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 A sketch of Shakespeare. 
 
 3 1924 013 148 972 
 
Cornell University 
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A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 I have, in this rough work, shap'd out a man, 
 Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug 
 With amplest entertainment. 
 
 TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
A SKETCH 
 
 OF 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 WILLIAM LEIGHTON: 
 
 lUTHOB OP THE "SONS OP GODWIN," "CHANGE" &C. 
 
 WHEELING: 
 
 STANTON AND DAVENPORT. 
 
 1879. 
 
Copyright, 1879, by William Leighton\ 
 
 WHEELING : 
 Chas. B. Reeves, Book & Job Printer. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ■^'X'HIS little volume has been made up, by request of friends, 
 ^^ from the substance of three addresses read to the Wheeling 
 Shakespeare Club upon the anniversaries of the poet's birth, in 1875, 
 '77, and '79. 
 
 In consolidating these, certain local allusions, which were inter- 
 esting only on the occasions that gave rise to them, have been omit- 
 ted; and some new matter, mostly in the way of illustration of the 
 original thoughts, has been added: but so little change has been 
 made in the form of the composition that it still retains the desultory 
 character permissible in its first purpose, and lacks the systematic 
 arrangement and thoroughness which should belong to a critical 
 essay. 
 
 It will therefore be understood that here is no elaborately digested 
 biography containing the result of careful research of original au- 
 thorities, nor an exhaustive analysis of the genius of Shakespeare, 
 which would be a more ambitious effort than is here attempted; but 
 simply a tribute of respectful admiration to the greatest poet of our 
 language, with a brief sketch of his life and an endeavor to set down 
 some of the plain and obvious reasons why we honor and admire 
 him, and why the world has accorded to him the highest place in 
 its literature. 
 
 With this explanation, the author must be content; but asks that 
 enthusiasm in his subject be permitted to stand, in some degree, as 
 an excuse for the book. 
 
 May, 1879. \V. L. 
 
PROMETHEUS OF THE DRAMA. 
 
 Around Orestes crazed, the Greek of old, 
 Terrors sublime of tragedy, unrolled; 
 While Art delighted touched his skilful hand. 
 And graceful shapes came forth at her command; 
 Grandeur and grace their mingling lines allied : 
 The cloudy brow of thought, the lip of pride, 
 Passion's wild eye, soft Pity's pleading tear. 
 Anger's clinched hand, Ambition's brandished spear- 
 While, over all, mysterious terrors glare 
 When fierce Erinyes toss their hissing hair. 
 Their artist pose, those ancient figures keep ; 
 No flitting dream disturbs their marble sleep; 
 No quick. Promethean spark is kindling there 
 To send its flash across their stony stare. 
 
 As in the stately Pantheon row on row 
 Of marble gods looked down on men below; 
 So from their ancient pedestals on high 
 Look down on us, in deaths' mute fixity. 
 The olden dramas. But a heavenly flame 
 Descended, and a new Prometheus came : — 
 
Behold him fettered like the god of old 
 With cruel chains whose iron shackles hold 
 His struggling life, while on his entrails feed 
 The ravening eagles of each hungry need ! 
 Yet with hot impulse in his fiery soul 
 A Titan's passion writhes beneath control — 
 Then Shakespeare's genius woke cold Drama's life 
 As once Pygmalion won his statue-wife. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 On some of the circumstances of the life of shakespeare. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The works of shakespeare: their influence, purpose, and 
 literary excellence. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 An ANALYTICAL GLANCE AT SHAKESPEARE'S METHOD AND GENIUS. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 On some of the circumstances of the life of Shakespeare. 
 
 %rT is a theory now universally received, that the development of 
 1^ art, literature, and science depends, not so much on isolated, 
 individual effort, as on the condition of the general mind. The 
 operation of the movement of mind in any given direction may be 
 briefly sketched in this way. The active energies of the more cul- 
 tivated minds so act upon the aggregate mind of the world that a 
 general interest is awakened in the subject thus presented. This 
 general interest, moulding and modifying every individual to whom 
 it comes, incites to greater or less progress according to capacity or 
 constitution. Thus it chances at length to light up and stimulate, 
 in some happily constituted organization, a creative power capable 
 of wonderful progress — a power which would not have been aroused 
 to action, but for the prevailing interest in such direction, and the 
 consequent susceptibility of the world to be acted on by its force. 
 So it is ever the aggregate progress that produces individual pro- 
 gress, although the latter may proceed so far, under the impulse of 
 its exciting cause, as to reach a development, to the height of which 
 the aggregate progress may never arrive — may never arrive, because 
 progress is not always constant, and peculiarly gifted minds have 
 often power to advance far beyond the point at which the general 
 progress halts, or turns to retrograde movement. Although such 
 progress of the individual has undoubtedly the effect to hasten the 
 advance' of all, yet to bring up the general mind in any direction is 
 
A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 a slow and tedious work, and may not be largely accomplished by a 
 few brilliant examples; but by the constant action of the larger and 
 more rapid minds upon the smaller and slower. 
 
 These thoughts belong to the consideration of one of the marvels 
 of the world's history, who, undoubtedly the offspring of an age of 
 uncommon literary excitement, exhibited such brilliant example of 
 individual effort, and accomplished such magnificent success, that, 
 after three hundred years of constant general progression, the world 
 yet sees his works apparently as unapproachable as in the day when 
 they issued from his brain, master-pieces of skill, power, beauty, 
 imagination, and philosophic grasp of thought. 
 
 On the gently flowing stream of Avon, in the heart of England, 
 in the midst of beautiful, rural scenery, undisturbed by the din of 
 workshops, or the turmoil of business, and undisfigured by the black 
 smoke of factory chimneys, the little village of Stratford, in 1564, 
 was composed of a few thatched cottages clustered about a magnifi- 
 cent church and stately stone bridge of fourteen arches. The 
 whole population probably did not exceed fifteen hundred people 
 who were mostly engaged in agriculture or the simple trades of a 
 rural community. In one of these little cottages dwelt a young 
 burgess and town magistrate, well to-do and well respected in his 
 little community, and now rejoicing at the birth of his first son who, 
 on the 26th of April, was christened and named William Shake- 
 speare. Tradition has assigned the 23d as his birth-day, probably 
 because it was a general, though not universal, custom to christen a 
 child on the third day after its birth. 
 
 John Shakespeare, the father of the poet, was of the class styled 
 in that time and land, yeoman ; the son of a farmer who tilled lands 
 in Snitterfield, a village adjoining Stratford, and rented his little 
 farm of Robert Arden, a gentleman untitled, but of a family boast- 
 ing of blood and lineage, their pedigree extending beyond the Con- 
 
CHAPTER I: LIFE. 
 
 queror, back to the reign of Edward the Confessor. John Shake- 
 speare, a farmer's son, a glove-maker by trade, married the daughter 
 of Robert Arden, a gentleman — married the fair Mary Arden, a 
 lady and an heiress. How this marriage came about tradition is 
 silent, but it was doubtless a love-match, the work of mischievous 
 Cupid, who is often guilty of overlooking the distinction of class. 
 But though John Shakespeare had no line of distinguished ancestry 
 of which to boast, he was a thrifty, progressive man, whd, not con- 
 tent with enhancing his dignity by having a lady-wife, sought to 
 build himself up to respectable position by acts of integrity and by 
 honorable character. 
 
 The pedigree of the Ardens has been often quoted to prove the 
 good blood of Shakespeare, in a land where descent from noble or 
 titled ancestry has been always the proud boast of all who could 
 possibly discover such descent; but it remains to be proven that the 
 great poet drew his distinguished qualities rather from the noble 
 Ardens, than from the yeoman race of his paternal line. The pride 
 of ancestry was naturally fostered in a country whose very form of 
 government rested on ancestral claims; and where hereditary rank 
 was the custom and the rule. It was an Englishman of a later day, 
 who made one of the characters of his romantic drama express this 
 republican sentiment: "Not to the past, but to the future, looks 
 true nobility; and finds its blazon in posterity." Thus, might John 
 Shakespeare have spoken in the day when he saw his own son more 
 illustrious than any high-born ancestor of the line of Arden. 
 
 Of the early life of the young Shakespeare little authentic infor- 
 mation can be gleaned. Like other youths of his village, he at- 
 tended the "Free Grammar School," where he could have learned, 
 and doubtless did learn, Latin and some Greek, a little English too, 
 but probably not much ; for, in the ordinary grammar school of tiiat 
 time, but littie English learning was taught. He never was a learn- 
 
lo A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 ed man according to the opinions of the most erudite scholars of 
 the time. Let us consider in what such learning was judged to con- 
 sist. A thorough knowledge of Greek and Latin authors, derived 
 from their diligent study in the original languages; some acquaint- 
 ance with Eastern language and literature; a thorough training .in 
 all the schools of philosophy, ancient and modern; a knowledge of 
 modern languages and literature, and, at least, a superficial ac- 
 quaintance with science. All this went to make up a learned man ; 
 but, as was most emphatically proven in Shakespeare's case, so 
 much learning was not necessary to produce a great poet, philoso- 
 pher, and dramatist. 
 
 At Stratford, near the chapel of the Guild,' was Great House or 
 New Place, built by Sir Hugh Clopton, and, in Shakespeare's youth, 
 the residence of John Combe, a wealthy gendeman. Clopton 
 House, a fine residence, was only two miles away. Charlecote, a 
 country-seat, built by Sir Thomas Lucy, was four miles in a,nother 
 direction; Warwick Castle was nine miles, and the famous- Kenil- 
 worth, fourteen miles from Stratford. There was then the possibili- 
 ty that the youthful Shakespeare might have had, at one" of these 
 fine residences, access to a library whefe the rich treasures of litera- 
 ture were at his command. With the eager thirst of young and 
 ardent desire, and the wonderful grasp and capability of his broad 
 mind, what fields of literature might he most joyously have rambled 
 over, storing his memory with thoughts, fancies, facts, and philoso- 
 phies, to be recalled at a later day to embellish his own greater and 
 more marvelous works ! 
 
 A knowledge of literature, thus acquired in the seclusion of some 
 great library, with himself for his own teacher, may not have con- 
 stituted learning in the sense such word is used by the fastidious 
 scholars of his day, such as Bacon, Sidney, or Ben. Johnson; but 
 it might have been suitable training for the admirable work 
 
CHAPTER I: LIFE. 
 
 he was destined to accomplish. If he had received the more exact 
 discipline of the schools, it is possible that the exuberance of his 
 fancy might have been checked by his endeavor to adapt his 
 thoughts to classic or antique models, and his great conceptions 
 dwarfed by confining them within the exact and measured 
 rules of composition, laid down by well established authorities. 
 From this he was perhaps saved by a desultory course of reading, 
 which was also sufficient to greatly enrich a mind of wonderful 
 comprehension and most rapid perceptions. Although the French 
 and Italian languages were not taught at the Stratford grammar 
 school, yet^ of these, Shakespeare seems to have had some knowl- 
 edge, which might have been self acquired, at least as far as reading 
 is concerned, and easily so acquired, by a mind as wonderfully rapid 
 as was that of the young poet 
 
 To fill up with more detail the meagre outlines of the youth of 
 Shakespeare, let me refer to a scene at which he must have been 
 present, although neither history nor tradition record the fact. At 
 the Castle of Keuilworth, in 1575, Robert Dudley, the magnificent 
 Earl of Leicester, entertained his queen, the royal Ehzabeth, with 
 splendid festivities, lasting through seventeen days. Here, while 
 the great earl coquetted with his intellectual, but vain, fickle, and 
 dangerous mistress, and, in the sun of her smiles, dreamed himself 
 monarch of England, pageants and plays were enacted with gor- 
 geous dress and brilliant trappings, ingenious machinery and skilful 
 dialogue, to honor, in the then fashion of the age, the great occasion. 
 Sir Walter Scott, in his romance of Kenilworth, has admirably de- 
 scribed all this; and while we pore over his enchanting pages there 
 rises before us the impressive scene of the great queen's reception. 
 We see the flashing light of two hundred torches in the hands of as 
 many armed horsemen. We see the train of glittering nobles and 
 beautiful ladies, with England's Elizabeth and the princely Leicester 
 
A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 at their head, the giant porter at the gate, the pageant of the Lady 
 of the Lake and her attendant train of Tritons and Nereids mount- 
 ed on fanciful sea-horses; and, in imagination, behold, dimly flitting 
 in the shadowy back-ground, the sad face of the wretched countess, 
 the beautiful, but unfortunate, Amy Robsart, a disguised fugitive in 
 the castle of her lordly husband. Thus, be witched, by the glamour 
 ~of this most romantic scene, we forget that history declares, the 
 earl's fair countess died fifteen years before the date of these famous 
 revels, in the lonely mansion of Cumnor. 
 
 But what Sir Walter does not describe let us imagine, and the 
 thought must awaken a fresh train of romantic ideas. Among the 
 glad throng that welcome the royal party, a handsome boy, with a 
 thousand fancies flashing from his thoughtful eyes as he contem- 
 plates, with all a poet's comprehension, the romantic beauty of the 
 scene, all splendid, weird; and magical; to his inexperienced eye 
 like the brilliant enchantments of which he had read in the quaint 
 pages of old Sir Thomas Malory, Thus, while the light of dancing 
 torches and the huge bonfires on the castle walls flash in his eyes, 
 he strives, in vain bewilderment, to think that it is real. This is 
 not mere idle fancy — it must have been the fact. As Stratford is 
 but fourteen miles from Kenilworth, young Shakespeare, then eleven 
 years of age, must have been present at these great revels, a much 
 interested spectator, if not an actor in the numerous pageantries. 
 Perhaps already his thoughts were flowing in verse, and his boyish 
 lips may have repeated his youthful poetry to the great queen who 
 afterward so highly commended his maturer efforts. Here the 
 young poet may have known his first dramatic inspiration, and re- 
 ceived the impress of ideas that would haunt his mind through 
 youth and early manhood until at length the opportunity came to 
 develop the latent ambitions here created. But this is lingering, 
 perhaps too long, over a period of the-poet's life undefined by posi- 
 
CHAPTER I: LIFE. 13 
 
 rive facts, though surely possibilities warrant speculations such £is 
 these. 
 
