Shakespeare criticism; a selection

Front matter

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SHAKESPEARE CRITICISM

A SELECTION

Introduction

There have been many collections of criticisms on Shakespeare. They begin with the verses which were contributed by friends, seven years after his death, to the first complete volume of his plays, the ' First Folio ' of 1623 ; and they vary in character with the times in which they were published. At the end of the century Sir Thomas Pope Blount attempted to represent contemporary opinion on Shakespeare in his De Re Poetica, or Remarks upon Poetry (1694). In the eighteenth century, when the text of the plays came to be examined and explained, the prefaces or introductory essays of the different editors were sometimes printed in a body, as in the edition of Samuel Johnson ; and the first critical anthology was produced by David Garrick under the title ' Testimonies to the Genius and Merits of Shakespeare ' — a short selection of notable statements which was added to his Ode for the Stratford celebration in 1769. In the nineteenth century the continued growth of scholarly and methodical study gave us in such a book as Ingleby's Shakespeare's Centurie ofPrayse the kind of compilation that aims at being an exhaustive record of allusions.

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This little volume has thus many predecessors. It does not, however, as far as the editor is aware, follow directly in the tracks of any of them. While it claims to give the greatest pieces of Shakespeare criticism from his death till the middle of the nineteenth century, it also tries to represent the general movement in critical opinion and method. Occasionally an extract has been included mainly because the views it expresses were novel or important at the time of publication, or because it helps to place the work of subsequent critics in truer perspective.

No good writer, as Landor says, was ever long neglected ; no great man overlooked by men equally great. There is abundant proof of the esteem in which Shakespeare was held in his own day. He was recognized as the greatest of them all. His writings were confessed to be

such As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much ;

and this was ' all men's suffrage '. His contemporaries had never any doubt of his greatness. But, as contemporaries always do, they knew wherein he faulted. He was not always a careful writer ; sometimes his unapproachable facility carried him into error, or gave too free play to his wit. Ben Jonson, who lacked this facility, spoke of it with something of the consolation that comes

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from superior scholarship ; just as the sense of contrast with Shakespeare also made him pride himself on the originality and construction of his plots. But no nobler tribute will ever be paid to a friend than the verses of this warm-hearted burly rival 'to the memory of my beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us'. Shakespeare is admitted to have surpassed the Greek and Latin dramatists, Jonson's own masters ; he was not of an age, but for all time ; and he had excelled not merely because he was the poet of nature, but by reason of his art. In private conversation Jonson is known to have said that Shakespeare ' wanted art ', meaning thereby that he did not always take sufficient care ; and Jonson has some responsibility for the statement to be found again and again, in varied words, in later critics, that there was more art in his work and more nature in Shakespeare's. It is therefore important to note that in his most deliberate testimony to the genius of Shakespeare he acknowledged him to have been master of an art which no one else could reach. With all his faults Shakespeare was to Jonson the greatest of dramatists. This was the contemporary view, and it was never seriously challenged throughout the seventeenth century.1 Though the claims of Jonson were

1 In a poem prefixed to the edition of Shakespeare's Poems published in 1640, Leonard Digges bore remarkable viii INTRODUCTION

occasionally urged by his ' sons ', though after th6 Restoration Fletcher was for some time more frequently acted, and though the vagaries of theatrical taste, then as now, called for alterations or adaptations, Shakespeare did not lose his hold on the national pride and affection.

The extracts in this volume from the seventeenth century may appear to occupy comparatively little space. But the mere bulk of criticism on any author is never to be taken as the measure of his fame. It is one thing to admire an author ; it is quite another thing to publish the reasons of that

testimony to the popularity of Shakespeare's plays, especially in comparison with the plays of Jonson :

So have I seene, when Cesar would appeare,

And on the Stage at halfe-sword parley were

Brutus and Cassius : oh how the Audience

Were ravish' d, with what wonder they went thence,.

