{
  "schema": "tga.work.v1",
  "identifier": "dresden:vol-3:shakespeare",
  "slug": "shakespeare",
  "title": "Shakespeare",
  "subtitle": "The greatest genius of our world.",
  "excerpt": "A sweeping tribute to Shakespeare as the supreme poet of the human mind — born of common parents, untouched by royal blood, the finest flower of natural human genius.",
  "year": 1891,
  "volume": 3,
  "category": "Tribute",
  "author": {
    "name": "Robert G. Ingersoll",
    "wikidata": "Q360326",
    "viaf": "44331023"
  },
  "isPartOf": {
    "title": "The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll",
    "edition": "Dresden Edition",
    "publisher": "C. P. Farrell",
    "year": 1900
  },
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/",
  "url": "https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/shakespeare/",
  "wordCount": 13346,
  "body": "WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was the greatest genius of our world. He left to\nus the richest legacy of all the dead—the treasures of the rarest soul\nthat ever lived and loved and wrought of words the statues, pictures,\nrobes and gems of thought.\n\nIt is hard to overstate the debt we owe to the men and women of genius.\nTake from our world what they have given, and all the niches would be\nempty, all the walls naked—meaning and connection would fall from words\nof poetry and fiction, music would go back to common air, and all the\nforms of subtle and enchanting Art would lose proportion and become the\nunmeaning waste and shattered spoil of thoughtless Chance.\n\nShakespeare is too great a theme. I feel as though endeavoring to grasp\na globe so large that the hand obtains no hold. He who would worthily\nspeak of the great dramatist should be inspired by \"a muse of fire that\nshould ascend the brightest heaven of invention\"—he should have \"a\nkingdom for a stage, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene.\"\n\nMore than three centuries ago, the most intellectual of the human race\nwas born. He was not of supernatural origin. At his birth there were\nno celestial pyrotechnics. His father and mother were both English, and\nboth had the cheerful habit of living in this world. The cradle in which\nhe was rocked was canopied by neither myth nor miracle, and in his veins\nthere was no drop of royal blood.\n\nThis babe became the wonder of mankind. Neither of his parents could\nread or write. He grew up in a small and ignorant village on the banks\nof the Avon, in the midst of the common people of three hundred years\nago. There was nothing in the peaceful, quiet landscape on which he\nlooked, nothing in the low hills, the cultivated and undulating fields,\nand nothing in the murmuring stream, to excite the imagination—nothing,\nso far as we can see, calculated to sow the seeds of the subtlest and\nsublimest thought.\n\nSo there is nothing connected with his education, or his lack of\neducation, that in any way accounts for what he did. It is supposed that\nhe attended school in his native town—but of this we are not certain.\nMany have tried to show that he was, after all, of gentle blood, but the\nfact seems to be the other way. Some of his biographers have sought to\ndo him honor by showing that he was patronized by Queen Elizabeth, but\nof this there is not the slightest proof.\n\nAs a matter of fact, there never sat on any throne a king, queen, or\nemperor who could have honored William Shakespeare.\n\nIgnorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called\neducation. The sons of the poor, having suffered the privations of\npoverty, think of wealth as the mother of joy. On the other hand, the\nchildren of the rich, finding that gold does not produce happiness, are\napt to underrate the value of wealth. So the children of the educated\noften care but little for books, and hold all culture in contempt. The\nchildren of great authors do not, as a rule, become writers.\n\nNature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Extremes beget\nlimitations, even as a river by its own swiftness creates obstructions\nfor itself.\n\nPossibly, many generations of culture breed a desire for the rude joys\nof savagery, and possibly generations of ignorance breed such a longing\nfor knowledge, that of this desire, of this hunger of the brain, Genius\nis born. It may be that the mind, by lying fallow, by remaining idle for\ngenerations, gathers strength.\n\nShakespeare's father seems to have been an ordinary man of his time and\nclass. About the only thing we know of him is that he was officially\nreported for not coming monthly to church. This is good as far as it\ngoes. We can hardly blame him, because at that time Richard Bifield\nwas the minister at Stratford, and an extreme Puritan, one who read the\nPsalter by Sternhold and Hopkins.\n\nThe church was at one time Catholic, but in John Shakespeare's day it\nwas Puritan, and in 1564, the year of Shakespeare's birth, they had the\nimages defaced. It is greatly to the honor of John Shakespeare that\nhe refused to listen to the \"tidings of great joy\" as delivered by the\nPuritan Bifield.\n\nNothing is known of his mother, except her beautiful name—Mary Arden.\nIn those days but little attention was given to the biographies of\nwomen. They were born, married, had children, and died. No matter how\ncelebrated their sons became, the mothers were forgotten. In old times,\nwhen a man achieved distinction, great pains were taken to find\nout about the father and grandfather—the idea being that genius is\ninherited from the father's side. The truth is, that all great men have\nhad great mothers. Great women have had, as a rule, great fathers.\n\nThe mother of Shakespeare was, without doubt, one of the greatest of\nwomen. She dowered her son with passion and imagination and the higher\nqualities of the soul, beyond all other men. It has been said that a\nman of genius should select his ancestors with great care—and yet\nthere does not seem to be as much in heredity as most people think.\nThe children of the great are often small. Pigmies are born in palaces,\nwhile over the children of genius is the roof of straw. Most of the\ngreat are like mountains, with the valley of ancestors on one side and\nthe depression of posterity on the other.\n\nIn his day Shakespeare was of no particular importance. It may be that\nhis mother had some marvelous and prophetic dreams, but Stratford was\nunconscious of the immortal child. He was never engaged in a reputable\nbusiness. Socially he occupied a position below servants. The law\ndescribed him as \"a sturdy vagabond.\" He was neither a noble, a soldier,\nnor a priest. Among the half-civilized people of England, he who amused\nand instructed them was regarded as a menial. Kings had their clowns,\nthe people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare was scheduled as a\nservant. It is thus that successful stupidity has always treated genius.\nMozart was patronized by an Archbishop—lived in the palace,—but was\ncompelled to eat with the scullions.\n\nThe composer of divine melodies was not fit to sit by the side of the\ntheologian, who long ago would have been forgotten but for the fame of\nthe composer.\n\nWe know but little of the personal peculiarities, of the daily life, or\nof what may be called the outward Shakespeare, and it may be fortunate\nthat so little is known. He might have been belittled by friendly fools.\nWhat silly stories, what idiotic personal reminiscences, would have\nbeen remembered by those who scarcely saw him! We have his best—his\nsublimest—and we have probably lost only the trivial and the worthless.\nAll that is known can be written on a page.\n\nWe are tolerably certain of the date of his birth, of his marriage and\nof his death. We think he went to London in 1586, when he was twenty-two\nyears old. We think that three years afterward he was part owner of\nBlackfriars' Theatre. We have a few signatures, some of which are\nsupposed to be genuine. We know that he bought some land—that he had\ntwo or three law-suits. We know the names of his children. We also know\nthat this incomparable man—so apart from, and so familiar with, all the\nworld—lived during his literary life in London—that he was an actor,\ndramatist and manager—that he returned to Stratford, the place of his\nbirth,—that he gave his writings to negligence, deserted the children\nof his brain—that he died on the anniversary of his birth at the age\nof fifty-two, and that he was buried in the church where the images\nhad been defaced, and that on his tomb was chiseled a rude, absurd and\nignorant epitaph.\n\nNo letter of his to any human being has been found, and no line written\nby him can be shown.\n\nAnd here let me give my explanation of the epitaph. Shakespeare was an\nactor—a disreputable business—but he made money—always reputable. He\ncame back from London a rich man. He bought land, and built houses. Some\nof the supposed great probably treated him with deference. When he died\nhe was buried in the church. Then came a reaction. The pious thought the\nchurch had been profaned. They did not feel that the ashes of an actor\nwere fit to lie in holy ground. The people began to say the body\nought to be removed. Then it was, as I believe, that Dr. John Hall,\nShakespeare's son-in-law, had this epitaph cut on the tomb:\n    \"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare\n    To digg the dust enclosed heare:\n    Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones,\n    And curst be he yt moves my bones.\"\n\nCertainly Shakespeare could have had no fear that his tomb would be\nviolated. How could it have entered his mind to have put a warning, a\nthreat and a blessing, upon his grave? But the ignorant people of that\nday were no doubt convinced that the epitaph was the voice of the dead,\nand so feeling they feared to invade the tomb. In this way the dust was\nleft in peace.\n\nThis epitaph gave me great trouble for years. It puzzled me to explain\nwhy he, who erected the intellectual pyramids,—great ranges of\nmountains—should put such a pebble at his tomb. But when I stood beside\nthe grave and read the ignorant words, the explanation I have given\nflashed upon me.