 While thus the boy Shakespeare was preparing himself for his 
 great destiny, his father was abandoned by prosperity, and fell, by 
 degrees, into low fortunes. How his property was dissipated we do 
 not know, except that a numerous family were dependent upon him. 
 It may have been an effort to live after the manner of his wife's 
 family rather than of his own yeoman ancestry, that impoverished 
 his fortune. Instead of exercising the office of a bailiff, as was 
 formerly his duty, he was now haunted by bailiff and by writ. He 
 was now, says one authority, a small dealer in wool. Another de- 
 clares that he was a butcher; and, in either case, assisted by his son. 
 
 We now reach the date of 1582; and Will Shakespeare, at eigh- 
 teen years of age, is the lover of Anne Hathaway, a farmer's daugh- 
 ter without mental culture, without the capacity to understand 
 mental culture, and eight years the senior of her boy-lover. Let us 
 imagine the author of Romeo and Juliet, of Antony and Cleopatra, 
 sighing out his impassioned soul at the feet of his mistress. What 
 woman could have resisted him? Anne Hathaway did not; and in 
 December 1582 they were married. Doubtless Shakespeare loved 
 most impetuously, for he had fervor and energy of passion in his 
 heart beyond example, as shown in his great dramas. And doubt- 
 less Anne Hathaway loved; for she had a lover more gloriously en- 
 dowed with grace of mind and luxuriant fancy, than ever had 
 woman before or since; and though the opaque veil of her own un- 
 congenial thoughts may have hidden his graces from her unintellect- 
 ual mind; yet she must have seen the reflection of his beauties of 
 intellect in the admiration of his more sympathetic companions. It 
 is very natural for a shallow-minded character, as tradition and cir- 
 cumstance induce us to believe Anne Hathaway to have been, to 
 admire and love one whom she perceives to be the object of admira- 
 
14 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 tion of those around her, whose minds she feels to be above her 
 own. Such love, however, is not the love that endureth through a 
 life. 
 
 In this case the marriage may have been an unfortunate one, in 
 so far as its purpose, of conferring happiness on the two parties 
 most immediately interested, is considered; but, to the world — if it 
 alienated the poet from domestic ties, and thus forced his thoughts 
 to find, in literature, his more congenial mistress, and drove him, 
 perforce, into the position best calculated to develop his genius, — 
 this ill-sorted union may have been the reverse of unfortuate. Of- 
 ten the tempest that wrecks individual happiness confers upon the 
 world incalculable benefits, and it is possible that this was so with 
 Shakespeare in his hasty, improvident marriage. His wife had 
 grace of person, but her mind had not the grace to comprehend 
 her poet husband; while he, filled with constant yearnings for sym- 
 pathy with his ardent imaginings, which met with no response, had 
 no practical experience of life, nor sufficiently matured judgment, 
 to properly direct his great abihties, and successfully meet the im- 
 mediate, ordinary wants of life. Anne Hathaway should have mar- 
 ried a ploughman, and Shakespeare should have married — well, he 
 should not have married, probably. 
 
 Not yet twenty-one years old, his father impoverished, a wife and 
 family to support, Shakespeare found hard labor an imperious neces- 
 sity. His character of mind and education, though suitable for a 
 poet,, were very unsuitable for the occupations in which he was now 
 compelled to toil. It was the old story of Pegasus in harness, a 
 glorious steed to ascend Parnassus, but utterly useless fqr the heavy 
 drudgery of this village life. Discouragement drove him from the 
 path of dull labor, which his uninterested mind had not patience to 
 follow; and, with idle or vicious companions, he indulged in idle or 
 vicious amusements. 
 
CHAPTER I: LIFE. 15 
 
 Tradition tells of a nocturnal adventure in Sir Thomas Lucy's 
 park, and accused of, and threatened with punishment for, deer- 
 stealing, Shakespeare is said to have retorted with a sarcastic and 
 indeed scurrilous lampoon which he had the audacity to fix upon 
 the gates of Sir Thomas' park. This deer-stealing adventure 
 is strongly insisted on by tradition, and the verses also, but the lat^ 
 ter may have been the invention of some companion-poet of the 
 village, who afterward screened himself from danger behind his 
 more generous friend. In spite of the gross character of the lines, 
 however, there is something in them that smacks of Sliakespeare, 
 especially a whimsical connection of the knighf s name with a word 
 of similar sound, a common word-trick with our poet. 
 
 If this anecdote is authentic, — as we have reason to believe; 
 though its authenticity has been assailed by the criticisms of scholars 
 who have been unable to discover, or unwilling to acknowledge, in 
 the coarse bitterness of its verse, the hand that wrote with such 
 elegance and grace the drama of the Tempest and the tragedy of 
 Macbeth, — it clearly shows that young Will Shakespeare had already 
 acquired the reputation of a verse-maker, for he was at once sus- 
 pected as the author of the scurrilous composition, and compelled 
 to leave his native town to escape the rage of the irritated knight. 
 So, to avoid the consequences of this escapade, Will Shakespeare 
 went up to London ; and, as far as authentic history is concerned, 
 we there lose 'him for at least six years. 
 
 What was hi^ first occupation in the great metropolis, and how he 
 became connected with the stage, are now matters of conjecture, 
 concerning which many unauthorized stories have been told. 
 There is a one, that his first occupation in London was holding 
 horses at the door of the play-house; but, as this can be traced to a 
 recent origin, it is unworthy of belief. The popular idea has been 
 
1 6 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 thaf he immediately commenced his apprenticeship to the stage, but 
 this is by no means certain. 
 
 Whoever follows the fortunes of this gifted youth, can imagine 
 for himself the beginning of his career in London. We may picture 
 it something like this : — Shakespeare had a kinsman, formerly resi- 
 dent of Stratford, but at the time of the poet's "hegira" in the year 
 1585-6, a London attorney. Arrived in London, Will Shakespeare 
 would naturally have sought out his kinsman for aid and advice in 
 obtaining an occupation by which he might gain a livelihood and 
 sornething to send to his wife and children left destitute at Stratford. 
 But for a raw country-boy to find profitable employment in the great 
 city, might have been very difficult, and we can imagine our youth, 
 disappointed of other work, settling down to the duties of an at- 
 torney's clerk in his cousin Greene's office, even if he had not re- 
 ceived the offer, or made choice, of such position at once. His 
 knowledge of law-terms has often excited the wonder and admira- 
 tion of modern critics, and it has been declared that only a lawyer 
 could use such terms so accurately as they are found in his poems. 
 In his cousin's office, employed in making copies and drafts of legal 
 documents, for which his knowledge of Latin well fitted him, and 
 in which he would soon have become proficient from his quick per- 
 ceptions and acute mind, we can easily understand how his memory 
 became stored with legal phraseology which would afterward flow 
 freely and correctly from his pen when his mind was busied in dra- 
 matic composition. 
 
 Lawyer Greene had a brother, or cousin, Thomas Greene, who, 
 in 1586, was a member of a company of actors, known as "The 
 Lord Chamberlain's Servants," to which company Shakespeare after- 
 ward became permanently attached. Thomas Greene was an actor 
 of some repute, also a play-writer; and, by his influence, Shake- 
 speare could have obtained employment for his evenings in some in- 
 
CHAPTER I: LIFE. 17 
 
 ferior position on the stage which, for one of his poetic tempera- 
 ment, must have had great attraction. Thus may have passed the 
 young man's life: busy during the day in the attorney's office, and, 
 in the evenings, on the stage, doing the very small parts, but learn- 
 ing rapidly and thoroughly the minuliae of dramatic representation 
 and all the requirements and possibilities of the theatre. 
 
 As an actor, Shakespeare never acquired great proficiency, per- 
 haps because he soon discovered that he had moie ability to drama- 
 tize than to act. It has been related that he never reached a higher 
 rank, as actor, than to play the part of the Ghost in his own tragedy 
 of Hamlet. His literary ability must soon have induced him to put 
 together dramatic scenes. This ability, becoming apparent, he 
 would be set to adapt old compositions to present wants, to re-write 
 scenes to suit certain peculiar circumstances: the step from this 
 to the construction of a complete and original drama could have 
 been easily taken ; and that drama once presented to the public, 
 the world thus placed in sympathy with the poet's conceptive and 
 fancy-lighted mind, the encouragement of success would have led 
 to further efforts. 
 
 As early as 1592, Shakespeare had left the lawyer's office, — if in- 
 deed he had ever been employed there, as there is surely good rea- 
 son to believe, — and about this time, or soon after, produced, be- 
 sides his poems of Venus and Adonis published in 1593, and Lucrece 
 in 1594, King Richard III, A Midsummer Nights Dream, The Mer- 
 chant of Venice, King Richard II, perhaps also Romeo and Juliet 
 and AWs Well that Ends Well. He was growing famous, as 
 the author of such works must needs have been. 
 
 Spenser, then in high favor at Court, and arisen to quick celebrity 
 by the publication of the first three books of the Faerie Queene, 
 generously paid to the rising dramatist, in his poem, Colin Clouts 
 Come Home Again, published in 1594, this high compliment: 
 
1 8 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 "And there, though last not least is ^tion ; 
 A gentler shepherd may no where be found ; 
 Whose muse, full of high thought's invention. 
 Doth, like himself, heroically sound." 
 
 The queen, delighted by his flattering verses and exquisite com- 
 pliment in A Midsummer Nights Dream, was pleased to honor him 
 by her approbation, and did him the further grace to suggest a sub- 
 ject for his dramatic skill. There is also a very pretty story of the 
 queen and Shakespeare, told in this way. The poet was enacting 
 the part of a king. At that time people of distinction were in the 
 habit of passing over the stage during dramatic representations. 
 The queen, in so passing, bowed to the actor who did not return her 
 salutation, but went on with his rendition of character. To ascer- 
 tain if she could cause him to drop his assumed character, the mis- 
 chievous lady again passed, and at the same time allowed her glove 
 to fall at his feet. Shakespeare immediately picked it up, and re- 
 turned it to its royal owner with these impromptu lines added, 
 without an instant's deliberation, to the speech which he was just 
 
 reciting : 
 
 "And though now bent on this high embassy. 
 Yet stoop we to take up our cousin's glove." 
 
 The intellectual queen was of course highly pleased with the 
 poet's skill and readiness, and expressed her delight by a royal com- 
 pliment. In this connection may be mentioned a complimentary 
 letter said to have been written by King James to Shakespeare on 
 the occasion of the production of the tragedy of Macbeth and refer- 
 ring to the prophetic vision of kings that greeted the Scottish usurp- 
 er, as the descendants of Banquo. 
 
 Whether Shakespeare ever received more substantial favors from 
 his crowned auditors than empty compliments, we are unable to 
 determine. He had, however, in the Earl of Southampton, a mu- 
 nificent patron, if the story be true, that, at the building of the 
 
CHAPTER I: LIFE. 19 
 
 Globe Theatre in 1594, he received, as a gift from the earl gratified 
 aud complimented by the dedication to him of the poems, Venus and 
 Adonis and Lucrece which had become at once exceedingly popular, 
 the sum of a thousand pounds, an amount equal, taking into ac- 
 count the change of values which has occurred in three hundred 
 years, to perhaps thirty thousand dollars, which the poet invested as 
 his share in the new theatre. 
 
 As Shakespeare's plays were now produced in rapid succession, 
 and met with the most enthusiastic success; his fortunes became ex- 
 ceedingly prosperous, and his reputation thoroughly established. 
 His full purse enabled him to remove the embarrassments that still 
 oppressed his worthy parents; and he found means likewise to ob- 
 tain, from the Herald's College, a grant of coat-armour, by which 
 honest John Shakespeare was raised from the rank of yeoman to 
 that of gentleman, much to the disgust of Sir Thomas Lucy who 
 had driven the son from his native village, and who now entered his 
 protest against ennobling the father. In 1597, William Shakespeare 
 bought Great House or New Place, the most pretentious residence 
 of his native town ; but the death of his only son, Hamnet, about 
 this time, destroyed the joyfulness of such improvement in his cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 Near the beginning of the seventeenth century the famous Mer- 
 maid Club was founded by Sir Walter Raleigh, and tradition reports 
 many witty sayings and doings by its distinguished members, one of 
 which the great dramatist undoubtedly was. The encounters of wit 
 between Shakespeare and Ben Johnson have been often referred to, 
 and these doubtless took place when the members of this merry 
 club were met at the Mermaid Tavern, in Bread street, to spend 
 the night in joyous conviviality. There were assembled Sir Walter 
 Raleigh, Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Jonson, Dekker, Bur- 
 bage, Selden, Colton, Carew, Donne, and many others, notable in 
 
A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 that age of literature and wit. We may imagine, but cannot fully 
 realize, the joyous merriment that resounded in the old wainscoted 
 parlor of the Mermaid, when Shakespeare pushed, with his quick 
 wit and quaint conceits, the bewildered Jonson; and that slower 
 worthy, his more ponderous wit quite disconcerted by the brilliant 
 flashes of his rapid antagonist, sought by more labored and elaborate 
 jokes, or some pedantic display of learning, to cover his discomfit- 
 ure from his laughing companions. Then would Dick Burbage 
 perpetrate some merry joke, or relate a humorous anecdote, or call 
 on Fletcher for a song, on elegant Beaumont for a toast to some 
 fair court-lady, or on Sir Walter for a tale of wild adventure on the 
 seas, or bold descent upon the Spanish coasts. 
 
