The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded | Page 6

philosophy in
both these cases, and not philosophy in one of them, and a brutish,
low-lived, illiterate, unconscious spontaneity in the other.
The proposition is that it proceeds, in both cases, from a reflective
deliberative, eminently deliberative, eminently conscious, designing
mind; and that the coincidence which is manifest not in the design only,
and in the structure, but in the detail to the minutest points of execution,
is not accidental.
It is a proposition which is demonstrated in this volume by means of
evidence derived principally from the books of this philosophy--books
in which the safe delivery and tradition of it to the future was
artistically contrived and triumphantly achieved:--the books of a new
'school' in philosophy; books in which the connection with the school is
not always openly asserted; books in which the true names of the
authors are not always found on the title-page;--the books of a school,
too, which was compelled to have recourse to translations in some
cases, for the safe delivery and tradition of its new learning.
The facts which lie on the surface of this question, which are involved
in the bare statement of it, are sufficient of themselves to justify and
command this inquiry.

The fact that these two great branches of the philosophy of observation
and practice, both already virtually recognised as that,--the one openly,
subordinating the physical forces of nature to the wants of man,
changing the face of the earth under our eyes, leaving behind it, with its
new magic, the miracles of Oriental dreams and fables;--the other,
under its veil of wildness and spontaneity, under its thick-woven veil of
mirth and beauty, with its inducted precepts and dispersed directions,
insinuating itself into all our practice, winding itself into every
department of human affairs; speaking from the legislator's lips, at the
bar, from the pulpit,--putting in its word every where, always at hand,
always sufficient, constituting itself, in virtue of its own irresistible
claims and in the face of what we are told of it, the oracle, the great
practical, mysterious, but universally acknowledged, oracle of our
modern life; the fact that these two great branches of the modern
philosophy make their appearance in history at the same moment, that
they make their appearance in the same company of men--in that same
little courtly company of Elizabethan Wits and Men of Letters that the
revival of the ancient learning brought out here--this is the fact that
strikes the eye at the first glance at this inquiry.
But that this is none other than that same little clique of disappointed
and defeated politicians who undertook to head and organize a popular
opposition against the government, and were compelled to retreat from
that enterprise, the best of of them effecting their retreat with some
difficulty, others failing entirely to accomplish it, is the next notable
fact which the surface of the inquiry exhibits. That these two so
illustrious branches of the modern learning were produced for the
ostensible purpose of illustrating and adorning the tyrannies which the
men, under whose countenance and protection they are produced, were
vainly attempting, or had vainly attempted to set bounds to or
overthrow, is a fact which might seem of itself to suggest inquiry.
When insurrections are suppressed, when 'the monstrous enterprises of
rebellious subjects are overthrown, then FAME, who is the posthumous
sister of the giants,--the sister of defeated giants springs up'; so a man
who had made some political experiments himself that were not very
successful, tells us.

The fact that the men under whose patronage and in whose service
'Will the Jester' first showed himself, were men who were secretly
endeavouring to make political capital of that new and immense motive
power, that not yet available, and not very easily organised political
power which was already beginning to move the masses here then, and
already threatening, to the observant eye, with its portentous movement,
the foundations of tyranny, the fact, too, that these men were
understood to have made use of the stage unsuccessfully as a means of
immediate political effect, are facts which lie on the surface of the
history of these works, and unimportant as it may seem to the
superficial enquirer, it will be found to be anything but irrelevant as
this inquiry proceeds. The man who is said to have contributed a
thousand pounds towards the purchase of the theatre and wardrobe and
machinery, in which these philosophical plays were first exhibited, was
obliged to stay away from the first appearance of Hamlet, in the
perfected excellence of the poetic philosophic design, in consequence
of being immured in the Tower at that time for an attempt to overthrow
the government. This was the ostensible patron and friend of the Poet;
the partner of his treason was the ostensible friend and patron