Part 18 (1/2)
”So, study evermore is overshot”
In fine, Biron ridicules study at such length and with such earnestness and pointed phrase that it isto Shakespeare hio_ to be arguing on the other side; for again and again we have had to notice that Shakespeare was a confir bookish metaphors, and Hamlet was a student by nature This attitude on the part of Biron, then, calls for explanation, and it seems to me that the only possible explanation is to be found in Shakespeare's own experience Those who know England as she was in the days of Elizabeth, or as she is to-day, will hardly need to be told that when Shakespeare first caarded as an unlettered provincial (”with little Latin and less Greek”), and had to bear the mocks and flouts of his beschooled felloho esteeenius In his very first independent play he answered the scorners with scorn But this disdain of study was not Shakespeare's real feeling; and his natural loyalty to the deeper truth forced hiu; but is certainly undrah I have for barbarise you can say”
Undrath and earnestness hich Biron has ; but here undoubtedly we find the true Shakespeare who as a youth speaks of ”that angel, knowledge,” just as in ”Cyel of the world”
When we come to his ”Life” we shall see that Shakespeare, as thrown into the scrie of existence as a youth, and had to win his oay in the world, had, naturally enough, athan Goethe, as bred a student and knew life only as an amateur:
”Einen Blick in's Buch hinein und zwei in's Leben Das eben”
Shakespeare would undoubtedly have given ”two glances” to books and one to life, had he been free to choose; but perhaps after all Goethe was right in warning us that life is more valuable to the artist than any transcript of it
To return to our the Shakespeare's successful portraits of hi is now over-minute, now too loose When Biron talks of study, he reveals, as we have seen, personal feelings that are merely transient; on the other hand, when he talks about Boyet he talks ue” He is, however, always nimble-witted and ientleraceful, and witty speech, which qualities afterwards came to blossom in Mercutio and Gratiano The faults in portraiture are manifestly due to inexperience: Shakespeare was still too youthful-timid to paint his chief features boldly, and it is left for Rosaline to picture Biron for us as Shakespeare doubtless desired to appear:
”Aets occasion for his wit; For every object that the one doth catch, The other turns to a ue, conceit's expositor, Delivers in such apt and gracious words That aged ears play truant at his tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished, So sweet and voluble is his discourse”
Every touch of this self-painted portrait deserves to be studied: it is the first photograph of our poet which we possess--a photograph, too, taken in early manhood Shakespeare's e knew, his mirth too, and that his conversation was voluble and sweet enough to ravish youthful ears and enthrall the aged we htful to hear of his arded himself as the best talker in the world But just as the play at the end turns frohts of death and ”world-without-end” pledges, so Biron's s out in him Shakespeare's characteristic ht ain, as in his apology to Rosaline and his appeal at the end of the play to ”honest plain words,” he shows a deep underlying seriousness The soul of quick talkative mirthful Biron is that he loves beauty whether of woh he conde for the ”silken terms precise” in the very form of his condereater seriousness of the last two acts of ”Love's Labour's Lost,” and the frequent use of blank verse instead of rhymed verse in them, are due to the fact that Shakespeare revised the play in 1597, soht or nine years probably after he had first written it Every onespeech at the end of the fourth act, which show the original garment and the later, finer embroidery As I shall have to return to this revision for other reasons, it will be enough here to remark that it is especially the speeches of Biron which Shakespeare i
Dr Brandes, or rather Coleridge, tells us that in Biron and his Rosaline we have the first hesitating sketch of the ”; but in this I think Coleridge goes too far Unformed as Biron is, he is Shakespeare in early youth, whereas in Benedick the likeness is not by any means so clear In fact, Benedick is e silhouette and needs to be filled out with an actor's personality Beatrice, on the other hand, is a woes of explanation, which Coleridge never dreamed of A certain similarity rather of situation than of character seee in this instance Boyet jests with Maria and Rosaline just as Biron does, and just as Benedick jests with Beatrice: all these scenes si Shakespeare enjoyed a coestiveness that nearly always shows itself when the combatants are of different sexes
