Shakespeare
The greatest genius of our world.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1891)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 3.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/shakespeare/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was the greatest genius of our world. He left to
us the richest legacy of all the dead—the treasures of the rarest soul
that ever lived and loved and wrought of words the statues, pictures,
robes and gems of thought.

It is hard to overstate the debt we owe to the men and women of genius.
Take from our world what they have given, and all the niches would be
empty, all the walls naked—meaning and connection would fall from words
of poetry and fiction, music would go back to common air, and all the
forms of subtle and enchanting Art would lose proportion and become the
unmeaning waste and shattered spoil of thoughtless Chance.

Shakespeare is too great a theme. I feel as though endeavoring to grasp
a globe so large that the hand obtains no hold. He who would worthily
speak of the great dramatist should be inspired by "a muse of fire that
should ascend the brightest heaven of invention"—he should have "a
kingdom for a stage, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene."

More than three centuries ago, the most intellectual of the human race
was born. He was not of supernatural origin. At his birth there were
no celestial pyrotechnics. His father and mother were both English, and
both had the cheerful habit of living in this world. The cradle in which
he was rocked was canopied by neither myth nor miracle, and in his veins
there was no drop of royal blood.

This babe became the wonder of mankind. Neither of his parents could
read or write. He grew up in a small and ignorant village on the banks
of the Avon, in the midst of the common people of three hundred years
ago. There was nothing in the peaceful, quiet landscape on which he
looked, nothing in the low hills, the cultivated and undulating fields,
and nothing in the murmuring stream, to excite the imagination—nothing,
so far as we can see, calculated to sow the seeds of the subtlest and
sublimest thought.

So there is nothing connected with his education, or his lack of
education, that in any way accounts for what he did. It is supposed that
he attended school in his native town—but of this we are not certain.
Many have tried to show that he was, after all, of gentle blood, but the
fact seems to be the other way. Some of his biographers have sought to
do him honor by showing that he was patronized by Queen Elizabeth, but
of this there is not the slightest proof.

As a matter of fact, there never sat on any throne a king, queen, or
emperor who could have honored William Shakespeare.

Ignorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called
education. The sons of the poor, having suffered the privations of
poverty, think of wealth as the mother of joy. On the other hand, the
children of the rich, finding that gold does not produce happiness, are
apt to underrate the value of wealth. So the children of the educated
often care but little for books, and hold all culture in contempt. The
children of great authors do not, as a rule, become writers.

Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Extremes beget
limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness creates obstructions
for itself.

Possibly, many generations of culture breed a desire for the rude joys
of savagery, and possibly generations of ignorance breed such a longing
for knowledge, that of this desire, of this hunger of the brain, Genius
is born. It may be that the mind, by lying fallow, by remaining idle for
generations, gathers strength.

Shakespeare's father seems to have been an ordinary man of his time and
class. About the only thing we know of him is that he was officially
reported for not coming monthly to church. This is good as far as it
goes. We can hardly blame him, because at that time Richard Bifield
was the minister at Stratford, and an extreme Puritan, one who read the
Psalter by Sternhold and Hopkins.

The church was at one time Catholic, but in John Shakespeare's day it
was Puritan, and in 1564, the year of Shakespeare's birth, they had the
images defaced. It is greatly to the honor of John Shakespeare that
he refused to listen to the "tidings of great joy" as delivered by the
Puritan Bifield.

Nothing is known of his mother, except her beautiful name—Mary Arden.
In those days but little attention was given to the biographies of
women. They were born, married, had children, and died. No matter how
celebrated their sons became, the mothers were forgotten. In old times,
when a man achieved distinction, great pains were taken to find
out about the father and grandfather—the idea being that genius is
inherited from the father's side. The truth is, that all great men have
had great mothers. Great women have had, as a rule, great fathers.

The mother of Shakespeare was, without doubt, one of the greatest of
women. She dowered her son with passion and imagination and the higher
qualities of the soul, beyond all other men. It has been said that a
man of genius should select his ancestors with great care—and yet
there does not seem to be as much in heredity as most people think.
The children of the great are often small. Pigmies are born in palaces,
while over the children of genius is the roof of straw. Most of the
great are like mountains, with the valley of ancestors on one side and
the depression of posterity on the other.

In his day Shakespeare was of no particular importance. It may be that
his mother had some marvelous and prophetic dreams, but Stratford was
unconscious of the immortal child. He was never engaged in a reputable
business. Socially he occupied a position below servants. The law
described him as "a sturdy vagabond." He was neither a noble, a soldier,
nor a priest. Among the half-civilized people of England, he who amused
and instructed them was regarded as a menial. Kings had their clowns,
the people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare was scheduled as a
servant. It is thus that successful stupidity has always treated genius.
Mozart was patronized by an Archbishop—lived in the palace,—but was
compelled to eat with the scullions.

The composer of divine melodies was not fit to sit by the side of the
theologian, who long ago would have been forgotten but for the fame of
the composer.

We know but little of the personal peculiarities, of the daily life, or
of what may be called the outward Shakespeare, and it may be fortunate
that so little is known. He might have been belittled by friendly fools.
What silly stories, what idiotic personal reminiscences, would have
been remembered by those who scarcely saw him! We have his best—his
sublimest—and we have probably lost only the trivial and the worthless.
All that is known can be written on a page.

We are tolerably certain of the date of his birth, of his marriage and
of his death. We think he went to London in 1586, when he was twenty-two
years old. We think that three years afterward he was part owner of
Blackfriars' Theatre. We have a few signatures, some of which are
supposed to be genuine. We know that he bought some land—that he had
two or three law-suits. We know the names of his children. We also know
that this incomparable man—so apart from, and so familiar with, all the
world—lived during his literary life in London—that he was an actor,
dramatist and manager—that he returned to Stratford, the place of his
birth,—that he gave his writings to negligence, deserted the children
of his brain—that he died on the anniversary of his birth at the age
of fifty-two, and that he was buried in the church where the images
had been defaced, and that on his tomb was chiseled a rude, absurd and
ignorant epitaph.

No letter of his to any human being has been found, and no line written
by him can be shown.

And here let me give my explanation of the epitaph. Shakespeare was an
actor—a disreputable business—but he made money—always reputable. He
came back from London a rich man. He bought land, and built houses. Some
of the supposed great probably treated him with deference. When he died
he was buried in the church. Then came a reaction. The pious thought the
church had been profaned. They did not feel that the ashes of an actor
were fit to lie in holy ground. The people began to say the body
ought to be removed. Then it was, as I believe, that Dr. John Hall,
Shakespeare's son-in-law, had this epitaph cut on the tomb:
    "Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare
    To digg the dust enclosed heare:
    Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones,
    And curst be he yt moves my bones."

Certainly Shakespeare could have had no fear that his tomb would be
violated. How could it have entered his mind to have put a warning, a
threat and a blessing, upon his grave? But the ignorant people of that
day were no doubt convinced that the epitaph was the voice of the dead,
and so feeling they feared to invade the tomb. In this way the dust was
left in peace.

This epitaph gave me great trouble for years. It puzzled me to explain
why he, who erected the intellectual pyramids,—great ranges of
mountains—should put such a pebble at his tomb. But when I stood beside
the grave and read the ignorant words, the explanation I have given
flashed upon me.

II.

IT has been said that Shakespeare was hardly mentioned by his
contemporaries, and that he was substantially unknown. This is a
mistake. In 1600 a book was published called England's Parnassus,
and it contained ninety extracts from Shakespeare. In the same year
was published the Garden of the Muses, containing several pieces from
Shakespeare, Chapman, Marston and Ben Jonson. England's Helicon was
printed in the same year, and contained poems from Spenser, Greene,
Harvey and Shakespeare.

