The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

Considering what a barbaric age it was that the English mind was emerging from then; and the difficulties attending the first attempt to create in the English literature, anything which should bear any proportion to those finished models of skill which were then dazzling the imagination of the English scholar in the unworn gloss of their fresh revival here, and discouraging, rather than stimulating, the rude poetic experiment; – considering what weary lengths of essay there are always to be encountered, where the standard of excellence is so far beyond the power of execution; we have no occasion to despise the first bold attempts to overcome these difficulties which the good taste of this company has preserved to us. They are just such works as we might expect under those circumstances; – yet full of the pedantries of the new acquisition, overflowing on the surface with the learning of the school, sparkling with classic allusions, seizing boldly on the classic original sometimes, and working their new fancies into it; but, full already of the riant vigour and originality of the Elizabethan inspiration; and never servilely copying a foreign original. The English genius is already triumphant in them. Their very crudeness is not without its historic charm, when once their true place in the structure we find them in, is recognised. In the later works, this crust of scholarship has disappeared, and gone below the surface. It is all dissolved, and gone into the clear intelligence; – it has all gone to feed the majestic current of that new, all-subduing, all-grasping originality. It is in these earlier performances that the stumbling-blocks of our present criticism are strewn so thickly. Nobody can write any kind of criticism of the 'Comedy of Errors,' for instance, without recognizing the Poet's acquaintance with the classic model, [See a recent criticism in 'The Times.'] – without recognizing the classic treatment. 'Love's Labour's Lost,' 'The Taming of the Shrew,' the condemned parts of 'Henry the VI.,' and generally the Poems which are put down in our criticism as doubtful, or as the earlier Poems, are just those Poems in which the Poet's studies are so flatly betrayed on the surface. Among these are plays which were anonymously produced by the company performing at the Rose Theatre, and other companies which English noblemen found occasion to employ in their service then. These were not so much as produced at the theatre which has had the honor of giving its name to other productions, bound up with them. We shall find nothing to object to in that somewhat heterogeneous collection of styles, which even a single Play sometimes exhibits, when once the history of this phenomenon accompanies it. The Cathedrals that were built, or re-built throughout, just at the moment in which the Cathedral Architecture had attained its ultimate perfection, are more beautiful to the eye, perhaps, than those in which the story of its growth is told from the rude, massive Anglo-Saxon of the crypt or the chancel, to the last refinement of the mullion, and groin, and tracery. But the antiquary, at least, does not regret the preservation. And these crude beginnings here have only to be put in their place, to command from the critic, at least, a similar respect. For here, too, the history reports itself to the eye, and not less palpably.

It may seem surprising, and even incredible, to the modern critic, that men in this position should find any occasion to conceal their relation to those quite respectable contributions to the literature of the time, which they found themselves impelled to make. The fact that they did so, is one that we must accept, however, on uncontradicted cotemporary testimony, and account for it as we can. The critic who published his criticisms when 'the gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd's Calendar' was just coming into notice, however inferior to our modern critics in other respects, had certainly a better opportunity of informing himself on this point, than they can have at present. 'They have writ excellently well,' he says of this company of Poets, – this 'courtly company,' as he calls them, – ' they have writ excellently well, if their doings could be found out and made public with the rest.' Sir Philip Sidney, Raleigh, and the gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd's Calendar, are included in the list of Poets to whom this remark is applied. It is Raleigh's verse which is distinguished, however, in this commendation as the most 'lofty, insolent, and passionate;' a description which applies to the anonymous poems alluded to, but is not particularly applicable to those artificial and tame performances which he was willing to acknowledge. And this so commanding Poet, who was at the same time an aspiring courtier and meddler in affairs of state, and who chose, for some mysterious reason or other, to forego the honours which those who were in the secret of his literary abilities and successes, – the very best judges of poetry in that time, too, were disposed to accord him, – and we are not without references to cases in antiquity corresponding very nearly to this; and which seemed to furnish, at least, a sufficient precedent for this proceeding; – this so successful poet, and courtier, and great man of his time, was already in a position to succeed at once to that chair of literary patronage which the death of Sir Philip Sidney had left vacant. Instinctively generous, he was ready to serve the literary friends whom he attracted to him, not less lavishly than he had served the proud Queen herself, when he threw his gay cloak in her obstructed path, – at least, he was not afraid of risking those sudden splendours which her favour was then showering upon him, by wearying her with petitions on their behalf. He would have risked his new favour, at least with his 'Cynthia,' – that twin sister of Phoebus Apollo, – to make her the patron, if not the inspirer of the Elizabethan genius. 'When will you cease to be a beggar, Raleigh?' she said to him one day, on one of these not infrequent occasions. 'When your Majesty ceases to be a most gracious mistress,' was this courtier's reply. It is recorded of her, that 'she loved to hear his reasons to her demands.'

