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gentle expresser of it." Jonson received this evidence of facility as a reproof to his own laborious mode of composition. He felt proud, and wisely so, of the commendations of his admirers, that his works cost him much sweat and much oil; and when the players told him that Shakspere never blotted out a line, he had his self-satisfied retort, “Would he had blotted a thousand." But this carelessness, as it appeared to Jonson,-this exuberant facility, as the players thought,was in itself no proof that Shakspere did not elaborate his works with the nicest care. The same thing was said of Fletcher as of him. Humphrey Moseley, the publisher of Beaumont and Fletcher's works in 1647, says -"Whatever I have seen of Mr. Fletcher's own hand is free from interlining, and his friends affirm he never writ any one thing twice." But the stationer does not put this forth as any proof of carelessness; for he most judiciously adds, "It seems he had that rare felicity to prepare and perfect all first in his own brain, to shape and attire his notions, to add or lop off before he committed one word to writing, and never touched pen till all was to stand as firm and immutable as if engraven in brass or marble." This is the way, we believe, in which all works of great originality are built up. If Shakspere blotted not a line, it was because he wrote not till he had laid the foundations, and formed the plan, and conceived the ornaments, of his wondrous edifices. The execution of the work was then an easy thing; and the facility was the beautiful result of the pre

vious labour.

But if Jonson expressed himself a little petulantly, and perhaps inconsiderately, about the boast of the players, surely nothing can be nobler than the hearty tribute which he pays to the memory of Shakspere :-" I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any." Unquestionably this is language which shows that the memory of Shakspere was cherished by others even to idolatry; so that Jonson absolutely adopts an apologetical tone in venturing an observation which can scarcely be considered disparaging "he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was neces

sary he should be stopped." It was the facility that excited Jonson's critical comparison of Shakspere with himself; and it was in the same way that, when he wrote his noble verses "To the Memory of my Beloved Mr. William Shakespeare and what he hath left us," he could not avoid drawing a comparison between his own profound scholarship and Shakspere's practical learning :

"If I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less
Greek,

From thence to honour thee I will not seek
For names: but call forth thund'ring Eschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,

Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,

To live again, to hear thy buskin tread
And shake a stage: or, when thy socks were

on,

Leave thee alone for the comparison

Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.

Nature herself was proud of his designs, And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines! Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit. The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes, Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please, But antiquated and deserted lic, As they were not of Nature's family." The interpretation of this passage is certainly not difficult. Its general sense is expressed by Gifford :-" Jonson not only sets Shakspeare above his contemporaries, but above the ancients, whose works himself idolized, and of whose genuine merits he was perhaps a more competent judge than any scholar of his age. The entire passage was unquestionably meant for praise, whatever opinion might be implied in it as to Shakspere's learning. Looking to the whole construction and tendency of the passage, it may even be doubted whether Jonson intended to express a direct opinion as to Shakspere's philological attainments. If we paraphrase

*Jonson's Works,' vol. viii. p. 333.

the course of his conversation, a familiar phrase or two of French or Italian." There is, however, a contemporary testimony to the acquirements of Shakspere which is of somewhat higher value than the assertions of any master "of all such reading as was never read "—of one, himself a true poet, who holds that all Shakspere's excellences were his freehold, but that his cunning brain improved his natural gifts :—

the passage according to the common notion, | might pick up in the writers of the time, or it reads thus:-And although you knew little Latin and less Greek, to honour thee out of Latin and Greek I will not seek for names. According to this construction, the poet ought to have written, because "thou hadst small Latin," &c. But without any violence the passage may be read thus:-And although thou hadst in thy writings few images derived from Latin, and fewer from Greek authors, I will not thence (on that account) seek for names to honour thee, but call forth thundering Eschylus, &c. It is perfectly clear that Jonson meant to say, and not disparagingly, that Shakspere was not an imitator. Immediately after the mention of Aristophanes, Terence, and Plautus, he adds,

