The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

… 'The magnanimous and most illustrate King Cophetua, set eye upon the pernicious and indubitate beggar Zenelophon. And it was he that might rightly say, Veni, vidi, vici; which to anatomise in the vulgar, (O base and obscure vulgar!) Videlicet, he came, saw, and overcame… Who came? the king. Why did he come? to see. Why did he see? to overcome. To whom came he? to the beggar. What saw he? the beggar. Who overcame he? the beggar. The conclusion is victory. On whose side? etc.

'Thine in the dearest design of industry.'

[Dramatic comment.]

_Boyet. I am much deceived but I remember the style.

Princess. Else your memory is bad going o'er it erewhile._

Jaquenetta. Good Master Parson, be so good as to read me this letter – it was sent me from Don Armatho: I beseech you to read it.

Holofernes. [Speaking here, however, not in character but for 'the Academe.'] Fauste precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra Ruminat, and so forth. Ah, good old Mantuan! I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice

– Vinegia, Vinegia,

Chi non te vede, ei non te pregia.

Old Mantuan! Old Mantuan! Who understandeth thee not, loves thee not. – Ut re sol la mi fa. – Under pardon, Sir, what are THE CONTENTS? or, rather, as Horace says in his – What, my soul, verses?

Nath. Ay, Sir, and very learned [one would say so upon examination].

Hol. Let me have a staff, a stanza, a verse; Lege Domine.

Nath. [Reads the 'verses.'] – 'If love make me forsworn,' etc.

Hol. You find not the apostrophe, and so – miss the accent– [criticising the reading. It is necessary to find the apostrophe in the verses of this Academy, before you can give the accent correctly; there are other points which require to be noted also, in this refined courtier's writings, as this criticism will inform us]. Let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified, but for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadency of poesy, caret. Ovidius Naso was the man. And why, indeed, Naso; but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention. Imitari is nothing; so doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider. [It was no such reading and writing as that which this Academy was going to countenance, or teach.] But, Damosella, was this directed to you?

Jaq. Ay, Sir, from one Monsieur Biron, one of the strange queen's lords.

Hol. I will over-glance the super-script. 'To the snow white hand of the most beauteous lady Rosaline.' I will look again on the intellect of the letter for the nomination of the party writing, to the person written unto (Rosaline). – [Look again. – That is the rule for the reading of letters issued from this Academy, whether they come in Don Armado's name or another's, when the point is not to 'miss the accent.'] 'Your ladyship's, in all desired employment, BIRON.' Sir Nathaniel, this Biron is one of the votaries with the king, and here he hath framed a letter to a sequent of the stranger queen's, which, accidentally or by way of progression, hath miscarried. Trip and go, my sweet; deliver this paper into the royal hand of the king. It may concern much. Stay not thy compliment, I forgive thy duty. Adieu.

Nath. Sir, you have done this in the fear of God, very religiously; and as a certain father saith —

Hol. Sir, tell me not of the father, I do fear colorable colors. But to return to the verses. Did they please you, Sir Nathaniel?

Nath. Marvellous well for the pen.

Hol. I dine to-day at the _father's _of a certain pupil of mine, where, if before repast, it shall please you to gratify the table with a grace, I will, on my privilege I have with the parent of the foresaid child, or pupil, undertake your ben venuto, where I will prove those verses to be very unlearned, neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention. I beseech your society.

Nath. And thank you, too; for society (saith the text) is the happiness of LIFE.

Hol. And, certes, the text most infallibly concludes it. – Sir, [to Dull] I do invite you too, [to hear the verses ex-criticised] you shall not say me nay: pauca verba. Away; the gentles are at their games, and we will to our recreation.

Another part of the same. After dinner.

Re-enter Holofernes, Sir Nathaniel, and Dull.

Hol. Satis quod sufficit.

Nath. I praise God for you, Sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the king's, who is intituled, nominated, or called Don Adriano de Armado.

Hol. Novi hominem tanquam te. His manner is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, and his general behaviour, vain, ridiculous and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, and, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.

Nath. A most singular and choice epithet! [Takes out his table-book.]

Hol. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument, ['More matter with less art,' says the queen in Hamlet], I abhor such fantastical phantasms, such insociable and point device companions, such rackers of orthography, as to speak doubt fine when he should say doubt, etc. This is abhominable which he would call abominable; it insinuateth me of insanie; Ne intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic.