When some new day they would not brooke a lino

Of tedious (though well laboured) Catiline ;

Sejanus too was irkesome, they priz'de mere

Honest logo, or the jealous Moore.

And though the Fox and subtill Alchimist,

Long intermitted, could not quite be mist,

Though these have sham'd all the Ancients, and might

raise Their Authours merit with a crowne of Bayes, Yet these sometimes, even at a friends desire Acted, have scarce defrai'd the Seacoale fire And doore-keepers : when let but Falstaffe come, Hall, Poines, the rest, you scarce shall have a roome, All is so pester' d : let but Beatrice And Benedicke be seene, loe in a trice The Cockpit, Galleries, Boxes, all are full To heare Malvoglio, that crosse garter' d GulL

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admiration. In the seventeenth century criticism had not yet become an organized industry. There were no editions to be furnished with critical prefaces ; the periodicals did not print literary essays ; and many years had to pass before the public discovered a taste for lectures.

The criticism of Shakespeare which deliberately discusses principles and determines merits begins with Dryden. A dramatist himself, with a happy faculty of meeting and guiding the public taste, he was compelled to review the many problems of dramatic art that had been forced into prominence since Shakespeare's death. The Elizabethans, by the mere lapse of half a century, had come to appear somewhat antiquated ; and pride in the great national tradition could not conceal its exhaustion. The old life had gone from it at the very time when the French drama, following other methods, was attaining its highest perfection. There were scholars who, like Milton in Samson Agonistes, favoured neither English nor French methods, but held that Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were ' the best rule to all who endeavour to write tragedy \ Yet other methods were found in the Spanish plays, which were well known and even occasionally acted. The very stage had altered, with the introduction of movable scenery and the substitution of women for the Elizabethan boy actors. The whole theory of the drama x INTRODUCTION

demanded scrutiny by dramatist and critic alike ; and Shakespeare had to be tested by what had been achieved under different conditions elsewhere. If in other countries plays were written on principles which theoretically appeared more reasonable, were the English to persist in sheltering their extravagances under Shakespeare's name? Or, while continuing to boast of him as a great irregular genius, should they adopt the simpler and severer style of the classical and the French drama ? It was not a new problem, and it was not a question of submitting to foreign fashion: Ben Jonson had championed stricter methods, and was he not a safer guide than a genius who had triumphed in spite of his irregularities ?

In general Shakespeare was considered to have reached his goal by dangerous routes which he need not have taken. But the construction of his plays was not the only point at issue. The language of the Elizabethans was old-fashioned, and the men of the Restoration were too ready to discover in it impropriety or meanness of expression. They also made the common mistake of assuming that the changes in the modes of wit were refinements. ' The wit of the last age ', said Dryden, 4 was yet more incorrect than their language.' Of Shakespeare, who had not neglected the taste of his audience and was always a rapid writer, he had to say that ' he is many times flat, insipid ;

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his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast'.

Censures such as these must be viewed in relation to Dryden's enthusiastic praise of Shakespeare's genius. Nor is it to be thought that a critic like Thomas Rymer represented a large body of opinion. The whole spirit of his attack on Shakespeare shows that he was leading a forlorn hope. All his life he was entirely out of sympathy with the modern drama, in France as well as in England. His Short View of Tragedy (1693) repeated with emphasis the views which he had expressed in The Tragedies of the last Age Considered and Examined by the Practice of the Ancients, and by the Common sense of all Ages (1678). He held that the English should have built on the same foundation as Sophocles and Euripides, or after their model, and that the chorus is the most necessary part of tragedy. He was a learned man, clever, and boisterously witty, but when he attacked Othello with ridicule he knew that it was his last weapon. He called it the ' Tragedy of the Handkerchief ', he found in it the moral that wives should look well to their linen, and he summed up his censures thus : ' There is in this Play, some burlesk, some humour, and ramble of Comical Wit, some shew, and some Mimickry to divert the spectators : but the tragical part is plainly none other than a Bloody Farce, without salt or savour.' This xii INTRODUCTION

is not the language of a man who thought he could win his cause. His own tragedy, Edgar, had shown that to be a successful dramatist it was not sufficient to be a learned critic. Dryden expressed the general verdict when he said in the Prologue to Love Triumphant that

To Shakespear's Critic he bequeaths the Curse, To find his faults, and yet himself make worse ; A precious Reader in Poetic Schools, Who by his own Examples damns his Rules.

