Part 16 (2/2)

The first lines of this poem are conceived in the very spirit of the poeht,” and in the last lines Shakespeare puts to use that divine iher air of life, and reaches its noblest in Prospero's solemn-sad lyric

Shakespeare's love of music is so much a part of hiuiven to Lorenzo:

”The man that hath no music to himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratageht, And his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted”

That this vieas notmood is shown by the fact that Shakespeare lends no ives welcome to his friends with music, just as Hamlet welcomes the players with music and Portia calls for music while her suitors make their eventful choice titania and Oberon both seek the aid of music to help them in their loves, and the orn and ti some rest to his ”weary spirit”; in much the same ns his ht” in full manhood Shakespeare shows himself to us as Romeo, in love with flowers and music and passion

True, this Orsino is a little less occupied with verbal quips, a little more frankly sensual, too, than Romeo; but then Romeo would have been more frankly sensual had he lived from twenty-five to thirty-five As an older man, too, Orsino has naturally more of Hamlet-Shakespeare's peculiar traits than Romeo showed; the contempt of wealth and love of solitude are qualities hardly indicated in Romeo, while in Orsino as in the mature Shakespeare they are salient characteristics To suives us Shakespeare's mind; but in Romeo-Orsino he has discovered his heart and poetic teh not, perhaps, so completely, as he does in the Sonnets

CHAPTER VIII SHAKESPEARE'S HUMOUR: FALSTAFF

Shakespeare's portraits of hie bring into clearer light the indestructible individuality, and no difference of circumstance or position has any effect upon this distinctive character: whether he is the lover, Romeo; the murderer, Macbeth; the courtier, Haentle yet impulsive nature, sensuous at once andnature and his own reveries to action and the life of courts; a ust, as is a delicate wos; an idealist daintily sensitive to all courtesies, chivalries, and distinctions The portrait is not yet complete--far from it, indeed; but already it is manifest that Shakespeare's nature was so complex, so tremulously poised betorld-wide poles of poetry and philosophy, of what is individual and concrete on the one hand and what is abstract and general on the other, that the task of revealing hiularly difficult It is not easy even to describe hi to avoid a ht into too great proentle passionate side of Shakespeare's nature; though that would be difficult and in any case no bad fault; for this is the side which has hitherto been neglected or rather overlooked by the critics

My view of Shakespeare can beHamlet the philosopher as Shakespeare's most profound and complex study, and went on to prove that Haiven of hi as it were sides of Hamlet or less successful _replicas_ of hi hi, so to speak, Shakespeare's easiest and most natural portrait In Hamlet, if one may dare to say so, Shakespeare has discovered too much of himself: Hamlet is at one and the same time philosopher and poet, critic and courtier, lover and cynic--the extremes that Shakespeare's intellect could cover--and he fills every part so easily that he ht almost be a bookish Admirable Crichton, a type of perfection rather than an individual ness of nature, and particularly for the brooding melancholy and disbelief which darkened Shakespeare's outlook at the ti characteristic of Shakespeare, to be found in his Richard II as in his Prospero, it did not overshadow all his being as it does Hamlet's There was a summer-time, too, in Shakespeare's life, and in his nature a capacity for sunny gaiety and a delight in life and love which caolden coht” The complement to Hamlet the sad philosopher-sceptic is the sensuous happy poet-lover Orsino, and e take these seeood portrait of Shakespeare But these two, Hamlet and Orsino, are in reality one; every quality of Orsino is to be found or divined in Haet at Shakespeare is to take Hamlet and deepen those peculiarities in him which we find in Orsino

Soiven a portrait of Coleridge rather than a portrait of Shakespeare This is not altogether the fact, though I for one see no shae had a ”smack of Hamlet” in him, as he himself saw; indeed, in his rich endowentleness and sweetness of disposition, he was lishe the poet soon disappeared, and a little later the philosopher in him faded into the visionary and sophist; he becalish Church and found reasons in the immutable constitution of the universe for aprons and shovel-hats Shakespeare, on the other hand, though sier passions and greater depth of feeling; the sensuousness of Keats was in hireater lyric poet than Coleridge and a far saner thinker, but carried him in spite of a constitutional dislike of resolve and action to his astounding achievement

But even e thus coe, as we co that as the roots of the one go deeper and take a firmer hold of earth, so in exact her air, still there is so to our comparison Even e hold Hamlet-Orsino before us as the best likeness of the master-poet, our impression of him is still incomplete

There remains a host of creations from Launce to Autolycus, and from Dame Quickly to Maria, which proves that Shakespeare was soentle lover-thinker-poet e have shown It is Shakespeare's hue and Keats, but also from the world-poets, Goethe, Dante, and Hos him into vital touch with reality and co ideality as disproportioned or one-sided Strip hio in his true proportions His syenerous than Balzac's; his nature is too delicate, too sensitive, too sensuous; but his humour blinds us to the truth Of course his comic characters, like his captains and inally to his faculty of observation; but while his observation of the fighting men is always superficial and at times indifferent, his humorous observation is so intensely interested and sympathetic that its creations are only inferior in artistic value to his portraits of the poet-philosopher-lover

