GIFT OF
Felix Fltteel
\J
,-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
BY
VICTOR HUGO
BY MELVILLE B. ANDERSON
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY
1891
33*,
£00
831
COPYRIGHT
BY A. C. McCLURG AND Co.
A.D. 1886.
•• ••• : : •• : : .*.*•
•:.*:••• ::...•* •••
r.i
TO
ENGLAND
E BrtJicate tfjts iSook,
THE GLORIFICATION OF HER POET.
I TELL ENGLAND THE TRUTH;
BUT AS A LAND ILLUSTRIOUS AND FREE, I ADMIRE HER,
AND AS AN ASYLUM, I LOVE HER.
VICTOR HUGO.
HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1864.
PREFACE.
THE true title of this work should be, ' Con-
cerning Shakespeare.' The Author's original
incentive was the desire to "introduce," as they
say in England, the new translation of Shakespeare
to the public. The tie that binds him so closely
to the translator need not deprive him of the privi-
lege of commending the translation.1 From an-
other side, however, and still more closely, his
conscience was engaged by the subject itself. In
contemplating Shakespeare, all the questions re-
lating to art have arisen in the Author's mind.
To deal with these questions is to set forth the
mission of art ; to deal with these questions is to
set forth the duty of human thought toward man.
Such an opportunity for speaking some true words
imposes an obligation that is not to be shirked,
especially in a time like ours. This the Author
1 Made by the poet's son, Franfois- Victor Hugo. — TR.
viii PREFACE.
has understood. He has not hesitated to take
every avenue of approach to these complex ques-
tions of art and of civilization, varying the horizon
as the perspective shifted, and accepting every
hint supplied by the urgency of the task. From
such an enlarged conception of the subject this
book has sprung.
Hauteville House, 1864.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
HPHE work herewith presented to the public
A belongs to the literature of power rather
than to the literature of knowledge. Beguiling
his exile, remote from great libraries and from
books of reference, by this sweeping review of
all that he regarded as worthiest and noblest in
the whole range of humane letters, Victor Hugo
is sometimes pardonably inaccurate in details.
The Translator has deemed it his duty to re-
produce faithfully the text, and has taken the
liberty to correct in footnotes (signed TR.) the
errors that seemed to him most noticeable, es-
pecially those touching the life and works of
Shakespeare. That he has corrected all which
may appear important to others, he cannot venture
to hope. Fortunately, this great work does not
depend for its value upon the accuracy of its
statements of fact, nor even, chiefly, upon the
X TRANSLATORS PREFACE.
light it throws upon the life and genius of Shake-
speare. It is mainly to be prized as a masterly
statement of the Author's ideas concerning the
proper relation of literature to human life, — a
statement illuminated by wonderful flashes of
poetry and eloquence, and illustrated by strong
characterizations of many famous books and men.
This is not to say, however, that the present work
will not serve, better than most others, as an
introduction to Shakespeare, to yEschylus, and
perhaps to some other of the immortals whom it
so glowingly celebrates.
The Translator is responsible for the table of
contents, and for the index, which makes no pre-
tence of being exhaustive.
M. B. A.
PURDUE UNIVERSITY,
Lafayette, Ind., October, 1886.
TOPICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
part JFirst.
BOOK I.
SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Description of Marine Terrace, Isle of Jersey. — The Exiles . 3
CHAPTER II.
Shakespeare and the Ocean 7
CHAPTER III.
Shakespeare's Birthplace. — Orthography of Name. — Youth-
ful Escapades and Marriage. — London under Elizabeth.
— The Actors, the Theatres, the Audience. •<— Moliere's
Theatre and Xouis XIV.'s Patronage. — Shakespeare's
Person. — The Taverns. — Chronology of Shakespeare's
Plays. — Shakespeare Manager and Money-lender. — New
Place ; Mrs. Davenant. — The Last Years 9
xii TOPICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
PAGE
Shakespeare's Life embittered. — Contemporary Notice. —
The Puritans close the Play-houses. — Shakespeare's Fame
after the Restoration. — Dryden, Shaftesbury, Nahum
Tate. — Shakespeare's " eclipse " 29
CHAPTER V.
Recasts of Plays. — Voltaire, Garrick, Malone 34
BOOK II.
MEN OF GENIUS.
CHAPTER I.
Art, Nature, God. — Science and the Supernatural. — The
Poet's Inspiration 36
CHAPTER II.
The Poet's Ascent to the Ideal. — Homer characterized. —
Job characterized. — .^Eschylus characterized. — Isaiah
characterized. — Ezekiel characterized. — Lucretius char-
acterized. — Juvenal characterized. — Tacitus character-
ized : Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero. — Saint John
characterized. — Saint Paul characterized. — Dante char-
acterized.— Rabelais characterized. — Cervantes charac-
terized.— Shakespeare characterized 41
CHAPTER III.
The Dynasty of Genius. —The Wreck of ^Eschylus .... 82
CHAPTER IV.
The Great, Anonymous, Collective Works of Orient and
Occident. — The German Genius: Beethoven. — "Good
Taste " an Incubus upon Genius 84
TOPICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xiii
BOOK III.
ART AND SCIENCE.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Poetry made imperishable by Printing. — The Book the In-
strument of Civilization 95
CHAPTER II.
Number the Basis of Poetry and of Science . 99
CHAPTER III.
Poetry, being absolute in Nature, incapable of Progress . . 101
CHAPTER IV.
The Relative and Progressive Nature of Science. — The Im-
provement of the Telescope. — Examples of Outgrown
Scientific Notions. — The Errors of Pythagoras. — The
Errors of Chrysippus. — Science transitory, Art abiding.
— The Eternal Power of Art illustrated by the Effect of
Lucretius upon Hugo 105
CHAPTER V.
The Decline of Poetry impossible 118
xiv TOPICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
BOOK IV.
THE ANCIENT SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Formidable Character of ^Eschylus. — Vastness and Compre-
hensiveness of the Drama. — Tragic Terror of ^Eschylus . 122
CHAPTER II.
Description of the Greek Theatre. — Description of the Rep-
resentation of a Greek Play „ . . 126
CHAPTER III.
The Renown of yEschylus after his Death 132
CHAPTER IV.
Ptolemy Evergetes and the Alexandrian Library. — ^Eschylus
stolen from Athens and transferred to Alexandria. — The
Alexandrian Library burned by Omar 135
CHAPTER V.
Attempts to justify Omar. — Shakespeare nearly meets the
fate of ^schylus 140
CHAPTER VI.
"^Eschylus Lost." — The Number of Works irrevocably
destroyed 143
TOPICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV
CHAPTER VII.
PAGE
The Affinity of ^schylus with Asia. — His Geography. — His
Priesthood of Nature. — His Bold Familiarity 146
CHAPTER VIII.
The Relation of Aristophanes to ^Eschylus. — The Opposition
of Socrates to their Religious Enthusiasm. — The Broad
Farce of yEschylus. — The Alarming Mirth of Art. — The
Two Ears of Poetry 153
CHAPTER IX.
Greece the great Civilizer. — The Drama in her Colonies. —
JEschylus the Poet of the Greek Fatherland 160
CHAPTER X.
Explanation of the Loss of Books in Antiquity. — Gutenberg
has made the Book immortal. — The Ruins of Greek and
Roman Books. — Sources of our Knowledge of ^Eschylus.
— Similarity of ^Eschylus to Shakespeare 164
BOOK V.
SOULS.
/
CHAPTER I.
The Genesis of the Soul. — No Tangible Law. — The Coinci-
dences of Genius. — The Sacred Horror of the Great Mys-
tery.—The Reality of the Soul. — The Reality of Great
Souls. — Their Lofty Functions. — The Origin and the
Mission of Genius 170
CHAPTER II.
God the Exhaustless Source of Genius 183
xvi TOPICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Part g>econfc,
BOOK I.
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The Censurers of Shakespeare: Forbes, Greene, Rymer,
Dryden, Ben Jonson, Warburton, Foote, Pope, Voltaire,
Dr. Johnson, Frederick the Great, Coleridge, Knight,
Hunter, Delandine 189
CHAPTER II.
Shakespeare's Reality. — The Inexorable Law of his Genius.
— His Sovereign Horror and his Charm. — His Philoso-
phy. — His Imaginative Arabesque. — His Psychology.
— His History. — His Universality 195
CHAPTER III.
Shakespeare's Antithesis a Double Refraction of Nature . . 203
CHAPTER IV.
The Orthodox and Academical School condemns the Luxu-
riance of Great Poets. — No Flirtation with the Muses. —
Genius bound over to keep the Peace 205
CHAPTER V.
Shakespeare a Trial to the " Sober " Critics ; his Fertility and
Virility. — Shakespeare intoxicated with Nature . . . .211
TOPICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. . xvii
BOOK II.
SHAKESPEARE'S WORK. — THE CULMI-
NATING POINTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The Great Poets Creators of Human Types. — Their Kinship
with God. — The Infamy of their Censors 219
CHAPTER II.
The Nature of the Living Types produced by the Poets. —
How they differ from Historic Persons 223
CHAPTER III.
The Man of ^Eschylus, Prometheus; the Man of Shake-
speare, Hamlet . . 228
CHAPTER IV.
Prometheus on Caucasus. — Hamlet 230
CHAPTER V.
The Feigned Madness of Hamlet. — The Character of Ham-
let -234
CHAPTER VI.
Macbeth. — Othello. — Lear: Time of the Action; Nature
of the Subject ; Character of Lear ; Lear and Cordelia . 240
*
xviii TOPICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
BOOK III.
ZOILUS AS ETERNAL AS HOMER.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
A Chapter of Calumnies 250
CHAPTER II.
The Pedants and the Police 254
CHAPTER III.
Calumniation of Voltaire and Rousseau. — Their Burial in the
Pantheon. — Their Bones thrown into a Hole 257
CHAPTER IV.
Pedantry solicitous about Genius 261
CHAPTER V.
The Academical View of Genius. — The Comfortable Middle-
Class View . . 263
CHAPTER VI.
The Sun offensive to Weak Eyes. — Genius portentous. —
Its Humanity, Sympathy, Love, Beauty 268
TOPICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. XIX
BOOK IV.
CRITICISM.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The Double Plots of Shakespeare's Plays a Reflection of all
the Art of the Renascence 274
CHAPTER II.
Genius to be accepted as Nature is accepted 277
CHAPTER III.
Pegasus a Gift-Horse. — Prometheus the Progenitor of Mab
and Titania 279
CHAPTER IV.
The Romantic School has imitated neither Shakespeare nor
yEschylus 282
CHAPTER V.
The Poet original, personal, inimitable 285
CHAPTER VI.
Definition of the Official French School of Letters. — How
the Poet panders to the Mob. — The Mob described. —
The High Mission of the Poet to make himself a Sacri-
fice for many 288
XX TOPSCAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
BOOK V.
THE MINDS AND THE MASSES.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Destruction and Construction . 294
/
CHAPTER II.
Literature secretes Civilization. — The True Socialism . . . 295
CHAPTER III.
The Nadir of Democracy 298
CHAPTER IV.
Animalism not the Goal of Man 301
CHAPTER V.
Literature not for the Lettered only 303
CHAPTER VI.
The Irony of Macchiavelli and of Voltaire 305
CHAPTER VII.
The Poet a Teacher. — The Mob at the Theatre. —The Mob
open to the Ideal 307
CHAPTER VIII.
How to restore the Ideal to the Human Mind 310
TOPICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxi
BOOK VI.
THE BEAUTIFUL THE SERVANT OF
THE TRUE.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Utility the Test of Art. — Utility of ^Eschylus and of the Bible.
— The Poet a Helper 312
CHAPTER II.
No Loss of Beauty from Goodness. — " Art for Art's sake." —
Utility of Primitive Poetry. — Greatness of Juvenal . . . 320
CHAPTER III.
The Power of Poetry in Barbarous Times ....... 324
CHAPTER IV.
The Obligation of the Poet to Political Vigilance 327
CHAPTER V.
Bayle and Goethe. — The Poet's Passion for the Right. —
Louis XIV. and Racine. — The Official and Academical
Conception of the Poet's Function. — The Poet a Nour-
isher, a Comforter, a Liberator 330
xxii TOPICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CONCLUSION.
BOOK I.
AFTER DEATH; SHAKESPEARE; ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Six Feet of Earth the End of All for the Soldier, the Begin-
ning of All for the Poet ............ 341
CHAPTER II.
Shakespeare the Chief Glory of England. — England, Sparta,
Carthage. — England's Statues. — Her Snobbishness . . 348
CHAPTER III.
Shakespeare and Elizabeth. — Shakespeare and the Bible. —
Coldness of England to Shakespeare. — English Prudish-
ness. — Philistine Criticism. — Shakespeare and Mr. Cal-
craft, the Hangman .............. 355
CHAPTER IV.
England in Debt to Shakespeare. — France to Joan of Arc. —
Voltaire the Reviler of both ........... 362
CHAPTER V.
Shakespeare's True Monument. — A Monument indifferent to
Shakespeare, important to England ......... 364
CHAPTER VI.
The Centennial Anniversaries of Shakespeare ...... 368
TOPICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxiii
BOOK II.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The Nineteenth Century born of the French Revolution. —
Romanticism. — " Literary '93." — The Eruption of Truth
in the Soul. — The Need of Prompt Action on the part of
Thinkers. — Discouragement. — The Practical Functions
of Thinkers 371
BOOK III.
TRUE HISTORY. — EVERY ONE PUT IN
HIS PLACE.
CHAPTER I.
The Age of the Warrior gone. — Finance hostile to Heroes.
— Cost of the Napoleonic Wars 385
CHAPTER II.
Imbecility the Warrior's Excuse. — Things Tyrants, and Ty-
rants Things. — Horrible Examples of Tyrannic Cruelty.
— The Wolf the Fruit of the Forest. — The Thinker the
Founder of Civilization 390
CHAPTER III.
History must be rewritten. — Examples of its Triviality and
Sycophancy. — Cantemir and Karamsin. — Loyal History:
More Examples. — History ignorant of the Essential Facts
of Civilization : Examples 396
xxiv TOPICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
PAGE
True History described and prophesied. — Truth coming to
Light. — The Dynasty of Genius not oppressive .... 408
CHAPTER V.
The New Aspect of Things. — The Potentates put to Flight
by the Dreamers 415
PART I.
PART FIRST.
BOOK I.
SHAKESPEARE. — HIS LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
A DOZEN years ago, on an island near the coast
of France, a house, at every season of for-
bidding aspect, was growing especially gloomy by
reason of the approach of winter. The west wind,
which had full sweep there, was piling thick upon
this dwelling those enveloping fogs November in-
terposes between sun and earth. In autumn, night
falls early ; the narrow windows made the days still
briefer within, and deepened the sombre twilight of
the house.
This house was flat-roofed, rectilinear, correct,
square, and covered with a fresh coat of white-
wash; it was Methodism in brick and stone.
Nothing is so glacial as this English whiteness;
it seems to offer you a kind of polar hospitality.
One thinks with longing of the old peasant huts
of France, wooden and black, yet cheerful with
clustering vines.
, , ', , WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Adjoining the house was a quarter-acre of slop-
ing garden-ground, walled in, broken by granite
steps and breast-walls, — a bare, treeless garden,
with more stones than leaves. This little uncul-
tivated patch abounded in tufts of marigolds,
which bloom in autumn, and which the poor
people of the country eat cooked with the con-
ger-eel. The neighboring sea-shore was concealed
from this garden by a rise of ground, upon which
there was a field of grass with some nettles and a
big hemlock.
From the house was seen on the horizon at the
right, in a little wood upon a hill, a tower said to be
haunted ; at the left was seen the dike. The dike
was a row of great piles set upright in the sand
against a wall ; these dry, gaunt, knotty logs resem-
bled an array of leg-bones and knee-caps afflicted
with anchylosis. Revery, which likes to accept
fancies as material for enigmas, might inquire to
what race of men these three-fathom tibias had
belonged.
