Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 by Various

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. III.--JUNE, 1859.--NO. XX.

SHAKSPEARE'S ART.

"Yet must I not give Nature all; thy Art,
My gentle SHAKSPEARE, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter Nature be,
His Art doth give the fashion."--Ben Jonson.

Whoever would learn to think naturally, clearly, logically, and to
express himself intelligibly and earnestly, let him give his days and
nights to WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. His ear will thus accustom itself to forms
of phrase whose only mannerism is occasioned by the fulness of thought
and the directness of expression; and he will not easily, through the
habits which either his understanding or his ear will acquire, fall into
the fluent cadences of that sort of writing in which words are used
without discrimination of their nice meanings,--where the sentences are
only a smoothly-undulating current of common phrases, in which it takes
a page to say weakly what should be said forcibly in a few periods.

These are somewhat novel arguments for the study of one whom all the
world has so long reverenced as "the great poet of Nature." But they may
properly serve to introduce a consideration of the sense in which
that phrase should be understood,--an attempt, in short, to look
into Shakspeare's modes of creation, and define his relations, as an
_artist_, with Nature.

We shall perhaps be excused the suggestion, that a poet cannot be
natural in the same sense that a fool may be; he cannot be _a_
natural,--since, if he is, he is not a poet. For to be a poet implies
the ability to use ideas and forms of speech artistically, as well as to
have an eye in a fine frenzy rolling. This is a distinction which all
who write on poets or poetry should forever seek to keep clear by new
illustrations. The poet has poetic powers that are born with him; but he
must also have a power over language, skill in arrangement, a thousand,
yes, a myriad, of powers which he was born with only the ability to
acquire, and to use after their acquirement. In ranking Shakspeare the
great poet of Nature, it is meant that he had the purpose and the power
to think what was natural, and to select and follow it,--that, among his
thick-coming fancies, he could perceive what was too fine, what tinged
with personal vanity, what incongruous, unsuitable, feeble, strained, in
short, unnatural, and reject it. His vision was so strong that he saw
his characters and identified himself with them, yet preserving his cool
judgment above them, and subjecting all he felt through them to its
test, and developing it through this artificial process of writing. This
vision and high state of being he could assume and keep up and work out
through days and weeks, foreseeing the end from the beginning, retaining
himself, and determining long before how many acts his work should be,
what should be its plot, what the order of its scenes, what personages
he would introduce, and where the main passions of the work should be
developed. His fancy, which enabled him to see the stage and all its
characters,--almost to _be_ them,--was so under the control of his
imagination, that it did not, through any interruptions while he was at
his labor, beguile him with caprices. The _gradation_ or action of his
work, opens and grows under his creative hand; twenty or more characters
appear, (in some plays nearly forty, as in "Antony and Cleopatra" and
the "First Part of Henry the Sixth,") who are all distinguished, who
are all more or less necessary to the plot or the underplots, and who
preserve throughout an identity that is life itself; all this is done,
and the imagined state, the great power by which this evolution of
characters and scene and story be carried on, is always under the
control of the poet's will, and the direction of his taste or critical
judgment. He chooses to set his imagination upon a piece of work, he
selects his plot, conceives the action, the variety of characters, and
all their doings; as he goes on reflecting upon them, his imagination
warms, and excites his fancy; he sees and identifies himself with his
characters, lives a secondary life in his work, as one may in a dream
which he directs and yet believes in; his whole soul becomes more active
under this fervor of the imagination, the fancy, and all the powers of
suggestion,--yet, still, the presiding judgment remains calm above all,
guiding the whole; and above or behind that, the will which elects to do
all this, perchance for a very simple purpose,--namely, for filthy lucre,
the purchase-money of an estate in Stratford.

To say that he "followed Nature" is to mean that he permits his thoughts
to flow out in the order in which thoughts naturally come,--that he
makes his characters think as we all fancy we should think under the
circumstances in which he places them,--that it is the truth of his
thoughts which first impresses us. It is in this respect that he is
so universal; and it is by his universality that his naturalness is
confirmed. Not all his finer strokes of genius, but the general scope
and progress of his mind, are within the path all other minds travel;
his mind _answers_ to all other men's minds, and hence is like the voice
of Nature, which, apart from particular association, addresses all
alike. The cataracts, the mountains, the sea, the landscapes, the
changes of season and weather have each the same general meaning to
all mankind. So it is with Shakspeare, both in the conception and
development of his characters, and in the play of his reflections and
fancies. All the world recognizes his sanity, and the health and beauty
of his genius.

