Shakespeare as a dramatic artist, with an account of his reputation at various periods

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Contents

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I. The Dramatic Unities — I 1

II. The Dramatic Unities — II 37

Chapter I The Dramatic Unities I

" He said that Shakespeare wanted art." This is the criticism of his great contemporary which Drummond of Hawthornden gives us as having come from Ben Jonson. There is no reason either for doubting that the man who reported the words reported them correctly, or that the words themselves correctly represented the belief of the one to whom they were attributed. In 1618 Jonson had made a journey to Scotland. While there he visited Drummond at his estate of Hawthornden. His host, who anticipated Boswell's conduct, though without Boswell's feelings of reverence, took notes of the conversation of his guest. Among the remarks of the latter were numerous comments upon his contemporaries, uttered with great freedom. The sentence quoted above expressed from one point of view his opinion of Shakespeare.

It was an opinion which with more or less of modification prevailed till within a hundred years past. In accordance with it the two great dramatic writers of the Elizabethan period were long regularly differentiated. The literary criticism of the seventeenth and eighteenth 1 1 centuries with almost wearisome iteration depicts Jonson as the representative of art and Shakespeare as the representative of nature. This perhaps did not come to be the universally accepted estimate till after the Restoration. Still, the distinction, if not fully formulated before that time, was in process of formation. It may not be absolutely implied in the well-known reference in ' L'Allegro ' to the " native woodnotes wild " of Shakespeare and the " learned sock " of Jonson. But in Milton's lines prefixed to the folio of 1632 there can be little question that, in asserting that the former writer's ease of composition was to the shame of slowendeavoring art, the great Puritan poet had also the latter writer in mind. At any rate, as time went on, this distinction cropped out more and more in the critical judgments which contrasted the two men. Thus, in the commendatory verses to Fletcher, which were prefixed to the Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647, Sir John Denham assumes this difference between them as an accepted fact. As was proper in such a place, he gave to the poet he was celebrating the credit of having united in himself the varying merits of the two. But the characteristics which common consent had attributed to each are plainly marked in the following lines : —

" When Jonson, Shakespeare and thyself did sit, And swayed in the triumvirate of wit, — Yet what from Jonson's oil and sweat did flow, Or what more easy nature did bestow On Shakespeare's gentler muse, in thee full grown Their graces both appear, yet so that none Can say here nature ends and art begins." 2

All through the following century this same view was expressed. Jonson's art, Shakespeare's nature, turn up almost as regularly as their names are mentioned in criticism. It was echoed and re-echoed by scores of persons who had the dimmest possible conception of what was meant by the words they were saying. How completely this method of characterizing the two men had become the merest commonplace we find indicated by Pope in his epistle ' To Augustus,' which came out a little less than a hundred years after the utterance of Denham that has just been given.

" In all debates where critics bear a part, Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art, Of Shakespeare's nature,"

is the somewhat contemptuous comment he makes upon the now well-worn and conventional comparison. It is evident in truth, from the remarks scattered up and down the literature of the century and more following the Restoration, that a distinction of some sort was felt to exist between nature and art in dramatic composition. In the abstract such a distinction might seem without fomidation. To some, indeed, it may even then have appeared absurd. Why should art be unnatural ? That art should not represent some things in nature is a position perfectly defensible. But why should art be opposed to nature ? Why should nature not be in accordance with the highest art? In the concrete, however, the question was invariably answered in one way, and it was answered in a way that for generations profoundly influenced the estimate taken of Shakespeare as a dramatist.

Let us, however, try first to ascertain what it was that the original users of this distinction intended to express. What in particular did Jonson mean when he declared that Shakespeare lacked art? He surely could not have intended to say that the great dramatist of all time was ignorant of the very things which were essential to success in his profession. In fact, in the glowing tribute which he subsequently paid to the memory of his friend he took care to insist upon his proficiency in the very particular which in the conversation with Drummond he is reported as having denied. He asserted that after Shakespeare the ancients — tart Aristophanes, neat Terence, and witty Plautus — please no longer, but lie antiquated and deserted, as if they were not of nature's family. Then he goes on to say, —

" Yet must 1 not give nature all. Thy art, My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. For though the poet's matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion. . . .

For a good poet 's made as well as born.

