The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

This was the learning in which the art of a new age and race first spoke, and many an old foolish, childish, borrowed notion went off like vapour in it at its first word, without any one's ever so much as stopping to observe it, any one whose place was within. It is the school of a criticism much more severe than the criticism which calls its freedom in question. It is a school in which the taking of names in vain in general is strictly forbidden. That is the first commandment of it, and it is a commandment with promise.

The man who sits there in the Tower, now, driving that same 'goose-pen' which he speaks of as such a safe instrument for unfolding practical doctrines, with such patient energy, is not now occupied with the statistics of Noah's Ark, grave as he looks; though that, too, is a subject which his nautical experience and the indomitable bias of his genius as a western man towards calculation in general, together with his notion that the affairs of the world generally, past as well as future, belong properly to his sphere as a man, will require him to take up and examine and report upon, before he will think that his work is done. It is not a chapter in the History of the World which he is composing at present, though that work is there at this moment on the table, and forms the ostensible state-prison work of this convict.

This is the man who made one so long ago in those brilliant 'Round Table' reunions, in which the idea of converting the new belles lettres of that new time, to such grave and politic uses was first suggested; he is the genius of that company, that even in such frolic mad-cap games as Love's Labour's Lost, and the Taming of the Shrew, and Midsummer Night's Dream, could contrive to insert, not the broad farce and burlesque on the old pretentious wordy philosophy and pompous rhetoric it was meant to dethrone only, and not the most perilous secret of the new philosophy, only, but the secret of its organ of delivery and tradition, the secret of its use of letters, the secret of its 'cipher in letters,' and not its 'cipher in words' only, the cipher in which the secret of the authorship of these works was infolded, and in which it was found, but not found in these earlier plays, – plays in which these so perilous secrets are still conveyed in so many involutions, in passages so intricate with quips and puns and worthless trivialities, so uninviting or so marred with their superficial meanings, that no one would think of looking in them for anything of any value. For it is always when some necessary, but not superficial, question of the play is to be considered, that the Clown and the Fool are most in request, for 'there be of them that will themselves laugh to set on some barren spectators to laugh too'; and under cover of that mirth it is, that the grave or witty undertone reaches the ear of the judicious.

It is in the later and more finished works of this school that the key to the secret doctrines of it, which it is the object of this work to furnish, is best found. But the fact, that in the very rudest and most faulty plays in this collection of plays, which form so important a department of the works of this school, which make indeed the noblest tradition, the only adequate tradition, the 'illustrated tradition' of its noblest doctrine – the fact that in the very earliest germ of this new union of 'practic and theoric,' of art and learning, from which we pluck at last Advancements of Learning, and Hamlets, and Lears, and Tempests, and the Novum Organum, already the perilous secret of this union is infolded, already the entire organism that these great fruits and flowers will unfold in such perfection is contained, and clearly traceable, – this is a fact which appeared to require insertion in this history, and not, perhaps, without some illustration.

'It is not amiss to observe,' says the Author of the Advancement of Learning, when at last his great exordium to the science of nature in man, and the art of culture and cure that is based on that science is finished – pausing to observe it, pausing ere he will produce his index to that science, to observe it: 'It is not amiss to observe', he says – (speaking of the operation of culture in general on young minds, so forcible, though unseen, as hardly any length of time, or contention of labour, can countervail it afterwards) – 'how small and mean faculties gotten by education, yet when they fall into great men, or great matters, do work great and important effects; whereof we see a notable example in Tacitus, of two stage-players, Percennius and Vibulenus, who, by their faculty of playing, put the Pannonian armies into an extreme tumult and combustion; for, there arising a mutiny among them, upon the death of Augustus Caesar, Blaesus the lieutenant had committed some of the mutineers, which were suddenly rescued; whereupon Vibulenus got to be heard speak [being a stage-player], which he did in this manner.

'"These poor innocent wretches appointed to cruel death, you have restored to behold the light: but who shall restore my brother to me, or life to my brother, that was sent hither in message from the legions of Germany to treat of – THE COMMON CAUSE? And he hath murdered him this last night by some of his fencers and ruffians, that he hath about him for his executioners upon soldiers. The mortalest enemies do not deny burial; when I have performed my last duties to the corpse with kisses, with tears, command me to be slain besides him, so that these, my fellows, for our good meaning and our true hearts to THE LEGION, may have leave to bury us."

'With which speech he put the army into an infinite fury and uproar; whereas, truth was, he had no brother, neither was there any such matter [in that case], but he played it merely as if he had been upon the stage.'