\n\nII.\n\nIT has been said that Shakespeare was hardly mentioned by his\ncontemporaries, and that he was substantially unknown. This is a\nmistake. In 1600 a book was published called England's Parnassus,\nand it contained ninety extracts from Shakespeare. In the same year\nwas published the Garden of the Muses, containing several pieces from\nShakespeare, Chapman, Marston and Ben Jonson. England's Helicon was\nprinted in the same year, and contained poems from Spenser, Greene,\nHarvey and Shakespeare.\n\nIn 1600 a play was acted at Cambridge, in which Shakespeare was alluded\nto as follows: \"Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare who puts them all\ndown.\" John Weaver published a book of poems in 1595, in which there\nwas a sonnet to Shakespeare. In 1598 Richard Bamfield wrote a poem\nto Shakespeare. Francis Meres, \"clergyman, master of arts in both\nuniversities, compiler of school books,\" was the author of the _Wits\nTreasury_. In this he compares the ancient and modern tragic poets, and\nmentions Marlowe, Peele, Kyd and Shakespeare. So he compares the writers\nof comedies, and mentions Lilly, Lodge, Greene and Shakespeare. He\nspeaks of elegiac poets, and names Surrey, Wyatt, Sidney, Raleigh and\nShakespeare. He compares the lyric poets, and names Spenser, Drayton,\nShakespeare and others. This same writer, speaking of Horace, says that\nEngland has Sidney, Shakespeare and others, and that \"as the soul of\nEuphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet-wittie soul\nof Ovid lives in the mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare.\" He\nalso says: \"If the Muses could speak English, they would speak in\nShakespeare's phrase.\" This was in 1598. In 1607, John Davies alludes in\na poem to Shakespeare.\n\nOf course we are all familiar with what rare Ben Jonson wrote. Henry\nChettle took Shakespeare to task because he wrote nothing on the death\nof Queen Elizabeth.\n\nIt may be wonderful that he was not better known. But is it not\nwonderful that he gained the reputation that he did in so short a time,\nand that twelve years after he began to write he stood at least with the\nfirst?\n\nIii\n\nBUT there is a wonderful fact connected with the writings of\nShakespeare: In the Plays there is no direct mention of any of his\ncontemporaries. We do not know of any poet, author, soldier, sailor,\nstatesman, priest, nobleman, king, or queen, that Shakespeare directly\nmentioned.\n\nIs it not marvelous that he, living in an age of great deeds, of\nadventures in far-off lands and unknown seas—in a time of religious\nwars—in the days of the Armada—the massacre of St. Bartholomew—the\nEdict of Nantes—the assassination of Henry III.—the victory of\nLepanto—the execution of Marie Stuart—did not mention the name of any\nman or woman of his time? Some have insisted that the paragraph ending\nwith the lines: \"The imperial votress passed on in maiden meditation\nfancy-free,\" referred to Queen Elizabeth; but it is impossible for me\nto believe that the daubed and wrinkled face, the small black eyes,\nthe cruel nose, the thin lips, the bad teeth, and the red wig of Queen\nElizabeth could by any possibility have inspired these marvelous lines.\n\nIt is perfectly apparent from Shakespeare's writings that he knew but\nlittle of the nobility, little of kings and queens. He gives to these\nsupposed great people great thoughts, and puts great words in their\nmouths and makes them speak—not as they really did—but as Shakespeare\nthought such people should. This demonstrates that he did not know them\npersonally.\n\nSome have insisted that Shakespeare mentions Queen Elizabeth in the\nlast scene of Henry VIII. The answer to this is that Shakespeare did not\nwrite the last scene in that Play. The probability is that Fletcher was\nthe author.\n\nShakespeare lived during the great awakening of the world, when Europe\nemerged from the darkness of the Middle Ages, when the discovery of\nAmerica had made England, that blossom of the Gulf-Stream, the centre\nof commerce, and during a period when some of the greatest writers,\nthinkers, soldiers and discoverers were produced.\n\nCervantes was born in 1547, dying on the same day that Shakespeare died.\nHe was undoubtedly the greatest writer that Spain has produced. Rubens\nwas born in 1577. Camoens, the Portuguese, the author of the Lusiad,\ndied in 1597. Giordano Bruno—greatest of martyrs—was born in\n1548—visited London in Shakespeare's time—delivered lectures at\nOxford, and called that institution \"the widow of learning.\" Drake\ncircled the globe in 1580. Galileo was born in 1564—the same year\nwith Shakespeare. Michael Angelo died in 1563. Kepler—he of the Three\nLaws—born in 1571. Calderon, the Spanish dramatist, born in 1601.\nCorneille, the French poet, in 1606. Rembrandt, greatest of painters,\n1607. Shakespeare was born in 1564. In that year John Calvin died. What\na glorious exchange!\n\nSeventy-two years after the discovery of America Shakespeare was born,\nand England was filled with the voyages and discoveries written by\nHakluyt, and the wonders that had been seen by Raleigh, by Drake, by\nFrobisher and Hawkins. London had become the centre of the world, and\nrepresentatives from all known countries were in the new metropolis. The\nworld had been doubled. The imagination had been touched and kindled by\ndiscovery. In the far horizon were unknown lands, strange shores beyond\nuntraversed seas. Toward every part of the world were turned the prows\nof adventure. All these things fanned the imagination into flame,\nand this had its effect upon the literary and dramatic world. And\nyet Shakespeare—the master spirit of mankind—in the midst of these\ndiscoveries, of these adventures, mentioned no navigator, no general, no\ndiscoverer, no philosopher.\n\nGalileo was reading the open volume of the sky, but Shakespeare did not\nmention him. This to me is the most marvelous thing connected with this\nmost marvelous man.\n\nAt that time England was prosperous—was then laying the foundation of\nher future greatness and power.\n\nWhen men are prosperous, they are in love with life. Nature grows\nbeautiful, the arts begin to flourish, there is work for painter and\nsculptor, the poet is born, the stage is erected—and this life with\nwhich men are in love, is represented in a thousand forms.\n\nNature, or Fate, or Chance prepared a stage for Shakespeare, and\nShakespeare prepared a stage for Nature.\n\nFamine and faith go together. In disaster and want the gaze of man is\nfixed upon another world. He that eats a crust has a creed. Hunger falls\nupon its knees, and heaven, looked for through tears, is the mirage\nof misery. But prosperity brings joy and wealth and leisure—and the\nbeautiful is born.\n\nOne of the effects of the world's awakening was Shakespeare. We account\nfor this man as we do for the highest mountain, the greatest river, the\nmost perfect gem. We can only say: He was.\n    \"It hath been taught us from the primal state\n    That he which is was wished until he were.\"\n\nIV.\n\nIN Shakespeare's time the actor was a vagabond, the dramatist a\ndisreputable person—and yet the greatest dramas were then written. In\nspite of law, and social ostracism, Shakespeare reared the many-colored\ndome that fills and glorifies the intellectual heavens.\n\nNow the whole civilized world believes in the theatre—asks for some\ngreat dramatist—is hungry for a play worthy of the century, is anxious\nto give gold and fame to any one who can worthily put our age upon the\nstage—and yet no great play has been written since Shakespeare died.\n\nShakespeare pursued the highway of the right. He did not seek to put his\ncharacters in a position where it was right to do wrong. He was sound\nand healthy to the centre. It never occurred to him to write a play in\nwhich a wife's lover should be jealous of her husband.\n\nThere was in his blood the courage of his thought. He was true to\nhimself and enjoyed the perfect freedom of the highest art. He did not\nwrite according to rules—but smaller men make rules from what he wrote.\n\nHow fortunate that Shakespeare was not educated at Oxford—that the\nwinged god within him never knelt to the professor. How fortunate\nthat this giant was not captured, tied and tethered by the literary\nLilliputians of his time.\n\nHe was an idealist. He did not—like most writers of our time—take\nrefuge in the real, hiding a lack of genius behind a pretended love of\ntruth. All realities are not poetic, or dramatic, or even worth knowing.\nThe real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to\na statue—or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and\nimpoverishes. In no event can a realist be more than an imitator and\ncopyist. According to the realist's philosophy, the wax that receives\nand retains an image is an artist.\n\nShakespeare did not rely on the stage-carpenter, or the scenic painter.\nHe put his scenery in his lines. There you will find mountains and\nrivers and seas, valleys and cliffs, violets and clouds, and over all\n\"the firmament fretted with gold and fire.\" He cared little for plot,\nlittle for surprise. He did not rely on stage effects, or red fire. The\nplays grow before your eyes, and they come as the morning comes. Plot\nsurprises but once. There must be something in a play besides surprise.\nPlot in an author is a kind of strategy—that is to say, a sort of\ncunning, and cunning does not belong to the highest natures.\n\nThere is in Shakespeare such a wealth of thought that the plot becomes\nalmost immaterial—and such is this wealth that you can hardly know the\nplay—there is too much. After you have heard it again and again, it\nseems as pathless as an untrodden forest.\n\nHe belonged to all lands. \"Timon of Athens\" is as Greek as any tragedy\nof Eschylus. \"Julius Cæsar\" and \"Coriolanus\" are perfect Roman, and as\nyou read, the mighty ruins rise and the Eternal City once again becomes\nthe mistress of the world. No play is more Egyptian than \"Antony and\nCleopatra\"—the Nile runs through it, the shadows of the pyramids\nfall upon it, and from its scenes the Sphinx gazes forever on the\noutstretched sands.