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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
SHAKESPEARE
A LECTURE
ROBERT G.
INGERSOLL
$
Shakespeare.—An intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores
of thought.
‘ i
London :
R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
��SHAKESPEARE.
I.
William Shakespeare was the greatest genius of our
world. He left to us the richest legacy of all the dead__
the treasures of the rarest soul that ever lived and loved
and wrought of words the statues, pictures, robes, and gems
of thought. He was the greatest man that ever touched
this grain of sand and tear we call the world.
It is hard to overstate the debt we owe to the men and
women of genius. Take from our world what they have
given, and all the niches would be empty, all the walls naked
—meaning and connection would fall from words of poetry
and fiction, music would go back to common air, and all
the forms of subtle and enchanting Art would lose pro
portion, and become the unmeaning waste and shattered
spoil of thoughtless Chance.
Shakespeare is too great a theme. I feel as though
endeavoring to grasp a globe so large that the hand obtains
no hold. He who would worthily speak of the great
dramatist should be inspired by “a muse of fire that should
ascend the brightest heaven of invention
he should have
“ a kingdom for a stage, and monarchs to behold the
swelling scene.”
More than three centuries ago the most intellectual of
the human race was born. He was not of supernatural
origin. At his birth there^ were no celestial pyrotechnics.
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His father and mother were both English, and both had the
cheerful habit of living in this world. The cradle in which
he was rocked was canopied by neither myth nor miracle,
and in his veins there was no drop of royal blood.
This babe became the wonder of mankind. Neither of
his parents could read or write. He grew up in a small
and ignorant village on the banks of the Avon, in the midst
of the common people of three hundred years ago. There
was nothing in the peaceful, quiet landscape on which he
looked, nothing in the low hills, the cultivated and un*
dulating fields, and nothing in the murmuring stream, to
excite the imagination—nothing, so far as we can see, cal
culated to sow the seeds of the subtlest and sublimest
thought.
So there is nothing connected with his education, or his
lack of education, that in any way accounts for what he did.
It is supposed that he attended school in his native town ;
but of this we are not certain. Many have tried to show
that he was, after all, of gentle blood; but the fact seems
to be the other way. Some of his biographers have sought
to do him honor by showing that he was patronized by
Queen Elizabeth ; but of this there is not the slightest
proof.
As a matter of fact, there never sat on any throne a king,
queen, or emperor who could have honored William Shake
speare.
Ignorant people are apt to over-rate the value of what is
called education. The sons of the poor, having suffered
the privations of poverty, think of wealth as the mother of
joy. On the other hand, the children of the rich, finding
that gold does not produce happiness, are apt to under-rate
the value of wealth. So the children of the educated often
care but little for books, and hold all culture in contempt.
The children of great authors do not, as a rule, become
writers.
Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Ex-
�SHAKESPEARE.
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tremes beget limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness
creates obstructions for itself.
Possibly many generations of culture breed a desire for
the rude joys of savagery, and possibly generations of igno
rance breed such a longing for knowledge that of this desire,
of this hunger of the brain, Genius is born. It may be that
the mind, by lying fallow, by remaining idle for generations,
gathers strength.
Shakespeare's father seems to have been an ordinary man
of his time and class. About the only thing we know of
him is that he was officially reported for not coming monthly
to church. This is good as far as it goes. We can hardly
blame him, because at that time Richard Bifield was the
minister at Stratford, and an extreme Puritan, one who read
the Psalter by Sternhold and Hopkins.
The church was at one time Catholic, but in John Shake
speare’s day it was Puritan, and in 15645 the year of
Shakespeare’s birth, they had the images defaced. It is
greatly to the honor of John Shakespeare that he refused to
listen to the “ tidings of great joy ” as delivered by the
Puritan Bifield.
Nothing is known of his mother except her beautiful
name—Mary Arden. In those days but little attention was
given to the biographies of women. They were born,
married, had children, and died. No matter how celebrated
their sons became, the mothers were forgotten. In old
times, when a man achieved distinction, great pains were
taken to find out about the father and grandfather—the
idea being that genius is inherited from the father’s side.
The truth is, that all great men have had great mothers.
Great women have had, as a rule, great fathers.
The mother of Shakespeare was, without doubt, one of
the greatest of women. She dowered her son with passion
and imagination and the higher qualities of the soul, beyond
all other men. It has been said that a man of genius
should select his ancestors with great care; and yet there
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does not seem to be as much in heredity as most people think.
The children of the great are' often small. Pigmies are
born in palaces, while over the children of genius is the
roof of straw. Most of the great are like mountains, with
the valley of ancestors on one side and the depression of
posterity on the other.
In his day Shakespeare was of no particular importance.
It may be that his mother had some marvellous and pro
phetic dreams, but Stratford was unconscious of the immortal
child. He was never engaged in a reputable business.
Socially he occupied a position below servants. The law
described him as “ a sturdy vagabond.” He was neither a
noble, a soldier, nor a priest. Among the half-civilized
people of England, he who amused and instructed them
was regarded as a menial. Kings had their clowns, the
people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare was
scheduled as a servant. It is thus that successful stupidity
has always treated genius. Mozart was patronized by an
archbishop—lived in the palace—but was compelled to eat
with the scullions.
The composer of divine melodies was not fit to sit by the
side of the theologian, who long ago would have been for
gotten but for the fame of the composer.
We know but little of the personal peculiarities, of the
daily life, or of what may be called the outward Shakespeare ;
and it may be fortunate that so little is known. He might
have been belittled by friendly fools. What silly stories,
what idiotic personal reminiscences, would have been
remembered by those who scarcely saw him 1 We have his
best—his sublimest—and we have probably lost only the
trivial and the worthless. All that is known can be written
on a page.
We are tolerably certain of the date of his birth, of his
marriage, and of his death. We think he went to London
in 1586, when he was twenty-two years old. We think that
three years afterwards he was part owner of Blackfriars’'
�SHAKESPEARE.
7,
Theatre. We have a few signatures, some of which are
supposed to be genuine. We know that he bought some
land; that he had two or three law-suits. We know the
names of his children. We also know that this incomparable
man—soapart from, and so familiar with, all the world—
lived during his literary life in London ; that he was an
actor, dramatist, and manager ; that he returned to Stratford,
the place of his birth; that he gave his writings to negli
gence, deserted the children of his brain ; that he died on
the anniversary of his birth at the age of fifty-two, and that
he was buried in the church where the images had been
defaced, and that on his tomb was chiselled a rude, absurd,
and ignorant epitaph.
No letter of his to any human being has been found, and
no line written by him can be shown.
And -here let me give my explanation of the epitaph.
Shakespeare was an actor—a disreputable business ; but he
made money—always reputable. He came back from
London a rich man. He bought land, and built houses.
Some of the supposed great probably treated him with
deference. When he died he was buried in the church.
Then came a reaction. The pious thought the church had
been profaned. They did not feel that the ashes of an actor
were fit to lie in holy ground. The people began to say the
body ought to be removed. Then it was, as I believe, that
Dr. John Hall, Shakespeare’s son-in-law, had this epitaph cut
on the tomb:
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbeare
To digg the dust enclosed heare :
Blese be ye man yt spares these stones,
And curst be he yt moves my bones.
Certainly Shakespeare could have had no fear that his
tomb would be violated. How could it have entered his
mind to have put a warning, a threat, and a blessing upon
his grave ? But the ignorant people of that day were no
doubt convinced that the epitaph was the voice of the dead,
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and, so feeling, they feared to invade the tomb. In this way
the dust was left in peace.
This epitaph gave me great trouble for years. It puzzled
me to explain why he, who erected the intellectual pyramids
—great ranges of mountains—should put such a pebble at
his tomb. But when I stood beside the grave .and read the
ignorant words, the explanation I have given flashed
upon me.
II.
It has been said that Shakespeare was hardly mentioned
by his contemporaries, and that he was substantially un
known. This is a mistake. In 1600 a book was published
called England's Parnassus, and it contained ninety extracts
from Shakespeare. In the same year was published The
Garden of the Muses, containing several pieces from Shake
speare, Chapman, Marston, and Ben Jonson. England's
Helicon was printed in the same year, and contained poems
from Spenser, Greene, Harvey, and Shakespeare.
