§ VIII. WHEN William Shakspere was about five years of age a grant of arms was made by the College of Heralds to his father. The father was unquestionably engaged in trade of some sort in Stratford-upon-Avon; but he lived in an age when the pride of ancestry was not lightly regarded, and when a distinction such as this was of real and permanent importance. The grant was confirmed in 1599; and the reason for the confirmation of arms is stated with minute particularity in the "exemplification" then granted by Sir William Dethick and the great Camden :-" Know ye that in all nations and kingdoms the record and remembrance of the valiant facts and virtuous dispositions of worthy men have been known and divulged by certain shields of arms and tokens of chivalry; the grant and testimony whereof appertaineth unto us, by virtue of our offices from the queen's most excellent majesty and her highness' most noble and victorious progenitors: wherefore, being solicited, and by credible report informed that John Shakspeare, now of Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick, gent., whose parent and great-grandfather, late antecessor, for his faithful and approved service to the late most prudent prince King Henry VII. of famous memory was advanced and rewarded with lands and tenements, given to him in these parts of Warwickshire, where they have continued by some descents in good reputation and credit," &c. &c. It is not difficult to imagine the youthful Shakspere sitting at his mother's feet, to listen to the tale of his "antecessor's" prowess; or to picture the boy led by his father over the field of Bosworth,-to be shown the great morass which lay between both armies,-and Radmoor Plain, where the battle began,-and Dickon's Nook, where the tyrant harangued his army, and the village of Dadlington, where the graves of the slain still indented the ground. Here was the scene of his antecessor's "faithful and approved service." In the humble house of Shakspere's boyhood there was, in all probability, to be found a thick squat folio volume, then some thirty years printed, in which might be read, "what misery, what murder, and what execrable plagues this famous region hath suffered by the division and dissention of the renowned houses of Lancaster and York." This, to the generation of Shakspere's boyhood, was not a tale buried in the dust of ages; it was one whose traditions were familiar to the humblest of the land, whilst the memory of its bitter hatreds still ruffled the spirits of the highest. “For what nobleman liveth at this day, or what gentleman of any ancient stock or progeny is clear, whose lineage hath not been infested and plagued with this unnatural division?" In that old volume from which we quote, "the names of the histories contained" are thus set forth :-"I. 'The Unquiet Time of King Henry the Fourth.' II. The Victorious Acts of King Henry the Fifth.' III. 'The Troublous Season of King Henry the Sixth.' IV. The Prosperous Reign of King Edward the Fourth.' V.The Pitiful Life of King Edward the Fifth.' VI. 'The Tragical Doings of King Richard the Third.' VII. 'The Politic Governance of King Henry the Seventh.' VIII. The Triumphant Reign of King Henry the Eighth."" This book was Hall's Chronicle.' How diligently the young man Shakspere had studied the book, and how carefully he has followed it in four of his chronicle histories, we have given abundant example in the Historical Illustrations of these plays. With the local and family associations, then, that must have belonged to his early years, the subject of these · four dramas, or rather the subject of this one great drama in four parts, must have irresistibly presented itself to the mind of Shakspere, as one which he was especially qualified to throw into the form of a chronicle history. It was a task peculiarly fitted for the young poet during the first five years of his connexion with the theatre. Historical dramas, in the rudest form, presented unequalled attractions to the audiences who flocked to the rising stage. Without any undue reliance on his own powers, he might believe that he could produce something more worthily attractive than the rude dialogue which ushered in the "four swords and a buckler" of the old stage. He had not here to invent a plot; or to aim at the unity of action, of time, and of place, which the more refined critics of his day held to be essential to tragedy. The form of a chronicle history might appear to require little beyond a poetical exposition of the most attractive facts of the real Chronicles. It is in this spirit, we think, that Shakspere approached the execution of the First Part of Henry VI. It appears to us, also, that in that very early performance he in some degree held his genius in subordination to the necessity of executing his task, rather with reference to the character of his audience and the general nature of his subject than for the fulfilment of his own aspirations as a poet. There was before him one of two courses. He might have chosen, as the greater number of his contemporaries chose, to consider the dominions of poetry and of common sense to be far sundered; and, unconscious or doubtful of the force of simplicity, he might have resolved, with them, to substitute what would more unquestionably gratify a rude popular taste,—the force of extravagance. On the other hand, it was open to him to transfer to the dramatic shape the spirit-stirring recitals of the old chronicle writers; in whose narratives, and especially in that portion of them in which they make their characters speak, there is a manly and straightforward earnestness which in itself not seldom becomes poetical. Shakspere chose this latter course. When we begin to study the Henry VI., we find in the First Part that the action does not appear to progress to a catastrophe; that the author lingers about the details, as one who was called upon to exhibit an entire series of events rather than the most dramatic portions of them ;— there are the alternations of success and loss, and loss and success, till we somewhat doubt to which side to assign the victory. The characters are firmly drawn, but without any very subtle distinctions, and their sentiments and actions appear occasionally inconsistent, or at any rate not guided by a determined purpose in the writer. It is easy to perceive that this mode of dealing with a complicated subject was the most natural and obvious to be adopted by an unpractised poet, who was working without models. But although the effect may be, to a certain extent, undramatic, there is impressed upon the