\n\nIn \"Lear\" is the true pagan spirit. \"Romeo and Juliet\" is\nItalian—everything is sudden, love bursts into immediate flower, and in\nevery scene is the climate of the land of poetry and passion.\n\nThe reason of this is that Shakespeare dealt with elemental things, with\nuniversal man. He knew that locality colors without changing, and that\nin all surroundings the human heart is substantially the same.\n\nNot all the poetry written before his time would make his sum—not all\nthat has been written since, added to all that was written before, would\nequal his.\n\nThere was nothing within the range of human thought, within the horizon\nof intellectual effort, that he did not touch. He knew the brain and\nheart of man—the theories, customs, superstitions, hopes, fears,\nhatreds, vices and virtues of the human race.\n\nHe knew the thrills and ecstasies of love, the savage joys of hatred and\nrevenge. He heard the hiss of envy's snakes and watched the eagles of\nambition soar. There was no hope that did not put its star above his\nhead—no fear he had not felt—no joy that had not shed its sunshine\non his face. He experienced the emotions of mankind. He was the\nintellectual spendthrift of the world. He gave with the generosity, the\nextravagance, of madness.\n\nRead one play, and you are impressed with the idea that the wealth\nof the brain of a god has been exhausted—that there are no more\ncomparisons, no more passions to be expressed, no more definitions, no\nmore philosophy, beauty, or sublimity to be put in words—and yet, the\nnext play opens as fresh as the dewy gates of another day.\n\nThe outstretched wings of his imagination filled the sky. He was the\nintellectual crown o' the earth.\n\nV.\n\nTHE plays of Shakespeare show so much knowledge, thought and learning,\nthat many people—those who imagine that universities furnish\ncapacity—contend that Bacon must have been the author.\n\nWe know Bacon. We know that he was a scheming politician, a courtier,\na time-server of church and king, and a corrupt judge. We know that he\nnever admitted the truth of the Copernican system—that he was\ndoubtful whether instruments were of any advantage in scientific\ninvestigation—that he was ignorant of the higher branches of\nmathematics, and that, as a matter of fact, he added but little to the\nknowledge of the world. When he was more than sixty years of age he\nturned his attention to poetry, and dedicated his verses to George\nHerbert.\n\nIf you will read these verses you will say that the author of \"Lear\" and\n\"Hamlet\" did not write them.\n\nBacon dedicated his work on the _Advancement of Learning, Divine and\nHuman_, to James I., and in his dedication he stated that there had not\nbeen, since the time of Christ, any king or monarch so learned in all\nerudition, divine or human. He placed James the First before Marcus\nAurelius and all other kings and emperors since Christ, and concluded\nby saying that James the First had \"the power and fortune of a king,\nthe illumination of a priest, the learning and universality of a\nphilosopher.\" This was written of James the First, described by Macaulay\nas a \"stammering, slobbering, trembling coward, whose writings were\ndeformed by the grossest and vilest superstitions—witches being the\nspecial objects of his fear, his hatred, and his persecution.\"\n\nIt seems to have been taken for granted that if Shakespeare was not the\nauthor of the great dramas, Lord Bacon must have been.\n\nIt has been claimed that Bacon was the greatest philosopher of his\ntime. And yet in reading his works we find that there was in his mind a\nstrange mingling of foolishness and philosophy. He takes pains to tell\nus, and to write it down for the benefit of posterity, that \"snow\nis colder than water, because it hath more spirit in it, and that\nquicksilver is the coldest of all metals, because it is the fullest of\nspirit.\"\n\nHe stated that he hardly believed that you could contract air by putting\nopium on top of the weather glass, and gave the following reason:\n\n\"I conceive that opium and the like make spirits fly rather by malignity\nthan by cold.\"\n\nThis great philosopher gave the following recipe for staunching blood:\n\n\"Thrust the part that bleedeth into the body of a capon, new ripped and\nbleeding. This will staunch the blood. The blood, as it seemeth, sucking\nand drawing up by similitude of substance the blood it meeteth with, and\nso itself going back.\"\n\nThe philosopher also records this important fact: \"Divers witches among\nheathen and Christians have fed upon man's flesh to aid, as it seemeth,\ntheir imagination with high and foul vapors.\"\n\nLord Bacon was not only a philosopher, but he was a biologist, as\nappears from the following:\n\n\"As for living creatures, it is certain that their vital spirits are a\nsubstance compounded of an airy and flamy matter, and although air and\nflame being free will not mingle, yet bound in by a body that hath some\nfixing, will.\"\n\nNow and then the inventor of deduction reasons by analogy. He says:\n\n\"As snow and ice holpen, and their cold activated by nitre or salt, will\nturn water into ice, so it may be it will turn wood or stiff clay into\nstone.\"\n\nBacon seems to have been a believer in the transmutation of metals, and\nsolemnly gives a formula for changing silver or copper into gold. He\nalso believed in the transmutation of plants, and had arrived at such\na height in entomology that he informed the world that \"insects have no\nblood.\"\n\nIt is claimed that he was a great observer, and as evidence of this\nhe recorded the wonderful fact that \"tobacco cut and dried by the fire\nloses weight\" that \"bears in the winter wax fat in sleep, though they eat\nnothing\" that \"tortoises have no bones\" that \"there is a kind of stone, if\nground and put in water where cattle drink, the cows will give more milk\"\nthat \"it is hard to cure a hurt in a Frenchman's head, but easy in his\nleg;\" that \"it is hard to cure a hurt in an Englishman's leg, but easy in\nhis head;\" that \"wounds made with brass weapons are easier to cure than\nthose made with iron;\" that \"lead will multiply and increase, as in\nstatues buried in the ground\" and that \"the rainbow touching anything\ncauseth a sweet smell.\"\n\nBacon seems also to have turned his attention to ornithology, and says\nthat \"eggs laid in the full of the moon breed better birds,\" and that\n\"you can make swallows white by putting ointment on the eggs before they\nare hatched.\"\n\nHe also informs us \"that witches cannot hurt kings as easily as they can\ncommon people\" that \"perfumes dry and strengthen the brain\" that \"any one\nin the moment of triumph can be injured by another who casts an envious\neye, and the injury is greatest when the envious glance comes from the\noblique eye.\"\n\nLord Bacon also turned his attention to medicine, and he states that\n\"bracelets made of snakes are good for curing cramps\" that \"the skin of\na wolf might cure the colic, because a wolf has great digestion\" that\n\"eating the roasted brains of hens and hares strengthens the memory\"\nthat \"if a woman about to become a mother eats a good many quinces and\nconsiderable coriander seed, the child will be ingenious,\" and that\n\"the moss which groweth on the skull of an unburied dead man is good for\nstaunching blood.\"\n\nHe expresses doubt, however, \"as to whether you can cure a wound by\nputting ointment on the weapon that caused the wound, instead of on the\nwound itself.\"\n\nIt is claimed by the advocates of the Baconian theory that their hero\nstood at the top of science; and yet \"it is absolutely certain that he\nwas ignorant of the law of the acceleration of falling bodies, although\nthe law had been made known and printed by Galileo thirty years before\nBacon wrote upon the subject. Neither did this great man understand the\nprinciple of the lever. He was not acquainted with the precession of\nthe equinoxes, and as a matter of fact was ill-read in those branches of\nlearning in which, in his time, the most rapid progress had been made.\"\n\nAfter Kepler discovered his third law, which was on the 15th of May,\n1618, Bacon was more than ever opposed to the Copernican system. This\ngreat man was far behind his own time, not only in astronomy, but in\nmathematics. In the preface to the \"De-scriptio Globi Intellectualis,\"\nit is admitted either that Bacon had never heard of the correction of\nthe parallax, or was unable to understand it. He complained on account\nof the want of some method for shortening mathematical calculations; and\nyet \"Napier's Logarithms\" had been printed nine years before the date of\nhis complaint.\n\nHe attempted to form a table of specific gravities by a rude process\nof his own, a process that no one has ever followed; and he did this in\nspite of the fact that a far better method existed.\n\nWe have the right to compare what Bacon wrote with what it is claimed\nShakespeare produced. I call attention to one thing—to Bacon's opinion\nof human love. It is this:\n\n\"The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. As to the\nstage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies,\nbut in life it doth much mischief—sometimes like a siren, sometimes\nlike a fury. Amongst all the great and worthy persons there is not one\nthat hath been transported to the mad degree of love, which shows that\ngreat spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion.\"\n\nThe author of \"Romeo and Juliet\" never wrote that.\n\nIt seems certain that the author of the wondrous Plays was one of the\nnoblest of men.\n\nLet us see what sense of honor Bacon had.