 About the year 1611, Shakespeare is supposed to have withdrawn 
 from London, to live at his ease in Stratford, and enjoy the com- 
 petence his skill and industry had acquired. Whetlier he continued 
 to appear on the stage in the impersonation of characters until the 
 time of his retirement to Stratford, we are unable to determine. 
 One would suppose that the dignity of the author of Hamlei and 
 King Lear would have suffered by playing such inconsiderable char- 
 acters as he was accustomed to enact. . Hamlet was probably writ- 
 ten about the year 1600, first printed in 1603, in which year Sejanus, 
 a tragedy by Ben Jonson, was produced at the Blackfriars, and the 
 author of Hamlet played in it a subordinate part. So it is quite 
 evident that Shakespeare did not hold his dignity as an obstruction 
 to his duties as an actor; and that he continued on the stage after 
 his fame as a poet and a play-writer had been largely established. 
 
 Perhaps he thought the training of constant contact with the 
 necessities of the stage, as experienced by the actor, an important 
 guide to the judgment of the play-writer, and the most effectual 
 means to reduce his poetical conceptions and combinations within 
 those law&and limits that control and contain, in their unity, a per- 
 
CHAPTER I: LIFE. 
 
 feet drama. Poetic thought is apt to fly away from, and despise, 
 all rules; but dramatic action depends for its success upon the strict 
 observance of certain rules. To combine poetry and the drama, 
 therefore, what better means can be used than to combine the poet 
 and the actor, not indeed the principal actor who would be so much 
 engrossed by the passion of the play that his outward observation 
 would be limited, but a subordinate one who would be sufficiently 
 impressed with the necessities of the stage, without being absorbed 
 by the great theme of the action, and who would have the best op- 
 portunity of observation of both audience and dramatic movement ? 
 
 And here it must be remembered that more skill is called for in 
 the disposition and portraiture of minor parts of a drama, than of 
 the principal characters; for poetic genius alone may force the lat- 
 ter along, but scarcely will suffice for the nice arrangement, combi- 
 nation, and artistic support of the former, where consummate skill 
 and an experience of the stage are clearly indispensable. It has 
 been often noticed that Shakespeare's minor characters have an in- 
 dividuality and a purpose that indicate great skill in the dramatist, 
 and that they are seldom introduced for the simple purpose of re- 
 lating some matter necessary to carry along the action of the play, 
 as is of frequent occurrence with other dramatists. One character 
 is placed as a foil, or an intensifier of another ; and, while each is so 
 delineated as to make it, in itself, an effective study, all are so com- 
 bined and interlaced that their mutual eflFect is not fully realized un- 
 til much study has been given, or they are produced in very careful 
 representation, when, like the supporting parts of a finely imagined 
 picture, the whole will present a masterpiece of art. Perhaps, for 
 much of this skill of detail, Shakespeare was indebted to his ex- 
 perience as an actor. 
 
 Tradition says that, in his retirement, the great poet continued to 
 write plays for the London Stage, and the Tempest, Winter's Tale, 
 
A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 a.nA Henry F7// are supposed to have been produced during this 
 retirement. The date of the production of each of his numerous 
 plays is, however, a matter of much dispute, and Shakespearian 
 scholars differ, sometimes widely, in such assignment. Thus, the 
 7>»«/(?j^ has generally been assigned to the year 1611, or later, for 
 various reasons : among others, Prospero's last words : 
 
 "And thence retire me to my Milan, where 
 Every third thought shall be my grave." 
 
 These lines have been supposed to refer to Shakespeare's retire- 
 ment to Stratford, about 161 1; but a German Critic, Dr. Karl Elze, 
 writing in 1872, brings forward a variety of reasons to show that the 
 Tempest must have been written in 1604, and that, moreover, about 
 that time Shakespeare withdrew from the stage, and ceased to write 
 plays, as a regular occupation. ''At the same time," says Dr. Elze, 
 "it need not be doubted that Shakespeare, even after this time, 
 may have, once or twice, re-entered the service of the Muses; in 
 other words, that the Tempest was not his last play." 
 
 Dr. Elze's reasons for assignment of date to the Tempest are too 
 lengthy and elaborate to be considered here, but it may be said that 
 there is a certain amount of specious argument displayed, though 
 nothing to impress with the feeling of certainty. One is struck 
 with the ingenuity of such reasoning, but at the same time feels a 
 vague sense of indefiniteness, as the conclusions rest on internal 
 evidence of the play, as above illustrated, style of versification, 
 similitude of phraseology, and fancied relation of thoughts and 
 ideas with the works of earlier or contemporaneous writers. 
 
 But indeed any assignment of date, founded on similar grounds, 
 by the many critics who have busied their minds on this subject, is 
 liable to the same objections that hold against the arguments of the 
 German doctor, whose opinion has been here quoted on account of 
 its bearing on the time of the retirement of our dramatist from the 
 
CHAPTER I: LIFE. 23 
 
 London stage, which has generg.lly been set at a later date by 
 writers on this subject. 
 
 Rowesays: "'I'he latter part of Shakespeare's life was spent, as 
 all men of good sense will wish their's may be, in ease, retirement, 
 and the society of his friends; that his pleasurable wit and good na- 
 ture engaged him in the acquaintance, and entitled him to the friend- 
 ship, of the gentlemen of the neighborhood." It is even reported 
 that he was at length on pleasant terms of acquaintance with Sir 
 Thomas Lucy, the son of his ancient enemy. That he was of a 
 "sweet" and "gentle" disposition is the record of his whole life, and 
 his companionable qualities were such as must have made his socie- 
 ty much sought and enjoyed. 
 
 There is no record of large literary labors engaged in during his 
 retirement; but such may, nevertheless, have taken place, as our in- 
 formation of this period of his life is exceedingly vague. When 
 visited by friends, he gave himself up for the time to their society; 
 and their remembrance of such visits was only of his pleasant com- 
 pany. But Stratford was too far away, in those days of slow travel- 
 ing, to permit the frequent visits of his London friends, and these 
 are the only ones to have transmitted to us any mention of his 
 name. Thus the story of his retirement is untold. He never had, 
 so far as we can learn, at any time of his life, a chum, adviser, or 
 dear friend, into whose ear he could pour the ambitions and aspira- 
 tions of his gifted mind — to whom he could go for literary counsel 
 or sympathy. In all his career as a dramatist he stood alone, and 
 apparently formed no literary partnership, as was much the custom 
 of that time. 
 
 If, like Johnson, Shakespeare had found a Boswell to follow, like 
 a faithful spaniel, his literary walks, his social rambling, his domes- 
 tic retirement, the world need not hav6 speculated today over the 
 possibilities of his life. But, alas ! Boswell was born to pour his 
 
24 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 adulations upon one whom the world could better have left in dark- 
 ness than the author of Hamlet, and the biography of the greatest 
 of poets remains unwritten. In his own family there was no one of 
 sufficient intellect to inform the world of his latest purposes, or to 
 collect, and save from oblivion, his scattered papers, when, in the 
 strength of his manhood, he was suddenly cut down by acute 
 disease. 
 
 The death of the great poet and dramatist occurred on the twen- 
 ty-third of April, i6i6, just fifty two years after the supposed day of 
 his birth. The Reverend John Ward who was vicar of Stratford in 
 1662, has left this record, made a half century after the event, and 
 hence entitled to what credit the reader may allow: "Shakespeare, 
 Drayton, and Ben. Johnson had a merry meeting, and, it seems, 
 drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted." 
 This is, of course, possible, as at that time hard-drinking undoubt- 
 edly occurred frequently, and both Shakespeare and Ben. Johnson 
 were fond of conviviality; but the reverend gentleman's report 
 must have been founded on tradition which was transmitted to him 
 through village gossips, and the facts may thus have been grossly 
 exaggerated. 
 
 Shakespeare was buried on the 25th of April, in Stratford Church; 
 and above his grave, on the north wall, was placed a monumental 
 bust of the poet in the act of writing. Beneath, on a flat stone 
 covering his grave, is this inscription, said to have been written by 
 himself just before his death: 
 
 Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, 
 
 TO DIGG the DVST ENCLOASED HEARE : 
 
 E T 
 
 BLESTE be Y man Y SPARES THES STONES, 
 AND CVRST BE HE Y MOVES MY BONES. 
 We learn by tradition and several, more or less authorized, por- 
 
CHAPTER /;. LIFE. 25 
 
 traits, that the personal appearance of Shakespeare was very prepos- 
 sessing. Aubrey says the poet was "a handsome and well-shaped 
 man." That his eyes were light hazel, and hair and beard auburn, 
 we have reason to believe from such coloring of his monumental 
 bust which was executed some time before 1623, and probably im- 
 mediately after his death. There seems to be no foundation for the 
 story of his lameness, which rests only on conjecture, and is first 
 mentioned by Capell, an editor of the plays, who deduces it from 
 
 the Sonnets: 
 
 "So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite," 
 
 SONNET XXXVII. 
 
 "Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt," 
 
 SONNET LXXXIX. 
 
 This language is of course figurative, but the story has been so fre- 
 quently repeated that it now obtrudes itself upon us. Of the por- 
 traits of Shakespeare, the best authenticated is that published in 1623, 
 on the title page of the First Folio, which bears at the corner of the 
 plate the signature, "Martin Droeshout, sculpsit, London." Ben. 
 Jonson attests the fidelity of this engraving as a likeness of Shake- 
 speare, his friend and companion, in the following lines printed in 
 the Folio, on the page opposite the portrait: 
 
 "This Figure, that thou here seest put, 
 It was for gentle Shakespeare cut ; 
 Wherein the Graver had a strife 
 With Nature, to out-do the life : 
 O, could he but have drawn his wit 
 As well in brasse, as he hath hit 
 His face ; the Print would then surpasse 
 All, that was ever writ in brasse. 
 But since he cannot. Reader, looke 
 Not on his Picture, but his Booke. 
 B. I. " 
 
 The bust over the poet's grave is a ruder work than the Droeshout 
 print, and was made by one, Gerard Johnson, "a tombe-maker." 
 
26 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 It is believed, however, that this workman, — he cannot be called an 
 artist, — modelled his bust after a death-mask, as was the common 
 practice of the period. The bust is of stone colored, as before 
 mentioned, and bears some resemblance to the Droeshout print. It 
 has been claimed that a death-mask of Shakespeare, probably the 
 one used by Johnson, has been discovered in the possession of Dr. 
 Becker of Hesse-Darmstadt, from which a portrait has lately been 
 reproduced by Mr. William Page. There is also the Chandos por- 
 trait, an oil-painting, now in a ruined condition, in the National 
 Portrait Gallery, South Kensington, London. Besides these, there 
 are several other portraits which seem to be worthy of less consid- 
 eration ; but in no case can we be fairly sure that any likeness which 
 has come down to us, is a true and worthy copy of the face of the 
 great poet. 
 
 From all these, however, we have come to recognize a certain 
 style of head and features as the Shakespeare face. There is the 
 oval shape of countenance, high brow betokening not so conspicu- 
 ously force of intellect as delicacy of thought and sublimity and 
 liveliness of imagination, the tender, melancholy eyes, delicate 
 mouth, and firm chin: in fact, a face capable, — so far as we can 
 combine shape and expression with the wonderful thoughts of the 
 great master, — of producing the plays. 
 
 Although we must always regret that we have not a likeness of 
 Shakespeare by the hand of an artist of true genius, yet we cannot 
 feel that his face has been lost. The possibihties that exist in the 
 received idea of Shakespeare's face, are the best vouchers for its 
 authenticity. 
 
 That the genius of Shakespeare was very fully acknowledged in 
 his own day and generation, we have abundant proof; and that ac- 
 knowledgment, each succeeding generation has repeated. As the 
 world has progressed in knowledge, as literary works have vastly 
 
CHAPTER I: LIFE. 27 
 
 multiplied, as new poets have arisen to gain a popularity brief or 
 more enduring, it has become possible to more fully appreciate the 
 great merits of Shakespeare's dramas, under the light of succeeding 
 examples, than in the age that produced them. Thus Shakespeare's 
 fame grows brighter as time goes on, and as literary examples are 
 accumulated, by which to measure and illustrate him. In regard to 
 that fame, however, the great poet exhibited an apparent disregard 
 that critics now find quite unaccountable. 
 
 Smarting under the slights and privations that severely assailed the 
 first half of his life, Shakespeare seems to have been ambitious of 
 acquiring fortune and independent position; and, to gain these, 
 used his wonderful intellectual abilities most diligently and constant- 
 ly. The productions of his genius, the great creations of his im- 
 agination and fancy, as. they accomplished his immediate design of 
 procuring credit and fortune, seem to have been used for this pur- 
 pose, and then cast aside by their author as unworthy of further care. 
 He made no collection of his works, took no notice of their publi- 
 cation by others, and died without seeing the bright children of his 
 creative brain rescued from oblivion by being fairly set in print. 
 
 There seems but one way of rationally accounting for this appar- 
 ent disregard of the approbation of posterity, generally so highly 
 valued by the poetic mind. We may explain it in this way. Antici- 
 pating much longer life, as his previous good health gave him suf- 
 ficient reason to do, and finding judgment, skill, conception, and 
 imagination ripening, as each successive drama was produced, the 
 poet contemplated grander and more intellectual works than any 
 that have come down to us; greater monuments of his wonderful 
 power and skill. Constantly haunted by these more gigantic con- 
 ceptions, he could naturally look with indifference on what had 
 already been done, fully conscious that the undeveloped imaginings 
 which were floating in his brain, had possibilities beyond all his ear- 
 
28 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Her works. In the presence of Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, and 
 Othello, we are inclined to shake the head in incredulity at the men- 
 tion of grander, or more intellectual, works; but we must remember 
 that we are not viewing literature with Shakespeare's mind. 
 