whole performance a wonderful air of truth. Much of this must have resulted from the extraordinary quality of the poet's mind, which could tear off all the flimsy conventional disguises of individual character, and penetrate the real moving principle of events with a rare acuteness, and a rarer impartiality. In our view, that whole portion of the First Part of Henry VI. which deals with the character and actions of Joan of Arc is a remarkable example of this power in Shakspere. We find her described in the Chronicles under every form of vituperation,—a monstrous woman, a monster, a ramp, a devilish witch and satanical enchantress, an organ of the devil. She was the main instrument through which England had lost France; and thus the people still hated her memory. She claimed to be invested with supernatural powers; and thus her name was not only execrated but feared. Neither the patriotism nor the superstition of Shakspere's age would have endured that the Pucelle should have been dismissed from the scene without vengeance taken upon her imagined crimes; or that confession should not be made by her which would exculpate the authors of her death. Shakspere has conducted her history up to the point when she is handed over to the stake. Other writers would have burnt her upon the scene, and the audience would have shouted with the same delight that they felt when the Barabas of Marlowe was thrown into the caldron. Shakspere, following the historian, has made her utter a contradictory confession of one of the charges against her honour; but he has taken care to show that the brutality of her English persecutors forced from her an inconsistent avowal, if it did not suggest a false one, for the purpose of averting a cruel and instant death. In the treatment which she receives from York and Warwick, the poet has not exhibited one single circumstance that might excite sympathy for them. They are cold, and cruel, and insolent, because a defenceless creature whom they had dreaded is in their power. Her parting malediction has, as it appears to us, especial reference to the calamities which await the authors of her death : "May never glorious sun reflex his beams Upon the country where you make abode! But in all the previous scenes Shakspere has drawn the character of the Maid with an undisguised sympathy for her courage, her patriotism, her high intellect, and her enthusiasm. If she had been the defender of England, and not of France, the poet could not have invested her with higher attributes. It is in her mouth that he puts his choicest thoughts and his most musical verse. It is she who says "Glory is like a circle in the water, Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to nought." It is she who solicits the alliance of Burgundy in a strain of impassioned eloquence which belongs to one fighting in a high cause with unconquerable trust, and winning over enemies by the firm resolves of a vigorous understanding and an unshaken will. The lines beginning "Look on thy country, look on fertile France," might have given the tone to everything that has been subsequently written in honour of the Maid. It was his accurate knowledge of the springs of character, which in so young a man appears almost intuitive, that made Shakspere adopt this delineation of Joan of Arc. He knew that, with all the influence of her supernatural pretension, this extraordinary woman could not have swayed the destinies of kingdoms, and moulded princes and warriors to her will, unless she had been a person of very rare natural endowments. She was represented by the Chroniclers as a mere virago, a bold and shameless trull, a monster, a witch;-because they adopted the vulgar view of her character,—the view, in truth, of those to whom she was opposed. They were rough soldiers, with all the virtues and all the vices of their age; the creatures of brute force; the champions, indeed, of chivalry, but with the brand upon them of all the selfish passions with which the highest deeds of chivalry were too invariably associated. The wonderful thing about the First Part of Henry VI. is, that these men, who stood in the same relation of time to Shakspere's age as the men of Anne do to ours, should have been painted with a pencil at once so vigorous and so true. The English Chroniclers, in all that regards the delineation of characters and manners, give us abundant materials upon which we may form an estimate of actions, and motives, and instruments; but they do not show us the instruments moving in their own forms of vitality; they do not lay bare their motives; and hence we have no real key to their actions. Froissart is, perhaps, the only contemporary writer who gives us real portraits of the men of mail. But Shakspere marshalled them upon his stage, in all their rude might, their coarse ambition, their low jealousies, their factious hatreds,-mixed up with their thirst for glory, their indomitable courage, their warm friendships, their tender natural affections, their love of country. They move over his scene, displaying alike their grandeur and their littleness. He arrays them, equally indifferent whether their faults or their excellences be most prominent. The "terrible Talbot" denounces his rival Fastolf with a bitterness unworthy a companion in arms; enters into a fierce war of words with the Pucelle, in which her power of understanding leaves him almost contemptible; and fights onward from scene to scene as if there was nothing high in man except the power of warring against his fellows: but he weeps like a lover over the fruitless gallantry of his devoted son; and he folds his dead boy in his rough arms, even as the mother, perishing with her child, takes the cold clay of the dear one to her bosom. This is the truth which Shakspere substituted for the vague delineations of the old stage. These are the pictures of manners which he gave to the people, when other poets adopted the easier expedient of separating the imaginative from the vulgar view of human actions and passions, only by rejecting whatever was real. He gave to his audiences new characters and new manners, simply because he presented to them the characters and manners of the ages which he undertook to delineate. Other men were satisfied to find the new in what never had an existence. But with all this truth of characterization and of costume, the scattered events, the multifarious details, the alternations from factions at home to wars abroad, would have never hung together as a dramatic whole, had the poet not supplied a principle of cohesion, by which what is distant either in