The south front of the house faced the garden,
the north front a deserted road. A corridor as an
entry on the ground floor, a kitchen, a greenhouse,
and a court-yard, then a little drawing-room look-
ing out upon the lonely road, and a pretty large,
dimly lighted study; on the second and third floors,
neat, cold, freshly painted chambers, barely fur-
nished, with white shrouds for window-hangings.
Such was this dwelling, where the roar of the sea
was always heard.
This house, a heavy, white, rectangular cube,
chosen by its inmates upon a chance indication
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 5
(possibly the indications of chance are not always
without design), had the form of a tomb. Its in-
mates were a group — a family rather — of pro-
scribed persons. The eldest was one of those men
who at certain moments are found to be in the
way in their country. He came from an assem-
bly; the others, who were young, came from
prison. To have written, furnishes a justification
for bolts : whither should reflection lead, if not to
the dungeon?
The prison had set them at large into banish-
ment. The old man, the father, was accompanied
by his whole family, except his eldest daughter,
who could not follow him. His son-in-law was
with her. Often were they leaning round a table,
or seated on a bench, silent, grave, all of them
secretly thinking of those two absent ones.
Why had these people installed themselves in a
house so unattractive? By reason of haste, and
from a desire to be as soon as possible anywhere
but at the inn. Doubtless, also, because it was
the first house to let that they had met with, and
because exiles are not lucky.
This house — which it is time to rehabilitate a
little and console ; for who knows whether, in its
loneliness, it is not sad at what we have just said
about it? A house has a soul — this house was
called Marine Terrace. The arrival was mourn-
ful ; but, after all, we would not deny that the stay
in it was agreeable, and Marine Terrace has left to
those who then dwelt there none but affectionate
and dear remembrances. And what we say of
Marine Terrace, we say also of the Island of
6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Jersey. Places of suffering and trial come to
have a kind of bitter sweetness, which later on
causes them to be regretted; they have a stern
hospitality which appeals to the conscience.
There had been, before them, other exiles in
that island. This is not the time to speak of
them. We mention only that the most ancient
of whom tradition, or perhaps a legend, has pre-
served the memory was a Roman, Vipsanius Mi-
nator, who employed his exile in extending, in
the interest of his country's supremacy, the Ro-
man wall of which you may still see some parts,
like bits of hillock, near a bay named, I think,
St. Catherine's bay. This Vipsanius Minator was
a consular dignitary, an old Roman so infatu-
ated with Rome that he stood in the way of the
Empire. Tiberius exiled him to this Cimmerian
island, Cczsarea ; l according to others, to one
of the Orkneys. Tiberius did more ; not content
with exile, he decreed oblivion. It was forbidden
to the orators of the Senate and the Forum to pro-
nounce the name of Vipsanius Minator. The ora-
tors of the Forum and the Senate, and history, have
obeyed, — a result regarding which Tiberius, for that
matter, entertained no doubt. That arrogance in
commanding, which proceeded so far as to give
orders to men's thoughts, characterized certain an-
cient governments newly arrived at one of those
firm situations where the greatest sum of crime
produces the greatest sum of security.
Let us return to Marine Terrace.
1 The ancient name of the Island of Jersey, the place of Hugo's
exile. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 7
One morning, near the end of November, two of
the inhabitants of the place, the father and the
youngest of the sons, were seated in the lower
parlor. They were silent, like shipwrecked per-
sons who meditate.
Without, it rained, the wind blew, the house was
as if deafened by the outer roaring. Both went
on thinking, absorbed, perhaps, by thoughts of
this coincidence between the beginning of winter
and the beginning of exile.
Suddenly the son raised his voice and asked the
father, —
" What think you of this exile? "
" That it will be long."
" How do you intend to employ it?"
The father answered, " I shall gaze at the
ocean."
There was a silence. The father was the first
to speak : —
"And you?"
"I," said the son, "I shall translate Shakespeare."
CHAPTER II.
THERE are, indeed, men whose souls are like the
sea. Those billows, that ebb and flood, that inex-
orable going and coming, that noise of all the winds,
that blackness and that translucency, that vegeta-
tion peculiar to the deep, that democracy of clouds
in full hurricane, those eagles flecked with foam,
8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
those wonderful star-risings reflected in mysterious
agitation by millions of luminous wave-tops, — con-
fused heads of the multitudinous sea, — the errant
lightnings which seem to watch, those prodigious
sobbings, those half-seen monsters, those nights of
darkness broken by howlings, those furies, those
frenzies, those torments, those rocks, those ship-
wrecks, those fleets crushing each other, mingling
their human thunders with the divine thunders and
staining the sea with blood ; then that charm, that
mildness, those festivals, those gay white sails, those
fishing-boats, those songs amid the uproar, those
shining ports, those mists rising from the shore,
those cities at the horizon's edge, that deep blue of
sky and water, that useful asperity, that bitter savor
which keeps the world wholesome, that harsh salt
without which all would putrefy ; those wraths and
those appeasements, that all in one, the unforeseen
amid the changeless, the vast marvel of inexhaus-
tibly varied monotony, that smoothness after an
upheaval, those hells and those heavens of the
unfathomed, infinite, ever-moving deep, — all this
may exist in a mind, and then that mind is called
genius, and you have ^Eschylus, you have Isaiah,
you have Juvenal, you have Dante, you have
Michael Angelo, you have Shakespeare; and it
is all one whether you look at these souls or at
the sea.1
1 The reader is invited to compare this passage with the elo-
quent interpretation of it at the beginning of Swinburne's ' Study
of Shakespeare/ — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER III.
i. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was born at Strat-
ford-on-Avon, in a house under the tiles of which
was concealed a confession of the Catholic faith
beginning with these words, " I, John Shakespeare."
John was the father of William. The house, situ-
ated in Henley Street, was humble; the cham-
ber in which Shakespeare came into the world,
wretched: the walls were whitewashed, the black
rafters laid crosswise ; at the farther end was a tol-
erably large window with two small panes, where
you may read to-day, among other names, that of
Walter Scott. This poor dwelling sheltered a de-
cayed family. The father of William Shakespeare
had been an alderman ; his grandfather had been
bailiff. Shakespeare signifies " shake-spear ; " the
family had for a coat-of-arms an arm holding a
spear, — allusive arms, confirmed, they say, by
Queen Elizabeth in 1595, and visible, at the time
we write, on Shakespeare's tomb in the church of
Stratford-on-Avon.1 There is little agreement about
1 An application for a grant of coat-armor to his father was
made in 1596, and another in 1599; but the matter seems to have
gone no farther than the drafting of designs by the heralds. The
poet's relatives, fhowever, at a later date assumed his right to
the coat suggested for his father in 1596. The obvious pun upon
the name was not overlooked either by eulogists or by defamers.
For example, an ancient epigram reads, —
" Thou hast so used thy Pen (or shook thy Speare)
That Poets startle, nor thy wit come neare." — TR.
10 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
the orthography of the word Shake-spear as a
family name ; it is written variously, — Shakspere,
Shakespere, Shakespeare, Shakspeare: in the
eighteenth century it was habitually written Shake-
spear. The present translator1 has adopted the
spelling Shakespeare as the only true one, and
gives for it unanswerable reasons. The only ob-
jection 2 that can be made is that Shakspeare is
more easily pronounced than Shakespeare; that
cutting off the e mute is perhaps useful ; and that
in the interest of the names themselves and to
facilitate their wider currency, posterity has, as
regards proper names, a certain euphonic right. It
is evident, for example, that in French poetry the
orthography Shakspeare is necessary; however,
convinced by the translator, we write, in prose,
SJtakespeare.
2. The Shakespeare family had some original
drawback, probably its Catholicism, which caused
its downfall. A little after the birth of William,
Alderman Shakespeare was no more than " butcher
John." William Shakespeare made his dtbut in a
slaughter-house. At the age of fifteen he entered
his father's shambles, bared his arm, and killed
* That is, the translator of Shakespeare's works.
2 This "objection" is of course such to a Frenchman only.
Indeed this whole orthographical excursus, unintelligible as it must
be to the English reader, is retained only upon the general princi-
ple of fidelity. The translator referred to is Fran?ois Victor Hugo
(see Preface). It may be added that out of the scores of different
spellings of the name, the New Shakspere Society has adopted the
orthography Shakspere, upon the ground that it was so spelled
by a very eminent authority, — the bearer of the name himself.
— TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. \ i
sheep and calves, — " in a high style," says Aubrey.
At eighteen he married. Between the days of the
slaughter-house and the marriage he composed
a quatrain. This quatrain, directed against the
neighboring villages, is his maiden effort in poetry.
He there says that Hillborough is illustrious for its
ghosts, and Bidford for its drunkards. He made
this quatrain (being tipsy himself) in the open
air, under an apple-tree still celebrated in the
country in consequence of this midsummer-night's
dream. In this night and in this dream, where
there were lads and lasses, in this drunken fit
and under this apple-tree, he discovered that Anne
Hathaway was a pretty girl.1 The wedding fol-
lowed. He espoused this Anne Hathaway, older
than himself by eight years, had a daughter by her,
then twins, boy and girl, and left her; and this
wife disappears from Shakespeare's life, to reappear
only in his will, where he leaves her his second-best
bed, " having probably," says a biographer, " em-
ployed the best one with others." Shakespeare,
like La Fontaine, did but sip at married life. His
wife being put aside, he was a schoolmaster, then
clerk to an attorney, then a poacher. This poach-
ing was made use of later to justify the statement
1 For the story, which Victor Hugo has, after his fashion, very
much improved upon, see Halliwell-Phillipps's ' Outlines of the
Life of Shakespeare,' 3d ed., pp. 205, 206, and the accompanying
" illustrative notes," pp. 354-359. The quatrain referred to runs
as follows : —
" Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston,
Haunted Hillborough, Hungry Grafton,
Dadgeing Exhall, Papist Wicksford,
Beggarly Broom, and Drunken Bidford." — TR.
12 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
that Shakespeare had been a thief. One day he
was caught poaching in Sir Thomas Lucy's park.
They threw him into prison ; they began proceed-
ings. These being spitefully followed up, he saved
himself by flight to London. In order to gain a
livelihood, he began by holding horses at the doors
of theatres. Plautus had turned a millstone. This
business of holding horses at the doors still existed
at London in the last century, and it brought to-
gether a kind of small band or corps that they
called "Shakespeare's boys."
3. You may call London the black Babylon —
gloomy by day, magnificent by night. To see
London is a sensation; it is uproar under smoke
— mysterious analogy: uproar is the smoke of
noise. Paris is the capital of one side of hu-
manity; London is the capital of the opposite
side. Splendid and melancholy town ! There
activity is tumult, and the people swarm like
ants. One is free there, and yet confined. Lon-
don is an orderly chaos. The London of the
sixteenth century did not resemble the London
of our day ; but it was already an immense town.
Cheapside was the main street; St. Paul's, now a
dome, was then a spire. The plague was nearly
as much at home in London as in Constantinople.
There was not, in fact, much difference between
Henry VIII. and a sultan. Fires (as in Constanti-
nople, again) were frequent in London, on account
of the populous parts of the town being built
entirely of wood. In the streets there was but
one carriage, — the carriage of her Majesty; not
a cross-road where they did not cudgel some
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 13
pickpocket with the flail,1 which is still retained
at Groningen for thrashing wheat. Manners were
rough, almost savage ; a fine lady rose at six,
and went to bed at nine. Lady Geraldine Kildare,
to whom Lord Surrey inscribed verses, break-
fasted off a pound of bacon and a pot of beer.
Queens — the wives of Henry VIII. — knitted
mittens, and did not even object to their being
of coarse red wool. In this London the Duchess
of Suffolk took care of her hen-house, and, with
her dress tucked up to her knees, threw corn
to the ducks in the court below. To dine at
midday was to dine late. It was the delight of
the upper classes to go and play at " hot cockles"
at my Lord Leicester's. Anne Boleyn played
there; she knelt down, with eyes bandaged, for
this game, without knowing that she was rehears-
ing for a play of a different kind upon the scaffold.
This same Anne Boleyn, destined for the throne,
whence she was to go still farther, was perfectly
dazzled when her mother bought her three linen
chemises, at sixpence the ell, and promised her,
for the Duke of Norfolk's ball, a pair of new shoes
worth five shillings.
4. Under Elizabeth, in spite of the wrath of
the Puritans, there were in London eight compa-
nies of actors, — those of Newington Butts, Earl
Pembroke's company, Lord Strange's retainers,
the Lord Chamberlain's troop, the Lord High
Admiral's troop, the company of Blackfriars, the
children of St. Paul's, and, in the first rank, the
1 A purely conjectural translation, Victor Hugo's word being
"drotschbloch." — TR.
14 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Bear-baiters. Lord Southampton went to the play
every evening. Nearly all the theatres were situ-
ated on the banks of the Thames, — a fact which
increased the number of watermen. The play-
rooms were of two kinds: some merely open
tavern-yards, a platform set up against a wall,
no ceiling, rows of benches placed on the ground,
for boxes the windows of the tavern. The per-
formance took place in the broad daylight and
in the open air. The principal of these theatres
was the Globe. The others, which were mostly
closed play-rooms, lighted with lamps, were used
at night, the most frequented being Blackfriars.
The best actor of Lord Pembroke's troop was
named Henslowe ; the best actor at Blackfriars
was Burbage. The Globe was situated on the
bank-side. This is known by a document at Sta-
tioners' Hall, dated the 26th of November, 1607:
" His Majesty's servants playing usually at the
Globe, on the Bank Side." The scenery was
simple. Two swords laid crosswise — sometimes
two laths — signified a battle; a shirt over the
coat signified a knight; a broom-handle draped
with the petticoat of the players' hostess signified
a palfrey caparisoned. A rich theatre, which made
its inventory in 1598, possessed "the limbs of
Moors, a dragon, a big horse with his legs, a
cage, a rock, four Turks' heads and that of old
Mahomet, a wheel for the siege of London, and
a hell's mouth." Another had "a sun, a target,
the three plumes of the Prince of Wales, with the
device Ich Dien, besides six devils, and the Pope
on his mule." An actor besmeared with piaster.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 15
and motionless, signified a wall; if he spread his
fingers, it meant that the wall had crevices. A
man laden with a faggot, followed by a dog, and
carrying a lantern, meant the moon; his lantern
represented the moonshine. People have laughed
at this mise en scene of moonlight, made famous
by the ' Midsummer Night's Dream/ without im-
agining that there is in it a gloomy suggestion
from Dante. (See ' The Inferno/ canto xx.) The
dressing-room of these theatres, where the actors
robed themselves pell-mell, was a corner separated
from the stage by a rag of some kind stretched on a
cord. The dressing-room at Blackfriars was shut off
by an ancient piece of tapestry which had belonged
to one of the guilds, and represented an ironmonger's
shop. Through the holes in this curtain, hanging in
tatters, the public saw the actors rouge their cheeks
with brick-dust, or make up their mustaches with a
cork burned at a candle-end. From time to time,
through an occasional opening of the curtain, you
might see a face begrimed as a Moor, peeping to
see if the time for going on the stage had arrived,
or the glabrous chin of an actor who was to play
the part of a woman. " Glabri histriones," said
Plautus. These theatres were frequented by no-
blemen, scholars, soldiers, and sailors. There was
acted Lord Buckhurst's tragedy, entitled ' Gor-
boduc, or Ferrex and Porrex;' Lyly's 'Mother
Bombie/ in which the cheep-cheep of sparrows was
heard ; ' The Libertine/ an imitation of the ' Con-
vivado de Piedra/ which was making the tour
of Europe; 'Felix and Philomena/ a fashionable
comedy performed for the first time at Greenwich
1 6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
before "Queen Bess; " 'Promos and Cassandra/ a
comedy dedicated by the author, George Whetstone,
to William Fleetwood, recorder of London ; ' Tamer-
lane ' and the ' Jew of Malta/ by Christopher Mar-
lowe ; farces and pieces by Robert Greene, George
Peele, Thomas Lodge, and Thomas Kyd ; and lastly,
mediaeval comedies. For just as France has her
' 1'Avocat Pathelin/ so England has her ' Gammer
Gurton's Needle.' While the actors gesticulated
and ranted, the noblemen and officers — with their
plumes and bands of gold lace, standing or squat-
ting on the stage, turning their backs, haughty and
at their ease in the midst of the constrained actors
— laughed, shouted, played at cards, threw them
at each other's heads, or played at " post and pair ; "
and below, in the darkness, on the pavement, among
pots of beer and pipes, the " stinkards," or ground-
lings, were dimly visible. It was by way of that
very theatre that Shakespeare entered upon the
dramatic career. From being a tender of horses,
he became a shepherd of men.