\n\nIn writing commentaries on certain passages of Scripture, Lord Bacon\ntells a courtier, who has committed some offence, how to get back into\nthe graces of his prince or king. Among other things he tells him not to\nappear too cheerful, but to assume a very grave and modest face; not to\nbring the matter up himself; to be extremely industrious, so that the\nprince will see that it is hard to get along without him; also to get\nhis friends to tell the prince or king how badly he, the courtier,\nfeels; and then he says, all these failing, \"let him contrive to\ntransfer the fault to others.\"\n\nIt is true that we know but little of Shakespeare, and consequently\ndo not positively know that he did not have the ability to write the\nPlays—but we do know Bacon, and we know that he could not have\nwritten these Plays—consequently, they must have been written by a\ncomparatively unknown man—that is to say, by a man who was known by no\nother writings. The fact that we do not know Shakespeare, except through\nthe Plays and Sonnets, makes it possible for us to believe that he was\nthe author.\n\nSome people have imagined that the Plays were written by several—but\nthis only increases the wonder, and adds a useless burden to credulity.\n\nBacon published in his time all the writings that he claimed. Naturally,\nhe would have claimed his best. Is it possible that Bacon left the\nwondrous children of his brain on the door-step of Shakespeare, and kept\nthe deformed ones at home? Is it possible that he fathered the failures\nand deserted the perfect?\n\nOf course, it is wonderful that so little has been found touching\nShakespeare—but is it not equally wonderful, if Bacon was the\nauthor, that not a line has been found in all his papers, containing a\nsuggestion, or a hint, that he was the writer of these Plays? Is it\nnot wonderful that no fragment of any scene—no line—no word—has been\nfound?\n\nSome have insisted that Bacon kept the authorship secret because it\nwas disgraceful to write Plays. This argument does not cover the\nSonnets—and besides, one who had been stripped of the robes of office\nfor receiving bribes as a judge, could have borne the additional\ndisgrace of having written \"Hamlet.\" The fact that Bacon did not claim\nto be the author, demonstrates that he was not. Shakespeare claimed\nto be the author, and no one in his time or day denied the claim. This\ndemonstrates that he was.\n\nBacon published his works, and said to the world: This is what I have\ndone.\n\nSuppose you found in a cemetery a monument erected to John Smith,\ninventor of the Smith-churn, and suppose you were told that Mr.\nSmith provided for the monument in his will, and dictated the\ninscription—would it be possible to convince you that Mr. Smith was\nalso the inventor of the locomotive and telegraph?\n\nBacon's best can be compared with Shakespeare's common, but\nShakespeare's best rises above Bacon's best, like a domed temple above a\nbeggar's hut.\n\nVI.\n\nOF course it is admitted that there were many dramatists before and\nduring the time of Shakespeare—but they were only the foot hills of\nthat mighty peak the top of which the clouds and mists still hide.\nChapman and Marlowe, Heywood and Jonson, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher\nwrote some great lines, and in the monotony of declamation now and then\nis found a strain of genuine music—but all of them together constituted\nonly a herald of Shakespeare. In all these Plays there is but a hint,\na prophecy, of the great drama destined to revolutionize the poetic\nthought of the world.\n\nShakespeare was the greatest of poets. What Greece and Rome produced was\ngreat until his time. \"Lions make leopards tame.\"\n\nThe great poet is a great artist. He is painter and sculptor. The\ngreatest pictures and statues have been painted and chiseled with words.\nThey outlast all others. All the galleries of the world are poor and\ncheap compared with the statues and pictures in Shakespeare's book.\n\nLanguage is made of pictures represented by sounds. The outer world is\na dictionary of the mind, and the artist called the soul uses this\ndictionary of things to express what happens in the noiseless and\ninvisible world of thought. First a sound represents something in the\nouter world, and afterwards something in the inner, and this sound at\nlast is represented by a mark, and this mark stands for a picture,\nand every brain is a gallery, and the artists—that is to say, the\nsouls—exchange pictures and statues.\n\nAll art is of the same parentage. The poet uses words—makes pictures\nand statues of sounds. The sculptor expresses harmony, proportion,\npassion, in marble; the composer, in music; the painter in form and\ncolor. The dramatist expresses himself not only in words, not only\npaints these pictures, but he expresses his thought in action.\n\nShakespeare was not only a poet, but a dramatist, and expressed the\nideal, the poetic, not only in words, but in action. There are the\nwit, the humor, the pathos, the tragedy of situation, of relation. The\ndramatist speaks and acts through others—his personality is lost.\nThe poet lives in the world of thought and feeling, and to this the\ndramatist adds the world of action. He creates characters that seem to\nact in accordance with their own natures and independently of him. He\ncompresses lives into hours, tells us the secrets of the heart, shows us\nthe springs of action—how desire bribes the judgment and corrupts the\nwill—how weak the reason is when passion pleads, and how grand it is to\nstand for right against the world.\n\nIt is not enough to say fine things,—great things, dramatic things,\nmust be done.\n\nLet me give you an illustration of dramatic incident accompanying the\nhighest form of poetic expression:\n\nMacbeth having returned from the murder of Duncan says to his wife:\n    \"Methought I heard a voice cry: Sleep no more,\n    Macbeth does murder sleep; the innocent sleep;\n    Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,\n    The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,\n    Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course,\n    Chief nourisher in life's feast.\"...\n    \"Still it cried: Sleep no more, to all the house,\n    Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor\n    Shall sleep no more—Macbeth shall sleep no more.\"\n\nShe exclaims:\n    \"Who was it that thus cried?\n    Why, worthy Thane, you do unbend your noble strength\n    To think so brain-sickly of things; get some water,\n    And wash this filthy witness from your hand.\n    Why did you bring the daggers from the place?\"\n\nMacbeth was so overcome with horror at his own deed, that he not only\nmistook his thoughts for the words of others, but was so carried away\nand beyond himself that he brought with him the daggers—the evidence of\nhis guilt—the daggers that he should have left with the dead. This is\ndramatic.\n\nIn the same play, the difference of feeling before and after the\ncommission of a crime is illustrated to perfection. When Macbeth is\non his way to assassinate the king, the bell strikes, and he says, or\nwhispers:\n    \"Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell.\"\n\nAfterward, when the deed has been committed, and a knocking is heard at\nthe gate, he cries:\n    \"Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst.\"\n\nLet me give one more instance of dramatic action. When Antony speaks\nabove the body of Cæsar he says:\n    \"You all do know this mantle:\n    I remember The first time ever Cæsar put it on—\n    'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,\n    That day he overcame the Nervii:\n    Look! In this place ran Cassius' dagger through:\n    See what a rent the envious Casca made!\n    Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed,\n    And as he plucked his cursed steel away,\n    Mark how the blood of Cæsar followed it.\"\n\nVii\n\nTHERE are men, and many of them, who are always trying to show that\nsomebody else chiseled the statue or painted the picture,—that the poem\nis attributed to the wrong man, and that the battle was really won by a\nsubordinate.\n\nOf course Shakespeare made use of the work of others—and, we might\nalmost say, of all others. Every writer must use the work of others.\nThe only question is, how the accomplishments of other minds are used,\nwhether as a foundation to build higher, or whether stolen to the end\nthat the thief may make a reputation for himself, without adding to the\ngreat structure of literature.\n\nThousands of people have stolen stones from the Coliseum to make huts\nfor themselves. So thousands of writers have taken the thoughts of\nothers with which to adorn themselves. These are plagiarists. But the\nman who takes the thought of another, adds to it, gives it intensity and\npoetic form, throb and life,—is in the highest sense original.\n\nShakespeare found nearly all of his facts in the writings of others,\nand was indebted to others for most of the stories of his plays. The\nquestion is not: Who furnished the stone, or who owned the quarry, but\nwho chiseled the statue?\n\nWe now know all the books that Shakespeare could have read, and\nconsequently know many of the sources of his information. We find in\nPliny's Natural History, published in 1601, the following: \"The sea\nPontis evermore floweth and runneth out into the Propontis; but the sea\nnever retireth back again with the Impontis.\" This was the raw material,\nand out of it Shakespeare made the following:\n    \"Like to the Pontic Sea,\n    Whose icy current and compulsive course\n    Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on\n    To the Propontic and the Hellespont—\n    Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,\n    Shall ne'er turn back, ne'er ebb to humble love,\n    Till that a capable and wide revenge Swallow them up.\"\n\nPerhaps we can give an idea of the difference between Shakespeare and\nother poets, by a passage from \"Lear.\" When Cordelia places her hand\nupon her father's head and speaks of the night and of the storm, an\nordinary poet might have said:\n    \"On such a night, a dog\n    Should have stood against my fire.\"\n\nA very great poet might have gone a step further and exclaimed:\n    \"On such a night, mine enemy's dog\n    Should have stood against my fire.