In 1600 a play was acted at Cambridge, in which Shake
speare was alluded to as follows : “ Why, here’s our fellow
Shakespeare, who puts them all down.” John Weaver
published a book of poems in 1595 in which there was a
sonnet to Shakespeare. In 1598 Richard Bamfield wrote
a poem to Shakespeare. Francis Meres, “ clergyman,
master of arts in both universities, compiler of school books,”
was the author of The Wits Treasury. In this he compares
the ancient and modern tragic poets, and mentions
Marlowe, Peel, Kyd, and Shakespeare. So he compares
the writers of comedies, and mentions Lilly, Lodge,
Greene, and Shakespeare. He speaks of elegaic poets,
�SHAKESPEARE.
9
and names Surrey, Wyatt, Sidney, Raleigh, and Shakespeare.
He compares the lyric poets, and names Spenser, Drayton,
Shakespeare, and others. This same writer, speaking of
Horace, says that England has Sidney, Shakespeare, and
others, and that “ as the soul of Euphorbus was thought to
live in Pythagoras, so the sweet-wittie soul of Ovid lives in
the mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare.” He also
says : “If the Muses could speak English, they would speak
in Shakespeare’s phrase.” This was in 1598. In 1607 John
Davies alludes in a poem to Shakespeare.
Of course we are all familiar with what rare Ben Jonson
wrote. Henry Chettle took Shakespeare to task because he
wrote nothing on the death of Queen Elizabeth.
It may be wonderful that he was not better known. But
is it not wonderful that he gained the reputation that he did
in so short a time, and that, twelve years after he began to
write, he stood at least with the first ?
III.
But there is a wonderful fact connected with the writings
of Shakespeare. In the plays there is no direct mention of
any of his contemporaries. We do not know of any poet,
author, soldier, sailor, statesman, priest, nobleman, king, or
queen that Shakespeare directly mentioned.
Is it not marvellous that he, living in an age of great deeds,
of adventures in far-off lands and unknown seas, in a time of
religious wars, in the days of the Armada, the massacre of
St. Bartholomew, the Edict of Nantes, the assassination of
Henry III., the victory of Lepanto, the execution of Marie
Stuart, did not mention the name of any man or woman
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SHAKESPEARE.
of his time? Some have insisted that the paragraph ending
with the line,
The imperial votress passed on in maiden meditation fancy free,
referred to Queen Elizabeth; but it is impossible for me to
believe that the daubed and wrinkled face, the small black
eyes, the cruel nose, the thin lips, the bad teeth, and the
red wig of Queen Elizabeth could by any possibility have
inspired these marvellous lines.
It is perfectly apparent from Shakespeare’s writings that
he knew but little of the nobility, little of kings and queens.
He gives to these supposed great people great thoughts, and
puts great words in their mouths and makes them speak—
not as they really did—but as Shakespeare thought such
people should. This demonstrates that he did not know
them personally.
Some have insisted that Shakespeare mentions Queen
Elizabeth in the last scene of “ Henry VIII.” The answer
to this is that Shakespeare did not write the last scene
in that play. The probability is that Fletcher was the
author.
Shakespeare lived during the great awakening of the world,
when Europe emerged from the darkness of the Middle
Ages, when the discovery of America had made England,
that blossom of the Gulf Stream, the centre of commerce,
and during a period when some of the greatest writers,
thinkers, soldiers, and discoverers were produced.
Cervantes was born in 1547, dying on the same day that
Shakespeare died. He was undoubtedly the greatest writer
that Spain has produced. Rubens was born in 1577,
Camoens, the Portuguese, the author of the Lusiad, died in
1597. Giordano Bruno—greatest of martyrs—was born in
1548, visited London in Shakespeare’s time, delivered
lectures at Oxford, and called that institution “ the widow
of learning.” Drake circled the globe in 1580. Galileo
was born in 1564—the same year with Shakespeare. Michael
Angelo died in 1563. Kepler—he of the Three Laws—
�SHAKESPEARE.
II
born in 1571. Calderon, the Spanish dramatist, born in
1601. Corneille, the French poet, in 1606. Rembrandt,
greatest of painters, 1607. Shakespeare was born in 1564.
In that year John Calvin died. What a glorious exchange !
Seventy-two years after the discovery of America Shake
speare was born, and England was filled with the voyages
and discoveries written by Hakluyt, and the wonders that
had been seen by Raleigh, by Drake, by Frobisher, and
Hawkins. London had become the centre of the world,
and representatives from all known countries were in the
new metropolis. The world had been doubled. The
imagination had been touched and kindled by discovery.
In the far horizon were unknown lands, strange shores
beyond untraversed seas. Towards every part of the world
were turned the prows of adventure. All these things fanned
the imagination into flame, and this had its effect upon the
literary and dramatic world. And yet Shakespeare—the
master spirit of mankind—in the midst of these discoveries,
of these adventures, mentioned no navigator, no general, no
discoverer, no philosopher.
Galileo was reading the open volume of the sky, but
Shakespeare did not mention him. This, to me, is the most
marvellous thing connected with this most marvellous man.
At that time England was prosperous—was then laying
the foundation of her future greatness and power.
When men are prosperous they are in love with life.
Nature grows beautiful, the arts begin to flourish, there is
work for painter and sculptor, the poet is born, the stage is
erected, and this life with which men are in love is repre
sented in a thousand forms.
Nature, or Fate, or Chance prepared a stage for Shake
speare, and Shakespeare prepared a stage for Nature.
Famine and faith go together. In disaster and want the
gaze of man is fixed upon another world. He that eats a
crust has a creed. Hunger falls upon its knees, and heaven,
looked for through tears, is the mirage of misery. But
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prosperity brings joy and wealth and leisure, and the beautiful
is born.
One of the effects of the world’s awakening was Shake
speare. We account for this man as we do for the highest
mountain, the greatest river, the most perfect gem. We can
only say : He was.
It hath been taught us from the primal state
That he which is was wished until he were.
IV.
In Shakespeare’s time the actor was a vagabond, the
dramatist a disreputable person—and yet the greatest
dramas were then written. In spite of law and social
ostracism, Shakespeare reared the many-colored dome that
fills and glorifies the intellectual heavens.
Now the whole civilized world believes in the theatre,
asks for some great dramatist, is hungry for a play worthy
of the century, is anxious to give gold and fame to anyone
who can worthily put our age upon the stage ; and yet no
great play has been written since Shakespeare died.
Shakespeare pursued the highway of the right. He did
not seek to put his characters in a position where it was
right to do wrong. He was sound and healthy to the centre.
It never occurred to him to write a play in which a wife’s
lover should be jealous of her husband.
There was in his blood the courage of his thought. He
was true to himself, and enjoyed the perfect freedom of the
highest art. He did not write according to rules, but
smaller men make rules from what he wrote.
How fortunate that Shakespeare was not educated at
�SHAKESPEARE.
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Oxford—that the winged god within him never knelt to the
professor, flow fortunate that this giant was not captured,
tied, and tethered by the literary Liliputians of his time.
He was an idealist. He did not, like most writers of
our time, take refuge in the real, hiding a lack of genius
behind a pretended love of truth. All realities are not
poetic, or dramatic, or even worth knowing. The real
sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to
a statue, or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades
and impoverishes. In no event can a realist be more than
an imitator and copyist. According to the realist’s philo
sophy, the wax that receives and retains an image is an artist.
Shakespeare did not rely on the stage carpenter or the
scenic painter. He put his scenery in bis lines. There you
will find mountains and rivers and seas, valleys and cliffs,
violets and clouds, and over all “ the firmament fretted with
gold and fire.” He cared little for plot, little for surprise.
He did not rely on stage effects or red fire. The plays
grow before your eyes, and they come as the morning
comes. Plot surprises but once. There must be something
in a play beside surprise. Plot in an author is a kind of
strategy—that is to say, a sort of cunning; and cunning does
not belong to the highest natures.
