Tolstoy on Shakespeare: A Critical Essay on Shakespeare

"Sir, I am a true laborer; I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness; glad of other men's good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck."

(As You Like It, Act 3, Sc. 2.)

in short, an ideal proletarian from the point of view of the aristocrat.

The "Winter's Tale" can boast of another good shepherd (Act 3, Sc. 3), but he savors a little of burlesque. "Macbeth" has several humble worthies. There is a good old man in the second act (Sc. 2), and a good messenger in the fourth (Sc. 2). King Duncan praises highly the sergeant who brings the news of Macbeth's victory, and uses language to him such as Shakespeare's yeomen are not accustomed to hear (Act 1, Sc. 2). And in "Antony and Cleopatra" we make the acquaintance of several exemplary common soldiers. Shakespeare puts flattering words into the mouth of Henry V. when he addresses the troops before Agincourt:

"For he to-day that sheds his blood with meShall be my brother; be he ne'er so vileThis day shall gentle his condition."(Act 4, Sc. 4.)

And at Harfleur he is even more complaisant:

"And you, good yeomen,Whose limbs were made in England, shew us hereThe metal of your pasture; let us swearThat you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not,For there is none of you so mean and baseThat hath not noble luster in your eyes." (Act 3, Sc. 1.)

The rank and file always fare well before a battle.

"Oh, it's 'Tommy this' and 'Tommy that' an' 'Tommy, go away';But it's 'Thank you, Mr. Atkins,' when the band begins to play."

I should like to add some instances from Shakespeare's works of serious and estimable behavior on the part of individuals representing the lower classes, or of considerate treatment of them on the part of their "betters," but I have been unable to find any, and the meager list must end here.

But to return to Tommy Atkins. He is no longer Mr. Atkins after the battle. Montjoy, the French herald, comes to the English king under a flag of truce and asks that they be permitted to bury their dead and

"Sort our nobles from our common men;For many of our princes (wo the while!)Lie drowned and soaked in mercenary blood;So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbsIn blood of princes." (Henry V., Act 4, Sc. 7.)

With equal courtesy Richard III., on Bosworth field, speaks of his opponents to the gentlemen around him:

"Remember what you are to cope withal —A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,A scum of Bretagne and base lackey peasants."(Act 5, Sc. 3.)

But Shakespeare does not limit such epithets to armies. Having, as we have seen, a poor opinion of the lower classes, taken man by man, he thinks, if anything, still worse of them taken en masse, and at his hands a crowd of plain workingmen fares worst of all. "Hempen home-spuns," Puck calls them, and again

"A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,That work for bread upon Athenian stalls."

Bottom, their leader, is, according to Oberon, a "hateful fool," and according to Puck, the "shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort" (Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 3, Scs. 1 and 2, Act 4, Sc. 1). Bottom's advice to his players contains a small galaxy of compliments:

"In any case let Thisby have clean linen, and let not him that plays the lion pare his nails, for they shall hang out for the lion's claws. And, most dear actors, eat no onion or garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath, and I do not doubt to hear them say, it is a sweet comedy."

(Ib., Act 4, Sc. 2.)

The matter of the breath of the poor weighs upon Shakespeare and his characters. Cleopatra shudders at the thought that

"mechanic slaves,With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shallUplift us to the view; in their thick breathsRank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded,And forced to drink their vapor."(Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Sc. 2.)

Coriolanus has his sense of smell especially developed. He talks of the "stinking breaths" of the people (Act 2, Sc. 1), and in another place says:

"You common cry of curs, whose breath I hateAs reek of rotten fens, whose love I prizeAs the dead carcasses of unburied menThat do corrupt the air, I banish you,"

and he goes on to taunt them with cowardice (Act 3, Sc. 3). They are the "mutable, rank-scented many" (Act 3, Sc. 1). His friend Menenius is equally complimentary to his fellow citizens. "You are they," says he,

"That make the air unwholesome, when you castYour stinking, greasy caps, in hooting atCoriolanus's exile."(Act 4, Sc. 7.)