\"\n\nBut Shakespeare said:\n    \"Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me,\n    Should have stood, that night, against my fire.\"\n\nOf all the poets—of all the writers—Shakespeare is the most original.\nHe is as original as Nature.\n\nIt may truthfully be said that \"Nature wants stuff to vie strange forms\nwith fancy, to make another.\"\n\nViii\n\nTHERE is in the greatest poetry a kind of extravagance that touches the\ninfinite, and in this Shakespeare exceeds all others.\n\nYou will remember the description given of the voyage of Paris in search\nof Helen:\n    \"The seas and winds, old wranglers, made a truce,\n    And did him service; he touched the ports desired,\n    And for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive,\n    He brought a Grecian queen whose youth and freshness\n    Wrinkles Apollo, and makes stale the morning.\"\n\nSo, in Pericles, when the father finds his daughter, he cries out:\n    \"O Helicanus! strike me, honored sir;\n    Give me a gash, put me to present pain,\n    Lest this great sea of joys, rushing upon me,\n    O'erbear the shores of my mortality.\"\n\nThe greatest compliment that man has ever paid to the woman he adores is\nthis line:\n    \"Eyes that do mislead the morn.\"\n\nNothing can be conceived more perfectly poetic. In that marvelous play,\nthe \"Midsummer Night's Dream,\" is one of the most extravagant things in\nliterature:\n    \"Thou rememberest Since once I sat upon a promontory,\n    And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back\n    Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath\n    That the rude sea grew civil at her song,\n    And certain stars shot madly from their spheres\n    To hear the sea-maid's music.\"\n\nThis is so marvelously told that it almost seems probable.\n\nSo the description of Mark Antony:\n    \"For his bounty\n    There was no winter in't—an autumn t'was\n    That grew the more by reaping.\n    His delights\n    Were dolphin-like—they showed his back above\n    The element they lived in.\"\n\nThink of the astronomical scope and amplitude of this:\n    \"Her bed is India—there she lies a pearl.\"\n\nIs there anything more intense than these words of Cleopatra?\n    \"Rather on Nilus mud lay me stark naked\n    And let the water-flies blow me into abhorring.\"\n\nOr this of Isabella:\n    \"The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies,\n    And strip myself to death as to a bed\n    That longing I've been sick for, ere I yield\n    My body up to shame.\"\n\nIs there an intellectual man in the world who will not agree with this?\n    \"Let me not live\n    After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff\n    Of younger spirits.\"\n\nCan anything exceed the words of Troilus when parting with Cressida:\n    \"We two, that with so many thousand sighs\n    Did buy each other, most poorly sell ourselves\n    With the rude brevity and discharge of one.\n    Injurious time now with a robber's haste\n    Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how;\n    As many farewells as be stars in heaven,\n    With distinct breath and consigned kisses to them,\n    He fumbles up into a loos'e adieu,\n    And scants us with a single famished kiss,\n    Distasted with the salt of broken tears.\"\n\nTake this example, where pathos almost touches the grotesque.\n    \"O dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair?\n    Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous,\n    And that the lean, abhorred monster keeps thee here.\n    I' the dark, to be his paramour?\"\n\nOften when reading the marvelous lines of Shakespeare, I feel that his\nthoughts are \"too subtle potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness, for the\ncapacity of my ruder powers.\" Sometimes I cry out, \"O churl!—write all,\nand leave no thoughts for those who follow after.\"\n\nIX.\n\nSHAKESPEARE was an innovator, an iconoclast. He cared nothing for the\nauthority of men or of schools. He violated the \"unities,\" and cared\nnothing for the models of the ancient world.\n\nThe Greeks insisted that nothing should be in a play that did not tend\nto the catastrophe. They did not believe in the episode—in the sudden\ncontrasts of light and shade—in mingling the comic and the tragic.\nThe sunlight never fell upon their tears, and darkness did not overtake\ntheir laughter. They believed that nature sympathized or was in harmony\nwith the events of the play. When crime was about to be committed—some\nhorror to be perpetrated—the light grew dim, the wind sighed, the trees\nshivered, and upon all was the shadow of the coming event.\n\nShakespeare knew that the play had little to do with the tides and\ncurrents of universal life—that Nature cares neither for smiles nor\ntears, for life nor death, and that the sun shines as gladly on coffins\nas on cradles.\n\nThe first time I visited the Place de la Concorde, where during the\nFrench Revolution stood the guillotine, and where now stands an\nEgyptian obelisk—a bird, sitting on the top, was singing with all its\nmight.—Nature forgets.\n\nOne of the most notable instances of the violation by Shakespeare of the\nclassic model, is found in the 6th scene of the I. Act of Macbeth.\n\nWhen the King and Banquo approach the castle in which the King is to be\nmurdered that night, no shadow falls athwart the threshold. So beautiful\nis the scene that the King says:\n    \"This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air\n    Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself\n    Unto our gentle senses.\"\n\nAnd Banquo adds:\n    \"This guest of summer,\n    The temple-haunting martlet, does approve\n    By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath\n    Smells wooingly here; no jutty, frieze,\n    Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird\n    Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle.\n    Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed\n    The air is delicate.\"\n\nAnother notable instance is the porter scene immediately following\nthe murder. So, too, the dialogue with the clown who brings the asp to\nCleopatra just before the suicide, illustrates my meaning.\n\nI know of one paragraph in the Greek drama worthy of Shakespeare. This\nis in \"Medea.\" When Medea kills her children she curses Jason, using the\nordinary Billingsgate and papal curse, but at the conclusion says: \"I\npray the gods to make him virtuous, that he may the more deeply feel the\npang that I inflict.\"\n\nShakespeare dealt in lights and shadows. He was intense. He put noons\nand midnights side by side. No other dramatist would have dreamed of\nadding to the pathos—of increasing our appreciation of Lear's agony,\nby supplementing the wail of the mad king with the mocking laughter of a\nloving clown.\n\nX.\n\nTHE ordinary dramatists—the men of talent—(and there is the same\ndifference between talent and genius that there is between a stone-mason\nand a sculptor) create characters that become types. Types are\nof necessity caricatures—actual men and women are to some extent\ncontradictory in their actions. Types are blown in the one direction by\nthe one wind—characters have pilots.\n\nIn real people, good and evil mingle. Types are all one way, or all the\nother—all good, or all bad, all wise, or all foolish.\n\nPecksniff was a perfect type, a perfect hypocrite—and will remain a\ntype as long as language lives—a hypocrite that even drunkenness could\nnot change. Everybody understands Pecksniff, and compared with him\nTartuffe was an honest man.\n\nHamlet is an individual, a person, an actual being—and for that\nreason there is a difference of opinion as to his motives and as to\nhis character. We differ about Hamlet as we do about Cæsar, or about\nShakespeare himself.\n\nHamlet saw the ghost of his father and heard again his fathers voice,\nand yet, afterward, he speaks of \"the undiscovered country from whose\nbourne no traveler returns.\"\n\nIn this there is no contradiction. The reason outweighs the senses. If\nwe should see a dead man rise from his grave, we would not, the next\nday, believe that we did. No one can credit a miracle until it becomes\nso common that it ceases to be miraculous.\n\nTypes are puppets—controlled from without—characters act from within.\nThere is the same difference between characters and types that there\nis between springs and water-works, between canals and rivers, between\nwooden soldiers and heroes.\n\nIn most plays and in most novels the characters are so shadowy that we\nhave to piece them out with the imagination.\n\nOne waking in the morning sometimes sees at the foot of his bed a\nstrange figure—it may be of an ancient lady with cap and ruffles and\nwith the expression of garrulous and fussy old age—but when the light\ngets stronger, the figure gradually changes and he sees a few clothes on\na chair.\n\nThe dramatist lives the lives of others, and in order to delineate\ncharacter must not only have imagination but sympathy with the character\ndelineated. The great dramatist thinks of a character as an entirety, as\nan individual.\n\nI once had a dream, and in this dream I was discussing a subject with\nanother man. It occurred to me that I was dreaming, and I then said\nto myself: If this is a dream, I am doing the talking for both\nsides—consequently I ought to know in advance what the other man is\ngoing to say. In my dream I tried the experiment. I then asked the other\nman a question, and before he answered made up my mind what the answer\nwas to be. To my surprise, the man did not say what I expected he would,\nand so great was my astonishment that I awoke.\n\nIt then occurred to me that I had discovered the secret of Shakespeare.\nHe did, when awake, what I did when asleep—that is, he threw off a\ncharacter so perfect that it acted independently of him.\n\nIn the delineation of character Shakespeare has no rivals. He creates no\nmonsters. His characters do not act without reason, without motive.