In 1600 a play was acted at Cambridge, in which Shakespeare was alluded
to as follows: "Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare who puts them all
down." John Weaver published a book of poems in 1595, in which there
was a sonnet to Shakespeare. In 1598 Richard Bamfield wrote a poem
to Shakespeare. Francis Meres, "clergyman, master of arts in both
universities, compiler of school books," was the author of the _Wits
Treasury_. In this he compares the ancient and modern tragic poets, and
mentions Marlowe, Peele, Kyd and Shakespeare. So he compares the writers
of comedies, and mentions Lilly, Lodge, Greene and Shakespeare. He
speaks of elegiac poets, and names Surrey, Wyatt, Sidney, Raleigh and
Shakespeare. He compares the lyric poets, and names Spenser, Drayton,
Shakespeare and others. This same writer, speaking of Horace, says that
England has Sidney, Shakespeare and others, and that "as the soul of
Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet-wittie soul
of Ovid lives in the mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare." He
also says: "If the Muses could speak English, they would speak in
Shakespeare's phrase." This was in 1598. In 1607, John Davies alludes in
a poem to Shakespeare.

Of course we are all familiar with what rare Ben Jonson wrote. Henry
Chettle took Shakespeare to task because he wrote nothing on the death
of Queen Elizabeth.

It may be wonderful that he was not better known. But is it not
wonderful that he gained the reputation that he did in so short a time,
and that twelve years after he began to write he stood at least with the
first?

Iii

BUT there is a wonderful fact connected with the writings of
Shakespeare: In the Plays there is no direct mention of any of his
contemporaries. We do not know of any poet, author, soldier, sailor,
statesman, priest, nobleman, king, or queen, that Shakespeare directly
mentioned.

Is it not marvelous that he, living in an age of great deeds, of
adventures in far-off lands and unknown seas—in a time of religious
wars—in the days of the Armada—the massacre of St. Bartholomew—the
Edict of Nantes—the assassination of Henry III.—the victory of
Lepanto—the execution of Marie Stuart—did not mention the name of any
man or woman of his time? Some have insisted that the paragraph ending
with the lines: "The imperial votress passed on in maiden meditation
fancy-free," referred to Queen Elizabeth; but it is impossible for me
to believe that the daubed and wrinkled face, the small black eyes,
the cruel nose, the thin lips, the bad teeth, and the red wig of Queen
Elizabeth could by any possibility have inspired these marvelous lines.

It is perfectly apparent from Shakespeare's writings that he knew but
little of the nobility, little of kings and queens. He gives to these
supposed great people great thoughts, and puts great words in their
mouths and makes them speak—not as they really did—but as Shakespeare
thought such people should. This demonstrates that he did not know them
personally.

Some have insisted that Shakespeare mentions Queen Elizabeth in the
last scene of Henry VIII. The answer to this is that Shakespeare did not
write the last scene in that Play. The probability is that Fletcher was
the author.

Shakespeare lived during the great awakening of the world, when Europe
emerged from the darkness of the Middle Ages, when the discovery of
America had made England, that blossom of the Gulf-Stream, the centre
of commerce, and during a period when some of the greatest writers,
thinkers, soldiers and discoverers were produced.

Cervantes was born in 1547, dying on the same day that Shakespeare died.
He was undoubtedly the greatest writer that Spain has produced. Rubens
was born in 1577. Camoens, the Portuguese, the author of the Lusiad,
died in 1597. Giordano Bruno—greatest of martyrs—was born in
1548—visited London in Shakespeare's time—delivered lectures at
Oxford, and called that institution "the widow of learning." Drake
circled the globe in 1580. Galileo was born in 1564—the same year
with Shakespeare. Michael Angelo died in 1563. Kepler—he of the Three
Laws—born in 1571. Calderon, the Spanish dramatist, born in 1601.
Corneille, the French poet, in 1606. Rembrandt, greatest of painters,
1607. Shakespeare was born in 1564. In that year John Calvin died. What
a glorious exchange!

Seventy-two years after the discovery of America Shakespeare was born,
and England was filled with the voyages and discoveries written by
Hakluyt, and the wonders that had been seen by Raleigh, by Drake, by
Frobisher and Hawkins. London had become the centre of the world, and
representatives from all known countries were in the new metropolis. The
world had been doubled. The imagination had been touched and kindled by
discovery. In the far horizon were unknown lands, strange shores beyond
untraversed seas. Toward every part of the world were turned the prows
of adventure. All these things fanned the imagination into flame,
and this had its effect upon the literary and dramatic world. And
yet Shakespeare—the master spirit of mankind—in the midst of these
discoveries, of these adventures, mentioned no navigator, no general, no
discoverer, no philosopher.

Galileo was reading the open volume of the sky, but Shakespeare did not
mention him. This to me is the most marvelous thing connected with this
most marvelous man.

At that time England was prosperous—was then laying the foundation of
her future greatness and power.

When men are prosperous, they are in love with life. Nature grows
beautiful, the arts begin to flourish, there is work for painter and
sculptor, the poet is born, the stage is erected—and this life with
which men are in love, is represented in a thousand forms.

Nature, or Fate, or Chance prepared a stage for Shakespeare, and
Shakespeare prepared a stage for Nature.

Famine and faith go together. In disaster and want the gaze of man is
fixed upon another world. He that eats a crust has a creed. Hunger falls
upon its knees, and heaven, looked for through tears, is the mirage
of misery. But prosperity brings joy and wealth and leisure—and the
beautiful is born.

One of the effects of the world's awakening was Shakespeare. We account
for this man as we do for the highest mountain, the greatest river, the
most perfect gem. We can only say: He was.
    "It hath been taught us from the primal state
    That he which is was wished until he were."

IV.

IN Shakespeare's time the actor was a vagabond, the dramatist a
disreputable person—and yet the greatest dramas were then written. In
spite of law, and social ostracism, Shakespeare reared the many-colored
dome that fills and glorifies the intellectual heavens.

Now the whole civilized world believes in the theatre—asks for some
great dramatist—is hungry for a play worthy of the century, is anxious
to give gold and fame to any one who can worthily put our age upon the
stage—and yet no great play has been written since Shakespeare died.

Shakespeare pursued the highway of the right. He did not seek to put his
characters in a position where it was right to do wrong. He was sound
and healthy to the centre. It never occurred to him to write a play in
which a wife's lover should be jealous of her husband.

There was in his blood the courage of his thought. He was true to
himself and enjoyed the perfect freedom of the highest art. He did not
write according to rules—but smaller men make rules from what he wrote.

How fortunate that Shakespeare was not educated at Oxford—that the
winged god within him never knelt to the professor. How fortunate
that this giant was not captured, tied and tethered by the literary
Lilliputians of his time.

He was an idealist. He did not—like most writers of our time—take
refuge in the real, hiding a lack of genius behind a pretended love of
truth. All realities are not poetic, or dramatic, or even worth knowing.
The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to
a statue—or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and
impoverishes. In no event can a realist be more than an imitator and
copyist. According to the realist's philosophy, the wax that receives
and retains an image is an artist.

Shakespeare did not rely on the stage-carpenter, or the scenic painter.
He put his scenery in his lines. There you will find mountains and
rivers and seas, valleys and cliffs, violets and clouds, and over all
"the firmament fretted with gold and fire." He cared little for plot,
little for surprise. He did not rely on stage effects, or red fire. The
plays grow before your eyes, and they come as the morning comes. Plot
surprises but once. There must be something in a play besides surprise.
Plot in an author is a kind of strategy—that is to say, a sort of
cunning, and cunning does not belong to the highest natures.

There is in Shakespeare such a wealth of thought that the plot becomes
almost immaterial—and such is this wealth that you can hardly know the
play—there is too much. After you have heard it again and again, it
seems as pathless as an untrodden forest.

He belonged to all lands. "Timon of Athens" is as Greek as any tragedy
of Eschylus. "Julius Cæsar" and "Coriolanus" are perfect Roman, and as
you read, the mighty ruins rise and the Eternal City once again becomes
the mistress of the world. No play is more Egyptian than "Antony and
Cleopatra"—the Nile runs through it, the shadows of the pyramids
fall upon it, and from its scenes the Sphinx gazes forever on the
outstretched sands.