Nath. Lans deo bone intelligo.

Hol. Bone – bone for bene: Priscian, a little scratched 'twill serve. [This was never meant to be printed of course; all this is understood to have been prepared only for a performance in 'a booth.']

Enter Armado, etc.

Nath. Videsne quis venit?

Ho. Video et gaudeo.

Arm. Chirra!

Hol. Quare Chirra not Sirrah!

But the first appearance of these two book-men, as Dull takes leave them to call them in this scene, is not less to the purpose. They come in with Antony Dull, who serves as a foil to their learning; from the moment that they open their lips they speak 'in character,' and they do not proceed far before they give us some hints of the author's purpose.

Nath. Very reverent sport truly, and done in the testimony of a good conscience.

Hol. The deer was, as you know, in sanguis, ripe as a pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of Coelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven, and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra– the soil, the land, the earth. [A-side glance at the heights and depths of the incongruities which are the subject here.]

Nath. Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least, but, etc…

Hol. Most barbarous intimation! [referring to Antony Dull, who has been trying to understand this learned language, and apply it to the subject of conversation, but who fails in the attempt, very much to the amusement and self-congratulation of these scholars]. Yet a kind of insinuation, as it were, in via, in way of explication [a style much in use in this school], facere, as it were, replication, or rather ostentare, to show, as it were, his inclination, after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather unlettered, or ratherest unconfirmed fashion, – to insert again my haud credo for a deer… Twice sod simplicity, bis coctus! Oh thou monster ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!

Nath. [explaining] Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal – only sensible in the duller parts;

And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should be, (Which we of taste and feeling are) for those parts that do fructify in us more than he.

For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool, So were there a patch set on learning to see HIM in a school. [That would be a new 'school,' a new 'learning,' patching the 'defect' (as it would be called elsewhere) in the old.]

Dull. You two are book-men. Can you tell me by your wit, etc.

Nath. A rare talent.

Dull. If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent.

Hol. This is a gift that I have; simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.

Nath. Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my parishioners; for their sons are well tutored by you, and their daughters profit very greatly under you; you are a good member of the COMMON-WEALTH.

He is in earnest of course. Is the Poet so too?

'What is the end of study?' – let me know.

'O they have lived long in the alms-basket of WORDS,' is the criticism on this learning with which this showman, whoever he may he, explains his exhibition of it. And surely he must be, indeed, of the school of Antony Dull, and never fed with the dainties bred in a book, who does not see what it is that is criticised here; – that it is the learning of an unlearned time, of a barbarous time, of a vain, frivolous debased, wretched time, that has been fed long – always from "the alms-basket of words." And one who is acquainted already with the style of this school, who knows already its secret signs and stamp, would not need to be told to look again on the intellect of the letter for the nomination of the party writing, to the person written to, in order to see what source this pastime comes from, – what player it is that is behind the scene here. 'Whoe'er he be, he bears a mounting mind,' and beginning in the lowness of the actual, and collecting the principles that are in all actualities, the true forms that are forms in nature, and not in man's speech only, the new IDEAS of the New Academy, the ideas that are powers, with these 'simples' that are causes, he will reconstruct fortuitous conjunctions, he will make his poems in facts; he will find his Fairy Land in her kingdom whose iron chain he wears.

'The gentles were at their games,' and the soul of new ages was beginning its re-creations.

For this is but the beginning of that 'Armada' that this Don Armado – who fights with sword and pen, in ambush and in the open field – will sweep his old enemy from the seas with yet.

O like a book of sports thou'lt read me o'er,But there's more in me than thou'lt understand.Look how the father's faceLives in his issue; even so the raceOf Shake-spear's mind and manners brightly shines  In his well turn'd and true filed lines,  In each of which he seems to shake a lance,  As brandished in the eyes of – [what? – ]Ignorance!BEN JONSON.

Ignorance!– yes, that was the word.