This is the philosopher and stage critic who expresses a decided opinion elsewhere, that 'the play's the thing,' though he finds this kind of writing, too, useful in its way, and for certain purposes; but he is the one who, in speaking of the original differences in the natures and gifts of men, suggests that 'there are a kind of men who can, as it were, divide themselves;' and he does not hesitate to propound it as his deliberate opinion, that a man of wit should have at command a number of styles adapted to different auditors and exigencies; that is, if he expects to accomplish anything with his rhetoric. That is what he makes himself responsible for from his professional chair of learning; but it is the Prince of Denmark, with his remarkable natural faculty of speaking to the point, who says, 'Seneca can not be too heavy, nor Plautus too light, for – [what?] – the law of writ– and – the liberty.' 'These are the only men,' he adds, referring apparently to that tinselled gauded group of servants that stand there awaiting his orders.

'My lord – you played once in the university, you say,' he observes afterwards, addressing himself to that so politic statesmen whose overreaching court plots and performances end for himself so disastrously. 'That did I, my lord,' replies Polonius, 'and was accounted a good actor.' 'And what did you enact?' 'I did enact Julius Caesar. I – was killed i' the Capitol [I]. Brutus killed me.' 'It was a brute part of him [collateral sounds – Elizabethan phonography] to kill so capitol a calf there. – Be the players ready?'(?). [That is the question.]

'While watching the progress of the action at Sadlers' Wells,' says the dramatic critic of the 'Times,' in the criticism of the Comedy of Errors before referred to, directing attention to the juvenile air of the piece, to 'the classic severity in the form of the play,' and 'that baldness of treatment which is a peculiarity of antique comedy' – 'while watching the progress of the action at Sadlers' Wells, we may almost fancy we are at St. Peter's College, witnessing the annual performance of the Queen's scholars.' That is not surprising to one acquainted with the history of these plays, though the criticism which involves this kind of observation is not exactly the criticism to which we have been accustomed here. But any one who wishes to see, as a matter of antiquarian curiosity, or for any other purpose, how far from being hampered in the first efforts of his genius with this class of educational associations, that particular individual would naturally have been, in whose unconscious brains this department of the modern learning is supposed to have had its accidental origin, – any one who wishes to see in what direction the antecedents of a person in that station in life would naturally have biased, at that time, his first literary efforts, if, indeed, he had ever so far escaped from the control of circumstances as to master the art of the collocation of letters – any person who has any curiosity whatever on this point is recommended to read in this connection a letter from a professional contemporary of this individual – one who comes to us with unquestionable claims to our respect, inasmuch as he appears to have had some care for the future, and some object in living beyond that of promoting his own immediate private interests and sensuous gratification.

It is a letter of Mr. Edward Alleyn (the founder of Dulwich College), published by the Shakspere Society, to which we are compelled to have recourse for information on this interesting question; inasmuch as that distinguished contemporary and professional rival of his referred to, who occupies at present so large a space in the public eye, as it is believed for the best of reasons, has failed to leave us any specimens of his method of reducing his own personal history to writing, or indeed any demonstration of his appreciation of the art of chirography, in general. He is a person who appears to have given a decided preference to the method of oral communication as a means of effecting his objects. But in reading this truly interesting document from the pen of an Elizabethan player, who has left us a specimen of his use of that instrument usually so much in esteem with men of letters, we must take into account the fact, that this is an exceptional case of culture. It is the case of a player who aspired to distinction, and who had raised himself by the force of his genius above his original social level; it is the case of a player who has been referred to recently as a proof of the position which it was possible for 'a stage player' to attain to under those particular social conditions.

But as this letter is of a specially private and confidential nature, and as this poor player who did care for the future, and who founded with his talents, such as they were, a noble charity, instead of living and dying to himself, is not to blame for his defects of education, – since his acts command our respect, however faulty his attempts at literary expression, – this letter will not be produced here. But whoever has read it, or whoever may chance to read it, in the course of an antiquarian research, will be apt to infer, that whatever educational bias the first efforts of genius subjected to influences of the same kind would naturally betray, the faults charged upon the Comedy of Errors, the leaning to the classics, the taint of St. Peter's College, the tone of the Queen's scholars, are hardly the faults that the instructed critic would look for.

