"Master, go on, and I will follow thee
To the last gasp with truth and loyalty."
(Act 2, Sc. 3.)
But Shakespeare takes care to point out that such fidelity in servants
is most uncommon and a relic of the good old times--
"O good old man, bow well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world,
When service sweat for duty, nor for meed!
Thou art not for the fashion of these times,
When none will sweat but for promotion."
Outside the ranks of domestic servants we find a few cases of honorable
poverty in Shakespeare. In the play just quoted, Corin, the old
shepherd, says:
"Sir, I am a true laborer; I earn that I eat, get that I
wear; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness; glad of
other men's good, content with my harm; and the greatest of
my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck."
(As You Like It, Act 3, Sc. 2.)
in short, an ideal proletarian from the point of view of the aristocrat.
The "Winter's Tale" can boast of another good shepherd (Act 3, Sc. 3),
but he savors a little of burlesque. "Macbeth" has several humble
worthies. There is a good old man in the second act (Sc. 2), and a good
messenger in the fourth (Sc. 2). King Duncan praises highly the sergeant
who brings the news of Macbeth's victory, and uses language to him such
as Shakespeare's yeomen are not accustomed to hear (Act 1, Sc. 2). And
in "Antony and Cleopatra" we make the acquaintance of several exemplary
common soldiers. Shakespeare puts flattering words into the mouth of
Henry V. when he addresses the troops before Agincourt:
"For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile
This day shall gentle his condition."
(Act 4, Sc. 4.)
And at Harfleur he is even more complaisant:
"And you, good yeomen,
Whose limbs were made in England, shew us here
The metal of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not,
For there is none of you so mean and base
That hath not noble luster in your eyes." (Act 3, Sc. 1.)
The rank and file always fare well before a battle.
"Oh, it's 'Tommy this' and 'Tommy that' an' 'Tommy, go away';
But it's 'Thank you, Mr. Atkins,' when the band begins to play."
I should like to add some instances from Shakespeare's works of serious
and estimable behavior on the part of individuals representing the lower
classes, or of considerate treatment of them on the part of their
"betters," but I have been unable to find any, and the meager list must
end here.
But to return to Tommy Atkins. He is no longer Mr. Atkins after the
battle. Montjoy, the French herald, comes to the English king under a
flag of truce and asks that they be permitted to bury their dead and
"Sort our nobles from our common men;
For many of our princes (wo the while!)
Lie drowned and soaked in mercenary blood;
So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbs
In blood of princes." (Henry V., Act 4, Sc. 7.)
With equal courtesy Richard III., on Bosworth field, speaks of his
opponents to the gentlemen around him:
"Remember what you are to cope withal--
A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,
A scum of Bretagne and base lackey peasants."
(Act 5, Sc. 3.)
But Shakespeare does not limit such epithets to armies. Having, as we
have seen, a poor opinion of the lower classes, taken man by man, he
thinks, if anything, still worse of them taken _en masse_, and at his
hands a crowd of plain workingmen fares worst of all. "Hempen
home-spuns," Puck calls them, and again
"A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,
That work for bread upon Athenian stalls."
Bottom, their leader, is, according to Oberon, a "hateful fool," and
according to Puck, the "shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort"
(Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 3, Scs. 1 and 2, Act 4, Sc. 1). Bottom's
advice to his players contains a small galaxy of compliments:
"In any case let Thisby have clean linen, and let not him
that plays the lion pare his nails, for they shall hang out
for the lion's claws. And, most dear actors, eat no onion or
garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath, and I do not doubt
to hear them say, it is a sweet comedy."
(Ib., Act 4, Sc. 2.)
The matter of the breath of the poor weighs upon Shakespeare and his
characters. Cleopatra shudders at the thought that
"mechanic slaves,
With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shall
Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths
Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded,
And forced to drink their vapor."
(Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Sc. 2.)
Coriolanus has his sense of smell especially developed. He talks of the
"stinking breaths" of the people (Act 2, Sc. 1), and in another place
says:
"You common cry of curs, whose breath I hate
As reek of rotten fens, whose love I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt the air, I banish you,"
and he goes on to taunt them with cowardice (Act 3, Sc. 3). They are the
"mutable, rank-scented many" (Act 3, Sc. 1). His friend Menenius is
equally complimentary to his fellow citizens. "You are they," says he,
"That make the air unwholesome, when you cast
Your stinking, greasy caps, in hooting at
Coriolanus's exile."
(Act 4, Sc. 7.)