There was much talk about the ' rules ' at this time, and for many years to come ; but the importance attached to them can easily be overstated. The greater critics never laid stress on the rules ; neglect of text-book methods can always be justified by success. * Better a mechanic rule were stretched or broken than a great beauty were omitted,' said Dryden. i There is more beauty ', said Addison, ' in the works of a great genius who is ignorant of the rules of art, than in those of a little genius who knows and observes them.' Pope said much the same in his Essay on Criticism, and said it at length in the Preface to his edition of Shakespeare.

Dryden was so fully representative of his age that the public debate on the methods of the drama is adequately reflected in the debate in his own mind. At times he conformed to ' the exactest rules by which a play is wrought ' ; at others, he

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ignored them. His apparent inconsistencies are only proof of a live intelligence open to new impressions, and ready for new ventures. Amid all his doubts, he was guided and controlled by tastes and sympathies that were proudly English. Some of his statements, if taken out of their setting, may suggest scant respect for the Elizabethans. In self-defence he enlarged on the failings of the

* last age ' ; and he never hesitated to speak of

Shakespeare's faults. But he also said that

Shakespeare's critics

in the attempt are lost, When most they rail, know then they envy most.

His belief in the unmatched greatness of Shakespeare was stated deliberately, once and for all, in the glowing tribute in the early Essay of Dramatic Poesy.

This ' model of encomiastic criticism ', this

* epitome of excellence ', as Samuel Johnson called it, introduced the clearly marked type of appreciation which prevailed till the third quarter of the eighteenth century and is excellently represented by the Preface of Pope. Progress of farreaching importance was made in other directions. This period gave us, in the Introduction to Eowe's edition, the first biography of Shakespeare ; it discussed the extent of his learning and the sources of his plots, notably in Whalley's Enquiry into the Learning of Shakes peare (1748), Farmer's Essay on xiv INTRODUCTION

the Learning of Shakespeare (1767), and Charlotte Lennox's Shakespear Illustrated (1753) ; above all, it began the examination of the texts of the plays and the explanation of their difficulties. But in the more general criticism that deals with merits and characteristics — the kind of criticism that is the matter of this volume — there is one prevailing manner during the hundred years from Dryden's Essay (1668) to Johnson's Preface (1765).

Johnson set himself to review the common topics of Shakespeare criticism, and to give his judgement on the points at issue. There is little new matter in his Preface, except where he deals with his work as an editor. Its importance lies mainly in its being a conclusive summing up, by a strong, wise, and impartial mind, of a prolonged discussion. The question of Shakespeare's irregularities, though it had been losing interest, still required to be settled. They were felt to be right, and argued to be wrong. Learned opinion was as a whole against them, and it had an ally in timidity. Johnson's own Irene was regular to dullness, but in The Rambler he showed that he recognized the weight of the arguments on either side. He now set himself to reason out the whole question, and settled it for good. Henceforth no writer of any standing expressed his doubts on Shakespeare's irregularities, or had any doubts to express ; and when a change of fashion in criticism had turned

