A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Man Shakespeare

F >> Frank Harris >> The Man Shakespeare




Shakespeare had many of the weaknesses of the neurotic and artistic
temperament, but he had assuredly the noblest virtues of it: he was true
to his friends, and more than generous to their merits.

If his ethical conscience was faulty, his aesthetical conscience was of
the very highest. Whenever we find him in close relations with his
contemporaries we are struck with his kindness and high impartial
intelligence. Were they his rivals, he found the perfect word for their
merits and shortcomings. How can one better praise Chapman than by
talking of

"The proud full sail of his great verse"?

How can one touch his defect more lightly than by hinting that his
learning needed feathers to lift it from the ground? And if Shakespeare
was fair even to his rivals, his friends could always reckon on his
goodwill and his unwearied service. All his fine qualities came out when
as an elder he met churlish Ben Jonson. Jonson did not influence him as
much as Marlowe had influenced him; but these were the two greatest of
living men with whom he was brought into close contact, and his
relations with Jonson show him as in a glass. Rowe has a characteristic
story which must not be forgotten:

"His acquaintance with Ben Jonson began with a remarkable
piece of humanity and good-nature; Mr. Jonson,
who was at that time altogether unknown, had offered
one of his playes to the Players, in order to have it
acted; but the persons into whose hands it was put, after
having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, were
just upon returning it to him, with an ill-natured answer,
that it would be of no service to their company, when
Shakespeare luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something
so well in it as to encourage him to read through
and afterwards to recommend Ben Jonson and his writings
to the publick. After this they were professed
friends; though I don't know whether the other ever
made him an equal return of gentleness and sincerity.
Ben was naturally proud and indolent, and in the days
of his reputation did so far take upon him the premier
in witt that he could not but look with an evil eye upon
anyone that seemed to stand in competition with him.
And if at times he has affected to commend him, it has
always been with some reserve, insinuating his incorrectness,
a careless manner of writing and a want of judgment;
the praise of seldom altering or blotting out what
he writt which was given him by the players over the first
publish of his works after his death was what Jonson
could not bear...."

The story reads exactly like the story of Goethe and Schiller. It was
Schiller who held aloof and was full of fault-finding criticism: it was
Goethe who made all the advances and did all the kindnesses. It was
Goethe who obtained for Schiller that place as professor of history at
Jena which gave Schiller the leisure needed for his dramatic work. It is
always the greater who gives and forgives.

I believe, of course, too, in the traditional account of the
unforgettable evenings at the Mermaid. "Many were the wit-combats,"
wrote Fuller of Shakespeare in his "Worthies" (1662), "betwixt him and
Ben Jonson, which too I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an
English man of war. Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher
in learning, solid but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the
English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn
with all sides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the
quickness of his wit and invention."

It was natural for the onlooker to compare Ben Jonson and his
"mountainous belly" to some Spanish galleon, and Shakespeare, with his
quicker wit, to the more active English ship. It was Jonson's great
size--a quality which has always been too highly esteemed in
England--his domineering temper and desperate personal courage that
induced the gossip to even him with Shakespeare.

Beaumont described these meetings, too, in his poetical letter to his
friend Jonson:

"What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid? Heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life."

In one respect at least the two men were antitheses. Jonson was
exceedingly combative and quarrelsome, and seems to have taken a chief
part in all the bitter disputes of his time between actors and men of
letters. He killed one actor in a duel and attacked Marston and Dekker
in "The Poetaster"; they replied to him in the "Satiromastix." More than
once he criticized Shakespeare's writings; more than once jibed at
Shakespeare, unfairly trying to wound him; but Shakespeare would not
retort. It is to Jonson's credit that though he found fault with
Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" and "Pericles," he yet wrote of him in the
"Poetaster" as a peacemaker, and, under the name of Virgil, honoured him
as the greatest master of poetry.