And he laughs at the "apron-men" of Cominius and their "breath of garlic-eaters" (Act 4, Sc. 7). When Coriolanus is asked to address the people, he replies by saying: "Bid them wash their faces, and keep their teeth clean" (Act 2, Sc. 3). According to Shakespeare, the Roman populace had made no advance in cleanliness in the centuries between Coriolanus and Cæsar. Casca gives a vivid picture of the offer of the crown to Julius, and his rejection of it: "And still as he refused it the rabblement shouted, and clapped their chapped hands, and threw up their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath, because Cæsar refused the crown, that it had almost choked Cæsar, for he swooned and fell down at it. And for mine own part I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air." And he calls them the "tag-rag people" (Julius Cæsar, Act 1, Sc. 2). The play of "Coriolanus" is a mine of insults to the people and it becomes tiresome to quote them. The hero calls them the "beast with many heads" (Act 4, Sc. 3), and again he says to the crowd:

"What's the matter, you dissentious rogues,That rubbing the poor itch of your opinionMake yourself scabs?First Citizen. We have ever your good word.Coriolanus. He that will give good words to ye will flatterBeneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs,That like not peace nor war? The one affrights you,The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you,Where he would find you lions, finds you hares;Where foxes, geese; you are no surer, no,Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,Or hailstone in the sun. Your virtue isTo make him worthy whose offense subdues him,And curse that justice did it. Who deserves greatnessDeserves your hate; and your affections areA sick man's appetite, who desires most thatWhich would increase his evil. He that dependsUpon your favors, swims with fins of lead,And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?With every minute you do change a mind,And call him noble that was now your hate,Him vile that was your garland."(Act 1, Sc. 1.)

His mother, Volumnia, is of like mind. She calls the people "our general louts" (Act 3, Sc. 2). She says to Junius Brutus, the tribune of the people:

"'Twas you incensed the rabble,Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worthAs I can of those mysteries which HeavenWill not leave Earth to know."(Act 4, Sc. 2).

In the same play Cominius talks of the "dull tribunes" and "fusty plebeians" (Act 1, Sc. 9). Menenius calls them "beastly plebeians" (Act 2, Sc. 1), refers to their "multiplying spawn" (Act 2, Sc. 2), and says to the crowd:

"Rome and her rats are at the point of battle."(Act 1, Sc. 2).

The dramatist makes the mob cringe before Coriolanus. When he appears, the stage directions show that the "citizens steal away." (Act 1, Sc. 1.)

As the Roman crowd of the time of Coriolanus is fickle, so is that of Cæsar's. Brutus and Antony sway them for and against his assassins with ease:

"First Citizen. This Cæsar was a tyrant.Second Citizen. Nay, that's certain.We are blessed that Rome is rid of him…First Citizen. (After hearing a description of the murder.)O piteous spectacle!2 Cit. O noble Cæsar!3 Cit. O woful day!4 Cit. O traitors, villains!1 Cit. O most bloody sight!2 Cit. We will be revenged; revenge! about – seek – burn,fire – kill – slay – let not a traitor live!" (Act 3, Sc. 2.)

The Tribune Marullus reproaches them with having forgotten Pompey, and calls them

"You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things."

He persuades them not to favor Cæsar, and when they leave him he asks his fellow tribune, Flavius,

"See, whe'r their basest metal be not moved?"(Act 1, Sc. 1.)

Flavius also treats them with scant courtesy:

"Hence, home, you idle creatures, get you home.Is this a holiday? What! you know not,Being mechanical, you ought not walkUpon a laboring day without the signOf your profession?"(Ib.)

The populace of England is as changeable as that of Rome, if Shakespeare is to be believed. The Archbishop of York, who had espoused the cause of Richard II. against Henry IV., thus soliloquizes:

"The commonwealth is sick of their own choice;Their over greedy love hath surfeited;An habitation giddy and unsureHath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.O thou fond many! With what loud applauseDidst thou beat Heaven with blessing Bolingbroke,Before he was what thou would'st have him be!And now being trimmed in thine own desires,Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him,That thou provokest thyself to cast him up.So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorgeThy glutton bosom of the royal Richard,And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up,And howlst to find it."(Henry IV., Part 2, Act 1, Sc. 3.)

Gloucester in "Henry VI." (Part 2, Act 2, Sc. 4) notes the fickleness of the masses. He says, addressing his absent wife:

"Sweet Nell, ill can thy noble mind abrookThe abject people, gazing on thy faceWith envious looks, laughing at thy shame,That erst did follow thy proud chariot wheelsWhen thou didst ride in triumph through the streets."