time or space, or separated in the natural progression of events, is bound together. We feel in the First Part of the Henry VI. that some unseen principle is in operation by which the action still moves onward to a fixed point. One by one the great soldiers of Henry V. fade from the scene-the Salisburys, and Bedfords, and Talbots, who held France as their hunting-ground. Other actors come upon the busy stage more distinctly associated with the scenes of factious strife which are to follow. The beginnings of those strifes are heard even amidst the din of the battle-fields of France; and, surrounded by terrible slaughter and fruitless victories, we have an unstable peace and a marriage without hope-an imbecile king and a discontented nobility. Amidst all this involvement the poet disdains, as it were, to illuminate the thick darkness beyond with a single ray. We see only the progression of events without their consequences; and the belief produced upon the mind is, that a fate presides over their direction. The effect is achieved by the masterly skill with which the future is linked to the present-felt, but not seen. It appears to us that one of the most decisive proofs that Shakspere was the original author of the three Parts of Henry VI. is to be derived from the evidence which these plays present of the gradual increase of power in the writer. We say this without reference to the passages which have been added to the Contention;' for all the real dramatic power is most thoroughly developed in the original plays that have grown into the Second and Third Parts of the Henry VI. The succeeding process to which they were subjected was simply one of technical elaboration and refinement. We have no doubt at all that the First Part of Henry VI. originally existed in a rougher form. Whoever compares it critically with the two Parts of the Contention' will perceive that much of the ruggedness which belongs to those dramas has no place in this first drama of the series. For instance, it has very few Alexandrines; the use of old words, such as belike," is very rare, that word being frequently found in the Contention;' and the versification altogether, though certainly more monotonous, is what we may call more correct than that of the 'Contention.' How it could ever have been held that this play has undergone no repair, is to us one of the many marvellous things that belong to the ordinary critical estimation of it. Be the changes it has passed through few or many, it is evident to us that all the material parts of the ori ginal structure are still to be found. But whatever rapidity of action, truth of characterization, and correctness of style it may possess, in a pre-eminent degree, as compared with other plays of the period, it is not, in all the higher essentials of dramatic excellence, to be placed in the same scale as the two Parts of the Contention.' It wants, speaking generally, the high poetry of those plays-not the mere poetry of description, but the teeming thought, the figurative expression, the single word that conveys a complex idea with more distinctness and much more force than the periphrasis of ordinary writers. It results from this very defect that the First Part of Henry VI. has far less obscurity than the succeeding parts. We may venture to say that there is no play of the whole number received as Shakspere's which exhibits so few passages of doubtful meaning; and this we hold to be a consequence of its being one of his very earliest performances. All the very early plays possess this attribute, more or less. We can understand how a poet of Shakspere's extraordinary judgment-the quality which we hold to be as remarkable in him as his invention-should, surrounded as he was with dramatic productions teeming with extravagance and unreality of every description, first endeavour to be correct and to be intelligible. We have already noticed that the Two Gentlemen of Verona possesses this distinctive character. "This comedy has, to our minds, a very modern air. The thoughts are natural and obvious, the images familiar and general. The most celebrated passages have a character of grace rather than of beauty; the elegance of a youthful poet aiming to be correct, instead of the splendour of the perfect artist, subjecting every crude and apparently unmanageable thought to the wonderful alchymy of his all-penetrating genius."* But of what other author, who belonged to the transition-state of the drama, can it be said that intelligibility was a characteristic? Who else has attempted to give us the familiar without the vapid or the gross, and the dignified without the inflated? Who, in a word, of our dramatic writers between 1585 and 1590, trusted to the power of the real? The value of any work of art is to be tested rather by its effect as a whole than by the effect of particular parts. And this especially applies to a work of dramatic art; for parts even fine in themselves may, with reference to the entire effect of a drama, be blemishes instead of beauties. No writer that ever lived has approached Shakspere in the skill by which the whole is made to produce its entire and undisturbed effect. He is, thus, of all poets, the least to be appreciated from the study alone of "specimens." For although these may be sufficient to place him in the highest rank, in comparison with the "specimens" of other writers, yet, separated from the parts by which they are naturally surrounded, they furnish no idea of the extraordinary harmony with which they are blended with all that has preceded and all that follows them. Shakspere, beyond every other dramatic writer, possesses the power of sustaining a continuous idea, which imparts its own organization and vitality to the most complete and apparently incongruous action,-to the most diversified and seemingly isolated characters. Without understanding the paramount idea, the manufacturers of acting plays have ceeded to the abridgment and transposition of Shakspere's scenes, and have produced such monsters as D'Avenant's Tempest' and Tate's Lear.' It is in the same spirit that the critics upon the Henry VI. hold that these dramas are greatly inferior to Shakspere's other performances; and hence the theory of their spuriousness. But, as we have partially shown, the informing idea in all its dramatic power and unity runs through the entire series of these plays; and, as we think, is most especially manifest in the two Parts of the Contention.' For what is the effect which the poet intended in these two dramas to produce on *Introductory Notice to Two Gentlemen of Verona. |