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Shakespeare, thou hadst as smooth a comic vein,

Fitting the sock, and in thy natural brain As strong conception, and as clear a rage, As any one that traffick'd with the stage." To argue from such passages that the writers meant to reproach Shakspere as an ignorant or even as an unlearned man, in the common sense of the word, was an absurdity that was not fully propounded to the world till the discovery of Dr. Farmer, that, because translations existed from Latin, Italian, and French authors in the time of Shakspere, he was incapable of consulting the originals. This profound logician closes his judicial sentence with the following memorable words, which have become the true faith of some antiquarian critics up to this hour:"He remembered perhaps enough of his schoolboy learning to put the Hig, hag, hog, into the mouth of Sir Hugh Evans, and

Farmer, the most insolent of the race of piddling black-letter bibliographers, has the profligacy not to quote these lines, but to say, "Drayton, the countryman and acquaintance of Shakspeare, determines his excellence to the natural brain only."

"This and much more which cannot be express'd

But by himself, his tongue and his own breast,
Was Shakespeare's freehold, which his cunning
brain

Improved by favour of the ninefold train.
The buskin'd Muse, the Comic Queen, the
grand

And louder tone of Clio; nimble hand,
And nimbler foot of the melodious pair;
The silver-voiced Lady; the most fair
Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts,
And she whose praise the heavenly body
chants;-

These jointly woo'd him, envying one another,
(Obey'd by all as spouse, but loved as brother,
And wrought a curious robe of sable grave,
Fresh green, and pleasant yellow, red most
brave,

And constant blue, rich purple, guiltless
white,

The lowly russet, and the scarlet bright;
Branch'd and embroider'd like the painted

spring,

Each leaf match'd with a flower, and each
string

Of golden wire, each line of silk; there run
Italian works whose thread the sisters spun:
And there did sing, or seem to sing, the
choice

Birds of a foreign note and various voice.
Here hangs a mossy rock; there plays a fair
But chiding fountain purled: not the air,
Nor clouds, nor thunder, but were living
drawn,

Not out of common tiffany or lawn,
But fine materials, which the Muses know,
And only know the countries where they
grow."+

† Commendatory Verses, On Worthy Master Shakspeare and his Poems,' by I. M. S.

But if the passage which we have previously quoted from 'The Poetaster' be, as Gifford so plausibly imagined, intended for Shakspere, it is decisive as to Jonson's own opinion of his great friend's acquirements: it is the opinion of every man, now, who is not a slave to the authority of the smallest minds that ever undertook to measure the vast poetical region of Shakspere with their little tape, inch by inch :—

"His learning savours not the school-like gloss That most consists in echoing words and terms,

And soonest wins a man an empty name." The verses of Jonson, prefixed to the folio of 1623, conclude with these remarkable lines:

"Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage, Or influence, chide, or cheer, the drooping stage;

Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night,

And despairs day, but for thy volume's light."

From 1616, the year of Shakspere's death, to 1623, the date of the first edition of his collected works, Jonson himself had written nothing for the stage. Beaumont had died the year before Shakspere; but Fletcher alone was sustaining the high reputation which he had won with his accomplished associate. Massinger had been in London from 1606, known certainly to have written in conjunction with other dramatists before the period of Shakspere's death, and, without doubt, assisting to fill the void which he had left;

for The Bondman' appears in the list of the Master of the Revels in 1623. The indefatigable Thomas Heywood was a writer for the stage from the commencement of the seventeenth century to the suppression of the theatres. Webster was a poet of Shakspere's own theatre, immediately after his death, and a leading character in The Duchess of Malfi' was played by Burbage. Rowley produced some of his best works at the same period. Chapman had not ceased to write. Ford was known as a rising poet. Many others were there of genius and learning who at this particular time were struggling for the honours of the drama, and some with

great success. And yet Jonson does not hesitate to say, that since the death of Shakspere the stage mourns like night. Leonard Digges, writing at the date of the publication of the folio, says of Shakspere's dramas,

"Happy verse, thou shalt be sung and heard, When hungry quills shall be such honour barr'd.