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these very irregularities into a stock theme of praise, the arguments which Johnson had advanced were used by a generation which did him too little justice. It misunderstood the impartiality with which he spoke of Shakespeare's faults. * We must confess the faults of our favourite ', he explained in a letter to Charles Burney, ' to gain credit to our praise of his excellencies.' The passage on the carelessnesses and inequalities, the quibbles and idle conceits, is remarkably searching, and may here and there be too strongly worded. Perhaps it errs through the fear of betraying what he called * superstitious veneration '. It gives the impression that Johnson, in his scrupulous regard for truth, had tried to say the very worst that a judicious admirer could ever be forced to admit. No one who understands it, however unwelcome he may find it, will allow it to cast doubt on Johnson's admiration. Such faults, says Johnson, were ' sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit \ But they did not affect the real greatness of Shakespeare. The same reasoned impartiality which led him to describe the faults also compelled him to pronounce as high a eulogy as has ever been written on this side idolatry : • This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirror of life ; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here xvi INTRODUCTION

be cured of his delirious ecstasies by reading human sentiments in human language ; by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions.' Or again : ' The stream of time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.'

Johnson is the last great representative of what may be called the judicial manner. He is the true successor of Dryden, who looked upon Shakespeare as a brother dramatist, certainly of surpassing genius, but not therefore beyond the pale of censure. Johnson never ran any risk of forgetting that Shakespeare was an author who had to write for his living. We may apply to him a sentence which he himself wrote about Shakespeare ; ' Among his other excellencies it ought to be remarked that his Heroes are Men? To Johnson, Shakespeare was always a man among men. The later critics sometimes seem to treat him as if he belonged to a different order of beings.

Nothing could have been better than Johnson's Preface as a balanced estimate. The new triumphs were to be won in other ways. There had been many signs of the coming change. Joseph Warton had contributed to The Adventurer in 1753-4 five papers on The Tempest and King Lear, in one of which he had said that l general criticism is on

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all subjects useless and unentertaining, but is more than commonly absurd with respect to Shakespeare, who must be accompanied step by step, and scene by scene, in his gradual developments of characters and passions, and whose finer features must be singly pointed out, if we would do complete justice to his genuine beauties ' ; and he carried these views into practice in his analysis of the two plays, not with remarkable ability, it must be admitted, but with sufficient competence to make his work historically important. Attention came to be centred more and more on the characters. Henry Home (better known as Lord Karnes) pointed out in his Elements of Criticism that Shakespeare's method was not descriptive, as was Corneille's and the later dramatists', but directly imitative or representative, the sentiments being ' the legitimate offspring of passion, and therefore in themselves expressive of personality \ Lyttelton, in his Dialogues of the Dead, said that Shakespeare's knowledge of the passions, the humours, and the sentiments of mankind was so perfect, and so perfectly expressed, that ' if human nature were destroyed, and no monument were left of it except his works, other beings might know what man was from those writings '. The periodical essays show that a public which was more familiar than we are now with Shakespeare's characters as seen on the stage was also interested in discussing xviii INTRODUCTION

them. The change which becomes marked after Johnson's Preface was far from being a revolution. It was in fact only a natural and even an unavoidable sequel. The older criticism had accepted Shakespeare as the c mirror of life ', and the newer criticism now proceeded to supply the exposition. Johnson himself had heralded it in the notes to the various plays, where he introduced descriptive comments on the characters, such as those on Falstaff and Polonius. Pope had said that Shakespeare's characters are ' so much nature herself that 'tis a sort of injury to call them by so distant a name as copies of her \ The time had come when a couplet in his Essay on Criticism that has often been quoted against him could be applied with literal truth to the student of Shakespeare :

But when t' examine every part he came, Nature and Shakespeare were, he found, the same.