And he laughs at the "apron-men" of Cominius and their "breath of
garlic-eaters" (Act 4, Sc. 7). When Coriolanus is asked to address the
people, he replies by saying: "Bid them wash their faces, and keep their
teeth clean" (Act 2, Sc. 3). According to Shakespeare, the Roman
populace had made no advance in cleanliness in the centuries between
Coriolanus and Cæsar. Casca gives a vivid picture of the offer of the
crown to Julius, and his rejection of it: "And still as he refused it
the rabblement shouted, and clapped their chapped hands, and threw up
their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath,
because Cæsar refused the crown, that it had almost choked Cæsar, for he
swooned and fell down at it. And for mine own part I durst not laugh,
for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air." And he calls
them the "tag-rag people" (Julius Cæsar, Act 1, Sc. 2). The play of
"Coriolanus" is a mine of insults to the people and it becomes tiresome
to quote them. The hero calls them the "beast with many heads" (Act 4,
Sc. 3), and again he says to the crowd:
"What's the matter, you dissentious rogues,
That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion
Make yourself scabs?
First Citizen. We have ever your good word.
Coriolanus. He that will give good words to ye will flatter
Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs,
That like not peace nor war? The one affrights you,
The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you,
Where he would find you lions, finds you hares;
Where foxes, geese; you are no surer, no,
Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,
Or hailstone in the sun. Your virtue is
To make him worthy whose offense subdues him,
And curse that justice did it. Who deserves greatness
Deserves your hate; and your affections are
A sick man's appetite, who desires most that
Which would increase his evil. He that depends
Upon your favors, swims with fins of lead,
And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?
With every minute you do change a mind,
And call him noble that was now your hate,
Him vile that was your garland."
(Act 1, Sc. 1.)
His mother, Volumnia, is of like mind. She calls the people "our general
louts" (Act 3, Sc. 2). She says to Junius Brutus, the tribune of the
people:
"'Twas you incensed the rabble,
Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth
As I can of those mysteries which Heaven
Will not leave Earth to know."
(Act 4, Sc. 2).
In the same play Cominius talks of the "dull tribunes" and "fusty
plebeians" (Act 1, Sc. 9). Menenius calls them "beastly plebeians" (Act
2, Sc. 1), refers to their "multiplying spawn" (Act 2, Sc. 2), and says
to the crowd:
"Rome and her rats are at the point of battle."
(Act 1, Sc. 2).
The dramatist makes the mob cringe before Coriolanus. When he appears,
the stage directions show that the "citizens steal away." (Act 1, Sc.
1.)
As the Roman crowd of the time of Coriolanus is fickle, so is that of
Cæsar's. Brutus and Antony sway them for and against his assassins with
ease:
"First Citizen. This Cæsar was a tyrant.
Second Citizen. Nay, that's certain.
We are blessed that Rome is rid of him....
First Citizen. (After hearing a description of the murder.)
O piteous spectacle!
2 Cit. O noble Cæsar!
3 Cit. O woful day!
4 Cit. O traitors, villains!
1 Cit. O most bloody sight!
2 Cit. We will be revenged; revenge! about--seek--burn,
fire--kill--slay--let not a traitor live!" (Act 3, Sc. 2.)
The Tribune Marullus reproaches them with having forgotten Pompey, and
calls them
"You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things."
He persuades them not to favor Cæsar, and when they leave him he asks
his fellow tribune, Flavius,
"See, whe'r their basest metal be not moved?"
(Act 1, Sc. 1.)
Flavius also treats them with scant courtesy:
"Hence, home, you idle creatures, get you home.
Is this a holiday? What! you know not,
Being mechanical, you ought not walk
Upon a laboring day without the sign
Of your profession?"
(Ib.)
The populace of England is as changeable as that of Rome, if Shakespeare
is to be believed. The Archbishop of York, who had espoused the cause of
Richard II. against Henry IV., thus soliloquizes:
"The commonwealth is sick of their own choice;
Their over greedy love hath surfeited;
An habitation giddy and unsure
Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
O thou fond many! With what loud applause
Didst thou beat Heaven with blessing Bolingbroke,
Before he was what thou would'st have him be!
And now being trimmed in thine own desires,
Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him,
That thou provokest thyself to cast him up.
So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge
Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard,
And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up,
And howlst to find it."
(Henry IV., Part 2, Act 1, Sc. 3.)
Gloucester in "Henry VI." (Part 2, Act 2, Sc. 4) notes the fickleness of
the masses. He says, addressing his absent wife:
"Sweet Nell, ill can thy noble mind abrook
The abject people, gazing on thy face
With envious looks, laughing at thy shame,
That erst did follow thy proud chariot wheels
When thou didst ride in triumph through the streets."
When she arrives upon the scene in disgrace, she says to him:
"Look how they gaze;
See how the giddy multitude do point
And nod their heads and throw their eyes on thee.
Ah, Gloster, hide thee from their hateful looks."
And she calls the crowd a "rabble" (Ib.), a term also used in "Hamlet"
(Act 4, Sc. 5). Again, in part III. of "Henry VI.," Clifford, dying on
the battlefield while fighting for King Henry, cries:
"The common people swarm like summer flies,
And whither fly the gnats but to the sun?
And who shines now but Henry's enemies?"
(Act 2, Sc. 6.)
