Biographical Essays | Page 6

Charles's confidential counsellors, Lord Falkland,
that the king's admiration of Shakspeare had impressed a determination
upon the court reading. As to Milton, by double prejudices, puritanical
and classical, his mind had been preoccupied against the full
impressions of Shakspeare. And we know that there is such a thing as
keeping the sympathies of love and admiration in a dormant state, or
state of abeyance; an effort of self-conquest realized in more cases than
one by the ancient fathers, both Greek and Latin, with regard to the
profane classics. Intellectually they admired, and would not belie their
admiration; but they did not give their hearts cordially, they did not
abandon themselves to their natural impulses. They averted their eyes
and weaned their attention from the dazzling object. Such, probably,
was Milton's state of feeling towards Shakspeare after 1642, when the
theatres were suppressed, and the fanatical fervor in its noontide heat.
Yet even then he did not belie his reverence intellectually for
Shakspeare; and in his younger days we know that he had spoken more
enthusiastically of Shakspeare, than he ever did again of any uninspired
author. Not only did he address a sonnet to his memory, in which he
declares that kings would wish to die, if by dying they could obtain
such a monument in the hearts of men; but he also speaks of him in his
Il Penseroso, as the tutelary genius of the English stage. In this
transmission of the torch (greek: lampadophoria) Dryden succeeds to
Milton; he was born nearly thirty years later; about thirty years they
were contemporaries; and by thirty years, or nearly, Dryden survived
his great leader. Dryden, in fact, lived out the seventeenth century. And
we have now arrived within nine years of the era, when the critical
editions started in hot succession to one another. The names we have
mentioned were the great influential names of the century. But of
inferior homage there was no end. How came Betterton the actor, how
came Davenant, how came Rowe, or Pope, by their intense (if not
always sound) admiration for Shakspeare, unless they had found it
fuming upwards like incense to the Pagan deities in ancient times, from
altars erected at every turning upon all the paths of men?
But it is objected that inferior dramatists were sometimes preferred to
Shakspeare; and again, that vile travesties of Shakspeare were preferred

to the authentic dramas. As to the first argument, let it be remembered,
that if the saints of the chapel are always in the same honor, because
there men are simply discharging a duty, which once due will be due
for ever; the saints of the theatre, on the other hand, must bend to the
local genius, and to the very reasons for having a theatre at all. Men go
thither for amusement. This is the paramount purpose, and even
acknowledged merit or absolute superiority must give way to it. Does a
man at Paris expect to see Moliere reproduced in proportion to his
admitted precedency in the French drama? On the contrary, that very
precedency argues such a familiarization with his works, that those who
are in quest of relaxation will reasonably prefer any recent drama to
that which, having lost all its novelty, has lost much of its excitement.
We speak of ordinary minds; but in cases of public entertainments,
deriving part of their power from scenery and stage pomp, novelty is
for all minds an essential condition of attraction. Moreover, in some
departments of the comic, Beaumont and Fletcher, when writing in
combination, really had a freedom and breadth of manner which excels
the comedy of Shakspeare. As to the altered Shakspeare as taking
precedency of the genuine Shakspeare, no argument can be so frivolous.
The public were never allowed a choice; the great majority of an
audience even now cannot be expected to carry the real Shakspeare in
their mind, so as to pursue a comparison between that and the alteration.
Their comparisons must be exclusively amongst what they have
opportunities of seeing; that is, between the various pieces presented to
them by the managers of theatres. Further than this, it is impossible for
them to extend their office of judging and collating; and the degenerate
taste which substituted the caprices of Davenant, the rants of Dryden,
or the filth of Tate, for the jewellery of Shakspeare, cannot with any
justice be charged upon the public, not one in a thousand of whom was
furnished with any means of comparing, but exclusively upon those
(viz., theatrical managers,) who had the very amplest. Yet even in
excuse for them much may be said. The very length of some plays
compelled them to make alterations. The best of Shakspeare's dramas,
King Lear, is the least fitted for representation; and, even for the