And such wert thou. Look how the father's face

Lives in his issue, even so the race

Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines

In his well-turned and true-filed lines,

In each of which he seems to shake a lance,

As brandished at the eyes of ignorance."

Jonson was not a man to use words at random or to indulge in meaningless compliments. Could any intention of the latter kind be conceived to have influenced his action, the responsibility of his position as the then acknowledged head of English men of letters would have prevented their utterance. Clearly, therefore, the art spoken of in these lines is something quite distinct from the art which he told Drummond that Shakespeare lacked. What this latter was becomes apparent when we study with care one phase of the literary history of the Elizabethan period wliich has rarely received the full attention it deserves.

There seems to be a common belief that criticism is an art of comparatively late growth. It is frequently implied, and occasionally asserted, that the farther we go back in literature, the less we have of discussion of its principles, and that if we go back far enough we shall have no discussion of them at all. Genius, it is said, contents itself then with producing ; it never stops to consider whether what it produces is in conformity with authorized canons of taste, even if it be aware that such canons exist. This happy condition of ignorance or indifference, assumed to be characteristic of early times, belongs to the realm of fiction rather than of fact. A critical age may not be creative ; but a creative age is always critical. It has to be so by the very law of its being. The new experiments it is constantly making, the new forms it is introducing, the new methods of expression to which it is resorting, — all these compel it to give a reason for their employment to itself, if not to others. Whatever it does will be made the subject of comment, and consequently of attack and defence. Controversy, therefore, is always going on in a creative age. That the record of it does not come down to us at all, or at best comes down scantily, is due to other causes than lack of discussion at the time, or lack of interest in the subjects discussed. In early days there are no official organs existing for the purpose of recording the conflicting views and beliefs which divide men into hostile camps.

Far the greatest part of the most thoughtful criticism then expressed dies away with the breath that utters it. From chance allusion only, or at best from occasional pamphlets, do we get any conception of the arguments that once tasked the intellects of the disputants and sometimes aroused their passions. Naturally, therefore, but little critical discussion has reached us from the Elizabethan age. Still, enough of it has survived to make it clear that it was an age of keen literary controversy. During the whole of that period a furious war raged between the partisans of what we should now call respectively the classical and the romantic school. Though no such names were then known, the realities flourished as potently as they have at any time since. In certain ways the battle was then fought and won on ground which has never since been contested. It is easy to understand how the conflict should have arisen. The Latin and Greek literatures were the only ones with which the educated men of that day were familiar as a class. The steadily increasing attention paid to the two, which went on during the whole of the sixteenth century, developed at last a body of scholars who sought to make everything conform to the rules and practices which classical antiquity had established, whether suited or not to modern conditions. It met with determined, though to a certain extent blind, resistance from that new life which was running almost riot in the veins of the men who were creating the literature which in some respects we look upon as the proudest in the records of our speech. One phase of this long-continued struggle was the resolute attempt made to discard " rude and beggarly ryming," as it was called, and for it substitute in English poetry the metrical forms of the ancients. Hence in the literature of that period we come across dolorous Sapphics, lame iambic trimeters, and lumbering hexameters ,• and in tliis slough of pedantry we find men of genius like Sidney and Spenser occasionally wallowing. Little success attended the attack on ryme, though it is possible that it may have had indirectly some influence in strengthening the tendency to make blank verse the favorite measure for dramatic composition.

A far more determined effort, however, was put forth to compel the drama of that period to conform to the rules which were supposed to govern the ancient stage. Conditions then existed which it might seem would contribute materially to the adoption of these. A movement of a similar kind had been begun some time before in Italy. There it had achieved a triumph. The example thus held out was full of encouragement to those who sought to rescue the English stage from what they chose to call barbarism. During the latter part of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, Italian literature exercised over English an influence greater than it has ever exerted since. Furthermore, the dramatic ideal set up by it came reinforced with the plea that it embodied the conceptions and followed the practice of the ancients. In this movement for the so-called reformation of the English stage we find the key to explain Jonson's words. In his statement that Shakespeare lacked art is concentrated the issue which has been in controversy between the adherents of the classical and the romantic school since the birth of the modern drama. In this issue are involved several distinct questions. The one which has played far the most important part in the conflict has naturally the first claim to consideration. This is the doctrine of the unities.