Then vanish, upstart writers to each stage, You needy poetasters of this age!"

This man speaks authoritatively, because he speaks the public voice. But it is not with the poetasters only that he compares the popularity of Shakspere; he tells us that the players of the Globe live by him dead; and that prime judgments, rich veins,

"have fared

The worst with this deceased man compared;" and he then proceeds to exhibit the precise character of the popular admiration of Shakspere :—

"So have I seen, when Cæsar would appear, And on the stage at half-sword parley were Brutus and Cassius, O, how the audience Were ravish'd with what wonder they went thence !

When, some new day, they would not brook a line

Of tedious, though well-labour'd, Catiline;
Sejanus too was irksome: they prized more
'Honest' Iago, or the jealous Moor.
And though the Fox and subtle Alchymist,
Long intermitted, could not long be miss'd,
Though these have shamed all th' ancients,

and might raise

Their author's merit with a crown of bays, Yet these sometimes, even at a friend's desire Acted, have scarce defray'd the sea-coal fire And door-keepers: when, let but Falstaff

come,

Hal, Poins, the rest,-you scarce shall have a

room,

All is so pester'd: Let but Beatrice
And Benedict be seen, lo! in a trice
The cockpit, galleries, boxes, all are full,
To hear Malvolio, that cross-garter'd gull.
Brief, there is nothing in his wit-fraught
book,

Whose sound we would not hear, on whose worth look:

Like old-coin'd gold, whose lines in every page

Shall pass true current to succeding age.”

We have said enough, we think, to show how inconsiderate is the assertion, that Shakspere's "pre-eminence was not acknowledged by his contemporaries." Should this fact, however, be still thought to be a matter of opinion, we will place the opinion of a real critic, not the less sound for being an enthusiastic admirer, against this echo of

the babble of the cold and arrogant school of criticism that has still some small disciples and imitators: "Clothed in radiant armour, and authorised by titles sure and manifold as a poet, Shakspere came forward to demand the throne of fame, as the dramatic

poet of England. His excellences compelled throne, although there were giants in those days even his contemporaries to seat him on that contending for the same honour."*

*Coleridge's' Literary Remains,' vol. ii. p. 53.

BOOK X.

THE SONNETS.

THE original edition of this collection of parted from, but the lyrical poems of 'The poems bore the following title :-'Shake- Passionate Pilgrim' scattered here and speare's Sonnets. Never before imprinted. | there, and sometimes a single Sonnet, someAt London, by G. Eld, for T. T., and are to times two or three, and more rarely four or be sold by John Wright, dwelling at Christ five, distinguished by some quaint title. No Church-gate. 1609.' The volume is a small title includes more than five. In the ediquarto. In addition to the Sonnets it con- tions of the Poems which appeared during a tains, at the end, 'A Lover's Complaint. By century afterwards, the original order of the William Shake-speare.' In this collection Sonnets was adopted in some-that of the the Sonnets are numbered from 1 to 154. edition of 1640 in others. Lintot's, in 1709, Although the arrangement of the Sonnets in for example, adheres to the original ; Curll's, this first edition is now the only one adopted in 1710, follows the second edition. Cotes, in editions of Shakspere's Poems, another the printer of the second edition, was also order occasionally prevailed up to the time the printer of the second edition of the plays. of the publication of Steevens's fac-simile re- That the principle of arrangement adopted print of the Sonnets in 1766. An interval in Cotes' edition was altogether arbitrary, of thirty-one years elapsed between the and proceeded upon a false conception of publication of the volume by T. T. (Thomas many of these poems, we can have no hesitaThorpe) in 1609, and the demand for a re- tion in believing; but it is remarkable that print of these remarkable poems. In 1640 within twenty-four years of Shakspere's appeared 'Poems, written by Wil. Shake- death an opinion should have existed that speare, Gent. Printed at London by Tho. the original arrangement was also arbitrary, Cotes, and are to be sold by John Benson.' and that the Sonnets were essentially that This volume, in duodecimo, contains the collection of fragments which Meres described Sonnets, but in a totally different order, the in 1598, when he wrote, “As the soul of original arrangement not only being de- Euphorbus was thought to live in Pytha