 The great poet's death was accidental, suspending his labors at 
 the early age of fifty-two years. Had Milton and Dante died at a 
 like age, the world would never have known their two great epics; 
 for neither were completed when their authors had reached the age 
 at which Shakespeare died. Our author toiled most industriously 
 for position and fortune; these he had fully acquired in his busy 
 half-century of active life. Might it not have been his thought and 
 intention, to devote his remaining years, his ripe judgment, and ma- 
 tured skill to works that would have transmitted his name to posteri- 
 ty with even greater luster than gilds it flow ? 
 
 " Dramatic composition was not considered in his day, and perhaps 
 is not now, th6 highest branch of literature. Shakespeare may have 
 meditated a great epic, and desired its splendor to be undimmed by 
 the- lighter literature of dramas by the same author. Hence he may 
 have been content to suffer his dramas to perish. He may eveii 
 have commenced his epic. As no papers were collected at his de- 
 cease, though such papers must necessarily have existed, the large 
 Intents of his later years may have perished with his letters, frag- 
 mentary dramas, scraps of verse, unfinished scenes, notes, and 
 memoranda, such as would naturally be left in the library of a great 
 dramatist and poet at his death. Or they exist in some forgotten 
 spot where chance or circumstance has placed them, and from which 
 they may yet appear to challenge astonishment and admiration, and 
 to complete the history of the greatest intellect that has left its stamp 
 on the literatlire of the world. 
 
 Dr. Carl Elze, the German critic before referred to, claims, from 
 certain reflections in the Tempest and Sonnets, that Shakespeare felt 
 
CHAPTER I: LIFE. 29 
 
 the approach of age in declining force of mind and body, and he 
 quotes from sonnet Ixxiii to prove this assertion : 
 
 That time of year thou may'st in me behold 
 When yellow leaves, or none or few, do hang 
 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
 Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 
 In me thou see'st the twilight of such day 
 As after sunset fadeth in the west, 
 Which by-and-by black night doth take away ; 
 Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. &c. 
 
 Such moralizing as this sonnet contains might come from a youth- 
 ful mind transferring itself in imagination from youth to age, and 
 must be held insufficient proof of actual old age in the author who, 
 with a poet's license, might surely pass beyond the bounds of pres- 
 ent condition. The "autumnal mood" which has been pointed out 
 as pervadtng the Tempest, may likewise be regarded as an exhibition 
 of the exquisite art of the dramatist, in surrounding his "autumnal" 
 characters with a congenial atmosphere; and no more a portion of 
 the author's self, than the superstitious shadow, that hangs over Mac- 
 beth, is an evidence that Shakespeare was haunted by the supernat- 
 ural. There is nothing really tending to show declining powers of 
 mind or body in our poet previous to his final, mortal illness. The 
 plays assigned to his last years show no failing mind, but more fin- 
 ished execution, more careful combinations, and especially greater 
 power and originality of conception, than his earlier work. 
 
 Shakespeare's apparent disregard for the fate of the poems and 
 plays that were issued in his name, has been used as an argument 
 by those who have sought to deny to him his right of authorship; 
 but such argument seems to apply with even greater force against 
 the clainis of those who have presented Lord Bacon as the dramat- 
 ist, as it cannot be proven that the philosopher and Lord Chancel- 
 lor in any way sought to perpetuate the works in question, or had the 
 least connection with their ultimate preservation. 
 
30 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Although the late Lord Palmerston held that these plays came 
 from the brain of Lord Bacon, the idea was borrowed from this side 
 of the Atlantic, and was first given to the world, in 1856, by Miss 
 Delia Bacon, an American lady of much culture, but unfortunately 
 of an unstable mind. Although an intense student of Shakespeare 
 and Bacon and of all literature bearing on the lives or works of 
 either, and a "passionate pilgrim" and sojourner at the birth-places 
 and residences of both these illustrious men, the proof she sought 
 could not be found. The vague resemblances and shadowy rela- 
 tions that first awakened her suspicions, were all the arguments that 
 she could gather, to persuade the world into her belief. Tormented 
 by perceiving that what she deemed relations the world called fan- 
 cies, vexed and bewildered by the ridicule launched on her poor 
 head, sadly overworked and weighed down by poverty, this unfort- 
 unate lady's unbalanced brain gave way. "The latent insanity was 
 developed into phrenzy," and she became the inmate of an asylum. 
 She never recovered her mind, and only returned to her country to 
 di^ But the magnetic power of a persistent belief is shown by the ' 
 fact that her mad theory did not die with her. The world is prone 
 to grasp at novelty; and it is scarcely possible to propose anything 
 too extravagant for belief. The idea promulgated by this mad lady, 
 is growing, year after year, into public notice. People of sense and 
 understanding are found advocating it; and the great poet of the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is in positive danger of being 
 robbed of his laurel crown, in the opinion of many, unless, by some 
 means, these crazy fancies can be argued, or laughed, away. 
 
 As Lord Bacon survived Shakespeare nearly ten years, and passed 
 the last five in retirement and intellectual pursuits, what more sim- 
 ple and natural course could he have taken, if he had been the true 
 dramatist, than have brought forward the proofs of his authorship, 
 when such claim could have done no harm to the dead Shakespeare, 
 
CHAPTER I: LIFE. 31 
 
 and when there existed no reason that can now be sensibly assigned, 
 why he should not have done so, whatever might have been the re- 
 straining reasons of his youth ? Then he could have revised the 
 great plays, added explanatory notes where such were necessary, 
 seen them carefully printed and published, and thus, by the luster 
 of this late discovery, partially effaced from the remembrance of 
 men the disgrace that closed his career as a statesman. 
 
 The chief reasons that have been brought forward to bolster up a 
 claim for Bacon against the time-honored name of Shakespeare, are,, 
 that in an elaborate examination of their works, it has been found 
 that the currents of their thoughts often run in similar channels, 
 and the manner in which they group their ideas, and frequently 
 their mental reasonings, are alike, presenting such points of similitude 
 as would not be likely to occur accidentally. The explanation of 
 this likeness will bring us back to the theory or proposition with 
 which this chapter opened, viz: that the condition of the general 
 mind is the exciting and directing cause of the development of in- 
 dividual progress. Thus occurs the coincidence of the two great 
 minds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, acted upon by 
 .the currents of popular thought, but springing far beyond its average 
 level, as they crystalized their great conceptions into imperishable 
 literature, presenting the phenomena of constant reference to the 
 common source from which their progress sprung, the popular direc- 
 tion and modes of thought of the age in which they lived. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 The works qf Shakespeare: their influence, purpose and 
 literary excellence. 
 
 "C^^OTABLE and somewhat famous in his own time, the writings 
 ^^^ of William Shakespeare, poet and dramatist, have grown into 
 higher estimation since his death, until the world has come to rec- 
 ognize and acknowledge in him, not only the Master of Literature 
 and greatest of poets, but a guide and leader in the realm of thought : 
 and the broader the comprehension that now studies his works, the 
 larger the measure of admiration it accords. 
 
 A child seldom reads Shakespeare with that large degree of pleas- 
 ure which a mature mind derives from such perusal: fullness of judg- 
 ment and intellect is required to properly appreciate the exquisite 
 pathos, force, imaigination, humor, passion; and philosophy, that are 
 lavishly wrought into his greater dramas. Yet even a child can feel 
 the presence of larger thoughts, a deeper passion, than he can real- 
 ize, as he follows Hamlet or Macbeth through the psychological 
 changes that mark the career of each. 
 
 As the lessons of the world are successively learned — as the ways 
 
 and nature of humanity grow more familiar to us — as we become 
 
 aware of the capacity and reach of our own minds, the depth of 
 
 feeling in our own hearts — as we pome to know that life 
 
 "Is nobler than attending for a check, 
 
 Richer than doing nothing for a bauble, 
 
 Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk : 
 
 in brief, as we grow older, we find in Shakespeare, broadly deline- 
 
CHAPTER II: WORKS. 33 
 
 ated, all the phases of life which we notice about us, or experience 
 in ourselves; so that our admiration of him, whom we now find our 
 ablest teacher, grows into love and respect, as to the pleasure of the 
 imagination and charm of poetry is added the benefit of a larger, 
 truer conception of the world of men, obtained by study of his 
 works. In these plays is found, in highest perfection, whatever the 
 mind would seek, whether it be passion, sublimity, philosophy, mor- 
 ality, humor, wit, any function of the intellect, or quality of the 
 heart. The deepest thinker and the shallowest laugher drink from 
 the same cup, and find each his peculiar exhileration in the draught. 
 In the study of the two sides of our human nature, emotional 
 feeling and mental apprehension, I think it is safe to believe there 
 are no written text-books better than Shakespeare's plays, where life 
 is exhibited in the midst of its characteristic phenomena, as the di- 
 agnosis of the physician shows disease by the presence of its char- 
 acteristic symptoms. Whoever can xtaA Hamlet ox Macbeth without 
 feeling the sympathies of his heart stirred in its profoundest depths, 
 and his intellectual nature incited to larger reaches of thought than 
 come with the ordinary incidents of life, can scarcely expect to find 
 in any book an emotional or mental stimulus, or ahy measure of 
 himself; for in him imagination is such a sluggish thing that it has 
 
 "No figures, nor no fantasies, 
 Which busy care draws in the brains of men." 
 
 But where is such a man? Puck might circle the earth again and 
 again, and spend many times "forty minutes" about it, nor find so 
 unimpressible a piece of humanity. Imagination holds its sceptre 
 over all mankind without exception; it even descends lower in the 
 scale of being and exerts its power upon the brutes. A sleeping- 
 dog has his imaginations. Watch him as he moves "his paws rest- 
 lesslyj curls back his lips, and growls at some phantom of his sleep, 
 some invader of his dreams — 
 
34 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 "Dreams 
 Which are the children of an idle brain, 
 Begot of nothing but vain fantasy 
 Which is as thin of substance as the air, 
 And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes 
 Even now the frozen bosom of the north. 
 And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence. 
 Turning his face to the dew-dropping south." 
 
 The lover of fun is delighted at the vagaries and wit of Sir John 
 Falstaff, Dogberry, Nick Bottom, Sir Toby Belch, Malvolio, and all 
 the many humorous characters of the plays; but while thus intent 
 only on die merry side of life, he is often insensibly drawn to more 
 intellectual pleasures, and learns, perhaps in the midst of his merri- 
 ment, that there is something better than laughter. Although fun is 
 good and healthy, Shakespearfe's especially so, and though it is, 
 perhaps, a wise philosophy to laugh rather than look sad, to 
 
 "Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth, 
 Turn melancholy forth to funerals;" 
 
 yet we still remember that 
 
 "Mirth cannot move a soul in agony," 
 and that "those that are in extremity of either," — laughing or mel- 
 ancholy, — "are abominable fellows, and betray themselves to every 
 modern censure, worse than drunkards." 
 
 So undoubtedly fun must yield the palm of supremacy in interest 
 to the more noble pleasures of the intellect, arising from the glorious 
 apprehension of thought and the wonderful range of imagination. 
 We all love to laugh, for laughing is a thing essentially human; but 
 we would not choose to be cast in laughing parts all our lives, to 
 take up the profession of clowns or buffoons, 
 
 "And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper." 
 
 To laugh is the relaxation of nature from thought; but it is the 
 thought that is the purpose of life, not the laugh; and we all feel 
 
CHAPTER II: WORKS. 35 
 
 within us certain workings, of humanity which subdue levity, and 
 compel us to intense interest in every exhibition and delineation of 
 the; emotional nature of mankind, which we make our own by sym- 
 pathy; and especially are we interested in the development of each 
 intellectual faculty, because we recognize therein the great mental 
 inheritance of men — all that makes them different from more perish- 
 able forms of matter — from the dust, — to use Hamlet's conceit,— r 
 that imagination may trace, passing from the kingly shape of Alex- 
 ander, and serving many a baser purpose, till we find it stopping a 
 beer-barrel. 
 
 It niay be that we have read the plays again and again, that the 
 stories and characters are well known, that we can quote many pas- 
 sages, and that the words and verses fpllow each other with the 
 smooth-flowing easiness that belongs to familiar poetry j but can we 
 exhaust them? Is their wealth like the sweet material bees gather 
 from the flowers, a certain fixed quantity, and that taken, the sweetT 
 bearing blossoms only empty cups? Is it not rather like the scent 
 of sandal-wood, a never-dying perfume that time is powerless to 
 exhaust ? 
 
 I believe that the effects of the beauties and the suggestive force 
 of Shakespeare's great plays increase in their impression upon the. 
 mind the more familiar become the words and imagery of the scenes. 
 As we study and learn by heart his works, insensibly we absorb 
 into ourselves a part of the author; familiarity with the fine images 
 and grand conceptions Of his master-mind, so impresses our own 
 minds that those images and conceptions become permanently fixed 
 within us, and form an actual part of ourselves, influencing, per- 
 haps much more largely than we are conscious, all our thoughts and 
 actions. 
 
 Psychology is a theme which easily branches into the metaphysi- 
 cal; but nothing is surer than that the thoughts, which have found 
 
36 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 expression in the past, affect continuously the present, and will ex- 
 tend indefinitely into the future, as mankind study and learn the 
 lessons great minds and the events of history transmit, the largest 
 legacy of the human race. 
 