There is in Shakespeare such a wealth of thought that
the plot becomes almost immaterial ; and such is this wealth
that you can hardly know the play—there is too much.
After you have heard it again and again, it seems as pathless
as an untrodden forest.
He belonged to all lands. “Timon of Athens” is as
Greek as any tragedy of Eschylus. “ Julius Caesar and
“Coriolanus” are perfect Roman, and as you read the
mighty ruins rise and the Eternal City once again becomes
the mistress of the world. No play is more Egyptian than
“Antony and Cleopatra’’—the Nile runs through it, the
shadows of the pyramids fall upon it, and from its scenes
the Sphinx gazes forever on the outstretched sands.
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SHAKESPEARE.
In “ Lear ” is the true pagan spirit. “ Romeo and Juliet ”
is Italian everything is sudden, love bursts into immediate
flower, and in every scene is the climate of the land of
poetry and passion.
The reason of this is that Shakespeare dealt with elemental
things, with universal man. He knew that locality colors
without changing, and that in all surroundings the human
heart is substantially the same.
Not all the poetry written before his time would make
his sum not all that has been written since, added to all
that was written before, would equal his.
There was nothing within the range of human thought,
within the horizon of intellectual effort, that he did not
touch. He knew the brain and heart of man—the theories,
customs, superstitions, hopes, fears, hatreds, vices, and virtues
of the human race.
He knew the thrills and ecstasies of love, the savage joys
of hatred and revenge. He heard the hiss of envy’s snakes,
and watched the eagles of ambition soar. There was no
hope that did not put its star above his head, no fear he
had not felt, no joy that had not shed its sunshine on his
face. He experienced the emotions of mankind. He was
the intellectual spendthrift of the world. He gave with the
generosity, the extravagance, of madness.
Read one play, and you are impressed with the idea that
the wealth of the brain of a god has been exhausted—that
there are no more comparisons, no more passions to be
expressed, no more definitions, no more philosophy, beauty,
or sublimity to be put in words—and yet the next play opens
as fresh as the dewy gates of another day.
The outstretched wings of his imagination filled the sky.
He was the intellectual crown o’ the earth.
�SHAKESPEARE.
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V.
The plays of Shakespeare show so much knowledge, thought,
and learning that many people—those who imagine that
universities furnish capacity—contend that Bacon must
have been the author.
We know Bacon. We know that he was a scheming
politician, a courtier, a time-server of church and king, and
a corrupt judge. We know that he never admitted the
truth of the Copernican system, that he was doubtful whether
instruments were of any advantage in scientific investigation,
that he was ignorant of the higher branches of mathe
matics, and that, as a matter of fact, he added but little to
the knowledge of the world. When he was more than sixty
years of age he turned his attention to poetry, and dedicated
his verses to George Herbert.
If you will read these verses, you will say that the author
of “ Lear” and “ Hamlet ” did not write them.
Bacon dedicated his work on The Advancement of Learning,
Divine and Human, to James I., and in his dedication he
stated that there had not been, since the time of Christ, any
king or monarch so learned in all erudition, divine or
human. He placed James I. before Marcus Aurelius and
all other kings and emperors since Christ, and concluded
by saying that James I. had “the power and fortune of a
king, the illumination of a priest, the learning and univer
sality of a philosopher.” This was written of James I.,
described by Macaulay as a “ stammering, slobbering,
trembling coward, whose writings were deformed by the
grossest and vilest superstitions—-witches being the special
objects of his fear, his hatred, and his persecution.”
It seems to have been taken for granted that, if Shake
speare was not the author of the great dramas, Lord Bacon
must have been.
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It has been claimed that Bacon was the greatest philo
sopher of his time. And yet in reading his works we find
that there was in his mind a strange mingling of foolishness
and philosophy. He takes pains to tell us, and to write it
down for the benefit of posterity, that “ snow is colder than
water, because it hath more spirit in it, and that quick
silver is the coldest of all metals, because it is the fullest of
spirit.”
He stated that he hardly believed that you could contract
air by putting opium on top of the weather-glass, and gave
the following reason :
“ I conceive that opium and the like make spirits fly
rather by malignity than by cold.”
This great philosopher gave the following recipe for
staunching blood :
“ Thrust the part that bleedeth into the body of a capon,
new ripped and bleeding. This will staunch the blood.
The blood, as it seemeth, sucking and drawing up by
similitude of substance the blood it meeteth with, and so
itself going back.”
The philosopher also records this important fact:
“ Divers witches among heathen and Christians have fed
upon man’s flesh to aid, as it seemeth, their imagination
with high and foul vapors.”
Lord Bacon was not only a philosopher, but he was a
biologist, as appears from the following :
“ As for living creatures, it is certain that their vital spirits
are a substance compounded of an airy and flamy matter;
and although air and flame, being free, will not mingle, yet
bound in by a body that hath some fixing, will.”
Now and then the inventor of deduction reasons by
analogy. He says :
“As snow and ice holpen, and their cold, activated by
nitre or salt, will turn water into ice, so it may be it will turn
wood or stiff clay into stone.”
Bacon seems to have been a believer in the transmutation
�SHAKESPEARE.
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of metals, and solemnly gives a formula for changing silver
or copper into gold. He also believed in the transmutation
of plants, and had arrived at such a height in entomology
that he informed the world that “ insects have no blood.”
It is claimed that he was a great observer, and as evidence
of this he recorded the wonderful fact that “ tobacco cut
and dried by the fire loses weight ”; that “ bears in the
winter wax fat in sleep, though they eat nothing”; that
“ tortoises have no bones that “ there is a kind of stone,
if ground and put in water where cattle drink, the cows will
give more milk”; that “it is hard to cure a hurt in a
Frenchman’s head, but easy in his leg; that it is hard to
cure a hurt in an Englishman’s leg, but easy in his head ”;
that “ wounds made with brass weapons are easier to cure
than those made with iron ”; that “ lead will multiply and
increase, as in statues buried in the ground”; and that “the
rainbow touching anything causeth a sweet smell.”
Bacon seems also to have turned his attention to orni
thology, and says that “ eggs laid in the full of the moon
breed better birds,” and that “ you can make swallows
white by putting ointment on the eggs before they are
hatched.”
He also informs us “ that witches cannot hurt kings as
easily as they can common people ”; that “ perfumes dry
and strengthen the brain ”; that “ anyone in the moment of
triumph can be injured by another who casts an envious
eye, and the injury is greatest when the injury comes from
the oblique eye.”
Lord Bacon also turned his attention to medicine, and he
states that “ bracelets made of snakes are good for curing
cramps ”; that “ the skin of a wolf might cure the colic,
because a wolf has great digestion ”; that “ eating the
roasted brains of hens and hares strengthens the memory
that “ if a woman about to become a mother eats a good
many quinces and considerable coriander seed, the child
will be ingenious,” and that “ the moss which groweth on
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the skull of an unburied dead man is good for staunching
blood.”
He expresses doubt, however, “ as to whether you can
cure a wound by putting ointment on the weapon that
caused the wound, instead of on the wound itself.”
It is claimed by the advocates of the Baconian theory
that their hero stood at the top of science; and yet “ it is
absolutely certain that he was ignorant of the law of the
acceleration of falling bodies, although the law had been
made known and printed by Galileo thirty years before
Bacon wrote upon the subject. Neither did this great man
understand the principle of the lever. He was not
acquainted with the precession of the equinoxes, and, as a
matter of fact, was ill-read in those branches of learning in
which, in his time, the most rapid progress had been made.”
After Kepler discovered his third law, which was on the
15th of May, 1618, Bacon was more than ever opposed to
the Copernican system. This great man was far behind
his own time, not only in astronomy, but in mathematics.
In the preface to the Descriptio Globi Intellectuals it
is admitted either that Bacon had never heard of the correc
tion of the parallax, or was unable to understand it. He
complained on account of the want of some method for
shortening mathematical calculations; and yet “Napier’s
Logarithms ” had been printed nine years before the date
of his complaint.
He attempted to form a table of specific gravities by a
rude process of his own—a process that no one has ever
followed; and he did this in spite of the fact that a far
better method existed.