In "Lear" is the true pagan spirit. "Romeo and Juliet" is
Italian—everything is sudden, love bursts into immediate flower, and in
every scene is the climate of the land of poetry and passion.

The reason of this is that Shakespeare dealt with elemental things, with
universal man. He knew that locality colors without changing, and that
in all surroundings the human heart is substantially the same.

Not all the poetry written before his time would make his sum—not all
that has been written since, added to all that was written before, would
equal his.

There was nothing within the range of human thought, within the horizon
of intellectual effort, that he did not touch. He knew the brain and
heart of man—the theories, customs, superstitions, hopes, fears,
hatreds, vices and virtues of the human race.

He knew the thrills and ecstasies of love, the savage joys of hatred and
revenge. He heard the hiss of envy's snakes and watched the eagles of
ambition soar. There was no hope that did not put its star above his
head—no fear he had not felt—no joy that had not shed its sunshine
on his face. He experienced the emotions of mankind. He was the
intellectual spendthrift of the world. He gave with the generosity, the
extravagance, of madness.

Read one play, and you are impressed with the idea that the wealth
of the brain of a god has been exhausted—that there are no more
comparisons, no more passions to be expressed, no more definitions, no
more philosophy, beauty, or sublimity to be put in words—and yet, the
next play opens as fresh as the dewy gates of another day.

The outstretched wings of his imagination filled the sky. He was the
intellectual crown o' the earth.

V.

THE plays of Shakespeare show so much knowledge, thought and learning,
that many people—those who imagine that universities furnish
capacity—contend that Bacon must have been the author.

We know Bacon. We know that he was a scheming politician, a courtier,
a time-server of church and king, and a corrupt judge. We know that he
never admitted the truth of the Copernican system—that he was
doubtful whether instruments were of any advantage in scientific
investigation—that he was ignorant of the higher branches of
mathematics, and that, as a matter of fact, he added but little to the
knowledge of the world. When he was more than sixty years of age he
turned his attention to poetry, and dedicated his verses to George
Herbert.

If you will read these verses you will say that the author of "Lear" and
"Hamlet" did not write them.

Bacon dedicated his work on the _Advancement of Learning, Divine and
Human_, to James I., and in his dedication he stated that there had not
been, since the time of Christ, any king or monarch so learned in all
erudition, divine or human. He placed James the First before Marcus
Aurelius and all other kings and emperors since Christ, and concluded
by saying that James the First had "the power and fortune of a king,
the illumination of a priest, the learning and universality of a
philosopher." This was written of James the First, described by Macaulay
as a "stammering, slobbering, trembling coward, whose writings were
deformed by the grossest and vilest superstitions—witches being the
special objects of his fear, his hatred, and his persecution."

It seems to have been taken for granted that if Shakespeare was not the
author of the great dramas, Lord Bacon must have been.

It has been claimed that Bacon was the greatest philosopher of his
time. And yet in reading his works we find that there was in his mind a
strange mingling of foolishness and philosophy. He takes pains to tell
us, and to write it down for the benefit of posterity, that "snow
is colder than water, because it hath more spirit in it, and that
quicksilver is the coldest of all metals, because it is the fullest of
spirit."

He stated that he hardly believed that you could contract air by putting
opium on top of the weather glass, and gave the following reason:

"I conceive that opium and the like make spirits fly rather by malignity
than by cold."

This great philosopher gave the following recipe for staunching blood:

"Thrust the part that bleedeth into the body of a capon, new ripped and
bleeding. This will staunch the blood. The blood, as it seemeth, sucking
and drawing up by similitude of substance the blood it meeteth with, and
so itself going back."

The philosopher also records this important fact: "Divers witches among
heathen and Christians have fed upon man's flesh to aid, as it seemeth,
their imagination with high and foul vapors."

Lord Bacon was not only a philosopher, but he was a biologist, as
appears from the following:

"As for living creatures, it is certain that their vital spirits are a
substance compounded of an airy and flamy matter, and although air and
flame being free will not mingle, yet bound in by a body that hath some
fixing, will."

Now and then the inventor of deduction reasons by analogy. He says:

"As snow and ice holpen, and their cold activated by nitre or salt, will
turn water into ice, so it may be it will turn wood or stiff clay into
stone."

Bacon seems to have been a believer in the transmutation of metals, and
solemnly gives a formula for changing silver or copper into gold. He
also believed in the transmutation of plants, and had arrived at such
a height in entomology that he informed the world that "insects have no
blood."

It is claimed that he was a great observer, and as evidence of this
he recorded the wonderful fact that "tobacco cut and dried by the fire
loses weight" that "bears in the winter wax fat in sleep, though they eat
nothing" that "tortoises have no bones" that "there is a kind of stone, if
ground and put in water where cattle drink, the cows will give more milk"
that "it is hard to cure a hurt in a Frenchman's head, but easy in his
leg;" that "it is hard to cure a hurt in an Englishman's leg, but easy in
his head;" that "wounds made with brass weapons are easier to cure than
those made with iron;" that "lead will multiply and increase, as in
statues buried in the ground" and that "the rainbow touching anything
causeth a sweet smell."

Bacon seems also to have turned his attention to ornithology, and says
that "eggs laid in the full of the moon breed better birds," and that
"you can make swallows white by putting ointment on the eggs before they
are hatched."

He also informs us "that witches cannot hurt kings as easily as they can
common people" that "perfumes dry and strengthen the brain" that "any one
in the moment of triumph can be injured by another who casts an envious
eye, and the injury is greatest when the envious glance comes from the
oblique eye."

Lord Bacon also turned his attention to medicine, and he states that
"bracelets made of snakes are good for curing cramps" that "the skin of
a wolf might cure the colic, because a wolf has great digestion" that
"eating the roasted brains of hens and hares strengthens the memory"
that "if a woman about to become a mother eats a good many quinces and
considerable coriander seed, the child will be ingenious," and that
"the moss which groweth on the skull of an unburied dead man is good for
staunching blood."

He expresses doubt, however, "as to whether you can cure a wound by
putting ointment on the weapon that caused the wound, instead of on the
wound itself."

It is claimed by the advocates of the Baconian theory that their hero
stood at the top of science; and yet "it is absolutely certain that he
was ignorant of the law of the acceleration of falling bodies, although
the law had been made known and printed by Galileo thirty years before
Bacon wrote upon the subject. Neither did this great man understand the
principle of the lever. He was not acquainted with the precession of
the equinoxes, and as a matter of fact was ill-read in those branches of
learning in which, in his time, the most rapid progress had been made."

After Kepler discovered his third law, which was on the 15th of May,
1618, Bacon was more than ever opposed to the Copernican system. This
great man was far behind his own time, not only in astronomy, but in
mathematics. In the preface to the "De-scriptio Globi Intellectualis,"
it is admitted either that Bacon had never heard of the correction of
the parallax, or was unable to understand it. He complained on account
of the want of some method for shortening mathematical calculations; and
yet "Napier's Logarithms" had been printed nine years before the date of
his complaint.

He attempted to form a table of specific gravities by a rude process
of his own, a process that no one has ever followed; and he did this in
spite of the fact that a far better method existed.

We have the right to compare what Bacon wrote with what it is claimed
Shakespeare produced. I call attention to one thing—to Bacon's opinion
of human love. It is this:

"The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. As to the
stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies,
but in life it doth much mischief—sometimes like a siren, sometimes
like a fury. Amongst all the great and worthy persons there is not one
that hath been transported to the mad degree of love, which shows that
great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion."

The author of "Romeo and Juliet" never wrote that.

It seems certain that the author of the wondrous Plays was one of the
noblest of men.

Let us see what sense of honor Bacon had.

