A Hero and Some Other Folks. William A. Quayle
each person as an isolated fact, whereas souls are a series—men repeating men, women repeating women, in large measure, as a child steps in his father's tracks across a field of snow in winter. Other people seem intuitively to read character, being able to shut their eyes and see more than others with eyes open, having a faculty for practical psychology, which is little less than miracle, as in Tennyson, who was not a man among men—being shy as a whip-poor-will, seclusive as flowers which haunt the woodland shadows—yet those reading him must know how accurately he reads the human heart; and his characterization of Guinevere, Pelleas, Bedivere, Enid, the lover in Maud, à Becket, the Princess, Philip, Enoch Arden, and Dora, are, in accuracy, as
"Perfect music unto noble words."
Some people are born to this profound insight as storm-petrels for the seas, needing not to be tutored, and are as men and women to whom we tell our secrets, scarce knowing why we do. But Shakespeare knows what the sphinx thinks, if anybody does. His genius is penetrative as cold midwinter entering every room, and making warmth shiver in ague fits. I think Shakespeare never errs in his logical sequence in character. He surprises us, seems unnatural to us, but because we have been superficial observers; while genius will disclose those truths to which we are blind. Recur to Ophelia, whom Goethe has discussed with such insight. Ophelia is, to our eyes and ears, pure as air. We find no fault in her. Certainly, from any standpoint, her conduct is irreproachable; yet, surprisingly enough, when she becomes insane, she sings tainted songs, and salacious suggestions are on her lips, which in sane hours never uttered a syllable of such a sort. And Shakespeare is wrong? No; follow him. Thoughts are like rooms when shutters are closed and blinds down, and can not, therefore, be seen. We tell our thoughts, or conceal them, according to our desire or secretiveness, and speech may or may not be a full index to thought; and Shakespeare would indicate that fair Ophelia, love-lorn and neglected; fair Ophelia, whose words and conduct were unexceptional, even to the sharp eyes of a precisian—fair Ophelia cherished thoughts not meet for maidenhood, and in her heart toyed with voluptuousness. I know nothing more accurate; and the penetration of this poet seems, for the moment, something more than human. After a single example, such as adduced, would not he be guilty of temerity who would question Shakespeare's accuracy in character delineation? The sum of what has been said on this point is, distrust yourself rather than Shakespeare; and when your notions and his are not coincident, or when, more strongly stated, you feel sure that here for once he is inaccurate, reckon that he is profounder than you, and do you begin to seek for a hidden path as one lost in a wilderness, when, in all probability, you will discover that what you deemed inexact was in reality a profounder truth than had come under your observation. Nor would a discussion of Shakespeare's truthfulness be rounded out should his value as historian be omitted. He is profoundest of philosophical historians, compelling the motives in historic personages to disclose themselves, while, in the main, his historical data are correct as understood in his day. He has not juggled with facts, though in instances where he has taken liberty with events he has, by such change in historic setting, made the main issues more apparent. Some one has said that simply as historian of England Shakespeare has done nobly by his country, which remark I, for one, think accurate. Beginning with King John, he keeps the main channels of English history to the birth of Elizabeth, where, in a spirit of subtle courtesy, he makes the destination of his historical studies. If the purpose of noble history be to make us understand men and, consequently, measures, then is Shakespeare still the greatest English historian. Richard III never becomes so understandable as in the drama; and Henry IV is a figure clearly seen, as if he stood in the sunlight before our eyes, so that any one conversant with these history-plays is fortified against all stress in solid knowledge and profound insight into turbulent eras of Anglo-Saxon history; for Shakespeare has given us history carved in relief, as are the metopes of the Parthenon. For knowledge psychologically and historically accurate commend me to William Shakespeare, historian.