5. Such was the theatre in London about the
year 1580, under "the great Queen." It was not
much less wretched, a century later, at Paris, un-
der " the great King ; " and Moliere, at his dttut,
had, like Shakespeare, to make shift with rather
miserable playhouses. There is in the archives of
the ' Comedie Frangaise ' an unpublished manu-
script of four hundred pages, bound in parchment
and tied with a band of white leather. It is the
diary of Lagrange, a comrade of Moliere. La-
grange thus describes the theatre where Moliere's
company played by order of Mr. Rataban, super-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 17
intendent of the King's buildings : " Three rafters,
the frames rotten and shored up, and half the room
roofless and in ruin." In another place, under date
of Sunday, the I5th of March, 1671, he says :
" The company have resolved to make a large ceil-
ing over the whole hall, which, up to the said date
(i5th) has not been covered, save by a large blue
cloth suspended by cords." As for the lighting
and heating of this hall, particularly on the occa-
sion when such extraordinary sums were spent
upon the performance of ' Psyche,' which was by
Moliere and Corneille, we read : " Candles, thirty
francs ; janitor for wood, three francs." This was
the style of playhouse which " the great King "
placed at the disposal of Moliere. These bounties
to literature did not impoverish Louis XIV. so
much as to deprive him of the pleasure of giving,
at one time, two hundred thousand livres to Lavar-
din, and the same to D'Epernon ; two hundred
thousand livres, besides the regiment of France, to
the Count de Medavid ; four hundred thousand
livres to the Bishop of Noyon, because this Bishop
was a Clermont-Tonnerre, a family that had two
patents of Count and Peer of France, one for Cler-
mont and one for Tonnerre ; five hundred thou-
sand livres to the Duke of Vivonne, seven hundred
thousand livres to the Duke of Quintin-Lorges,
and eight hundred thousand livres to Monseigneur
Clement of Bavaria, Prince-Bishop of Liege. Let
us add that he gave a thousand livres pension to
Moliere. We find in Lagrange's journal, in the
month of April, 1663, this remark : "About the
same time M. de Moliere received, as a great wit,
2
1 8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
a pension from the King, and has been placed on
the civil list for the sum of a thousand livres."
Later, when Moliere was dead, and interred at St.
Joseph, " chapel of ease to the parish of St. Eus-
tache," the King pushed his patronage so far as to
permit his tomb to be " raised a foot out of the
ground."
6. Shakespeare, as we see, remained a long time
on the threshold of theatrical life, — outside, rather,
and in the street. At length he entered. He
passed the door and got behind the scenes. He
succeeded in becoming call-boy, vulgarly, a " bark-
er." About 1586 Shakespeare was " barking" with
Greene at Blackfriars. In 1587 he gained a step.
In the piece called ' The Giant Agrapardo, King
of Nubia, worse than his late brother, Angulafer,'
Shakespeare was intrusted with the task of carry-
ing the turban to the giant. Then from supernu-
merary he became actor, — thanks to Burbage, to
whom, long after, by an interlineation in his will,
he left thirty-six shillings to buy a gold ring. He
was the friend of Condell and Hemynge, — his
comrades while alive, his publishers after his death.
He was handsome : he had a high forehead, his
beard was brown, his manner was gentle, his mouth
pleasant, his eye profound. He took delight in
reading Montaigne, translated by Florio. He fre-
quented the Apollo Tavern, where he would see
and keep company with two frequenters of his
theatre, — Decker, author of * The Gull's Horn-
book/ in which a chapter is specially devoted to
" the way a man of fashion ought to behave at the
play," and Dr. Simon Forman, who has left a
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 19
manuscript journal containing reports of the first
performance of ' The Merchant of Venice ' and
'The Winter's Tale.'1 He used to meet Sir
Walter Raleigh at the Mermaid Club. Somewhere
about that time Mathurin Regnier met Philippe de
Bethune at La Pomme de Pin. The great lords
and fine gentlemen of the day were rather prone
to lend their names in order to start new taverns.
At Paris the Vicomte de Montauban, who was a
Crequi, had founded Le tripot des onze mille Diables.
At Madrid the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the un-
fortunate admiral of the Invincible Armada, had
founded the Puno-en-rostro, and in London Sir
Walter Raleigh had founded the Mermaid. There
drunkenness and wit kept company.
7. In 1589, while James VI. of Scotland, look-
ing to the throne of England, was paying his re-
spects to Elizabeth, who, two years before, on the
8th of February, 1587, had beheaded Mary Stuart,
mother of this James, Shakespeare composed his
first drama, 'Pericles' [i6o8].2 In 1591, while
the Catholic King was dreaming, after a scheme of
the Marquis d'Astorga, of a second Armada, more
lucky than the first, inasmuch as it was never
1 Inexact ; nothing is known of the first representation of ' The
Merchant of Venice.' Dr. Forman records representations of but
three plays, — 'Macbeth,' 'Cymbeline,' and 'The Winter's Tale;'
and it does not appear that these were first representations. — TR.
2 As the chronology of the plays here given is very different
from that accepted at present, the translator has inserted, in
brackets, after the name of each play, the dates found in Dow-
den's ' Shakspere Primer.' To that excellent little book the un-
initiated reader is referred for a general correction of Hugo's
biography of Shakespeare, which is to some extent legendary or
fabulous. — TR.
2O WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
launched, he composed 'Henry VI.' In 1593,
when the Jesuits obtained from the Pope express
permission to paint "the pains and torments of
hell" on the walls of "the chamber of meditation"
of Clermont College, where they often shut up a
poor youth who, the year after, became famous
under the name of Jean Chatel, he composed ' The
Taming of the Shrew' [1594-97 ?]. In 1594,
when, looking daggers at each other, and ready for
battle, the King of Spain, the Queen of England,
and even the King of France, all three were saying
" my good city of Paris," he continued and com-
pleted 'Henry VI.' [1591-92]. In 1595, while
Clement VIII. at Rome was solemnly striking
Henry IV. with his crosier over the backs of Car-
dinals du Perron and d'Ossat, he wrote ' Timon of
Athens' [1607-8]. In 1596, the year when Eliz-
abeth published an edict against the long points
of bucklers, and when Philip II. drove from his
presence a woman who had laughed while blowing
her nose, he composed ' Macbeth ' [1606]. In
1597, when this same Philip II. said to the Duke
of Alva, " You deserve the axe," not because the
Duke of Alva had put the Low Countries to fire
and sword, but because he had entered the King's
presence without being announced,1 he composed
'Cymbeline' [1609] and 'Richard III.' [1593].
In 1598, when the Earl of Essex ravaged Ireland,
wearing on his hat the glove of the Virgin Queen
1 The Duke of Alva who put the Netherlands to fire and
sword died in 1582. His memory may therefore be relieved of
the stain of having entered the King's presence unannounced in
1597 — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 21
Elizabeth, he composed ' The Two Gentlemen of
Verona' [1592-93], ' King John ' [ 1 595 ], ' Love's
Labor's Lost' [1590], ' The Comedy of Errors'
[1591], 'All's Well that Ends Well' [1601-2],
'A Midsummer Night's Dream' [1593-94], and
'The Merchant of Venice' [1596]. In 1599,
when the Privy Council, at her Majesty's request,
deliberated on the proposal to put Dr. Hayward to
the rack for having stolen some of the ideas of
Tacitus, he composed ' Romeo and Juliet ' [two
dates: 1591, 1596-97?]. In 1600, while the Em-
peror Rudolph was waging war against his rebel
brother, and sentencing his son, murderer of a
woman, to be bled to death, he composed ' As
You Like It' [1599], 'Henry IV.' [1597-98],
'Henry V.' [1599], and 'Much Ado About No-
thing' [1598]. In 1601, when Bacon published
the eulogy on the execution of the Earl of Essex,1
just as Leibnitz, eighty years afterwards, was to
find out good reasons for the murder of Monaldes-
chi (with this difference, however, that Monaldeschi
was nothing to Leibnitz, and that Essex had been
the benefactor of Bacon), he composed ' Twelfth
Night ; or, What you Will' [1600-1]. In 1602,
while, in obedience to the Pope, the King of
France, styled by Cardinal-nephew Aldobrandini
" The Fox of Beam," was counting his beads every
day, reciting the litanies on Wednesday, and the
1 The author here confuses two works, — the 'Declaration of
the Practices and Treasons of Essex' (1601), in which Bacon's
part was little more than that of amanuensis to the Government,
and his ' Apology in Certain Imputations concerning the Late
Earl of Essex' (1604). — TR.
22 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
rosary of the Virgin Mary on Saturday ; while
fifteen cardinals, assisted by the heads of the Or-
ders, were opening- the discussion on Molinism at
Rome ; and while the Holy See, at the request of
the Crown of Spain, was " saving Christianity and
the world " by the institution of the congregation
de Auxiliis, — he composed ' Othello ' [1604] . In
1603, when the death of Elizabeth made Henry
IV. say, " she was a virgin just as I am a Catholic/'
he composed ' Hamlet ' [1602]. In 1604, while
Philip III. was losing his last footing in the Low
Countries, he wrote 'Julius Caesar' [1601] and
' Measure for Measure' [1603]. In 1604, at the
time when James I. of England, the former James
VI. of Scotland, wrote against Bellarmin the * Tor-
tura Torti/ and, faithless to Carr, began to smile
upon Villiers, who was afterwards to honor him
with the title of " Your Piggishness," he composed
* Coriolanus ' [1608]. In 1607, when the Univer-
sity of York received the little Prince of Wales as
doctor, according to the account of Father St. Ro-
muald, " with all the ceremonies and the usual fur
gowns," he wrote ' King Lear ' [1605-6]. In 1609,
while the magistracy of France, placing the scaf-
fold at the disposition of the King, gave upon trust
a carte blanche for the sentence of the Prince of
Conde " to such punishment as it might please his
Majesty to order," Shakespeare composed ' Troi-
lus and Cressida ' [1603? revised 1607?]. In
1610, when Ravaillac assassinated Henry IV. by
the dagger, and the French Parliament assassinated
Ravaillac by the process of quartering his body,
Shakespeare composed 'Antony and Cleopatra'
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 2$
[1607], In 1611, while the Moors, driven out by
Philip III., were crawling out of Spain in the pangs
of death, he wrote 'The Winter's Tale' [1610-11],
'Henry VIII.' [1612-13], and 'The Tempest'
[1610].
8. He used to write on loose scraps of paper, —
like nearly all poets, for that matter. Malherbe and
Boileau are almost the only ones who have written
on sheets folded and stitched. Racan said to Mile,
de Gournay, " I have this morning seen M. de Mal-
herbe sewing with coarse gray thread a fascicle of
white paper, on which will soon appear some son-
nets." Each of Shakespeare's dramas, composed
according to the wants of his company, was in all
probability learned and rehearsed in haste by the
actors from the original itself, as they had not time
to copy it; hence in his case, as in Moliere's, the
dismemberment and loss of manuscripts. There
were few or no entry books in those almost itine-
rant theatres; no coincidence in time between
representation and publication of the plays ; some-
times not even a printed copy, the stage remaining
the sole medium of publication. When the pieces
by chance are printed, they bear titles which bewil-
der us. The second part of ' Henry VI.' is entitled
' The First Part of the Contention between York
and Lancaster.' The third part is called ' The True
Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York.'1 All this
enables us to understand why so much obscurity
rests on the dates when Shakespeare composed his
dramas, and why it is difficult to fix them with
1 The plays thus entitled are older ones, of which ' Henry VI.'
Parts II. and III. are recasts. — TR.
24 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
precision. The dates which we have just given -
here brought together for the first time — are pretty
nearly certain; notwithstanding some doubt still
exists as to the years when were written, or even
played, ' Timon of Athens/ ' Cymbeline/ 'Julius
Caesar,' ' Antony and Cleopatra,' ' Coriolanus/ and
' Macbeth.' Here and there we meet with barren
years; others there are of which the fertility seems
excessive. It is, for instance, on a simple note by
Meres, the author of 'The Wit's Treasury,' that
we are compelled to attribute to the year 1598 the
creation of six pieces, — ' The Two Gentlemen of
Verona,' ' The Comedy of Errors/ ' King John/
' Midsummer Night's Dream/ ' The Merchant of
Venice/ and 'All's Well that Ends Well/ which
Meres calls ' Love's Labour 's Won.' l The date of
' Henry VI.' is fixed, for the First Part at least, by
an allusion which Nash makes to this play in ' Pierce
Penniless.' The year 1604 is given as that of
' Measure for Measure/ inasmuch as this piece was
played on St. Stephen's Day of that year, — a circum-
stance of which Hemynge makes a special note ;
and the year 1611 for ' Henry VIII. / inasmuch as
' Henry VIII.' was played at the time of the burning
of the Globe Theatre.2 Various circumstances — a
disagreement with his company, a whim of the Lord
Chamberlain — sometimes compelled Shakespeare
l- Francis Meres published in 1598 his ' Palladis Tamia : Wit's
Treasury,' in which he enumerates not six but twelve of Shake-
speare's plays. This 'mention of course merely proves the exist-
ence of the plays in 1598 ; he does not state that any of them were
produced in that year. — TR.
2 This " most celebrated theatre the world has ever seen " was
destroyed by fire on Tuesday, June 29, 1613. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 2$
to change from one theatre to another. ' The
Taming of the Shrew ' was played for the first time
in 1593, at Henslowe's theatre;1 'Twelfth Night'
in 1601, at Middle Temple Hall ; ' Othello ' in 1602,
at Harefield Castle.2 ' King Lear ' was played at
Whitehall during Christmas (1607) before James I.8
Burbage created the part of Lear. Lord South-
ampton, recently set free from the Tower of Lon-
don, was present at this performance. This Lord
Southampton was an old frequenter of Blackfriars,
and Shakespeare, in 1589,* had dedicated the poem
of ' Venus and Adonis ' to him. Adonis was the
fashion at that time ; twenty-five years after Shake-
speare, the Chevalier Marini wrote a poem on
Adonis which he dedicated to Louis XIII.
9. In 1597 Shakespeare lost his son, of whom
the only trace on earth is one line in the death-
register of the parish of Stratford-on-Avon : " 1 597.
August 17. Hamnet. Filius William Shakespeare"
On the 6th of September, 1601, the poet's father,
John Shakespeare, died. He was now the head of
his company of actors. James I. had given him in
1607 the management of Blackfriars, and afterward
the privilege of the Globe. In 1613, the Princess
Elizabeth, daughter of James, and the Elector Pala-
tine, King of Bohemia, whose statue may be seen
in the ivy at the angle of a great tower at Heidel-
berg, came to the Globe to see ' The Tempest'
1 This must have been the older play, * The Taming of a Shrew,'
published in 1594. — TR.
2 Halliwell-Phillipps (' Outlines,' p. 180) says that 'Othello ' is
first heard of in 1604. — TR.
3 The true date is Dec. 26, 1606. —TR.
* 'Venus and Adonis ' was published in 1593. — TR.
26 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
performed. These royal attendances did not save
him from the censure of the Lord Chamberlain.
A certain interdict weighed upon his pieces, the
representation of which was tolerated, and the
printing now and then forbidden. In the second
volume of the register at Stationers' Hall you may
read to-day, on the margin of the title of three
pieces, ' As You Like It,' ' Henry V.,' * Much Ado
About Nothing,' the words " 4 Augt. to be staled"
The motives for these interdictions escape us.