We have the right to compare what Bacon wrote with
what it is claimed Shakespeare produced. I call attention
to one thing—to Bacon’s opinion of human love. It is
this:
“The stage is more beholding to love than the life of
man. As to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies, and
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nowand then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief
—sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury. Among
all the great and worthy persons there is not one that hath
been transported to the. mad degree: of love, which shows,
that great spirits and great business do keep out this weak
passion.”
. The author of Romeo and Juliet never wrote that.
•. It seems certain that the author of the wondrous Plays
was one of the noblest of men.
Let us see what sense of honor Bacon had.
In writing commentaries on certain passages of Scripture,
Lord Bacon tells a courtier, who has committed some
offence, how to get back into the graces of his prince or
king. Among other things he tells him not to appear too
cheerful, but to assume a very grave and modest face; not
to bring the matter up himself; to be extremely industrious,
so that the prince will see that it is hard to getalong without
him; also to get his friends to tell the prince or king how
badly he, the courtier, feels; and then he says, all these
failing, “let him contrive to transfer the fault to others.”
It is true that we know but little of Shakespeare, and
consequently do not positively know that he did not have
the ability to write the Plays; but we do know Bacon, and
we know that he could not have written these Plays; con
sequently, they must have been written by a comparatively
unknown man—that is to say, by a man who was known by
no other writings. The fact that we do not know Shakespeare,
except through the Plays and Sonnets, makes it possible for
us to believe that he was the author.
Some people have imagined that the Plays were written
by several; but this only increases the wonder, and adds a
useless burden to credulity.
Bacon published in his time all the writings that he
claimed. Naturally, he would have claimed his best. Is
it possible that Bacon left the wondrous children of his
brain on the door-step of Shakespeare, and kept the
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deformed ones at home? Is it possible that he fathered
the failures and deserted the perfect ?
Of course, it is wonderful that so little has been found
touching Shakespeare; but is it not equally wonderful, if
Bacon was the author, that not a line has been found, in all
his papers, containing a suggestion, or a hint, that he was
the writer of these Plays? Is it not wonderful that no
fragment of any scene—no line—no word—has been found ?
Some have insisted that Bacon kept the authorship secret,
because it was disgraceful to write Plays. This argument
does not cover the Sonnets—and, besides, one who had
been stripped of the robes of office, for receiving bribes as
as a judge, could have borne the additional disgrace of
having written “Hamlet.” The fact that Bacon did not
claim to be the author demonstrates that he was not.
Shakespeare claimed to be the author, and no one in his
time or day denied the claim. This demonstrates that he
was.
Bacon published his works, and said to the world : This
is what I have done.
Suppose you found in a cemetery a monument erected to
John Smith, inventor of the Smith-churn, and suppose you
were told that Mr. Smith provided for the monument in his
will, and dictated the inscription—would it be possible to
convince you that Mr. Smith was also the inventor of the
locomotive and telegraph ?
, Bacon’s best can be compared with Shakespeare’s
common; but Shakespeare’s best rises above Bacon’s best,
like a domed temple above a beggar’s hut.
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VI.
Of course it is admitted that there were many dramatists
before and during the time of Shakespeare; but they were
only the foot hills of that mighty peak the top of which the
clouds and mists still hide. Chapman and Marlowe,
Heywood and Jonson, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher,
wrote some great lines, and in the monotony of declamation
now and then is found a strain of genuine music; but all
of them together constituted only a herald of Shakespeare.
In all these plays there is but a hint, a prophecy, of the
great drama destined to revolutionize the poetic thought of
the world.
Shakespeare was the greatest of poets. What Greece
and Rome produced was great until his time. “ Lions
make leopards tame.”
The great poet is a great artist. He is painter and
sculptor. The greatest pictures and statues have been
painted and chiseled with words. They outlast all others
All the galleries of the world are poor and cheap compared
with the statues and pictures in Shakespeare’s book.
Language is made of pictures represented by sounds.
The outer world is a dictionary of the mind, and the artist
called the soul uses this dictionary of things to express what
happens in the noiseless and invisible world of thought.
First a sound represents something in the outer world, and
afterwards something in the inner; and this sound at last is
represented by a mark, and this mark stands for a picture,
and every brain is a gallery, and the artists—that is to say,
the souls—exchange pictures and statues.
All art is of the same parentage. The poet uses words—
makes pictures and statues of sounds. The sculptor
expresses harmony, proportion, passion, in marble; the
composer, in music; the painter, in form and color. The
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dramatist expresses himself not only in words, not only
paints these pictures, but he expresses his thought in action.
Shakespeare was not only a poet, but a dramatist, and
expressed the ideal, the poetic, not only in words, but in
action. There are the wit, the humor, the pathos, the
tragedy of situation, of relation. The dramatist speaks and
acts through others—his personality is lost. The poet lives
in the world of thought and feeling, and to this the
dramatist adds the world of action. He creates characters
that seem to act in accordance with their own natures and
independently of him. He compresses lives into hours,
tells us the secrets of the heart, shows us the springs of
action—how desire bribes the judgment and corrupts the
will—how weak the reason is when passion pleads, and how
grand it is to stand for right against the world.
It is not enough to say fine things; great things,
dramatic things, must be done.
Let me give you an illustration of dramatic incident
accompanying the highest form of poetic expression :
Macbeth, having returned from the murder of Duncan,
says to his wife :
Methought I heard a voice cry : Sleep no more,
Macbeth does murder sleep ; the innocent sleep ;
Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great Nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.......
Still it cried : Sleep no more, to all the house,
Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more—Macbeth shall sleep no more.
She exclaims :
Who was it that thus cried ?—
Why, worthy Thane, you do unbend your noble strength
To think so brain-sickly of things ; get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
Why did you bring the daggers from the place ?
L Macbeth was so overcome with horror at his own deed
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that he not only mistook his thoughts for the words of
others, but was so carried away and beyond himself that he
brought with him the daggers—the evidence of his guilt—
the dagger that he should have left with the dead. This is
dramatic.
In the same play, the difference of feeling before and
after the commission of a crime is illustrated to perfection.
When Macbeth is on his way to assassinate the king, the
bell strikes, and he says, or whispers :
Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell.
Afterwards, when the deed has been committed, and a
knocking is heard at the gate, he cries :
Wake Duncan with thy knocking.
I would thou couldst.
Let me give one more instance of dramatic action.
Antony speaks above the body of Caesar he says:
When
You all do know this mantle: I remember
The first time ever Caesar put it on—
’Twas on a summer’s evening, in his tent,
That day he overcame the Nervii:
Look ! In this place ran Cassius’ dagger through :
See what a rent the envious Casca made !
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed,
And as he plucked his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Caesar followed it.
VII.
There are men, and many of them, who are always trying
to show that somebody else chiselled the statue or painted
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the picture, that the poem is attributed to the wrong man;
and that the battle was really won by a subordinate.
Of course, Shakespeare made use of the work of others—
and, we might almost say, of all others. Every writer must
use the work of others. The only question is, how the
accomplishments of other minds are used, whether as a
foundation to build higher, or whether stolen to the end
that the thief may make a reputation for himself, without
adding to the great structure of literature.
Thousands of people have stolen stones from the Coliseum
to make huts for themselves. So thousands of writers have
taken the thoughts of others with which to adorn themselves.
These are plagiarists. But the man who takes the thought
of another adds to it, gives it intensity and poetic form,
throb and life, is in the highest sense original.
Shakespeare found nearly all of his facts in the writings of
others, and was indebted to others for most of the stories of
his plays. The question is not who furnished the stone, or
who owned the quarry, but who chiseled the statue ?
We now know all' the books that Shakespeare could have
read, and consequently know many of the sources of his
information. We find in Pliny's Natural History, published
in 1601, the following: “The sea Pontis evermore floweth
and runneth out into the Propontis ; but the sea never
retireth back again with the Impontis.” This was the raw
material, and out of it Shakespeare made the following :
Like to the Pontic Sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont;
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
Shall ne’er turn back, ne’er ebb to humble love,
Till that a capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up.
Perhaps we can give an idea of the difference between
Shakespeare and other poets, by a passage from Lear.