 We are not alone what natural formation and the circumstances 
 of our surroundings constitute; all the great Past stretches out in- 
 numerable lines of communication, connecting us, the living, with 
 the many dead; so that what our ancestors and all the world's an- 
 cestors have been, helps to make us what we are. Especially minds 
 of great conceptive and imaginative power often exert after death a 
 greater influence upon the movement of the world of men than tliey 
 did in life; and such has undoubtedly been the case with Shakes- 
 peare. Thought once impressed on the general mind by any popu- 
 lar form of literature, is a never-exhausted legacy to the race ; it 
 reaches generation after generation, not only by means of the origi- 
 nal literature, but also by the harvests which spring from its seed in 
 the generations through which it passes. 
 
 Thus it is impossible to measure the effect which Shakespeajre's 
 mind is exerting on the world to-day; that effect comes to us through 
 so many modifications that we cannot trace its course; but it is. safe 
 to conclude that a portion, and perhaps not a small one, of every 
 man's intellect, is a reproduction of some part of Shakespeare's. 
 So great has been his influence upon the world, through literature 
 and the drama, that a large part of what passes for original thought 
 in this A. D. 1879, is but a reflection from him, a filtering of his 
 thoughts through the world's thinkers during nearly three hundred 
 years. 
 
 Therefore, whether we read and study his plays, or never look at 
 them, we receive some part of their influence through the minds of 
 those, living and dead, who have studied them. Is it not then a 
 reasonable thing that we should go to the fountain-head from which 
 
CHAPTER II: WORKS. 37 
 
 so great a stream of thought has come down the ages, and drink 
 with thirsty minds from this intellectual spring, nor be content to 
 take it by absorption from second hands ? 
 
 To study Shakespeare's plays is to go to school to him ; and the 
 lessons he teaches are generally easy, and always interesting. He 
 gives us hard work sometimes as he leads our minds into intricacies 
 or profundities of thought, but he guides with such masterly control 
 of all the intellectual elements, that we have generally surmounted 
 the diificulty before we are fully aware of the greatness of ihe prob^ 
 lem we are working. That we may not feel the fatigue of our in- 
 tellectual exertions, he amuses us with his hearty humor and spark- 
 ling wit, excites us with his pictures of brilliant 'imaginings, and 
 charming conceptions, arouses our sympathetic emotions with skill- 
 ful touches upon the pathetic chords of our hearts, and finally sends 
 us home after each lesson wiser and better beings, creatures of 
 larger thoughts and broader sympathies. 
 
 We "may wander 
 From east to Occident, cry out for service. 
 Try many, all good, serve truly, never 
 Find such another master," 
 
 A correct taste in art is acquired and cultivated by constant study 
 and examination of the best work of artists; and we find that we 
 can return again and again to a fine picture with constantly renewed 
 pleasure, and dream, at each visit, a new dream suggested by the 
 appeal of art and beauty to the impressible mind. In precisely the 
 same way, the study of Shakespeare's plays is greatly instructive, 
 and the pictures they contain are always beautiful, always freshly 
 suggestive to the imaginative mind. We cannot tire of them, for 
 they come to us always with newly kindled thoughts; and the more 
 we contemplate them, the more sensitive grow our minds to their 
 impressions. 
 
38 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Concerning the meaning of Shakespeare's plays and the purpose 
 of the author in their elaboration, and in the characterization of 
 his people of the drama, much has been written ingeniously and 
 learnedly, telling what profound and careful students have discover- 
 ed in them. Not only every play, but every character, has been 
 subjected to the closest analysis and criticism, and many subtle 
 thoughts and specious theories have been developed, by which is 
 made to appear that these dramas have another signification than is 
 apparent in their obvious showing. 
 
 The critics, searching for subtle thought beneath the stories and 
 characterization, have attempted to prove that each of these dramas 
 is the philosophifcal development of a theme, every part resting up- 
 on a well-ordered scaffold of abstract thought, on which the author's 
 skill has built up this outside show of beauty, as the fairest blossom 
 is but the development of a seed, the germ of such -flower life. 
 Attempting to follow the critics in their intricate investigations, the 
 mind often becomes bewildered, while there arises in the heart a 
 feeling of regret when the flesh-and-blood Hamlet fades away, .and, 
 in his place, is set the impersonation of a philosophical idea which, 
 though it may be very ingenious, does not so appeal to our sympa- 
 thies' and imaginations as did the melancholy Dane ere he was rob- 
 bed of his human personality. 
 
 In the dramas of life which we see constantiy going on around us, 
 the apparent actors are persons and not ideas. If the drama of the 
 stage would be a mimic of that of life, its actors should have inde- 
 pendent personalities, not represent ingenious covers of injpersonal 
 ideas. In the dramas of life, the contact of character with charac- 
 ter, under varying circumstances, startles and interests us with its 
 unexpected developments and deviations from customary ways. 
 These surprises of life make its chief interest and constitute the 
 thrilling tragedies and amusing comedies. Drama presents pictures 
 
CHAPTER II: WORKS. 39 
 
 of life which must be in accordance with what we know of it, or we 
 are shocked or wearied, not interested or pleased. Personality is 
 especially necessary to give the largest interest in the scene by our 
 human sympathies with the joys, the woes, the laughter, or the 
 tears, of its mimic life. 
 
 But when a play is divested of personalties, made the representa- 
 tion of a thought, an idea, a theme, sympathy no longer invests it 
 with such interest, and its movement fails to touch the heart. In 
 other words, the action of the play upon the audience is transferred 
 from the heart to the mind; it becomes an ingenious literary com- 
 position perhaps, but no longer an enchanting tragedy or comedy. 
 Shakespeare's compositions are, in an eminent degree, true dramas 
 of life, and his characters, living men and women, who take their 
 places with the real men and women of history; and, like such act- 
 ual historical characters, exert their influence, by example and pre- 
 cept, upon their audience, the living men and women of the world. 
 They claim and have our fullest sympathies. 
 
 If then the force of dramatic action depends upon real and in- 
 tense personalities, is it not imputing lack of sagacity to the author 
 of a drama to endeavor to show that he drew his characters not so 
 much for their apparent action in the scenes as for the development 
 of a theme, or to serve as types of ideas, supporters of an ingenious 
 presentation approaching the character of allegory? As a literary 
 effort, an allegory may be worthy of much admiration, but its merit 
 is in another direction from the merit of a drama. Shakespeare's 
 Othello and Bunyan's Pilgrinis Progress have, each its own, peculiar 
 beauties and merits; but the Pilgrinis Process, on the stage, would 
 not command the same attention,' nor excite the same admiration as 
 the play of Othello; yet perhaps the work of Bunyan has had as 
 many readers and admirers as Shakespeare's Moor of Venice. The 
 reason why the Pil^m's Progress has not an assured place on the 
 
40 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 stage is, of course, that allegory is unsuitable to produce such 
 powerful stage effects as the legitimate drama. The point I wish to 
 develop fully is that it may be held to be a defect in a drama to 
 have an inner meaning beneath its imagery; and the great and con- 
 tinued success of Shakespeare's plays prove that they are not weak- 
 ened by such defect or fault, 
 
 Let us then not go too far below the surface, nor explore with the 
 diving-bells of theoretical criticism, profound depths beneath these 
 plays, in search of abstruse, inner meaning. This super-critical 
 analysis has been the favorite practice of many acute minds, and 
 has had its ardent followers and admirers, especially among German 
 students of our great dramatist, who have found, as they believe, in 
 the writings of the poet, a reflection of the inner life of the man; 
 and who claim to have first revealed Shakespeare, in his true great- 
 ness, to his own countrymen — 
 
 "But men may construe things after their fashion, 
 Clean from the purpose of the things themselves." 
 
 How much or how little truth may exist in such deeply drawn 
 conclusions is too broad a subject to be examined here; but with- 
 out a subtle, inner purpose, the plays of Shakespeare have a depth 
 of meaning in their obvious and apparent lessons, sufficient to lead 
 thoughtful and contemplative minds to the largest study of a philos- 
 ophy that is bounded only by the unknowable; and they contain 
 such grand array of beauties as to awaken admiration in those the 
 least inclined to sesthetical reflection. Most lovers of Shakespeare 
 are content with these obvious beauties so profusely spread before 
 them. Admirers of nature should be satisfied to feast their eyes 
 and hearts upon a lovely landscape, nor sully its contemplation with 
 desire to dig beneath the surface of each beautiful scene in search 
 of precious minerals. So may we be content with the glorious 
 showing of life that Shakespeare gives us, his flow of imagination, 
 
CHAPTER II: WORKS. 41 
 
 passion, and poetry, those fine touches of exquisite art, nature, or 
 inspiration, that thrill all hearts by their pathos, grandeur, wit, or 
 subtlety, their gentle graces, or their frightful terrors: and we may 
 leave the hidden philosophies of these plays, if such there be, in the 
 dark wells where they are said to lurk ; finding that to grasp the out- 
 er and revealed thoughts, is a sufficient task for our intellectual 
 powers, often calling for the largest exercise of mental comprehen- 
 sion. While then the deep miners labor in their search, let us en- 
 joy the fragrance and the beauty of the perfumed buds, the de- 
 licious and graceful blossoms, that hang sweetly in the air above, 
 rejoicing in bright promises, or the fullness of mature perfection. 
 
 There has been much inquiry and speculation concerning the 
 chronological order of the plays; and the date of each has teen de- 
 termined by careful examination of various points of reference to 
 contemporaneous writings and events, and also by reference in the 
 works of other writers. In this way careful lists have been made, 
 showing just how the plays have followed one another, with the Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona, Comedy of Errors, or Lovers Labor's Lost, at 
 one end, and Tempest, Henry VIII, or Winter's Tale, at the other. 
 Besides this way of settling the order of their composition, a new 
 method has more recently been devised, based upon metrical con- 
 struction of the verse ; and the order thus determined has been found 
 to be very nearly in agreement with that established by evidence 
 and reference. 
 
 In the earlier plays rhymes are abundant; Lov^s Labor's Lost 
 contains 1028, and ^ Midsummer Nights Dream, 731; while the 
 Tempest has only 2, and Winter's Tale, none. The first plays con- 
 tain few lines with superfluous final syllables; of these Lov^s Labor's 
 Lost has only 9, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, 29; while 
 the Tempest has 476, and Winter's Tale, 639. These differences 
 are so marked, as to establish the fact of a change in the author's 
 
42 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 method; and a thorough examination of the versification of the 
 plays soon convinces that, beginning with a free use of rhymes and 
 with exact endings, the poet gradually dropped the use of rhyme, 
 and adopted, or permitted himself to fall into, the habit of double- 
 endings. There are few Alexandrines in the first plays : in the poet's 
 middle period they are more abundant; but in the later plays they 
 decrease in number though continuing to occur oftener than in the 
 early plays. 
 
 These pecuUarities of versification, indicating as they do habits 
 of mind, are safe guides as to the general order of the plays; but 
 can scarcely be used alone to determine positively the relative posi- 
 tion of two plays written so nearly togather as within one or two 
 years. They are also very interesting facts, as illustrating the pro- 
 gress of Shakespeare's mind in dramatic composition. 
 
 Later writers have essayed to perfect the works of Shakespeare, 
 but such efforts have consisted chiefly of new arrangement of 
 scenes, curtailments, and slight changes to suit what they deem the 
 requirements of the modern stage. Colly Gibber has re-arranged, 
 and revised, the play of Richard III, and his version is now usual- 
 ly put upon the stage in preferance to the original of Shakespeare. 
 But what has he accomplished? Has he intensified the character of 
 Gloster? Has he given it new traits? new lines of demarkation? 
 Not at all; -he has given it nothing; it is above his measure. His 
 work is like a coat of bright paint put upon an old Greek statue; it 
 mars, not beautifies; but cannot hide the grand proportions. 
 
 Two writers of large dramatic genius, at least so considered in 
 their day, Dryden, the great poet — "with whom," Mapaulay says, 
 "died the secret of the old poetical diction of England" — and Sir 
 William Davenant noted for his claim of relationship to Shakespeare, 
 and also a poet-lauriate of England, united their labors to revise 
 and alter Shakespeare's Tempest. What did they accomplish ? The 
 
CHAPTER II: WORKS. 43 
 
 only scenes really impressive in their version are those they did not 
 touch, or altered little. They invented Sycorax, a sister of Caliban, 
 a very common woman, and utterly lacking of that poetical mon- 
 strosity that marks her brother, as Shakespeare drew him. They 
 invented Dorinda, a second daughter of Prospero, making her, as 
 well as her sister Miranda whom they quite spoiled, two feeble sen- 
 timentalists, in accordance with the fashion of their day. They in- 
 vented Hippolito — a man who had never seen a woman, having 
 lived secluded from the world, — in whom nature is shown working 
 in very questionable manner, in fact, warped to suit the prevailing 
 sentiment of a sentimental age. Most of the new matter of their 
 play is farcical; much of it commonplace; none of it grandly im- 
 aginative. As a specimen of its style and philosophy, this quotation : 
 
 Dorinda is sitting beside the wounded Hippolito, her lover, who has 
 just been restored from a death-like swoon. 
 
 "DORINDA. 
 
 I will not leave you, till you promise me 
 You will not die again. 
 
 HIPPOLITO. 
 
 Indeed I will not. 
 
 DORINDA. 
 
 You must not go to Heav'n, unless we go 
 Togather, for.I've heard my father say 
 That we must strive to be each other's guide : 
 The way to it will else be difficult, 
 Especially to those who are so young ; 
 But I much wonder what it is to die. 
 
 ^ ' V HIPPOLITO. 
 
 Sure 'tis to dream, a kind of breathless sleep. 
 When once the soul's gone out. 
 
 DORINDA. 
 
 What is the soul ? 
 
44 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 HIPPOLITO. 
 
 A small, Jjlue thing, that runs about within us. 
 
 DORINDA. 
 Then I have seen it, in a frosty morning, 
 liiin smoking from my mouth." 
 
 Dryden's tempest v. i. 
 