Shakespeare was able, for instance, without arous-
ing protest, to place upon the stage his former
poaching adventure, and make of Sir Thomas Lucy
a witling (Justice Shallow) ; to show the public
Falstaff killing the buck and belaboring Shallow's
people ; and to push the likeness so far as to give
to Shallow the arms of Sir Thomas Lucy, — an
Aristophanic piece of audacity by a man who did
not know Aristophanes. Falstaff, in Shakespeare's
manuscripts, was written " Falstaffe." In the mean-
time he had amassed some wealth, as did Moliere
later. Towards the end of the century he was rich
enough for a certain Richard Quiney to ask, on the
8th of October,1 1598, his assistance in a letter which
bears the superscription, " To my loveing good
ffrend and countreyman Mr. Wm. Shackespere delr
thees." He refused the assistance, as it appears,
and returned the letter, which was found afterwards
among Fletcher's papers, and on the back of which
this same Richard Quiney had written Histrio !
1 The author has the date wrong. It should be the 25th of
October. The letter is signed " Rye. Quyney" which Hugo prints
thus : " Ryc-Quiney.n — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 27
Mima ! 1 Shakespeare loved Stratford-on-Avon,
where he was born, where his father had died, where
his son was buried. He there bought or built a
house, which he christened " New Place." We
say, " bought or built a house ; " for he bought it
according to Whiterill, and he built it according
to Forbes, and on this point Forbes disputes with
Whiterill.2 These cavils of the learned about tri-
fles are not worth being searched into, particularly
when we see Father Hardouin, for instance, com-
pletely upset a whole passage of Pliny by replacing
nos pridern by non pridem.
10. Shakespeare went from time to time to
pass some days at New Place. Half-way upon
the short journey he encountered Oxford, and at
Oxford the Crown Inn, and at the inn the hostess,
a beautiful, intelligent creature, wife of the worthy
innkeeper, Davenant. In 1606 Mrs. Davenant was
brought to bed of a son, whom they named Wil-
liam; and in 1644 Sir William Davenant, created
knight by Charles I., wrote to Rochester: "Know
this, which does honor to my mother, — I am the
son of Shakespeare;" thus allying himself to Shake-
speare in the same way that in our days M. Lucas-
Montigny has claimed relationship with Mirabeau.
1 Halliwell-Phillipps, who gives at p. 144 of the ' Outlines ' a
fac-simile of this, the only letter directly addressed to Shakespeare
known to exist, is silent about this part of the anecdote. The let-
ter was found in the Corporation archives at Stratford. — TR.
2 Shakespeare bought the Great House, or New Place, in the
spring of 1 597. For interesting particulars, see Halliwell-Phillipps's
'Outlines,' pp. 116 ff., and R. G. White's 'Life and Genius of
Shakespeare/ p. 121. An exhaustive account of it is given in the
appendix to the ' Outlines,' pp. 447-479. — TR.
28 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Shakespeare had married his two daughters, —
Susanna to a doctor, Judith to a merchant. Su-
sanna was clever, but Judith knew not how to read
or write, and signed her name with a cross. In
1613 it happened that Shakespeare, having come
to Stratford-on-Avon, had no further desire to
return to London. Perhaps he was in difficul-
ties. He had just been compelled to mortgage
his house. The contract deed of this mortgage,
dated the nth of March, 1613, and indorsed
with Shakespeare's signature, was in the last cen-
tury in the hands of an attorney, who gave it to
Garrick, who lost it. Garrick lost likewise (it is
Mile. Violetti, his wife, who tells the story) Forbes's
manuscript, with his letters in Latin. From 1613
Shakespeare remained at his house at New Place,
occupied with his garden, forgetting his plays,
wholly devoted to his flowers. He planted in
this garden of New Place the first mulberry-tree
that was grown at Stratford, — just as Queen Eliza-
beth wore, in 1561, the first silk stockings seen in
England. On the 25th of March, 1616, feeling ill,
he made his will. His will, dictated by him, is
written on three pages ; he signed each of them
with a trembling hand. On the first page he
signed only his Christian name, " William ;" on
the second, " Willm. Shaspr. ; " on the third,
" William Shasp." 1 On the 23d of April he died.
1 This statement of the form of the poet's signatures to his will
is incorrect. The surname is signed in full in each case. All
Shakespeare's authentic signatures are conveniently exhibited in
fac-simile at the end of Charles Knight's ' Biography of Shakspere/
In at least five of the six signatures the spelling is apparently
Shakspere ; in the other (the last upon the will) it is obscure. The
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 29
He had that day reached the exact age of fifty-two
years, having been born on the 23d of April, 1564.
On that same day, 23d April, 1616, died Cervantes,
a genius of like stature. When Shakespeare died,
Milton was eight years, and Corneille ten years of
age ; Charles I. and Cromwell were two youths, the
one of sixteen, the other of seventeen years.
CHAPTER IV.
SHAKESPEARE'S life was greatly embittered. He
lived perpetually slighted. Posterity may read this
to-day in his familiar verses : —
" Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdu'd
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand :
Pity me, then, . . .
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eysel." Sonnet in.
" Your love and pity doth th' impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow."
Sonnet 112.
" Nor thou with public kindness honor me,
Unless thou take that honor from thy name."
Sonnet 36.
" Or on my frailties why are frailer spies."
Sonnet 12 1.
Shakespeare had permanently near him one
envious person, Ben Jonson, an indifferent comic
common spelling, Shakespeare, is based upon " the mode in which
it was usually printed during the poet's life." — TR.
30 WILLTAM SHAKESPEARE.
poet, whose first steps he had aided.1 Shake-
speare was thirty-nine when Elizabeth died. This
Queen had not paid much attention to him ; she
managed to reign forty-four years without recog-
nizing Shakespeare. None the less is she histori-
cally styled " protectress of arts and letters," etc.
The historians of the old school gave these certifi-
cates to all princes, whether they knew how to
read or not.
Shakespeare, persecuted as, at a later date, was
Moliere, sought, like Moliere, to lean on the mas-
ter. Shakespeare and Moliere would in our days
have had a loftier spirit. The master was Eliza-
beth, " King Elizabeth," as the English say. Shake-
speare glorified Elizabeth : he called her " the Virgin
Star," " Star of the West, "and " Diana," — a name
divine which pleased the Queen ; but in vain.
The Queen took no notice of it, — less sensitive
to the praises in which Shakespeare called her
" Diana" than to the insults of Scipio Gentilis, who,
taking the pretensions of Elizabeth on the bad
side, called her " Hecate," and applied to her the
ancient triple curse, Mormo ! Bombo ! Gorgo! As
for James I., whom Henry IV. called " Master
James," he gave, as we have seen, the privilege of
the Globe to Shakespeare, but he willingly forbade
the publication of his pieces. Some contempora-
1 Only the last clause of the sentence is accurate. For the
nature of the important service rendered by Shakespeare to Ben
Jonson, see Halliwell-Phillipps's 'Outlines,' pp. 148-150. That
Ben Jonson was envious of Shakespeare is doubtless as untrue
as that he was an " indifferent poet." " I loved the man," he said
after Shakespeare's death, " and do honor his memory, on this
side idolatry, as much as any." — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 3 I
ries, Dr. Simon Forman among others, so far took
notice of Shakespeare as to make a note of the
occupation of an evening passed at the perform-
ance of ' The Merchant of Venice ! ' l That was
all he knew of glory.2 Shakespeare, once dead,
entered into oblivion.
From 1640 to 1660 the Puritans abolished art
and shut up the play-houses. The whole theatre
was shrouded as in a winding-sheet. With Charles
II. the drama revived, without Shakespeare. The
false taste of Louis XIV. had invaded England.
Charles II. belonged rather to Versailles than
London. He had as mistress a French girl, the
Duchess of Portsmouth, and as an intimate friend
the privy purse of the King of France. Clifford,
his favorite, who never entered the Parliament-
house without spitting, said : " It is better for my
master to be viceroy under a great monarch like
Louis XIV. than to be the slave of five hundred
insolent English subjects." These were no longer
the days of the Commonwealth, — the time when
Cromwell took the title of " Protector of England
and France," and forced this same Louis XIV. to
accept the title of " King of the French."
1 See note p. 19.
2 Apart from the commendatory verses prefixed to the folio of
1623, Halliwell-Phillipps ('Outlines,' pp. 569-582) cites no less
than eighteen contemporary references by name to the great dram-
atist, substantially all of them eulogistic. It would be strange
indeed if that pre-eminently dramatic age should have left the
discovery of Shakespeare's genius as a playwright to be made in
an age of dramatic decay. Considering that no one took pains
to preserve testimony of any kind with reference to Shakespeare,
the evidence of his great popularity — not to say pre-eminence —
in his own time is in truth remarkably abundant. — TR.
32 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Under this restoration of the Stuarts, Shake-
speare's eclipse became complete. He was so
thoroughly dead that Davenant, his putative son,
recomposed his pieces. There was no longer any
' Macbeth ' but the ' Macbeth ' of Davenant. Dry-
den speaks of Shakespeare on one occasion in
order to say that he is " out of date." l Lord
Shaftesbury calls him " a wit out of fashion." Dry-
den and Shaftesbury were two oracles. Dryden, a
converted Catholic, had two sons, ushers in the
chamber of Clement XI. ; he made tragedies wor-
thy of being put into Latin verse, as Atterbury's
hexameters prove, and he was the servant of that
James II. who, before he became king on his own ac-
count, had asked of his brother, Charles II., "Why
don't you hang Milton ? " The Earl of Shaftes-
bury, a friend of Locke, was the man who wrote
an ' Essay on Sprightliness in Important Conversa-
tions/ and who, by the manner in which Chancellor
Hyde helped his daughter to the wing of a chicken,
divined that she was secretly married to the Duke
of York.
These two men having condemned Shakespeare,
the oracle had spoken. England, a country more
obedient to conventional opinion than is generally
1 Dryden spoke of Shakespeare often, sometimes critically, but
always with the highest respect. It was he who wrote in the pro-
logue to ' The Tempest : ' —
" But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be ;
Within that circle none durst walk but he."
And in the dedication to • The Rival Ladies,' he refers to Shake-
speare as one " who, with some errors not to be avoided in that
age, had undoubtedly a larger soul of poesy than ever any of our
nation." — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
33
believed, forgot Shakespeare. Some purchaser
pulled down his house, New Place. A Rev. Dr.
Cartrell cut down and burned his mulberry-tree.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the
eclipse1 was total. In 1707, a certain Nahum Tate
published a ' King Lear,' informing his readers
" that he had borrowed the idea of it from a play
which he had read by chance, the work of some
nameless author." This " nameless author " was
Shakespeare.2
1 Victor Hugo's smoked glass very much darkens the " eclipse "
of Shakespeare at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Ge-
rard Langbaine, in his 'Account of the English Dramatick Poets'
(Oxford, 1691), says: "I esteem his plays beyond any that have
ever been published in our language." Again : " I should think I
were guilty of an injury beyond pardon to his memory, should I
so far disparage it as to bring his wit in competition with any in
our age." That Langbaine was not alone in thinking thus, there
is plenty of evidence. See foot-note, p. 32. — TR.
2 The statement that Tate styled the original ' Lear ' the work
of " some nameless author " is piquant, but untrue. His Dedica-
tion names Shakespeare repeatedly, and " in a tone of reverence."
He speaks of his own work as a "revival" of Shakespeare's, and
his Epilogue concludes with, —
"This Play's Reviver humbly do's admit
Your abs'lute POWT to damn his part of it :
But still so many Master-Touches shine
Of that vast Hand that first laid this Design
That in great Shakespear1 s right, He 's bold to say,
If you like nothing you have seen this Day,
The Play your Judgment damns, not you the Play."
It may be added that Victor Hugo advances by about a quarter
of a century the date of Tate's " revival " of ' Lear,' which had
been before the public seven or eight years when Langbaine
wrote the remarks quoted in the preceding note. The reader
may be willing to be reminded that this " certain " Nahum Tate
succeeded Shadwell (Dryden's successor) as poet laureate of
England. — TR.
34 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER V.
IN 1728 Voltaire imported from England to
France the name of Will Shakespeare; only, in-
stead of Will, he pronounced it Gilles.
Jeering began in France, and oblivion continued
in England. What the Irishman Nahum Tate had
done for ' King Lear/ others did for other pieces.
'All's Well that Ends Well' had successively
two " arrangers," Pilon for the Haymarket, and
Kemble for Drury Lane. Shakespeare existed no
longer, and counted no longer. ' Much Ado About
Nothing ' served likewise as a rough draft twice, —
for Davenant in 1673; for James Miller in 1737.
' Cymbeline ' was recast four times, — under James
II., at the Theatre Royal, by Thomas Dursey; in
1695 by Charles Marsh; in 1759 by W. Hawkins;
in 1761 by Garrick. ' Coriolanus ' was recast four
times, — in 1682, for the Theatre Royal, by Tate;
in 1720, for Drury Lane, by John Dennis; in
1755, for Covent Garden, by Thomas Sheridan;
in 1801, for Drury Lane, by Kemble. ' Timon of
Athens ' was recast four times, — at the Duke's
Theatre, in 1678, by Shadwell; in 1768, at the
theatre of Richmond Green, by James Love ; in
1771, at Drury Lane, by Cumberland; in 1786, at
Covent Garden, by Hull.
In the eighteenth century the persistent raillery
of Voltaire finally produced in England a cer-
tain revival of interest. Garrick, while correcting
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 35
Shakespeare, played him, and acknowledged that
it was Shakespeare that he played. They reprinted
him at Glasgow. An imbecile, Malone, made com-
mentaries on his plays, and, as a logical sequence,
whitewashed his tomb. There was on this tomb a
little bust, of a doubtful resemblance, and indiffer-
ent as a work of art, but venerable from the fact
that it was contemporaneous with Shakespeare.
It is after this bust that all the portraits of Shake-
speare have been made that we now see. The
bust was whitewashed. Malone, critic and white-
washer of Shakespeare, spread a coat of plaster
over his face, and of stupid nonsense over his
work.
BOOK II.
MEN OF GENIUS.
CHAPTER I.
HIGH Art, using this word in its absolute sense,
is the region of Equals.
Before going farther, let us fix the value of
this expression, "Art," which often occurs in this
book.
We speak of Art as we speak of Nature. Here
are two terms of almost indeterminate meaning;
to pronounce the one or the other of these words
— Nature, Art — is to make a conjuration, to call
forth the ideal from the deeps, to draw aside one
of the two great curtains of the divine creation.
God manifests himself to us in the first degree
through the life of the universe, and in the second
through the thought of man. The second mani-
festatioa is not less holy than the first. The first
is named Nature, the second is named Art. Hence
this reality : the poet is a priest.
There is here below a pontiff, — it is genius.
Sacerdos Magnus.
Art is the second branch of Nature.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 37
Art is as natural as Nature.
By the word GOD — let us fix the sense of this
word also — we mean the Living Infinite.
The latent Ego of the visible Infinite, that is
God.
God is the invisible made evident.
The world concentrated, is God. God expanded,
is the world.
We, who are speaking, believe in nothing out of
God.
That being said, let us proceed. God creates
Art by man, having for a tool the human intellect.
The great Workman has made this tool for himself;
he has no other.
Forbes, in the curious little work perused by
Warburton and lost by Garrick, affirms that Shake-
speare devoted himself to the practice of magic,
that magic was in his family, and that what little
good there was in his pieces was dictated to him
by a familiar spirit.
Let us say concerning this — for we must not
draw back from any question that may arise —
that it has been a strange error of all ages to
desire to give the human intellect assistance from
without. Antrum adjuvat vatem. The work ap-
pearing superhuman, people wish to exhibit the
intervention of the extra-human : in antiquity, the
tripod ; in our days, the table. The table is nothing
but the tripod come again. To accept in a literal
sense the demon that Socrates talks of, the bush
of Moses, the nymph of Numa, the spirit of
Plotinus, and Mahomet's dove, is to be the victim
of a metaphor.
38 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
On the other hand, the table, turning or talking,
has been very much laughed at. To speak plainly,
this raillery is out of place. To replace inquiry by
mockery is convenient, but not very scientific.
