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II.

SHAKESPEARE'S TREATMENT OF HIS ORIGINALS.

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F we may learn something of the industry of Shakespeare by noting the traces of his reading in his works, we may learn still more of his character, when we study his methods of utilizing his reading. He was not a pioneer in dramatic art, he was not always even the first to manipulate the materials that he used. He often borrowed plots, sometimes characters, and even language. In the difference between what he had received and what he gives, we can learn something of the thoughts and feelings and art of Shakespeare. There is nothing new under the sun," said the preacher. But there are new combinations and new transmutations. To him had been revealed the two great secrets that the philosophers of the day vainly sought, the secret of the Philosopher's Stone, which would turn the baser metals into pure gold; and the secret of the Elixir of Life, which could secure to his work the gifts of immortal life and eternal youth. "Spirits are not finely touched, but to fine issues." His spiritual insight showed him how to vivify the processes by which he presented his thought to the world and to make even dry bones live. If it is true that he was a student before he was a writer, it is also true that he was an actor before he was a dramatist. Tradition has it that he was a servitor," that is an apprentice, and probably what we would call an understudy at first. Dissatisfied with, or tired of some of his Company's plays, he altered them, to the satisfaction of the owners, and of their audiences, until he altered them so much as to remake them altogether, and they grew popular as his own work. All this we can read between the lines in the bitter tirade by which Robert Greene introduces him to us in 1592. He warns his fellow dramatists not to trust to the

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Puppits that speak from our mouths, those antics garnished in our colours," "for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's Heart wrapt in a Player's Hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you, and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shakescene in a countrie. O, that I might intreate your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses, and let these Apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions.... Whilst you may, seeke you better maisters, for it is pittie such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes... painted monsters" (Greene's Groatsworth of Wit' 1592). It may be presumed that the early plays which he recast (most of them have now vanished) were treated in a manner somewhat similar to that by which he afterwards utilised the originals which he used in his own work.

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When he faced the question of writing a play, he consciously or unconsciously, set himself at least four special laws or limitations, under which he must work, considering its probable effect, 1st, on the Censor, and on the Public, 2nd, Its suitability to the acting powers of his own company 3rd, Its satisfaction of his own critical taste, and 4th, Its truth to its originals, this the last and least important to him. To these at times might be added, a second intention" such as Spenser elaborates in the explanation of the allegories in his "Faerie Queene," where he had both a general and particular meaning. For we have Shakespeare's own authority that he had at times "gored his own thoughts, made old offences of affections new" in his dramatic works. The very clue to much of this is now lost, but sufficient remains to make us remember the possibilities of other suggestions. These five determinants influenced him in different proportions at different times of his life, as by his work and experience he gradually

1 See "O Tyger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide," 3rd part, Hen. VI., I. 4, and compare Wyat's "O Tiger's hert who hath thus cloked the

That art so cruel, covered with bewtie,"

educated not only himself, but his public. By degrees he came to consider his public less, and himself more. He taught them what they ought to want. He could risk it. He laboured against what may be called the "sensationalism" of the pre-Shakespearean Stage, by throwing an interest into character, apart from, as well as through the plot. The blood and horrors which were supposed necessary to give force to a tragedy, were generally connected with feeble characterisation. Character was drowned in a great flood of action. He only once followed the people's tastes, in Titus Andronicus,' (if indeed he wrote it) and after that he made the prevailing taste follow him.

The special Censorship of plays had only been instituted in 1589, and was to our poet a staying and protective power, while the people, like those of Athens, were ever seeking after some new thing. Novelty, in their eyes, covered a multitude of sins, but it roused the suspicious attentions of the Censor.

He had to study the powers of his expressers. We can glean something of the changes in and comparative strength of his company from various external sources. We know that as Richard Burbage grew, his wonderful histrionic powers developed; his special genius for Tragedy became more pronounced,' and to that, I think, rather than to the "dark period" in the Dramatist's life, may we attribute a tragic period in his plays. We know when Will Kemp the broad humorist, left the Company, we know when Will Osteler, the chief actor of women's parts, died, and other changes are reflected in his plots.