When she arrives upon the scene in disgrace, she says to him:

"Look how they gaze;See how the giddy multitude do pointAnd nod their heads and throw their eyes on thee.Ah, Gloster, hide thee from their hateful looks."

And she calls the crowd a "rabble" (Ib.), a term also used in "Hamlet" (Act 4, Sc. 5). Again, in part III. of "Henry VI.," Clifford, dying on the battlefield while fighting for King Henry, cries:

"The common people swarm like summer flies,And whither fly the gnats but to the sun?And who shines now but Henry's enemies?"(Act 2, Sc. 6.)

And Henry himself, conversing with the keepers who have imprisoned him in the name of Edward IV., says:

"Ah, simple men! you know not what you swear.Look, as I blow this feather from my face,And as the air blows it to me again,Obeying with my wind when I do blow,And yielding to another when it blows,Commanded always by the greater gust,Such is the lightness of you common men."(Ib., Act 3, Sc. 1.)

Suffolk, in the First Part of the same trilogy (Act 5, Sc. 5), talks of "worthless peasants," meaning, perhaps, "property-less peasants," and when Salisbury comes to present the demands of the people, he calls him

"the Lord AmbassadorSent from a sort of tinkers to the king,"(Part 2, Act 3, Sc. 2.)

and says:

"'Tis like the Commons, rude unpolished hindsCould send such message to their sovereign."

Cardinal Beaufort mentions the "uncivil kernes of Ireland" (Ib., Part 2, Act 3, Sc. 1), and in the same play the crowd makes itself ridiculous by shouting, "A miracle," when the fraudulent beggar Simpcox, who had pretended to be lame and blind, jumps over a stool to escape a whipping (Act 2, Sc. 1). Queen Margaret receives petitioners with the words "Away, base cullions" (Ib., Act 1, Sc. 3), and among other flattering remarks applied here and there to the lower classes we may cite the epithets "ye rascals, ye rude slaves," addressed to a crowd by a porter in Henry VIII., and that of "lazy knaves" given by the Lord Chamberlain to the porters for having let in a "trim rabble" (Act 5, Sc. 3). Hubert, in King John, presents us with an unvarnished picture of the common people receiving the news of Prince Arthur's death:

"I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,The whilst his iron did on his anvil cool,With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news;Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,Standing on slippers (which his nimble hasteHad falsely thrust upon contrary feet),Told of a many thousand warlike FrenchThat were embattailed and rank'd in Kent.Another lean, unwashed artificer,Cuts off his tale, and talks of Arthur's death."(Act 4, Sc. 2.)

Macbeth, while sounding the murderers whom he intends to employ, and who say to him, "We are men, my liege," answers:

"Ay, in the catalogue, ye go for menAs hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,Shoughs, water-sugs, and demi-wolves, are clepedAll by the name of dogs."(Act 3, Sc. 1.)

As Coriolanus is held up to our view as a pattern of noble bearing toward the people, so Richard II. condemns the courteous behavior of the future Henry IV. on his way into banishment. He says:

"Ourselves, and Bushy, Bagot here and GreenObserved his courtship to the common people;How he did seem to dive into their heartsWith humble and familiar courtesy;What reverence he did throw away on slaves;Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smilesAnd patient overbearing of his fortune,As 'twere to banish their effects with him.Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;A brace of draymen did God speed him wellAnd had the tribute of his supple knee,With 'Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends.'"(Richard II., Act 1, Sc. 4.)

The King of France, in "All's Well that Ends Well," commends to Bertram the example of his late father in his relations with his inferiors:

"Who were below himHe used as creatures of another place,And bowed his eminent top to their low ranks,Making them proud of his humilityIn their poor praise he humbled. Such a manMight be a copy to these younger times."(Act 1, Sc. 2.)

Shakespeare had no fondness for these "younger times," with their increasing suggestion of democracy. Despising the masses, he had no sympathy with the idea of improving their condition or increasing their power. He saw the signs of the times with foreboding, as did his hero, Hamlet:

"By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it; the age has grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe." There can easily be too much liberty, according to Shakespeare – "too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty" (Measure for Measure, Act 1, Sc. 3), but the idea of too much authority is foreign to him. Claudio, himself under arrest, sings its praises:

"Thus can the demi-god, Authority,Make us pay down for our offense by weight, —The words of Heaven; – on whom it will, it will;On whom it will not, so; yet still 'tis just."(Ib.)

