The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded. Bacon Delia Salter

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СКАЧАТЬ the 'illustrated tradition' of its noblest doctrine – the fact that in the very earliest germ of this new union of 'practic and theoric,' of art and learning, from which we pluck at last Advancements of Learning, and Hamlets, and Lears, and Tempests, and the Novum Organum, already the perilous secret of this union is infolded, already the entire organism that these great fruits and flowers will unfold in such perfection is contained, and clearly traceable, – this is a fact which appeared to require insertion in this history, and not, perhaps, without some illustration.

      'It is not amiss to observe,' says the Author of the Advancement of Learning, when at last his great exordium to the science of nature in man, and the art of culture and cure that is based on that science is finished – pausing to observe it, pausing ere he will produce his index to that science, to observe it: 'It is not amiss to observe', he says – (speaking of the operation of culture in general on young minds, so forcible, though unseen, as hardly any length of time, or contention of labour, can countervail it afterwards) – 'how small and mean faculties gotten by education, yet when they fall into great men, or great matters, do work great and important effects; whereof we see a notable example in Tacitus, of two stage-players, Percennius and Vibulenus, who, by their faculty of playing, put the Pannonian armies into an extreme tumult and combustion; for, there arising a mutiny among them, upon the death of Augustus Caesar, Blaesus the lieutenant had committed some of the mutineers, which were suddenly rescued; whereupon Vibulenus got to be heard speak [being a stage-player], which he did in this manner.

      '"These poor innocent wretches appointed to cruel death, you have restored to behold the light: but who shall restore my brother to me, or life to my brother, that was sent hither in message from the legions of Germany to treat of – THE COMMON CAUSE? And he hath murdered him this last night by some of his fencers and ruffians, that he hath about him for his executioners upon soldiers. The mortalest enemies do not deny burial; when I have performed my last duties to the corpse with kisses, with tears, command me to be slain besides him, so that these, my fellows, for our good meaning and our true hearts to THE LEGION, may have leave to bury us."

      'With which speech he put the army into an infinite fury and uproar; whereas, truth was, he had no brother, neither was there any such matter [in that case], but he played it merely as if he had been upon the stage.'

      This is the philosopher and stage critic who expresses a decided opinion elsewhere, that 'the play's the thing,' though he finds this kind of writing, too, useful in its way, and for certain purposes; but he is the one who, in speaking of the original differences in the natures and gifts of men, suggests that 'there are a kind of men who can, as it were, divide themselves;' and he does not hesitate to propound it as his deliberate opinion, that a man of wit should have at command a number of styles adapted to different auditors and exigencies; that is, if he expects to accomplish anything with his rhetoric. That is what he makes himself responsible for from his professional chair of learning; but it is the Prince of Denmark, with his remarkable natural faculty of speaking to the point, who says, 'Seneca can not be too heavy, nor Plautus too light, for – [what?] – the law of writ– and – the liberty.' 'These are the only men,' he adds, referring apparently to that tinselled gauded group of servants that stand there awaiting his orders.

      'My lord – you played once in the university, you say,' he observes afterwards, addressing himself to that so politic statesmen whose overreaching court plots and performances end for himself so disastrously. 'That did I, my lord,' replies Polonius, 'and was accounted a good actor.' 'And what did you enact?' 'I did enact Julius Caesar. I – was killed i' the Capitol [I]. Brutus killed me.' 'It was a brute part of him [collateral sounds – Elizabethan phonography] to kill so capitol a calf there. – Be the players ready?'(?). [That is the question.]

      'While watching the progress of the action at Sadlers' Wells,' says the dramatic critic of the 'Times,' in the criticism of the Comedy of Errors before referred to, directing attention to the juvenile air of the piece, to 'the classic severity in the form of the play,' and 'that baldness of treatment which is a peculiarity of antique comedy' – 'while watching the progress of the action at Sadlers' Wells, we may almost fancy we are at St. Peter's College, witnessing the annual performance of the Queen's scholars.' That is not surprising to one acquainted with the history of these plays, though the criticism which involves this kind of observation is not exactly the criticism to which we have been accustomed here. But any one who wishes to see, as a matter of antiquarian curiosity, or for any other purpose, how far from being hampered in the first efforts of his genius with this class of educational associations, that particular individual would naturally have been, in whose unconscious brains this department of the modern learning is supposed to have had its accidental origin, – any one who wishes to see in what direction the antecedents of a person in that station in life would naturally have biased, at that time, his first literary efforts, if, indeed, he had ever so far escaped from the control of circumstances as to master the art of the collocation of letters – any person who has any curiosity whatever on this point is recommended to read in this connection a letter from a professional contemporary of this individual – one who comes to us with unquestionable claims to our respect, inasmuch as he appears to have had some care for the future, and some object in living beyond that of promoting his own immediate private interests and sensuous gratification.

      It is a letter of Mr. Edward Alleyn (the founder of Dulwich College), published by the Shakspere Society, to which we are compelled to have recourse for information on this interesting question; inasmuch as that distinguished contemporary and professional rival of his referred to, who occupies at present so large a space in the public eye, as it is believed for the best of reasons, has failed to leave us any specimens of his method of reducing his own personal history to writing, or indeed any demonstration of his appreciation of the art of chirography, in general. He is a person who appears to have given a decided preference to the method of oral communication as a means of effecting his objects. But in reading this truly interesting document from the pen of an Elizabethan player, who has left us a specimen of his use of that instrument usually so much in esteem with men of letters, we must take into account the fact, that this is an exceptional case of culture. It is the case of a player who aspired to distinction, and who had raised himself by the force of his genius above his original social level; it is the case of a player who has been referred to recently as a proof of the position which it was possible for 'a stage player' to attain to under those particular social conditions.

      But as this letter is of a specially private and confidential nature, and as this poor player who did care for the future, and who founded with his talents, such as they were, a noble charity, instead of living and dying to himself, is not to blame for his defects of education, – since his acts command our respect, however faulty his attempts at literary expression, – this letter will not be produced here. But whoever has read it, or whoever may chance to read it, in the course of an antiquarian research, will be apt to infer, that whatever educational bias the first efforts of genius subjected to influences of the same kind would naturally betray, the faults charged upon the Comedy of Errors, the leaning to the classics, the taint of St. Peter's College, the tone of the Queen's scholars, are hardly the faults that the instructed critic would look for.

      But to ascertain the fact, that the controlling idea of that new learning which the Man in the Tower is illustrating now in so grand and mature a manner, not with his pen only, but with his 'living art,' and with such an entire independence of classic models, is already organically contained in those earlier works on which the classic shell is still visible, it is not necessary to go back to the Westminster play of these new classics, or to the performances of the Queen's Scholars. Plays having a considerable air of maturity, in which the internal freedom of judgment and taste is already absolute, still exhibit on the surface of them this remarkable submission to the ancient forms which are afterwards rejected on principle, and by a rule in the new rhetoric – a rule which the author of the Advancement of Learning is СКАЧАТЬ