And Henry himself, conversing with the keepers who have imprisoned him
in the name of Edward IV., says:
"Ah, simple men! you know not what you swear.
Look, as I blow this feather from my face,
And as the air blows it to me again,
Obeying with my wind when I do blow,
And yielding to another when it blows,
Commanded always by the greater gust,
Such is the lightness of you common men."
(Ib., Act 3, Sc. 1.)
Suffolk, in the First Part of the same trilogy (Act 5, Sc. 5), talks of
"worthless peasants," meaning, perhaps, "property-less peasants," and
when Salisbury comes to present the demands of the people, he calls him
"the Lord Ambassador
Sent from a sort of tinkers to the king,"
(Part 2, Act 3, Sc. 2.)
and says:
"'Tis like the Commons, rude unpolished hinds
Could send such message to their sovereign."
Cardinal Beaufort mentions the "uncivil kernes of Ireland" (Ib., Part 2,
Act 3, Sc. 1), and in the same play the crowd makes itself ridiculous by
shouting, "A miracle," when the fraudulent beggar Simpcox, who had
pretended to be lame and blind, jumps over a stool to escape a whipping
(Act 2, Sc. 1). Queen Margaret receives petitioners with the words
"Away, base cullions" (Ib., Act 1, Sc. 3), and among other flattering
remarks applied here and there to the lower classes we may cite the
epithets "ye rascals, ye rude slaves," addressed to a crowd by a porter
in Henry VIII., and that of "lazy knaves" given by the Lord Chamberlain
to the porters for having let in a "trim rabble" (Act 5, Sc. 3). Hubert,
in King John, presents us with an unvarnished picture of the common
people receiving the news of Prince Arthur's death:
"I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,
The whilst his iron did on his anvil cool,
With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news;
Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,
Standing on slippers (which his nimble haste
Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet),
Told of a many thousand warlike French
That were embattailed and rank'd in Kent.
Another lean, unwashed artificer,
Cuts off his tale, and talks of Arthur's death."
(Act 4, Sc. 2.)
Macbeth, while sounding the murderers whom he intends to employ, and who
say to him, "We are men, my liege," answers:
"Ay, in the catalogue, ye go for men
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-sugs, and demi-wolves, are cleped
All by the name of dogs."
(Act 3, Sc. 1.)
As Coriolanus is held up to our view as a pattern of noble bearing
toward the people, so Richard II. condemns the courteous behavior of the
future Henry IV. on his way into banishment. He says:
"Ourselves, and Bushy, Bagot here and Green
Observed his courtship to the common people;
How he did seem to dive into their hearts
With humble and familiar courtesy;
What reverence he did throw away on slaves;
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles
And patient overbearing of his fortune,
As 'twere to banish their effects with him.
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;
A brace of draymen did God speed him well
And had the tribute of his supple knee,
With 'Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends.'"
(Richard II., Act 1, Sc. 4.)
The King of France, in "All's Well that Ends Well," commends to Bertram
the example of his late father in his relations with his inferiors:
"Who were below him
He used as creatures of another place,
And bowed his eminent top to their low ranks,
Making them proud of his humility
In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man
Might be a copy to these younger times."
(Act 1, Sc. 2.)
Shakespeare had no fondness for these "younger times," with their
increasing suggestion of democracy. Despising the masses, he had no
sympathy with the idea of improving their condition or increasing their
power. He saw the signs of the times with foreboding, as did his hero,
Hamlet:
"By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it; the
age has grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near the
heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe." There can easily be too much
liberty, according to Shakespeare--"too much liberty, my Lucio,
liberty" (Measure for Measure, Act 1, Sc. 3), but the idea of too much
authority is foreign to him. Claudio, himself under arrest, sings its
praises:
"Thus can the demi-god, Authority,
Make us pay down for our offense by weight,--
The words of Heaven;--on whom it will, it will;
On whom it will not, so; yet still 'tis just."
(Ib.)
Ulysses, in "Troilus and Cressida" (Act 1, Sc. 3), delivers a long
panegyric upon authority, rank, and degree, which may be taken as
Shakespeare's confession of faith:
"Degree being vizarded,
Th' unworthiest shews as fairly in the mask.
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center,
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office and custom, in all line of order;
And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol,
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandments of a king,
Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets,
In evil mixture, to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea, shaking of the earth,
Commotion of the winds, frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture! Oh, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder of all high designs,
The enterprise is sick. How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenity and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, laurels,
But by degree stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune the string,
And hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy; the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe;
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead;
Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong,
(Between whose endless jar justice resides)
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power.
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, a universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking;
And this neglection of degree it is,
That by a pace goes backward, in a purpose
It hath to climb. The General's disdained
By him one step below; he by the next;
That next by him beneath; so every step,
Exampled by the first pace that is sick
Of his superiors, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation;
And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength."