It is almost certain that ”Love's Labour's Lost” holly conceived and constructed as well as written by Shakespeare; no play or story has yet been found which ht, in this case, have served him as a model
For the first and probably the last tiination, and the result froht's point of view is unfortunate; ”Love's Labour's Lost” is his slightest and feeblest play It is scarcely ever seen on the stage--is, indeed, practically unactable This fact goes to confires, that Shakespeare was not a good playwright and took little or no interest in the external incidents of his dramas The plot and action of the story, so carefully worked out by the ordinary playwright and so highly esteemed by critics and spectators, he always borrows, as if he had recognized the weakness of this first attempt, and when he sets himself to construct a play, it has no action, no plot--is, indeed, ive occasion for light love-rouping of characters the construction of his early plays is puerile,with his three courtiers is set against the Princess and her three ladies; in ”The Two Gentlemen of Verona” there is the faithful Valentine opposed to the inconstant Proteus, and each of them has a comic servant; and when later his plays frorew, and thus assuular sylected Neither the poet nor the philosopher in Shakespeare felt much of the child's interest in the story; he chose his tales for the sake of the characters and the poetry, and whether they were effective stage-tales or not troubled him but little There is hardly more plot or action in ”Lear” than in ”Love's Labour's Lost”
It is probable that ”The Comedy of Errors” followed hard on the heels of ”Love's Labour's Lost” It practically belongs to the same period: it has fewer lines of prose in it than ”Love's Labour's Lost”; but, on the other hand, the intrigue-spinning is clever, and the whole play shows a riper knowledge of theatrical conditions Perhaps because the intrigue isis even feebler than that of the earlier co worth calling character-drawing at all Shakespeare speaks through this or that mask as occasion tempts him: and if the women are sharply, crudely differentiated, it is because Shakespeare, as I shall show later, has sketched his wife for us in Adriana, and his view of her character is decided enough if not over kind Still, any and every peculiarity of character deserves notice, for in these earliest works Shakespeare is compelled to use his personal experience, to tell us of his own life and his own feelings, not having any wider knowledge to draw upon Every word, therefore, in these first comedies, is important to those ould learn the story of his youth and fatho scenes, tells the Duke about the shi+pwreck in which he is separated froladly have eiven for this extraordinary contes” of his wife, the ”piteous plainings of the pretty babes,” that forced him, he says, to exert hier, nor are the ”piteous plainings of the pretty babes” a feature of shi+pwreck; I find here a little picture of Shakespeare's early eon concludes his account by saying that his life was prolonged in order
”To tell sad stories of my own mishaps”
--which reminds one of similar words used later by Richard II This personal, eon surely lives in hope of finding his wife and child and not in order to tell of his eon is evidently a breath of Shakespeare hiain when the play is practically finished Deep-brooding melancholy was the customary habit of Shakespeare even in youth
Just as in ”Love's Labour's Lost” we find Shakespeare speaking first through the King and then h the hero, Biron, so here he first speaks through Aegeon and then at greater length through the protagonist Antipholus of Syracuse Antipholus is introduced to us as new co of his own first day in London when he puts in his mouth these words:
”Within this hour it will be dinner-time: Till that, I'll view the aze upon the buildings, And then return and sleep withintravel I ah ”stiff and weary” he is too eager-young to rest; he will see everything--even ”peruse the traders”--how the bookish metaphor always comes to Shakespeare's lips!--before he will eat or sleep The utterly needless last line, with its emphatic description--”stiff and weary”--corroboratesus what he himself felt and did on his first arrival in London
In the second scene of the third act Antipholus sends his servant to the port:
”I will not harbour in this town to-night If any bark put forth”
From the fact that Shakespeare represented Antipholus to hi to leave Ephesus by sea, it is probable that he pictured hiins to tell us what he did on reaching London he recalls his own desires and then his own feelings; he was ”stiff and weary” on that first day because he rode, or more probably walked, into London; one does not become ”stiff and weary”