But to ascertain the fact, that the controlling idea of that new learning which the Man in the Tower is illustrating now in so grand and mature a manner, not with his pen only, but with his 'living art,' and with such an entire independence of classic models, is already organically contained in those earlier works on which the classic shell is still visible, it is not necessary to go back to the Westminster play of these new classics, or to the performances of the Queen's Scholars. Plays having a considerable air of maturity, in which the internal freedom of judgment and taste is already absolute, still exhibit on the surface of them this remarkable submission to the ancient forms which are afterwards rejected on principle, and by a rule in the new rhetoric – a rule which the author of the Advancement of Learning is at pains to state very clearly. The wildness of which we hear so much, works itself out upon the surface, and determines the form at length, as these players proceed and grow bolder with their work. A play, second to none in historical interest, invaluable when regarded simply in its relation to the history of this school, one which may be considered, in fact, the Introductory Play of the New School of Learning, is one which exhibits very vividly these striking characteristics of the earlier period. It is one in which the vulgarities of the Play-house are still the cloak of the philosophic subtleties, and incorporated, too, into the philosophic design; and it is one in which the unity of design, that one design which makes the works of this school, from first to last, as the work of one man, is still cramped with those other unities which the doctrines of Dionysus and the mysteries of Eleusis prescribed of old to their interpreters. 'What is the end of study? What is the end of it?' was the word of the New School of Learning. That was its first speech. It was a speech produced with dramatic illustrations, for the purpose of bringing out its significance more fully, for the purpose of pointing the inquiry unmistakeably to those ends of learning which the study of the learned then had not yet comprehended. It is a speech on behalf of a new learning, in which the extant learning is produced on the stage, in its actual historical relation to those 'ends' which the new school conceived to be the true ends of it, which are brought on to the stage in palpable, visible representation, not in allegorical forms, but in instances, 'conspicuous instances,' living specimens, after the manner of this school.

'What is the end of study?' cried the setter forth of this new doctrine, as long before as when lore and love were debating it together in that 'little Academe' that was yet, indeed, to be 'the wonder of the world, still and contemplative in living art.' 'What is the end of study?' cries already the voice of one pacing under these new olives. That was the word of the new school; that was the word of new ages, and these new minds taught of nature – her priests and prophets knew it then, already, 'Let fame that all hunt after in their lives,' they cry —

Live registered upon our brazen tombs, And then grace us in the disgrace of death; When spite of cormorant devouring time, The endeavour of this present breath may buy That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge, And make us HEIRS of all eternity– [of ALL]. * * * * * Navarre shall be the wonder of the world, Our Court shall be a little Academe, Still and contemplative in– LIVING art.

This is the Poet of the Woods who is beginning his 'recreations' for us here – the poet who loves so well to take his court gallants in their silks and velvets, and perfumes, and fine court ladies with all their courtly airs and graces, and all the stale conventionalitites that he is sick of, out from under the low roofs of princes into that great palace in which the Queen, whose service he is sworn to, keeps the State. This is the school-master who takes his school all out on holiday excursions into green fields, and woods, and treats them to country merry-makings, and not in sport merely. This is the one that breaks open the cloister, and the close walls that learning had dwelt in till then, and shuts up the musty books, and bids that old droning cease. This is the one that stretches the long drawn aisle and lifts the fretted vault into a grander temple. The Court with all its pomp and retinue, the school with all its pedantries and brazen ignorance, 'High Art' with its new graces, divinity, Mar-texts and all, must 'come hither, come hither,' and 'under the green-wood tree lie with me,' the ding-dong of this philosopher's new learning says, calling his new school together. This is the linguist that will find 'tongues in trees,' and crowd out from the halls of learning the lore of ancient parchments with their verdant classics, their 'truth in beauty dyed.' This is the teacher with whose new alphabet you can find 'sermons in stones, books in the running brooks,' and good, – good – his 'good' the good of the New School, that broader 'good' in every thing. 'The roof of this court is too high to be yours,' says the princess of this out-door scene to the sovereignty that claimed it then.

This is 'great Nature's' Poet and Interpreter, and he takes us always into 'the continent of nature'; but man is his chief end, and that island which his life makes in the universal being is the point to which that Naturalist brings home all his new collections. This is the Poet of the Woods, but man, – man at the summit of his arts, in the perfection of his refinements, is always the creature that he is 'collecting' in them. In his wildest glades, this is still the species that he is busied with. He has brought him there to experiment on him, and that we may see the better what he is. He has brought him there to improve his arts, to reduce his conventional savageness, to re-refine his coarse refinements, not to make a wild-man of him. This is the Poet of the Woods; but he is a woodman, he carries an axe on his shoulder. He will wake a continental forest with it and subdue it, and fill it with his music.