The lover is Shakespeare's main thesis; and his lovers—men and women—never violate the proprieties of love. What his lovers do has been done and will be done. Helena, in "All's Well that Ends Well," is a true phase of womanhood; and in those days of the more general infidelity and lordship of man, more common than now—though now this picture is truthful—woman has a power of self-sacrifice and rigorous self-denial when in love, which, as it is totally unconscious on her part, is as totally inexplicable on our part. Life is not a condition easily explained. The heart of simplest man or woman is a mystery, compared with which the sphinx is an open secret. The vagaries of love in life are the vagaries of love in Shakespeare. Life was his book, which he knew by heart. Rosalind, in "As You Like It," is a portrait both fair and accurate. We have seen Rosalind, and the sight of her was good for the eyes. To read Shakespeare is to be told what we ourselves have seen, we not recognizing the people we had met until he whispers in our ears, "You have seen her and him;" whereat we answer, "Yes, truly, so we have, though we did not know it till you told us."
Shakespeare is philosopher of both sexes, though this is not the rule, as we will readily agree, thinking over the great portrait painters of character. To state a single illustrative case: Hall Caine must be allowed to have framed some mighty men, tragic, or melodramatic sometimes, somber always, but men of bulk and character. Pete, in "The Manxman," is a creation sufficient to make the artist conceiving him immortal; and Red Jason is no less real, manly, mighty, self-mastering, self-surrendering. Caine's men are giants; but his women do not satisfy and seldom interest us, with an exception in a few cases—as with Naomi in "The Scape Goat," and Greeba, wife of Michal Sunlocks; though Naomi is little more than a figure seen at a doorway, standing in the sun; for she has not forged a character up to the time when her lover puts arm about her, as she droops above her dying father, when his vast love would make him immortal for her sake. Glory Quayle is interesting, but unsatisfactory. My belief is that Tolstoi has drawn no man approaching his astonishing Anna Karenina. Shakespeare is ambidexter here. All things are seemingly native to him; for he is never at a loss. Not words, thoughts, dreams, images, music, fail him for a moment even. Who found him feeling for a word? Did we not find them ready at his hand as Ariel was ready to serve Prospero? Lear, Prospero, Brutus, Cassius, Falstaff, Iago, Macbeth, Hamlet, are as crowning creations as Cleopatra, Miranda, Lady Macbeth, Katharine the Shrew, Imogen, or Cordelia. We know not which to choose, as one who looks through a mountain vista to the sea, declaring each view fairer than the last, yet knowing if he might choose any one for a perpetual possession he could not make decision. We are incapable of choosing between Shakespeare's men and his women.
Small volumes are best for reading Shakespeare, for this reason: In large volumes the dramas get lost to your thought, as a nook of beauty is apt to get lost in the abundant beauty of summer hills, solely because there are so many; but when put into small volumes, each play becomes individualized, made solitary, and stands out like a tree growing in a wide field alone. Do not conceive of Shakespeare's plays as marble column, pediment, frieze, metope, built into a Parthenon, but conceive of each play as a Parthenon; for I think it certain each one might have stood solitary on cape or hill, as those old Greeks built temples to their tutelar deities. He wrote so much and so greatly as to bewilder us, just as night does with her multitudinous stars. Who maps the astral globe will divide his heavens into sections, so he may chart his constellations. The like must be done with Shakespeare. A great painting is always at more of an advantage in a room of its own than in a gallery, since each picture is in a way a distraction, stealing a trifle of beauty from its fellow, though adding nothing to itself thereby. "Come," we say to a dear friend from whom we have been parted for a long time, "come, let me have you alone," and you walk across a field, and sit in the singing shadows of the pines—you appropriate your friend. Do the same with a poem; for in such a wilderness of beauty send majesty as Shakespeare's plays this need becomes imperative. Pursuant to this suggestion, I recur to a previous thought on Shakespearean criticism that, rich as it is, is defective in this individualization—so much being written on the whole, so little in comparison on the parts. Each drama fills our field of vision, and justifies a dissertation. Each dialogue of Plato demands an essay by Jowett. How well, then, may each dialogue of Shakespeare demand a separate study! There is distinct gain in looking at a landscape from a window, sitting a little back from the window-sill, the view being thus framed as a picture, and the superfluous horizon cut off; and the relevancies, as I may say, are included and the irrelevancies excluded; for in looking at too much we are losers, not gainers, the eye failing to catch the entirety of