When Cordelia places her hand upon her father’s head and
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speaks of the night and of the storm, an ordinary poet
might have said:
On such a night, a dog
Should have stood against my fire.
A very great poet might have gone a step further and
exclaimed :
On' such a night, mine enemy s dog
Should have stood against my fire.
But Shakespeare said :—
Mine enemy’s dog, though he had bit me,
Should have stood, that night, against my fire.
Of all the poets, of all the writers, Shakespeare is the
most original. He is as original as Nature.
It may truthfully be said that “ Nature wants stuff to vie
strange forms with fancy, to make another.”
VIII.
There is in the greatest poetry a kind of extravagance that
touches the infinite, and in this Shakespeare exceeds all
others.
You will remember the description given of the voyage
of Paris in search of Helen :
The seas and winds, old wranglers, made a truce,
And did him service ; he touched the ports desired,
And for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive,
He brought a Grecian queen whose youth and freshness
Wrinkles Apollo, and makes stale the morning.
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So, in Pericles, when the father finds his daughter, he
cries out:
O Helicanus 1 strike me, honored sir;
Give me a gash, put me to present pain,
Lest this great sea of joys, rushing upon me,
O’erbear the shores of my mortality.
^The greatest compliment that man has ever paid to the
woman he adores is in this line :
Eyes that do mislead the morn.
Nothing can be conceived more perfectly poetic.
In that marvellous play, the Midsummer Night's Dream,
is one of the most extravagant things in literature:
Thou rememberest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid’s music.
This is so mavellously told that it almost seems probable.
So the description of Mark Antony:
For his bounty
There was no winter in’t—an autumn ’twas
That grew the more by reaping. His delights
Were dolphin-like—they showed his back above
The element they lived in.
Think of the astronomical scope and amplitude of this :
Her bed is India—there she lies a pearl.
Is there anything more intense than these words of
Cleopatra ?
Rather on Nilus mud lay me stark naked,
And let the water-flies blow me into abhorring.
Or this of Isabella ?
The impression of keen whips I’d wear as rubies,
And strip myself to death as to a bed
That longing I’ve been sick for, ere I yield
My body up to shame.
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Is there an intellectual man in the world who will not
agree with this ?
Let me not live
After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
Of younger spirits.
Can anything exceed the words of Troilus when parting
with Cressida?
-
We two, that with so many thousand sighs .
Did buy each other, most poorly sell ourselves ■ .
With the rude brevity and discharge of one.
Injurious time now with a robber s haste
Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how ;
As many farewells as be stars in heaven,
With distinct breath and consigned kisses to them,
He fumbles up into a loose adieu,
And scants us with a single famished kiss
Distasted with the salt of broken tears.
Take this example, where pathos almost touches the
grotesque:
‘
"
t - -
O dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair ?
Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean, abhorred monster keeps thee here
I’ the dark, to be his paramor ?
Often, when reading the marvellous lines of Shakespeare,
I feel that his thoughts are “too subtle potent, tuned.too
sharp in sweetness, for the capacity of my ruder powers.
Sonietimes I cry out, “ O churl! write all, and leave no
thoughts for those who follow after.”
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IX.
Shakespeare was an innovator, an iconoclast. He cared
nothing for the authority of men or of schools. He violated
the “unities,” and cared nothing for the models of the
ancient world.
The Greeks insisted that nothing should be in a play that
did not tend to the catastrophe. They did not believe in
the episode—in the sudden contrasts of light and shade—in
mingling the comic and the tragic. The sunlight never fell
upon their tears, and darkness did not overtake their
laughter. They believed that nature sympathized, or was in
harmony, with the events of the play. When crime was
about to be committed—some horror to be perpetrated—
the light grew dim, the wind sighed, the trees shivered, and
upon all was the shadow of the coming event.
Shakespeare knew that the play had little to do with the
tides and currents of universal life j that Nature cares
neither for smiles nor tears, for life nor death; and that the
sun shines as gladly on coffins as on cradles.
The first time I visited the Place de la Concorde, where
during the French Revolution stood the guillotine, and
where now stands an Egyptian obelisk—a bird, sitting on
the top, was singing with all its might.—Nature forgets.
One of the most notable instances of the violation by
Shakespeare of the classic model is found in the 6th Scene
of the ist Act of Macbeth.
When the King and Banquo approached the castle in
which the King is to be murdered that night, no shadow
falls athwart the threshold. So beautiful is the scene that
the King says :
This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
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And Banquo adds:
.
This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
By his loved mansionary that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here ; no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle.
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed
The air is delicate.
Another notable instance is the porter scene immediately
following the murder. So, too, the dialogue with the clown
who brings the asp to Cleopatra just before the suicide,
illustrates my meaning.
I know of one paragraph in the Greek drama worthy of
Shakespeare. This is in “Medea.” When Medea kills
her children she curses Jason, using the ordinary Billingsgate
and papal curse, but at the conclusion says : “ I pray the
gods to make him virtuous, that he may the more deeply
feel the pang that I inflict.”
Shakespeare dealt in lights and shadows. He was intense.
He put noons and midnights side by side. No other
dramatist would have dreamed of adding to the pathos—of
increasing our appreciation of Lear’s agony, by supplement
ing the wail of the mad king with the mocking laughter of a
loving clown.
X.
The ordinary dramatists—the men of talent (and there is
the same difference between talent and genius that there is
between a stone-mason and a sculptor), create characters
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that become types. Types are of necessity caricatures—
actual men and women are to some extent contradictory in
their actions. Types are blown in the one direction by the
one wind—characters have pilots.
In real people, good and evil mingle. Types are all one
way, or all the other—all good, or all bad, all wise or all
foolish.
Pecksniff was a perfect type, a perfect hypocrite—and will
remain a type as long as language lives—a hypocrite that
even drunkenness could not change. Everybody under
stands Pecksniff, and compared with him Tartuffe was an
honest man.
Hamlet is an individual, a person, an actual being—and
for that reason there is a difference of opinion as to his
motives and as to his character. We differ about Hamlet
as we do about Ceesar, or about Shakespeare himself.
Hamlet saw the ghost of his father, and heard again his
father’s voice; and yet, afterwards, he speaks of “ the
undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller
returns.”
In this there is no contradiction. The reason outweighs
the senses. If we should see a dead man rise from his
grave., we would not, the next day, believe that we did.
No one can credit a miracle until it becomes so common
that it ceases to be miraculous.
Types are puppets, controlled from without; characters
act from within. There is the same difference between
characters and types that there is between springs and
water-works, between canals and rivers, between wooden
soldiers and heroes.
In most plays and in most novels the characters are so
shadowy that we have to piece them out with the imagi
nation.
One waking in the morning sometimes sees at the foot of
his bed a strange figure—it may be of an ancient lady with
cap and ruffles, and with the expression of garrulous and
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fussy old age; but when the light gets stronger the figure
gradually changes, and he sees a few clothes on a chair.
The dramatist lives the lives of others, and in order to
delineate character must not only have imagination, but
sympathy with the character delineated. The great,
dramatist thinks of a character as an entirety, as an indi
vidual.
I once had a dream, and in this dream I was discussing
a subject with another man. It occurred to me that I was
dreaming, and I then said to myself: If this is a dream, I
am doing the talking for both sides ; consequently, I ought
to know in advance what the other man is going to say.. In
my dream I tried the experiment. I then asked the other
man a question, and, before he answered, made up my
tnmd what the answer was to be. To my surprise, the
man did not say what I expected he would, and so great
was my astonishment that I awoke.
It then occurred to me that I had discovered the secret
of Shakespeare. He did, when awake, what I did when
• asleep—that is, he threw off a character so perfect that it
acted independently of him.
In the delineation of character Shakespeare has no rivals.
He creates no monsters. His characters do not act without
reason, without motive.
Iago had his reasons. In Caliban nature was not des
troyed ; and Lady Macbeth certifies that the woman still
was in her heart, by saying :
Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it.
Shakespeare’s characters act from within. They are,
centres of energy. They are not pushed by unseen hands,
or pulled by unseen strings. They have objects, desires.