 Pardpn t)iis quotation which is given for the sake of illustration^ 
 
 arid l^t us remember, and believe if we can, that it is the work of 
 
 two really good writers, one of them often considered, after Milton, 
 
 the greatest English poet between Shakespeare and Lord Byron. 
 
 Let us compare with this, Shakespeare's profound philosophy and 
 
 poetical imageryl in Prospero's words, — omitted by Dryden and 
 
 ;Dayenant in their version to make place for such puerile stuff as 
 
 just quoted, — at the conclusion of the masque of Iris, Ceres, Juno, 
 
 and nymphs: 
 
 "These, our actors. 
 As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 
 Are melted ifito air, into thin air : 
 And, like the baseless fabric of this vision. 
 The cloud capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself. 
 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 
 And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded, 
 Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made on, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep." 
 
 The joint efforts of Dryden and Davenant to amend the Tempest re- 
 sulted so weakly, that their production is forgotten, and is only men- 
 tioned here, because' it shows, in a very striking manner, how com- 
 pletely unapproaphable is Shakespeare in his creations. Even the 
 emendation of difficult passages by the most careful . scholars is a 
 dangerous experiment; for it has often happened that what at first 
 seemed a happy restoration of the author's meaning, has proven, in 
 
CHAPTER II: WORKS. 45 
 
 the light of a broader or truer conception of the passage, a mistak- 
 ing or narrowing of the poet's thought. A distinguished Shake- 
 spearian scholar has termed the text of the plays ' 'a still lion that 
 seems dead, but may be only sleeping, or indeed only shamming;" 
 and liable, at any time, to average himself on whoever shall unwar- 
 ily dare to presume on his stillness, and take unwarrantable liberties 
 with him. 
 
 The printed copies of many of the plays could not, we know, 
 have had the supervision of the author, and we have reason to be- 
 lieve that such may have been the case with all. Hence we are 
 plagued with many blunders of the old printers who worked oiF the 
 original copies in an age when the typographical art had not reached 
 such perfection- as now. Over these cruces Shakespearian students 
 have carefully labored, intent on restoring the meaning hidden be- 
 neath errors of the types. So much wisdom, literary skill, ingenu- 
 ity, and patient thought have been brought to bear on the text that 
 its meaning has generally been made plain; but a few cases still re- 
 main to utterly baffle conjecture. 
 
 In this restoration of the text, many have been the disputes that 
 have arisen between editors and commentators concerning the mean- 
 ing of the author; and so much has been written in elucidation of 
 the plays that Shakespearian literature has grown to immense pro- 
 portions. The latest editions of Shakespeare's works contain,' how- 
 ever, the condensed results of much of the mental labor thus ex- 
 pended, and so give the student of to-day a great advantage over 
 the readers of the earlier editions, who were compelled to puzzle 
 through each difficult erux as best they could, without the aid of the 
 sign-boards that are now set up to tell what famous thinkers have 
 believed the right way. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 An analytical glance at Shakespeare's method and genius. 
 
 EN the midst of his enjoyment of Shakespeare the thoughtful 
 student will sometim'es stop to examine his pleasure, and seek to 
 learn the method by which the great master built so high his art. 
 In order to do this, he must, in imagination, enter the workshop of 
 the poet, and inquire how he probably set about the manufacture of 
 a play. 
 
 His stories, and often his characters, he did not invent. He 
 found some popular, or obscure, tale or history, that suited his pur- 
 pose, and foUowed'its events often with scrupulous exactness. Take, 
 as an example, the play of Othello. This is built upon a story by 
 GiovambattistaGiraldi Cinthio, an Italian author — a story that was 
 translated into English by N. Parr in 1795 : no earlier translation is 
 known; but there may have been one in Shakespeare's time although 
 no copy has survived. From such early translation, or from the 
 origirtal, our poet had the story of his play. This original is in it- 
 self rude and meagre, unadorned by the play of fancy or aesthetic 
 art. To give even an abridgment of it would be tedious. It is 
 enough to say that the circumstances of Othello's marriage are nar- 
 rated, the departure to Cyprus, the scenes in which lago awakens 
 and excites Othello's jealousy, the contrivance of the former by 
 which Cassio obtains Desdemona's intercession for him with her 
 husband, the scenes where she pleads to the Moor for the lieutenant, 
 the circumstance of the handkerchief, the attempted assassination 
 
CHAPTER HI: GENIUS. 47 
 
 of Cassio and murder of Desdemona; in the manner of which last 
 event the play departs from the original where that unfortunate lady 
 is beaten to death with a stocking full of sand; but such clumsy 
 means of death would not have comported with the dignity of 
 Shakespeare's tragedy. He also makes a change in the conclusion, 
 exposing the crimes of lago, and presenting the suicide of Othello; 
 by which poetical and moral justice bring punishment to crime, and 
 the drama is given a concise and tragic end. So much for the story 
 of Othello; it is not Shakespeare's but Cinthio's. What then is 
 Shakespeare's? All that is charming and interesting in the play be- 
 longs to him. Cinthio's novel excites simply disgust at human de- 
 pravity, with perhaps a sentiment of pity for the unfortunate victims. 
 It is like the police-record of crime, bare and revolting particulars 
 that make us shudder and strive to forget. The play of Othello, on 
 the other hand, is an entrancing romance, a beautiful and highly- 
 wrought poem, where the same horrors exist indeed as in the tale; 
 but so skillfully managed; so lighted by bright fancies, brilliant im- 
 aginations, and lofty thoughts, that, like the shadows in a fine pict- 
 ure, they serve to bring out tlie lights in startling distinctness from 
 their black and terrible background. Our hearts may be wrought 
 to painful sympathy, our moral natures pained by the portrayal of, 
 for a time, successful villany; but at the same time admiration, 
 generous pity, and noble anger are awakened, and urged to such 
 intensity that they reveal to us greatness and goodness in ourselves, 
 of which we were not fully conscious till the wand of the great 
 magician brought them forth with its ennobling touch — greatness 
 and goodness which such lessons wake from idle apathy, and stir to 
 useful purpose. 
 
 The play of Othello has delighted the most cultivated, virtuous, 
 and artistic minds through nearly three centuries. We listen to it 
 again and again, and though we know the scenes by heart, our at- 
 
48 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 tention is chained, our sympathy and admiration excited, as when 
 we first thrilled at the recital of its bewitching lines. No play per- 
 haps is better known; quotations from its verse fall from the lips of 
 the learned and the unlearned; every living man who speaks the 
 English language feels an influence from it working imperceptibly 
 in his heart, yet no play is more sure of drawing a crowded audience 
 here, everywhere upon the English stage. It is new each time it 
 touches our hearts, as the giant of old was fabled to renew his 
 strength whenever he touched his mother, Earth. Meanwhile the 
 original by Cinthio is forgotten; the student of Shakespeare reads it 
 in order to learn the method of the great master; and, while he 
 reads, marvels at the genius that could elevate so base a tale. The 
 student reads it, but no other; yet its scenes have been followed, 
 often with wonderful exactness, in the play of Othello. How has the 
 dramatist accomplished this marvelous success? 
 
 His method is like that of the artist who picks up in the streets 
 some common, inferior creature to be the model of a Madonna, a 
 Cleopatra, an Apollo, or a bust of Plato. He needs a personality, 
 as a scaifold, on which to build his art. No matter how common, 
 how poor, the figure, the light of his imagination and the glamour 
 of his art can so gild and adorn it that the common becomes su- 
 perlative, and the poor, grand. 
 
 Through the dull brains of mediocre humanity, the master pours 
 the quick fire of his own luminous soul. Bright pictures of imagi- 
 nation, the noblest and most subtle thoughts, appear in every conver- 
 sation, and lend a charm to each utterance. His dramas present 
 not the meeting of ordinary mortals, but of a group of Shakespeares 
 who utter to each other their flashing fancies. Yet each character 
 is true to nature; each character has a mind, an individuality of his 
 own ; but the sotll of Shakespeare permeates every scene, and glim- 
 mers through each well-drawn personality. It is this that gives the 
 plays of, Shakespeare their brightest charm. 
 
CHAPTER III: GENIUS. 49 
 
 Othello appears before uS; he has his own individuahty; he has 
 the burning passions of his fiery being, the simplicity and candour 
 of an untutored, almost barbarous, nature; he has a generous cre- 
 dulity that makes him a ready believer in the faith of all; but, be- 
 hind all this, his simple mind, his un-ordered thoughts, are lighted 
 by the artistic cultivation and luxuriant imagination of Shakespeare. 
 It is as though the fervent savage had, shining through his nature, 
 the illumination of exquisite art; thus the passion of the man, while 
 it pours forth unconscious of restraint, is beautified by continual 
 flashes of noble and intellectual grace, lighting up his heroic but 
 despairing soul. 
 
 So Desdemona comes, gentle, virtuous, confiding, an innocence 
 that will not even believe in the existence of sin, a simplicity that 
 shows itself in childlike trust of all; but through this gentle mind 
 plays the same light of fervent fancy, more charming than even her 
 virtuous simplicity. 
 
 It is the same with lago, a dark plotter whose intricate thoughts 
 are a snare to his own mind, a moral monster, but an intellectual 
 prodigy ; the basest of men, but still pervaded by such artistic fire 
 of imagination that he compels admiration and interest; although his 
 acts, when we escape from the fascination of the man, awaken in 
 our moral natures only horror and anger. And so with all. Each 
 scene is a cluster of jewels glittering in a ring; their luster so com- 
 mingled that often we cannot tell which shines the brightest. The 
 magic of Shakespeare's genius thrills, glows, and dances, in every 
 line of this powerful and exquisite drama, giving the base acts, in- 
 Vented or recorded by the forgotten Cinthio, a glory and a luster 
 that make them revelations. 
 
 In the play of Hamlet the story is no more Shakespeare's, than is 
 that of Othello. There was an old History of Hamlet written by 
 Saxo Grammaticus, a Dane, from which a play had been written 
 
50 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 some years before 1590. The play is lost, but the story survives. 
 In this are the circumstances of the murder of Hamlet's father by a 
 brother, the speedy marriage of the latter to the widow of his vic- 
 tim, a. simulated madness suggestive of Prince Hamlet's, the at- 
 tempt to pluck out the heart of his mystery by over-hearing his con- 
 versation with a lady, the visit of the prince to his mother, the 
 killing of the eavesdropper (Polonius of the play) behind the ar- 
 ras, even to Hamlet's exclamation, "a rat!" as he strikes the old 
 counsellor — all this is set down in the story. There is also the same 
 style of lecture by Hamlet to his mother upon her conduct, the 
 mission to England, the circumstance of the alteration of letters in 
 such manner as to accomplish the death of the two confidents of 
 the king of Denmark, the return of the prince from England, and 
 the punishment of the uncle by the sword of the nephew. 
 
 This story is even more crude than Cinthio's, and, like it, most 
 tedious; yet, from it, Shakespeare has built the most intellectual 
 production of our language. Whoever reads the History of Hamlet, 
 as the old narrator tells it, will find ^ great number of the circum- 
 stances of Shakespeare's play, or hints that led to them; but he will 
 find no ghost, no Horatio, no Laertes," no grave-diggers, no poetry. 
 In transforming this antique tale into the play of Hamlet, the poet's 
 art has effected such magical change as if a ghastly skeleton, hung 
 up in the closet of an anatomical student, were rehabilitated with 
 the vitality of life, and, with that vitality, were returned the round- 
 ing of the graceful limbs, the harmony of colours, the warmth of 
 expression, the radiant beauty of a soul. 
 
 The play of King Lear is built upon legend and an older play, 
 "2%« History of King Leir and his three daughters," in which is the 
 scene of the division of the kingdom between the two daughters, ' 
 Goneril and Regan, who extravagantly profess their love; there is 
 the casting off by her father of the too-truthful Cordelia, the mar- 
 
CHAPTER III: GENIUS. 51 
 
 riage of the latter to the king of France, the ingratitude of Goneril 
 and Regan, the despair of Lear, his meeting with Cordelia, the af- 
 fectionate love of the latter, the battle between the forces of the 
 king of PVance and ihose of Goneril and Regan, but in which the 
 latter are defeated, and Lear reinstated in his kingdom. This old 
 play is a very rude production, lacking alike beauty and art. It has 
 no Fool, Edgar, Edmund, or Gloster; no crazed king; no poetry; but 
 its main circumstances are followed through the scenes of Shake- 
 speare's magnificent drama. 
 
 In Macbeth, Shakespeare follows the old chronicler, Holinshed, 
 giving the scene of the two thanes and the three Weird Sisters, on 
 the blasted heath, almost word for word from him. Our poet also 
 follows the chronicle in its delineation of the character of Macbeth 
 and his wife. Here he also found the murder of King Duncan, and 
 that of Banquo with the escape of Fleance in the darkness, the tak- 
 ing of the castle of Macduff, the slaughter of his family, his flight to 
 England, the prophecies to Macbeth by "a certain witch,'' "that he 
 never should be slain with man born of any woman," nor vanquish- 
 ed "till the wood of Birnam came to the castle of Dunsinane." 
 The scene of Malcome's self-accusations, to try the faith of Macduff, 
 is also found here, the return of Malcome and Macduff with old 
 Siward and ten thousand Enghshmen, the cuttmg down of the 
 branches of Birnam wood, and finally the scene upon the battle- 
 field, where Macduff, — so says the chronicle, — tells the tyrant: "I 
 am even he that thy wizards have told thee of, who was never born 
 of my mother, but ripped out of her womb." After which, says 
 the chronicle simply, "therewithal he stept unto him and slew him 
 in the place." 
 
 Here are hints of all the supernatural machinery of the play of 
 Macbeth, the characters are largely delineated, nor is the chronicle 
 without a certain rude force and poetry. It is like a painter's palette : 
 
52 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 the colours are there, but require the artist's hand and skill to lay 
 their tints so nicely on the canvas that they may glow with life and 
 beauty. This is what Shakespeare has done. 
 