Tradition gives us one witty story about the relations between the pair
which seems to me extraordinarily characteristic. Shakespeare was
godfather to one of Ben's children, and after the christening, being in
a deep study, Jonson came to cheer him up, and asked him why he was so
melancholy. "No, faith, Ben," says he; "not I, but I have been
considering a great while what should be the fittest gift for me to
bestow upon my godchild and I have resolved at last." "I pr'ythee,
what?" sayes he. "I'faith, Ben, I'll e'en give him a dozen good Lattin
spoons, and thou shalt translate them." Lattin, as everybody knows, was
a mixed metal resembling brass: the play upon words and sly fun poked at
Jonson's scholarship are in Shakespeare's best manner. The story must be
regarded as Shakespeare's answer to Jonson's sneer that he had "little
Latine and lesse Greeke."

Through the mist of tradition and more or less uncertain references in
his poetry, one sees that he had come, probably through Southampton, to
admire Essex, and the fall and execution of Essex had an immense effect
upon him. It is certain, I think, that the noble speech on mercy put
into Portia's mouth in "The Merchant of Venice," was primarily an appeal
to Elizabeth for Essex or for Southampton. It is plainly addressed to
the Queen, and not to a Jew pariah:

"... It becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this scepter'd sway,
It is enthroned in the heart of kings.
It is an attribute of God Himself,
And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When Mercy seasons Justice."

All this must have seemed the veriest irony when addressed to an outcast
Jew. It was clearly intended as an appeal to Elizabeth, and shows how
far gentle Shakespeare would venture in defence of a friend. Like a
woman, he gained a certain courage through his affections.

I feel convinced that he resented the condemnation of Essex and the
imprisonment of Southampton very bitterly, for though he had praised
Elizabeth in his salad days again and again, talked about her in "A
Midsummer Night's Dream" as a "fair vestal throned by the west"; walking
in "maiden meditation, fancy-free"; yet, when she died, he could not be
induced to write one word about her. His silence was noticed, and
Chettle challenged him to write in praise of the dead sovereign, because
she had been kind to him; but he would not: he had come to realise the
harsh nature of Elizabeth, and he detested her ruthless cruelties. Like
a woman, he found it difficult to forgive one who had injured those he
loved. Now that I have discussed at some length Shakespeare's character,
its powers and its weaknesses, let us for a moment consider his
intellect. All sorts and conditions of men talk of it in superlatives;
but that does not help us much. It is as easy to sit in Shakespeare's
brain and think from there, as it is from Balzac's. If we have read
Shakespeare rightly, his intelligence was peculiarly self-centred; he
was wise mainly through self-knowledge, and not, as is commonly
supposed, through knowledge of others and observation; he was assuredly
anything but worldly-wise. Take one little point. In nearly every play
he discovers an intense love of music and of flowers; but he never tells
you anything about the music he loves, and he only mentions a dozen
flowers in all his works. True, he finds exquisite phrases for his
favourites; but he only seems to have noticed or known the commonest.
His knowledge of birds and beasts is similarly limited. But when Bacon
praises flowers he shows at once the naturalist's gift of observation;
he mentions hundreds of different kinds, enumerating them month by
month; in April alone he names as many as Shakespeare has mentioned in
all his writings. He used his eyes to study things outside himself, and
memory to recall them; but Shakespeare's eyes were turned inward; he
knew little of the world outside himself.

Shakespeare's knowledge of men and women has been overrated. With all
his sensuality he only knew one woman, Mary Fitton, though he knew her
in every mood, and only one man, himself, profoundly apprehended in
every accident and moment of growth.

He could not construct plays or invent stories, though he selected good
ones with considerable certainty. He often enriched the characters,
seldom or never the incidents; even the characters he creates are
usually sides of himself, or humorous masks without a soul. He must have
heard of the statesman Burleigh often enough; but nowhere does he
portray him; no hint in his works of Drake, or Raleigh, or Elizabeth, or
Sidney. He has no care either for novelties; he never mentions forks or
even tobacco or potatoes. A student by nature if ever there was one, all
intent, as he tells us, on bettering his mind, he passes through Oxford
a hundred times and never even mentions the schools: Oxford men had
disgusted him with their alma mater.