It is the Prince of that little Academe that sits in the Tower here now. It is in the Tower that that little Academe holds its 'conferences' now. There is a little knot of men of science who contrive to meet there. The associate of Raleigh's studies, the partner of his plans and toils for so many years, Hariot, too scientific for his age, is one of these. It is in the Tower that Raleigh's school is kept now. The English youth, the hope of England, follow this teacher still. 'Many young gentlemen still resort to him.' Gilbert Harvey is one of this school. 'None but my father would keep such a bird in such a cage,' cries one of them – that Prince of Wales through whom the bloodless revolution was to have been accomplished; and a Queen seeks his aid and counsel there still.

It is in the Tower now that we must look for the sequel of that holiday performance of the school. It is the genius that had made its game of that old love's labour's lost that is at work here still, still bent on making a lore of life and love, still ready to spend its rhetoric on things, and composing its metres with them.

Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou growest.

He is building and manning new ships in his triumphant fleet. But they are more warlike than they were. The papers that this Academe issues now have the stamp of the Tower on them. 'The golden shower,' that 'flowed from his fruitful head of his love's praise' flows no more. Fierce bitter things are flung forth from that retreat of learning, while the kingly nature has not yet fully mastered its great wrongs. The 'martial hand' is much used in the compositions of this school indeed for a long time afterwards.

Fitter perhaps to thunder martial stower

When thee so list thy tuneful thoughts to raise, said the partner of his verse long before.

With rage

  Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage,

says his protegé.

It was while this arrested soldier of the human emancipation sat amid his books and papers, in old Julius Caesar's Tower, or in the Tower of that Conqueror, 'commonly so called,' that the 'readers of the wiser sort' found, 'thrown in at their study windows,' writings, as if they came 'from several citizens, wherein Caesar's ambition was obscurely glanced at' and thus the whisper of the Roman Brutus 'pieced them out.'

Brutus thou sleep'st; awake, and see thyself.  Shall Rome [soft – 'thus must I piece it out.']  Shall Rome stand under one man's awe? What Rome?* * * * *  The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,  But in ourselves that we are underlings.* * * * *

Age, thou art shamed.

It was while he sat there, that the audiences of that player who was bringing forth, on 'the banks of Thames,' such wondrous things out of his treasury then, first heard the Roman foot upon their stage, and the long-stifled, and pent-up speech of English freedom, bursting from the old Roman patriot's lips.

Cassius. And let us swear our resolution.

Brutus. No, not an oath: If not the face of men, The sufferance of our soul's, the time's abuse, If these be motives weak, break off betimes, And every man hence to his idle bed; So let high-sighted tyranny range on, Till each man drop by lottery.

It was while he sat there, that the player who did not write his speeches, said —

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; If I know this, know all the world beside, That part of tyranny that I do bear, I can shake off at pleasure.

And why should Caesar be a tyrant then? Poor Man! I know he would not be a wolf, But that he sees the Romans are but sheep: He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.

But I, perhaps, speak this Before a willing bondman.

Hamlet. My lord, – you played once in the university, you say?

Polonius. That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.

Hamlet. And what did you enact?

Polonius. I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i'the Capitol;

Brutus killed me.

Hamlet. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf

there. – Be the players ready?

Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ, and the liberty. These are the only men.

Hamlet. Why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you

would drive me into a toil?

Guild. O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too

unmannerly.

Hamlet. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?

Guild. My lord, I cannot.

Hamlet. I pray you.

Guild. Believe me, I cannot.

Hamlet. I do beseech you.

Guild. I know no touch of it, my lord.

Hamlet. 'Tis as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

Guild. But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony: I have not the SKILL.

Hamlet. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of ME? You would play upon ME; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of MY MYSTERY; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my key; and there is much music, excellent voice in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood! do you think I AM EASIER TO BE PLAYED ON THAN A PIPE? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot PLAY upon me.

Hamlet. Why did you laugh when I said, Man delights not me?

Guild. To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment THE PLAYERS shall receive from you. We coted them on the way, and thither are they coming to offer you – SERVICE.

BOOK I.

THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF DELIVERY AND TRADITION

PART I.

MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE'S 'PRIVATE AND RETIRED ARTS.'

And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,With windlaces and with assays of bias,  By indirections, find directions out;  So by my former lecture and advice,  Shall you, my son. —Hamlet.

CHAPTER I

ASCENT FROM PARTICULARS TO THE 'HIGHEST PARTS OF SCIENCES,' BY THE ENIGMATIC METHOD ILLUSTRATED

Single, I'll resolve you. —Tempest.