The intellect in hio upon in the case of the man of action; he never loved the Captain or watched hie that ht and shallow are these portraits in comparison with the portrait of a Parolles or a Sir Toby Belch, or the ever-famous Nurse, where the sahtened the effect of loving observation The critics who have ignorantly praised his Hotspur and bastard as if he had been a man of deeds as well as a man of words have only obscured the truth that Shakespeare the poet-philosopher, the lover _quand h his overflowing humour He whose intellect and sensibilities inspired hi for the mass of reasy caps and foul breaths of the berry, and Bottom, Quickly and Tearsheet, clod and clown, pihter they afforded His hued of contempt; a product not of hate but of love; full of sy humour, harmless and beautiful

Sorim, and these lapses are characteristic He hates false friends and tirateful, the lords of Timon's acquaintance and his artists; he loathes Shylock, whose God is greed and who battens on others' hteous Malvolio and not with hi the pretended ascetic and Puritan Angelo; but for the frailties of the flesh he has an ever-ready forgiveness Like the greatest of ethical teachers, he can take the publican and the sinner to his heart, but not the hypocrite or the Pharisee or the money-lender

It does not come within the scope of this essay to attempt a detailed criticish for my purpose to show that even in his masterpiece of humour, the incomparable Falstaff, he betrays himself more than once: more than once we shall find Shakespeare, the poet, or Shakespeare, the thinker, speaking through Falstaff's mouth Yet to criticize Falstaff is difficult, and if easy, it would still be an offence to those capable of gratitude I would as soon find fault with Ariel's most exquisite lyric, or the ih the rich words of the Lord of Comedy in small balances of reason But such considerations must not divert me from my purpose; I have undertaken to discover the very soul of Shakespeare, and I must, therefore, trace him in Falstaff as in Hamlet

Falstaff enters and asks the Prince the time The Prince answers that unless ”hours were cups of sack and so forth, he can't understand why Falstaff should care about anything so superfluous as time” Falstaff replies: ”Indeed you coo by the moon and the seven stars and not by Phoebus, he, 'that wandering knight so fair'” Here we have a sort of lyrical strain in Falstaff and then a tag of poetry which gives food for thought; but his next speech is unentlemen of the shade, overnoverned, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress, the moon, under whose countenance we--steal”

This is Shakespeare speaking, and Shakespeare alone: the phrases sing to us in the unh the fall at the last to ”--steal,” seeet into the character of Falstaff It is, of course, difficult to make the first words of a person sharply characteristic; a writer is apt to work hiradually; it is only the sensitive self-consciousness of our time that demands an absolute fidelity in characterization from the first word to the last Yet this scene is so excellent and natural, that the uncertainty in the painting of Falstaff strikes me as peculiar But this first speech is not the only speech of Falstaff in which Shakespeare betrays hiain we catch the very accent of the poet It is not Falstaff but Shakespeare who says that ”the poor abuses of the time want countenance”; and later in the play, when the character of Falstaff is fully developed, it is Shakespeare, the thinker, who calls Falstaff's ragged regi peace” In just the same way Hamlet speaks of the expedition of Fortinbras:

”This is the imposthume of h the belief that Shakespeare sometimes falls out of the character and slips phrases of his own into Falstaff's mouth is well-founded, it should nevertheless be put aside as a heresy, for the true faith is that the white-bearded old footpad who cheered on his fellow-ruffians with

”Strike Bacon-fed knaves! they hate us youth: doith theain: ”On, bacons, on! What, ye knaves! young men must live!”

is the most splendid piece of humorous portraiture in the world's fiction

Who but Falstaff would have found his self-justification in his youth?--_splendide mendax_! and yet the excuse is as true to his sack-heated blood when he uses it on Gadshi+ll as it was true also to fact when he first used it forty years before And who but Falstaff would have had the words of repentance always on his lips and never in his heart? I ascribe these illu flashes to Falstaff, and not to Shakespeare, for no iination in the world has yet accomplished such a miracle; as a h, as a miracle of creation he is simply unthinkable I would almost as soon believe that Falstaff made Shakespeare as that Shakespearemodel All hail to thee, inimitable, incomparable Jack! Never before or since has poet been blessed with such a teacher, as rich and laughterful, asas life itself

I inal of Falstaff was as richly hu as the drae in that world of literature which outlasts all the fleeting shows of the so-called real world It seeood reader to notice not only Shakespeare's lapses and faults in the drawing of this character, but also totouches, and so arrive at last at the hu model for the inimitable portrait The first scene in which Falstaff appears talking with Prince Henry will supply exa

Falstaff's very first speech after he asks Hal the tiives us the key; he ends it with:

”And I pr'ythee, shen thou art king,--as, God save thy grace--race thou wilt have none,--”