The utmost reach of this self-student is extraordinary; the main puzzle
of life is hidden from us as from him; but his word on it is deeper than
any of ours, though we have had three centuries in which to climb above
him.

"Men must abide
Their going hence even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all."

And if it be said that the men of the Renaissance occupied themselves
more with such questions than we do, and therefore show better in
relation to them, let us take another phrase which has always seemed to
me of extraordinary insight. Antony has beaten Caesar, and returns to
Cleopatra, who greets him with the astounding words:

"Lord of lords,
O, infinite virtue, com'st thou smiling from
The world's great snare uncaught?"

This is all more or less appropriate in the mouth of Cleopatra; but it
is to me Shakespeare's own comment on life; he is conscious of his
failure; he has said to himself: "if I, Shakespeare, have failed, it is
because every one fails; life's handicap searches out every weakness; to
go through life as a conqueror would require 'infinite virtue.'" This is
perhaps the furthest throw of Shakespeare's thought.

But his worldly wisdom is to seek. After he had been betrayed by Lord
Herbert he raves of man's ingratitude, in play after play. Of course men
are ungrateful; it is only the rarest and noblest natures who can feel
thankful for help without any injury to vanity. The majority of men love
their inferiors, those whom they help; to give flatters self-esteem; but
they hate their superiors, and lend to the word "patron" an intolerable
smirk of condescension. Shakespeare should have understood that at
thirty.

When his vanity was injured, his blindness was almost inconceivable. He
should have seen Mary Fitton as she was and given us a deathless-true
portrait of her; but the noble side of her, the soul-side a lover should
have cherished, is not even suggested. He deserved to lose her, seeking
only the common, careless of the "silent, silver lights" she could have
shown him. He was just as blind with his wife; she had been unwillingly
the ladder to his advancement; he should have forgiven her on that
ground, if not on a higher.

He was inordinately vain and self-centred. He talked incontinently, as
he himself assures us, and as Ben Jonson complains. He was exceedingly
quick and witty and impatient. His language shows his speed of thought;
again and again the images tumble over each other, and the mere music of
his verse is breathlessly rapid, just as the movement of Tennyson's
verse is extremely slow.

More than once in his works I have shown how, at the crisis of fate, he
jumps to conclusions like a woman. He seems often to have realized the
faults of his own haste. His Othello says:

"How poor are they that have not patience."

With this speed of thought and wealth of language and of wit, he
naturally loved to show off in conversation; but as he wished to get on
and make a figure in the world, he should have talked less and
encouraged his patrons to show off. Poor heedless, witty, charming
Shakespeare! One threat which he used again and again, discovers all his
world-blindness to me. Gravely, in sonnet 140, he warns Mary Fitton that
she had better not provoke him or he will write the truth about
her--just as if the maid of honour who could bear bastard after bastard,
while living at court, cared one straw what poor Shakespeare might say
or write or sing of her. And Hamlet runs to the same weapon: he praises
the players to Polonius as

"Brief chronicles of the time; after your death you
were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while
you live."

It is all untrue; actors were then, as now, only mummers without
judgement. Shakespeare was thinking of himself, the dramatist-poet, who
was indeed a chronicle of the time; but the courtier Lord Polonius would
not care a dam for a rhymester's praise or blame. Posthumus, too, will
write against the wantons he dislikes. Shakespeare's weapon of offence
was his pen; but though he threatened, he seldom used it maliciously; he
was indeed a "harmless opposite," too full of the milk of human kindness
to do injury to any man. But these instances of misapprehension in the
simple things of life, show us that gentle Shakespeare is no trustworthy
guide through this rough all-hating world. The time has now come for me
to consider how Shakespeare was treated by the men of his own time, and
how this treatment affected his character. The commentators, of course,
all present him as walking through life as a sort of uncrowned king,
fêted and reverenced on all sides during his residence in London, and in
the fullness of years and honours retiring to Stratford to live out the
remainder of his days in the bosom of his family as "a prosperous
country gentleman," to use Dowden's unhappy phrase. As I have already
shown, his works give the lie to this flattering fiction, which in all
parts is of course absolutely incredible. It is your Tennyson, who is of
his time and in perfect sympathy with it; Tennyson, with his May Queens,
prig heroes and syrupy creed, who passes through life as a conqueror,
and after death is borne in state to rest in the great Abbey.

The Shakespeares, not being of an age, but for all time, have another
guess sort of reception. From the moment young Will came to London, he
was treated as an upstart, without gentle birth or college training: to
Greene he was "Maister of Artes in Neither University." He won through,
and did his work; but he never could take root in life; his children
perished out of the land. He was in high company on sufferance. On the
stage he met the highest, Essex, Pembroke, Southampton, on terms of
equality; but at court he stood among the menials and was despitefully
treated. Let no one misunderstand me: I should delight in painting the
other picture if there were any truth in it: I should have joyed in
showing how the English aristocracy for this once threw off their
senseless pride and hailed the greatest of men at least as an equal.
Frederic the Great would have done this, for he put Voltaire at his own
table, and told his astonished chamberlains that "privileged spirits
rank with sovereigns." Such wisdom was altogether above the English
aristocracy of that or any time. Yet they might have risen above the
common in this one instance. For Shakespeare had not only supreme genius
to commend him, but all the graces of manner, all the sweetness of
disposition, all the exquisite courtesies of speech that go to ensure
social success. His imperial intelligence, however, was too heavy a
handicap. Men resent superiority at all times, and there is nothing your
aristocrat so much dislikes as intellectual superiority, and especially
intellect that is not hall-marked and accredited: the Southamptons and
the Pembrokes must have found Shakespeare's insight and impartiality
intolerable. It was Ben Jonson whom Pembroke made Poet Laureate; it was
Chapman the learned, and not Shakespeare, who was regarded with
reverence. How could these gentlemen appreciate Shakespeare when it was
his "Venus and Adonis" and his "Lucrece" that they chiefly admired.
"Venus and Adonis" went through seven editions in Shakespeare's
lifetime, while "Othello" was not thought worthy of type till the author
had been dead six years.

But badly as the aristocrats treated Shakespeare they yet treated him
better than any other class. The shopkeepers in England are infinitely
further removed from art or poetry than the nobles; now as in the time
of Elizabeth they care infinitely more for beef and beer and broadcloth
than for any spiritual enjoyment; while the masses of the people prefer
a dog-fight to any masterpiece in art or letters.

Some will say that Shakespeare was perhaps condemned for dissolute
living, and did not come to honour because of his shortcomings in
character. Such a judgement misapprehends life altogether. Had
Shakespeare's character been as high as his intellect he would not have
been left contemptuously on one side; he would have been hated and
persecuted, pilloried or thrown into prison as Bunyan was. It was his
dissolute life that commended him to the liking of the loose-living
Pembroke and Essex. Pembroke, we know from Clarendon, was "immoderately
given to women." Four maids of honour, we learn, were enceintes
to Essex at the same time. Shakespeare was hardly as dissolute as his
noble patrons. The truth was they could not understand his genius; they
had no measure wherewith to measure it, for no one can see above his own
head; and so they treated him with much the same condescending
familiarity that nobles nowadays show to a tenor or a ballet dancer. In
March, 1604, after he had written "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," Shakespeare
and some other actors walked from the Tower of London to Westminster in
the procession which accompanied King James on his formal entry into
London. Each of the actors received four and a half yards of scarlet
cloth to wear as a cloak on the occasion. The scarlet cloak to
Shakespeare must have been a sort of Nessus' shirt, or crown of
thorns--the livery of derision.

Shakespeare, who measured both enemies and friends fairly, measured
himself fairly, too. He usually praises his impersonations: Hamlet is "a
noble heart," Brutus "the noblest Roman of them all"; and speaking
directly he said of himself in a sonnet:

"I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own;
I may be straight though they themselves be bevel."

He knew his own greatness, none better, and as soon as he reached middle
age and began to take stock of himself, he must have felt bitterly that
he, the best mind in the world, had not brought it far in the ordinary
estimation of men. No wonder he showed passionate sympathy with all
those who had failed in life; he could identify himself with Brutus and
Antony, and not with the Caesars.

Shakespeare's view of England and of Englishmen was naturally affected
by their treatment of him. He is continually spoken of as patriotic, and
it is true that he started in youth with an almost lyrical love of
country. His words in "Richard II." are often quoted; but they were
written before he had any experience or knowledge of men.

"Gaunt. This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat, defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."

The apologists who rejoice in his patriotism never realize that
Shakespeare did not hold the same opinions throughout his life; as he
grew and developed, his opinions developed with him. In "The Merchant of
Venice" we find that he has already come to saner vision; when Portia
and Nerissa talk of the English suitor, Portia says:

"You know I say nothing to him; for he understands
not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor
Italian; and you will come into the court and swear that
I have a poor pennyworth in the Englishman. He is a
proper man's picture; but, alas, who can converse with a
dumb show? How oddly he is suited! I think he bought
his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet
in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere."

What super-excellent criticism it all is; true, now as then, "a proper
man's picture but ... a dumb show." It proves conclusively that
Shakespeare was able to see around and over the young English noble of
his day. From this time on I find no praise of England or of Englishmen
in any of his works, except "Henry V.," which was manifestly written to
catch applause on account of its jingoism. In his maturity Shakespeare
saw his countrymen as they were, and mentioned them chiefly to blame
their love of drinking. Imogen says:

"Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night,
Are they not but in Britain?..........................prithee, think
There's livers out of Britain."

Whoever reads "Coriolanus" carefully will see how Shakespeare loathed
the common Englishman; there can be no doubt at all that he incorporated
his dislike of him once for all in Caliban. The qualities he lends
Caliban are all characteristic. Whoever will give him drink is to
Caliban a god. The brutish creature would violate and degrade art
without a scruple, and the soul of him is given in the phrase that if he
got the chance he would people the world with Calibans. Sometimes one
thinks that if Shakespeare were living to-day he would be inclined to
say that his prediction had come true.

One could have guessed without proof that in the course of his life
Shakespeare, like Goethe, would rise above that parochial vanity which
is so much belauded as patriotism. He was in love with the ideal and
would not confine it to any country.

There is little to tell of his life after he met Mary Fitton, or rather
the history of his life afterwards is the history of his passion and
jealousy and madness as he himself has told it in the great tragedies.
He appears to have grown fat and scant of breath when he was about
thirty-six or seven. In 1608 his mother died, and "Coriolanus" was
written as a sort of monument to the memory of "the noblest mother in
the world." His intimacy with Mary Fitton lasted, I feel sure, up to his
breakdown in 1608 or thereabouts, and was probably the chief cause of
his infirmity and untimely death.

It only remains for me now to say a word or two about the end of his
life. Rowe says that "the latter part of his life was spent as all men
of good sense will that theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and the
conversation of his friends. He had the good fortune to gather an estate
equal to his occasion, and, in that, to his wish, and is said to have
spent some years before his death at his native Stratford." Rowe, too,
tells us that it is a story "well remembered in that country, that he
had a particular intimacy with Mr. Combe, an old gentleman noted
thereabouts for his wealth and usury; it happened that in a pleasant
conversation amongst their common friends Mr. Combe told Shakespeare, in
a laughing manner, that he fancied he intended to write his epitaph, if
he happened to outlive him; and since he did not know what might be said
of him when he was dead, he desired it might be done immediately; upon
which Shakespeare gave him these four verses:

"Ten in the Hundred lies here ingrav'd
'Tis a Hundred to Ten his soul is not sav'd:
If any Man ask, 'Who lies in this tomb,'
Oh! ho! quoth the Devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe."

But the sharpness of the Satyr is said to have stung the man so severely
that he never forgave him."

I have given all this because I want the reader to have the sources
before him, and because the contempt of tradesman-gain and usury, even
at the very end, is so characteristic.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.