Henceforth to study the one was to study the other. It is further proof of the steady and full preparation for the new criticism that three writers should have been engaged independently about the same time on essays which, taken together, mark its real beginning. Thomas Whately, an active politician, William Richardson, a young Professor of Latin in the University of Glasgow, and Maurice Morgann, a government official with a special knowledge of American affairs, all wrote

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on Shakespeare by way of relaxation from their main duties, and all could claim for their work the credit of novelty. Whately expressly stated that ' the distinction and preservation of character ' was c a subject for criticism more worthy of attention than the common topics of discussion ', and produced the first elaborate analysis of two of Shakespeare's characters in his comparison of Macbeth and Richard III. He intended to have dealt with others in the same manner, but his scheme was cut short by his death in 1772. What he left had been written before 1770, but was not published till 1785, under the title Remarks on some of the Characters of Shakespeare, Richardson was the first of the three writers to get into print, his Philosophical Analysis and Illustration of some of Shakespeare1 s Remarkable Characters appearing in 1774. His work had an ethical aim ; he had indulged in what he described as an exercise no less adapted to improve the heart, than to inform the understanding. ' My intention ', he says, ' is to make poetry subservient to philosophy, and to employ it in tracing the principles of human conduct.' The main interest of this work is that it took Shakespeare's characters as examples for moral disquisitions.1 Morgann's much greater

1 A substantial volume entitled The Morality of Shakespeare's Drama Illustrated was brought out by Elizabeth Griffith in 1775 (the dedication is dated November 1, xx INTRODUCTION

Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff was written about the same time, though it was not published till 1777. He knew neither Richardson nor Whately, and believed that in considering Shakespeare in detail he was undertaking ' a task hitherto unattempted '. The book grew under his hands till it became more than its title promised — not merely a vindication of Falstaff's courage, but an enthusiastic exposition of the genius of Shakespeare as revealed in the minute examination of a single character. No title could have been more misleading in its modesty. ' Falstaff is the word only, Shakespeare is the theme.' The passage where he breaks away exultantly from his main subject to write in sheer delight of Shakespeare's essential difference from all other writers and his imperishable gifts, is one of the great things in the whole range of English criticism. There is nothing greater — perhaps nothing so great — in Coleridge or Hazlitt. Forty years were to pass before they gave us the new criticism in all its strength, and they, to their loss, did not know Morgann. In the interval the best work on Shakespeare was done by the scholars,

1774). It must have been in preparation at the same time as Richardson's Philosophical Analysis, of which it is wholly independent, though its purpose is similar. It expounds Johnson's statement (infra, p. 102) that from Shakespeare's writings 'a system of social duty may be selected \

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such as Steevens and Malone, who contributed to the elucidation of the text so great a wealth of linguistic, antiquarian, and bibliographical knowledge that later research has done little more than supplement it ; too frequently it has been used without due acknowledgement.

When Hazlitt published his Characters of Shake" spear's Plays in 1817 he spoke of it in his Preface as if it were a new venture in criticism, and the novelty of its manner was remarked on by Jeffrey in an article in The Edinburgh Review. It was the first book in which the criticism of the nineteenth century spoke clearly and confidently. But Coleridge had already been lecturing on Shakespeare for several years ; and Lamb had written his magazine article ' On the Tragedies of Shakespeare '. When Hazlitt brought out his book the new criticism was thus in all its vigour. Unfortunately little is preserved of Coleridge's early lectures. His most important course was not delivered till 1818.1

1 See the footnote on p. 255. Coleridge regarded himself as the leader of the new critics, and resented the suggestion that he was in any way indebted to the Germans. Wordsworth had said in 1815 ('Essay Supplementary to Preface ') that * the Germans only, of foreign nations, are approaching towards a knowledge and feeling of what he (Shakespeare) is. In some respects they have acquired a superiority over the fellow countrymen of the Poet. . . . How long may it be before . . it becomes universally acknowledged that the xxii INTRODUCTION