They are persons—real, living beings.
Few dramatists succeed in getting their characters loose
from the canvas; their backs stick to the wall; they do not
have free and independent action ; they have no back
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ground, no unexpressed motives ; no untold desires. They
lack the complexity of the real.
Shakespeare makes the character true to itself. Christopher
Sly, surrounded by the luxuries of a lord, true to his station,
calls for a pot of the smallest ale.
Take one expression by Lady Macbeth. You remember
that after the murder is discovered—after the alarm bell
is rung—she appears upon the scene, wanting to know what
has happened. Macduff refuses to tell her, saying that the
slightest word would murder as it fell. At this moment
Banquo comes upon the scene, and Macduff cries out to
him:
Our royal master’s murdered.
What does Lady Macbeth then say ? She, in fact, makes a
confession of guilt. The weak point in the terrible tragedy
is that Duncan was murdered in Macbeth’s castle. So,
when Lady Macbeth hears what they suppose is news to
her, she cries :
What! In our house !
Had she been innocent, her horror of the crime would
have made her forget the place—the venue. Banquo sees
through this, and sees through her. Her expression was
a light by which he saw her guilt, and he answers :—
Too cruel anywhere.
No matter whether Shakespeare delineated clown or
king, warrior or maiden—no matter whether his characters
are taken from the gutter or the throne—each is a work of
consummate art, and when he is unnatural he is so splendid
that the defect is forgotten.
. When Romeo is told of the death of Juliet, and there
upon makes up his mind to die upon her grave, he gives a
description of the shop where poison could be purchased.
He goes into particulars, and tells of the alligators stuffed ;
of the skins of ill-shaped fishes ; of the beggarly account of
empty boxes ; of the remnants of pack-thread, and old cakes
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of roses ; and while it is hardly .possible to believe that,
under such circumstances, a man would take the trouble
to make an inventory of a strange kind of drug-store, yet
the inventory is so perfect, the picture is so marvellously
drawn, that we forget to think whether it is natural or not.
In making the frame of a great picture—of a great
scene—Shakespeare was often careless, but the picture is
perfect. In making the sides of the arch he was negligent,
but when he placed the keystone it burst into blossom.
Of course, there are many lines in Shakespeare that never
Should have been written. In other words, there are im
perfections in his plays. But we must remember that
Shakespeare furnished the torch that enables us to see these
imperfections.
Shakespeare speaks through his characters, and we must
not mistake what the characters say for the opinion of
Shakespeare.
No one can believe that Shakespeare
regarded life as “ a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing.” That was the opinion of a
murderer, surrounded by avengers, and whose wife—partner
in bis crimes—troubled with thick-coming fancies—bad
gone down to her death.
Most actors and writers seem to suppose that the lines
called “ The Seven Ages ” contain Shakespeare’s view of
human life. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The
lines were uttered by a cynic, in contempt and scorn of
the human race.
Shakespeare did not put his characters in the livery and
uniform of some weakness, peculiarity, or passion. He did
not use names as tags or brands. He did not write under
the picture, “ This is a villain.” His characters need no
suggestive names to tell us what they are—-we see them,
and we know them for ourselves.
It may be that in the greatest utterances of the greatest
characters in the supreme moments we have the real
thoughts, opinions, and convictions of Shakespeare.
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Of all writers Shakespeare is the most impersonal. He
speaks through others, and the others seem to speak for
themselves. The didactic is lost in the dramatic. He does
not use the stage as a pulpit to enforce some maxim. He is
as reticent as Nature.
He idealizes the common, and transfigures all he
touches—but he does not preach. He was interested in
men and things as they were. He did not seek to change
them—but to portray. He was Nature’s mirror—and in that
Nature saw herself.
When I stood amid the great trees of California that lift
their spreading capitals against the clouds, looking like
Nature’s columns to support the sky, I thought of the
poetry of Shakespeare.
XI.
What a procession of men and women—statesmen and
warriors—kings and clowns—issued from Shakespeare’s
brain. What women !
Isabella—in whose spotless life love and reason blended
into perfect truth.
Juliet—within whose heart passion and purity met like
white and red within the bosom of a rose.
Cordelia—who chose to suffer loss rather than show
her wealth of love with those who gilded lies in hope of
gain.
Hermione—“ tender as infancy and grace ”—who bore
with perfect hope and faith the cross of shame, and who at
last forgave with all her heart.
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Desdemona—so innocent, so perfect, her love so pure,
that she was incapable of suspecting that another could
suspect, and who with dying words sought to hide her
lover’s crime—and with her last faint breath uttered a
loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her pallid
lips.
Perdita—A violet dim, and sweeter than the lids of Juno’s
eyes—“ The sweetest low-born lass that ever ran on the
green sward.” And
Helena—who said :
I know I love in vain, strive against hope—
Yet in this captious and intenable sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still.
Thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore
The sun that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more.
Miranda—who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its
bosom to the kisses of the sun.
And Cordelia, whose kisses cured, and whose tears
restored. And stainless Imogen, who cried : “ What is it to
be false ?”
And here is the description of the perfect woman :
To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love ;
To keep her constancy in plight and youth —
Outliving beauty’s outward with a mind
That doth renew swifter than blood decays.
Shakespeare has done more for woman than all the other
dramatists of the world.
For my part, I love the Clowns. I love Launce and his
dog Crabb; and Gobbo, whose conscience threw its arms
around the neck of his heart; and Touchstone, with his lie
seven times removed; and dear old Dogberry a pretty
piece of flesh, tedious as a king. And Tottom, the very
paramor for a sweet voice, longing to take the part to tear
a cat in ; and Autolycus, the snapper-up of unconsidered
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trifles, sleeping out the thought for the life to come. And
great Sir John, without conscience, and for that reason un
blamed and enjoyed—and who at the end babbles of green
fields, and is almost loved. And ancient Pistol, the world
his oyster. And Bardolph, with the flea on his blazing
nos^, putting beholders in mind of a damned soul in hell.
And the poor Fool, who followed the mad king, and went
“ to bed at noon.” And the clown who carried the worm
of Nilus, whose “ biting was immortal.” And Corin, the
shepherd—who described the perfect man : “ I am a true
laborer : I earn that I eat—get that I wear—owe no man
aught—envy no man’s happiness—glad of other men’s
good—content.”
And mingling in this motley throng, Lear, within whose
brain a tempest raged until the depths were stirred, and the
intellectual wealth of a life was given back to memory—and
then by madness thrown to storm and night; and when I
read the living lines I feel as though I looked upon the sea
and saw it wrought by frenzied whirlwinds, until the buried
treasures and the sunken wrecks of all the years were cast
upon the shores.
And Othello—who, like the base Indian, threw a pearl
away richer than all his tribe.
And Hamlet—thought-entangled—hesitating between
two worlds.
And Macbeth—strange mingling of cruelty and con
science, reaping the sure harvest of successful crime—
“ Curses not loud, but deep—mouth-honor—breath.”
And Brutus, falling on his sword that Csesar might be still.
And Romeo, dreaming of the white wonder of Juliet’s
hand. And Ferdinand, the patient log-man for Miranda’s
sake. And Florizel, who, “ for all the sun sees, or the close
earth wombs, or the profound seas hide,” would not be
faithless to the low-born lass. And Constance, weeping for
her son, while grief “ stuff’s out his vacant garments with his
form.”
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37
And in the midst of tragedies and tears, of love and
laughter and crime, we hear the voice of the good friar, who
declares that in every human heart, as in the smallest
flower, there are encamped the opposed hosts of good and
evil—and our philosophy is interrupted by the garrulous old
nurse, whose talk is as busily useless as the babble of a
stream that hurries by a ruined mill.
/
From every side the characters crowd upon us—the men
and women born of Shakespeare’s brain. They utter with
a thousand voices the thoughts of the “ myriad-minded ’
man, and impress themselves upon us as deeply and vividly
as though they really lived with us.
Shakespeare alone has delineated love in every possible
phase—has ascended to the very top, and actually reached
heights that no other has imagined. I do not believe the
human mind will ever produce, or be in a position to appre
ciate, a greater love-play than Romeo and Juliet. It is a
symphony in which all music seems to blend. The heart
bursts into blossom, and he who reads feels the swooning
intoxication of a divine perfume.