For this is the Poet who cries 'Westward Ho!' But he has not got into the woods yet in this play. He is only on the edge of them as yet. It is under the blue roof of that same dome which is 'too high,' the princess here says, to belong to the pygmy that this Philosopher likes so well to bring out and to measure under that canopy – it is 'out of doors' that this new speech on behalf of a new learning is spoken. But there is a close rim of conventionalities about us still. It is a Park that this audacious proposal is uttered in. But nothing can be more orderly, for it is 'a Park with a Palace in it.' There it is, in the background. If it were the Attic proscenium itself hollowed into the south-east corner of the Acropolis, what more could one ask. But it is the palace of the King of —Navarre, who is the prince of good fellows and the prince of good learning at one and the same time, which makes, in this case, the novelty. 'A Park with a Palace in it' makes the first scene. 'Another part of the same' with the pavilion of a princess and the tents of her Court seen in the distance, makes the second; and the change from one part of this park to another, though we get into the heart of it sometimes, is the utmost license that the rigours of the Greek Drama permit the Poet to think of at present. This criticism on the old learning, this audacious proposal for the new, with all the bold dramatic illustration with which it is enforced, must be managed here under these restrictions. Whatever 'persons' the plot of this drama may require for its evolutions, whatever witnesses and reporters the trial and conviction of the old learning, and the definition of the ground of the new, may require, will have to be induced to cross this park at this particular time, because the form of the new art is not yet emancipated, and the Muse of the Inductive Science cannot stir from the spot to search them out.

However, that does not impair the representation as it is managed. There is a very bold artist here already, with all his deference for the antique. We shall be sure to have all when he is the plotter. The action of this drama is not complicated. The persons of it are few; the characterization is feeble, compared with that of some of the later plays; but that does not hinder or limit the design, and it is all the more apparent for this artistic poverty, anatomically clear; while as yet that perfection of art in which all trace of the structure came so soon to be lost in the beauty of the illustration, is yet wanting; while as yet that art which made of its living instance an intenser life, or which made with its living art a life more living than life itself, was only germinating.

The illustration here, indeed, approaches the allegorical form, in the obtrusive, untempered predominance of the qualities represented, so overdone as to wear the air of a caricature, though the historical combination is still here. These diagrams are alive evidently; they are men, and not allegorical spectres, or toys, though they are 'painted in character.'

The entire representation of the extant learning is dramatically produced on this stage; the germ of the 'new' is here also; and the unoccupied ground of it is marked out here as, in the Advancement of Learning, by the criticism on the deficiences of that which has the field. Here, too, the line of the extant culture, – the narrow indented boundary of the culture that professed to take all is always defining the new, – cutting out the wild not yet visited by the art of man; – only here the criticism is much more lively, because here 'we come to particulars,' a thing which the new philosophy – much insists on; and though this want in learning, and the wildness it leaves, is that which makes tragedies in this method of exhibition; it has its comical aspect also; and this is the laughing and weeping philosopher in one who manages these representations; and in this case it is the comical aspect of the subject that is seized on.

Our diagrams are still coarse here, but they have already the good scientific quality of exhausting the subject. It is the New School that occupies the centre of the piece. Their quarters are in that palace, but the king of it is the Royalty (Raleigh) that founded and endowed this School – that was one of his secret titles, – and under that name he may sometimes be recognized in descriptions and dedications that persons who were not in the secret of the School naturally applied in another quarter, or appropriated to themselves. 'Rex was a surname among the Romans,' says the Interpreter of this School, in a very explanatory passage, 'as well as King is with us.' It is the New School that is under these boughs here, but hardly that as yet.

It is rather the representation of the new classical learning, – the old learning newly revived, – in which the new is germinating. It is that learning in its first effect on the young, enthusiastic, but earnest practical English mind. It is that revival of the old learning, arrested, daguerréotyped at the moment in which the new begins to stir in it, in minds which are going to be the master-minds of ages.

'Common sense' is the word here already. 'Common sense' is the word that this new Academe is convulsed with when the curtain rises. And though it is laughter that you hear there now, sending its merry English peals through those musty, antique walls, as the first ray of that new beam enters them; the muse of the new mysteries has also another mask, and if you will wait a little, you shall hear that tone too. Cries that the old mysteries never caught, lamentations for Adonis not heard before, griefs that Dionysus never knew, shall yet ring out from those walls.

Under that classic dome which still calls itself Platonic, the questions and experiments of the new learning are beginning. These youths are here to represent the new philosophy, which is science, in the act of taking its first step. The subject is presented here in large masses. But this central group, at least, is composed of living men, and not dramatic shadows merely. There are good historical features peering through those masks a little. These youths are full of youthful enthusiasm, and aspiring to the ideal heights of learning in their enthusiasm. But already the practical bias of their genius betrays itself. They are making a practical experiment with the classics, and to their surprise do not find them 'good for life.'