Not all the world, either. Nature's poet fares no better than Nature
herself. Half the world is out of the pale of knowledge; a good part
of the rest are stunted by cant in its Protean shapes, or by inherited
narrowness and prejudice, and innumerable soul-cankers. They neither
know nor think of Nature or Poetry. Just as there are hundreds in all
great cities who never leave their accustomed streets winter or summer,
until finally they lose all curiosity, and cease to feel the yearnings
of that love which all are born with for the sight of the land and
sea,--the dear face of our common mother. Or the creatures who compose
the numerical majority of the world are rather like the children of some
noble lady stolen away by gypsies, and taught to steal and cheat and
beg, and practised in low arts, till they utterly forget the lawns
whereon they once played; and if their mother ever discovers them, their
natures are so subdued that they neither recognize her nor wish to go
with her.

Without fearing that Shakspeare can ever lose his empire while the
language lasts, it is humiliating to be obliged to acknowledge one
great cause that is operating to keep him from thousands of our young
countrymen and women, namely, the wide-spread _mediocrity_ that is
created and sustained by the universal diffusion of our so-called
cheap literature;--dear enough it will prove by and by!--But this is
needlessly digressing.

The very act of writing implies an art not born with the poet. This
process of forming letters and words with a pen is not natural, nor
will the poetic frenzy inspire us with the art to go through it. In
conceiving the language of passion, the _natural_ impulse is to imitate
the passion in gesture; there is something artificial in sitting quietly
at a table and hollaing, "Mortimer!" through a quill. If Hotspur's
language is in the highest degree natural, it is because the poet felt
the character, and words suggested themselves to him which he chose and
wrote down. The act of choice might have been almost spontaneous with
the feeling of the character and the situation, yet it was there,--the
conscious judgment was present; and if the poet wrote the first words
that came, (as no doubt he usually did,) it was because he was satisfied
with them at the time; there was no paroxysm of poetic inspiration,--the
workings of his mind were sane. His fertility was such that he was not
obliged to pause and compare every expression with all others he could
think of as appropriate;--judgment may decide swiftly and without
comparison, especially when it is supervising the suggestions of a vivid
fancy, and still be judgment, or taste, if we choose to call it by that
name. We know by the result whether it was present. The poet rapt into
unconsciousness would soon betray himself. Under the power of the
imagination, all his faculties waken to a higher life; his fancies are
more vivid and clear; all the suggestions that come to him are more
apt and congruous; and his faculties of selection, his perceptions of
fitness, beauty, and appropriateness of relation are more keen and
watchful. No lapse in what he writes at such times indicates aught
like dreaming or madness, or any condition of mind incompatible with
soundness and health,--with that perfect sanity in which all the mental
powers move in order and harmony under the control of the rightful
sovereign, Reason.

These observations are not intended to bear, except remotely, upon the
question, Which is the true Dramatic Art, the romantic or the ancient?
We shall not venture into that land of drought, where dry minds forever
wander. We can admit both schools. In fact, even the countrymen of
Racine have long since admitted both,--speculatively, at least,--though
practically their temperament will always confine them to artificial
models. We may consider the question as set at rest in these words of M.
Guizot:--"Everything which men acknowledge as beautiful in Art owes its
effect to certain combinations, of which our reason can always detect
the secret when our emotions have attested its power. The science--or
the employment of these combinations--constitutes what we call Art.
Shakspeare had his own. We must detect it in his works, and examine the
means he employs and the results he aims at." Although we should be
far from admitting so general a definition of Art as this, yet it is
sufficient as an answer to the admirers of the purely classic school.