 King Richard III is founded on an old play called The true 
 tragedy of Richard the Third; but deviates very largely from this 
 original, though sometimes copying closely, as for instance : 
 
 ' ' The battle, enter Richard, wounded, with his page. 
 
 KING. 
 
 A horse, a horse, a fresh horse ! 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Fly, my lord, and save your life. 
 
 KING. 
 
 Fly, villain, look I as tho' I would fly ? 
 
 No, first shall this dull and senseless ball 
 
 Of earth receive my body cold and void of sense" — 
 
 Shakespeare also follows in this play his favorite chronicler, Hohn- 
 shed, sometimes using his words. A Latin play by Dr. Thomas 
 Legge, called Richardus Tertius, was also extant in Shakespeare's 
 time. King Richard III bears the same relation to these predeces- 
 sors that Othello does to Cinthio's tale, or Hamlet to the old story 
 of like name. 
 
 We might examine how his Roman plays follow North's English 
 translation of Plutarch; and other of his dramas, the Italian novel- 
 ists; but the examples already given are sufficient to show the gen- 
 eral method of the great play-writer. He took down from their, 
 niches the dead figures of history or fable, and bade them live again, 
 speak again, break the deep silence of death, and walk upon his- 
 magic stage, instinct with life and thought, and glowing with every 
 thrill of their original passions. No dim or shadowy forms are these ; 
 but actual realities, clean-cut figures, vigorous, passionate mortals, , 
 
CHAPTER III: GENIUS. 53 
 
 wearing man's glories and his errors, but all radiant with their crea- 
 tor's poetic imaginings. 
 
 Can we then deny to Shakespeare the name of a creator? He 
 wakes to Hfe the dead. From the wild struggle of the elements of 
 human passion, unsightly perhaps in bare wickedness or sluggish 
 virtue, he builds a thing of glorious life. His work is like the act 
 of the fabled god, Prometheus, who breathed into the instincts of 
 humanity the fire of Heaven, the conceptions and imaginations of a 
 fervent intellect. 
 
 In all the creations of Shakespeare, we see the mind of their cre- 
 ator; as every creature must bear the impress of the power that 
 formed its being. It is not that nature is drawn true to life, though 
 it is so drawn; this might excite admiration of the skill of the lim- 
 ner, but would scarcely give us so much delight: it is that life is 
 made beautiful and graceful with all the noblest and highest imagin- 
 ings and desirings of humanity. Even the dark phases of human 
 passion are made grandly magnificent by the poet's power of intel- 
 lect and light of fancy, revealing, by their grandeur, the greatness 
 of the powers thus perverted to evil. 
 
 As Milton's fallen angel shines with a lurid glory, the dying em- 
 bers of former divine radiance, majestic and grand though a repre- 
 sentative spirit of ill; so Shakespeare's Gloster and lago are mag- 
 nificent in their iniquity; crowned with powers of intellect, their 
 wicked natures rise out of the level of common men, proudly con- 
 spicuous, as the bold peak of some fire-vomiting mountain lifts itself 
 abov# the fruitful fields and fertile valleys that surround it. 
 
 Nor, while thus putting a crown on vice, does the poet fail to 
 teach lessons of morality; for he ever surrounds such crowned evil > 
 with grim terrors, natural or supernatural — terrors arising from vio- 
 lated conscience within, or wronged humanity without. He so ex- 
 hibits the destruction of every hope resting on a dishonest or wicked 
 
54 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 foundation, that each play, each several character even, is a sermon 
 teaching the doctrine that no power of intellect, however great, can 
 conduct an evil course to a prosperous end — that, high over all the 
 affairs of men, sits enthroned an "even-handed justice" which can- 
 not be cheated or evaded, dealing out fit punishment to crime in 
 spite of every device of cunning evil. 
 
 This lesson of morality is taught not only by the tragic ending of 
 Gloster's career on Bosworth field, but, by the suspicion that haunts 
 his life, making painful his golden crown, and pointing to an aveng- 
 er in every seeming friend — by the lonely desolation of his heart, 
 prompting to such sad utterance as this: 
 
 "There is no creature loves me ; ® 
 
 And if I die, no soul shall pity me ;" 
 
 and by the ghostly dreams that come to threaten and to torture, 
 making his sleep no rest, but agony beyond all physical suffering. 
 The murderer, Macbeth, finds likewise a more dreadful retribu- 
 tion in the persecutions of conscience, and in the haunting spectre 
 of "the blood-bolter' d Banquo," than in the sharp edge of Macduff s 
 avenging sword. His guilty ambition has set him on a throne, from 
 which gilded seat goes up his cry of disappointment and despair: 
 
 "I have lived long enough : my way of life 
 
 Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; 
 
 And that which should accompany old age. 
 
 As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, 
 
 I must not look to have ; but in their stead 
 
 Curses not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath. 
 
 Which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare not." 
 
 Even in the case of the amusing debauchee, Sir John Falstaflf, an. 
 avenging Nemesis points out to him how his dissolute career has 
 robbed him of the honors and fortune due to his large ability and 
 active intellect. When this speaker of many witticisms, in the hour 
 
CHAPTER III: GENIUS. 55 
 
 when he hopes for some large reward as payment for the amusement 
 he has given his prince, is met with this reproach from his former 
 boon companion, now King Henry V, 
 
 "I know thee not, old man ; fall to thy prayers ; 
 How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!" 
 
 what witty answer can he make? None. Jhere is no more left for 
 the once gay reveller, but to end his wasted life, lonely and disap-s 
 pointed, in that very inn, the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, the scene 
 of so many jolly festivities; but where his last scene is most solemn- 
 ly dismal, and where his last friend is the poor woman he has basely 
 cheated, but whose simple, kind heart is much moved by womanly 
 compassion at his last hours; and who tells the story of his dying in 
 illiterate, but touching, language, thus: 
 
 "He's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. 
 'A made a finer end, and went away, an it had been any christom 
 child: 'a parted ev'n just between twelve and one, ev'n at the turn- 
 ing o' the tide ; for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play 
 with flowers, and smile upon his finger's end, I knew there was but 
 one way; for his nose was sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green 
 fields. 'How now. Sir John?' quoth I: 'what, man! be of good 
 cheer.' So 'a cried out — 'God, God, God!' three or four times. 
 Now I, to comfort him, bid him 'a should not thiiik of God. I 
 hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts 
 yet. So 'a bade me lay more clothes on his feet; I put my hand in- 
 to the bed, and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then 
 I felt to his knees, and so upward, and upward, and all was as cold 
 as any stone." 
 
 So while we examine, much enjoying, these dramas, we are con- 
 stantly learning lessons of philosophy, of morality. The stories, 
 the events on which they are built, are of no importance; the char- 
 
S6 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 acters even, though often so largely drawn as to rise beyond our 
 limits of measure, are things of secondary interest; but the bright 
 imaginings, the large conceptions, the great moral and philosophical 
 truths, that reveal the broad and brilliant mind of Shakespeare — 
 these open to us fields of thought and fancy, so vast and beautiful, 
 that we may wander there delighted, meeting constant agreeable 
 surprises, and finding always new pleasures. 
 
 Comparison of Shakespeare with other authors always brings into 
 conspicuous notice the power of our great poet in the use of lan- 
 guage. Bright images of fancy, original conceptions of beauty and 
 of truth, must not only exist in the mind of a poet, but find in his 
 language such expression that their picturing will stand out in vivid 
 distinctness, and with such marked outlines as to fix attention and 
 compel remembrance. 
 
 It has been often said that we are all, to ourselves, poets; that is, 
 we have times when the beautiful in nature, or in ideal, appeals to 
 us with a mingling of soul and sense, and fills our admiring minds 
 with graceful shapes and harmonious thoughts. It is as if an inspira- 
 tion filled us from the original source of truth and beauty. This we 
 are conscious of; but if we would describe it, and present it to oth- 
 er minds, the figures and the thoughts defy our power to fix them 
 into permanent characters, or set them down in words,, unless the 
 gift of expression belongs to us. 
 
 The capacity to comprehend poetry, to feel the inspiration and 
 visiting of poetic images, is almost universal; but ability to give ex- 
 act form and characteristic expression in words, or in artistic repre- 
 sentation, to such pictures, is rare. Perhaps the largest conceptions 
 of beauty by the human mind have' been lost to the world by lack of 
 power of expression to fully show them. They have delighted the 
 single mind which they filled with their grace or their grandeur, but 
 beyond which they could not pass in their perfection. The Jupiter 
 
CHAPTER III: GENIUS. 57 
 
 of Phidias, the Virgin of Raphael, the Hamlet of Shakespeare, 
 though each a masterpiece, appeared, doubtless, to either artist, an 
 imperfect delineation of the ideal which each sought to portray. 
 
 Language is a means by which the mind strives to exhibit itself; 
 but it is a means never perfect : with the most skilful it falls far 
 short of absolute accuracy; and when the skill is little, the exhibition 
 is very imperfect. Whom the world calls poets, are those that can 
 portray what the many are conscious of, see, feel, and think, but 
 cannot express; and these poets are greater or less according to 
 their skill to make themselves the exponents of the minds of men, 
 and picture more or less accurately the thoughts, the visions, the 
 imaginings, that come alike to all. It is because we recognize in 
 poetic images something that has existence in ourselves, that poetry 
 appeals so universally to the minds of men. That poet whose 
 thoughts or fancies are so very abstruse or original as to belong on- 
 ly to himself, will have no power to affect or interest his fellow men. 
 
 I have said poetry is common to mankind; the lowest intellects 
 are often capable of being more moved by it than higher organiza- 
 tions, simply because the poet, for the moment, shows them, by the 
 magic sympathy of mind with mind, pictures that pertain to an in- 
 tellectuality above their own, by the which enlarging of their men- 
 tal horizon they are filled with rapture. This faculty of expression, 
 — showing the greatness and the splendor of the powers and possi- 
 bilities that exist almost unconsciously within us; for in the poet's 
 pictures we recognize familiar features, — constitutes one great ele- 
 ment of the genius of a poet. In Shakespeare this power seems 
 equally matched with the conceptions whose graceful forms, force, 
 and brilliance, it exhibits. To illustrate would be superfluous; for 
 the affluence, power, sweetness, and truth, of his language appeal at 
 once to every mind capable of receiving such impressions. To such, 
 if such there be, who cannot percei-ve the force and grace of ex- 
 
58 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 pression that belong to him, no labored efforts to exhibit these would 
 avail anything} ifor to them language is a thing of words only. 
 
 In considering the genius of a dramatist, we should not neglect to 
 examine the circumstances attending the construction of his plays, 
 and the purpose for which they were written. Whether his intent was 
 to give to the world, under cover of such plays, certain philosophi- 
 cal views or theories, or simply to present thrilling pictures of life 
 embellished with whatever of philosophy might be latent or active 
 in his mind, would require a, different analysis, and would present 
 the plays in a different light, in either case. 
 
 From our knowledge, though meagre, of the life of Shakespeare, 
 we are led to believe that he was no slow, long-pondering philoso- 
 pher, meditating for years over original conceptions, or historic 
 theories, of life; but rather one whose temperament and circum- 
 stances compelled him to more hurried compositions than were suit- 
 able to the development of philosophy, as such simply. But in our 
 poet's plays, nevertheless, the profound wisdom that comes of a 
 broad intellect rather than of learned and labored thought, is every- 
 where apparent; and life so clothed in its true garb and colors, men's 
 actions everywhere so accurately referred, each to its exciting cause 
 in passion, hope, desire, love, fear, aspiration, or faith — all elements 
 of our common nature — that his pictures of life, though their stories 
 are now trite, appeal to us with, the same force of trutli and wis- 
 dom that they had for those to whom their life-like scenes were first 
 displayed. This truth of portrayal is shown in that the lapse of 
 nearly three hundred years has afforded no deeper knowledge of the 
 heart, our broad array of classified facts given no clearer insight in- 
 to the working of human nature, than had the "Bard of Avon" when 
 he wrote his famous plays for the London stage. But not, perhaps, 
 for truths' sake did he write .them, not for the sake of their philoso- 
 
CHAPTER III: GENIUS. 59 
 
 phy; but for the purpose of bringing to his theatre a thronging 
 audience. 
 
 Does this lessen the poet? Not at all. A poet is a man, and 
 must be fed. Connected with the brain and the heart there is a 
 stomach. It is the thought of a sentimentalist that abstracts the 
 poetic mind from the living needs and natural desires of men. 
 
 Thus the most profound philosophy of the human mind and heart, 
 which generation after generation, each more clearly than its prede- 
 cessor, has recognized as truth, was given to the world in the embel- 
 lishment of certain plays; for the production of which, the first and 
 moving purpose was desire in the heart of a poor and obscure actor 
 to place the Shakespeare family in a position of more comfort and 
 higher social standing — to enable this quandam deer-stealer and 
 glove-maker to buy the best mansion in his native town, and to dec- 
 orate his father, the honest yeoman and bailiff, with the high dignity 
 of a coat of arms. These, so far as 'we have means to ascertain, 
 were the motives that prompted his brain to the large conceptions 
 contained in the plays of Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, and Othello. 
 