In writing commentaries on certain passages of Scripture, Lord Bacon
tells a courtier, who has committed some offence, how to get back into
the graces of his prince or king. Among other things he tells him not to
appear too cheerful, but to assume a very grave and modest face; not to
bring the matter up himself; to be extremely industrious, so that the
prince will see that it is hard to get along without him; also to get
his friends to tell the prince or king how badly he, the courtier,
feels; and then he says, all these failing, "let him contrive to
transfer the fault to others."

It is true that we know but little of Shakespeare, and consequently
do not positively know that he did not have the ability to write the
Plays—but we do know Bacon, and we know that he could not have
written these Plays—consequently, they must have been written by a
comparatively unknown man—that is to say, by a man who was known by no
other writings. The fact that we do not know Shakespeare, except through
the Plays and Sonnets, makes it possible for us to believe that he was
the author.

Some people have imagined that the Plays were written by several—but
this only increases the wonder, and adds a useless burden to credulity.

Bacon published in his time all the writings that he claimed. Naturally,
he would have claimed his best. Is it possible that Bacon left the
wondrous children of his brain on the door-step of Shakespeare, and kept
the deformed ones at home? Is it possible that he fathered the failures
and deserted the perfect?

Of course, it is wonderful that so little has been found touching
Shakespeare—but is it not equally wonderful, if Bacon was the
author, that not a line has been found in all his papers, containing a
suggestion, or a hint, that he was the writer of these Plays? Is it
not wonderful that no fragment of any scene—no line—no word—has been
found?

Some have insisted that Bacon kept the authorship secret because it
was disgraceful to write Plays. This argument does not cover the
Sonnets—and besides, one who had been stripped of the robes of office
for receiving bribes as a judge, could have borne the additional
disgrace of having written "Hamlet." The fact that Bacon did not claim
to be the author, demonstrates that he was not. Shakespeare claimed
to be the author, and no one in his time or day denied the claim. This
demonstrates that he was.

Bacon published his works, and said to the world: This is what I have
done.

Suppose you found in a cemetery a monument erected to John Smith,
inventor of the Smith-churn, and suppose you were told that Mr.
Smith provided for the monument in his will, and dictated the
inscription—would it be possible to convince you that Mr. Smith was
also the inventor of the locomotive and telegraph?

Bacon's best can be compared with Shakespeare's common, but
Shakespeare's best rises above Bacon's best, like a domed temple above a
beggar's hut.

VI.

OF course it is admitted that there were many dramatists before and
during the time of Shakespeare—but they were only the foot hills of
that mighty peak the top of which the clouds and mists still hide.
Chapman and Marlowe, Heywood and Jonson, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher
wrote some great lines, and in the monotony of declamation now and then
is found a strain of genuine music—but all of them together constituted
only a herald of Shakespeare. In all these Plays there is but a hint,
a prophecy, of the great drama destined to revolutionize the poetic
thought of the world.

Shakespeare was the greatest of poets. What Greece and Rome produced was
great until his time. "Lions make leopards tame."

The great poet is a great artist. He is painter and sculptor. The
greatest pictures and statues have been painted and chiseled with words.
They outlast all others. All the galleries of the world are poor and
cheap compared with the statues and pictures in Shakespeare's book.

Language is made of pictures represented by sounds. The outer world is
a dictionary of the mind, and the artist called the soul uses this
dictionary of things to express what happens in the noiseless and
invisible world of thought. First a sound represents something in the
outer world, and afterwards something in the inner, and this sound at
last is represented by a mark, and this mark stands for a picture,
and every brain is a gallery, and the artists—that is to say, the
souls—exchange pictures and statues.

All art is of the same parentage. The poet uses words—makes pictures
and statues of sounds. The sculptor expresses harmony, proportion,
passion, in marble; the composer, in music; the painter in form and
color. The dramatist expresses himself not only in words, not only
paints these pictures, but he expresses his thought in action.

Shakespeare was not only a poet, but a dramatist, and expressed the
ideal, the poetic, not only in words, but in action. There are the
wit, the humor, the pathos, the tragedy of situation, of relation. The
dramatist speaks and acts through others—his personality is lost.
The poet lives in the world of thought and feeling, and to this the
dramatist adds the world of action. He creates characters that seem to
act in accordance with their own natures and independently of him. He
compresses lives into hours, tells us the secrets of the heart, shows us
the springs of action—how desire bribes the judgment and corrupts the
will—how weak the reason is when passion pleads, and how grand it is to
stand for right against the world.

It is not enough to say fine things,—great things, dramatic things,
must be done.

Let me give you an illustration of dramatic incident accompanying the
highest form of poetic expression:

Macbeth having returned from the murder of Duncan says to his wife:
    "Methought I heard a voice cry: Sleep no more,
    Macbeth does murder sleep; the innocent sleep;
    Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
    The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
    Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course,
    Chief nourisher in life's feast."...
    "Still it cried: Sleep no more, to all the house,
    Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor
    Shall sleep no more—Macbeth shall sleep no more."

She exclaims:
    "Who was it that thus cried?
    Why, worthy Thane, you do unbend your noble strength
    To think so brain-sickly of things; get some water,
    And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
    Why did you bring the daggers from the place?"

Macbeth was so overcome with horror at his own deed, that he not only
mistook his thoughts for the words of others, but was so carried away
and beyond himself that he brought with him the daggers—the evidence of
his guilt—the daggers that he should have left with the dead. This is
dramatic.

In the same play, the difference of feeling before and after the
commission of a crime is illustrated to perfection. When Macbeth is
on his way to assassinate the king, the bell strikes, and he says, or
whispers:
    "Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell."

Afterward, when the deed has been committed, and a knocking is heard at
the gate, he cries:
    "Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst."

Let me give one more instance of dramatic action. When Antony speaks
above the body of Cæsar he says:
    "You all do know this mantle:
    I remember The first time ever Cæsar put it on—
    'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,
    That day he overcame the Nervii:
    Look! In this place ran Cassius' dagger through:
    See what a rent the envious Casca made!
    Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed,
    And as he plucked his cursed steel away,
    Mark how the blood of Cæsar followed it."

Vii

THERE are men, and many of them, who are always trying to show that
somebody else chiseled the statue or painted the picture,—that the poem
is attributed to the wrong man, and that the battle was really won by a
subordinate.

Of course Shakespeare made use of the work of others—and, we might
almost say, of all others. Every writer must use the work of others.
The only question is, how the accomplishments of other minds are used,
whether as a foundation to build higher, or whether stolen to the end
that the thief may make a reputation for himself, without adding to the
great structure of literature.

Thousands of people have stolen stones from the Coliseum to make huts
for themselves. So thousands of writers have taken the thoughts of
others with which to adorn themselves. These are plagiarists. But the
man who takes the thought of another, adds to it, gives it intensity and
poetic form, throb and life,—is in the highest sense original.

Shakespeare found nearly all of his facts in the writings of others,
and was indebted to others for most of the stories of his plays. The
question is not: Who furnished the stone, or who owned the quarry, but
who chiseled the statue?

We now know all the books that Shakespeare could have read, and
consequently know many of the sources of his information. We find in
Pliny's Natural History, published in 1601, the following: "The sea
Pontis evermore floweth and runneth out into the Propontis; but the sea
never retireth back again with the Impontis." This was the raw material,
and out of it Shakespeare made the following:
    "Like to the Pontic Sea,
    Whose icy current and compulsive course
    Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
    To the Propontic and the Hellespont—
    Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
    Shall ne'er turn back, ne'er ebb to humble love,
    Till that a capable and wide revenge Swallow them up."

Perhaps we can give an idea of the difference between Shakespeare and
other poets, by a passage from "Lear." When Cordelia places her hand
upon her father's head and speaks of the night and of the storm, an
ordinary poet might have said:
    "On such a night, a dog
    Should have stood against my fire."

A very great poet might have gone a step further and exclaimed:
    "On such a night, mine enemy's dog
    Should have stood against my fire."

But Shakespeare said:
    "Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me,
    Should have stood, that night, against my fire."

Of all the poets—of all the writers—Shakespeare is the most original.
He is as original as Nature.