But it has become necessary in this "spasmodic" day to vindicate
our great poet from the supposition of having written in a state of
somnambulism,--to show that he was even an _artist_, without reference
to schools. The scope of our observations is to exhibit him in that
light; we wish to insist that he was a man of forethought,--that, though
possessing creative genius, he did not dive recklessly into the sea of
his fancy without knowing its depth, and ready to grasp every pebble for
a pearl-shell; we wish to show that he was not what has been called, in
the cant of a class who mistake lawlessness for liberty, an "earnest
creature,"--that he was not "fancy's child" in any other sense than as
having in his power a beautifully suggestive fancy, and that he "warbled
his native wood-notes wild" in no other meaning than as Milton warbled
his organ-notes,--namely, through the exercise of conscious Art, of Art
that displayed itself not only in the broad outlines of his works, but
in their every character and shade of color. With this purpose we
have urged that he was "natural" from taste and choice,--artistically
natural. To illustrate the point, let us consider his Art alone in a few
passages.

We will suppose, preliminarily, however, that we are largely interested
in the Globe Theatre, and that, in order to keep it up and continue to
draw good houses, we must write a new piece,--that, last salary-day,
we fell short, and were obliged to borrow twenty pounds of my Lord
Southampton to pay our actors. Something must be done. We look into our
old books and endeavor to find a plot out of ancient story, in the same
manner that Sir Hugh Evans would hunt for a text for a sermon. At length
one occurs that pleases our fancy; we revolve it over and over in our
mind,--and at last, after some days' thought, elaborate from it the plot
of a play,--"TIMON OF ATHENS,"--which plot we make a memorandum of,
lest we should forget it. Meantime, we are busy at the theatre with
rehearsals, changes of performance, bill-printing, and a hundred
thousand similar matters that must be each day disposed of. But we keep
our newly-thought-of play in mind at odd intervals, good things occur to
us as we are walking in the street, and we begin to long to be at it.
The opening scenes we have quite clearly in our eye, and we almost know
the whole; or it may be, _vice versa_, that we work out the last scenes
first; at all events, we have them hewn out in the rough, so that we
work the first with an intention of making them conform to a something
which is to succeed; and we are so sure of our course that we have no
dread of the something after,--nothing to puzzle the will, or make us
think too precisely on the event. Such is the condition of mind in which
we finally begin our labor. Some Wednesday afternoon in a holiday-week,
when the theatres are closed, we find ourselves sitting at a desk before
a sea-coal fire in a quaintly panelled rush-strewn chamber, the pen in
our hand, nibbed with a "Rogers's" pen-knife, [A] and the blank page
beneath it.

[Footnote A: "A Shefeld thwitel bare he in his hose."--CHAUCER. _The
Reve's Tale._]

We desire the reader to close his eyes for a moment and endeavor to
fancy himself in the position of William Shakspeare about to write a
piece,--the play abovenamed. This may be attempted without presumption.
We wish to recall and make real the fact that our idol was a man,
subject to the usual circumstances of men living in his time, and to
those which affect all men at all times,--that he had the same round of
day and night to pass through, the same common household accidents which
render "no man a hero to his valet." The world was as real to him as it
is to us. The dreamy past, of two hundred and fifty years since, was to
him the present of one of the most stirring periods in history, when
wonders were born quite as frequently as they are now.

And having persuaded the reader to place himself in Shakspeare's
position, we will make one more very slight request, which is, that he
will occupy another chair in the same chamber and fancy that he sees the
immortal dramatist begin a work,--still keeping himself so far in his
position that he can observe the workings of his mind as he writes.

Shakspeare has fixed upon a name for his piece, and he writes it,--he
that the players told Ben Jonson "never blotted a line." It is the
tragedy,--

TIMON OF ATHENS.

He will have it in five acts, as the best form; and he has fixed upon
his _dramatis personae_, at least the principal of them, for he names
them on the margin as he writes. He uses twelve in the first scene, some
of whom he has no occasion for but to bring forward the character of his
hero; but they are all individualized while he employs them. The scene
he has fixed upon; this is present to his mind's eye; and as he cannot
afterwards alter it without making his characters talk incongruously and
being compelled to rewrite the whole, he writes it down thus:--

ACT I.