These critics were possessed with all the joy of a discovery. They thought that they understood Shakespeare as he had never been understood

judgment of Shakespeare in the selection of his materials, and in the manner in which he has made them, heterogeneous as they often are, constitute a unity of their own, and contribute all to one great end, is not less admirable than his imagination, his invention, and his intuitive knowledge of human nature ? ' Hazlitt also had neglected Coleridge's lectures when he said in 1817 that ' some little jealousy of the character of the national understanding was not without its share in producing ' his Characters of Shakespear^s Plays, * for we were piqued that it should be reserved for a foreign critic to give reasons for the faith which we English have in Shakespear '. Coleridge was moved to make an indignant protest. In a private letter written in 1819 he pointed out that, in a course of lectures which he assigned to 1802, he had argued ' that Shakespeare's judgment was, if possible, still more wonderful than his genius, or rather, that the contradistinction itself between judgment and genius rested on an utterly false theory ' ; and he also expressed the regret that the idea should have been produced by other English writers [e. g. Wordsworth] as if it were their own, or that the merit of it should be given to * a foreign writer [i.e. A. W. Schlegel] whose lectures were not given orally till two years after mine '. He believed that there was not 'one single principle in Schlegel's work (which is not an admitted drawback from its merits), that was not established and applied in detail by me '. This letter was first printed in The Canterbury Magazine for September 1834, pp. 125-6 ; cf. Biographia Epistolaris, ed. A. Turnbull, vol. ii, pp. 168-9. The priority of Coleridge or Schlegel is a matter of little importance. The main fact is that no German influence is necessary to account for the character

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before. They liked to show how they differed from the older critics ; in their pride in their new power they did not feel their relationship. Like Coriolanus, they would ■ stand as if a man were author of himself and knew no other kin '.

The differences are obvious at a glance. There is the greater freedom of movement, the clearer signs of real pleasure in writing or speaking about Shakespeare. Enthusiasm is not checked by the desire to strike a just balance ; there is no longer any fear of being misled by ' superstitious veneration \ These critics did not hold with Johnson that it was necessary to confess faults in order to gain credit to their praise of excellences. Their purpose was to explain these excellences. They did not pass judgement ; they gave an interpretation. They held, in Hazlitt's words, that * a genuine criticism should reflect the colours, the light and shade, the soul and body of a work \ The great question they set themselves to answer was not how far has Shakespeare succeeded, but how is Shakespeare to be understood. The plays are regarded as embodiments of real life ; the characters are treated as fellow beings of whom the plays preserve our only record. There is none

of English criticism on Shakespeare at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The criticism of Coleridge and Hazlitt is a natural and direct development from earlier English criticism.

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of the aloofness which must accompany the judicial attitude of watching the craftsman at his work and noting the varying results. Johnson's main interest was in Shakespeare the man ; the business of nineteenth-century critics was with the world of his creation. When they studied the ordered development of his art and demonstrated its unity, their attitude was the philosopher's in describing the phases of a great phenomenon in nature. ' The Englishman ', said Coleridge, ' who without reverence, a proud and affectionate reverence, can utter the name of William Shakespeare, stands disqualified for the office of critic' • It may be said of Shakespeare ', said Hazlitt, ' that " those who are not for him are against him ". An overstrained enthusiasm is more pardonable with respect to Shakespeare than the want of it.'

Taken as a whole the criticism of Shakespeare in the first half of the nineteenth century is our greatest, alike in range and insight and in stimulus. As an aid to the appreciation of the plays, it has no equal. It opens new vistas and communicates a sense of exaltation and wonder. It is nothing if not reverential and intuitively sympathetic. But the imaginative freedom which it derives from contact with Shakespeare's mind sometimes renders it an unsafe guide. A critic who sets out to give an interpretation of a work of art is always beset by the danger of reading himself

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into it, and the danger is the greater if he is himself an artist — a poet or a brilliant essayist. He may begin to create a new work on the basis of the original. The impression derived from a passage may be expounded out of proportion to the impression derived from the play as a whole. A wealth of subtle meaning may be extracted from what cooler judgements will not regard as specially significant, sometimes even from a rhyming tag. Or if the critic have an ethical bias, he may regard the play as a statement of a moral doctrine, and find in it the illustration of his own prepossessions. Those who aim at giving an interpretation intend to subject themselves to their author ; but the results show that there is no kind of criticism in which the personality of the critic is allowed freer scope.