But though, with all his wit and eloquence, he could not contrive to make of the grand-daughter of Henry the Seventh, a Pericles, or an Alexander, or a Ptolemy, or an Augustus, or an encourager of anything that did not appear to be directly connected with her own particular ends, he did succeed in making her indirectly a patron of the literary and scientific development which was then beginning to add to her reign its new lustre, – which was then suing for leave to lay at her feet its new crowns and garlands. Indirectly, he did convert her into a patron, – a second-hand patron of those deeper and more subtle movements of the new spirit of the time, whose bolder demonstrations she herself had been forced openly to head. Seated on the throne of Henry the Seventh, she was already the armed advocate of European freedom; – Raleigh had contrived to make her the legal sponsor for the New World's liberties; it only needed that her patronage should be systematically extended to that new enterprise for the emancipation of the human life from the bondage of ignorance, from the tyranny of unlearning, – that enterprise which the gay, insidious Elizabethan literature was already beginning to flower over and cover with its devices, – it only needed that, to complete the anomaly of her position. And that through Raleigh's means was accomplished.

He became himself the head of a little Alexandrian establishment. His house was a home for men of learning. He employed men in literary and scientific researches on his account, whose business it was to report to him their results. He had salaried scholars at his table, to impart to him their acquisitions, Antiquities, History, Poetry, Chemistry, Mathematics, scientific research of all kinds, came under his active and persevering patronage. Returning from one of his visits to Ireland, whither he had gone on this occasion to inspect a seignorie which his 'sovereign goddess' had then lately conferred upon him, he makes his re-appearance at court with that so obscure personage, the poet of the 'Faery Queene,' under his wing; – that same gentleman, as the court is informed, whose bucolics had already attracted so much attention in that brilliant circle. By a happy coincidence, Raleigh, it seems, had discovered this Author in the obscurity of his clerkship in Ireland, and had determined to make use of his own influence at court to push his brother poet's fortunes there; but his efforts to benefit this poor bard personally, do not appear to have been attended at any time with much success. The mysterious literary partnership between these two, however, which dates apparently from an earlier period, continues to bring forth fruit of the most successful kind; and the 'Faery Queene' is not the only product of it.

All kinds of books began now to be dedicated to this new and so munificent patron of arts and letters. His biographers collect his public history, not from political records only, but from the eulogies of these manifold dedications. Ladonnier, the artist, publishes his Sketches of the New World through his aid. Hooker dedicates his History of Ireland to him; Hakluyt, his Voyages to Florida. A work 'On Friendship' is dedicated to him; another 'On Music,' in which art he had found leisure, it seems, to make himself a proficient; and as to the poetic tributes to him, – some of them at least are familiar to us already. In that gay court, where Raleigh and his haughty rivals were then playing their deep games, – where there was no room for Spenser's muse, and the worth of his 'Old Song' was grudgingly reckoned, – the 'rustling in silks' is long since over, but the courtier's place in the pageant of the 'Faery Queene' remains, and grows clearer with the lapse of ages. That time, against which he built so perseveringly, and fortified himself on so many sides, will not be able to diminish there 'one dowle that's in his plume.' [He was also a patron of Plays and Players in this stage of his career, and entertained private parties at his house with very recherché performances of that kind sometimes.]

In the Lord Timon of the Shakspere piece, which was rewritten from an Academic original after Raleigh's consignment to the Tower, – in that fierce satire into which so much Elizabethan bitterness is condensed, under the difference of the reckless prodigality which is stereotyped in the fable, we get, in the earlier scenes, some glimpses of this 'Athenian' also, in this stage of his career.

But it was not as a Patron only, or chiefly, that he aided the new literary development. A scholar, a scholar so earnest, so indefatigable, it followed of course that he must be, in one form or another, an Instructor also; for that is still, under all conditions, the scholar's destiny – it is still, in one form or another, his business on the earth. But with that temperament which was included among the particular conditions of his genius, and with those special and particular endowments of his for another kind of intellectual mastery, he could not be content with the pen – with the Poet's, or the Historian's, or the Philosopher's pen – as the instrument of his mental dictation. A Teacher thus furnished and ordained, seeks, indeed, naturally and instinctively, a more direct and living and effective medium of communication with the audience which his time is able to furnish him, whether 'few' or many, whether 'fit' or unfit, than the book can give him. He must have another means of 'delivery and tradition,' when the delivery or tradition is addressed to those whom he would associate with him in his age, to work with him as one man, or those to whom he would transmit it in other ages, to carry it on to its perfection – those to whom he would communicate his own highest view, those whom he would inform with his patiently-gathered lore, those whom he would instruct and move with his new inspirations. For the truth has become a personality with him – it is his nobler self. He will live on with it. He will live or die with it.