Observe his inclination in yourself. —Hamlet.

For ciphers, they are commonly in letters, but may be in words. Advancement of Learning.

The fact that a Science of Practice, not limited to Physics and the Arts based on the knowledge of physical laws, but covering the whole ground of the human activity, and limited only by the want and faculty of man, required, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First, some special and profoundly artistic methods of 'delivery and tradition,' would not appear to need much demonstration to one acquainted with the peculiar features of that particular crisis in the history of the English nation.

And certainly any one at all informed in regard to the condition of the world at the time in which this science, – which is the new practical science of the modern ages, – makes its first appearance in history, – any one who knows what kind of a public opinion, what amount of intelligence in the common mind the very fact of the first appearance of such a science on the stage of the human affairs presupposes, – any one who will stop to consider what kind of a public it was to which such a science had need as yet to address itself, when that engine for the diffusion of knowledge, which has been battering the ignorance and stupidity of the masses of men ever since, was as yet a novel invention, when all the learning of the world was still the learning of the cell and the cloister, when the practice of the world was still in all departments, unscientific, – any one at least who will stop to consider the nature of the 'preconceptions' which a science that is none other than the universal science of practice, must needs encounter in its principal and nobler fields, will hardly need to be told that if produced at all under such conditions, it must needs be produced covertly. Who does not know, beforehand, that such a science would have to concede virtually, for a time, the whole ground of its nobler fields to the preoccupations it found on them, as the inevitable condition of its entrance upon the stage of the human affairs in any capacity, as the basis of any toleration of its claim to dictate to the men of practice in any department of their proceedings.

That that little 'courtly company' of Elizabethan scholars, in which this great enterprise for the relief of man's estate was supposed in their own time to have had its origin, was composed of wits and men of learning who were known, in their own time, to have concealed their connection with the works on which their literary fame chiefly depended – that that 'glorious Willy,' who finds these forbidden fields of science all open to his pastime, was secretly claimed by this company – that a style of 'delivery' elaborately enigmatical, borrowed in part from the invention of the ancients, and the more recent use of the middle ages, but largely modified and expressly adapted to this exigency, was employed in the compositions of this school, both in prose and verse, a style capable of conveying not merely a double, but a triple significance; a style so capacious in its concealments, so large in its 'cryptic,' as to admit without limitation the whole scope of this argument, and so involved as to conceal in its involutions, all that was then forbidden to appear, – this has been proved in that part of the work which contains the historical key to this delivery.

We have also incontestable historical evidence of the fact, that the man who was at the head of this new conjunction in speculation and practice in its more immediate historical developments, – the scholar who was most openly concerned in his own time in the introduction of those great changes in the condition of the world, which date their beginning from this time, was himself primarily concerned in the invention of this art. That this great political chief, this founder of new polities and inventor of new social arts, who was at the same time the founder of a new school in philosophy, was understood in his own time to have found occasion for the use of such an art, in his oral as well as in his written communications with his school; – that he was connected with a scientific association, which was known to have concealed under the profession of a curious antiquarian research, an inquiry into the higher parts of sciences which the government of that time was not disposed to countenance; – that in the opinion of persons who had the best opportunity of becoming acquainted with the facts at the time, this inventor of the art was himself beheaded, chiefly on account of the discovery of his use of it in one of his gravest literary works; – all this has been produced already, as matter of historic record merely. All this remains in the form of detailed contemporary statement, which suffices to convey, if not the fact that the forbidden parts of sciences were freely handled in the discussions of this school, and not in their secret oral discussions only, but in their great published works, – if not that, at least the fact that such was the impression and belief of persons living at the time, whether any ground existed for it or not.

But the arts by which these new men of science contrived to evade the ignorance and the despotic limitations of their time, the inventions with which they worked to such good purpose upon their own time, in spite of its restrictions and oppositions, and which enable them to 'outstretch their span,' and prolong and perpetuate their plan for the advancement of their kind, and compel the future ages to work with them to the fulfilment of its ends; – the arts by which these great original naturalists undertook to transfer in all their unimpaired splendour and worth, the collections they had made in the nobler fields of their science to the ages that would be able to make use of them; – these are the arts that we shall have need to master, if we would unlock the legacy they have left to us.