It may truthfully be said that "Nature wants stuff to vie strange forms
with fancy, to make another."

Viii

THERE is in the greatest poetry a kind of extravagance that touches the
infinite, and in this Shakespeare exceeds all others.

You will remember the description given of the voyage of Paris in search
of Helen:
    "The seas and winds, old wranglers, made a truce,
    And did him service; he touched the ports desired,
    And for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive,
    He brought a Grecian queen whose youth and freshness
    Wrinkles Apollo, and makes stale the morning."

So, in Pericles, when the father finds his daughter, he cries out:
    "O Helicanus! strike me, honored sir;
    Give me a gash, put me to present pain,
    Lest this great sea of joys, rushing upon me,
    O'erbear the shores of my mortality."

The greatest compliment that man has ever paid to the woman he adores is
this line:
    "Eyes that do mislead the morn."

Nothing can be conceived more perfectly poetic. In that marvelous play,
the "Midsummer Night's Dream," is one of the most extravagant things in
literature:
    "Thou rememberest Since once I sat upon a promontory,
    And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
    Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
    That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
    And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
    To hear the sea-maid's music."

This is so marvelously told that it almost seems probable.

So the description of Mark Antony:
    "For his bounty
    There was no winter in't—an autumn t'was
    That grew the more by reaping.
    His delights
    Were dolphin-like—they showed his back above
    The element they lived in."

Think of the astronomical scope and amplitude of this:
    "Her bed is India—there she lies a pearl."

Is there anything more intense than these words of Cleopatra?
    "Rather on Nilus mud lay me stark naked
    And let the water-flies blow me into abhorring."

Or this of Isabella:
    "The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies,
    And strip myself to death as to a bed
    That longing I've been sick for, ere I yield
    My body up to shame."

Is there an intellectual man in the world who will not agree with this?
    "Let me not live
    After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
    Of younger spirits."

Can anything exceed the words of Troilus when parting with Cressida:
    "We two, that with so many thousand sighs
    Did buy each other, most poorly sell ourselves
    With the rude brevity and discharge of one.
    Injurious time now with a robber's haste
    Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how;
    As many farewells as be stars in heaven,
    With distinct breath and consigned kisses to them,
    He fumbles up into a loos'e adieu,
    And scants us with a single famished kiss,
    Distasted with the salt of broken tears."

Take this example, where pathos almost touches the grotesque.
    "O dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair?
    Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous,
    And that the lean, abhorred monster keeps thee here.
    I' the dark, to be his paramour?"

Often when reading the marvelous lines of Shakespeare, I feel that his
thoughts are "too subtle potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness, for the
capacity of my ruder powers." Sometimes I cry out, "O churl!—write all,
and leave no thoughts for those who follow after."

IX.

SHAKESPEARE was an innovator, an iconoclast. He cared nothing for the
authority of men or of schools. He violated the "unities," and cared
nothing for the models of the ancient world.

The Greeks insisted that nothing should be in a play that did not tend
to the catastrophe. They did not believe in the episode—in the sudden
contrasts of light and shade—in mingling the comic and the tragic.
The sunlight never fell upon their tears, and darkness did not overtake
their laughter. They believed that nature sympathized or was in harmony
with the events of the play. When crime was about to be committed—some
horror to be perpetrated—the light grew dim, the wind sighed, the trees
shivered, and upon all was the shadow of the coming event.

Shakespeare knew that the play had little to do with the tides and
currents of universal life—that Nature cares neither for smiles nor
tears, for life nor death, and that the sun shines as gladly on coffins
as on cradles.

The first time I visited the Place de la Concorde, where during the
French Revolution stood the guillotine, and where now stands an
Egyptian obelisk—a bird, sitting on the top, was singing with all its
might.—Nature forgets.

One of the most notable instances of the violation by Shakespeare of the
classic model, is found in the 6th scene of the I. Act of Macbeth.

When the King and Banquo approach the castle in which the King is to be
murdered that night, no shadow falls athwart the threshold. So beautiful
is the scene that the King says:
    "This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
    Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
    Unto our gentle senses."

And Banquo adds:
    "This guest of summer,
    The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
    By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath
    Smells wooingly here; no jutty, frieze,
    Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
    Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle.
    Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed
    The air is delicate."

Another notable instance is the porter scene immediately following
the murder. So, too, the dialogue with the clown who brings the asp to
Cleopatra just before the suicide, illustrates my meaning.

I know of one paragraph in the Greek drama worthy of Shakespeare. This
is in "Medea." When Medea kills her children she curses Jason, using the
ordinary Billingsgate and papal curse, but at the conclusion says: "I
pray the gods to make him virtuous, that he may the more deeply feel the
pang that I inflict."

Shakespeare dealt in lights and shadows. He was intense. He put noons
and midnights side by side. No other dramatist would have dreamed of
adding to the pathos—of increasing our appreciation of Lear's agony,
by supplementing the wail of the mad king with the mocking laughter of a
loving clown.

X.

THE ordinary dramatists—the men of talent—(and there is the same
difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone-mason
and a sculptor) create characters that become types. Types are
of necessity caricatures—actual men and women are to some extent
contradictory in their actions. Types are blown in the one direction by
the one wind—characters have pilots.

In real people, good and evil mingle. Types are all one way, or all the
other—all good, or all bad, all wise, or all foolish.

Pecksniff was a perfect type, a perfect hypocrite—and will remain a
type as long as language lives—a hypocrite that even drunkenness could
not change. Everybody understands Pecksniff, and compared with him
Tartuffe was an honest man.

Hamlet is an individual, a person, an actual being—and for that
reason there is a difference of opinion as to his motives and as to
his character. We differ about Hamlet as we do about Cæsar, or about
Shakespeare himself.

Hamlet saw the ghost of his father and heard again his fathers voice,
and yet, afterward, he speaks of "the undiscovered country from whose
bourne no traveler returns."

In this there is no contradiction. The reason outweighs the senses. If
we should see a dead man rise from his grave, we would not, the next
day, believe that we did. No one can credit a miracle until it becomes
so common that it ceases to be miraculous.

Types are puppets—controlled from without—characters act from within.
There is the same difference between characters and types that there
is between springs and water-works, between canals and rivers, between
wooden soldiers and heroes.

In most plays and in most novels the characters are so shadowy that we
have to piece them out with the imagination.

One waking in the morning sometimes sees at the foot of his bed a
strange figure—it may be of an ancient lady with cap and ruffles and
with the expression of garrulous and fussy old age—but when the light
gets stronger, the figure gradually changes and he sees a few clothes on
a chair.

The dramatist lives the lives of others, and in order to delineate
character must not only have imagination but sympathy with the character
delineated. The great dramatist thinks of a character as an entirety, as
an individual.

I once had a dream, and in this dream I was discussing a subject with
another man. It occurred to me that I was dreaming, and I then said
to myself: If this is a dream, I am doing the talking for both
sides—consequently I ought to know in advance what the other man is
going to say. In my dream I tried the experiment. I then asked the other
man a question, and before he answered made up my mind what the answer
was to be. To my surprise, the man did not say what I expected he would,
and so great was my astonishment that I awoke.

It then occurred to me that I had discovered the secret of Shakespeare.
He did, when awake, what I did when asleep—that is, he threw off a
character so perfect that it acted independently of him.

In the delineation of character Shakespeare has no rivals. He creates no
monsters. His characters do not act without reason, without motive.

Iago had his reasons. In Caliban, nature was not destroyed—and Lady
Macbeth certifies that the woman still was in her heart, by saying:
    "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it."

Shakespeare's characters act from within. They are centres of energy.
They are not pushed by unseen hands, or pulled by unseen strings. They
have objects, desires. They are persons—real, living beings.

Few dramatists succeed in getting their characters loose from the
canvas—their backs stick to the wall—they do not have free and
independent action—they have no background, no unexpressed motives—no
untold desires. They lack the complexity of the real.