There is no hint in this eloquent apostrophe of the difficulty of
determining among men who shall be the sun and who the satellite, nor of
the fact that the actual arrangements, in Shakespeare's time, at any
rate, depended altogether upon that very force which Ulysses
deprecates. In another scene in the same play the wily Ithacan again
gives way to his passion for authority and eulogizes somewhat
extravagantly the paternal, prying, omnipresent State:
"The providence that's in a watchful state
Knows almost every grain of Plutus' gold,
Finds bottom in th' incomprehensive deeps,
Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the gods,
Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.
There is a mystery (with which relation
Durst never meddle) in the soul of state,
Which hath an operation more divine
Than breath or pen can give expressure to."
(Act 3, Sc. 3.)
The State to which Ulysses refers is of course a monarchical State, and
the idea of democracy is abhorrent to Shakespeare. Coriolanus expresses
his opinion of it when he says to the people:
"What's the matter,
That in these several places of the city
You cry against the noble Senate, who,
Under the gods, keep you in awe, which else
Would feed on one another?"
(Act 2, Sc. 1.)
The people should have no voice in the government--
"This double worship,--
Where one part does disdain with cause, the other
Insult without all reason, where gentry, title, wisdom,
Can not conclude, but by the yea and no
Of general ignorance,--it must omit
Real necessities, and give away the while
To unstable slightness. Purpose so barred, it follows,
Nothing is done to purpose; therefore, beseech you,
You that will be less fearful than discreet,
That love the fundamental part of state
More than you doubt the change on't, that prefer
A noble life before a long, and wish
To jump a body with a dangerous physic
That's sure of death without it, at once pluck out
The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick
The sweet which is their poison."
(Ib. Act 3, Sc. 1.)
It is the nobility who should rule--
"It is a purposed thing and grows by plot
To curb the will of the nobility;
Suffer't and live with such as can not rule,
Nor ever will be ruled."
(Ib.)
Junius Brutus tries in vain to argue with him, but Coriolanus has no
patience with him, a "triton of the minnows"; and the very fact that
there should be tribunes appointed for the people disgusts him--
"Five tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms,
Of their own choice; one's Junius Brutus,
Sicinus Velutus, and I know not--'Sdeath!
The rabble should have first unroofed the city,
Ere so prevailed with me; it will in time
Win upon power, and throw forth greater themes."
And again:
"The common file, a plague!--Tribunes for them!"
(Act 1, Sc. 6.)
Shakespeare took his material for the drama of "Coriolanus" from
Plutarch's "Lives," and it is significant that he selected from that
list of worthies the most conspicuous adversary of the commonalty that
Rome produced. He presents him to us as a hero, and, so far as he can,
enlists our sympathy for him from beginning to end. When Menenius says
of him:
"His nature is too noble for the world,"
(Act 3, Sc. 1.)
he is evidently but registering the verdict of the author. Plutarch's
treatment of Coriolanus is far different. He exhibits his fine
qualities, but he does not hesitate to speak of his "imperious temper
and that savage manner which was too haughty for a republic." "Indeed,"
he adds, "there is no other advantage to be had from a liberal education
equal to that of polishing and softening our nature by reason and
discipline." He also tells us that Coriolanus indulged his "irascible
passions on a supposition that they have something great and exalted in
them," and that he wanted "a due mixture of gravity and mildness, which
are the chief political virtues and the fruits of reason and education."
"He never dreamed that such obstinacy is rather the effect of the
weakness and effeminacy of a distempered mind, which breaks out in
violent passions like so many tumors." Nor apparently did Shakespeare
ever dream of it either, altho he had Plutarch's sage observations
before him. It is a pity that the great dramatist did not select from
Plutarch's works some hero who took the side of the people, some Agis or
Cleomenes, or, better yet, one of the Gracchi. What a tragedy he might
have based on the life of Tiberius, the friend of the people and the
martyr in their cause! But the spirit which guided Schiller in the
choice of William Tell for a hero was a stranger to Shakespeare's heart,
and its promptings would have met with no response there.
Even more striking is the treatment which the author of "Coriolanus"
metes out to English history. All but two of his English historical
dramas are devoted to the War of the Roses and the incidental struggle
over the French crown. The motive of this prolonged strife--so
attractive to Shakespeare--had much the same dignity which distinguishes
the family intrigues of the Sublime Porte, and Shakespeare presents the
history of his country as a mere pageant of warring royalties and their
trains. When the people are permitted to appear, as they do in Cade's
rebellion, to which Shakespeare has assigned the character of the rising
under Wat Tyler, they are made the subject of burlesque. Two of the
popular party speak as follows:
"John Holland. Well, I say, it was never merry world in
England since gentlemen came up.
George Bevis. O miserable age! Virtue is not regarded in
handicraftsmen.
John. The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons."
When Jack Cade, alias Wat Tyler, comes on the scene, he shows himself to
be a braggart and a fool. He says:
"Be brave then, for your captain is brave and vows
reformation. There shall be in England seven half-penny
loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten
hoops, and I will make it a felony to drink small beer. All
the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my
palfrey go to grass. And when I am king asking I will be--
All. God save your majesty!
Cade. I thank you, good people--there shall be no money; all
shall eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all
in one livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship
me their lord."
(Henry VI., Part 2, Act 4, Sc. 2.)
The crowd wishes to kill the clerk of Chatham because he can read,
write, and cast accounts. (Cade. "O monstrous!") Sir Humphrey Stafford
calls them
"Rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent,
Marked for the gallows."
(Ib.)
Clifford succeeds without much difficulty in turning the enmity of the
mob against France, and Cade ejaculates disconsolately, "Was ever a
feather so lightly blown to and fro as this multitude?" (Ib., Act 4, Sc.
8.) In the stage directions of this scene, Shakespeare shows his own
opinion of the mob by writing, "Enter Cade and his rabblement." One
looks in vain here as in the Roman plays for a suggestion that poor
people sometimes suffer wrongfully from hunger and want, that they
occasionally have just grievances, and that their efforts to present
them, so far from being ludicrous, are the most serious parts of
history, beside which the struttings of kings and courtiers sink into
insignificance.
One of the popular songs in Tyler's rebellion was the familiar couplet:
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
Shakespeare refers to it in "Hamlet," where the grave-diggers speak as
follows:
"First Clown. Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentleman
but gardners, ditchers and grave-makers; they hold up Adam's
profession.
Second Clown. Was he a gentleman?
First Clown. He was the first that ever bore arms.
Second Clown. Why, he had none.
First Clown. What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand
the Scripture? The Scripture says, Adam digged; could he dig
without arms?"
(Act 5, Sc. 1.)
That Shakespeare's caricature of Tyler's rebellion is a fair indication
of his view of all popular risings appears from the remarks addressed by
Westmoreland to the Archbishop of York in the Second Part of "Henry IV."
(Act 4, Sc. 1). Says he:
"If that rebellion
Came like itself, in base and abject routs,
Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags,
And countenanced by boys and beggary;
I say if damned commotion so appeared,
In his true, native, and most proper shape,
You, Reverend Father, and these noble lords
Had not been here to dress the ugly form
Of base and bloody insurrection
With your fair honors."
The first and last of Shakespeare's English historical plays, "King
John" and "Henry VIII.," lie beyond the limits of the civil wars, and
each of them treats of a period momentous in the annals of English
liberty, a fact which Shakespeare absolutely ignores. John as king had
two great misfortunes--he suffered disgrace at the hands of his barons
and of the pope. The first event, the wringing of Magna Charta from the
king, Shakespeare passes over. A sense of national pride might have
excused the omission of the latter humiliation, but no, it was a triumph
of authority, and as such Shakespeare must record it for the edification
of his hearers, and consequently we have the king presented on the stage
as meekly receiving the crown from the papal legate (Act 5, Sc. 1).
England was freed from the Roman yoke in the reign of Henry VIII., and
in the drama of that name Shakespeare might have balanced the indignity
forced upon King John, but now he is silent. Nothing must be said
against authority, even against that of the pope, and the play
culminates in the pomp and parade of the christening of the infant
Elizabeth! Such is Shakespeare's conception of history! Who could guess
from reading these English historical plays that throughout the period
which they cover English freedom was growing, that justice and the
rights of man were asserting themselves, while despotism was gradually
curbed and limited? This is the one great glory of English history,
exhibiting itself at Runnymede, reflected in Wyclif and John Ball and
Wat Tyler, and shining dimly in the birth of a national church under the
eighth Henry. As Shakespeare wrote, it was preparing for a new and
conspicuous outburst. When he died, Oliver Cromwell was already
seventeen years of age and John Hampden twenty-two. The spirit of
Hampden was preeminently the English spirit--the spirit which has given
distinction to the Anglo-Saxon race--and he and Shakespeare were
contemporaries, and yet of this spirit not a vestige is to be found in
the English historical plays and no opportunities lost to obliterate or
distort its manifestations. Only in Brutus and his
fellow-conspirators--of all Shakespearian characters--do we find the
least consideration for liberty, and even then he makes the common, and
perhaps in his time the unavoidable, mistake of overlooking the
genuinely democratic leanings of Julius Cæsar and the anti-popular
character of the successful plot against him.
It has in all ages been a pastime of noble minds to try to depict a
perfect state of society. Forty years before Shakespeare's birth, Sir
Thomas More published his "Utopia" to the world. Bacon intended to do
the same thing in the "New Atlantis," but never completed the work,
while Sir Philip Sidney gives us his dream in his "Arcadia." Montaigne
makes a similar essay, and we quote from Florio's translation, published
in 1603, the following passage (Montaigne's "Essays," Book I, Chapter
30):
"It is a nation, would I answer Plato, that hath no kind of traffic, no
knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate
nor of political superiority; no use of service, of riches, or of
poverty; no contracts, no succession, no dividences; no occupation, but
idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no
manuring of lands; no use of wine, corn, or metal. The very words that
import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy,
detraction, and pardon were never heard among them."
We may readily infer that Shakespeare found little to sympathize with in
this somewhat extravagant outline of a happy nation, but he goes out of
his way to travesty it. In "The Tempest" he makes Gonzalo, the noblest
character in the play, hold the following language to the inevitable
king (Shakespeare can not imagine even a desert island without a king!):
"Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,
I' th' commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn or wine or oil;
No occupation; all men idle,--all,
And women too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty, ...
Sebastian. Yet he would be king on't.
Antonia. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets
the beginning.
Gonzalo. All things in common. Nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavor; treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
Would I not have; but Nature should bring forth
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people.
Seb. No marrying 'mong his subjects?
Ant. None, man; all idle, whores, and knaves.
Gon. I would with such perfection govern, sir,
To 'xcel the golden age.
Seb. 'Save his Majesty!
Ant. Long live Gonzalo!
Gon. And do you mark me, sir?
King. Pr'ythee, no more; thou dost talk nothing to me.
Gon. I do well believe your Highness; and did it to
minister occasion to these gentlemen, who are of such
sensible and nimble lungs that they always use to laugh
at nothing.
Ant. 'Twas you we laughed at.
Gon. Who, in this kind of merry fooling, am nothing
to you; so you may continue and laugh at nothing still."
(Tempest, Act 2, Sc. 1.)
That all things are not for the best in the best of all possible worlds
would seem to result from the wise remarks made by the fishermen who
enliven the scene in "Pericles, Prince of Tyre." They compare landlords
to whales who swallow up everything, and suggest that the land be purged
of "these drones that rob the bee of her honey"; and Pericles, so far
from being shocked at such revolutionary and vulgar sentiments, is
impressed by their weight, and speaks kindly of the humble philosophers,
who in their turn are hospitable to the shipwrecked prince--all of which
un-Shakespearian matter adds doubt to the authenticity of this drama
(Act 2, Sc. 1).
However keen the insight of Shakespeare may have been into the hearts of
his high-born characters, he had no conception of the unity of the human
race. For him the prince and the peasant were not of the same blood.
"For princes are
A model, which heaven makes like to itself,"
says King Simonides in "Pericles," and here at least we seem to see the
hand of Shakespeare (Act 2, Sc. 2). The two princes, Guiderius and
Arviragus, brought up secretly in a cave, show their royal origin
(Cymbeline, Act 3, Sc. 3), and the servants who see Coriolanus in
disguise are struck by his noble figure (Coriolanus, Act 4, Sc. 5).
Bastards are villains as a matter of course, witness Edmund in "Lear"
and John in "Much Ado about Nothing," and no degree of contempt is too
high for a
"hedge-born swain
That doth presume to boast of gentle blood."
(Henry VI., Part 1, Act 4, Sc. 1.)
Courage is only to be expected in the noble-born. The Duke of York says:
"Let pale-faced fear keep with the mean-born man,
And find no harbor in a royal heart."
(Henry VI., Part 2, Act 3, Sc. 1.)
In so far as the lower classes had any relation to the upper classes, it
was one, thought Shakespeare, of dependence and obligation. It was not
the tiller of the soil who fed the lord of the manor, but rather the
lord who supported the peasant. Does not the king have to lie awake and
take thought for his subjects? Thus Henry V. complains that he can not
sleep
"so soundly as the wretched slave,
Who with a body filled and vacant mind,
Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread,
Never sees horrid night, the child of Hell,
But like a lackey, from the rise to set,
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night
Sleeps in Elysium....
The slave, a member of the country's peace,
Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots
What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages."
(Henry V., Act 4, Sc. 1.)
And these lines occur at the end of a passage in which the king laments
the "ceremony" that oppresses him and confesses that but for it he would
be "but a man." He makes this admission, however, in a moment of danger
and depression. Henry IV. also invokes sleep (Part 2, Act 2, Sc. 1):
"O thou dull god! why liest thou with the vile
In loathsome beds?"
But plain people have to watch at times, and the French sentinel finds
occasion to speak in the same strain:
"Thus are poor servitors
(When others sleep upon their quiet beds)
Constrained to watch in darkness, rain, and cold."
(Henry VI., Part 1, Act 2, Sc. 1.)
Henry VI. is also attracted by the peasant's lot:
"O God, methinks it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain....
... The shepherd's homely curds,
His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade,
All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,
As far beyond a prince's delicates."
(Henry VI., Part 3, Act 2, Sc. 5.)
All of which is natural enough, but savors of cant in the mouths of men
who fought long and hard to maintain themselves upon their thrones.
We have already shown by references to the contemporary drama that the
plea of custom is not sufficient to explain Shakespeare's attitude to
the lower classes, but if we widen our survey to the entire field of
English letters in his day, we shall see that he was running counter to
all the best traditions of our literature. From the time of Piers
Plowman down, the peasant had stood high with the great writers of
poetry and prose alike. Chaucer's famous circle of story-tellers at the
Tabard Inn in Southwark was eminently democratic. With the knight and
the friar were gathered together
"An haberdasher and a carpenter,
A webbe, a deyer and tapiser,"
and the tales of the cook and the miller take rank with those of the
squire and lawyer. The English Bible, too, was in Shakespeare's hands,
and he must have been familiar with shepherd kings and
fishermen-apostles. In the very year in which "Hamlet" first appeared, a
work was published in Spain which was at once translated into English, a
work as well known to-day as Shakespeare's own writings. If the
peasantry was anywhere to be neglected and despised, where should it be
rather than in proud, aristocratic Spain, and yet, to place beside
Shakespeare's Bottoms and Slys, Cervantes has given us the admirable
Sancho Panza, and has spread his loving humor in equal measure over
servant and master. Are we to believe that the yeomen of England, who
beat back the Armada, were inferior to the Spanish peasantry whom they
overcame, or is it not rather true that the Spanish author had a deeper
insight into his country's heart than was allotted to the English
dramatist? Cervantes, the soldier and adventurer, rose above the
prejudices of his class, while Shakespeare never lifted his eyes beyond
the narrow horizon of the Court to which he catered. It was love that
opened Cervantes's eye, and it is in all-embracing love that Shakespeare
was deficient. As far as the common people were concerned, he never held
the mirror up to nature.
But the book of all others which might have suggested to Shakespeare
that there was more in the claims of the lower classes than was dreamt
of in his philosophy was More's "Utopia," which in its English form was
already a classic. More, the richest and most powerful man in England
after the king, not only believed in the workingman, but knew that he
suffered from unjust social conditions. He could never have represented
the down-trodden followers of Cade-Tyler nor the hungry mob in
"Coriolanus" with the utter lack of sympathy which Shakespeare
manifests. "What justice is there in this," asks the great Lord
Chancellor, whose character stood the test of death--"what justice is
there in this, that a nobleman, a goldsmith, a banker, or any other man,
that either does nothing at all or at best is employed in things that
are of no use to the public, should live in great luxury and splendor
upon what is so ill acquired; and a mean man, a carter, a smith, a
plowman, that works harder even than the beasts themselves, and is
employed on labors so necessary that no commonwealth could hold out a
year without them, can only earn so poor a livelihood, and must lead so
miserable a life, that the condition of the beasts is much better than
theirs?"
How different from this is Shakespeare's conception of the place of the
workingman in society! After a full and candid survey of his plays,
Bottom, the weaver with the ass's head, remains his type of the artizan
and the "mutable, rank-scented many," his type of the masses. Is it
unfair to take the misshapen "servant-monster" Caliban as his last word
on the subject?
"Prospero. We'll visit Caliban my slave who never
Yields us kind answer.
Miranda. 'Tis a villain, sir,
I do not love to look on.
Prospero. But as 'tis,
We can not miss him! he does make our fire,
Fetch in our wood, and serve in offices
That profit us." (Tempest, Act 1, Sc. 2.)
To which I would fain reply in the words of Edward Carpenter:
"Who art thou ...
With thy faint sneer for him who wins thee bread
And him who clothes thee, and for him who toils
Day-long and night-long dark in the earth for thee?"
LETTER FROM MR. G. BERNARD SHAW
(Extracts)
As you know, I have striven hard to open English eyes to the emptiness
of Shakespeare's philosophy, to the superficiality and second-handedness
of his morality, to his weakness and incoherence as a thinker, to his
snobbery, his vulgar prejudices, his ignorance, his disqualifications of
all sorts for the philosophic eminence claimed for him.... The preface
to my "Three Plays for Puritans" contains a section headed "Better than
Shakespeare?" which is, I think, the only utterance of mine on the
subject to be found in a book.... There is at present in the press a new
preface to an old novel of mine called "The Irrational Knot." In that
preface I define the first order in Literature as consisting of those
works in which the author, instead of accepting the current morality and
religion ready-made without any question as to their validity, writes
from an original moral standpoint of his own, thereby making his book an
original contribution to morals, religion, and sociology, as well as to
_belles letters_. I place Shakespeare with Dickens, Scott, Dumas pГЁre,
etc., in the second order, because, tho they are enormously
entertaining, their morality is ready-made; and I point out that the one
play, "Hamlet," in which Shakespeare made an attempt to give as a hero
one who was dissatisfied with the ready-made morality, is the one which
has given the highest impression of his genius, altho Hamlet's revolt is
unskillfully and inconclusively suggested and not worked out with any
philosophic competence.[4]
May I suggest that you should be careful not to imply that Tolstoy's
great Shakespearian heresy has no other support than mine. The preface
of Nicholas Rowe to his edition of Shakespeare, and the various prefaces
of Dr. Johnson contain, on Rowe's part, an apology for him as a writer
with obvious and admitted shortcomings (very ridiculously ascribed by
Rowe to his working by "a mere light of nature"), and, on Johnson's, a
good deal of downright hard-hitting criticism. You should also look up
the history of the Ireland forgeries, unless, as is very probable,
Tolstoy has anticipated you in this. Among nineteenth-century poets
Byron and William Morris saw clearly that Shakespeare was enormously
overrated intellectually. A French book, which has been translated into
English, has appeared within the last ten years, giving Napoleon's
opinions of the drama. His insistence on the superiority of Corneille to
Shakespeare on the ground of Corneille's power of grasping a political
situation, and of seeing men in their relation to the state, is
interesting.
Of course you know about Voltaire's criticisms, which are the more
noteworthy because Voltaire began with an extravagant admiration for
Shakespeare, and got more and more bitter against him as he grew older
and less disposed to accept artistic merit as a cover for philosophic
deficiencies.
Finally, I, for one, shall value Tolstoy's criticism all the more
because it is criticism of a foreigner who can not possibly be enchanted
by the mere word-music which makes Shakespeare so irresistible in
England.[5] In Tolstoy's estimation, Shakespeare must fall or stand as a
thinker, in which capacity I do not think he will stand a moment's
examination from so tremendously keen a critic and religious realist.
Unfortunately, the English worship their great artists quite
indiscriminately and abjectly; so that is quite impossible to make them
understand that Shakespeare's extraordinary literary power, his fun, his
mimicry, and the endearing qualities that earned him the title of "the
gentle Shakespeare"--all of which, whatever Tolstoy may say, are quite
unquestionable facts--do not stand or fall with his absurd reputation as
a thinker. Tolstoy will certainly treat that side of his reputation with
the severity it deserves; and you will find that the English press will
instantly announce that Tolstoy considers his own works greater than
Shakespeare's (which in some respects they most certainly are, by the
way), and that he has attempted to stigmatize our greatest poet as a
liar, a thief, a forger, a murderer, an incendiary, a drunkard, a
libertine, a fool, a madman, a coward, a vagabond, and even a man of
questionable gentility. You must not be surprised or indignant at this:
it is what is called "dramatic criticism" in England and America. Only a
few of the best of our journalist-critics will say anything worth
reading on the subject.
Yours faithfully,
G. BERNARD SHAW.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Besides the prefaces here referred to, Mr. G. Bernard Shaw has at
various times written other articles on the subject.--(V. T.)
[5] It should be borne in mind that this letter was written before Mr.
G. B. Shaw had seen the essay in question, by Tolstoy, now published in
this volume.--(V. T.)
"No one will peruse a page without laying down the book a
better and a wiser man."--_Dundee Courier._
Tolstoy's Essays and Letters
By LEO TOLSTOY
Translated by AYLMER MAUDE
This work contains twenty-six essays and letters (many
published for the first time) belonging to the last fifteen
years of Tolstoy's career, the period in which he has
devoted himself exclusively to humanitarian labors.
Therefore each has a definite altruistic purpose. In the
letters in particular we have, in the words of the
translator, "Tolstoy's opinions in application to certain
definite conditions. They thus help to bridge the gulf
between theory and practise."
HIGHLY COMMENDED
"The subjects are varied, and present Tolstoy's
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"For those who wish to be well instructed in
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"These essays form an admirable introduction to
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12mo, Cloth, 372 pp. Price, $1.00, post-paid
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NEW YORK and LONDON
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Tolstoy's Plays
Also Annotated List of Works
This volume, a new translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude,
contains Tolstoy's three great plays, together with the
Russian folk-tale of which one of them is the dramatized
version. It also includes a complete annotated and
chronological list of Tolstoy's works of special
helpfulness to all readers and students of the great
Russian writer.
LIST OF THE PLAYS
=The Power of Darkness=; or, If a Claw is Caught the Bird
is Lost--A drama in five acts.
=The First Distiller=--A comedy in six acts.
=Fruits of Culture=--A comedy in four acts.
INCLUDING ALSO
=The Imp and the Crust=--This is a Russian folk-tale, of
which "The First Distiller" is the dramatized version.
=Their High Literary and Dramatic Value=
To their literary merit Tolstoy's plays add the quality of
being excellent acting dramas, as their success both in
Russia and elsewhere has abundantly shown. Mr. Laurence
Irving lately wrote: "I suppose England is the only country
in Europe where 'The Power of Darkness' has not been acted.
It ought to be done. It is a stupendous tragedy; the effect
on the stage is unparalleled."
=Their Wide Range of Sentiment=
"Between Tolstoy's two great plays," says the translator,
"'The Power of Darkness' and 'The Fruits of Culture,' the
contrast is very striking. The first is intensely moral,
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'Fruits of Culture,' a play brimful of laughter and
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Handsomely printed on deckle-edge paper, gilt-top,
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