"I have made too free With that sweet lady's ear. My place in Denmark, Nymph, in thy orisons be my sins remembered." 1 These priceless lines show us what the eighteenth century could do when it set out seriously to reform Shakespeare, to correct his negligence and refine his ruggedness in accordance with the requirements of taste and art. 6 The altered Hamlet' held the stage at Drury Lane for nearly eight years. But it was not often played. The audience might put up with the version; but they plainly did not love it. In this feeling high and low concurred. Accordingly, on April 21, 1780, little more than a year after Garrick's death, Hamlet was advertised to be acted as Shakespeare wrote it." Contemporary testimony shows that the abandonment of the alteration took place, not under the compulsion of active hostility, manifested according to the then usual custom in the playhouse itself, but simply in consequence of the refusal of people to attend the performance of the piece. "Since the death of the player," said Reed in 1782, "the public has vindicated the rights of the poet by starving the theatre into compliance with 1 Garrick Correspondence, vol. i. p. 573. Letter dated Sept. 30, 1773. 2 Genest, vol. vi. p. 133. 1 That their wishes to see Hamlet as originally meant for exhibition." Thus early disappeared from the boards the alteration so long desired by a certain class. It was practically the last serious attempt upon Shakespeare which correctness made as a tribute to an assumed higher taste. Some of Kemble's later versions were even viler; but they were not original. actor only refashioned what others had previously accomplished. Garrick's course in this matter is one of which explanation can be given, but for which defence cannot be made. The student of English constitutional history has frequent occasion to observe how infinitely superior has sometimes been the stupidity of juries to the wisdom of judiciaries. Examples of a similar sort do not so often meet the eye of the student of literary history. Still they are to be found. Among them there is perhaps no more striking illustration than the present, of the superiority of judgment sometimes shown by the great mass of men to that arrogantly boasted of by the select body of self-appointed arbiters of taste and guardians of dramatic propriety. 1 Biographia Dramatica, ed. of 1782, under Hamlet. CHAPTER V REPRESENTATIONS OF VIOLENCE AND BLOODSHED THE violation of the unities, the intermixture of comic scenes with tragic were two faults which in the eyes of the classicists placed an ineffaceable stigma upon the romantic drama. About their essential depravity both continental and English critics were agreed. Shakespeare, in consequence of his exemplifying these atrocities, was regularly made the subject of the tale which he was not thought to adorn, and served constantly to point its moral. It is true that he had not acted differently from almost every one of his contemporaries. They were as regardless of these rules as he. But while others had sinned as much against art, he was the only one who had really survived. He was the only one who continued to impress himself upon successive generations. Particular plays of certain of his contemporaries Fletcher especially, and occasionally Jonson and Massinger were from time to time refitted for the stage and brought out during the eighteenth century. But they had at best but a partial success; they often met with positive failure. may be remembered," said Colman in 1763, "that "The Spanish Curate,' The Little French Lawyer,' and 'Scornful Lady' of our authors," - that is, Beaumont and Fletcher," as well as 'The Silent Woman' of Jonson, "It all favorite entertainments of our predecessors, have within these few years encountered the severity of the pit, and received sentence of condemnation." But of Shakespeare nothing of this sort could be said. His reign had never been disturbed. He had not only kept unbroken possession of the theatre, but was constantly extending his occupancy. It was therefore upon him that the weight of criticism fell. But a third grand distinction existed between the classical and the romantic drama. The French theatre and the French theatre for a long time gave the law to continental Europe- had made an advance upon the ancient in the rigidity of its requirements. It restricted the liberty of representation to exceedingly narrow bounds. In particular, it carried, to an extreme, hostility to the introduction of scenes of violence. The audience were to be treated with the tenderest consideration. Nothing was to take place on the stage that could offend the susceptibilities of the most fastidious. No blood was to be shed in the sight of the spectator. There was indeed one singular modification of this restriction. A character in the tragedy could be permitted to kill himself, whether he did it by poison or steel: what he was not suffered to do was to kill some one else. And while nothing was to be shown on the stage which could offend the feelings through the medium of the eyes, equally was nothing to be narrated with the accompaniment of any adjuncts that could possibly arouse disagreeable sensations in the mind. Voltaire tells us how he was stirred in the 1 Advertisement to the alteration of Philaster, 1763. English theatre by seeing Brutus harangue the people, while holding in his hand the bloody knife with which he had just stabbed Cæsar. He somewhat regretfully remarked that no such method of representation would have been tolerated on the French stage, any more than would have been an assemblage made up of Roman plebeians and artisans. No bleeding body of the dead dictator could have been exposed in public. He was inclined to think-at least at first that in this respect the French stage had gone too far. Here were legitimate opportunities for stage effect which it had deliberately abandoned. At other times he was disposed to justify its course. Scenes like these just mentioned, he admitted, were natural; but a French audience expected that nature should always be presented with some strokes of art. On their stage consequently all deeds of violence had to be narrated. Their actual performance took place behind the scenes. The audience learned of them from the mouth of some eyewitness who came to tell it what had happened. This method might spare the sensibilities of the hearers, but it assuredly did not add to the effectiveness of the play. One finds his admiration of the great French dramatists increasing when he recognizes under what limitations they labored. Nor need we shut our eyes to the fact that the method thus forced upon them had the advantages of its defects. It acted as a spur to the writer. compelled him, in particular, to pay attention to expression. Conscious that the success of his production would be little aided by attractions which appealed to It |