In the alembic of Shakespeare’s brain the baser metals
were turned to gold, passions became virtues, weeds became
exotics from some diviner land, and common mortals made
of ordinary clay outranked the Olympian Gods. In his
brain there was the touch of chaos that suggests the infinite
—that belongs to genius. Talent is measured and mathe
matical, dominated by prudence and the thought of use.
Genius is tropical. The creative instinct runs riot, delights
in extravagance and waste, and overwhelms the mental
beggars of the world with uncounted gold and unnumbered
gems.
Some things are immortal—the plays of Shakespeare, the
marbles of the Greeks, and the music of Wagner.
�38
SHAKESPEARE.
XII.
Shakespeare was the greatest of philosophers. He knew
the conditions of success—of happiness—the relations that
men sustain to each other, and the duties of all. He knew
the tides and currents of the heart—the cliffs and caverns
of the brain. He knew the weakness of the will, the
sophistry of desire—and
That pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to the
voice of any true decision.
He knew that the soul lives in an invisible world—that
flesh is but a mask, and that
There is no art to find the mind’s construction
In the face.
He knew that courage should be the servant of judgment,
and that
When valor preys on reason it eats the sword
It fights with.
He knew that man is never master of the event, that he
is, to some extent, the sport or prey of the blind forces of
the world, and that
In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men.
Feeling that the past is unchangeable, and that that
which must happen is as much beyond control as though it
had happened, he says :
Let determined things to destiny
Hold unbewailed their way.
Shakespeare was great enough to know that every human
being prefers happiness to misery, and that crimes are but
mistakes. Looking in pity upon the human race, upon the
pain and poverty, the crimes and cruelties, the limping
�SHAKESPEARE.
39
travellers on the thorny paths, he was great and good
enough to say :
There is no darkness but ignorance.
In all the philosophies there is no greater line. This
great truth fills the heart with pity.
He knew that place and power do not give happiness—
that the crowned are subject as the lowest to fate and
chance.
Within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps death his Court, and there the antic sits
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a brief and little scene
To monarchize by fear and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit—
As if this flesh that walls about our life
Were brass impregnable ; and humored thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall—and farewell king !
So, too, he knew that gold could not bring joy—that
death and misfortune come alike to rich and poor, because :
If thou art rich, thou art poor ;
For like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee.
In some of his philosophy there was a kind of scorn—a
hidden meaning that could not in his day and time have
safely been expressed. You will remember that Laertes
was about to kill the king, and this king was the murderer
of his own brother, and sat upon the throne by reason of
his crime—and in the mouth of such a king Shakespeare
puts these words :
There’s such divinity doth hedge a king.
So, in Macbeth :
How he solicits Heaven himself best knows ; but
strangely visited people,
�40
SHAKESPEARE,
All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despairs of surgery, he cures ;
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks.
Put on with holy prayers ; and ’tis spoken
To the succeeding royalty—he leaves
The healing benediction. With this strange virtue
He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,
And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
That speak him full of grace.
Shakespeare was the master of the human heart—knew
all the hopes, fears, ambitions, and passions that sway the
mind of man ; and, thus knowing, he declared that
Love is not love that alters
When it alteration finds.
This is the sublimest declaration in the literature of the
world.
Shakespeare seems to give the generalization, the result,
without the process of thought. He seems always to be at
the conclusion—standing where all truths meet.
In one of the Sonnets is this fragment of a line that
contains the highest possible truth :
Conscience is born of love.
If man were incapable of suffering, the words “right”
and “ wrong ” never could have been spoken. If man were
destitute of imagination, the flower of pity never could have
blossomed in his heart.
We suffer ; we cause others to suffer ; those that we love ;
and of this fact conscience is born.
Love is the many-colored flame that makes the fireside of
the heart. It is the mingled spring and autumn—the
perfect climate of the soul.
�SHAKESPEARE.
41
XIII.
In the realm of comparison Shakespeare seems to have
exhausted the relations, parallels, and similitudes of things.
He only could have said :
Tedious as a twice-told tale
Vexing the ears of a drowsy man.
Duller than a great thaw.
Dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.
In the words of Ulysses, spoken to Achilles, we find the
most wonderful collection of pictures and comparisons ever
compressed within the same number of lines :
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion—
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes
Those scraps are good deeds passed ; which are devoure
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done ; perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honor bright: to have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honor travels in a strait so narrow
Where one but goes abreast; keep, then, the path ;
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue ; if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by
And leave you hindmost:
Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O’errun and trampled on : then what they do in present,
Tho’ less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours ;
For time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: Welcome ever smiles,
And Farewell goes out sighing.
�42
SHAKESPEARE.
So the words of Cleopatra, when Charmain speaks :
Peace, peace :
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast
That sucks the nurse asleep ?
XIV.
Nothing is more difficult than a definition—a crystalliza
tion of thought so perfect that it emits light. Shakespeare
says of suicide :—
It is great to do that thing
That ends all other deeds,
Which shackles accident, and bolts up change.
He defines drama to be :
Turning the accomplishments of many years
Into an hour glass.
Of death:
This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod,
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot.
Of memory:
The warder of the brain.
Of the body:
This muddy vesture of decay.
And he declares that
Our little life is rounded with a sleep.
He speaks of Echo as :
The babbling gossip of the air—.
�SHAKESPEARE.
43
Romeo, addressing the poison that he is about to take,
says :
Come, bitter conduct; come, unsavory guide,
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick, weary bark.
He describes the world as
This bank and shoal of time.
He says of rumor—
That it doubles, like the voice and echo.
It would take days to call attention to the perfect
definitions, comparisons, and generalizations of Shakespeare.
He gave us the deeper meanings of our words—taught us
the art of speech. He was the lord of language—master of
expression and compression.
He put the greatest thoughts into the shortest words—
made the poor rich and the common royal.
Production enriched his brain. Nothing exhausted him.
The moment his .attention was called to any subject—
comparisons, definitions, metaphors, and generalizations
filled his mind and begged for utterance. His thoughts
like bees robbed every blossom in the world, and then with
“ merry march ” brought the rich booty home “ to the tent
royal of their emperor.”
Shakespeare was the confidant of Nature. To him she
opened her “infinite book of secrecy,” and in his brain were
“ the hatch and brood of time.”
�44
SHAKESPEARE.
XV.
There is in Shakespeare the mingling of laughter and
tears, humor and pathos. Humor is the rose, wit the
thorn. Wit is a crystallization, humor an efflorescence.
Wit comes from the brain, humor from the heart. Wit is
the lightning of the soul.
In Shakespeare’s nature was the climate of humor. He
saw and felt the sunny side even of the saddest things
“You have seen sunshine and rain at once.” So Shake
speare’s tears fell oft upon his smiles. In moments of peril
—on the very darkness of death—there comes a touch of
humor that falls like a fleck of sunshine.
Gonzalo, when the ship is about to sink, having seen the
boatswain, exclaims :
I have great comfort from this fellow ;
Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him ;
His complexion is perfect gallows.
Shakespeare is filled with the strange contrasts of grief
and laughter. While poor Hero is supposed to be dead
—wrapped in the shroud of dishonor—Dogberry and
Verges unconsciously put again the wedding wreath upon
her pure brow.
The soliloquy of Launcelot—great as Hamlet’s—offsets
the bitter and burning words of Shylock.
There is only time to speak of Maria in Twelfth Night,
of Autolycus in the Winter’s Tale, of the parallel drawn by
Fluellen between Alexander of Macedon and Harry of
Monmouth, or of the marvellous humor of Falstaff, who
never had the faintest thought of right or wrong—or of
Mercutio, that embodiment of wit and humor—or of the
gravediggers who lamented that “ great folk should have
countenance in this world to drown and hang themselves
�45
SHAKESPEARE.
more than their even Christian,” and who reached the
generalization that “ the gallows does well because it does
well to those who do ill.”