\n\nIago had his reasons. In Caliban, nature was not destroyed—and Lady\nMacbeth certifies that the woman still was in her heart, by saying:\n    \"Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it.\"\n\nShakespeare's characters act from within. They are centres of energy.\nThey are not pushed by unseen hands, or pulled by unseen strings. They\nhave objects, desires. They are persons—real, living beings.\n\nFew dramatists succeed in getting their characters loose from the\ncanvas—their backs stick to the wall—they do not have free and\nindependent action—they have no background, no unexpressed motives—no\nuntold desires. They lack the complexity of the real.\n\nShakespeare makes the character true to itself. Christopher Sly,\nsurrounded by the luxuries of a lord, true to his station, calls for a\npot of the smallest ale.\n\nTake one expression by Lady Macbeth. You remember that after the murder\nis discovered—after the alarm bell is rung—she appears upon the scene\nwanting to know what has happened. Macduff refuses to tell her, saying\nthat the slightest word would murder as it fell. At this moment Banquo\ncomes upon the scene and Macduff cries out to him:\n    \"Our royal master's murdered.\"\n\nWhat does Lady Macbeth then say? She in fact makes a confession of\nguilt. The weak point in the terrible tragedy is that Duncan was\nmurdered in Macbeth's castle. So when Lady Macbeth hears what they\nsuppose is news to her, she cries:\n    \"What! In our house!\"\n\nHad she been innocent, her horror of the crime would have made her\nforget the place—the venue. Banquo sees through this, and sees through\nher.\n\nHer expression was a light, by which he saw her guilt—and he answers:\n    \"Too cruel anywhere.\"\n\nNo matter whether Shakespeare delineated clown or king, warrior or\nmaiden—no matter whether his characters are taken from the gutter or\nthe throne—each is a work of consummate art, and when he is unnatural,\nhe is so splendid that the defect is forgotten.\n\nWhen Romeo is told of the death of Juliet, and thereupon makes up his\nmind to die upon her grave, he gives a description of the shop where\npoison could be purchased. He goes into particulars and tells of the\nalligators stuffed, of the skins of ill-shaped fishes, of the beggarly\naccount of empty boxes, of the remnants of pack-thread, and old cakes\nof roses—and while it is hardly possible to believe that under such\ncircumstances a man would take the trouble to make an inventory of a\nstrange kind of drug-store, yet the inventory is so perfect—the picture\nis so marvelously drawn—that we forget to think whether it is natural\nor not.\n\nIn making the frame of a great picture—of a great scene—Shakespeare\nwas often careless, but the picture is perfect. In making the sides of\nthe arch he was negligent, but when he placed the keystone, it burst\ninto blossom. Of course there are many lines in Shakespeare that never\nshould have been written. In other words, there are imperfections in his\nplays. But we must remember that Shakespeare furnished the torch that\nenables us to see these imperfections.\n\nShakespeare speaks through his characters, and we must not mistake what\nthe characters say, for the opinion of Shakespeare. No one can believe\nthat Shakespeare regarded life as \"a tale told by an idiot, full of\nsound and fury, signifying nothing.\" That was the opinion of a murderer,\nsurrounded by avengers, and whose wife—partner in his crimes—troubled\nwith thick-coming fancies—had gone down to her death.\n\nMost actors and writers seem to suppose that the lines called \"The Seven\nAges\" contain Shakespeare's view of human life. Nothing could be further\nfrom the truth. The lines were uttered by a cynic, in contempt and scorn\nof the human race.\n\nShakespeare did not put his characters in the livery and uniform of\nsome weakness, peculiarity or passion. He did not use names as tags or\nbrands. He did not write under the picture, \"This is a villain.\" His\ncharacters need no suggestive names to tell us what they are—we see\nthem and we know them for ourselves.\n\nIt may be that in the greatest utterances of the greatest characters in\nthe supreme moments, we have the real thoughts, opinions and convictions\nof Shakespeare.\n\nOf all writers Shakespeare is the most impersonal. He speaks through\nothers, and the others seem to speak for themselves. The didactic is\nlost in the dramatic. He does not use the stage as a pulpit to enforce\nsome maxim. He is as reticent as Nature.\n\nHe idealizes the common and transfigures all he touches—but he does\nnot preach. He was interested in men and things as they were. He did not\nseek to change them—but to portray. He was Natures mirror—and in that\nmirror Nature saw herself.\n\nWhen I stood amid the great trees of California that lift their\nspreading capitals against the clouds, looking like Nature's columns to\nsupport the sky, I thought of the poetry of Shakespeare.\n\nIX.\n\nTHAT a procession of men and women—statesmen and warriors—kings and\nclowns—issued from Shakespeare's brain! What women!\n\nIsabella—in whose spotless life love and reason blended into perfect\ntruth.\n\nJuliet—within whose heart passion and purity met like white and red\nwithin the bosom of a rose.\n\nCordelia—who chose to suffer loss, rather than show her wealth of\nlove with those who gilded lies in hope of gain.\n\nHermione—\"tender as infancy and grace\"—who bore with perfect hope\nand faith the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her\nheart.\n\nDesdemona—so innocent, so perfect, her love so pure, that she was\nincapable of suspecting that another could suspect, and who with dying\nwords sought to hide her lover's crime—and with her last faint breath\nuttered a loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her pallid\nlips.\n\nPerdita—\"a violet dim, and sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes\"—\"The\nsweetest low-born lass that ever ran on the green sward.\" And\n\nHelena—who said:\n    \"I know I love in vain, strive against hope—\n    Yet in this captious and intenable sieve\n    I still pour in the waters of my love,\n    And lack not to lose still,\n    Thus, Indian-like,\n    Religious in mine error, I adore\n    The sun that looks upon his worshiper,\n    But knows of him no more.\"\n\nMiranda—who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its bosom to\nthe kisses of the sun. And Cordelia—whose kisses cured and whose\ntears restored. And stainless\n\nImogen—who cried: \"What is it to be false?\" And here is the\ndescription of the perfect woman:\n    \"To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love;\n    To keep her constancy in plight and youth—\n    Outliving beauty's outward with a mind\n    That doth renew swifter than blood decays.\"\n\nShakespeare has done more for woman than all the other dramatists of the\nworld.\n\nFor my part, I love the Clowns. I love Launce and his dog Crabb, and\nGobbo, whose conscience threw its arms around the neck of his heart,\nand Touchstone, with his lie seven times removed; and dear old\nDogberry—a pretty piece of flesh, tedious as a king. And Bottom,\nthe very paramour for a sweet voice, longing to take the part to tear\na cat in; and Autolycus, the snapper-up of unconsidered trifles,\nsleeping out the thought for the life to come. And great Sir John,\nwithout conscience, and for that reason unblamed and enjoyed—and who\nat the end babbles of green fields, and is almost loved. And ancient\nPistol, the world his oyster. And Bardolph, with the flea on his\nblazing nose, putting beholders in mind of a damned soul in hell. And\nthe poor Pool, who followed the mad king, and went \"to bed at\nnoon.\" And the clown who carried the worm of Nilus, whose \"biting was\nimmortal.\" And Corin, the shepherd—who described the perfect man:\n\"I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat—get that I wear—owe no man\naught—envy no man's happiness—glad of other men's good—content.\"\n\nAnd mingling in this motley throng, Lear, within whose brain a tempest\nraged until the depths were stirred, and the intellectual wealth of a\nlife was given back to memory?—and then by madness thrown to storm and\nnight—and when I read the living lines I feel as though I looked upon\nthe sea and saw it wrought by frenzied whirlwinds, until the buried\ntreasures and the sunken wrecks of all the years were cast upon the\nshores.\n\nAnd Othello—who like the base Indian threw a pearl away richer than\nall his tribe.\n\nAnd Hamlet—thought-entangled—hesitating between two worlds.\n\nAnd Macbeth—strange mingling of cruelty and conscience, reaping\nthe sure harvest of successful crime—\"Curses not loud but\ndeep—mouth-honor—breath.\"\n\nAnd Brutus, falling on his sword that Cæsar might be still.\n\nAnd Romeo, dreaming of the white wonder of Juliet's hand. And\nFerdinand, the patient log-man for Miranda's sake. And Florizel,\nwho, \"for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the\nprofound seas hide,\" would not be faithless to the low-born lass. And\nConstance, weeping for her son, while grief \"stuffs out his vacant\ngarments with his form.\"\n\nAnd in the midst of tragedies and tears, of love and laughter and crime,\nwe hear the voice of the good friar, who declares that in every human\nheart, as in the smallest flower, there are encamped the opposed hosts\nof good and evil—and our philosophy is interrupted by the garrulous old\nnurse, whose talk is as busily useless as the babble of a stream that\nhurries by a ruined mill.\n\nFrom every side the characters crowd upon us—the men and women born of\nShakespeare's brain. They utter with a thousand voices the thoughts of\nthe \"myriad-minded\" man, and impress themselves upon us as deeply and\nvividly as though they really lived with us.\n\nShakespeare alone has delineated love in every possible phase—has\nascended to the very top, and actually reached heights that no other has\nimagined. I do not believe the human mind will ever produce or be in a\nposition to appreciate, a greater love-play than \"Romeo and Juliet.\" It\nis a symphony in which all music seems to blend. The heart bursts into\nblossom, and he who reads feels the swooning intoxication of a divine\nperfume.