The Man Shakespeare | Page 2

and new powers, in
masterpiece after masterpiece; and at length in his decline with
weakened grasp and fading colours, so that in him we can study the
growth and fruiting and decay of the finest spirit that has yet been born
among men. This tragedy of tragedies, in which "Lear" is only one
scene--this rise to intensest life and widest vision and fall through
abysms of despair and madness to exhaustion and death--can be
followed experience by experience, from Stratford to London and its
thirty years of passionate living, and then from London to village
Stratford again, and the eternal shrouding silence.
As soon as this astonishing drama discovered itself to me in its tragic
completeness I jumped to the conclusion that it must have been set
forth long ago in detail by Shakespeare's commentators, and so, for the
first time, I turned to their works. I do not wish to rail at my
forerunners as Carlyle railed at the historians of Cromwell, or I should
talk, as he talked, about "libraries of inanities...conceited dilettantism
and pedantry...prurient stupidity," and so forth. The fact is, I found all
this, and worse; I waded through tons of talk to no result. Without a
single exception the commentators have all missed the man and the
story; they have turned the poet into a tradesman, and the unimaginable
tragedy of his life into the commonplace record of a successful
tradesman's career. Even to explain this astounding misadventure of the
host of critics is a little difficult. The mistake, of course, arose from the
fact that his contemporaries told very little about Shakespeare; they left
his appearance and even the incidents of his life rather vague. Being
without a guide, and having no clear idea of Shakespeare's character,
the critics created him in their own image, and, whenever they were in
doubt, idealized him according to the national type.
Still, there was at least one exception. Some Frenchman, I think it is
Joubert, says that no great man is born into the world without another
man being born about the same time, who understands and can interpret
him, and Shakespeare was of necessity singularly fortunate in his
interpreter. Ben Jonson was big enough to see him fairly, and to give
excellent-true testimony concerning him. Jonson's view of Shakespeare

is astonishingly accurate and trustworthy so far as it goes; even his
attitude of superiority to Shakespeare is fraught with meaning. Two
hundred years later, the rising tide of international criticism produced
two men, Goethe and Coleridge, who also saw Shakespeare, if only by
glimpses, or rather by divination of kindred genius, recognizing certain
indubitable traits. Goethe's criticism of "Hamlet" has been vastly
over-praised; but now and then he used words about Shakespeare
which, in due course, we shall see were illuminating words, the words
of one who guessed something of the truth. Coleridge, too, with his
curious, complex endowment of philosopher and poet, resembled
Shakespeare, saw him, therefore, by flashes, and might have written
greatly about him; but, alas, Coleridge, a Puritan born, was brought up
in epicene hypocrisies, and determined to see Shakespeare--that child
of the Renascence--as a Puritan, too, and consequently mis-saw him far
oftener than he saw him; misjudged him hideously, and had no inkling
of his tragic history.
There is a famous passage in Coleridge's "Essays on Shakespeare"
which illustrates what I mean. It begins: "In Shakespeare all the
elements of womanhood are holy"; and goes on to eulogize the instinct
of chastity which all his women possess, and this in spite of Doll
Tearsheet, Tamora, Cressida, Goneril, Regan, Cleopatra, the Dark Lady
of the Sonnets, and many other frail and fascinating figures. Yet
whatever gleam of light has fallen on Shakespeare since Coleridge's
day has come chiefly from that dark lantern which he now and then
flashed upon the master.
In one solitary respect, our latter-day criticism has been successful; it
has established with very considerable accuracy the chronology of the
plays, and so the life-story of the poet is set forth in due order for those
to read who can.
This then is what I found--a host of commentators who saw men as
trees walking, and mistook plain facts, and among them one authentic
witness, Jonson, and two interesting though not trustworthy witnesses,
Goethe and Coleridge--and nothing more in three centuries. The mere
fact may well give us pause, pointing as it does to a truth which is still

insufficiently understood. It is the puzzle of criticism, at once the
despair and wonder of readers, that the greatest men of letters usually
pass through life without being remarked or understood by their
contemporaries. The men of Elizabeth's time were more interested in
Jonson than in Shakespeare, and have told us much more about the
younger than the greater master; just as Spaniards