For our part, we think that the strict duty of
Science is to test all phenomena. Science is ig-
norant, and has no right to laugh : a savant who
laughs at the possible, is very near being an idiot.
The unexpected ought always to be expected by
Science. Her duty is to stop it in its course and
search it, rejecting the chimerical, establishing the
real. Science has but the right to put a visa on
facts; she should verify and distinguish. All hu-
man knowledge is but picking and culling. The
circumstance that the false is mingled with the
true, furnishes no excuse for rejecting the whole
mass. When was the tare an excuse for refusing
the corn? Hoe out the weed error, but reap the
fact, and place it beside others. Science is the
sheaf of facts.
The mission of Science is to study and sound
everything. All of us, according to our degree,
are the creditors of investigation ; we are its debt-
ors also. It is due to us, and we owe it to others.
To evade a phenomenon, to refuse to pay it that
attention to which it has a right, to bow it out, to
show it the door, to turn our back on it laughing,
is to make truth a bankrupt, and to leave the
signature of Science to be protested. The phe-
nomenon of the tripod of old, and of the table
of to-day, is entitled, like anything else, to inves-
tigation. Psychic science will gain by it, without
doubt. Let us add, that to abandon phenomena
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 39
to credulity, is to commit treason against human
reason.
Homer affirms that the tripods of Delphi walked
of their own accord; and he explains the fact
(book xviii. of the ' Iliad ') by saying that Vulcan
forged invisible wheels for them. The explanation
does not much simplify the phenomenon. Plato
relates that the statues of Daedalus gesticulated in
the darkness, had wills of their own, and resisted
their master, and that he was obliged to tie them
up, so that they might not walk off. Strange dogs
at the end of a chain ! Fiddlier mentions, at page
52 of his 'History of Theodosius,' — referring to
the great conspiracy of the magicians of the fourth
century against the Emperor, — a tipping table, of
which we shall perhaps speak elsewhere, in order
to say what Flechier did not say, and seemed not
to know. This table was covered with a round
plating of several metals, ex diversis metallicis
materiis fabrefacta, like the copper and zinc plates
employed at present in biological investigation.
So it appears that this phenomenon, always re-
jected and always reappearing, is not an affair of
yesterday.
Besides, whatever credulity has said or thought
about it, this phenomenon of the tripods and tables
is without any connection with the inspiration of
the poets, — an inspiration entirely direct. This is
the point at which we have been aiming. The
sibyl has a tripod, the poet none; the poet is
himself a tripod, the tripod of divinity itself. God
has not made this marvellous distillery of thought,
— the brain of man, — in order to make no use of
40 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
it. The man of genius has need of no apparatus
but his brain ; through it his every thought must
pass. Thought ascends, and buds from the brain,
as the fruit from the root Thought is the resul-
tant of man ; the root plunges into the earth, the
brain into God, — that is to say, into the Infinite.
Those who imagine (there are such, witness
Forbes) that a poem like ' Le Medecin de son
Honneur' or ' King Lear' can be dictated by a
tripod or a table, err in a strange fashion ; these
works are the works of man. God has no need
to make a piece of wood aid Shakespeare or
Calderon.
Then let us set aside the tripod. Poetry is the
poet's own. Let us be respectful before the possi-
ble, of which no one knows the limit. Let us be
attentive and serious before the extra-human, out
of which we come, and which awaits us ; but let
us not degrade the great workers of the world
by hypotheses of a mysterious assistance which
is not necessary; let us leave to the brain that
which belongs to it, and agree that the productions
of genius are a superhuman offspring of man.
CHAPTER II.
SUPREME Art is the region of Equals. There
is no primacy among masterpieces.
Like water, which heated to a hundred degrees
will bear no increase of temperature, human thought
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 41
attains in certain men its maximum intensity.
yEschylus, Job, Phidias, Isaiah, Saint Paul, Juve-
nal, Dante, Michael Angelo, Rabelais, Cervantes,
Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven, with some
others, rise to the hundredth degree of genius.
The human mind has a summit, — the ideal; to
this summit God descends, man rises.
In each age three or four men of genius under-
take the ascent. From below, the world's eyes
follow them. These men go up the mountain,
enter into the clouds, disappear, reappear. People
watch them, mark them. They skirt precipices;
a false step would not displease certain of the
lookers-on. They daringly pursue their road. See
them aloft, already afar; they are no longer any-
thing but black specks. " How small they are ! "
says the crowd. They are giants. On they go.
The road is rugged, the scarped cliff resists them.
At each step a wall, at each step a pitfall. As
they rise, the cold increases. They must make
their ladder, cut the ice, and walk on it, converting
obstacles into a stairway. Every storm is raging.
Nevertheless, these madmen make their way. The
air becomes difficult to breathe, the abyss widens
around them. Some fall: they have done well.
Others stop, and retrace their steps; there is sad
weariness. Some intrepid ones continue ; the elect
persevere. The dreadful declivity crumbles be-
neath them and seeks to sweep them away; glory
is treacherous. Eagles eye them ; lightnings blunt
their bolts upon them; the hurricane is furious.
No matter, they persist, they press upward. He
who reaches the summit is thy equal, O Homer!
42 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Repeat the names we have mentioned, and those
which we might have added. To choose between
these men is impossible. There is no method
for striking the balance between Rembrandt and
Michael Angelo.
Confining ourselves solely to the authors and
poets, let us examine them one after the other.
Which is the greatest ? Every one.
I. One, Homer, is the huge poet-child. The
world is born, Homer sings : he is the bird of this
dawn. Homer has the holy candor of morning.
The shadow is almost unknown to him. Chaos,
heaven, earth, Geo and Ceto, Jove god of gods,
Agamemnon king of kings, peoples, flocks from
the beginning, temples, towns, battles, harvests, the
ocean ; Diomedes fighting, Ulysses wandering;
the meanderings of a ship seeking its home ; the
Cyclops, the Pygmies ; a map of the world with a
crown of gods upon Olympus, and here and there
a glimpse of Erebus through furnace-mouths ;
priests, virgins, mothers, little children frightened
by the plumes, the unforgetting dog, great words
which fall from gray-beards, loving friendships, the
passions and the hydras, Vulcan for the laugh of
the gods, Thersites for the laugh of men ; the two
aspects of married life summed up for the benefit
of the centuries in Helen and in Penelope; the
Styx, Destiny, the heel of Achilles, without which
Destiny would be vanquished by the Styx ; mon-
sters, heroes, men, a thousand perspectives glimps-
ing in the haze of the antique world, — this is Homer.
Troy coveted, Ithaca longed for. Homer is war
and travel, — the two first methods for the meeting of
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 43
mankind. The camp attacks the fortress, the ship
attacks the unknown by penetrating it ; around war
every passion ; around travel every kind of adven-
ture; two gigantic groups: the first, bloody, is
called the ' Iliad/ the second, luminous, is called
the ' Odyssey.' Homer makes men preternatu-
rally big ; they hurl at each other masses of rock
which twelve yoke of oxen could not move ; the
gods hardly care to have to deal with them. Min-
erva takes Achilles by the hair; he turns around
in anger: "What wouldst thou with me, goddess?"
There is, however, no monotony in these puissant
figures. These giants are graduated. After each
hero, Homer breaks the mould. Ajax son of
Olleus is less high in stature than Ajax son of
Telamon. Homer is one of the men of genius who
solve that fine problem of art, — the finest of all,
perhaps, — truly to depict humanity by the en-
largement of man: that is, to generate the real
in the ideal. Fable and history, hypothesis and
tradition, the chimera and knowledge, make up
Homer. He is fathomless, and he is cheerful.
All the depth of ancient days moves, radiant and
luminous, in the vast azure of his mind. Lycur-
gus, that peevish sage, half a Solon and half a
Draco, was conquered by Homer. He turned out
of the way, while travelling, to go and read, at the
house of Cleophilus, Homer's poems, placed there
in remembrance of the hospitality that Homer,
it is said, had formerly received in that house.
Homer, to the Greeks, was a god ; he had priests,
the Homerides. Alcibiades gave a rhetorician a
cuff for boasting that he had never read Homer.
44 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
The divinity of Homer has survived Paganism.
Michael Angelo said, " When I read Homer, I
look at myself to see if I am not twenty feet in
height." Tradition will have it that the first verse
of the * Iliad ' is a verse of Orpheus ; and this
tradition, doubling Homer by Orpheus, increased
in Greece the religion of Homer. The shield of
Achilles, book xviii. of the ' Iliad,' was explained
in the temples by Banco, daughter of Pythagoras.
Homer, like the sun, has planets. Virgil who
writes the ' yEneid/ Lucan who writes the ' Pharsa-
lia,' Tasso who writes the 'Jerusalem,' Ariosto with
his 'Roland,' Milton with 'Paradise Lost,' Camoens
with the ' Lusiad,' Klopstock with the ' Messiah/
Voltaire with the ' Henriade,' all gravitate about
Homer, and, sending back to their own moons
his light reflected at different angles, move at un-
equal distances within his boundless orbit. Such
is Homer; such is the beginning of the epic.
2. Another, Job, begins the drama. This em-
bryo is a colossus. Job begins the drama, now
forty centuries ago, by placing Jehovah and Satan
in presence of each other ; the evil defies the good,
and behold ! the action is begun. The scene is laid
upon the earth, and man is the field of battle ; the
plagues are the actors. One of the wildest grand-
eurs of this poem is, that in it the sun is baleful.
The sun is in Job as in Homer; but it is no longer
the dawn, it is high noon. The mournful oppres-
sion of the brazen ray, falling perpendicularly on
the desert, pervades the poem, which is heated to
a white heat. Job sweats on his dunghill. The
shadow of Job is small and black, and hidden under
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 45
him, as the snake under the rock. Tropical flies
buzz on his sores. Job has above his head the
frightful Arabian sun — a breeder of monsters, an
intensifier of plagues, which changes the cat into
the tiger, the lizard into the crocodile, the pig into
the rhinoceros, the snake into the boa, the nettle
into the cactus, the wind into the simoom, the
miasma into the pestilence. Job is anterior to
Moses. Afar in the ages, by the side of Abraham
the Hebrew patriarch, there is Job the Arabian
patriarch. Before being tried, he had been happy :
" this man was the greatest of all the men of the
East," says his poem. This was the laborer-king :
he exercised the immense priesthood of solitude :
he sacrificed and sanctified. Toward evening he
gave the earth the blessing, the berakah. He was
learned ; he was acquainted with rhythm ; his
poem, of which the Arabian text is lost, was written
in verse : this, at least, is certain from verse 3 of
chap. iii. to the end. He was good; he did not
meet a poor child without throwing him the small
coin kesitha ; he was " the foot of the lame, and the
eye of the blind." It is from this that he has fallen :
fallen, he becomes gigantic. The whole poem of
Job is the development of this idea, — the greatness
that may be found at the bottom of the pit. Job is
more majestic when unfortunate than when prosper-
ous; his leprosy is a robe of purple. His misery
terrifies those who are there ; they speak not to him
until after a silence of seven days and seven nights.
His lamentation is marked by a certain tranquil and
gloomy magianism. While crushing the vermin on
his ulcers, he apostrophizes the stars. He addresses
46 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Orion, the Hyades, — which he names the Plei-
ades, — and " the chambers of the south." He
says, " God setteth an end to darkness." He calls
the diamonds which are hidden, " the stones of
darkness." He mingles with his own distress the
misfortune of others, and has tragic words that
freeze, — " the widow is empty." l He smiles also,
and is then still more terrible. He has around him
Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, three implacable types of
the friendly busybody, of whom he says, " You
play on me as on a tambourine." His language,
submissive toward God, is bitter toward kings :
" kings and counsellors of the earth, which built
desolate places for themselves," — leaving our wit
to find out whether he speaks of their tomb or of
their kingdom. Tacitus says, solitudinem faciunt.
As to Jehovah, Job adores him; and under the
furious scourging of the plagues, all his resistance
is confined to asking of God : " How long wilt thou
not depart from me, nor let me alone till I swallow
down my spittle?" That dates from four thousand
years ago. At the same hour, perhaps, when the
enigmatical astronomer of Denderah carves in the
granite his mysterious zodiac, Job engraves his on
human thought; and his zodiac is not made of
stars, but of miseries. This zodiac turns yet above
our heads. We have of Job only the Hebrew ver-
sion, attributed to Moses. The thought of such a
poet, followed by such a translator, is impressive :
the man of the dunghill translated by the man of
Sinai ! Job is in reality a priest and a seer. Job
1 Is this an error ? Job xxii. 9 reads, " Thou hast sent widows
away empty." And where is the next quotation found ? — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 47
extracts from his drama a dogma ; he suffers, and
draws an inference. Now, to suffer and draw an
inference is to teach ; sorrow leads logically to God.
Job teaches; having touched the summit of the
drama, he stirs the depths of philosophy. He first
shows that sublime madness of wisdom which, two
thousand years later, in resignation making itself
a sacrifice, will be the foolishness of the cross —
stultitiam crucis. The dunghill of Job, transfigured,
will become the Calvary of Jesus.
3. Another, ^schylus, enlightened by the un-
conscious divination of genius, without suspecting
that he has behind him, in the East, the resignation
of Job, completes it, unwittingly, by the revolt of
Prometheus ; so that the lesson may be complete,
and that the human race, to whom Job has taught
but duty, shall feel in Prometheus the dawn of
right. There is something ghastly in ^Eschylus
from one end to the other; there is a vague out-
line of an extraordinary Medusa behind the figures
in the foreground. yEschylus is splendid and for-
midable ; as though you saw a frowning brow above
the sun. He has two Cains, Eteocles and Polyni-
ces ; Genesis has but one. His troop of Oceanides
comes and goes under a dark sky, like a flock of
driven birds. ^Eschylus has none of the recognized
proportions. He is shaggy, abrupt, excessive, un-
susceptible of softened contour, almost savage, with
a grace all his own like that of the flowers of wild
nooks, less haunted by the nymphs than by the
furies, siding with the Titans, among the goddesses
choosing the austere and greeting the Gorgons
with a sinister smile, like Othryx and Briareus a
48 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
son of the soil, and ready to scale the skies anew
against the upstart Jupiter. ^Eschylus is ancient
mystery made man ; something like a Pagan
prophet. His work, if we had it all, would be a
kind of Greek Bible. Poet hundred-handed, having
an Orestes more fatal than Ulysses and a Thebes
grander than Troy, hard as rock, tumultuous like
the foam, full of steeps, torrents, and precipices,
and such a giant that at times one might take him
for a mountain. Coming later than the ' Iliad/ he
has the air of an elder brother of Homer.
4. Another, Isaiah, seems placed above human-
ity, and resembles a rumbling of continual thun-
der. He is the great reproacher. His style, a
kind of nocturnal cloud, is lighted up with images
which suddenly empurple all the depths of his
obscure thought, and make us exclaim, " It light-
ens ! " Isaiah engages in battle, hand to hand,
with the evil which, in civilization, makes its ap-
pearance before the good. He cries " Silence ! "
at the noise of chariots, of festivals, of triumphs.
The foam of his prophecy falls even on Nature ;
he gives Babylon over to the moles and bats, Nin-
eveh to the briers, Tyre to ashes, Jerusalem to
night; he fixes a date for oppressors, warns the
powers of their approaching end, assigns a day
against idols, against high citadels, against the fleets
of Tarsus, against all the cedars of Lebanon, and
against all the oaks of Bashan. He stands upon
the threshold of civilization, and he refuses to
enter. He is a kind of mouthpiece of the desert
speaking to the multitudes, and demanding, in the
name of the sands, the brambles, and the winds,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 49
the sites of the cities. And this upon the score
of justice : because the tyrant and the slave, that
is to say, pride and shame, exist wherever there
are walled enclosures ; because evil is there in-
carnate in man ; because in solitude there is but
the beast, while in the city there is the monster.
Those things with which Isaiah reproached his time,
— idolatry, debauchery, war, prostitution, ignor-
ance, — still exist. Isaiah is the undying contem-
porary of the vices that make themselves servants,
and of the crimes that make themselves kings.