Shakespeare makes the character true to itself. Christopher Sly,
surrounded by the luxuries of a lord, true to his station, calls for a
pot of the smallest ale.

Take one expression by Lady Macbeth. You remember that after the murder
is discovered—after the alarm bell is rung—she appears upon the scene
wanting to know what has happened. Macduff refuses to tell her, saying
that the slightest word would murder as it fell. At this moment Banquo
comes upon the scene and Macduff cries out to him:
    "Our royal master's murdered."

What does Lady Macbeth then say? She in fact makes a confession of
guilt. The weak point in the terrible tragedy is that Duncan was
murdered in Macbeth's castle. So when Lady Macbeth hears what they
suppose is news to her, she cries:
    "What! In our house!"

Had she been innocent, her horror of the crime would have made her
forget the place—the venue. Banquo sees through this, and sees through
her.

Her expression was a light, by which he saw her guilt—and he answers:
    "Too cruel anywhere."

No matter whether Shakespeare delineated clown or king, warrior or
maiden—no matter whether his characters are taken from the gutter or
the throne—each is a work of consummate art, and when he is unnatural,
he is so splendid that the defect is forgotten.

When Romeo is told of the death of Juliet, and thereupon makes up his
mind to die upon her grave, he gives a description of the shop where
poison could be purchased. He goes into particulars and tells of the
alligators stuffed, of the skins of ill-shaped fishes, of the beggarly
account of empty boxes, of the remnants of pack-thread, and old cakes
of roses—and while it is hardly possible to believe that under such
circumstances a man would take the trouble to make an inventory of a
strange kind of drug-store, yet the inventory is so perfect—the picture
is so marvelously drawn—that we forget to think whether it is natural
or not.

In making the frame of a great picture—of a great scene—Shakespeare
was often careless, but the picture is perfect. In making the sides of
the arch he was negligent, but when he placed the keystone, it burst
into blossom. Of course there are many lines in Shakespeare that never
should have been written. In other words, there are imperfections in his
plays. But we must remember that Shakespeare furnished the torch that
enables us to see these imperfections.

Shakespeare speaks through his characters, and we must not mistake what
the characters say, for the opinion of Shakespeare. No one can believe
that Shakespeare regarded life as "a tale told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury, signifying nothing." That was the opinion of a murderer,
surrounded by avengers, and whose wife—partner in his crimes—troubled
with thick-coming fancies—had gone down to her death.

Most actors and writers seem to suppose that the lines called "The Seven
Ages" contain Shakespeare's view of human life. Nothing could be further
from the truth. The lines were uttered by a cynic, in contempt and scorn
of the human race.

Shakespeare did not put his characters in the livery and uniform of
some weakness, peculiarity or passion. He did not use names as tags or
brands. He did not write under the picture, "This is a villain." His
characters need no suggestive names to tell us what they are—we see
them and we know them for ourselves.

It may be that in the greatest utterances of the greatest characters in
the supreme moments, we have the real thoughts, opinions and convictions
of Shakespeare.

Of all writers Shakespeare is the most impersonal. He speaks through
others, and the others seem to speak for themselves. The didactic is
lost in the dramatic. He does not use the stage as a pulpit to enforce
some maxim. He is as reticent as Nature.

He idealizes the common and transfigures all he touches—but he does
not preach. He was interested in men and things as they were. He did not
seek to change them—but to portray. He was Natures mirror—and in that
mirror Nature saw herself.

When I stood amid the great trees of California that lift their
spreading capitals against the clouds, looking like Nature's columns to
support the sky, I thought of the poetry of Shakespeare.

IX.

THAT a procession of men and women—statesmen and warriors—kings and
clowns—issued from Shakespeare's brain! What women!

Isabella—in whose spotless life love and reason blended into perfect
truth.

Juliet—within whose heart passion and purity met like white and red
within the bosom of a rose.

Cordelia—who chose to suffer loss, rather than show her wealth of
love with those who gilded lies in hope of gain.

Hermione—"tender as infancy and grace"—who bore with perfect hope
and faith the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her
heart.

Desdemona—so innocent, so perfect, her love so pure, that she was
incapable of suspecting that another could suspect, and who with dying
words sought to hide her lover's crime—and with her last faint breath
uttered a loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her pallid
lips.

Perdita—"a violet dim, and sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes"—"The
sweetest low-born lass that ever ran on the green sward." And

Helena—who said:
    "I know I love in vain, strive against hope—
    Yet in this captious and intenable sieve
    I still pour in the waters of my love,
    And lack not to lose still,
    Thus, Indian-like,
    Religious in mine error, I adore
    The sun that looks upon his worshiper,
    But knows of him no more."

Miranda—who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its bosom to
the kisses of the sun. And Cordelia—whose kisses cured and whose
tears restored. And stainless

Imogen—who cried: "What is it to be false?" And here is the
description of the perfect woman:
    "To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love;
    To keep her constancy in plight and youth—
    Outliving beauty's outward with a mind
    That doth renew swifter than blood decays."

Shakespeare has done more for woman than all the other dramatists of the
world.

For my part, I love the Clowns. I love Launce and his dog Crabb, and
Gobbo, whose conscience threw its arms around the neck of his heart,
and Touchstone, with his lie seven times removed; and dear old
Dogberry—a pretty piece of flesh, tedious as a king. And Bottom,
the very paramour for a sweet voice, longing to take the part to tear
a cat in; and Autolycus, the snapper-up of unconsidered trifles,
sleeping out the thought for the life to come. And great Sir John,
without conscience, and for that reason unblamed and enjoyed—and who
at the end babbles of green fields, and is almost loved. And ancient
Pistol, the world his oyster. And Bardolph, with the flea on his
blazing nose, putting beholders in mind of a damned soul in hell. And
the poor Pool, who followed the mad king, and went "to bed at
noon." And the clown who carried the worm of Nilus, whose "biting was
immortal." And Corin, the shepherd—who described the perfect man:
"I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat—get that I wear—owe no man
aught—envy no man's happiness—glad of other men's good—content."

And mingling in this motley throng, Lear, within whose brain a tempest
raged until the depths were stirred, and the intellectual wealth of a
life was given back to memory?—and then by madness thrown to storm and
night—and when I read the living lines I feel as though I looked upon
the sea and saw it wrought by frenzied whirlwinds, until the buried
treasures and the sunken wrecks of all the years were cast upon the
shores.

And Othello—who like the base Indian threw a pearl away richer than
all his tribe.

And Hamlet—thought-entangled—hesitating between two worlds.

And Macbeth—strange mingling of cruelty and conscience, reaping
the sure harvest of successful crime—"Curses not loud but
deep—mouth-honor—breath."

And Brutus, falling on his sword that Cæsar might be still.

And Romeo, dreaming of the white wonder of Juliet's hand. And
Ferdinand, the patient log-man for Miranda's sake. And Florizel,
who, "for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the
profound seas hide," would not be faithless to the low-born lass. And
Constance, weeping for her son, while grief "stuffs out his vacant
garments with his form."

And in the midst of tragedies and tears, of love and laughter and crime,
we hear the voice of the good friar, who declares that in every human
heart, as in the smallest flower, there are encamped the opposed hosts
of good and evil—and our philosophy is interrupted by the garrulous old
nurse, whose talk is as busily useless as the babble of a stream that
hurries by a ruined mill.

From every side the characters crowd upon us—the men and women born of
Shakespeare's brain. They utter with a thousand voices the thoughts of
the "myriad-minded" man, and impress themselves upon us as deeply and
vividly as though they really lived with us.

Shakespeare alone has delineated love in every possible phase—has
ascended to the very top, and actually reached heights that no other has
imagined. I do not believe the human mind will ever produce or be in a
position to appreciate, a greater love-play than "Romeo and Juliet." It
is a symphony in which all music seems to blend. The heart bursts into
blossom, and he who reads feels the swooning intoxication of a divine
perfume.

