Shakspere and Montaigne | Page 8

cast me downe, that I might be humbled; and
punished me, for examples of others' sinne.'
Greene offers his own wretched end to his colleagues as a warning
example; admonishing them to employ their 'rare wits in more
profitable courses;' to look repentingly on the past; to leave off profane
practices, and not 'to spend their wits in making plaies.' He especially
warns them against actors--because these, it seems, had given him up.
His rancorous spite against them he expresses in the well-known
words:--'Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart Crow, beautified
with our feathers, that _with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide_,
supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of

you; and being an absolute _Johannes Fac-totum_, is in his owne
conceit the onely 'SHAKE-SCENE in a countrie.'
This satirical point, directed, without doubt, against Shakspere, is the
only thing reliable which, down to the year 1592, we know of his
dramatic activity. He had then been only about four years in London.
Yet he must already have wielded considerable authority, seeing that he
is publicly, though with sneering arrogance, called a complete Johannes
Fac-totum--a man who has laid himself out in every direction.
It is the divine mission of a genius to bring order out of chaos, to
regulate matters with the directing force of his superior glance.
Certainly, Shakspere, from the very beginning of his activity, sought,
with all the energy of his power, to rule out all ignoble, anarchical
elements from the stage, and thus to obtain for it the sympathies of the
best of his time. Fate so willed it, that one of the greatest minds which
Heaven ever gave to mankind, entered, on this occasion, the modest
door of a playhouse, as if Providence had intended showing that a
generous activity can effect noble results everywhere, and that the most
despised calling (such, still, was that of the actors then) can produce
most excellent fruits.
Shakspere's life is a beneficial harmony between will and deed; no
attempt to draw down Heaven to Earth, or to raise up Earth to Heaven.
His are rather the ways and manners peculiar to a people which likes to
adapt itself to given circumstances, to make use of the existing practical
good, in order to produce from it that which is better.
It is an ascertained fact that Shakspere, who had received some training
at school--but no University education--began, at the age of
twenty-four, to arrange the pieces of other writers, to make modest
additions to them; in short, to render them fit and proper for stage
purposes. This may have been one of the causes why Greene dubbed
him a 'Johannes Fac-totum.' Others, too, have accused him, during his
lifetime, of 'application' (plagiarism), because he took his subjects
mostly from other authors. Among those who so charged him, were, as
we shall show, more especially Ben Jonson and Marston.

Shakspere never allowed himself to be induced by these reproaches to
change his mode of working. Down to his death it remained the same.
Is his merit, on that account, a lesser one? Certainly not: in the Poetical
Art, in the Realm of Feeling and Thought, there are no regular
boundary-stones. No author has the right to say: 'Thou must not step
into the circle drawn by me; thou hast to do thy work wholly outside of
it!'
An author who so expresses an idea, or so describes a situation as to fix
it most powerfully in men's imagination, is to be looked upon as the
true owner or creator of the image: to him belongs the crown. The
Greeks reckoned it to be the highest merit of the masters of their plastic
art when they retained the great traits with which their predecessors had
invested a conception; only endeavouring to better those parts in which
a lesser success had been achieved--until that section of the work, too,
had attained the highest degree of perfection. Thus arose the Jupiter of
Pheidias, a Venus of Milo, an Apollo of Belvedere. Thus the noblest
ideal of beauty as created, and in this wise the Greek national epic
became the model of all kindred poetry.
There is a most characteristic fact which shows how greatly the drama
had risen in universal esteem after Shakspere had devoted to it twelve
years of his life. It is this. The Corporation of the City of London, once
so hostile to all theatrical representations, and which had used every
possible chicanery against the stage, had become so friendly to it
towards the year 1600, that, when it was asked from governmental
quarters to enforce a certain decree which had been launched against
the theatre, it refused to comply with the request. On the contrary, the
Lord