\n\nIn the alembic of Shakespeare's brain the baser metals were turned to\ngold—passions became virtues—weeds became exotics from some diviner\nland—and common mortals made of ordinary clay outranked the Olympian\nGods. In his brain there was the touch of chaos that suggests\nthe infinite—that belongs to genius. Talent is measured and\nmathematical—dominated by prudence and the thought of use. Genius is\ntropical. The creative instinct runs riot, delights in extravagance and\nwaste, and overwhelms the mental beggars of the world with uncounted\ngold and unnumbered gems.\n\nSome things are immortal: The plays of Shakespeare, the marbles of the\nGreeks, and the music of Wagner.\n\nXii\n\nSHAKESPEARE was the greatest of philosophers. He knew the conditions of\nsuccess—of happiness—the relations that men sustain to each other,\nand the duties of all. He knew the tides and currents of the heart—the\ncliffs and caverns of the brain. He knew the weakness of the will, the\nsophistry of desire—and\n    \"That pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than\n    Adders to the voice of any true decision.\"\n\nHe knew that the soul lives in an invisible world—that flesh is but a\nmask, and that\n    \"There is no art to find the mind's construction\n    In the face.\"\n\nHe knew that courage should be the servant of judgment, and that\n    \"When valor preys on reason it eats the sword\n    It fights with.\"\n\nHe knew that man is never master of the event, that he is to some extent\nthe sport or prey of the blind forces of the world, and that\n    \"In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men.\"\n\nFeeling that the past is unchangeable, and that that which must happen\nis as much beyond control as though it had happened, he says:\n    \"Let determined things to destiny\n    Hold unbewailed their way.\"\n\nShakespeare was great enough to know that every human being prefers\nhappiness to misery, and that crimes are but mistakes. Looking in\npity upon the human race, upon the pain and poverty, the crimes and\ncruelties, the limping travelers on the thorny paths, he was great and\ngood enough to say:\n    \"There is no darkness but ignorance.\"\n\nIn all the philosophies there is no greater line. This great truth fills\nthe heart with pity.\n\nHe knew that place and power do not give happiness—that the crowned are\nsubject as the lowest to fate and chance.\n    \"For within the hollow crown,\n    That rounds the mortal temples of a king,\n    Keeps death his court; and there the antick sits,\n    Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;\n    Allowing him a breath, a little scene\n    To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;\n    Infusing him with self and vain conceit.—\n    As if this flesh, which walls about our life,\n    Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus;\n    Comes at the last, and with a little pin\n    Bores through his castle wall, and—farewell king!\"\n\nSo, too, he knew that gold could not bring joy—that death and\nmisfortune come alike to rich and poor, because:\n    \"If thou art rich thou art poor;\n    For like an ass whose back with ingots bows\n    Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey,\n    And death unloads thee.\"\n\nIn some of his philosophy there was a kind of scorn—a hidden meaning\nthat could not in his day and time have safely been expressed. You will\nremember that Laertes was about to kill the king, and this king was the\nmurderer of his own brother, and sat upon the throne by reason of his\ncrime—and in the mouth of such a king Shakespeare puts these words:\n    \"There's such divinity doth hedge a king.\"\n\nSo, in Macbeth:\n    \"How he solicits\n    Heaven himself best knows; but strangely visited people\n    All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,\n    The mere despairs of surgery, he cures;\n    Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,\n    Put on with holy prayers; and 'tis spoken\n    To the succeeding royalty—he leaves\n    The healing benediction.\n    With this strange virtue\n    He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,\n    And sundry blessings hang about his throne,\n    That speak him full of grace.\"\n\nShakespeare was the master of the human heart—knew all the hopes,\nfears, ambitions and passions that sway the mind of man; and thus\nknowing, he declared that\n    \"Love is not love that alters\n    When it alteration finds.\"\n\nThis is the sublimest declaration in the literature of the world.\n\nShakespeare seems to give the generalization—the result—without the\nprocess of thought. He seems always to be at the conclusion—standing\nwhere all truths meet.\n\nIn one of the Sonnets is this fragment of a line that contains the\nhighest possible truth:\n    \"Conscience is born of love.\"\n\nIf man were incapable of suffering, the words right and wrong never\ncould have been spoken. If man were destitute of imagination, the flower\nof pity never could have blossomed in his heart.\n\nWe suffer—we cause others to suffer—those that we love—and of this\nfact conscience is born.\n\nLove is the many-colored flame that makes the fireside of the heart. It\nis the mingled spring and autumn—the perfect climate of the soul.\n\nXiii\n\nIN the realm of comparison Shakespeare seems to have exhausted the\nrelations, parallels and similitudes of things, He only could have said:\n    \"Tedious as a twice-told tale\n    Vexing the ears of a drowsy man.\"\n    \"Duller than a great thaw.\n    Dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.\"\n\nIn the words of Ulysses, spoken to Achilles, we find the most wonderful\ncollection of pictures and comparisons ever compressed within the same\nnumber of lines:\n    \"Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,\n    Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,—\n    A great-sized monster of ingratitudes—\n    Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devoured\n    As fast as they are made, forgot as soon\n    As done; perseverance, dear my lord,\n    Keeps honor bright: to have done is to hang\n    Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail\n    In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;\n    For honor travels in a strait so narrow\n    Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path;\n    For emulation hath a thousand sons\n    That one by one pursue; if you give way,\n    Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,\n    Like to an entered tide, they all rush by\n    And leave you hindmost:\n    Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,\n    Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,\n    O'errun and trampled on: then what they do in present,\n    Tho' less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours;\n    For time is like a fashionable host\n    That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,\n    And with his arms outstretched as he would fly,\n    Grasps in the comer: Welcome ever smiles,\n    And Farewell goes out sighing.\"\n\nSo the words of Cleopatra, when Charmain speaks:\n    \"Peace, peace:\n    Dost thou not see my baby at my breast\n    That sucks the nurse asleep?\"\n\nXiv\n\nNOTHING is more difficult than a definition—a crystallization of\nthought so perfect that it emits light. Shakespeare says of suicide:\n    \"It is great to do that thing\n    That ends all other deeds,\n    Which shackles accident, and bolts up change.\"\n\nHe defines drama to be:\n    \"Turning the accomplishments of many years\n    Into an hour glass.\"\n\nOf death:\n    \"This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod,\n    To lie in cold obstruction and to rot.\"\n\nOf memory:\n    \"The warder of the brain.\"\n\nOf the body:\n    \"This muddy vesture of decay.\"\n\nAnd he declares that\n    \"Our little life is rounded with a sleep.\"\n\nHe speaks of Echo as:\n    \"The babbling gossip of the air\"—\n\nRomeo, addressing the poison that he is about to take, says:\n    \"Come, bitter conduct, come unsavory guide,\n    Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on\n    The dashing rocks thy sea-sick, weary bark.\"\n\nHe describes the world as\n    \"This bank and shoal of time.\"\n\nHe says of rumor—\n    \"That it doubles, like the voice and echo.\"\n\nIt would take days to call attention to the perfect definitions,\ncomparisons and generalizations of Shakespeare. He gave us the deeper\nmeanings of our words—taught us the art of speech. He was the lord of\nlanguage—master of expression and compression.\n\nHe put the greatest thoughts into the shortest words—made the poor rich\nand the common royal.\n\nProduction enriched his brain. Nothing exhausted him. The moment his\nattention was called to any subject—comparisons, definitions, metaphors\nand generalizations filled his mind and begged for utterance. His\nthoughts like bees robbed every blossom in the world, and then with\n\"merry march\" brought the rich booty home \"to the tent royal of their\nemperor.\"\n\nShakespeare was the confidant of Nature. To him she opened her \"infinite\nbook of secrecy,\" and in his brain were \"the hatch and brood of time.\"\n\nXV.\n\nTHERE is in Shakespeare the mingling of laughter and tears, humor and\npathos. Humor is the rose, wit the thorn. Wit is a crystallization,\nhumor an efflorescence. Wit comes from the brain, humor from the heart.\nWit is the lightning of the soul.\n\nIn Shakespeare's nature was the climate of humor. He saw and felt the\nsunny side even of the saddest things. You have seen sunshine and rain\nat once. So Shakespeare's tears fell oft upon his smiles. In moments of\nperil—on the very darkness of death—there comes a touch of humor that\nfalls like a fleck of sunshine.\n\nGonzalo, when the ship is about to sink, having seen the boatswain,\nexclaims:\n    \"I have great comfort from this fellow;\n    Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him;\n    His complexion is perfect gallows.\"\n\nShakespeare is filled with the strange contrasts of grief and laughter.