5. Another, Ezekiel, is the wild soothsayer: a
genius of the cavern, whose thought is best ex-
pressed by a beast-like growling. But listen. This
savage makes a prophecy to the world, — the pro-
phecy of progress. Nothing more astonishing.
Ah ! Isaiah overthrows ? Very well ! Ezekiel will
reconstruct. Isaiah refuses civilization ; Ezekiel
accepts, but transforms it. Nature and humanity
blend together in that softened howl which Ezekiel
utters. The conception of duty is in Job ; in JEs-
chylus, the conception of right. Ezekiel intro-
duces the resultant third conception, — the human
race ameliorated, the future more and more eman-
cipated. It is man's consolation that the future
is to be a sunrise instead of a sunset. Time pre-
sents works for time to come; work, then, and
hope ! Such is Ezekiel's cry. Ezekiel is in Chal-
daea, and from Chaldaea he sees distinctly Judaea,
just as from oppression one may see liberty. He
declares peace as others declare war. He proph-
esies harmony, goodness, gentleness, union, the
blending of races, love. Notwithstanding, he is
4
50 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
terrible. He is the fierce benefactor, the univer-
sal, beneficent grumbler at the human race. He
scolds, he almost gnashes his teeth, and people
fear and hate him. The men about are thorns to
him. " I live among the briers," he says. He
condemns himself to be a symbol, and makes of
his person, become hideous, a sign of human
misery and popular degradation. He is a kind
of voluntary Job. In his town, in his house, he
causes himself to be bound with cords, and remains
mute : behold the slave ! In the public place he
eats filth : behold the courtier ! This causes Vol-
taire's laughter to burst forth, and our sobs. Ah,
Ezekiel, so far does thy devotion go ! Thou ren-
derest shame visible by horror; thou compellest
ignominy to avert the head when recognizing her-
self in ordure ; thou showest that to accept a man
as master is to eat filth ; thou causest a shudder to
the sycophants who follow the prince, by putting
into thy stomach what they put into their souls ;
thou preachest deliverance by vomiting. Accept
our veneration ! This man, this being, this figure,
this swine-prophet, is sublime. And the transfigu-
ration that he announces, he proves. How ? By
transfiguring himself. From this horrible and de-
filed mouth there issues splendid poetry. Never
has grander language been spoken, never more
extraordinary. " I saw visions of God. A whirl-
wind came out of the North, and a great cloud,
and a fire infolding itself. I saw a chariot, and a
likeness of four living creatures. Above the living
creatures and the chariot was a space like a ter-
rible crystal. The wheels of the chariot were
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 5!
made of eyes, and so high that they were dread-
ful. The noise of the wings of the four angels
was as the voice of the Almighty, and when they
stood they let down their wings. And I saw a
likeness which was as fire, and which put forth a
hand. And a voice said, ' The kings and the
judges have in their souls gods of dung. I will
take the stony heart out of their flesh, and I will
give them an heart of flesh.' ... I came to them
that dwelt by the river of Chebar, and I remained
there astonished among them seven days." And
again : " There was a plain and dry bones, and I
said, ' Bones, rise up ; ' and when I beheld, lo !
the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and
the skin covered them above; but there was no
breath in them. And I cried, ' Come from the
four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain
that they may live ! ' The spirit came. The breath
came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon
their feet, an exceeding great army. Then the
voice said, ' Ye shall be one nation, ye shall have
no king or judge but me ; and I will be the God
who has one people, and ye shall be the people
who have one God.' " Is not everything there?
Search for a higher formula, you will not find it:
a free man under a sovereign God. This vision-
ary eater of filth is a resuscitator. Ezekiel has
offal on his lips, and the sun in his eyes. Among
the Jews the reading of Ezekiel was dreaded, and
was not permitted before the age of thirty years.
The rabbis, disturbed, put a seal upon this poet.
People could not call him an impostor: his pro-
phetic fury was incontestable; he had evidently
$2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
seen what he related : thence his authority. His
very enigmas made him an oracle. They could
not tell who were meant by those women sitting
toward the North weeping for Tammuz ; l impos-
sible to divine what was the hashmal, this metal
which he pictured as in fusion in the furnace of
the dream.2 But nothing was more clear than his
vision of Progress. Ezekiel saw the quadruple
man, — man, ox, lion, and eagle ; that is to say,
the master of thought, the master of the field, the
master of the desert, the master of the air. No-
thing is forgotten ; it is the entire future, from
Aristotle to Christopher Columbus, from Triptole-
mus to Montgolfier. Later on, the Gospel also
will become quadruple in the four evangelists,
making Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John subser-
vient to man, the ox, the lion, and the eagle, and,
remarkable fact, to symbolize progress it will take
the four faces of Ezekiel. Furthermore, Ezekiel,
like Christ, calls himself the " Son of Man."
Jesus often in his parables invokes and cites Eze-
kiel ; and this kind of first Messiah makes prece-
dents for the second. There are in Ezekiel three
constructions, — man, in whom he places progress ;
the temple, where he puts a light that he calls
"glory ; " the city, where he places God. He cries
1 Ezekiel viii. 14. This " enigma " was not such to Milton,
who sings of Zion's daughters, —
" Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch
Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah."
Paradise Lost, i. 446 seq.
2 The mysterious word hashmal is rendered by " amber " in our
common version (Ezekiel i. 4). — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 53
to the temple, — " No priests here, neither they,
nor their kings, nor the carcases of their kings "
(xliii. 7).1 One cannot help thinking that this
Ezekiel, a species of Biblical demagogue, would
help '93 in the terrible sweeping of St. Denis. As
for the city built by him, he mutters above it this
mysterious name, Jehovah Schammah, which sig-
nifies " the Eternal is there." Then, standing
silent in the darkness, he shows men, on the far
horizon, an ever-widening space of azure sky.
6. Another, Lucretius, is that vast, obscure thing,
AIL Jupiter is in Homer; Jehovah is in Job; in
Lucretius, Pan appears. Such is Pan's greatness,
that he has under him Destiny, which is above Ju-
piter. Lucretius has travelled and he has mused,
and musing is another form of travel. He has
been at Athens; he has been in the haunts of
philosophers ; he has studied Greece and divined
India. Democritus has set him to thinking about
the molecule, and Anaximander about space. His
dreams have become doctrine. Nothing is known
of the incidents of his life. Like Pythagoras, he
has frequented the two mysterious schools of the
Euphrates, Neharda and Pombeditha, and he may
have met there the Jewish doctors. He has deci-
phered the papyri of Sepphoris, which in his time
was not yet transformed into Diocaesarea ; he has
lived with the pearl-fishers of the Isle of Tylos.
We find in the Apocrypha traces of a strange an-
cient itinerary, recommended, according to some,
1 The curious reader will discover that the citations from Eze-
kiel are either paraphrased or garbled, or both. Pedantic exact-
itude is not one of Hugo's faults. — TR.
54 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
to philosophers by Empedocles, the magician of
Agrigentum, and, according to others, to the
rabbis by the high-priest Eleazer, who corre-
sponded with Ptolemy Philadelphus. This itin-
erary would have served at a later time as a
model for the journeyings of the Apostles. The
traveller who followed this itinerary traversed the
five satrapies of the country of the Philistines ;
visited the people who charm serpents and suck
poisonous sores, — the Psylli ; drank of the torrent
Bosor, which marks the frontier of Arabia Deserta ;
then touched and handled the bronze collar of
Andromeda, still sealed to the rock of Joppa;
Baalbec in Ccele-Syria; Apamea on the Orontes,
where Nicanor fed his elephants; the harbor of
Ezion-geber, where rode the vessels of Ophir,
laden with gold ; Segher, which produced white
incense, preferred to that of Hadramauth ; the
two Syrtes ; Smaragdus, the mountain of emer-
ald; the Nasamones, who pillaged the ship-
wrecked; the black nation, Agyzimba; Adribe,
the city of crocodiles ; Cynopolis, the city of
dogs ; the wonderful cities of Comagena, Claudia,
and Barsalium; perhaps even Tadmor, the city
of Solomon : such were the stages of this almost
fabulous pilgrimage of the thinkers. Did Lucre-
tius make this pilgrimage? One cannot tell. His
numerous travels are beyond doubt. He has seen
so many men that at the last to his eye they all
seem indistinguishably blended, and have become
to him a spectral multitude. He is arrived at
that excess of simplification of the universe
which almost causes it to disappear. He has
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 55
sounded until he feels the plummet float. He
has questioned the vague spectres of Byblos ;
he has conversed with the tree-trunk cut from
Cithaeron, which represents Juno Thespia. Per-
haps he has spoken in the reeds to Cannes, the
man-fish of Chaldaea, who had two heads, — at the
top, the head of a man, below, the head of a hydra,
— and who, drinking up chaos by his lower gullet,
revomited it on the earth through his upper mouth
in the form of dreadful knowledge. Isaiah stands
next to the archangels, Lucretius to the spectres.
Lucretius twists the ancient veil of Isis, steeped in
the waters of darkness, and wrings from it some-
times in torrents, sometimes drop by drop, a som-
bre poesy. The boundless is in Lucretius. At
times there passes a powerful spondaic verse,
almost monstrous, and full of shadow: —
" Circum se froliis ac frondibus involventes."
Here and there a vast image of pairing is dimly
outlined in the forest : —
" Tune Venus in sylvis jungebat corpora amantum ; "
and the forest is Nature. These verses are impos-
sible with Virgil. Lucretius turns his back on hu-
manity, and fixes his gaze upon the enigma. His
searching spirit is placed between that reality, the
atom, and that impossibility, the vacuum : by turns
attracted by these two precipices, he is religious
when he contemplates the atom, sceptical when he
perceives the void ; thence his two aspects, equally
profound, of denial and of affirmation. One day
this traveller commits suicide. This is his last de-
parture. He puts himself en route for Death. He
56 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
wishes to see for himself. He has embarked suc-
cessively upon every sort of vessel, — on the galley
of Trevirium for Sanastrea in Macedonia; on the
trireme of Carystos for Metapontum1 in Greece;
on the Cyllenian skiff for the Island of Samothrace ;
on the sandale of Samothrace for Naxos, the home
of Bacchus ; on the ceroscaph of Naxos for Syria ;
on the Syrian pinnace for Egypt; and on the ship
of the Red Sea for India. It remains for him to
make one voyage : he is curious about the dark
country; he takes passage on the coffin, and slip-
ping the hawser himself, he pushes off into the
shadow the obscure barque that is tossed by an
unknown sea.
7. Another, Juvenal, has everything in which
Lucretius fails, — passion, emotion, fever, tragic
flame, passion for honesty, the avenging sneer,
personality, humanity. He dwells at a certain
given point in creation, and he contents himself
with it, finding there what may nourish and swell
his heart with justice and anger. Lucretius is the
universe, Juvenal the locality. And what a local-
ity ! Rome. Between the two they are the double
voice which speaks to world and town — urbi et
orbi. As Juvenal hovers above the Roman Empire,
one hears the terrific flapping of the lammergeyer's
wings above a nest of reptiles. He pounces upon
this swarm and takes them, one after the other, in
his terrible beak, — from the adder who is emperor
and calls himself Nero, to the earthworm who is
a bad poet and calls himself Codrus. Isaiah and
1 Metapontum was a Greek colony in Lucania. Sanastrea the
translator is unable to find. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 57
Juvenal has each his harlot; but there is one
thing more ominous than the shadow of Babel, —
it is the creaking of the bed of the Caesars ; and
Babylon is less formidable than Messalina. Juve-
nal is the ancient free spirit of the dead republics ;
in him there is a Rome of that metal in which
Athens and Sparta were cast. Thence in his poetry
something of Aristophanes and something of Ly-
curgus. Beware of him ; he is severe ! Not a cord
is wanting to his lyre, nor to the lash he uses. He
is lofty, rigid, austere, glowing, violent, grave, inex-
haustible in imagery, harshly gracious, too, when
he chooses. His cynicism is the indignation of
modesty. His grace, thoroughly independent and
a true figure of liberty, has claws ; it appears all at
once, enlivening by certain supple and spirited un-
dulations the angular majesty of his hexameter.
It is as if you saw the Cat of Corinth prowling upon
the pediment of the Parthenon. There is some-
thing of the epic in this satire ; Juvenal holds in
his hand the golden sceptre with which Ulysses
beats Thersites. " Bombast, declamation, exagger-
ation, hyperbole," cry the slaughtered deformities ;
and these cries, stupidly repeated by rhetoricians,
are a sound of glory. " To commit these things
or to relate them, the crime is equal," say Tille-
mont, Marc Muret, Garasse, etc., — fools who, like
Muret, are sometimes knaves. Juvenal's invective
has been blazing for two thousand years, — a fearful
flame of poetry, which burns Rome in the presence
of the centuries. The fire still flashes upon that
radiant hearth, and, far from diminishing with
time, increases under its mournful cloud of smoke.
58 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
From it proceed rays in behalf of liberty, probity,
heroism ; and it may be said that Juvenal sends
even into our civilization spirits born of his light.
What is Regnier? what D'Aubigne? what Cor-
neille? Scintillations from Juvenal.
8. Another, Tacitus, is the historian. Liberty
is incarnate in him, as in Juvenal, and ascends, dead,
to the seat of judgment, having for a toga her
winding-sheet, and summons tyrants to her bar.
Juvenal, we have just said, is the soul of a nation
embodied in a man ; the same is also true of
Tacitus. By the side of the poet who condemns,
stands the historian who punishes. Tacitus, seated
on the curule chair of genius, summons and seizes
in flagrante delicto those criminals, the Caesars.
The Roman Empire is a long crime. This crime
is begun by four demons, — Tiberius, Caligula,
Claudius, Nero. Tiberius, the imperial spy; the
eye which watches the world; the first dictator
who dared to pervert to his personal service the
law of majesty made for the Roman people ; know-
ing Greek, intellectual, sagacious, sarcastic, elo-
quent, terrible ; loved by informers ; the murderer
of citizens, of knights, of the senate, of his wife, of
his family ; having rather the air of stabbing nations
than of massacring them ; humble before the Bar-
barians ; a traitor with Archelaus, a coward with
Artabanus ; having two thrones, — Rome for his
ferocity, Capreae for his baseness; an inventor of
vices and of names for these vices ; an old man with a
seraglio of young girls ; gaunt, bald, crooked, bandy-
legged, fetid, eaten up with leprosy, covered with
suppurations, masked with plasters, crowned with
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 59
laurels; having ulcers like Job, and the sceptre
besides; surrounded by an oppressive silence;
seeking a successor, scenting out Caligula, and
rinding him good : a viper choosing a tiger. Calig
ula, the man who has known fear, the slave be-
come master, trembling under Tiberius, terrible
after Tiberius, vomiting his fright of yesterday in
atrocity. This mad fool has not his equal. An
executioner makes a mistake, and kills, instead of
the condemned one, an innocent man; Caligula
smiles and says, " The condemned had not more
deserved it." He has a woman eaten alive by dogs,
to enjoy the sight. He lies publicly upon his three
sisters, all stark naked. One of them dies, — Dru-
silla; he says, " Behead those who do not bewail
her, for she is my sister ; and crucify those who
bewail her, for she is a goddess." He makes his
horse a pontiff, as, later on, Nero will make his
monkey a god. He offers to the universe the
wretched spectacle of the annihilation of intellect
by supreme power. A prostitute, a sharper, a
robber, breaking the busts of Homer and Virgil,
his head dressed as Apollo with rays, and his feet
shod with wings like Mercury, frenetically master
of the world, desiring incest with his mother, wish-
ing a plague to his empire, famine to his people,
rout to his army, his own resemblance to the gods,
and one sole head to the human race, that he might
cut it off, — such is Caius Caligula. He forces the
son to assist at the torment of the father, and the
husband at the violation of the wife, and to laugh.
Claudius is a mere sketch of a ruler, a piece of a
man made a tyrant, a crowned noodle. He hides
60 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
himself; they discover him, they drag him from his
hole, and they throw him, terrified, upon the throne.