For such a one there is, perhaps, no institution ready in his time to accept his ministry. No chair at Oxford or Cambridge is waiting for him. For they are, of course, and must needs be, the strong-holds of the past – those ancient and venerable seats of learning, 'the fountains and nurseries of all the humanities,' as a Cambridge Professor calls them, in a letter addressed to Raleigh. The principle of these larger wholes is, of course, instinctively conservative. Their business is to know nothing of the new. The new intellectual movement must fight its battles through without, and come off conqueror there, or ever those old Gothic doors will creak on their reluctant hinges to give it ever so pinched an entrance. When it has once fought its way, and forced itself within – when it has got at last some marks of age and custom on its brow – then, indeed, it will stand as the last outwork of that fortuitous conglomeration, to be defended in its turn against all comers. Already the revived classics had been able to push from their chairs, and drive into corners, and shut up finally and put to silence, the old Aristotelian Doctors – the Seraphic and Cherubic Doctors of their day – in their own ancient halls. It would be sometime yet, perhaps, however, before that study of the dead languages, which was of course one prominent incident of the first revival of a dead learning, would come to take precisely the same place in those institutions, with their one instinct of conservation and 'abhorrence of change,' which the old monastic philosophy had taken in its day; but that change once accomplished, the old monastic philosophy itself, religious as it was, was never held more sacred than this profane innovation would come to be. It would be some time before those new observations and experiments, which Raleigh and his school were then beginning to institute, experiments and inquiries which the universities would have laughed to scorn in their day, would come to be promoted to the Professor's chair; but when they did, it would perhaps be difficult to convince a young gentleman liberally educated, at least, under the wings of one of those 'ancient and venerable' seats of learning, now gray in Raleigh's youthful West – ambitious, perhaps, to lead off in this popular innovation, where Saurians, and Icthyosaurians, and Entomologists, and Chonchologists are already hustling the poor Greek and Latin Teachers into corners, and putting them to silence with their growing terminologies – it would perhaps be difficult to convince one who had gone through the prescribed course of treatment in one of these 'nurseries of humanity,' that the knowledge of the domestic habits and social and political organisations of insects and shell-fish, or even the experiments of the laboratory, though never so useful and proper in their place, are not, after all, the beginning and end of a human learning. It was no such place as that that this department of the science of nature took in the systems or notions of its Elizabethan Founders. They were 'Naturalists,' indeed; but that did not imply, with their use of the term, the absence of the natural common human sense in the selection of the objects of their pursuits. 'It is a part of science to make judicious inquiries and wishes,' says the speaker in chief for this new doctrine of nature; speaking of the particular and special applications of it which he is forbidden to make openly, but which he instructs, and prepares, and charges his followers to make for themselves.

One of those innovations, one of those movements in which the new ground of ages of future culture is first chalked out – a movement whose end is not yet, whose beginning we have scarce yet seen – was made in England, not very far from the time in which Sir Walter Raleigh, began first to convert the eclat of his rising fortunes at home, and the splendour of his heroic achievements abroad, and all those new means of influence which his great position gave him, to the advancement of those deeper, dearer ambitions, which the predominance of the nobler elements in his constitution made inevitable with him. Even then he was ready to endanger those golden opinions, waiting to be worn in their newest gloss, not cast aside so soon, and new-won rank, and liberty and life itself, for the sake of putting himself into his true intellectual relations with his time, as a philosopher and a beginner of a new age in the human advancement. For 'spirits are not finely touched but to fine issues.'

If there was no Professor's Chair, if there was no Pulpit or Bishop's Stall waiting for him, and begging his acceptance of its perquisites, he must needs institute a chair of his own, and pay for leave to occupy it. If there was no university with its appliances within his reach, he must make a university of his own. The germ of a new 'universality' would not be wanting in it. His library, or his drawing-room, or his 'banquet,' will be Oxford enough for him. He will begin it as the old monks began theirs, with their readings. Where the teacher is, there must the school be gathered together. And a school in the end there will be: a school in the end the true teacher will have, though he begin it, as the barefoot Athenian began his, in the stall of the artisan, or in the chat of the Gymnasium, amid the compliments of the morning levee, or in the woodland stroll, or in the midnight revel of the banquet.

When the hour and the man are indeed met, when the time is ripe, and one truly sent, ordained of that Power which chooses, not one only – what uncloaked atheism is that, to promulgate in an age like this! —not the Teachers and Rabbis of one race only, but all the successful agents of human advancement, the initiators of new eras of man's progress, the inaugurators of new ages of the relief of the human estate and the Creator's glory – when such an one indeed appears, there will be no lack of instrumentalities. With some verdant hill-side, it may be, some blossoming knoll or 'mount' for his 'chair,' with a daisy or a lily in his hand, or in a fisherman's boat, it may be, pushed a little way from the strand, he will begin new ages.

