Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ would be as absurd as to call Dulcinea del Tobosa a princess of the blood. A friend of mine – a well-known non-commissioned officer in the Devil's Own – told me this story, which I mention to you, my dear Smith, in strict confidence, in case the heroine of the anecdote should find that her confession is made known. An old lady – properly so called, both as respects the adjective and the noun, for she was past eighty, and was refined and pure – astonished my friend, by asking him one day to try and get a volume or two for her of the works of Assa Behn. He did so – no little wondering at such a choice of books – and in a day the novel was returned, "I send you back these volumes," she said, "as I am unable to get through the first. Is it not strange that I, an old woman, sitting in my own room, am positively ashamed and disgusted at the scenes and conversations which were read aloud to me in mixed companies, without a blush or shudder, when I was eighteen?"

      Now, in Shakspeare's time, there was no female in the land that would have stumbled at the grossest passages in Assa Behn. The tenderness, delicacy, and beauty of the feminine character were still in the future tense; and, therefore, it is not a matter of surprise that the female characters in Shakspeare were original creations, and not transcripts from human life. For the time and the state of society when the plays were written, they are instances of the most marvellous imagination. But they were as purely fictitious as Caliban or Ariel. They borrowed from the infinite riches of the poet their noble or tender thoughts; but whenever he tried to make them more than abstractions – to unite them to the sympathies of his audience – or to clothe them in real flesh and blood – look at the means he takes – listen to the conversations of Miss Juliet and the songs of Ophelia – and you will perceive what were the lessons his experience in actual men and women had taught him.

      It is impossible, my dear Smith, for a Frenchman to write an English comedy – and why? Because the turn of his mind, and unacquaintance with the peculiarities of our dispositions, unfit him for it. But not more separated from us is the Parisian Feuilletonist by his language and manners, not to mention the Channel, than the author of Elizabeth's and James's days by the lapse of two hundred years, and the total alteration of our modes of thought; and yet how frightfully you would be laughed at for applying the remark to Shakspeare, though, between ourselves, my dear fellow, he is the very man to call it forth! Oh, how vividly I can fancy the exclamations of Jiggles of the Victoria, or Pumpkins of the Stepney Temple of Thespis! "He is the poet of all time!" says Jiggles, with a thump on the table that sets all the pewter pots dancing. "Do you mean, Mr Bobson," cries Pumpkins, with a triumphant curl of his lip, "to say, that the laws of nature are transitory as the fashion of a coat, and that what was nature at one period will not be nature at another?" If he should ask you this question, my dear sir, tell him at once that that is decidedly your opinion, or, if it is not, tell him that it is most unquestionably mine; for most assuredly the same train of thought that would be natural among the chiefs of the Druids, would be most absurdly out of character if attributed to the bench of Bishops. "Oho!" exclaims Pumpkins, "what has the bench of Bishops to do with it? We maintain that Shakspeare, or any one else, having written a play wherein the sentiments of the Druids were once true to nature, those sentiments will continue true to nature to the end of time."

      By no means, Mr Pumpkins. Certain sentiments were thought true to nature by the critics and audience at the beginning of the seventeenth century; but nature, like every thing else, assumes a different appearance according to the point it is viewed from. At a time when human life was not very highly valued, and woman's feelings were held in no reverence or respect, it was, perhaps, thought "natural" that the Prince of Denmark should stab old Polonius and bully his daughter to death; but in this nineteenth century of time, no amount of insanity, real or assumed, will make us think it in accordance with the high and noble nature of the philosophic prince, either to sneer at the poor old whiteheaded courtier he has murdered, or taunt the little trusting girl he has taught to love him. If it were not for the name of Shakspeare, Hamlet would be set down as nearly the beau-ideal of a snob – a combination of the pedantry of James and the unmanliness of Buckingham. Read the play, with this key to the character, and you will find it quite as true to nature as in the laborious glosses of Schlegel and Göethe.

      If I ever have the honour to meet you again at the Ducrow Arms, I will enter more fully into this part of my view of the injuries inflicted on the stage by Shakspeare. It will be sufficient, at the present time, to condense my meaning into this one remark, that the nature of 1600 is not necessarily the nature of 1846, and probably is as different as the statesmanship of Sir Robert Cecil from that of Sir Robert Peel. If there had been a controller of politicians as powerful as the controller of the stage, we should have had the right honourable baronet making Popery punishable with death, dressed in trunk breeches and silver shoe-buckles – or taking measures to lessen the alarming power of Spain.

      You think, perhaps, that I have let you off altogether, because I have declined enlarging on this particular point; but no, my dear Smith, I have not had half my say out yet. It is not only that things are presented to us in Shakspeare's plays in a way that was admirable, because adapted to the feelings and fancies of the time, when they first enriched the Globe, but not so admirable now: I have also to find fault with the manner in which the characters – granting that they are true to nature – are developed and made palpable to vulgar eyes. The fact is, my benevolent friend, that every thing is gigantic in his conceptions. He is like a sculptor who despises the easy flow of the resting figure, and fills his studio with agonizing athletes – every muscle on the stretch – the eyeballs projecting, and the hair on end. Even when he carves a slumbering nymph, her proportions are tremendous – she is like a sleeping tigress, calm and hushed, but giving evidence of preternatural strength; her very softness is the softness of melted gold – when it hardens it will kill like lead; or, if that is a bad image, her very quiet is the quiet of the sea – let the wind blow, and then – ! Don't you see that Ophelia – Juliet – Imogen – all of them, are endowed with tremendous power, as well as other qualities? And that, as to the heroes, they are regular volcanoes every one of them? Is not this proved by the fact, that there is no hero in Shakspeare who does not demand as much bodily labour from his representative as would tire out a coal-whipper on the Thames? Is there one leading part in any of his plays that does not require an enormous outlay of voice? Now, can it be possible that no deep passion can coexist with a weak thorax? Run over the principal plays —Macbeth, Richard, Romeo, Hamlet again, Lear– and depend on it, that this loudness of exclamation is not stage trick; it is part of the development of the character; and therefore I shall always blame that infernal asthmatical tendency of mine for having induced Mr Whibbler, of the Whitechapel Imperial, to decline my services when I offered to act Coriolanus for my own benefit, gratis. The consequence, however, of this Shakspearian fancy, of placing characters of passion in positions where they must split the ears of the groundlings, is, that it has become an English article of faith, that without some prodigious explosions, calling out the whole strength of the actor's lungs, the character falls dead. The Indian could not believe the air-gun had killed the bird, because he did not hear the report. We have reversed the Indian mode of reasoning, and always believe it is the noise that kills the bird. Oh, Smith! think of the bellowings of Sir Giles Overreach – and Barbarossa – and Zanga – and the diabolical howlings of Belvidera, and Isabella, and the Mourning Bride. Can people have no passion that don't disturb the whole neighbourhood with their noise? Can a woman not find out she has been jilted without risking a bloodvessel? Is this the way they do in common life? I remember when that girl at Bermondsey hauled me up before David Jardine, and produced all my letters, and the ring I had given her * * * * she never spoke above her breath. And I was very glad to hush it up with four-and-sixpence a-week.

      Now the fault of Shakspeare is this, not that he puts tearing, ramping language in the mouths of his heroes – for in their positions it is the only language fit to use – but that, in accordance with the bullying, blustering habits of his day, he has placed every one of his heroes in such a situation, that blustering and bullying is the only thing he can do. And therefore every man who writes plays at the present, and at any future time, must have a hero first-cousin at least to Stentor. Who would venture to place Louis the Eleventh on the boards? He probably never spoke louder than a physician at a consultation – no, not when he confronted СКАЧАТЬ