There is also an example of grim humor an example
without a parallel in literature, so far as I know. Hamlet,
having killed Polonius, is asked :
Where’s Polonius ?
At supper.
At supper ! where ?
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten.
Above all others, Shakespeare appreciated the pathos of
situation.
Nothing is more pathetic than the last scene in Lear. No
one has ever bent above his dead who did not feel the
words uttered by the mad king—words born of a despair
deeper than tears :
Oh, that a horse, a dog, a rat hath life,
And thou no breath !
So Iago, after he has been wounded, says :
I bleed, sir ; but not killed.
And Othello answers from the wreck and shattered
remnant of his life :
I would have thee live ;
For in my sense it is happiness to die.
When Troilus finds Cressida has been false, he cries :
Let it not be believed for womanhood ;
Think 1 we had mothers.
Ophelia, in her madness, “ the sweet bells jangled out o’
tune,” says softly:
I would give you some violets ;
But they withered all when my father died.
When Macbeth has reaped the harvest, the seeds of
which were sown by his murderous hand, he exclaims—
and what could be more pitiful ?
I ’gin to be aweary of the sun.
-
�46
SHAKESPEARE.
Richard the Second feels how small a thing it is to be, or
to have been, a king, or to receive honors before or after
power is lost j and so, of those who stood uncovered before
him, he asks this piteous question :
I live with bread, like you ; feel want,
Taste grief, need friends ; subjected thus,
How can you say to me I am a king ?
Think of the salutation of Antony to the dead Csesar :
Pardon me, thou piece of bleeding earth.
When Pisanio informs Imogen that he had been ordered
by Posth umus to murder her, she bares her neck, and cries :
The lamb entreats the butcher :
Where is thy knife ? Thou art too slow
To do thy master’s bidding when I desire it.
Antony, as the last drops are falling from his self-inflicted
wound, utters with his dying breath to Cleopatra, this :
I here importune death awhile, until
Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips.
To me the last words of Hamlet are full of pathos :
I die, Horatio.
The potent poison quite o’er crows my spirit.......
The rest is silence.
XVI.
Some have insisted that Shakespeare must have been a
physician, for the reason that he shows such knowledge of
medicine—of the symptoms of disease and death—was so
familiar with the brain, and with insanity in all its forms.
I do not think he was a physician. He knew too much
�SHAKESPEARE.
47
—his generalizations were too splendid. He had none of
the prejudices of that profession in his time. We might as
well say that he was a musician, a composer, because wTe
find in The Two Gentlemen of Verona nearly every musical
term known in Shakespeare’s time.
Others maintain that he was a lawyer, perfectly acquainted
with the forms, with the expressions familiar to that pro
fession ; yetethere is nothing to show that he was a lawyer,
or that he knew more about law than any intelligent man
should know.
He was not a lawyer. His sense of justice was never
dulled by reading English law.
Some think that he was a botanist, because he named
nearly all known plants. Others, that he was an astronomer,
a naturalist, because he gave hints and suggestions of nearly
all discoveries.
Some have thought that he must have been a sailor, for
the reason that the orders given in the opening of The
Tempest were the best that could, under the circumstances,
have been given to save the ship.
For my part, I think there is nothing in the plays to show
that he was a lawyer, doctor, botanist, or scientist. He had
the observant eyes that really see, the ears that really hear,
the brain that retains all pictures, all thoughts, logic as
unerring as light, the imagination that supplies defects and
builds the perfect from a fragment. And these faculties,
these aptitudes, working together, account for what he did.
He exceeded all the sons of men in the splendor of his.
imagination. To him the whole world- paid tribute, and
nature poured her treasures at his feet. In him all races
lived again', and even those to be were pictured in his brain.
He was a man of imagination—that is to say, of genius,
and having seen a leaf, and a drop of water, he could
construct the forests, the rivers, and the seas; and in his
presence all the cataracts would fall and foam, the mists
rise, the clouds form and float.
�48
SHAKESPEARE.
If Shakespeare knew one fact, he knew its kindred and
its neighbors.
Looking at a coat of mail, he instantly
imagined the society, the conditions, that produced it, and
what it, in turn, produced. He saw the castle, the moat,
the draw-bridge, the lady in the tower, and the knightly
lover spurring across the plain. He saw the bold baron and
the rude retainer, the trampled serf, and all the glory and
the grief of feudal life.
He lived the life of all.
He was a citizen of Athens in the days of Pericles. He
listened to the eager eloquence of the great orators, and sat
upon the cliffs, and with the tragic poet heard 11 the multi
tudinous laughter of the sea.” He saw Socrates thrust the
spear of question through the shield and heart of falsehood.
He was present when the great man drank hemlock, and
met the night of death, tranquil as a star meets morning.
He listened to the peripatetic philosophers, and was un
puzzled by the sophists. He watched Phidias as he chiselled
shapeless stone to forms of love and awe.
He lived by the mysterious Nile, amid the vast and
monstrous. He knew the very thought that wrought the
form and features of the Sphinx. He heard great Memnon’s
morning song when marble lips were smitten by the sun.
He laid him down with the embalmed and waiting dead,
and felt within their dust the expectation of another life,
mingled with cold and suffocating doubts—the children
born of long delay.
He walked the ways of mighty Rome, and saw great
Caesar with his legions in the field. He stood with vast
and motley throngs, and watched the triumphs given to
victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the captured
hosts, and all the spoils of ruthless war. He heard the
shout that shook the Coliseum’s roofless walls, when from
the reeling gladiator’s hand the short sword fell, while from
his bosom gushed the stream of wasted life.
He lived the life of savage men. He trod the forests’
�SHAKESPEARE.
49
silent depths, and in the desperate game of life or death he
matched his thought against the instinct of the beast.
He knew all crimes and all regrets, all virtues and their
rich rewards. He was victim and victor, pursuer and pursued,
outcast and king. He heard the applause and curses of the
world, and on his heart had fallen all the nights and noons
of failure and success.
He knew the unspoken thought, the dumb desires, the
wants and ways of beasts. He felt the crouching tiger s
thrill, the terror of the ambushed prey, and with the eagles
he had shared the ecstasy of flight and poise and swoop, and
he had lain with sluggish serpents on the barren rocks
uncoiling slowly in the heat of noon.
He sat beneath the bo-tree’s contemplative shade,
wrapped in Buddha’s mighty thought, and dreamed all
dreams that light, the alchemist, has wrought from dust and
dew, and stored within the slumbrous poppy’s subtle blood.
He knelt with awe and dread at every shrine—he offered
every sacrifice, and every prayer—felt the consolation and
the shuddering fear—mocked and worshipped all the gods
—enjoyed all heavens, and felt the pangs of every hell.
He lived all lives, and through his blood and brain there
crept the shadow and the chill of every death; and his soul,
like Mazeppa, was lashed naked to the wild horse of every
fear and love and hate.
The Imagination had a stage in Shakespeare’s brain,
whereon were set all scenes that lie between the morn of
laughter and the night of tears, and where his players bodied
forth the false and true, the joys and griefs, the careless
shallows and the tragic deeps of universal life.
From Shakespeare’s brain there poured a Niagara of gems
spanned by Fancy’s seven-hued arch. He was as manysided as clouds are many-formed. To him giving was
hoarding—sowing was harvest—and waste itself the source
of wealth. Within his marvellous mind were the fruits of
all thought past, the seed of all to be. As a drop of dew
�5°
SHAKESPEARE.
contains the image of the earth and sky, so all there is of
life was mirrored forth in Shakespeare’s brain.
Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves
touched all the shores of thought; within which were all the
tides and waves of destiny and will■ over which swept all
the storms of fate, ambition, and revenge; upon which fell
the gloom and darkness of despair and death, and all the
sunlight of content and love, and within which was the
inverted sky lit with the eternal stars—an intellectual ocean
—towards which all rivers ran, and from which now the isles
and continents of thought receive their dew and rain.
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�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Shakespeare : a lecture
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 50, [2] p. ; 18 p.
Notes: Publisher's advertisements on unnumbered pages at the end. No. 66d in Stein checklist. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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R. Forder
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[189?]
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N394
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Shakespeare