 At an age more mature than the whole life of Shakespeare, 
 Goethe, the most profound thinker and greatest literary genius of 
 Germany, commenced to write the play of Faust, the second part 
 of which was concluded when its author was in the eighty-second 
 year of his age. This dramatic poem, — over which his mind is said 
 to have brooded for thirty years before its first line was written, and 
 which he and his admirers deemed his crowning masterpiece, — con- 
 tains a strange mingling of all the philosophic speculations and con- 
 templative musings of his life. Dreamy philosophy, uncertain mor- 
 ality, and unprofitable speculation, are the objects of the poet's work; 
 his drama but the dress, the embellishment, of his theme. As a 
 drama, his work is a failure; as a poem, a success in so far as the 
 adornments of fancy and the charms of powerful and graceful ex- 
 
6o A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 pression can so constitute it; but in its first purpose, the delineation 
 of the philosophy of life, it is unsatisfactory, vague, and contra- 
 dictory, affording no certain help to the minds of men. In this re- 
 spect it is most unlike Shakespeare's greater plays, where a broad 
 comprehension and well-defined system of morality illustrate, with 
 the clear light of truth, a sure and safe path through the world's 
 ways, that all who read may see, and so guide their steps. The 
 play of Faust is exampled here to show, by its contrast in purpose 
 with the plays of Shakespeare, how differing circumstances and 
 such different purpose of authors have claims for consideration in 
 the analyses of their works. 
 
 Shakespeare's genius was that of a ■ play-writer, though his plays 
 exhibit the wisdom and the power of a many-sided mind that grasp- 
 ed, as by intuition, great truths which succeeding years and modern 
 research have but developed and amplified, not changed; and gave 
 them, wrought by his poetry into imperishable characters, to the 
 world. 
 
 Goethe's genius was that of a philosopher who, seeking to pub- 
 lish his speculative thought, used the embellishment of dramatic ac- 
 tion to exhibit what he deemed abstract and moral truths, but which 
 succeeding philosophy has refused to verify. Though failing as a 
 philosopher, his success as a poet has gained for him the laurel crown 
 which his learned speculations failed to win. 
 
 By the help of the hypothesis, warranted by all the facts that have 
 come down to us, that Shakespeare's chief and actuating purpose 
 in the construction of his dramas was to produce successful plays, 
 we are enabled to understand many points that are obscure under 
 any other view. To show how this purpose of the author should 
 ■influence our understanding and analysis of his works, let us take 
 the example of a single character. The question has been often 
 raised, why Shakespeare permitted misfortune to overwhelm the virt- 
 
CHAPTER III: GENIUS. 6i 
 
 uous Desdemona, who seems to have deserved a better fate than the 
 calamities that so soon destroyed her young and innocent life. 
 
 It has been urged that her misfortunes are attributable to her er- 
 ror in making a match between unmatchable races; or that it 
 was because of her disobedience to her parent that she suffered. 
 Both of these are insufficient reasons: the first, because we can easi- 
 ly see that the same calamity might have occurred if her husband 
 had been a Venetian ; and the second, because the same fate might 
 have overtaken her if she had married with the full approbation of 
 her father. The obvious reason why the play so presents the de- 
 struction of this innocent being, is that such was the circumstance 
 of the story on which the drama was built; and Shakespeare's com- 
 prehension of human nature enabled him to perceive how he could 
 exhibit the working of intrigue, suspicion, and passion, under the 
 circumstances of that story, in such way that the death of the sweet 
 lady would be a natural result, while her very innocence would give 
 his art the means to enlist in her sad fate, most completely, the 
 hearts of his audience. In so far as poetical justice, logical or ethi- 
 cal right, call for a different result, he paid no attention to such de- 
 mands; perceiving how often in life, poetical justice, logical or 
 ethical right, are not apparent within those limits in which we see 
 life, and within which the drama is placed. 
 
 Shakespeare's genius combines in one grasp the several powers of 
 the artist, the philosopher, and the poet. 
 
 As an artist, he knew how to delineate each character so that its ef- 
 fect iipon surrounding characters, and in the play, should be in perfect 
 accord, and also in harmony with nature. He knew how to contrast 
 character with character so that their contact might render inore ap- 
 parent the peculiar excellence of each, as the painter makes his tints 
 more brilliant and effective by skilful regard to complimentary colors. 
 He knew how to so group and present his characters and scenes to 
 
62 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 produce the strongest dramatic effects. He knew how to invest 
 every character with a peculiar grace that should lend its charm to 
 beautify even the commonplace. 
 
 His philosophy is broad and comprehensive, but generous and 
 kind. It looks through the shams of the world, with pity for folly 
 and weakness, but ever with a lash for vice. It fathoms the heart 
 of the monarch, the mind of the slave, and the intricate brain of the 
 intellectual schemer and man of meditative thought. No degree of 
 mental power is beyond its measure ; no lack of intellect below its 
 comprehension. The capricious and subtle thinkings of Hamlet, 
 the passionate frenzy of Othello, the crooked intrigues of lago, the 
 insane wanderings of Lear, the guilty conscience-questionings of 
 Macbeth, the muddy and grovelling instincts of Caliban, are all 
 traced with the same large comprehension of the differing phases of 
 various humanity, the same unerring fidelity to the truths of our 
 common nature. 
 
 The great problems of life and death, he wisely reviewed and in- 
 vestigated with so little prejudice or bias from the current teaching 
 and opinions of his time, that we wonder how he could have reach- 
 ed that sublime height, from which he looked down so calmly on 
 his fellow men. Modern science reveals the immensity of matter, 
 the infinity of its laws, and the intricate relations it bears to life; 
 thus presenting a picture of nature, very different from the one pre- 
 sented in Shakespeare's day by the less advanced condition of scien- 
 tific knowledge. Nevertheless, what modern writer can draw a 
 truer or more expressive picture of the life of man, in its relation to 
 time and matter, than Shakespeare, in his fifth act of Macbeth ? 
 
 "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
 And then is heard no more ; it is a tale 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. 
 Signifying nothing.'" 
 
CHAPTER III: GENIUS. 63 
 
 Or when Hamlet says? 
 
 "And a man's life's no more than to say 'One.' " 
 
 We must remember these lines were written when public opinion 
 still held that the universe was made expressly for man, and our earth 
 its centre; thirty years, perhaps, before the day when Galileo, cloth- 
 ed in sackcloth, was compelled to kneel at Rome, and, with all for- 
 mality, make abjuration of the Copernican theory of the Solar system. 
 
 Nor must we suppose, in the lines last quoted, that Shakespeare's 
 characters intend to ignore man's immorality: the reference is sim- 
 ply to the duration of organic being, that which is called life, and 
 which intellect attempts to measure by the symbol, time; the pur- 
 pose of the lines being, to express man's insignificance and the nar- 
 row boundries beyond which we can look only by the light of faith, 
 imagination, or the natural instincts of the soul. 
 
 Our poet's large philosophy, thus anticipating the progress of the 
 world, shines out from his various characters with a steady and re- 
 vealing light, by which we see far deeper in the minds and hearts of 
 men, into each mingling of sense and thbught that constitutes an 
 identity, than by our own unaided light of intellect we have the 
 power to penetrate. Nor has the world, in its three centuries, yet 
 progressed beyond the standpoint from which Shakespeare viewed 
 life and man : in fact the mass of mankind are, in this respect, far — 
 far beneath the platform on which he stood. 
 
 Leaving now the poetry of art and philosophy, for the realm of 
 fancy and uncurbed imagination, we find our author soaring on the 
 broadest and swiftest wing: bidding us follow the flight of his grand 
 and beautiful imagining beyond the bounds that circle in the world 
 of ordinary thought; with Ariel 
 
 "To ride 
 On the curl'd clouds." 
 
64 A SKETCH OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 With Oberon and Puck to listen to 
 
 "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-maids music" — 
 
 With queen Titania dance in the moonlight round her fairy ring, or 
 with her elves 
 
 "Kill cankers in the musk-rose buds ; 
 Make war with rear-mice for their leathern wings 
 To make the small elves coats ;" 
 
 or watch the puny beings, while they 
 
 "Keep back 
 The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, and wonders , 
 At the quaint spirits." 
 
 Descend with Prospero on the enchanted island, and behold 
 
 "The foul witch Sycorax, who, with age and envy. 
 Was grown into a hoop." 
 
 Go with Macbeth upon the blasted heath, and meet the Weird Sis- 
 ters; hear their shrieking prophecies, and behold them vanish 
 
 "Into the air ; and what seemed corporal melt 
 As breath into the wind." 
 
 See them 
 
 "Round about the cauldron go ; 
 In the poison'd entrails throw." 
 
 Hear their horrible refrain, 
 
 "Double, double toil and trouble; 
 Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." 
 
 Then grope darkly in the dread cavern, and look upon the magical 
 showing of the crowned progeny of Banquo. Thus to chase a myr- 
 
CHAPTER III: GENIUS. 65 
 
 iad fancies through a multitude of scenes, excited by turns to won- 
 der, admiration, fear, pity, sorrow, and laughter. But why attempt 
 any enumeration of the countless beauties of Shakespeare's imagi- 
 nation? Do they not shine upon the pages of his immortal plays, 
 there to survive so long as our language survives; to raise, to in- 
 struct, and to delight, the men and women of the future; as they 
 have raised, instructed, and delighted, the men and women of the 
 past. 
 
CHANGE: THE WHISPER OF THE SPHINX. A Poem by 
 William Leighton. Cloth, gilt $1,50.— This is an epic poem instinct 
 with true epic power ; and made so by the employment neither of the 
 old mythological legends, nor of the supernatural in Christian history ; 
 but of the manifold, intricate, stupendoiis phenomena of nature, history, 
 and man. It is written in a serious, elevated, majestic style. It does 
 not droop, or flag, or give any evidence of exhaustion of power. Its 
 gait is even, steady, strong, triumphant. In its striking originality, in 
 the subUmity of its style, in the grandeur of its scope, in the beauty and 
 aptness of its illustrations, in the startlingly graphic power of its descrip- 
 tions, in the tenderness of its pathos, in the wealth of its knowledge, in 
 its splendid poetic revelation of the eager, daring, restless spirit of the 
 age, in the fineness, the keenness, the suggestiveness of its philosophy, 
 in its pure and reverent religious spirit, and in the largeness and me^g- 
 nificence of its hope for man, it has established its high claim as one of 
 the immortal classics of the English language.— The West Virginia 
 Journal of Education. 
 
 It is a poem that holds the attention both by the beauty of its language 
 and the skill with which the very large subject is treated. In imagery, 
 there is a wealth of beautiful things. — Boston Journal. 
 
 The poet's attempt to give utterance to his conception of the universe, 
 to interpret the universal law, to make articulate the voice of Nature . 
 The execution is throughout that of a strong, confident, and skilled work- 
 man who has finished his work before giving it to the world. — New 
 York Evening Post. 
 
 Mr. Leighton traces the progress of Change through the rise and fall 
 of earthly kingdoms, the growth and decay of material forces, and the 
 various stages of development through which science, art, morals, and 
 religious belief have passed. Now as a blind, relentless force, and now 
 as a hideous, mocking monster, he sets its triumphs forth ; and makes 
 one feel the impotence of all created beings in the comparison. But at 
 last even Change he finds subject to unchanging laws. — The Literary 
 World. 
 
 It is a bold subject and a dangerous one for any but a master-work- 
 man to attempt ; and Mr. Leighton deserves to have his name recorded 
 high up on the column of poetic fame for his success. The poem a- 
 bounds in fine thoughts forcibly and energetically expressed ; and it 
 must be carefully read over and over again to be fully appreciated and 
 enjoyed. It photographs the mind not only of a poet, but of a natural 
 philosopher. — ^Joseph Crosby in the Zanesville Courier. 
 
 For sale by STANTON & DAVENPORT, 44 Twelfth Street, 
 Wheeling, W. Va. 
 
THE SONS OF GODWIN. A TRAGEDY. By William Leighton. 
 12 mo, extra cloth, $1,25. — It appears at the same time with Tennyson's 
 poem upon the same theme, and does not suffer by comparison with it ; 
 it has more dramatic fire, and moves with brisker step, and has as sWeet 
 songs in it, and as much poetry. — Louisville Courier Journal. 
 
 Mr. Leighton's drama is vastly more creditable to him than "Harold" 
 to Tennyson. — Boston Christian Register. 
 
 It has touches of genuine art. The plot is well sustained. The char^ 
 acters are effectively drawn. — Boston Watchman. 
 
 It is spirited in execution, clear and powerful in conception, and the 
 versification is something more than correct. — London Saturday Review. 
 
 "It must be admitted, judging the two dramas solely on their own 
 merits, without regard to 'the glory and the nothing of a name' great 
 in modern literature, that the younger American has much surpassed the 
 experienced and maturer English poet; his dialogue is more spirited, 
 his action more decided, his personal feeling stronger, and strange to 
 say, his poetical expression at least as good." — Philadelphia Press. 
 
 AT THE COURT OF KING EDWIN. A DRAMA. By William 
 Leighton. 12 mo, extra cloth, $1,25 A performance which estab- 
 lishes its author's right to a good place among the authors of our times. 
 — New York Evening Post. 
 
 The verse is stately, dignified, and steeped in an essence of poetry. — 
 New York Tribune. 
 
 This work is for those who like to call up the picture of the far past 
 through a charmed atmosphere, softened with the refined haze of cult- 
 ure, embellished with imagery, fragrant with choice flowers of sentiment, 
 and musical with the cadences of well-poised periods and the purling 
 flow of jewelled words along their channel. — Home Journal. 
 
 There is fire, spirit and energy throughout, with not a few passages 
 eloquent with noble philosophy. — Boston Journal. 
 
 In style. Mr.Leighton's verse is pure, strong and graceful, while the 
 tone of his thought is well sustained, and his characters are cleverly 
 drawn. — Literary World. 
 
 This drama is very thoughtful. — Boston Advertiser. 
 
 It will enhance Mr. Leighton's reputation. — Louisville Commercial. 
 
 Certainly it entitles its author to a high place among American poets. 
 — Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. 
 
 For sale by STANTON & DAVENPORT, 44 Twelfth Street, 
 Wheeling, W. Va. 
 
^'/I 
 
 
 
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