It is outside the design of this work to enter into any account of this doctrine save so far as it concerns the English stage. For three centuries controversy in regard to it has raged with only occasional cessation. About it volumes have been written and further volumes are yet to be written. Even among its supporters there has been wide disagreement as to the exact scope of its rules. Here only so much needs to be said about it as bears directly upon the way in which, and the extent to which, it came to affect the English theatre, and as a result of that, the influence it exerted upon the estimate taken of Shakespeare as a dramatic artist. Scholars will forgive what will strike them as the obtrusion of the commonest of commonplaces when they find here a definition of the doctrine. In the varying interpretations which have at times been put upon the rules constituting it, the better course seems to be to furnish at the outset a statement of the precise meaning given to them in the following pages. They will be set forth as briefly as possible. The doctrine of the unities, it may then be said, consists in the three following points : —

First, the events occurring in the play acted upon the stage must be represented as having taken place within a period of twenty-four hours or less; that is to say, they must not extend over the space of one natural day. This is the unity of time. The reason given for the rule is that the duration of the action which goes on in the play should come as near as possible to the duration of the period in which it is represented. As the latter rarely covers more than three hours, the drama in which the events depicted as occurring come nearest to this space can be deemed the nearest imitation of nature. The time, however, has been occasionally lengthened beyond the limits here specified. Aristotle reported that such was occasionally the practice of the ancients. Corneille, who felt keenly how hard upon the modern author was the pressure of this rule, was disposed to prolong the time to tliirty hours. This extension was assented to reluctantly, whenever assented to at all, by the stricter advocates of the doctrine. It was a concession to human infirmity which they might be forced to put up with ; but they made no pretence to look upon it with approval. Furthermore, between those who were willing to prolong the duration of the action somewhat beyond the twenty-four hours, and those who sought to restrict it as nearly as possible to the exact duration of the representation, sprang up a third party, which insisted that the time should be confined to the artificial instead of the natural day. The period between sunrise and sunset was all that in their eyes could be properly allotted. Differences such as these, it will be seen, are mainly over details ; they do not concern the justice of the rule itself. They are controversies simply between what is allowable and what is praiseworthy.

The second point is that the series of events that are represented in the play must be limited to one place. This does not ordinarily mean — at least in the English theatre — one room or one house. But just as the ideal attempted to be reached was to have the time of the action no longer than the time of representation, so also at certain periods, and especially in certain countries, a strenuous effort was put forth that nothing should take place in the performance of the play which would necessitate any change of scene whatever. The nearer an approach was made to this condition of things, the more it was felt that Art was justified of her children. Still, on the English stage this was an ideal rarely insisted upon, and less often attained. Much oftener was the requirement carried out that there should be no change of scene in any one act. But these are limitations which meet with favor or disfavor according to the opinions or prejudices of individuals. In general the rule means that the places in which the scenes are laid shall not be so remote from each other that the characters cannot be supposed to pass from one to the other in the limited time allowed for the action of the play. Consequently various localities in the same town may be used for separate scenes in accordance with this rule. On the other hand, it is impossible that cities in different countries — such for instance as Rome in Italy and Alexandria in Egypt — can be looked upon as being in conformity with its requirements. This is the unity of place.

The third point is the unity of action. About the precise signification to be given to this rule, about the nature and extent of its requirement, there has been even wider divergence of opinion than about the scope of either of the others. Certainly there have been wider divergences in its application. It is sufficient to say that as used in this work it means that there should be but one plot. Furthermore, the development of it must be orderly. Any matter that would interfere with this ought not to be brought into the play. This limitation does not necessarily involve the abolition of subordinate plots, though the rejection of any such has sometimes been proclaimed as essential. It requires no more, however, than the observance of the rule that if they are introduced they are to be made subservient to the main plot, and to help carry on its action and bring about its denouement. Were this not the case, we should be having, in reality, two plays instead of one.

These three requirements — of time, of place, of action — constitute, then, the doctrine of the unities. Upon them in the eyes of the classicists hang all the law and the prophets that have to do with the drama. Upon their exact observance depends the salvation of every man, not necessarily as a poet, but as a dramatic artist. The three imities, it has been said; but only two of them need much to be considered. Nobody seriously questions the propriety of the rule requiring unity of action. No adherent of the romantic drama ever denied its binding force, — at least as he understood it, and not as some one else defined it. Unlike the other two, it carries on its face the necessity of its being. As a consequence, in the controversies which have gone on in regard to the unities, this particular one, though first in importance, has been the one least considered. In fact, it has usually been dropped out of the discussion entirely. It is the unities of time and of place to which alone attention has been directed. It is with them only that critical literature deals to any extent. It is they that are almost invariably specified when any attempt is made to test any particular play as to the- degree of its conformity to the general doctrine. So regularly is this the case that when violation of the unities is spoken of in the following pages, those of time and place will ordinarily be the only ones intended, unless special attention is called to that of action.