In the alembic of Shakespeare's brain the baser metals were turned to
gold—passions became virtues—weeds became exotics from some diviner
land—and common mortals made of ordinary clay outranked the Olympian
Gods. In his brain there was the touch of chaos that suggests
the infinite—that belongs to genius. Talent is measured and
mathematical—dominated by prudence and the thought of use. Genius is
tropical. The creative instinct runs riot, delights in extravagance and
waste, and overwhelms the mental beggars of the world with uncounted
gold and unnumbered gems.

Some things are immortal: The plays of Shakespeare, the marbles of the
Greeks, and the music of Wagner.

Xii

SHAKESPEARE was the greatest of philosophers. He knew the conditions of
success—of happiness—the relations that men sustain to each other,
and the duties of all. He knew the tides and currents of the heart—the
cliffs and caverns of the brain. He knew the weakness of the will, the
sophistry of desire—and
    "That pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than
    Adders to the voice of any true decision."

He knew that the soul lives in an invisible world—that flesh is but a
mask, and that
    "There is no art to find the mind's construction
    In the face."

He knew that courage should be the servant of judgment, and that
    "When valor preys on reason it eats the sword
    It fights with."

He knew that man is never master of the event, that he is to some extent
the sport or prey of the blind forces of the world, and that
    "In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men."

Feeling that the past is unchangeable, and that that which must happen
is as much beyond control as though it had happened, he says:
    "Let determined things to destiny
    Hold unbewailed their way."

Shakespeare was great enough to know that every human being prefers
happiness to misery, and that crimes are but mistakes. Looking in
pity upon the human race, upon the pain and poverty, the crimes and
cruelties, the limping travelers on the thorny paths, he was great and
good enough to say:
    "There is no darkness but ignorance."

In all the philosophies there is no greater line. This great truth fills
the heart with pity.

He knew that place and power do not give happiness—that the crowned are
subject as the lowest to fate and chance.
    "For within the hollow crown,
    That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
    Keeps death his court; and there the antick sits,
    Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
    Allowing him a breath, a little scene
    To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
    Infusing him with self and vain conceit.—
    As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
    Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus;
    Comes at the last, and with a little pin
    Bores through his castle wall, and—farewell king!"

So, too, he knew that gold could not bring joy—that death and
misfortune come alike to rich and poor, because:
    "If thou art rich thou art poor;
    For like an ass whose back with ingots bows
    Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey,
    And death unloads thee."

In some of his philosophy there was a kind of scorn—a hidden meaning
that could not in his day and time have safely been expressed. You will
remember that Laertes was about to kill the king, and this king was the
murderer of his own brother, and sat upon the throne by reason of his
crime—and in the mouth of such a king Shakespeare puts these words:
    "There's such divinity doth hedge a king."

So, in Macbeth:
    "How he solicits
    Heaven himself best knows; but strangely visited people
    All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
    The mere despairs of surgery, he cures;
    Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
    Put on with holy prayers; and 'tis spoken
    To the succeeding royalty—he leaves
    The healing benediction.
    With this strange virtue
    He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,
    And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
    That speak him full of grace."

Shakespeare was the master of the human heart—knew all the hopes,
fears, ambitions and passions that sway the mind of man; and thus
knowing, he declared that
    "Love is not love that alters
    When it alteration finds."

This is the sublimest declaration in the literature of the world.

Shakespeare seems to give the generalization—the result—without the
process of thought. He seems always to be at the conclusion—standing
where all truths meet.

In one of the Sonnets is this fragment of a line that contains the
highest possible truth:
    "Conscience is born of love."

If man were incapable of suffering, the words right and wrong never
could have been spoken. If man were destitute of imagination, the flower
of pity never could have blossomed in his heart.

We suffer—we cause others to suffer—those that we love—and of this
fact conscience is born.

Love is the many-colored flame that makes the fireside of the heart. It
is the mingled spring and autumn—the perfect climate of the soul.

Xiii

IN the realm of comparison Shakespeare seems to have exhausted the
relations, parallels and similitudes of things, He only could have said:
    "Tedious as a twice-told tale
    Vexing the ears of a drowsy man."
    "Duller than a great thaw.
    Dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage."

In the words of Ulysses, spoken to Achilles, we find the most wonderful
collection of pictures and comparisons ever compressed within the same
number of lines:
    "Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
    Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,—
    A great-sized monster of ingratitudes—
    Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devoured
    As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
    As done; perseverance, dear my lord,
    Keeps honor bright: to have done is to hang
    Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
    In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
    For honor travels in a strait so narrow
    Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path;
    For emulation hath a thousand sons
    That one by one pursue; if you give way,
    Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
    Like to an entered tide, they all rush by
    And leave you hindmost:
    Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
    Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
    O'errun and trampled on: then what they do in present,
    Tho' less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours;
    For time is like a fashionable host
    That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
    And with his arms outstretched as he would fly,
    Grasps in the comer: Welcome ever smiles,
    And Farewell goes out sighing."

So the words of Cleopatra, when Charmain speaks:
    "Peace, peace:
    Dost thou not see my baby at my breast
    That sucks the nurse asleep?"

Xiv

NOTHING is more difficult than a definition—a crystallization of
thought so perfect that it emits light. Shakespeare says of suicide:
    "It is great to do that thing
    That ends all other deeds,
    Which shackles accident, and bolts up change."

He defines drama to be:
    "Turning the accomplishments of many years
    Into an hour glass."

Of death:
    "This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod,
    To lie in cold obstruction and to rot."

Of memory:
    "The warder of the brain."

Of the body:
    "This muddy vesture of decay."

And he declares that
    "Our little life is rounded with a sleep."

He speaks of Echo as:
    "The babbling gossip of the air"—

Romeo, addressing the poison that he is about to take, says:
    "Come, bitter conduct, come unsavory guide,
    Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
    The dashing rocks thy sea-sick, weary bark."

He describes the world as
    "This bank and shoal of time."

He says of rumor—
    "That it doubles, like the voice and echo."

It would take days to call attention to the perfect definitions,
comparisons and generalizations of Shakespeare. He gave us the deeper
meanings of our words—taught us the art of speech. He was the lord of
language—master of expression and compression.

He put the greatest thoughts into the shortest words—made the poor rich
and the common royal.

Production enriched his brain. Nothing exhausted him. The moment his
attention was called to any subject—comparisons, definitions, metaphors
and generalizations filled his mind and begged for utterance. His
thoughts like bees robbed every blossom in the world, and then with
"merry march" brought the rich booty home "to the tent royal of their
emperor."

Shakespeare was the confidant of Nature. To him she opened her "infinite
book of secrecy," and in his brain were "the hatch and brood of time."

XV.

THERE is in Shakespeare the mingling of laughter and tears, humor and
pathos. Humor is the rose, wit the thorn. Wit is a crystallization,
humor an efflorescence. Wit comes from the brain, humor from the heart.
Wit is the lightning of the soul.

In Shakespeare's nature was the climate of humor. He saw and felt the
sunny side even of the saddest things. You have seen sunshine and rain
at once. So Shakespeare's tears fell oft upon his smiles. In moments of
peril—on the very darkness of death—there comes a touch of humor that
falls like a fleck of sunshine.

Gonzalo, when the ship is about to sink, having seen the boatswain,
exclaims:
    "I have great comfort from this fellow;
    Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him;
    His complexion is perfect gallows."

Shakespeare is filled with the strange contrasts of grief and laughter.
While poor Hero is supposed to be dead—wrapped in the shroud of
dishonor—Dogberry and Verges unconsciously put again the wedding wreath
upon her pure brow.

The soliloquy of Launcelot—great as Hamlet's—offsets the bitter and
burning words of Shylock.

There is only time to speak of Maria in "Twelfth Night," of Autolycus in
the "Winter's Tale," of the parallel drawn by Fluellen between Alexander
of Macedon and Harry of Monmouth, or of the marvelous humor of Falstaff,
who never had the faintest thought of right or wrong—or of Mercutio,
that embodiment of wit and humor—or of the gravediggers who lamented
that "great folk should have countenance in this world to drown and
hang themselves, more than their even Christian," and who reached the
generalization that "the gallows does well because it does well to those
who do ill."