SCENE I.--_A Hall in Timon's House._

Now he has reflected that his first object is to interest his audience
in the action and passion of the piece,--at the very outset, if
possible, to catch their fancies and draw them into the mimic life of
the play,--to beguile and attract them without their knowing it. He has
reflected upon this, we say,--for see how artfully he opens the scene,
and how soon the empty stage is peopled with life! He chooses to begin
by having two persons enter from opposite wings, whose qualities are
known at once to the reader of the play, but not to an audience. The
stage-direction informs us:--

[_Enter Poet, Painter, Jeweller, Merchant, and others, at several
doors._

We shall see how at the same time they introduce and unfold their own
characters and awaken an interest in the main action. In writing, we
are obliged to name them. They do not all enter quite at once. At first
comes

_Poet._ Good day, Sir.
_Painter._ I am glad to see you well.
_Poet._ I have not seen you long; how goes the world?
_Painter._ It wears, Sir, as it grows.

This shows them to be acquaintances.--While the next reply is made, in
which the Poet begins to talk in character even before the audience know
him, two others enter from the same side, as having just met, and others
in the background.

_Poet._ Ay, that's well known:--
But what particular rarity? what strange,
That manifold record not matches? See,

And we fancy him waving his hand in an enthusiastic manner,--

Magic of bounty! all these spirits thy power
Hath conjured to attend.

Which manner is only a high-flowing habit, for he adds in the same
breath, dropping his figure suddenly,--

I know the merchant.
_Painter._ I know them both; t'other's a jeweller.

It is certainly natural that painters should know jewellers,--and,
perhaps, that poets should be able to recognize merchants, though the
converse might not hold. We now know who the next speakers are, and soon
distinguish them.

_Merchant._ Oh, 'tis a worthy lord!
_Jeweller._ Nay, that's most fixed.
_Merchant._ A most incomparable man; breathed as it were
To an untirable and continuate goodness:
He passes.
_Jeweller._ I have a jewel here.

The Jeweller being known, the Merchant is; and, it will be noticed that
the first speaks in a cautious manner.

_Merchant._ Oh, pray, let's see it! For the lord Timon, Sir?
_Jeweller._ If he will touch the estimate; but, for that----

We begin to suspect who is the "magic of bounty" and the "incomparable
man," and also to have an idea that all these people have come to his
house to see him.--While the Merchant examines the jewel, the first who
spoke, the high-flown individual, is pacing and talking to himself near
the one he met:--

_Poet. When we for recompense have praised the vile,
It stains the glory in that happy verse
Which aptly sings the good._

Perhaps he is thinking of himself. The Merchant and Jeweller do not hear
him;--they stand in twos at opposite sides of the stage.

_Merchant_. 'Tis a good form.
[_Looking at the jewel._

He observes only that the stone is well cut; but the Jeweller adds,--

_Jeweller_. And rich: here is a water, look you.

While they are interested in this and move backward, the two others come
nearer the front.

_Painter_. You are rapt, Sir, in some work, some dedication
To the great lord.

This is said, of course, with reference to the other's recent soliloquy.
And now we are going to know them.

_Poet_. A thing slipped idly from me.
Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes
From whence 'tis nourished. The fire i' the flint
Shows not till it be struck; our gentle flame
Provokes itself, and like the current files
Each bound it chafes.--What have you there?

We perceive that he is a poet, and a rather rhetorical than sincere one.
He has the art, but, as we shall see, not the heart.

_Painter_. A picture, Sir.--And when comes your book forth?

_Poet_. Upon the heels of my presentment, Sir--
Let's see your piece.
_Painter_. 'Tis a good piece.

We know that the Poet has come to make his presentment. The Painter,
the more modest of the two, wishes his work to be admired, but is
apprehensive, and would forestall the Poet's judgment. He means, it is a
"tolerable" piece.

_Poet_. So 'tis: this comes off well and excellent.

_Painter_. Indifferent.

_Poet_. Admirable. How this grace
Speaks his own standing! What a mental power
This eye shoots forth! How big imagination
Moves in this lip! To the dumbness of the gesture
One might interpret.

He, at all events, means to flatter the Painter,--or he is so habituated
to ecstasies that he cannot speak without going into one. But with what
Shakspearean nicety of discrimination! The "grace that speaks his own
standing," the "power of the eye," the "imagination of the lip," are all
true; and so is the natural impulse, in one of so fertile a brain as a
poet from whom verse "oozes" to "interpret to the dumb gesture,"--to
invent an appropriate speech for the figure (Timon, of course) to be
uttering. And all this is but to preoccupy our minds with a conception
of the lord Timon!

_Painter_. It is a pretty mocking of the life.
Here's a touch; is't good?

_Poet_. I'll say of it
It tutors Nature: artificial strife
Lives in these touches livelier than life.

He has thought of too fine a phrase; but it is in character with all his
fancies.

[_Enter certain Senators, and pass over._

_Painter_. How this lord's followed!

_Poet_. The senators of Athens: happy men!

This informs us who they are that pass over. The Poet also keeps up the
Ercles vein; while the Painter's eye is caught.

_Painter_. Look, more!

_Poet_. You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors.

I have, in this rough work, shaped out a man
Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug
With amplest entertainment: my free drift
Halts not particularly, but moves itself
In a wide sea of wax: no levelled malice
Infects one comma in the course I hold:
But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,
Leaving no tract behind.

This flight of rhetoric is intended to produce a sort of musical effect,
in preparing us by its lofty sound for readily apprehending the lord
Timon with "amplest entertainment." The same is true of all that
follows. The Poet and Painter do but sound a lordly note of preparation,
and move the curtain that is to be lifted before a scene of profusion.
Call it by what name we please, it surely was not accident or
unconscious inspiration,--a rapture or frenzy,--which led Shakspeare to
open this play in this manner. If we remember the old use of choruses,
which was to lift up and excite the fancy, we may well believe that he
intended this flourishing Poet to act as a chorus,--to be a "mighty
whiffler," going before, elevating "the flat unraised spirits" of his
auditory, and working on their "imaginary forces." He is a rhetorical
character, designed to rouse the attention of the house by the pomp
of his language, and to set their fancies in motion by his broad
conceptions. How well he does it! No wonder the Painter is a little
confused as he listens to him.

_Painter_. How shall I understand you?

_Poet_. I'll unbolt to you.

You see how all conditions, how all minds,
(As well of glib and slippery creatures, as
Of grave and austere quality,) tender down
Their services to Lord Timon; his large fortune,
Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,
Subdues and properties to his love and tendance
All sorts of hearts; yea, from the glass-faced flatterer
To Apemantus, that few things loves better
Than to abhor himself; even he drops down
The knee before him, and returns in peace,
Most rich in Timon's nod.

There was almost a necessity that the spectator should be made
acquainted with the character of Timon before his appearance; for his
profuseness could be illustrated, after being known, better than it
could make itself known in dialogue and action in which he should bear a
part. And of the hundreds of English plays opening with an explanation
or narrative of foregone matters, there is none where the formality is
concealed by a more ingenious artifice than is used in this scene. The
spectator is fore-possessed with Timon's character, and (in the outline
the Poet is proceeding to give) with a suspicion that he is going to see
him ruined in the course of the piece; and this is accomplished in
the description of a panegyric, incidentally, briefly, picturesquely,
artfully, with an art that tutors Nature, and which so well conceals
itself that it can scarcely be perceived except in this our microscopic
analysis. Here also we have Apemantus introduced beforehand. And with
all this, the Painter and Poet speak minutely and broadly in character;
the one sees scenes, the other plans an action (which is just what his
own creator had done) and talks in poetic language. It is no more
than the text warrants to remark that the next observation, primarily
intended to break the poet's speech, was also intended to be the natural
thought and words of a

_Painter_. I saw them speak together.

_Poet_. Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill
Feigned Fortune to be throned: the base of
the mount
Is ranked with all deserts, all kinds of natures
That labor on the bosom of this sphere
To propagate their states; amongst them all,
Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fixed,
One do I personate of Lord Timon's frame,
Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her;
Whose present grace to present slaves and servants
Translates his rivals.

_Painter_. 'Tis conceived to scope.
This throne, this Fortune, and this hill, methinks,
With one man beckoned from the rest below,
Bowing his head against the steepy mount
To climb his happiness, would be well expressed
In our condition.

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