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When we imagine Shakespeare in his study, with his plastic material in his hand, he is more than Vulcan in his smithy. He does not only weld, he creates. "None merits the name of Creator," cries Tasso save God and the poet." For the poet also can take of the dust of the ground, and breathe into it the breath of life. He was creating characters of men and women. It was necessary for him to change his stories by condensation, because only the doubly distilled 1 See my "Burbage, and Shakespeare's Stage."

interest of a novel can be given in a play.

There we can only see the supreme crises of men's lives. Sometimes the compelling force of a character dragged him out of the ruts of his story, and he had to finish it off the lines, and try again, in some other situation, how he might alter it. We can, to a certain extent, trace the course of his development through changes in his thought, method, rhythm, rhyme, language, but we must not be too certain of our conjectures concerning him, for his thoughts are not our thoughts nor his ways our ways. I am aware that some writers of the day claim as a discovery that Shakespeare never gives us women's characters so great or interesting or complex as those of his men, because he was preparing parts which would not be played by women, but by boy actors. The discovery, if discovery it be, is at least as old as Queen Anne, a commonplace of thought to every student of Shakespeare. None of us forget that boys acted the parts of women, and that this had an effect on the scheme and working out of his Drama. Probably that is the reason why there are so few mothers, grandmothers, aunts, or other superfluous women in Shakespeare's plays.

We can see that Shakespeare creates a specially good set of women suitable for the Stage, none such came before them, and none even approaching such came after him, at least until very long after his date. Of the principal parts, it took the prophetic insight of a Ruskin to discover that "there are no heroes in Shakespeare's plays, only heroines," and that in spite of their being presented by boys. Another limitation affected Shakespeare as an author. an author. He was painting nature as he saw it. It was the custom of his time to reckon women's highest duty and beauty that of obedience to some other will, to a father's in her earlier years and to a husband's in her riper life. How is it possible to see or understand a true human being, whose thoughts and words and actions are dominated by the will of another human being? Shakespeare saw some of it. Within these limitations, how well he understood women, and how well he expressed them, free of these limitations! Except when history or the ex

igencies of a plot compels otherwise, he makes them dutiful to their fathers, faithful to their husbands, loyal to other women, courageous beyond the courage of men, when need be ; free and independent in action, when their souls recognise a higher law than mere man-made law. We see this most clearly in those women that the poet did not find in his originals, but created in order to fulfil a rôle that men feared to undertake. Though he paints the weak submissive women because such there were, his own ideal characters in women are always fearless, independent, and self-determining.

One is driven to study his originals in order to learn what is truly his own views. The proportion of his changes is very different in different plays. Sometimes he only polishes and strengthens, as in "Romeo and Juliet," sometimes he recasts, as in 'Hamlet.' It is sometimes the circumstances, more often the characters, that he alters according to the degree in which they satisfy his critical demands. 'Nothing of (them) that doth fade

But doth suffer a (soul-)change

Into something rich and strange."-Tempest i., 2. And to all his changes in construction he adds the change of style. Rough and uncouth, heavy and lifeless, some originals might have been, but when he has touched them, his readings move us, "Like perfect music set to noble words." Not that he always eschewed the very phrases used in his originals, but he interweaves them with his own, till they become his own. There seems to have been a Republic of Letters in his time, everybody was ready to borrow from everybody else, and such "unconsidered trifles" as words and phrases were apt to be treated as common property.

In his Comedies Shakespeare generally contents himself with the ordinary poetic providence, of protecting the good, and punishing the evil. In his tragedies the chief characters are generally made to do some deed, great or little, which directly leads to their own destruction. But among the secondary characters the innocent often suffer helplessly with and because of the guilty leading characters. In his

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