It is hardly necessary to say that Shakespeare rarely conforms to these two. In the so-called Histories they are absolutely disregarded. In them the period of time extends over many years, and so little attention is paid to the unity of place that successive scenes in the same act are sometimes supposed to occur in cities and countries scores and even hundreds of miles apart. These Histories indeed have generally been credited with being a law unto themselves. This was a feeling which showed itself at the very beginning. As early as 1591 Florio represented the views of the severer school of critics in saying that the plays the English stage possessed were neither right comedies nor right tragedies. He described them specifically as "representations of histories without any decorum." ^ The line of

1 Quoted by Malone in his ' Historical Account of the English Stage,' Shakespeare Works, variorum of 1821, vol. iii. p. 41.

defence which has often been taken for these productions would strictly be inapplicable to the tragedies. Yet from some of these they differ in degree rather than in kind. The greatest of the latter, such as ' Hamlet,' ' Lear,' ' Macbeth,' and ' Othello,' disregard utterly the unities of time and place. In the comedies, wliile there is generally much closer conformity to these canons, there is wide variation from any strict compliance with their requirements. The time of the action is usually two or more days in those where the rules appear to have been most rigidly observed. In some instances it extends to weeks and months. In the case of ' The Winter's Tale,' an interval of sixteen years elapses between the third and fourth acts. In so doing, Shakespeare was only acting as did most of his contemporaries, though even among his fellow playwrights there were not wanting men to denounce the course usually followed as opposed to the example of the ancients, and therefore obviously reprehensible.

It is equally evident that it is Shakespeare's practice which is the one followed upon the modern stage. Stress is no longer laid upon the unities of time and place. In regard to these the doctrine is now so thoroughly discredited in theory and discarded in practice that there are playwrights of our day who, so far from accepting it, do not even know of its ever having had an existence. Accordingly it might seem an unnecessary slaying of the slain to consider it here at any length. Such an impression, however, would be a mistake. The weight which the belief in it has had upon the estimate formed of Shakespeare has been so unmeasured that a careful examination of its influence in English critical literature must always be a matter of first importance in the eyes of the special student of his career and reputation. Nor indeed can absolute confidence be felt that, at some period in the revolution of the ever-changing canons of taste and criticism, the doctrine of the unities may not, for a while at least, come again into fashion. It is improbable, to be sure ; it is by no means impossible. The field of battle is at present held by the romanticists ; but it cannot be forgotten that for nearly a century and a half even of the English drama it was occupied by the classicists. In France its sway over the belief and conduct of men was, from the middle of the seventeenth century, almost unmeasured. It was not, indeed, until 1827 that Victor Hugo, in the preface to his drama of Cromwell, sounded the trumpet blast that shook for the first time the literary traditions of his native land; for though at intervals inveighed against before, they had never lost perceptibly their hold. Yet even in spite of the triumph which he and his associates subsequently achieved, it is clear that the doctrine of the unities, though no longer held imperative, is still dear at heart to educated Frenchmen; that many of them look back regretfully to the days when submission to its behests was deemed absolutely essential to the highest art, and feel that the liberty now enjoyed is only another name for license.

Of any such sentiment there is now little exhibition among the members of our own race. Some modern English writers, it is true, have occasionally constructed dramas in which the unities have been strictly preserved.

They may have produced them for the sake of experiment, or possibly in accordance with their own convictions. Browning is a case in point. Three of his plays — ' The Return of the Druses,' ' Colombe's Birthday,' and 'Luria' — are all limited to one day and one place. Even ' Prince Victor and Prince Charles ' and ' A Soul's Tragedy ' — the last far the best of all — are divided into two parts ; and in both each part strictly observes the unities of time and place. But plays like these — never acted or unsuccessful if acted — are not representative of the dominant influences which now affect the English stage. In general, these requirements, once deemed essential, are at present systematically ignored or contemptuously disallowed, even when they are not ignorantly disregarded. They are looked upon as trammelling the freedom of legitimate movement. If we are right now in this view, it is needless to add that Shakespeare was right long before. Was he therefore really wanting in art, as Jonson asserted, and as men continued to repeat for nearly two hundred years after Jonson was dead? In order to answer this question satisfactorily, as well as to understand the nature of the estimate in which the great dramatist has been held, it will be necessary to give a brief outline of the history of the doctrine of the unities, so far as it relates to the English stage. Then we shall be in a position to comprehend whether Shakespeare's violation of these rules was due to carelessness or design ; whether his so-called lack of art sprang from ignorance or indifference on his part, or from an entirely different view of what constitutes art.

Aristotle, it is to be said in the first place, is the one usually credited with formulating the doctrine of the unities, basing it upon the practice of the Greek tragedians. His name is almost invariably mentioned in connection with it. Accordingly, it is apt to strike readers with surprise when they find that in the treatise on ' Poetics ' — the only work in which Aristotle touches upon the matter at all — it is the unity of action alone upon which he lays stress. About the unity of time there is but one sentence, and the observation in regard to it occurs almost incidentally. He is led to refer to it by his discussion of the distinction that exists between dramatic and epic poetry. " Tragedy," he says, " is especially bounded by one period of the sun [that is, one entire natural day], or admits but a small variation from that period ; but the epopee is not defined within a certain time, and in this it differs from tragedy, though at first tragedy, no less than epic poetry, was not confined to any portion of time."

This is the somewhat slender basis upon which the doctrine of the unities has been built up, so far as the one great authority credited with formulating it had any thing whatever to do with its creation. It is worthy of notice that Aristotle does not hold the action down rigidly to four and twenty hours. He allows a small variation from it, basing this privilege probably upon the occasional modification of the rule that was practised upon the Greek stage. Nor does he even mention the unity of place; though it is just to admit that this is an almost inevitable sequence from the unity of time. But throughout there is nothing to indicate that he lays much stress upon the latter as a principle of vital importance. His language is not at all that of a lawgiver; it is merely that of an observer. He is simply registering the practice prevalent upon the Greek stage. He describes it in precisely the same way as he might have put on record a point of linguistic usage, about the abstract right or wrong of which he entertained no opinion, or at least expressed none.

It seems as if it must have been students of Aristotle, rather than Aristotle himself, who are to be credited with the responsibility for the great weight which was placed upon the doctrine of the unities and for the belief in its obligatory observance. It was in Italy that it had its birth, though in France it found finally its cherished home. Its history outside of the English stage does not specially concern us here. It is sufficient to say that the credit or discredit of having been the first modern writer to construct a drama in which the unities of time and place are regularly observed, is generally given to Giovanni Giorgio Trissino, a scholar and poet of the court of Leo X. He was born at Vicenza in 1478 and died at Rome in 1550. The play referred to is the tragedy of Sofonisha. It is commonly said to have been written in 1515, and was printed about ten years after. The example of Trissino speedily found imitators in his own country. It was not long, however, before the influence of the principles he advocated and of the methods he adopted began to be felt in foreign lands. Their progress was assisted by the increasing veneration which was paid to the works of classical antiquity, especially of Greek 2 17 literature. In time these rules came to play the same vigorous and damnatory part in the drama which the Athanasian creed has done in theology. It is hard indeed for us now to realize the importance that was once attached to the doctrine of the unities, how fervently or rather ferociously it was insisted upon, and how much opprobrium fell upon those who through carelessness about it, or ignorance of it, or disbelief in it, failed to conform to its requirements.

In England the doctrine was early advocated. Long before the coming of Shakespeare it had been preached as the only true dramatic gospel. For its disregard of it the English stage was taunted with barbarism. In the dedication of his comedy of ' Promos and Cassandra,' printed in 1578, George Whetstone expressed himself with earnestness on this very topic. He attacked the drama of Italy, France, Spain, and Germany, as deviating from the practice of the ancients in various particulars. That of his own country he held up to special censure for its disregard of the unities of time and place. " The Englishman," he said, " in this quality is most vain, indiscreet, and out of order. He first grounds his work on impossibilities : then in three hours runs he through the world; marries, gets children, makes children men, men to conquer kingdoms, murder monsters, and bringeth gods from heaven and fetcheth devils from hell."