Montaigne and Shakspere. J. M. Robertson

Montaigne and Shakspere - J. M. Robertson


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us know Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us There's a divinity" etc.

      Compare the following extracts from Florio's translation:—

      "The Dæmon of Socrates were peradventure a certain inpulsion or will which without the advice of his discourse presented itself unto him. In a mind so well purified, and by continual exercise of wisdom and virtue so well prepared as his was, it is likely his inclinations (though rash and inconsiderate) were ever of great moment, and worthy to be followed. Every man feeleth in himself some image of such agitations, of a prompt, vehement, and casual opinion. It is in me to give them some authority, that afford so little to our wisdom. And I have had some (equally weak in reason and violent in persuasion and dissuasion, which was more ordinary to Socrates) by which I have so happily and so profitably suffered myself to be transported, as they might perhaps be thought to contain some matter of divine inspiration."15

      "Even in our counsels and deliberations, some chance or good luck must needs be joined to them; for whatsoever our wisdom can effect is no great matter."16

      "When I consider the most glorious exploits of war, methinks I see that those who have had the conduct of them employ neither counsel nor deliberation about them, but for fashion sake, and leave the best part of the enterprise to fortune; and on the confidence they have in her aid, they still go beyond the limits of all discourse. Casual rejoicings and strange furies ensue among their deliberations."17 etc.

      Compare finally Florio's translation of the lines of Manilius cited by Montaigne at the end of the 47th Essay of the First Book:

      "'Tis best for ill-advis'd, wisdom may fail,18 Fortune proves not the cause that should prevail, But here and there without respect doth sail: A higher power forsooth us overdraws, And mortal states guides with immortal laws."

      It is to be remembered, indeed, that the idea expressed in Hamlet's words to Horatio is partly anticipated in the rhymed speech of the Player-King in the play-scene in Act III., which occurs in the First Quarto:

      "Our wills, our fates do so contrary run That our devices still are overthrown; Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own."

      Such a passage, reiterating a familiar commonplace, might seem at first sight to tell against the view that Hamlet's later speech to Horatio is an echo of Montaigne. But that view being found justified by the evidence, and the idea in that passage being exactly coincident with Montaigne's, while the above lines are only partially parallel in meaning, we are forced to admit that Shakspere may have been influenced by Montaigne even where a partial precedent might be found in his own or other English work.

      III. The phrase "discourse of reason," which is spoken by Hamlet in his first soliloquy,19 and which first appears in the Second Quarto, is not used by Shakspere in any play before Hamlet; and he uses it again in Troilus and Cressida;20 while "discourse of thought" appears in Othello;21 and "discourse," in the sense of reasoning faculty, is used in Hamlet's last soliloquy.22 In English literature this use of the word seems to be special in Shakspere's period,23 and it has been noted by an admirer as a finely Shaksperean expression. But the expression "discourse of reason" occurs at least four times in Montaigne's Essays, and in Florio's translation of them: in the essay24 That to philosophise is to learn how to die; again at the close of the essay25 A demain les affaires; again in the first paragraph of the Apology of Raimond Sebonde26; and yet again in the chapter on The History of Spurina;27 and though it seems to be scholastic in origin, and occurs once or twice before 1600 in English books, it is difficult to doubt that, like the other phrase above cited, it came to Shakspere through Florio's Montaigne. The word discours is a hundred times used singly by Montaigne, as by Shakspere in the phrase "of such large discourse," for the process of ratiocination.

      IV. Then again there is the clue of Skakspere's use of the word "consummation" in the revised form of the "To be" soliloquy. This, as Mr. Feis pointed out,28 is the word used by Florio as a rendering of anéantissement in the speech of Socrates as given by Montaigne in the essay29 Of Physiognomy. Shakspere makes Hamlet speak of annihilation as "a consummation devoutly to be wished." Florio has: "If it (death) be a consummation of one's being, it is also an amendment and entrance into a long and quiet night. We find nothing so sweet in life as a quiet and gentle sleep, and without dreams." Here not only do the words coincide in a peculiar way, but the idea in the two phrases is the same; the theme of sleep and dreams being further common to the two writings.

      Beyond these, I have not noted any correspondences of phrase so precise as to prove reminiscence beyond possibility of dispute; but it is not difficult to trace striking correspondences which, though falling short of explicit reproduction, inevitably suggest a relation; and these it now behoves us to consider. The remarkable thing is, as regards Hamlet, that they almost all occur in passages not present in the First Quarto.

      V. When we compare part of the speech of Rosencrantz on sedition30 with a passage in Montaigne's essay, Of Custom,31 we find a somewhat close coincidence. In the play Rosencrantz says:

      "The cease of Majesty, Dies not alone; but like a gulf doth draw What's near with it: it is a massy wheel Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount, To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things Are mortised and adjoined; which, when it falls, Each small annexment, petty consequence, Attends the boisterous ruin."

      Florio has:

      "Those who attempt to shake an Estate are commonly the first overthrown by the fall of it. … The contexture and combining of this monarchy and great building having been dismissed and dissolved by it, namely, in her old years, giveth as much overture and entrance as a man will to like injuries. Royal majesty doth more hardly fall from the top to the middle, than it tumbleth down from the middle to the bottom."

      The verbal correspondence here is only less decisive—as regards the use of the word "majesty"—than in the passages collated by Mr. Morley; while the thought corresponds as closely.

      VI. The speech of Hamlet,32 "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so"; and Iago's "'tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus,"33 are expressions of a favourite thesis of Montaigne's, to which he devotes an entire essay.34 The Shaksperean phrases echo closely such sentences as:—

      "If that which we call evil and torment be neither torment nor evil, but that our fancy only gives it that quality, it is in us to change it. … That which we term evil is not so of itself." … "Every man is either well or ill according as he finds himself."

      And in the essay35 Of Democritus and Heraclitus there is another close parallel:—

      "Therefore let us take no more excuses from external qualities of things. To us it belongeth to give ourselves account of it. Our good and our evil hath no dependency but from ourselves."

      VII. Hamlet's apostrophe to his mother on the power of custom—a passage which, like the others above cited, first appears in the Second Quarto—is similarly an echo of a favourite proposition of Montaigne, who devotes to it the essay36 Of Custom, and not to change readily a received law. In that there occur the typical passages:—

      "Custom doth so blear us that we cannot distinguish the usage of things. … Certes, chastity is an excellent virtue, the commodity whereof is very well known; but to use it, and according to nature to prevail with it, is as hard as it is easy to endear it and to prevail with it according to custom, to laws and precepts." "The laws of conscience, which we say are born of nature, are born of custom."

      Again, in the essay Of Controlling one's Will37 we have: "Custom is a second nature, and not less potent."

      Hamlet's words are:—

      "That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat Of habits devil, is angel yet in this That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock or livery That aptly is put on. … For use can almost change the stamp of nature."

      No doubt the idea is a classic commonplace; and in the early Two Gentlemen of Verona38 we actually have the line, "How use doth breed a habit in a man;" but here again there seems reason to regard Montaigne as having suggested Shakspere's


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