\nWhile poor Hero is supposed to be dead—wrapped in the shroud of\ndishonor—Dogberry and Verges unconsciously put again the wedding wreath\nupon her pure brow.\n\nThe soliloquy of Launcelot—great as Hamlet's—offsets the bitter and\nburning words of Shylock.\n\nThere is only time to speak of Maria in \"Twelfth Night,\" of Autolycus in\nthe \"Winter's Tale,\" of the parallel drawn by Fluellen between Alexander\nof Macedon and Harry of Monmouth, or of the marvelous humor of Falstaff,\nwho never had the faintest thought of right or wrong—or of Mercutio,\nthat embodiment of wit and humor—or of the gravediggers who lamented\nthat \"great folk should have countenance in this world to drown and\nhang themselves, more than their even Christian,\" and who reached the\ngeneralization that \"the gallows does well because it does well to those\nwho do ill.\"\n\nThere is also an example of grim humor—an example without a parallel in\nliterature, so far as I know. Hamlet having killed Polonius is asked:\n    \"Where's Polonius?\"\n    \"At supper.\"\n    \"At supper! where?\"\n    \"Not where he eats, but where he is eaten.\"\n\nAbove all others, Shakespeare appreciated the pathos of situation.\n\nNothing is more pathetic than the last scene in \"Lear.\" No one has\never bent above his dead who did not feel the words uttered by the mad\nking,—words born of a despair deeper than tears:\n    \"Oh, that a horse, a dog, a rat hath life\n    And thou no breath!\"\n\nSo Iago, after he has been wounded, says:\n    \"I bleed, sir; but not killed.\"\n\nAnd Othello answers from the wreck and shattered remnant of his life:\n    \"I would have thee live;\n    For in my sense it is happiness to die.\"\n\nWhen Troilus finds Cressida has been false, he cries:\n    \"Let it not be believed for womanhood;\n    Think! we had mothers.\"\n\nOphelia, in her madness, \"the sweet bells jangled out o' tune,\" says\nsoftly:\n    \"I would give you some violets;\n    But they withered all when my father died.\"\n\nWhen Macbeth has reaped the harvest, the seeds of which were sown by his\nmurderous hand, he exclaims,—and what could be more pitiful?\n    \"I 'gin to be aweary of the sun.\"\n\nRichard the Second feels how small a thing it is to be, or to have been,\na king, or to receive honors before or after power is lost; and so, of\nthose who stood uncovered before him, he asks this piteous question:\n    \"I live with bread, like you; feel want,\n    Taste grief, need friends; subjected thus,\n    How can you say to me I am a king?\"\n\nThink of the salutation of Antony to the dead Cæsar:\n    \"Pardon me, thou piece of bleeding earth.\"\n\nWhen Pisanio informs Imogen that he had been ordered by Posthumus to\nmurder her, she bares her neck and cries:\n    \"The lamb entreats the butcher:\n    Where is thy knife? Thou art too slow\n    To do thy master's bidding when I desire it.\"\n\nAntony, as the last drops are falling from his self-inflicted wound,\nutters with his dying breath to Cleopatra, this:\n    \"I here importune death awhile, until\n    Of many thousand kisses the poor last\n    I lay upon thy lips.\"\n\nTo me, the last words of Hamlet are full of pathos:\n    \"I die, Horatio.\n    The potent poison quite o' er crows my spirit...\n    The rest is silence.\"\n\nXvi\n\nSOME have insisted that Shakespeare must have been a physician, for\nthe reason that he shows such knowledge of medicine—of the symptoms of\ndisease and death—was so familiar with the brain, and with insanity in\nall its forms.\n\nI do not think he was a physician. He knew too much—his generalizations\nwere too splendid. He had none of the prejudices of that profession\nin his time. We might as well say that he was a musician, a composer,\nbecause we find in \"The Two Gentlemen of Verona\" nearly every musical\nterm known in Shakespeare's time.\n\nOthers maintain that he was a lawyer, perfectly acquainted with the\nforms, with the expressions familiar to that profession—yet there is\nnothing to show that he was a lawyer, or that he knew more about law\nthan any intelligent man should know.\n\nHe was not a lawyer. His sense of justice was never dulled by reading\nEnglish law.\n\nSome think that he was a botanist, because he named nearly all known\nplants. Others, that he was an astronomer, a naturalist, because he gave\nhints and suggestions of nearly all discoveries.\n\nSome have thought that he must have been a sailor, for the reason that\nthe orders given in the opening of \"The Tempest\" were the best that\ncould, under the circumstances, have been given to save the ship.\n\nFor my part, I think there is nothing in the plays to show that he was\na lawyer, doctor, botanist or scientist. He had the observant eyes\nthat really see, the ears that really hear, the brain that retains all\npictures, all thoughts, logic as unerring as light,-the imagination\nthat supplies defects and builds the perfect from a fragment. And these\nfaculties, these aptitudes, working together, account for what he did.\n\nHe exceeded all the sons of men in the splendor of his imagination. To\nhim the whole world paid tribute, and nature poured her treasures at his\nfeet. In him all races lived again, and even those to be were pictured\nin his brain.\n\nHe was a man of imagination—that is to say, of genius, and having seen\na leaf, and a drop of water, he could construct the forests, the rivers,\nand the seas—and in his presence all the cataracts would fall and foam,\nthe mists rise, the clouds form and float.\n\nIf Shakespeare knew one fact, he knew its kindred and its neighbors.\nLooking at a coat of mail, he instantly imagined the society, the\nconditions, that produced it and what it, in turn, produced. He saw\nthe castle, the moat, the draw-bridge, the lady in the tower, and the\nknightly lover spurring across the plain. He saw the bold baron and the\nrude retainer, the trampled serf, and all the glory and the grief of\nfeudal life.\n\nHe lived the life of all.\n\nHe was a citizen of Athens in the days of Pericles. He listened to the\neager eloquence of the great orators, and sat upon the cliffs, and with\nthe tragic poet heard \"the multitudinous laughter of the sea.\" He saw\nSocrates thrust the spear of question through the shield and heart of\nfalsehood. He was present when the great man drank hemlock, and met the\nnight of death, tranquil as a star meets morning. He listened to the\nperipatetic philosophers, and was unpuzzled by the sophists. He watched\nPhidias as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms of love and awe.\n\nHe lived by the mysterious Nile, amid the vast and monstrous. He knew\nthe very thought that wrought the form and features of the Sphinx. He\nheard great Memnon's morning song when marble lips were smitten by\nthe sun. He laid him down with the embalmed and waiting dead, and felt\nwithin their dust the expectation of another life, mingled with cold and\nsuffocating doubts—the children born of long delay.\n\nHe walked the ways of mighty Rome, and saw great Cæsar with his legions\nin the field. He stood with vast and motley throngs and watched the\ntriumphs given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the\ncaptured hosts, and all the spoils of ruthless war. He heard the\nshout that shook the Coliseum's roofless walls, when from the reeling\ngladiator's hand the short sword fell, while from his bosom gushed the\nstream of wasted life.\n\nHe lived the life of savage men. He trod the forests' silent depths, and\nin the desperate game of life or death he matched his thought against\nthe instinct of the beast.\n\nHe knew all crimes and all regrets, all virtues and their rich rewards.\nHe was victim and victor, pursuer and pursued, outcast and king. He\nheard the applause and curses of the world, and on his heart had fallen\nall the nights and noons of failure and success.\n\nHe knew the unspoken thoughts, the dumb desires, the wants and ways of\nbeasts. He felt the crouching tiger's thrill, the terror of the ambushed\nprey, and with the eagles he had shared the ecstasy of flight and poise\nand swoop, and he had lain with sluggish serpents on the barren rocks\nuncoiling slowly in the heat of noon.\n\nHe sat beneath the bo-tree's contemplative shade, wrapped in Buddha's\nmighty thought, and dreamed all dreams that light, the alchemist, has\nwrought from dust and dew, and stored within the slumbrous poppy's\nsubtle blood.\n\nHe knelt with awe and dread at every shrine—he offered every sacrifice,\nand every prayer—felt the consolation and the shuddering fear—mocked\nand worshiped all the gods—enjoyed all heavens, and felt the pangs of\nevery hell.\n\nHe lived all lives, and through his blood and brain there crept the\nshadow and the chill of every death, and his soul, like Mazeppa, was\nlashed naked to the wild horse of every fear and love and hate.\n\nThe Imagination had a stage in. Shakespeare's brain, whereon were set\nall scenes that lie between the morn of laughter and the night of tears,\nand where his players bodied forth the false and true, the joys and\ngriefs, the careless shallows and the tragic deeps of universal life.\n\nFrom Shakespeare's brain there poured a Niagara of gems spanned by\nFancy's seven-hued arch. He was as many-sided as clouds are many-formed.\nTo him giving was hoarding—sowing was harvest—and waste itself the\nsource of wealth. Within his marvelous mind were the fruits of all\nthought past, the seeds of all to be. As a drop of dew contains the\nimage of the earth and sky, so all there is of life was mirrored forth\nin Shakespeare's brain.\n\nShakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the\nshores of thought; within which were all the tides and waves of destiny\nand will; over which swept all the storms of fate, ambition and revenge;\nupon which fell the gloom and darkness of despair and death and all the\nsunlight of content and love, and within which was the inverted sky lit\nwith the eternal stars—an intellectual ocean—towards which all rivers\nran, and from which now the isles and continents of thought receive\ntheir dew and rain.\n"
}