The influence of Raleigh upon his time cannot yet be fully estimated; because, in the first place, it was primarily of that kind which escapes, from its subtlety, the ordinary historical record; and, in the second place, it was an influence at the time necessarily covert, studiously disguised. His relation to the new intellectual development of his age might, perhaps, be characterised as Socratic; though certainly not because he lacked the use, and the most masterly use, of that same weapon with which his younger contemporary brought out at last, in the face of his time, the plan of the Great Instauration. In the heart of the new establishment which the magnificent courtier, who was a 'Queen's delight,' must now maintain, there soon came to be a little 'Academe.' The choicest youth of the time, 'the Spirits of the Morning Sort,' gathered about him. It was the new philosophic and poetic genius of the age that he attracted to him; it was on that philosophic and poetic genius that he left his mark for ever.

He taught them, as the masters taught of old, in dialogues – in words that could not then be written, in words that needed the master's modulation to give them their significance. For the new doctrine had need to be clothed in a language of its own, whose inner meaning only those who had found their way to its inmost shrine were able to interpret.

We find some contemporary and traditional references to this school, which are not without their interest and historical value, as tending to show the amount of influence which it was supposed to have exerted on the time, as well as the acknowledged necessity for concealment in the studies pursued in it. The fact that such an Association existed, that it began with Raleigh, that young men of distinction were attracted to it, and that in such numbers, and under such conditions, that it came to be considered ultimately as a 'School,' of which he was the head-master – the fact that the new experimental science was supposed to have had its origin in this association, – that opinions, differing from the received ones, were also secretly discussed in it, – that anagrams and other devices were made use of for the purpose of infolding the esoteric doctrines of the school in popular language, so that it was possible to write in this language acceptably to the vulgar, and without violating preconceived opinions, and at the same time instructively to the initiated, – all this remains, even on the surface of statements already accessible to any scholar, – all this remains, either in the form of contemporary documents, or in the recollections of persons who have apparently had it from the most authentic sources, from persons who profess to know, and who were at least in a position to know, that such was the impression at the time.

But when the instinctive dread of innovation was already so keenly on the alert, when Elizabeth was surrounded with courtiers still in their first wrath at the promotion of the new 'favourite,' indignant at finding themselves so suddenly overshadowed with the growing honours of one who had risen from a rank beneath their own, and eagerly watching for an occasion against him, it was not likely that such an affair as this was going to escape notice altogether. And though the secrecy with which it was conducted, might have sufficed to elude a scrutiny such as theirs, there was another, and more eager and subtle enemy, – an enemy which the founder of this school had always to contend with, that had already, day and night, at home and abroad, its Argus watch upon him. That vast and secret foe, which he had arrayed against him on foreign battle fields, knew already what kind of embodiment of power this was that was rising into such sudden favour here at home, and would have crushed him in the germ – that foe which would never rest till it had pursued him to the block, which was ready to join hands with his personal enemies in its machinations, in the court of Elizabeth, as well as in the court of her successor, that vast, malignant, indefatigable foe, in which the spirit of the old ages lurked, was already at his threshold, and penetrating to the most secret chamber of his councils. It was on the showing of a Jesuit that these friendly gatherings of young men at Raleigh's table came to be branded as 'a school of Atheism.' And it was through such agencies, that his enemies at court were able to sow suspicions in Elizabeth's mind in regard to the entire orthodoxy of his mode of explaining certain radical points in human belief, and in regard to the absolute 'conformity' of his views on these points with those which she had herself divinely authorised, suspicions which he himself confesses he was never afterwards able to eradicate. The matter was represented to her, we are told, 'as if he had set up for a doctor in the faculty and invited young gentlemen into his school, where the Bible was jeered at,' and the use of profane anagrams was inculcated. The fact that he associated with him in his chemical and mathematical studies, and entertained in his house, a scholar labouring at that time under the heavy charge of getting up 'a philosophical theology,' was also made use of greatly to his discredit.

And from another uncontradicted statement, which dates from a later period, but which comes to us worded in terms as cautious as if it had issued directly from the school itself, we obtain another glimpse of these new social agencies, with which the bold, creative, social genius that was then seeking to penetrate on all sides the custom-bound time, would have roused and organised a new social life in it. It is still the second-hand hearsay testimony which is quoted here. 'He is said to have set up an Office of Address, and it is supposed that the office might respect a more liberal intercourse—a nobler mutuality of advertisement, than would perhaps admit of all sorts of persons.' 'Raleigh set up a kind of Office of Address,' says another, 'in the capacity of an agency for all sorts of persons.' John Evelyn, refers also to that long dried fountain of communication which Montaigne first proposed, Sir Walter Raleigh put in practice, and Mr. Hartlib endeavoured to renew.