Ulysses, in "Troilus and Cressida" (Act 1, Sc. 3), delivers a long panegyric upon authority, rank, and degree, which may be taken as Shakespeare's confession of faith:

"Degree being vizarded,Th' unworthiest shews as fairly in the mask.The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center,Observe degree, priority, and place,Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,Office and custom, in all line of order;And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol,In noble eminence enthroned and spheredAmidst the other; whose med'cinable eyeCorrects the ill aspects of planets evil,And posts, like the commandments of a king,Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets,In evil mixture, to disorder wander,What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!What raging of the sea, shaking of the earth,Commotion of the winds, frights, changes, horrors,Divert and crack, rend and deracinateThe unity and married calm of statesQuite from their fixture! Oh, when degree is shaked,Which is the ladder of all high designs,The enterprise is sick. How could communities,Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,The primogenity and due of birth,Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, laurels,But by degree stand in authentic place?Take but degree away, untune the string,And hark, what discord follows! each thing meetsIn mere oppugnancy; the bounded watersShould lift their bosoms higher than the shores,And make a sop of all this solid globe;Strength should be lord of imbecility,And the rude son should strike his father dead;Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong,(Between whose endless jar justice resides)Should lose their names, and so should justice too.Then everything includes itself in power.Power into will, will into appetite;And appetite, a universal wolf,So doubly seconded with will and power,Must make perforce an universal prey,And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,This chaos, when degree is suffocate,Follows the choking;And this neglection of degree it is,That by a pace goes backward, in a purposeIt hath to climb. The General's disdainedBy him one step below; he by the next;That next by him beneath; so every step,Exampled by the first pace that is sickOf his superiors, grows to an envious feverOf pale and bloodless emulation;And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength."

There is no hint in this eloquent apostrophe of the difficulty of determining among men who shall be the sun and who the satellite, nor of the fact that the actual arrangements, in Shakespeare's time, at any rate, depended altogether upon that very force which Ulysses deprecates. In another scene in the same play the wily Ithacan again gives way to his passion for authority and eulogizes somewhat extravagantly the paternal, prying, omnipresent State:

"The providence that's in a watchful stateKnows almost every grain of Plutus' gold,Finds bottom in th' incomprehensive deeps,Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the gods,Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.There is a mystery (with which relationDurst never meddle) in the soul of state,Which hath an operation more divineThan breath or pen can give expressure to."(Act 3, Sc. 3.)

The State to which Ulysses refers is of course a monarchical State, and the idea of democracy is abhorrent to Shakespeare. Coriolanus expresses his opinion of it when he says to the people:

"What's the matter,That in these several places of the cityYou cry against the noble Senate, who,Under the gods, keep you in awe, which elseWould feed on one another?"(Act 2, Sc. 1.)

The people should have no voice in the government —

"This double worship, —Where one part does disdain with cause, the otherInsult without all reason, where gentry, title, wisdom,Can not conclude, but by the yea and noOf general ignorance, – it must omitReal necessities, and give away the whileTo unstable slightness. Purpose so barred, it follows,Nothing is done to purpose; therefore, beseech you,You that will be less fearful than discreet,That love the fundamental part of stateMore than you doubt the change on't, that preferA noble life before a long, and wishTo jump a body with a dangerous physicThat's sure of death without it, at once pluck outThe multitudinous tongue; let them not lickThe sweet which is their poison."(Ib. Act 3, Sc. 1.)

It is the nobility who should rule —

"It is a purposed thing and grows by plotTo curb the will of the nobility;Suffer't and live with such as can not rule,Nor ever will be ruled."(Ib.)

Junius Brutus tries in vain to argue with him, but Coriolanus has no patience with him, a "triton of the minnows"; and the very fact that there should be tribunes appointed for the people disgusts him —

"Five tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms,Of their own choice; one's Junius Brutus,Sicinus Velutus, and I know not – 'Sdeath!The rabble should have first unroofed the city,Ere so prevailed with me; it will in timeWin upon power, and throw forth greater themes."

And again:

"The common file, a plague! – Tribunes for them!"(Act 1, Sc. 6.)