|

The Sonnets of Shakspere are distinguished from the general character of that class of poems by the continuity manifestly existing in many successive stanzas, which form, as it were, a group of flowers of the same hue and fragrance. Mr. Hallam has justly explained this peculiarity:

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"No one ever entered more fully than Shakspeare into the character of this species of poetry, which admits of no expletive imagery, no merely ornamental line. But though each Sonnet has generally its proper unity, the sense--I do not mean the grammatical construction-will sometimes be found to spread from one to another, independently of that repetition of the leading idea, like variations of an air, which a series of them frequently exhibits, and on account of which they have latterly been reckoned by some rather an integral poem than a collection of Sonnets. But this is not uncommon among the Italians, and belongs, in fact, to those of Petrarch himself."

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goras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives | friend was has been the subject of infinite in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shake- discussion. Chalmers maintains that it was speare: witness his 'Venus and Adonis,' his Queen Elizabeth, and that there was no im'Lucrece,' his sugared Sonnets among his propriety in Shakspere addressing the queen private friends." Upon the question of the by the masculine pronoun, because a queen continuity of the Sonnets depend many im- is a prince; as we still say in the Liturgy, portant considerations with reference to the our queen and governor." The reasoning life and personal character of the poet; and of Chalmers on this subject, which may be it is necessary, therefore, to examine that found in his 'Supplementary Apology,' is question with proportionate care. one of the most amusing pieces of learned and ingenious nonsense that ever met our view. We believe that we must very summarily dismiss Queen Elizabeth. But Chalmers with more reason threw over the idea that the dedication of the bookseller to the edition of 1609 implied the person to whom the Sonnets were addressed. T. T., who dedicates, is, as we have mentioned, Thomas Thorpe, the publisher. W. H., to whom the dedication is addressed, was, according to the earlier critics, an humble person. He was either William Harte, the poet's nephew, or William Hews, some unknown individual; but Drake said, and said truly, that the person addressed in some of the Sonnets themselves was one of rank; and he maintained that it was Lord Southampton. "W. H„,” he said, ought to have been H. W.-Henry Wriothesley. But Mr. Boaden and Mr. Brown have subsequently affirmed that "W. H.” is William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, who, in his youth and his rank, exactly corre sponded with the person addressed by the poet. The words "begetter of these Sonnets," in the dedication, must mean, it is maintained, the person who was the immediate cause of their being written-to whom they were addressed. But he was "the only be getter of these Sonnets." The latter portion of the Sonnets are unquestionably addressed to a female, which at once disposes of the assertion that he was the only begetter, assuming the "begetter" to be used in the sense of inspirer. Chalmers disposes of this meaning of the word very cleverly:-“W. II. was the bringer forth of the Sonnets. Beget is derived by Skinner from the Anglo-Saxon begettan, obtinere. Johnson adopts this derivation and sense: so that begetter, in the quaint language of Thorpe the bookseller, Pistol the ancient, and such affected persons,

But, although a series may frequently exhibit a "repetition of the leading idea, like variations of an air," it by no means follows that they are to be therefore considered "rather an integral poem than a collection of Sonnets." In the edition of 1640 the ". variations" were arbitrarily separated, in many cases, from the "air;" but, on the other hand, it is scarcely conceivable that in the earlier edition of 1609 these verses were intended to be presented as "an integral poem." Before we examine this matter, let us inquire into some of the circumstances connected with the original publication.

The first seventeen Sonnets contain a "leading idea" under every form of ". variation." They are an exhortation to a friend, a male friend, to marry. Who this

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