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In Mr. Bulwer Lytton's novel "Zanoni," he describes as one of the elementary steps to a higher order of manhood, a manhood which shall defy death, fathom space, sovereign the stars, that the candidate be first rendered susceptible to sensations other than those which the flesh is heir to, that he hear music in silence, see light in darkness, and the sunlight becomes a sort of external elixir vitae to him. But at the same time he suffers intolerable pain from the millions of larvae with which the air and water are peopled and trembles in agony at things which fall upon the rest of mankind as humdrum and unnoticed as light falls upon the lids of a sleeper. Hamlet had to contend with the realities not only of this world, but of a world of his own.
Shakespeare had drawn no friendship, not even the friendship of
It is not often that two souls are delicately joined enough to experience as friendship
like that of Hamlet and Horatio. It is hardly covered by the word friendship; it is an
almost awful thing. Old Damon and his Pythias knew it, and Julius and his
Had Hamlet's first sorrow not have been so heavy that it crushed him, he might have been a great artist of some kind. These strained, exaggerated natures sometimes focus themselves in this way. Had he had a few more years with Horatio down in the silence of Wittenburg he might have been a genius; as it was he was only very miserable. It is strange how delicate is the distinction between miserable men and great men. Through all its existence the charcoal feels within its black breast every throb, every aspiration of the kindred gem. It feels its very being throb and break with light, light quivers through its every atom, but it is all latent, men do not see it. For lack of some crowning touch of the great chemist, it lies always in the dark, and can give back the light which the great sun locked up in it centuries ago, only in one way, through fire, by its own consumption. The gem shines on 1,000 years uninjured, shimmering in its own light. The charcoal gives light too, but it dies in giving light birth. Hamlet's grief killed the creative art in him, and left him only the "bad dreamer." Poor fellow! he lived hard, and he died hard. "The rest is silence."
It was upon this prince perhaps the least powerful and awe inspiring of all Shakespearian heroes, that William Shakespeare exhausted the greatest treasurer of his genius, and into whose life he breathed his own. I think that this is all Shakespeare meant Hamlet to be, a man who suffered. To Macbeth he gave the most finished characteristic art in the world; to Julius Caezar he gave the strongest pathos in literature; Hamlet he pitied, and he gave him the legecy of his love. In a certain way Shakespeare is as much misunderstood as his masterpiece. We try to make him the intellectual giant of the ages, when in truth I do not suppose he was half so intellectual as Newton. He was no great scholar; he took to the soul rather than to the technique of learning. He had little Latin history and more Greek mythology.
The great secret of Shakespeare's power was supreme love, rather than supreme intellect, supreme love for the ideal in art, and for the real in it too, which is but a form of the ideal after all. There have been other men with as much ability, as much talent, but they have contented themselves with being men of letters, rather than creators of thought. They hold a very prominent position in society, they are the presidents of the great literary clubs, they are editors of the leading magazines, they are sought out at every reception. It is a pleasant career, their penning of pretty pieces of literature, and there is fame in it; but it is a very different thing from thought creations, from thought birth, the agony in which all the forces of body, brain and soul are drawn to one vital center in the effort of one life to give individuality to a greater life, the agony of the Doric women who bore the sons of the gods. Modern authors admire the great creations of thought, oh yes, and they would like well enough to produce them, but they are unwilling to either for the sake of the idea itself or for the sake of the truth which inspired it, to underage the pain, the suffering, the separation from other men, the solitude and the loneliness which thought learning involves. They each love, they are not strong enough for the sacrifice, so they say "we will serve both, men and art." They serve the one, but the other they prostitute. They do not intend this, it comes upon them gradually. They forget that an artist should be unlike other men, for he should be a revelation to other men. They forget that conventionalism of art is the death of art. Yet we have conventionalized everything, men and the cities of men. When was it that the gods left Rome? Was it when it was sacked and pillaged, and bought and sold? Ah, no; but when the first locomotive rumbled across the trestle bridge over the Tiber. The railroad did what time, and fire, and steel could not do, made Rome like other cities. The fauns and the nymphs started in terror when they heard that first shrill whistle, and they wept all day in the fountains and at night they said farewell to the tombs along the via Appia and left Rome forever. Now we go there and turn away disappointed, sick at heart. The strength we look for is gone. We go to see the death we envy, we find the life we live.
The artist begins with earnestness and devotion enough, but the sirens sing his praises,
and he listens to them. He busies himself with the lighter vein of his art because it is
the pleasantest and easiest for the time; but when he seeks his old power it is gone, he
knows not whither. He anxiously calls upon his God, but it responds no more. After that
he may clasp its kness in desperate entreaty, he may cry and cut himself with sharp
stones, and cause his children to pass through the fire before it, but it is of no
avail.
It is not an easy thing, this separation from the world. Authors are not made of marble or of ice, and human sympathy is a sweet thing. There is much to suffer, much to undergo: the awful loneliness, the longing for human fellowship and for human love. The terrible realization of the soul that no one knows it, no one sees it, no one understands it; that it is barred from the perception of other souls; that it is always alone. It is a hard thing to endure, and only love can endure it, a love as deep and as serene as the eternal force of the universe Shakespeare loved.
It seems strange that many literary men who have so much should yet lack so much, that with all their correctness and elegance of form, they fall so far short of some men who had neither. Their learning burdens rather than aids them. It is just as it was long ago when the model young man came to Christ and said, "Lord, what good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" And Christ said, "Thou knowest the law and the prophets." And he said, "All these have I kept from my youth up." And Christ looked upon him, and loved him, for there was promise in him, and he said, "One thing thou lackest. Thou hast gained great wealth through observance of the law, and it was well gained. Now go and take all this which is rightfully thine, and sell it and give unto the poor. Give all, and follow me out into the desert and the waste places, and over the rugged mountain sides, and among the publicans and sinners, and over to Calvary." And the youth went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. "Will of Avon" gave all, he was only an English country lad, and had not much to give, and went out into the wilderness with the fishermen while the rest of us stay and worship properly at Jerusalem. Ingersoll says he is glad that Shakespeare never went to Oxford, and took a degree, and became a fellow, and taught Alpha, Beta to the young Englishmen. For myself, I am glad that he was not an ambitious man or a learned man, or a popular man, or even a very good man; but just Will Shakespeare, writer of plays; that he did not know many languages, but saw rather more in English than other writers; that he was not even travelled, and had never seen the lands he worshipped in his dreams, except as he saw the world float by him in the London fogs. He did not want to be studied; he just wanted to be loved. He did not write to make men think; he wrote to make men feel. We insist upon viewing him exclusively in the intellectual sense, we discern the dramatic power in Macbeth and the art purposes in the balcony scene. Probably Shakespeare had no more art purposes in writing the balcony scene than Romeo had when he swung himself up by the balustrades of Capulet's balcony, and lifted his lips to Juliet's. There is no art in the balcony scene, its all heart. There are under all our forms and fashions, a few fundenmental principles which are alive in us all. The different castes of society would almost become different species were it not for those few common touches of nature which make the whole world kin. Shakespeare was master of these few elementary emotions which are the key stones of life. Upon their strength he gathers art, history, poetry, science, philosophy and dramatic law, just as the great ocean surges sweeping up over the rocks gather pebbles, sand, sea wreck, star fish, driftwood and fling them back into the sea.