LITMIR.BIZ

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deathbed at the age of thirty-two, after a life of dissipation.

       Thence he writes to his forsaken wife:—

      'All my wrongs muster themselves about me; every evill at once plagues me. For my contempt of God, I am contemned of men; for my swearing and forswearing, no man will believe me; for my gluttony, I suffer hunger; for my drunkenesse, thirst; for my adulterie, ulcerous sores. Thus God has cast me downe, that I might be humbled; and punished me, for examples of others' sinne.'

      Greene offers his own wretched end to his colleagues as a warning example; admonishing them to employ their 'rare wits in more profitable courses;' to look repentingly on the past; to leave off profane practices, and not 'to spend their wits in making plaies.' He especially warns them against actors—because these, it seems, had given him up. His rancorous spite against them he expresses in the well-known words:—'Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Fac-totum, is in his owne conceit the onely 'SHAKE-SCENE in a countrie.'

      This satirical point, directed, without doubt, against Shakspere, is the only thing reliable which, down to the year 1592, we know of his dramatic activity. He had then been only about four years in London. Yet he must already have wielded considerable authority, seeing that he is publicly, though with sneering arrogance, called a complete Johannes Fac-totum—a man who has laid himself out in every direction.

      It is the divine mission of a genius to bring order out of chaos, to regulate matters with the directing force of his superior glance. Certainly, Shakspere, from the very beginning of his activity, sought, with all the energy of his power, to rule out all ignoble, anarchical elements from the stage, and thus to obtain for it the sympathies of the best of his time. Fate so willed it, that one of the greatest minds which Heaven ever gave to mankind, entered, on this occasion, the modest door of a playhouse, as if Providence had intended showing that a generous activity can effect noble results everywhere, and that the most despised calling (such, still, was that of the actors then) can produce most excellent fruits.

      Shakspere's life is a beneficial harmony between will and deed; no attempt to draw down Heaven to Earth, or to raise up Earth to Heaven. His are rather the ways and manners peculiar to a people which likes to adapt itself to given circumstances, to make use of the existing practical good, in order to produce from it that which is better.

      It is an ascertained fact that Shakspere, who had received some training at school—but no University education—began, at the age of twenty-four, to arrange the pieces of other writers, to make modest additions to them; in short, to render them fit and proper for stage purposes. This may have been one of the causes why Greene dubbed him a 'Johannes Fac-totum.' Others, too, have accused him, during his lifetime, of 'application' (plagiarism), because he took his subjects mostly from other authors. Among those who so charged him, were, as we shall show, more especially Ben Jonson and Marston.

      Shakspere never allowed himself to be induced by these reproaches to change his mode of working. Down to his death it remained the same. Is his merit, on that account, a lesser one? Certainly not: in the Poetical Art, in the Realm of Feeling and Thought, there are no regular boundary-stones. No author has the right to say: 'Thou must not step into the circle drawn by me; thou hast to do thy work wholly outside of it!'

      An author who so expresses an idea, or so describes a situation as to fix it most powerfully in men's imagination, is to be looked upon as the true owner or creator of the image: to him belongs the crown. The Greeks reckoned it to be the highest merit of the masters of their plastic art when they retained the great traits with which their predecessors had invested a conception; only endeavouring to better those parts in which a lesser success had been achieved—until that section of the work, too, had attained the highest degree of perfection. Thus arose the Jupiter of Pheidias, a Venus of Milo, an Apollo of Belvedere. Thus the noblest ideal of beauty as created, and in this wise the Greek national epic became the model of all kindred poetry.

      There is a most characteristic fact which shows how greatly the drama had risen in universal esteem after Shakspere had devoted to it twelve years of his life. It is this. The Corporation of the City of London, once so hostile to all theatrical representations, and which had used every possible chicanery against the stage, had become so friendly to it towards the year 1600, that, when it was asked from governmental quarters to enforce a certain decree which had been launched against the theatre, it refused to comply with the request. On the contrary, the Lord Mayor, as well as the other magistrates, held it to be an injustice towards the actors that the Privy Council gave a hearing to the charges brought forward by the Puritans. Truly, the feelings of this conservative Corporation, as well of a large number of those who once looked down upon the stage with the greatest contempt, must, in the meanwhile, have undergone a great change.

      Unquestionably the Company of the Lord Chamberlain—which in summer gave its masterly representations in the Globe Theatre, beyond the Thames, and in winter in Black-Friars—had been the chief agency in working that change. The first noblemen, the Queen herself, greatly enjoyed the pieces which Shakspere, in fact, wrote for that society; but the public at large were not less delighted with them.

      When, the day after such a representation, conversation arose in the family circle as to the three happy hours passed in the theatre, an opportunity was given for discussing the most important events of the past and the present. The people's history had not yet been written then. Solitary events only had been loosely marked down in dry folios. The stage now brought telling historical facts in vivid colours before the eye. The powerful speeches of high and mighty lords, of learned bishops, and of kings were heard—of exalted persons, all different in character, but all moved, like other mortals, by various passions, and driven by a series of circumstances to definite actions. It was felt that they, too, were subject to a certain spirit of the time, the tendency of which, if the poet was attentively listened to, could be plainly gathered. In this way conclusions might be drawn which shed light even upon the events of the present.

      True, it was forbidden to bring questions of the State and of religion upon the stage. But has Shakspere really avoided treating upon them?

      Richard Simpson has successfully shown that Shakspere, in his historical plays, carried on a political discussion easily understood by his contemporaries. [16] The maxims thus enunciated by the poet have been ascertained by that penetrating critic in such a manner that the results obtained can scarcely be subjected to doubt any more.

      On comparing the older plays and chronicles of which the poet made use for his historical dramas, with the creations that arose on this basis under his powerful hand, one sees that he suppresses certain tendencies of the subject-matter before him, placing others in their stead. Taking fully into account all the artistic technicalities calculated to produce a strong dramatic effect, we still find that he has evidently made a number of changes with the clear and most persistent intention of touching upon political questions of his time.

      If, for instance, Shakspere's 'King John' is compared with the old play, 'The Troublesome Raigne,' and with the chronicles from which (but more especially from the former piece) the poet has drawn the plan of his dramatic action, it will be seen that very definite political tendencies of what he had before him were suppressed. New ones are put in their place. Shakspere makes his 'King John' go through two different, wholly unhistorical struggles: one against a foe at home, who contests the King's legitimate right; the other against Romanists who think it a sacred duty to overthrow the heretic. These were not the feuds with which the King John of history had to contend.

      But the daughter from the unhappy marriage of Henry VIII. and the faithless Anne Boleyn—Queen Elizabeth—had, during her whole lifetime, to contend against rebels who held Mary Stuart to be the legitimate successor; and it was Queen Elizabeth who had always to remain armed against a confederacy of enemies who, encouraged by the Pope, made war upon the 'heretic' on the throne of England.

      Thus, in the Globe Theatre, questions of the State were discussed; and politics had their distinct place there. Yet who would enforce the rules of censorship upon such language as this:—

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