There is also an example of grim humor—an example without a parallel in
literature, so far as I know. Hamlet having killed Polonius is asked:
    "Where's Polonius?"
    "At supper."
    "At supper! where?"
    "Not where he eats, but where he is eaten."

Above all others, Shakespeare appreciated the pathos of situation.

Nothing is more pathetic than the last scene in "Lear." No one has
ever bent above his dead who did not feel the words uttered by the mad
king,—words born of a despair deeper than tears:
    "Oh, that a horse, a dog, a rat hath life
    And thou no breath!"

So Iago, after he has been wounded, says:
    "I bleed, sir; but not killed."

And Othello answers from the wreck and shattered remnant of his life:
    "I would have thee live;
    For in my sense it is happiness to die."

When Troilus finds Cressida has been false, he cries:
    "Let it not be believed for womanhood;
    Think! we had mothers."

Ophelia, in her madness, "the sweet bells jangled out o' tune," says
softly:
    "I would give you some violets;
    But they withered all when my father died."

When Macbeth has reaped the harvest, the seeds of which were sown by his
murderous hand, he exclaims,—and what could be more pitiful?
    "I 'gin to be aweary of the sun."

Richard the Second feels how small a thing it is to be, or to have been,
a king, or to receive honors before or after power is lost; and so, of
those who stood uncovered before him, he asks this piteous question:
    "I live with bread, like you; feel want,
    Taste grief, need friends; subjected thus,
    How can you say to me I am a king?"

Think of the salutation of Antony to the dead Cæsar:
    "Pardon me, thou piece of bleeding earth."

When Pisanio informs Imogen that he had been ordered by Posthumus to
murder her, she bares her neck and cries:
    "The lamb entreats the butcher:
    Where is thy knife? Thou art too slow
    To do thy master's bidding when I desire it."

Antony, as the last drops are falling from his self-inflicted wound,
utters with his dying breath to Cleopatra, this:
    "I here importune death awhile, until
    Of many thousand kisses the poor last
    I lay upon thy lips."

To me, the last words of Hamlet are full of pathos:
    "I die, Horatio.
    The potent poison quite o' er crows my spirit...
    The rest is silence."

Xvi

SOME have insisted that Shakespeare must have been a physician, for
the reason that he shows such knowledge of medicine—of the symptoms of
disease and death—was so familiar with the brain, and with insanity in
all its forms.

I do not think he was a physician. He knew too much—his generalizations
were too splendid. He had none of the prejudices of that profession
in his time. We might as well say that he was a musician, a composer,
because we find in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" nearly every musical
term known in Shakespeare's time.

Others maintain that he was a lawyer, perfectly acquainted with the
forms, with the expressions familiar to that profession—yet there is
nothing to show that he was a lawyer, or that he knew more about law
than any intelligent man should know.

He was not a lawyer. His sense of justice was never dulled by reading
English law.

Some think that he was a botanist, because he named nearly all known
plants. Others, that he was an astronomer, a naturalist, because he gave
hints and suggestions of nearly all discoveries.

Some have thought that he must have been a sailor, for the reason that
the orders given in the opening of "The Tempest" were the best that
could, under the circumstances, have been given to save the ship.

For my part, I think there is nothing in the plays to show that he was
a lawyer, doctor, botanist or scientist. He had the observant eyes
that really see, the ears that really hear, the brain that retains all
pictures, all thoughts, logic as unerring as light,-the imagination
that supplies defects and builds the perfect from a fragment. And these
faculties, these aptitudes, working together, account for what he did.

He exceeded all the sons of men in the splendor of his imagination. To
him the whole world paid tribute, and nature poured her treasures at his
feet. In him all races lived again, and even those to be were pictured
in his brain.

He was a man of imagination—that is to say, of genius, and having seen
a leaf, and a drop of water, he could construct the forests, the rivers,
and the seas—and in his presence all the cataracts would fall and foam,
the mists rise, the clouds form and float.

If Shakespeare knew one fact, he knew its kindred and its neighbors.
Looking at a coat of mail, he instantly imagined the society, the
conditions, that produced it and what it, in turn, produced. He saw
the castle, the moat, the draw-bridge, the lady in the tower, and the
knightly lover spurring across the plain. He saw the bold baron and the
rude retainer, the trampled serf, and all the glory and the grief of
feudal life.

He lived the life of all.

He was a citizen of Athens in the days of Pericles. He listened to the
eager eloquence of the great orators, and sat upon the cliffs, and with
the tragic poet heard "the multitudinous laughter of the sea." He saw
Socrates thrust the spear of question through the shield and heart of
falsehood. He was present when the great man drank hemlock, and met the
night of death, tranquil as a star meets morning. He listened to the
peripatetic philosophers, and was unpuzzled by the sophists. He watched
Phidias as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms of love and awe.

He lived by the mysterious Nile, amid the vast and monstrous. He knew
the very thought that wrought the form and features of the Sphinx. He
heard great Memnon's morning song when marble lips were smitten by
the sun. He laid him down with the embalmed and waiting dead, and felt
within their dust the expectation of another life, mingled with cold and
suffocating doubts—the children born of long delay.

He walked the ways of mighty Rome, and saw great Cæsar with his legions
in the field. He stood with vast and motley throngs and watched the
triumphs given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the
captured hosts, and all the spoils of ruthless war. He heard the
shout that shook the Coliseum's roofless walls, when from the reeling
gladiator's hand the short sword fell, while from his bosom gushed the
stream of wasted life.

He lived the life of savage men. He trod the forests' silent depths, and
in the desperate game of life or death he matched his thought against
the instinct of the beast.

He knew all crimes and all regrets, all virtues and their rich rewards.
He was victim and victor, pursuer and pursued, outcast and king. He
heard the applause and curses of the world, and on his heart had fallen
all the nights and noons of failure and success.

He knew the unspoken thoughts, the dumb desires, the wants and ways of
beasts. He felt the crouching tiger's thrill, the terror of the ambushed
prey, and with the eagles he had shared the ecstasy of flight and poise
and swoop, and he had lain with sluggish serpents on the barren rocks
uncoiling slowly in the heat of noon.

He sat beneath the bo-tree's contemplative shade, wrapped in Buddha's
mighty thought, and dreamed all dreams that light, the alchemist, has
wrought from dust and dew, and stored within the slumbrous poppy's
subtle blood.

He knelt with awe and dread at every shrine—he offered every sacrifice,
and every prayer—felt the consolation and the shuddering fear—mocked
and worshiped all the gods—enjoyed all heavens, and felt the pangs of
every hell.

He lived all lives, and through his blood and brain there crept the
shadow and the chill of every death, and his soul, like Mazeppa, was
lashed naked to the wild horse of every fear and love and hate.

The Imagination had a stage in. Shakespeare's brain, whereon were set
all scenes that lie between the morn of laughter and the night of tears,
and where his players bodied forth the false and true, the joys and
griefs, the careless shallows and the tragic deeps of universal life.

From Shakespeare's brain there poured a Niagara of gems spanned by
Fancy's seven-hued arch. He was as many-sided as clouds are many-formed.
To him giving was hoarding—sowing was harvest—and waste itself the
source of wealth. Within his marvelous mind were the fruits of all
thought past, the seeds of all to be. As a drop of dew contains the
image of the earth and sky, so all there is of life was mirrored forth
in Shakespeare's brain.

Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the
shores of thought; within which were all the tides and waves of destiny
and will; over which swept all the storms of fate, ambition and revenge;
upon which fell the gloom and darkness of despair and death and all the
sunlight of content and love, and within which was the inverted sky lit
with the eternal stars—an intellectual ocean—towards which all rivers
ran, and from which now the isles and continents of thought receive
their dew and rain.
