Part 42 (1/2)
When his vanity was injured, his blindness was almost inconceivable He should have seen Mary Fitton as she was and given us a deathless-true portrait of her; but the noble side of her, the soul-side a lover should have cherished, is not even suggested He deserved to lose her, seeking only the cohts” she could have shown hily the ladder to his advanceround, if not on a higher
He was inordinately vain and self-centred He talked incontinently, as he himself assures us, and as Ben Jonson coly quick and witty and iain and again the ies tumble over each other, and the mere music of his verse is breathlessly rapid, just as the movement of Tennyson's verse is extremely slow
More than once in his works I have sho, at the crisis of fate, he jumps to conclusions like a woman He seems often to have realized the faults of his own haste His Othello says:
”How poor are they that have not patience”
With this speed of thought and wealth of language and of wit, he naturally loved to show off in conversation; but as he wished to get on and ure in the world, he should have talked less and encouraged his patrons to show off Poor heedless, witty, charain, discovers all his world-blindness to me Gravely, in sonnet 140, he warns Mary Fitton that she had better not provoke him or he rite the truth about her--just as if the maid of honour who could bear bastard after bastard, while living at court, cared one strahat poor Shakespeareof her And Hamlet runs to the same weapon: he praises the players to Polonius as
”Brief chronicles of the time; after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live”
It is all untrue; actors were then, as now, onlyof himself, the dramatist-poet, as indeed a chronicle of the time; but the courtier Lord Polonius would not care a dam for a rhyainst the wantons he dislikes Shakespeare's weapon of offence was his pen; but though he threatened, he seldom used it maliciously; he was indeed a ”harmless opposite,” too full of the milk of human kindness to do injury to any man But these instances of entle Shakespeare is no trustworthy guide through this rough all-hating world The time has now come for me to consider how Shakespeare was treated by the men of his own time, and how this treatment affected his character The coh life as a sort of uncrowned king, feted and reverenced on all sides during his residence in London, and in the fullness of years and honours retiring to Stratford to live out the remainder of his days in the bosoentleman,” to use Dowden's unhappy phrase As I have already shown, his works give the lie to this flattering fiction, which in all parts is of course absolutely incredible It is your Tennyson, who is of his time and in perfect sy heroes and syrupy creed, who passes through life as a conqueror, and after death is borne in state to rest in the great Abbey
The Shakespeares, not being of an age, but for all tiuess sort of reception Fro Will caentle birth or college training: to Greene he was ”Maister of Artes in Neither University” He won through, and did his work; but he never could take root in life; his children perished out of the land He was in high cohest, Essex, Pembroke, Southa the menials and was despitefully treated Let no onethe other picture if there were any truth in it: I should have joyed in showing how the English aristocracy for this once threw off their senseless pride and hailed the greatest of men at least as an equal
Frederic the Great would have done this, for he put Voltaire at his own table, and told his astonished chans” Such wisdolish aristocracy of that or any tiht have risen above the common in this one instance For Shakespeare had not only supreraces of manner, all the sweetness of disposition, all the exquisite courtesies of speech that go to ensure social success His ience, however, was too heavy a handicap Men resent superiority at all ti your aristocrat so much dislikes as intellectual superiority, and especially intellect that is not hall-marked and accredited: the Southaht and impartiality intolerable It was Ben Jonson whom Pembroke made Poet Laureate; it was Chaparded with reverence How could these gentlemen appreciate Shakespeare when it was his ”Venus and Adonis” and his ”Lucrece” that they chiefly adh seven editions in Shakespeare's lifetiht worthy of type till the author had been dead six years
But badly as the aristocrats treated Shakespeare they yet treated hiland are infinitely further removed from art or poetry than the nobles; now as in the time of Elizabeth they care infinitely more for beef and beer and broadcloth than for any spiritual enjoyht to any masterpiece in art or letters
Some will say that Shakespeare was perhaps conde, and did not cos in character Such a judgeether Had Shakespeare's character been as high as his intellect he would not have been left contemptuously on one side; he would have been hated and persecuted, pilloried or thrown into prison as Bunyan was It was his dissolute life that co Pembroke and Essex Peiven to women” Four maids of honour, we learn, were _enceintes_ to Essex at the same time Shakespeare was hardly as dissolute as his noble patrons The truth was they could not understand his genius; they had no measure ith to measure it, for no one can see above his own head; and so they treated hi familiarity that nobles nowadays show to a tenor or a ballet dancer In March, 1604, after he had written ”Hamlet” and ”Macbeth,” Shakespeare and some other actors walked from the Tower of London to West James on his formal entry into London Each of the actors received four and a half yards of scarlet cloth to wear as a cloak on the occasion The scarlet cloak to Shakespeare must have been a sort of Nessus' shi+rt, or crown of thorns--the livery of derision
Shakespeare, who measured both enemies and friends fairly, measured himself fairly, too He usually praises his impersonations: Hamlet is ”a noble heart,” Brutus ”the noblest Ro directly he said of himself in a sonnet:
”I am that I am, and they that level At h they thereatness, none better, and as soon as he reached an to take stock of himself, he must have felt bitterly that he, the best ht it far in the ordinary estimation of men No wonder he showed passionate sympathy with all those who had failed in life; he could identify himself with Brutus and Antony, and not with the Caesars
Shakespeare's view of England and of Englishmen was naturally affected by their treatment of him He is continually spoken of as patriotic, and it is true that he started in youth with an almost lyrical love of country His words in ”Richard II” are often quoted; but they ritten before he had any experience or knowledge of s, this scepter'd isle,
This happy breed of men, this little world; This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a ainst the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realists who rejoice in his patriotism never realize that Shakespeare did not hold the sarew and developed, his opinions developed with him In ”The Merchant of Venice” we find that he has already colish suitor, Portia says:
”You know I say nothing to him; for he understands not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian; and you will come into the court and swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the Englishman He is a proper man's picture; but, alas, who can converse with a duht his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere”
What super-excellent criticism it all is; true, now as then, ”a proper man's picture buta dumb show” It proves conclusively that Shakespeare was able to see around and over the young English noble of his day Frolishmen in any of his works, except ”Henry V,” which was oism In his maturity Shakespeare saw his countrymen as they were, and en says:
”Hath Britain all the sun that shi+nes? Day, night, Are they not but in Britain?prithee, think There's livers out of Britain”
Whoever reads ”Coriolanus” carefully will see how Shakespeare loathed the colishman; there can be no doubt at all that he incorporated his dislike of him once for all in Caliban The qualities he lends Caliban are all characteristic Whoever will give him drink is to Caliban a God The brutish creature would violate and degrade art without a scruple, and the soul of hiot the chance he would people the world with Calibans So to-day he would be inclined to say that his prediction had couessed without proof that in the course of his life Shakespeare, like Goethe, would rise above that parochial vanity which is so much belauded as patriotism He was in love with the ideal and would not confine it to any country
There is little to tell of his life after he met Mary Fitton, or rather the history of his life afterwards is the history of his passion and jealousy and edies
He appears to have grown fat and scant of breath when he was about thirty-six or seven In 1608 his mother died, and ”Coriolanus” ritten as a sort of monument to the memory of ”the noblest mother in the world” His intimacy with Mary Fitton lasted, I feel sure, up to his breakdown in 1608 or thereabouts, and was probably the chief cause of his infirmity and untimely death
It only remains for me now to say a word or two about the end of his life Rowe says that ”the latter part of his life was spent as all ood sense will that theirs may be, in ease, retireood fortune to gather an estate equal to his occasion, and, in that, to his wish, and is said to have spent some years before his death at his native Stratford” Rowe, too, tells us that it is a story ”well remembered in that country, that he had a particular intientleman noted thereabouts for his wealth and usury; it happened that in a pleasant conversation ast their co manner, that he fancied he intended to write his epitaph, if he happened to outlive hiht be said of hiht be done iave hirav'd 'Tis a Hundred to Ten his soul is not sav'd: If any Man ask, 'Who lies in this tomb,'
Oh! ho! quoth the Devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe”