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The Man Shakespeare

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"Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaways' eyes may wink, and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties."

And here what Posthumus says of Imogen:

"Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain'd,
And pray'd me oft forbearance: did it with
A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on't
Might well have warmed old Saturn."

Neither of these statements is very generally true: but the second is
out of character. When Shakespeare praises restraint in love he must
have been very weak; in full manhood he prayed for excess of it, and
regarded a surfeit as the only rational cure.

I think Shakespeare liked Posthumus and Imogen; but he could not have
thought "Cymbeline" a great work, and so he pulled himself together for
a masterpiece. He seems to have said to himself, "All that fighting of
Posthumus is wrong; men do not fight at forty-eight; I will paint myself
simply in the qualities I possess now; I will tell the truth about
myself so far as I can." The result is the portrait of Prospero in "The
Tempest."

Let me just say before I begin to study Prospero that I find the
introduction of the Masque in the fourth act extraordinarily
interesting. Ben Jonson had written classic masques for this and that
occasion; masques which were very successful, we are told; they had
"caught on," in fact, to use our modern slang. Shakespeare will now show
us that he, too, can write a masque with classic deities in it, and
better Jonson's example. It is pitiful, and goes to prove, I think, that
Shakespeare was but little esteemed by his generation.

Jonson answered him conceitedly, as Jonson would, in the Introduction to
his "Bartholomew Fair" (1612-14), "If there be never a Servant
monster i' the Fayre, who can help it, he sayes; nor a nest of
Antiques. He is loth to make nature afraid in his Playes,
like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like
Drolleries."

At the very end, the creator of Hamlet, the finest mind in the world,
was eager to show that he could write as well in any style as the author
of "Every Man in his Humour." To me the bare fact is full of interest,
and most pitiful.

Let us now turn to "The Tempest," and see how our poet figures in it. It
is Shakespeare's last work, and one of his very greatest; his testament
to the English people; in wisdom and high poetry a miracle.

The portrait of Shakespeare we get in Prospero is astonishingly faithful
and ingenuous, in spite of its idealization. His life's day is waning to
the end; shadows of the night are drawing in upon him, yet he is the
same bookish, melancholy student, the lover of all courtesies and
generosities, whom we met first as Biron in "Love's Labour's Lost." The
gaiety is gone and the sensuality; the spiritual outlook is infinitely
sadder--that is what the years have done with our gentle Shakespeare.

Prospero's first appearance in the second scene of the first act is as a
loving father and magician; he says to Miranda:

"I have done nothing but in care of thee,
Of thee, my dear one! thee, my daughter."

He asks Miranda what she can remember of her early life, and reaches
magical words:

"What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?"

Miranda is only fifteen years of age. Shakespeare turned Juliet, it will
be remembered, from a girl of sixteen into one of fourteen; now, though
the sensuality has left him, he makes Miranda only fifteen; clearly he
is the same admirer of girlish youth at forty-eight as he was twenty
years before. Then Prospero tells Miranda of himself and his brother,
the "perfidious" Duke:

"And Prospero, the prime Duke, being so reputed
In dignity, and for the liberal arts
Without a parallel; those being all my study."

He will not only be a Prince now, but a master "without a parallel" in
the liberal arts. He must explain, too, at undue length, how he allowed
himself to be supplanted by his false brother, and speaks about himself
in Shakespeare's very words:

"I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicate
To closeness, and the bettering of my mind
With that, which, but by being so retired,
O'erprized all popular rate, in my false brother
Awaked an evil nature: and my trust,
Like a good parent, did beget of him,
A falsehood, in its contrary as great
As my trust was; which had, indeed, no limit,
A confidence sans bound."

Shakespeare, too, "neglecting worldly ends," had dedicated himself to
"bettering of his mind," we may be sure. Prospero goes on to tell us
explicitly how Shakespeare loved books, which we were only able to infer
from his earlier plays:

"Me, poor man, my library
Was dukedom large enough."

And again, Gonzalo (another name for Kent and Flavius) having given him
some books, he says:

"Of his gentleness,
Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me
From my own library, with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom."

His daughter grieves lest she had been a trouble to him: forthwith
Shakespeare-Prospero answers:

"O, a cherubim
Thou wast, that did preserve me. Thou didst smile
Infused with a fortitude from heaven,
When I have deck'd the sea with drops full salt
Under my burden groan'd; which raised in me
An undergoing stomach, to bear up
Against what should ensue."

But why should the magician weep or groan under a burden? had he no
confidence in his miraculous powers? All this is Shakespeare's
confession. Every word is true; his daughter did indeed "preserve"
Shakespeare, and enable him to bear up under the burden of life's
betrayals.

No wonder Prospero begins to apologize for this long-winded confession,
which indeed is "most impertinent" to the play, as he admits, though
most interesting to him and to us, for he is simply Shakespeare telling
us his own feelings at the time. The gentle magician then hears from
Ariel how the shipwreck has been conducted without harming a hair of
anyone.

The whole scene is an extraordinarily faithful and detailed picture of
Shakespeare's soul. I find significance even in the fact that Ariel
wants his freedom "a full year" before the term Prospero had originally
proposed. Shakespeare finished "The Tempest," I believe, and therewith
set the seal on his life's work a full year earlier than he had
intended; he feared lest death might surprise him before he had put the
pinnacle on his work. Ariel's torment, too, is full of meaning for me;
for Ariel is Shakespeare's "shaping spirit of imagination," who was once
the slave of "a foul witch," and by her "imprisoned painfully" for "a
dozen years."

That "dozen years" is to me astonishingly true and interesting: it shows
that my reading of the duration of his passion-torture was absolutely
correct--Shakespeare's "delicate spirit" and best powers bound to Mary
Fitton's "earthy" service from 1597 to 1608.

We can perhaps fix this latter date with some assurance. Mistress Fitton
married for the second time a Captain or Mr. Polwhele late in 1607, or
some short time before March, 1608, when the fact of her recent marriage
was recorded in the will of her great uncle. It seems to me probable, or
at least possible, that this event marks her complete separation from
Shakespeare; she may very likely have left the Court and London on
ceasing to be a Maid of Honour.

Shakespeare is so filled with himself in this last play, so certain that
he is the most important person in the world, that this scene is more
charged with intimate self-revealing than any other in all his works.
And when Ferdinand comes upon the stage Shakespeare lends him, too, his
own peculiar qualities. His puppets no longer interest him; he is
careless of characterization. Ferdinand says:

"This music crept by me upon the waters
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air."

Music, it will be remembered, had precisely the same peculiar effect
upon Duke Orsino in "Twelfth Night." Ferdinand, too, is extraordinarily
conceited:

"I am the best of them that speak this speech.
.... Myself am Naples."

Shakespeare's natural aristocratic pride as a Prince reinforced by his
understanding of his own real importance. Ferdinand then declares he
will be content with a prison if he can see Miranda in it:

"Space enough
Have I in such a prison."

Which is Hamlet's:

"I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself
a king of infinite space."

The second act, with its foiled conspiracy, is wretchedly bad, and the
meeting of Caliban and Trinculo with Stephanie does not improve it much,
Shakespeare has little interest now in anything outside himself: age and
greatness are as self-centred as youth.

In the third act the courtship of Ferdinand and Miranda is pretty, but
hardly more. Ferdinand is bloodless, thin, and Miranda swears "by her
modesty," as the jewel in her dower, which takes away a little from the
charming confession of girl-love:

"I would not wish
Any companion in the world but you."

The comic relief which follows is unspeakably dull; but the words of
Ariel, warning the King of Naples and the usurping Duke that the wrong
they have done Prospero is certain to be avenged unless blotted out by
"heart-sorrow and a clear life ensuing," are most characteristic and
memorable.

In the fourth act Prospero preaches, as we have seen, self-restraint to
Ferdinand in words which, in their very extravagance, show how deeply he
regretted his own fault with his wife before marriage. I shall consider
the whole passage when treating of Shakespeare's marriage as an incident
in his life. Afterwards comes the masque, and the marvellous speech of
Prospero, which touches the highest height of poetry:

"These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inhabit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled:
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell,
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind."

I have given the verses to the very end, for I find the insistence on
his age and weakness (which are not in keeping with the character of a
magician), a confession of Shakespeare himself: the words "beating mind"
are extraordinarily characteristic, proving as they do that his thoughts
and emotions were too strong for his frail body.

In the fifth act Shakespeare-Prospero shows himself to us at his
noblest: he will forgive his enemies:

"Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,
Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury
Do I take part: the rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,
The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown further."

In "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" we saw how Shakespeare-Valentine
forgave his faithless friend as soon as he repented: here is the same
creed touched to nobler expression.

And then, with all his wishes satisfied, his heart's desire
accomplished, Prospero is ready to set out for Milan again and home. We
all expect some expression of joy from him, but this is what we get:

"And thence retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave."

The despair is wholly unexpected and out of place, as was the story of
his weakness and infirmity, his "beating mind." It is evidently
Shakespeare's own confession. After writing "The Tempest" he intends to
retire to Stratford, where "every third thought shall be my grave."

I have purposely drawn special attention to Shakespeare's weakness and
despair at this time, because the sad, rhymed Epilogue which has to be
spoken by Prospero has been attributed to another hand by a good many
scholars. It is manifestly Shakespeare's, out of Shakespeare's very
heart indeed; though Mr. Israel Gollancz follows his leaders in saying
that the "Epilogue to the play is evidently by some other hand than
Shakespeare's": "evidently" is good. Here it is:

"Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not
Since I have my dukedom got,
And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want,
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults
As you from crimes would pardon'd be
Let your indulgence set me free."

From youth to age Shakespeare occupied himself with the deepest problems
of human existence; again and again we find him trying to pierce the
darkness that enshrouds life. Is there indeed nothing beyond the
grave--nothing? Is the noble fabric of human thought, achievement and
endeavour to fade into nothingness and pass away like the pageant of a
dream? He will not cheat himself with unfounded hopes, nor delude
himself into belief; he resigns himself with a sigh--it is the
undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns. But
Shakespeare always believed in repentance and forgiveness, and now,
world-weary, old and weak, he turns to prayer, [Footnote: Hamlet, too,
after speaking with his father's ghost, cries: "I'll go pray."] prayer
that--

"assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults."

Poor, broken Shakespeare! "My ending is despair": the sadness of it, and
the pity, lie deeper than tears.

What a man! to produce a masterpiece in spite of such weakness. What a
play is this "Tempest"! At length Shakespeare sees himself as he is, a
monarch without a country; but master of a very "potent art," a great
magician, with imagination as an attendant spirit, that can conjure up
shipwrecks, or enslave enemies, or create lovers at will; and all his
powers are used in gentle kindness. Ariel is a higher creation, more
spiritual and charming than any other poet has ever attempted; and
Caliban, the earth-born, half-beast, half-man--these are the poles of
Shakespeare's genius.




CHAPTER XIV

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE


Our long travail is almost at an end. We have watched Shakespeare
painting himself at various periods of his life, and at full length in
twenty dramas, as the gentle, sensuous poet-thinker. We have studied him
when given over to wild passion in the sonnets and elsewhere, and to
insane jealousy in "Othello"; we have seen him as Hamlet brooding on
revenge and self-murder, and in "Lear," and "Timon" raging on the verge
of madness, and in these ecstasies, when the soul is incapable of
feigning, we have discovered his true nature as it differed from the
ideal presentments which his vanity shaped and coloured. We have
corrected his personal estimate by that "story of faults conceal'd"
which Shakespeare himself referred to in sonnet 88. It only remains for
me now to give a brief account of his life and the incidents of it to
show that my reading of his character is borne out by the known facts,
and thus put the man in his proper setting, so to speak.

On the other hand, our knowledge of Shakespeare's character will help us
to reconstruct his life-story. What is known positively of his life
could be given in a couple of pages; but there are traditions of him,
tales about him, innumerable scraps of fact and fiction concerning him
which are more or less interesting and authentic; and now that we know
the man, we shall be able to accept or reject these reports with some
degree of confidence, and so arrive at a credible picture of his life's
journey, and the changes which Time wrought in him. In all I may say
about him I shall keep close to the facts as given in his works. When
tradition seems consonant with what Shakespeare has told us about
himself, or with what Ben Jonson said of him, I shall use it with
confidence.

Shakespeare was a common name in Warwickshire; other Shakespeares
besides the poet's family were known there in the sixteenth century, and
at least one other William Shakespeare in the neighbourhood of
Stratford. The poet's father, John Shakespeare, was of farmer stock, and
seems to have had an adventurous spirit: he left Snitterfield, his
birthplace, as a young man, for the neighbouring town of Stratford,
where he set up in business for himself. Aubrey says he was a butcher;
he certainly dealt in meat, skins, and leather, as well as in corn,
wool, and malt--an adaptable, quick man, who turned his hand to
anything--a Jack-of-all-trades. He appears to have been successful at
first, for in 1556, five years after coming to Stratford, he purchased
two freehold tenements, one with a garden in Henley Street, and the
other in Greenhill Street, with an orchard. In 1557 he was elected
burgess, or town councillor, and shortly afterwards did the best stroke
of business in his life by marrying Mary Arden, whose father had been a
substantial farmer. Mary inherited the fee simple of Asbies, a house
with some fifty acres of land at Wilmcote, and an interest in property
at Snitterfield; the whole perhaps worth some £80 or £90, or, say, £600
of our money. His marriage turned John Shakespeare into a well-to-do
citizen; he filled various offices in the borough, and in 1568 became a
bailiff, the highest position in the corporation. During his year of
office, we are told, he entertained two companies of actors at
Stratford.

Mary Arden seems to have been her father's favourite child, and though
she could not sign her own name, must have possessed rare qualities; for
the poet, as we learn from "Coriolanus," held her in extraordinary
esteem and affection, and mourned her after her death as "the noblest
mother in the world."

William Shakespeare, the first son and third child of this couple, was
born on the 22nd or 23rd April, 1564, no one knows which day; the
Stratford parish registers prove that he was baptized on 26th April. And
if the date of his birth is not known, neither is the place of it; his
father owned two houses in Henley Street, and it is uncertain which he
was born in.

John Shakespeare had, fortunately, nothing to pay for the education of
his sons. They had free tuition at the Grammar School at Stratford. The
poet went to school when he was seven or eight years of age, and
received an ordinary education together with some grounding in Latin. He
probably spent most of his time at first making stories out of the
frescoes on the walls. There can be no doubt that he learned easily all
he was taught, and still less doubt that he was not taught much. He
mastered Lyly's "Latin Grammar," and was taken through some conversation
books like the "Sententiae Pueriles," and not much further, for he puts
Latin phrases in the mouth of the schoolmasters, Holofernes in "Love's
Labour's Lost," and Hugh Evans in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," and all
these phrases are taken word for word either from Lyly's Grammar or from
the "Sententiae Pueriles." In "Titus Andronicus," too, one of Tamora's
sons, on reading a Latin couplet, says it is a verse of Horace, but he
"read it in the grammar," which was probably the author's case. Ben
Jonson's sneer was well-founded, Shakespeare had "little Latine and
lesse Greeke." His French, as shown in his "Henry V.," was anything but
good, and his Italian was probably still slighter.

It was lucky for Shakespeare that his father's increasing poverty
withdrew him from school early, and forced him into contact with life.
Aubrey says that "when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade [of
butcher]; but when he kill'd a calfe he would doe it in high style and
make a speech." I daresay young Will flourished about with a knife and
made romantic speeches; but I am pretty sure he never killed a calf.
Killing a calf is not the easiest part of a butcher's business; nor a
task which Shakespeare at any time would have selected. The tradition is
simply sufficient to prove that the town folk had already noticed the
eager, quick, spouting lad.

Of Shakespeare's life after he left school, say from thirteen to
eighteen, we know almost nothing. He probably did odd jobs for his
father from time to time; but his father's business seems to have run
rapidly from bad to worse; for in 1586 a creditor informed the local
Court that John Shakespeare had no goods on which distraint could be
levied, and on 6th September of the same year he was deprived of his
alderman's gown. During this period of steadily increasing poverty in
the house it was only to be expected that young Will Shakespeare would
run wild.

The tradition as given by Rowe says that he fell "into low company, and
amongst them some that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing engaged
him with them more than once in robbing the park of Sir Thomas Lucy of
Charlecot, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman,
as he then thought somewhat too severely, and in order to revenge that
ill-usage he made a ballad upon him."

Another story has it that Sir Thomas Lucy got a lawyer from Warwick to
prosecute the boys, and that Shakespeare stuck his satirical ballad to
the park gates at Charlecot. The ballad is said to have been lost, but
certain verses were preserved which fit the circumstances and suit
Shakespeare's character so perfectly that I for one am content to accept
them. I give the first and the last verses as most characteristic:

SONG

"A parliament member, a Justice of peace,
At home a poor scarecrow, in London an asse,
If Lowsie is lucy, as some volke miscalle it
Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befalle it.
He thinks himself greate
Yet an asse in his state,
We allowe by his ears but with asses to mate.
If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it
Sing lowsie Lucy whatever befalle it.
* * * * *
"If a juvenile frolick he cannot forgive,
We'll sing lowsie Lucy as long as we live,
And Lucy, the lowsie, a libel may calle it
Sing lowsie Lucy whatever befalle it.
He thinks himself greate
Yet an asse in his state,
We allowe by his ears but with asses to mate.
If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it
Sing lowsie Lucy, Whatever befalle it."

The last verse, so out of keeping in its curious impartiality with the
scurrilous refrain, appears to me to carry its own signature. There can
be no doubt that the verses give us young Shakespeare's feelings in the
matter. It was probably reading ballads and tales of "Merrie Sherwood"
that first inclined him to deer-stealing; and we have already seen from
his "Richard II." and "Henry IV." and "Henry V." that he had been led
astray by low companions.

In his idle, high-spirited youth, Shakespeare did worse than break
bounds and kill deer; he was at a loose end and up to all sorts of
mischief. At eighteen he had already courted and won Anne Hathaway, a
farmer's daughter of the neighbouring village of Shottery. Anne was
nearly eight years older than he was. Her father had died a short time
before and left Anne, his eldest daughter, £6 13s. 4d.,
or, say, £50 of our money. The house at Shottery, now shown as Anne
Hathaway's cottage, once formed part of Richard Hathaway's farmhouse,
and there, and in the neighbouring lanes, the lovers did their courting.
The wooing on Shakespeare's side was nothing but pastime, though it led
to marriage.

His marriage is perhaps the first serious mistake that Shakespeare made,
and it certainly influenced his whole life. It is needful, therefore, to
understand it as accurately as may be, however we may judge it. A man's
life, like a great river, may be limpid-pure in the beginning, and when
near its source; as it grows and gains strength it is inevitably sullied
and stained with earth's soilure.

The ordinary apologists would have us believe that the marriage was
happy; they know that Shakespeare was not married in Stratford, and,
though a minor, his parents' consent to the marriage was not obtained;
but they persist in talking about his love for his wife, and his wife's
devoted affection for him. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, the bell-wether of
the flock, has gone so far as to tell us how on the morning of the day
he died "his wife, who had smoothed the pillow beneath his head for the
last time, felt that her right hand was taken from her." Let us see if
there is any foundation for this sentimental balderdash. Here are some
of the facts.

In the Bishop of Worcester's register a licence was issued on 27th
November, 1582, authorizing the marriage of William Shakespeare with
Anne Whately, of Temple Grafton. On the very next day in the register of
the same Bishop there is a deed, wherein Fulk Sandells and John
Richardson, farmers of Shottery, bound themselves in the Bishop's court
under a surety of £40 to free the Bishop of all liability should a
lawful impediment--"by reason of any pre-contract or consanguinity"--be
subsequently disclosed to imperil the validity of the marriage, then in
contemplation, of William Shakespeare with Anne Hathaway.

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