family they discover that Richard was a " sweet rose " and Bolingbroke its "canker." Now Henry of Monmouth has been born into a new era, when the one-sided structure of feudalism is to break down, and society is to find a new equilibrium ; his youthful freshness has caught the new interest of human nature itself, the interest of Hfe outside feudal conceptions. ResponsibiHty and the call to action have not yet come ; Henry can afford to stand aside, and let the factions eat up one another. Meanwhile, what are attractions to the men of the time have no zest for him : a mere show of feudal life in mimic spectacle as a rehef from feudal Hfe in dull earnest. When they tell the prince of the " Oxford triumphs " that were to celebrate successful treason —

His answer was, he would unto the stews, And from the commonest creature pluck a glove. And wear it as a favour ; and with that He would unhorse the lustiest challenger. ^

All this is but the breath of change stirring, that is to mark a new generation. But curiosity grows in time to be something deeper; slowly observers of Henry come to see that he is "obscuring his contemplation under the veil of wildness." ^

This is not an afterthought, put forward to excuse a life that has been misspent. The first scene in which we view Henry surrounded by the Falstaff crew ends with a sohloquy."

I know you all, and will a while uphold The unyoked humour of your idleness : Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself.

Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at.

By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

Meanwhile, it is not a case of a Haroun al Raschid viewing low life under protection of night and disguise : Henry casts off all his rank, and meets human nature on its own level. He matches himself against the prince of humorists, and Falstaff can never get the better of him. He goes on to " sound the base-string of humility," and can out-trifle " a leash of drawers."

They take it already upon their salvation, that though I be but Prince of Wales, yet I am the king of courtesy ; and tell me flatly I am no proud Jack, like Falstaff", but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy, by the Lord, so they call me, and when I am king of England I shall command all the good lads in Eastcheap.'*

1 Richard the Seco?id : V. iii. 16. 3 / Henry the Fourth : L ii. 219.

2 Henry the Fifth .• L i. 63. 4 / Henry the Fourth ; IL iv. 9.

Nothing comes in sight but Henry will master it.

I am now of all humours that have showed themselves humours since the old days of goodman Adam to the pupil age of this present twelve o'clock at midnight.^

He is steady in his purpose of being in gay life without being of it ; with easy superiority he sits loose to the actions of his comrades, and if these have done damage he repays " with advantage." ^ Henry's claim is that " in everything the purpose must weigh with the folly " j^ and it is a folly that never loses sight of wisdom.

Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.^