Shakespeare took his material for the drama of "Coriolanus" from Plutarch's "Lives," and it is significant that he selected from that list of worthies the most conspicuous adversary of the commonalty that Rome produced. He presents him to us as a hero, and, so far as he can, enlists our sympathy for him from beginning to end. When Menenius says of him:

"His nature is too noble for the world,"(Act 3, Sc. 1.)

he is evidently but registering the verdict of the author. Plutarch's treatment of Coriolanus is far different. He exhibits his fine qualities, but he does not hesitate to speak of his "imperious temper and that savage manner which was too haughty for a republic." "Indeed," he adds, "there is no other advantage to be had from a liberal education equal to that of polishing and softening our nature by reason and discipline." He also tells us that Coriolanus indulged his "irascible passions on a supposition that they have something great and exalted in them," and that he wanted "a due mixture of gravity and mildness, which are the chief political virtues and the fruits of reason and education." "He never dreamed that such obstinacy is rather the effect of the weakness and effeminacy of a distempered mind, which breaks out in violent passions like so many tumors." Nor apparently did Shakespeare ever dream of it either, altho he had Plutarch's sage observations before him. It is a pity that the great dramatist did not select from Plutarch's works some hero who took the side of the people, some Agis or Cleomenes, or, better yet, one of the Gracchi. What a tragedy he might have based on the life of Tiberius, the friend of the people and the martyr in their cause! But the spirit which guided Schiller in the choice of William Tell for a hero was a stranger to Shakespeare's heart, and its promptings would have met with no response there.

Even more striking is the treatment which the author of "Coriolanus" metes out to English history. All but two of his English historical dramas are devoted to the War of the Roses and the incidental struggle over the French crown. The motive of this prolonged strife – so attractive to Shakespeare – had much the same dignity which distinguishes the family intrigues of the Sublime Porte, and Shakespeare presents the history of his country as a mere pageant of warring royalties and their trains. When the people are permitted to appear, as they do in Cade's rebellion, to which Shakespeare has assigned the character of the rising under Wat Tyler, they are made the subject of burlesque. Two of the popular party speak as follows:

"John Holland. Well, I say, it was never merry world in England since gentlemen came up.

George Bevis. O miserable age! Virtue is not regarded in handicraftsmen.

John. The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons."

When Jack Cade, alias Wat Tyler, comes on the scene, he shows himself to be a braggart and a fool. He says:

"Be brave then, for your captain is brave and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, and I will make it a felony to drink small beer. All the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass. And when I am king asking I will be —

All. God save your majesty!

Cade. I thank you, good people – there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship me their lord."

(Henry VI., Part 2, Act 4, Sc. 2.)

The crowd wishes to kill the clerk of Chatham because he can read, write, and cast accounts. (Cade. "O monstrous!") Sir Humphrey Stafford calls them

"Rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent,Marked for the gallows."(Ib.)

Clifford succeeds without much difficulty in turning the enmity of the mob against France, and Cade ejaculates disconsolately, "Was ever a feather so lightly blown to and fro as this multitude?" (Ib., Act 4, Sc. 8.) In the stage directions of this scene, Shakespeare shows his own opinion of the mob by writing, "Enter Cade and his rabblement." One looks in vain here as in the Roman plays for a suggestion that poor people sometimes suffer wrongfully from hunger and want, that they occasionally have just grievances, and that their efforts to present them, so far from being ludicrous, are the most serious parts of history, beside which the struttings of kings and courtiers sink into insignificance.

One of the popular songs in Tyler's rebellion was the familiar couplet:

"When Adam delved and Eve span,Who was then the gentleman?"

Shakespeare refers to it in "Hamlet," where the grave-diggers speak as follows:

"First Clown. Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentleman but gardners, ditchers and grave-makers; they hold up Adam's profession.

Second Clown. Was he a gentleman?

First Clown. He was the first that ever bore arms.

Second Clown. Why, he had none.

First Clown. What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture? The Scripture says, Adam digged; could he dig without arms?"

(Act 5, Sc. 1.)

That Shakespeare's caricature of Tyler's rebellion is a fair indication of his view of all popular risings appears from the remarks addressed by Westmoreland to the Archbishop of York in the Second Part of "Henry IV." (Act 4, Sc. 1). Says he: