of mental states, but in the adaptation of those mental states to the purposes of the drama. A character may be drawn with skill, and yet not be dramatic. All the traits which do not assist the fuller comprehension of the story are superfluous and inartistic. Suppose jealousy be the passion of the play, as in Othello. For simple theatrical purposes the writer may confine himself almost exclusively to this passion, and only exhihit in Othello the jealous husband. It is obvious, however, that our sympathies will not be greatly stirred, unless in this jealous husband we recognize other passions and other traits of human nature; and the great problem is so to contrive and combine these additional features, as not only to make the character individual and engaging, but to help forward the action and interest of the piece. An ordinary Moor in a paroxysm of jealousy would be a far less touching sight than that of the highminded, chivalric, open, affectionate Othello. The art of the poet is therefore to delineate these other qualities; and the art of the dramatist is to make them dramatic agents in the development of his story. Accordingly, all that we see and hear of Othello are not simply preparations for the exhibition of his jealousy and wrath, but are circumstances skilfully adapted for bringing out the story. We thus learn both how the gentle Desdemona was justified in her love, and how Iago found Othello so easy a victim; so that at last we listen not only with patience, but compassion, to the noble speech, in which at the moment of executing his stern sentence on himself, he seeks to show that he was worthy of a better fate. Had Shakespeare introduced traits into this portrait which, though consistent in themselves, yet had no bearing on the general picture, he would have ruined its dramatic interest. People do not go to the theatre to learn Moorish customs or to analyze character, but to see a drama; and a drama is not a mirror of life in all its fulness and in all its details. It is an episode in life, and must so be circumscribed. In Shakespeare's own day, it is true that the admiration of his contemporaries was long extorted in defiance of their "rules." They felt the greatness of Shakespeare, but they did not understand it. They eulogized his genius, but they wailed over his "irregularity." He was Nature's child, but he outraged Aristotle. While Ben Jonson and his learned contemporaries heartily admired him, they could not help thinking that he "wanted art." What they meant was, that he wanted learning. The scholar who, on the revival of ancient literature, confounded want of learning with want of art, must at times, one would think, have questioned the reasonableness of their theory, from what was passing before their eyes in the case of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson: dramatists who might appear to have been born to represent and verify the very distinction which they overlooked. Shakespeare drew delighted audiences; and the grateful actors of the "Globe" lived upon his plays even after his death. Thus he had "art" enough to achieve the first and greatest object-that of interesting his audience with a salient and lively interest, issuing from the human heart, and enduring therefore through all time. Would he have succeeded better in his aim as a dramatist had he read Aristotle and imitated Euripides? The question needs no answer. "Rare Ben Jonson," with all his "ancient art," failed to attract the crowd; and reproached the performers with their idolatry of his more successful rival. Leonard Digges tells us how people flocked to see Shakespeare: "O how the audience Were ravished! With what wonder they went thence! Of tedious though well laboured Catiline. Sejanus too was irksome: they prized more Honest Iago or the jealous Moor." And he also testifies of Jonson's plays "Though these have shamed all th' ancients, and might raise Their author's merit with a crown of bays, Yet these sometimes, even at a friend's desire Is it not absurd, then, to talk of "art" which, addressing itself to public taste, will not "defray the sea-coal fire"? The art of keeping away the public is not an art of rare and difficult accomplishment.. Warburton's assertion that Shakespeare's sublimity and wit supported! him in his defiance of the rules, while Ben Jonson was obliged to make up for his inferiority by borrowing all he could from art, is a very suitable foundation for the inference that-" here we see how a want: of sufficient natural genius accidentally contributed to the refinement of the English stage." The error we are combating is, however, a very natural error. In those days, so blind was the reverence felt for the classic writers that art was not understood to be the best means of attaining an end: it was understood to be the closest imitation of ancient models. "I have thought our poetry of the last age," said Rymer, one of the most learned men of his day, "as rude as our architecture. One cause thereof might be that Aristotle's Treatise of Poetry' has been so little studied amongst us." He would have been pronounced an ignoramus. in that age who should have ventured to dispute the necessity of fol-lowing ancient models, where anything more was to be attempted. than "splitting the ears of the groundlings." With respect to Shakespeare himself, few, indeed, denied that he was equal, if not superior, to the ancients in beauty of imagery, in depth of insight, in the portraiture of passion, in grace, tenderness, airiness, wit and pathos; but the schools, nevertheless, repeated that he "wanted art"! In case his critics had been asked what art he wanted, they would unanimously have declared it was some art they admired in the classics. But which? Why, something or other they found in the classics and missed, or thought they missed, in Shakespeare. Superior to the classics in the effect which he produced, he was supposed to be inferior in the means! But unless these highest dramatic effects can be supposed to be the result of mere chance, they must have been the result of art. That "fluent Shakespeare scarce effaced a line," certainly was not true. To talk of "nature" and "inspiration" is easy enough; but whoever looks closely into these plays, noting their numerous failures and their numberless successes, will see at once that Shakespeare was a very careful, though perhaps not a theoretical artist. Instead of blinding himself over antique books, he closely watched the tempers of mankind; his rules were not drawn from ancient precedents, but from his own keen sense of the mode in which an audience was to be moved. What were the unities, what was the chorus to him, who, as manager, actor and dramatist, felt the living pulse of the public from day to day? How well, how nicely he discriminated the beatings of that pulse his unparalleled successes have proved. Let us add that much of what amused an audience in his days-" conceits which clownage kept in pay"-and long poetical descriptions, will not amuse them now; hence the heaviness of some of his scenes on the modern stage. This change modern critics and dramatists too frequently overlook. They fall into the very error which they applaud Shakespeare for having avoided. They treat him as a classic-as a model to be slavishly imitated; until his genius has ended by consecrating as beauties the very defects which a wiser homage would have admitted to be blemishes-spots on the sun, it is true, but still spots. In his own day Shakespeare's triumph was complete. Even with his learned contemporaries, he had but one fault, and that was this departure from classic models. But from these models, Beaumont and Fletcher, who approached the nearest in popularity, departed as widely as himself. Then came the influence of French taste, which backed its pretensions not only by classic models, but by the masterpieces of Corneille and Racine. In spite of this taste, Shakespeare continued to hold undisputed sway over the hearts of Englishmen. No system of criticism could obscure the splendor of his genius. It was necessary, therefore, that an attempt of some kind should be. made by schoolmen who were employed to teach the classics, and who could teach nothing else, and who did not propose to shut up their schools, to reconcile the contradiction presented by a great poet, acknowledged to surpass the most finished artists in his effects, yet supposed all the time "totally ignorant of art." The reconciliation was brought about by means of the word "inspiration." In this attempt we read the idolatry of Shakespeare's admirers. Homer, indeed, might occasionally nod; Æschylus be obscure; Euripides prosaic, and Virgil verbose and tautologous; for they were men. But Shakespeare could have made mistakes only because he had not read certain classic authors: a tincture of learning would have infallibly guarded him from every error! If he wrote trash sometimes, false metaphors, disgusting images, and tedious speeches, it was to please the groundlings; that these must have been "foisted in by the players." Thus Pope, in his celebrated Preface, attributes the bombast and triviality to be found in Shakespeare wholly to the necessity of addressing a vulgar audience. And with this judgment Warburton agrees—premising only that Shakespeare "knew perfectly well what belonged to a true composition," and had once tried to reform the public taste (see Hamlet); but having failed, became the favorite of the people afterwards by complying with it! We are afraid, however, that, from an infirmity of the human mind, of which there are numerous examples, Shakespeare very sincerely admired those bombastic passages, and thought them truly grand; and that he probably had the same affection for his buffoonery and conceits as inveterate punsters have for their puns. Faultlessness is one of the privileges of mediocrity. It is with great geniuses, Longinus says, as with great riches-something always must be overlooked. Nor only overlooked: there will be even something in excess. We readily admit, therefore, that Shakespeare himself, were he alive, would be exceedingly amused at our making any difficulty in acknowledging his inequalities, and at our being at so much trouble to account for them and to demonstrate the improbability of his ever having written anything below proof. The criticism which reigned from Dryden to Coleridge was essentially French in its principles-essentially false in its application. The "correct" school would more properly be called the "timid" school. Its writers piqued themselves on their " sense " and "propriety," and were more solicitous not to offend than to enchant. The level they sought, accordingly, soon became a dead level. With respect to Shakespeare, the most remarkable criticism which that period produced was the Preface of Dr. Johnson. If we compare its dignified tone of generous admiration and honest blame with the feeble and often contemptuous tone of the "Remarks" he affixed to the separate plays, we shall recognize at once the difference between the general. effect of Shakespeare's genius and the particular effect of perverted criticism. From Ben Jonson downwards-from Sejanus to Irenemen admired Shakespeare in spite of their critical axioms; yet this admiration never led them to suspect the truth of the axioms! Voltaire's hostility to Shakespeare was based upon a system of art which he conceived, and rightly so, was opposed to the system of Shakespeare. Voltaire's position was peculiar. He had been educated in a rigid system; and had grown up in the belief that Racine was the very consummation of dramatic art. Yet, as a writer, he felt the yoke of classic rules press so heavily upon him that he secretly sighed for greater freedom. We cannot read his correspondence without being struck with his uneasiness at the strictness of Parisian taste a strictness which actually compelled him to abandon many of his favorite conceptions. Much as his taste was shocked by such an instance of unbounded license, that this very license enabled the poet to produce most marvellous effects, nevertheless, was a fact which there was no disguising. In the first ardor of his admiration he expressed himself unguardedly: for which, in after years, he did more than sufficient penance. But to the last, although as a Frenchman he could not help being outraged at the unexampled want of goût, and the reckless disregard no less of les bienséances than of le style noble on the other hand, as a man of genius, he could not help having a hearty sympathy with the genius of Shakespeare. The Englishman was a savage, no doubt; but he was an "inspired" savage. In an age when Frenchmen were as much convinced as ever were the Athenians that all foreigners were barbarians, our philosophers and poets must have been a great embarrassment to Voltaire. Praise escapes from him in a mingled transport of admiration and astonishment admiration at such excellence, and astonishment at finding it among barbarians. It is a great mistake to suppose that the praise was not genuine; it was far more genuine, we are persuaded, than the praise which he afterwards heaped upon Cato. He said indeed that Cato was a model, having "des vers dignes de Virgile et des sentiments dignes de Caton;" but he imitated Shakespeare—and no compliment approaches that of an imitation. At the time Voltaire introduced the name of Shakespeare into France, the English language was almost as rare an accomplishment in Paris as Chinese is at present. The effect of his "Lettres sur les Anglais," joined to other concurrent influences indicative of the coming" Anglomanie," caused English to be studied-and, as a natural consequence, Shakespeare was translated. And then so great and general was the admiration, that Voltaire trembled for the cause of French tragedy and good taste. His apprehensions could not but be affected in some degree by his interests; for his own great reputation as a dramatic poet was implicated in the fate of the classic drama. He endeavored, therefore, by ridicule and contempt, to stem the torrent. But it was too late. Shakespeare's spell was upon all who had studied him; it was felt that the barbarian was a Titan. Voltaire was furious; alarmed at the movement he himself had originated, he retired into the recesses of ancient prejudices, from which he thun |