Emperor, he still trembles, having the crown, but not
sure that he has his head. He feels for his head at
times, as if he searched for it. Then he gets more
confident, and decrees three new letters to be added
to the alphabet. He is a learned man, this idiot.
They strangle a senator ; he says, " I did not order
it; but since it is done, it is well." His wife prosti-
tutes herself before him. He looks at her, and says,
" Who is this woman ? " He scarcely exists ; he is
a shadow: but this shadow crushes the world. At
length the hour for his departure arrives : his wife
poisons him; his doctor finishes him. He says, " I
am saved," and dies. After his death they come to
see his corpse ; during his life they had seen his
ghost. Nero is the most formidable figure of ennui
that has ever appeared among men. The yawning
monster that the ancients called Livor and the mod-
erns call Spleen, gives us this riddle to guess, —
Nero. Nero seeks simply a distraction. Poet, come-
dian, singer, coachman, exhausting ferocity to find
voluptuousness, trying a change of sex, the husband
of the eunuch Sporus and bride of the slave Pythag-
oras, and promenading the streets of Rome between
his husband and his wife. He has two pleasures,
— one, to see the people clutching gold-pieces, dia-
monds, and pearls ; and the other, to see the lions
clutch the people. An incendiary for curiosity's
sake, and a matricide for want of employment. It
is to these four that Tacitus dedicates his first gib-
bets. Their reigns he hangs about their necks like
a collar. His book of ' Caligula ' is lost. Nothing
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 6 1
is easier to comprehend than the loss and oblitera-
tion of books of this sort. To read them was a
crime. A man having been caught reading the
history of Caligula by Suetonius, Commodus had
him thrown to the wild beasts. " Feris objici jus-
sit," says Lampridius. The horror of those days
is awful. Manners, below and above stairs, are
ferocious. You may judge of the cruelty of the
Romans by the atrocity of the Gauls. An insur-
rection breaks out in Gaul. The peasants place the
Roman ladies, naked and still alive, on harrows
whose points enter here and there into the body ;
then they cut off their breasts and sew them in
their mouths, that they may have the appearance
of eating them. Vix vindicta est, " this is scarcely
retaliation," says the Roman general Turpilianus.
These Roman ladies had the practice, while chat-
ting with their lovers, of sticking gold pins in
the breasts of the Persian or Gallic slaves who
dressed their hair. Such is the human specta-
cle at which Tacitus is present; the sight of it
renders him terrible. He states the facts, and
leaves you to draw your own conclusions. It is
only in Rome that a Potiphar mother of Joseph
is to be met.1 When Agrippina, reduced to her
last resource, seeing her grave in the eyes of her
son, offers him her bed, when her lips seek those
of Nero, Tacitus is there, following her with his
eyes : " Lasciva oscula et prsenuntias flagitii blandi-
tias ; " and he denounces to the world this effort of
a monstrous and trembling mother to make matri-
1 The original reads : " La Putiphar mere du Joseph, c'est ce
qu'on ne rencontre que dans Rome." — TR.
62 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
cide miscarry by means of incest. Whatever Jus-
tus Lipsius, who bequeathed his pen to the Holy
Virgin, may have said about it, Domitian exiled
Tacitus, and he did well. Men like Tacitus are
unwholesome for authority. Tacitus applies his
style to the shoulder of an emperor, and the brand
remains. Tacitus always makes his thrust at the
required spot, and leaves a deep scar. Juvenal,
all-powerful poet, deals about him, scatters, makes
a show, falls and rebounds, strikes right and left a
hundred blows at a time, on laws, manners, corrupt
magistrates, on bad verses, on libertines and the
idle, on Caesar, on the people, everywhere ; he is
lavish, like hail; his strokes scatter, like those of
the scourge. Tacitus has the incisiveness of red-
hot iron.
9. Another, John, is the virginal old man. All
the ardent juices of man seem subtilized within
him, filling his brain with visionary wraiths. One
does not escape love. Love, unappeased and dis-
contented, changes itself at the end of life into an
outflow of gloomy fancies. The woman wants
man; otherwise man, instead of human poetry,
will have a phantom poetry. Some beings, how-
ever, resist the universal generative tendency, and
then they are in that peculiar state in which men
are subject to monstrous inspirations. The Apoc-
alypse is the almost insane masterpiece of this
dreadful chastity. John, while young, was gentle
and shy. Having loved Jesus, he could love noth-
ing else. There is a profound resemblance be-
tween the Song of Songs and the Apocalypse ;
they are both explosions of pent-up virginity.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 63
The heart, mighty volcano, bursts into eruption;
there proceeds from it this dove, the Song of
Songs, or this dragon, the Apocalypse. These
two poems are the two poles of ecstasy, — volup-
tuousness and horror; the two extreme limits of
the soul are attained. In the first poem ecstasy
exhausts love, in the second, terror; and this
ecstasy inspires in mankind, henceforth forever
disquieted, the dread of the eternal precipice.
Another resemblance, not less worthy of attention,
there is between John and Daniel. The nearly
invisible thread of affinity is carefully followed by
the eye of those who see in the prophetic spirit a
human and normal phenomenon, and who, far
from disdaining the question of miracles, general-
ize it, and calmly connect it with permanent laws.
Religions lose, and science gains by the process.
It has not been sufficiently remarked that the
seventh chapter of Daniel contains the germ of
the Apocalypse. Empires are there represented
as beasts. Legend has therefore associated the
two poets, making the one pass through the lions'
den, and the other through the caldron of boiling
oil. Independently of the legend, the life of John
is noble, — an exemplary life, subject to marvellous
expansions, passing from Golgotha to Patmos, and
from the execution of the Messiah to the exile of
the prophet. John, after having been present at
the sufferings of Christ, ends by suffering on his
own account. The suffering seen makes him an
apostle, the suffering endured makes him a sage ;
from the growth of the trial results the growth of the
spirit. Bishop, he writes the Gospel; proscribed,
64 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
he composes the Apocalypse, — a tragic work,
written under the dictation of an eagle, the poet
having above his head we know not what mournful
flapping of wings. The whole Bible is between
two dreamers, Moses and John. This poem of
poems emerges from chaos in Genesis, and passes
out of view amid the thunders of the Apocalypse.
John was one of the great wanderers of the tongue
of fire. During the Last Supper his head was on
the breast of Jesus, and he could say, " Mine ear
has heard the beating of God's heart." He went
about to relate it to men. He spoke a barbarous
Greek, mingled with Hebrew expressions and
Syrian words, — a language of a wild, harsh charm.
He went to Ephesus, he went to Media, he went
among the Parthians. He dared to enter Ctesi-
phon, a town of the Parthians, built as a coun-
terpoise to Babylon. He faced the living idol,
Cobaris, king, god, and man, forever immovable
on his pierced block of nephritic jade, which serves
him as throne and latrine. He evangelized Per-
sia, which the Scriptures call Paras. When he
appeared at the Council of Jerusalem, he was
regarded as a pillar of the Church. He looked
with stupefaction at Cerinthus and Ebion, who
said that Jesus was but a man. When they ques-
tioned him upon the mystery, he answered, " Love
one another." He died at the age of ninety-four
years, under Trajan. According to tradition, he
is not dead ; he is spared, and John is ever living
at Patmos, as Barbarossa at Kaiserslautern.1 Cav-
erns there are in which these mysterious mortals
1 On Kyffhauser, the German legends say. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 65
are waiting. John as an historian has his equals,
— Matthew, Luke, Mark; as a visionary he is
alone. There is no dream that approaches his,
such a reach it has into the infinite. His meta-
phors issue from eternity, perturbed; his poetry
has a profound smile of madness. A light reflected
from the Most High is in the eye of this man ; it
is the sublime in full aberration. Men do not un-
derstand it — scorn it, and laugh. " My dear
Thiriot," says Voltaire, "the Apocalypse is a piece
of ordure." Religions, being in want of this book,
have taken to worshipping it; but it had to be
placed upon the altar in order to save it from the
ditch. What does it matter? John is a spirit. It
is in John of Patmos, above all others, that the
communication between certain men of genius and
the abyss is apparent. In all other poets we guess
this communication ; in John we see it, at moments
we touch it, and seem to lay a shuddering hand
upon that sombre portal. It is the door that leads
toward God. In reading the poem of Patmos,
some one seems to push you from behind ; the
dread entrance, vaguely outlined, arouses mingled
terror and longing. Were this all of John, he
would still be colossal.
10. Another, Paul, a saint for the Church, a
great man for humanity, represents that miracle, at
once divine and human, conversion. It is he to
whom the future has appeared. It leaves him
haggard; and nothing can be more superb than
this face, forever wondering, of the man con-
quered by the light. Paul, born a Pharisee, had
been a weaver of camel's-hair for tents, and servant
S
66 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
of one of the judges of Jesus Christ, Gamaliel;
then the Scribes, perceiving his fierce spirit, had
educated him. He was a man of the past, he
had guarded the clothes of the stone-throwers ;
he aspired, having studied with the priests, to be-
come an executioner ; he was on the road for this.
All at once a wave of light emanates from the
darkness and throws him down from his horse;
and henceforth there will be in the history of the
human race that wonderful thing, — the road to
Damascus. That day of the metamorphosis of
Saint Paul is a great day, — keep the date ; it cor-
responds to the 25th of January in our Gregorian
calendar. The road to Damascus is essential to
the march of Progress. To fall into the truth and
to rise a just man, — a transfiguring fall, — that is
sublime. It is the history of Saint Paul ; from his
day it will be the history of humanity. The flash
of light is something beyond the flash of lightning.
Progress will be carried forward by a series of
dazzling visions. As for Saint Paul, who has been
thrown down by the force of new conviction, this
harsh stroke from on high reveals to him his
genius. Once more upon his feet, he goes for-
ward ; he will not pause again. " Forward ! " is
his cry. He is a cosmopolite. He loves the out-
siders, whom Paganism calls Barbarians, and Chris-
tianity calls Gentiles ; he devotes himself to them.
He is the apostle of the outer world. He writes
to the nations epistles in behalf of God. Listen
to him speaking to the Galatians : " O foolish Ga-
latians ! how can ye go back to the yokes to which
ye were tied ? There are no longer either Jews,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 6?
or Greeks, or slaves. Do not perform your grand
ceremonies ordained by your laws. I declare unto
you that all that is nothing. Love one another.
It is all-important that man become a new crea-
ture. Ye are called to liberty." On Mars Hill at
Athens there were steps hewn in rock, which may
be seen to this day. Upon these steps sat the
great judges before whom Orestes had appeared.
There Socrates had been judged. Paul went there ;
and there, at night (the Areopagus sat only at
night), he said to those austere men, " I come
to declare unto you the unknown God." The
epistles of Paul to the Gentiles are simple and
profound, with the subtlety so marked in its in-
fluence over savages. There are in these messages
gleams of hallucination ; Paul speaks of the celes-
tial beings as if he distinctly saw them. Divided,
like John, between life and eternity, it seems as
though he had a part of his thought on the earth,
and a part in the Unknown; and it would seem,
at moments, that one of his verses answers to an-
other from beyond the dark wall of the tomb. This
half-possession of death gives him a personal cer-
tainty often wholly apart from dogma, and stamps
his individual convictions with an emphasis which
makes him almost heretical. His humility, resting
upon the mystery, is lofty. Peter says : " The
words of Paul may be taken in a bad sense."
Hilarius Diaconus and the Luciferians ascribe their
schism to the epistles of Paul. Paul is at heart
so anti-monarchical that King James I., very much
encouraged by the orthodox University of Oxford,
caused the Epistle to the Romans to be burned by
68 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
the hand of the common hangman. It is true it
was accompanied with a commentary by David
Pareus. Many of Paul's works are rejected by the
Church: they are the finest; and among them his
Epistle to the Laodiceans, and above all his Apoc-
alypse, cancelled by the Council of Rome under
Gelasius. It would be curious to compare it with
the Apocalypse of John. Over the opening that
Paul had made to heaven the Church wrote, " No
thoroughfare ! " He is a saint none the less ; that
is his official consolation. Paul has the restless-
ness of the thinker; text and formulary are little
for him; the letter does not suffice: the letter is
mere body. Like all men of progress, he speaks
with reserve of the written law; he prefers grace
to the law, just as we prefer to it justice. What
is grace ? It is the inspiration from on high ; it is
the breath, flat ubi milt ; it is liberty. Grace is
the spirit of the law. This discovery of the spirit
of the law belongs to Saint Paul ; and what he calls
" grace " from a heavenly point of view, we, from an
earthly point of view, call " right." Such is Paul.
The enlargement of a mind by the in-breaking of
light, the beauty of the seizure of a soul by the
truth, shine forth in his person. Herein, we insist,
lies the virtue of the journey to Damascus. Who-
ever, henceforward, shall desire such growth as
this, must follow the pointing finger of Saint Paul.
All those to whom justice shall reveal itself, every
blindness desirous of the day, all the cataracts
looking to be healed, all searchers after conviction,
all the great adventurers after virtue, all servants
of the good in quest of the true, must follow this
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 69
road. The light that they find there shall change
nature, for the light is always relative to darkness ;
it shall increase in intensity ; after having been rev-
elation, it shall be rationalism : but it shall ever be
the light. Voltaire, like Saint Paul, is on the road to
Damascus. The road to Damascus shall be forever
the route of great minds. It shall also be the route
of nations. For nations, those vast individualisms,
have, like each of us, their crisis and their hour ;
Paul, after his august fall, arose again, armed against
ancient errors with the flashing blade of Christian-
ity; and two thousand years after, France also,
struck to earth by the light, arouses herself, hold-
ing in hand the flaming sword of Revolution.
II. Another, Dante, has constructed within his
own mind the bottomless pit. He has made the
epic of the spectres. He rends the earth ; in the
terrible hole he has made, he puts Satan. Then
he pushes the world through Purgatory up to
Heaven. Where all else ends, Dante begins. Dante
is beyond man ; beyond, not without, — a singular
proposition, which, however, has nothing contra-
dictory in it, the soul being a prolongation of man
into the indefinite. Dante twists all light and all
shadow into a monstrous spiral ; it descends, then
it ascends. Unexampled architecture ! At the
threshold is the sacred mist; across the entrance
is stretched the corpse of Hope ; all that you per-
ceive beyond is night. Somewhere in the darkness
is heard the sobbing of the infinite anguish. You
lean over this gulf-poem — is it a crater? You
hear detonations ; the verse shoots out, narrow and
livid, as from the sulphurous fissures of a volcanic
70 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
region ; what seems vapor takes on a spectral form,
— the ghastly shape speaks ; and then you know
that the volcano you have glimpsed, is Hell. This
is no longer the human environment; you are in
the unknown abyss. In this poem the imponder-
able submits to the laws of the ponderable with
which it is mingled, as, in the sudden crash of a
building on fire, the smoke, carried down by the
ruins, falls and rolls with them, and seems caught
under the timber and the stones. Hence strange
effects; ideas seem to suffer and to be punished
in men. The idea, sufficiently human to suffer
expiation, is the phantom, a form of the shadow,
impalpable, but not invisible, — an appearance in
which there remains sufficient reality in order that
chastisement may have a hold upon it ; sin in the
abstract state, but preserving the human counte-
nance. It is not only the wicked who grieves in
this apocalypse, it is evil itself; there all possible
bad actions are in despair. This spiritualization
of penalty gives to the poem a powerful moral
bearing. The depth of Hell once sounded, Dante
pierces it, and reascends upon the other side of
the infinite. In rising, he becomes idealized, and
thought drops the body as a robe. From Virgil
he passes to Beatrice: his guide to Hell is the
poet; his guide to Heaven is poetry. The epic
swells into grander proportions as it continues;
but man no longer comprehends it. Purgatory
and Paradise are not less extraordinary than
Gehenna; but as we ascend we lose our interest.
We were somewhat at home in Hell, but are no
longer so in Heaven. We cannot recognize our
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Ji
fellows in the angels : perhaps the human eye is
not made for such excess of light; and when
the poem becomes happy, it becomes tedious.
Such is ever the story of the happy. It is well to
marry the lovers or to imparadise the souls ; but
seek the drama elsewhere than there. After all,
what matters it to Dante if you no longer follow
him? He goes on without you. He stalks alone,
this lion. His work is a miracle. What a philoso-
pher is this visionary ! what a sage is this mad-
man ! Dante lays down the law for Montesquieu ;
the penal divisions of 'L'Esprit des Lois' are copied
from the classifications in the Hell of the * Divina
Commedia.' What Juvenal does for the Rome of
the Caesars, Dante does for the Rome of the Popes ;
but Dante is a more terrible judge than Juvenal.
Juvenal whips with cutting thongs; Dante scourges
with flames. Juvenal condemns; Dante damns.
Woe to the living man on whom this traveller
fixes the inscrutable glare of his eyes !
12. Another, Rabelais, is the son of Gaul. And
who says Gaul, says also Greece, for the Attic
salt and the Gallic jest have at bottom the same
flavor ; and if anything, buildings apart, resembles
the Piraeus, it is La Rapee.1 Here is a greater than
Aristophanes, for Aristophanes is bad. Rabelais is
good, — Rabelais would have defended Socrates.
In the order of lofty genius, Rabelais chronologi-
cally follows Dante ; after the stern face, the sneer-
ing visage. Rabelais is the formidable mask of
ancient comedy detached from the Greek pro-
1 La Rapee Bercy is an eastern suburb of Paris, on the Seine.
It gives its name to a station on the belt railroad. — TR.
72 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
scenium, from bronze made flesh, henceforth a
human living face, remaining enormous, and com-
ing among us to laugh at us and with us. Dante
and Rabelais spring from the school of the Fran-
ciscan friars, as, later, Voltaire springs from the
Jesuits; Dante the incarnate sorrow, Rabelais
parody, Voltaire irony, — these issue from the
Church against the Church. Every genius has his
invention or his discovery; Rabelais has made his,
— the belly. The serpent is in man, it is the in-
testine. It tempts, betrays, and punishes. Man,
single being as a spirit, and complex as man, has
within himself for his earthly mission three centres,
— the brain, the heart, the belly; each of these
centres is august by one great function which is
peculiar to it: the brain has thought, the heart
has love, the belly has paternity and maternity.
The belly may be tragic. " Feri ventrem," says
Agrippina. Catherine Sforza, threatened with the
death of her children, who were hostages, exhibits
herself naked to the navel on the battlements of
the citadel of Rimini, and says to the enemy,
"With this I can bring forth others." In one of
the epic convulsions of Paris, a woman of the
people, standing on a barricade, raised her petti-
coat, showed the soldiery her naked belly, and
cried, " Kill your mothers ! " The soldiers riddled
that belly with bullets. The belly has its heroism ;
but it is from it that flow, in life, corruption, — in
art, comedy. The breast, where the heart rests,
has for its summit the head ; the belly has the
phallus. The belly, being the centre of matter,
is our gratification and our danger; it contains
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 73
appetite, satiety, and putrefaction. The devotion,
the tenderness, which seize us there, are liable to
death; egoism replaces them. Easily do the affec-
tions become lusts. That the hymn can be used
in the service of Bacchus, the strophe deformed
into a tippler's catch, is sad. This is the work of
the beast which is in man. The belly is essen-
tially this beast; degradation seems to be its law.
The ladder of sensual poetry has for its topmost
round the Song of Songs, and for its lowest the
jingling ballad. The belly god is Silenus; the
belly emperor is Vitellius; the belly animal is
the pig. One of those horrid Ptolemies was called
the Belly (Pkyscon). The belly is to humanity a
formidable weight ; it breaks at every moment the
equilibrium between the soul and the body. It
fills history ; it is responsible for nearly all crimes ;
it is the matrix of all vices. It is the belly that by
voluptuousness makes the sultan, and by drunk-
enness the czar; this it is that shows Tarquin to
the bed of Lucrece ; this it is that makes the Senate
which had awaited Brennus and dazzled Jugurtha,
end by deliberating on the sauce of a turbot It
is the belly which counsels the ruined libertine,
Caesar, the passage of the Rubicon. To pass the
Rubicon, how well that pays your debts ! To
pass the Rubicon, how readily that throws women
into your arms ! What good dinners afterward !
And the Roman soldiers enter Rome with the
cry, " Urbani, claudite uxores ; moechum calvum
adducimus." The appetite debauches the intellect.
Voluptuousness replaces will. At starting, as is al-
ways the case, there is some nobleness : this is the
74 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
stage of the revel. There is a distinction between
being fuddled and being dead drunk. Then the
revel degenerates into guzzling. Where there was
a Solomon there is Ramponneau. Man becomes
a barrel; thought is drowned in an inner deluge
of cloudy notions ; conscience, submerged, cannot
'warn the drunken soul. Brutalization is consum-
mated; it is not even any longer cynical, it is
empty and sottish. Diogenes disappears; there
remains but the tub. Beginning with Alcibiades,
we end with Trimalchio, and the thing is com-
plete ; nothing is left, neither dignity, nor shame,
nor honor, nor virtue, nor wit, — crude animal
gratification, thorough impurity. Thought is dis-
solved in satiety; carnal gorging absorbs every-
thing; nothing survives of the grand sovereign
creature inhabited by the soul ; the belly (pass the
expression) eats the man. Such is the final state
of all societies where the ideal is eclipsed. This
passes for prosperity, and gets the name of growth.
Sometimes even philosophers heedlessly further
this degradation by inserting in their doctrines the
materialism which is in men's consciences. This
sinking of man to the level of the human beast is
a great calamity. Its first-fruit is the turpitude
visible at the summit of all professions : the venal
judge, the simoniacal priest, the hireling soldier;
laws, manners, and beliefs are a dung-heap, — totus
homo fit excrementum.
In the sixteenth century, all the institutions of
the past are in that state. Rabelais gets hold of
the situation ; he verifies it ; he authenticates that
belly which is the world. Civilization is, then, but
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. f$
a mass, science is matter, religion is blessed with
hams, feudality digests, royalty is obese. What is
Henry VIII.? A paunch. Rome is a squab-
pampered old dame: is it health? is it sickness?
It is perhaps obesity, perhaps dropsy. Rabelais,
doctor and priest, feels the pulse of the Papacy ;
he shakes his head, and bursts out laughing. Is
it because he has found life? No, it is because
he has felt death; the Papacy is, in reality,
breathing its last. While Luther reforms, Rabe-
lais jests. Which best attains his end? Rabelais
ridicules the monk, the bishop, the Pope ; laugh-
ter and death-rattle together; fool's bell sounding
the tocsin ! But look ! I thought it was a feast
— it is a death-agony ; one may be deceived in
the nature of the hiccup. Let us laugh all the
same : death is at the table ; the last drop toasts
the last sigh. A death-agony in the merry mood,
— it is superb ! The large intestine is king ; all
that old world feasts and bursts; and Rabelais
enthrones a dynasty of bellies, — Grangousier,
Pantagruel, and Gargantua. Rabelais is the
^Eschylus of victuals ; and this is grand when we
think that eating is devouring. There is some-
thing of the gulf in the glutton. Eat, then, my
masters, and drink, and come to the finale. To
live, is a song, of which death is the refrain. Be-
neath the depraved human race others may dig
dreadful dungeons; but in the direction of the
subterranean, Rabelais takes you no farther than
the wine-cellar. This universe, which Dante put
into Hell, Rabelais confines in a wine-cask; his
book is nothing else. The seven circles of Alighieri
76 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
bound and encompass this extraordinary tun. Look
within the monstrous cask, and there you see
them again. In Rabelais they are entitled Idle-
ness, Pride, Envy, Avarice, Wrath, Lechery, Glut-
tony ; and it is thus that you suddenly meet again
the formidable jester. Where? In church. The
seven deadly sins form the text of this parson's
sermon. Rabelais is a priest. Castigation, prop-
erly understood, begins at home ; it is therefore at
the clergy that he strikes first. That is what it is
to be at home ! The Papacy dies* of indigestion.
Rabelais plays the Papacy a trick, — the trick of a
Titan. The Pantagruelian merriment is not less
grandiose than the mirth of a Jupiter. Cheek by
jowl : the monarchical and priestly jowl eats ;
the Rabelaisian cheek laughs. Whoever has read
Rabelais has forever before his eyes this stern con-
frontment: the mask of comedy fixing its stare
upon the mask of theocracy.
13. Another, Cervantes, is also a form of epic
mockery; for as the writer of these lines said in
I82/,1 there are between the Middle Ages and
modern times, after the feudal barbarism, and
placed there as it were to make an end of it, two
comic Homers, — Rabelais and Cervantes. To
epitomize the horrible in a jest, is not the least
terrible manner of doing it. This is what Rabelais
did ; it is what Cervantes did : but the raillery of
Cervantes has nothing of the broad Rabelaisian
grin. It is the fine humor of the noble after the
joviality of the parson. Gentlemen, I am the
Seignior Don Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra, poet-
1 Preface to Cromwell.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 77
soldier, and, as a proof, one-armed. No coarse
jesting in Cervantes ; scarcely a flavor of elegant
cynicism. The satirist is fine, acute, polished,
delicate, almost gallant, and would even run the
risk sometimes of diminishing his power, with all
his affected ways, if he had not the deep poetic
spirit of the Renascence. That saves his charm-
ing grace from becoming prettiness. Like Jean
Goujon, like Jean Cousin, like Germain Pilon, like
Primatice, Cervantes is not devoid of illusion.
Thence come all the unexpected marvels of his
imagination. Add to that a wonderful intuition
of the inmost processes of the mind and a multi-
form philosophy which seems to possess a new
and complete chart of the human heart. Cervan-
tes sees the inner man. His philosophy blends
with the comic and romantic instinct. Hence the
unexpected, breaking out at every moment in his
characters, in his action, in his style; the unfor-
seen, magnificent adventure. Personages remain-
ing true to themselves, but facts and ideas whirling
around them, with a perpetual renewing of the
original idea and a steady current of that wind which
brings the lightning-flash : such is the law of great
works. Cervantes is militant ; he has a thesis, he
makes a social book. Such poets are the cham-
pions of the intelligence. Where have they
learned fighting? On the battle-field itself. Juve-
nal was a military tribune ; Cervantes comes home
from Lepanto, as Dante from Campalbino, as
^Eschylus from Salamis. Afterward, they pass to
a new trial : ^Eschylus goes into exile, Juvenal in-
to exile, Dante into exile, Cervantes into prison.
78 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
This is just, since they have done you a service.
Cervantes, as poet, has the three sovereign gifts, —
creation, which produces types and clothes ideas
with flesh and bone; invention, which hurls pas-
sions against events, kindles in man a flame that
outshines the star of destiny, and brings forth the
drama ; imagination, sun of the brain, which throws
light everywhere, giving to its figures the high-
relief of life. Observation, which comes by acqui-
sition, and is, therefore, not so much a gift as
an accomplishment, is included in creation; were
the miser not observed, Harpagon would not be
created. In Cervantes, a new-comer, glimpsed in
Rabelais, puts in a decided appearance. You have
caught sight of him in Panurge, you see him
plainly in Sancho Panza. He comes like the
Silenus of Plautus, and he may also say, " I am the
god mounted on an ass." Wisdom in the begin-
ning, reason by and by : such is the strange history
of the human mind. What more replete with
wisdom than all the religions? What less reason-
able? Morals true, dogmas false. Wisdom exists
in Homer and in Job ; reason, such as it must
needs be to overcome prejudices, that is to say,
complete and armed cap-a-pie, will come in only
with Voltaire. Common-sense is not wisdom,
neither is it reason ; it is a little of one and a little
of the other, with a dash of egoism. Cervantes
makes it bestride ignorance, and, at the same time,
completing his profound satire, he mounts heroism
upon fatigue. Thus he shows one after the other,
one with the other, the two profiles of man, and
parodies them, without more pity for the sublime
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
79
than for the grotesque; the hippogriff becomes
Rosinante. Behind the equestrian personage,
Cervantes creates and sets in motion the asinine
personage. Enthusiasm takes the field, Irony
locks step with it. The wonderful feats of Don
Quixote, his riding and spurring, his big lance
steady in the rest, are judged by the ass, — a con-
noisseur in windmills. The invention of Cervantes
is so masterly that there is, between the human
type and the quadruped complement, statuary
adhesion ; the babbler, like the adventurer, is part
of the beast that is proper to him, and you can no
more dismount Sancho Panza than Don Quixote.
The Ideal is in Cervantes as in Dante; but it is
called the Impossible, and is scoffed at. Beatrice
is become Dulcinea. To rail at the ideal would be
the failing of Cervantes ; but this failing is only
apparent. Look well, — the smile has a tear; in
reality, Cervantes sides with Don Quixote, as
Moliere sides with Alceste. One must learn how
to read, especially in the books of the sixteenth
century ; there is in almost all, on account of the
threats hanging over freedom of thought, a secret
that must be unlocked, and whose key is often
lost. Rabelais has his reserves, Cervantes has an
aside, Machiavelli wears a mask, — more than one,
perhaps. At all events, the advent of common-
sense is the great fact in Cervantes. Common-
sense is not a virtue ; it is the eye of self-interest.
It would have encouraged Themistocles, and dis-
suaded Aristides ; Leonidas has no common-sense,
Regulus has no common-sense : but in face of
selfish and ferocious monarchies dragging their
80 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
unhappy peoples into their own private wars,
decimating families, making mothers desolate, and
driving men to kill each other with all those fine
words, — military honor, warlike glory, obedience
to orders, etc., etc., — this Common-Sense is an
admirable personage, arising suddenly, and crying
out to the human race, " Take care of your skin ! "
14. Another, Shakespeare: what is he? You
might almost answer, He is the earth. Lucretius
is the sphere, Shakespeare is the globe. There is
more and less in the globe than in the sphere. In
the sphere there is the All ; on the globe there is
man. Here the outer, there the inner mys-
tery. Lucretius is being, Shakespeare is exist-
ence. Hence the shadow that is in Lucretius;
hence the teeming life in Shakespeare. Space —
" the blue," as the Germans say — is certainly not
denied to Shakespeare. The earth sees and trav-
erses the heavens; the earth knows them under
their two aspects, — darkness and azure, doubt and
hope. Life comes and goes in death. All life is a
secret, a sort of enigmatical parenthesis between
birth and the death-throe, between the opening
and the closing eye. The possession of this
secret renders Shakespeare restless. Lucretius
is; Shakespeare lives. In Shakespeare the birds
sing, the bushes are clothed with green, hearts
love, souls suffer, the cloud wanders, it is hot,
it is cold, night falls, time passes, forests and
multitudes speak, the vast eternal dream hovers
over all. Sap and blood, all forms of the multi-
ple reality, actions and ideas, man and humanity,
the living and the life, solitudes, cities, religions,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 8 1
diamonds and pearls, dung-hills and charnel-
houses, the ebb and flow of beings, the steps of
comers and goers, all, all are on Shakespeare and
in Shakespeare ; and, this genius being the earth,
the dead emerge from it. Certain sinister sides
of Shakespeare are haunted by spectres. Shake-
speare is a brother of Dante : the one completes
the other. Dante incarnates all supernaturalism,
Shakespeare all Nature; and as these two regions,
Nature and the supernatural, which appear to us
so different, are really the same unity, Dante
and Shakespeare, however dissimilar, have con-
terminous boundaries and domains in common:
there is something of the human in Alighieri,
something of the spectre in Shakespeare. The
skull passes from the hands of Dante into the
hands of Shakespeare. Ugolino gnaws it, Hamlet
questions it; and it exhibits perhaps even a
deeper meaning and a loftier teaching in the
second than in the first. Shakespeare shakes it
and makes stars fall from it. The isle of Pros-
pero, the forest of Ardennes, the heath of Har-
muir, the platform of Elsinore, are illuminated,
no less than the seven circles of Dante's spiral,
by the sombre, reflected light of hypothesis.
Doubt, half chimera and half truth, is outlined
there as well as here. Shakespeare, as well as
Dante, gives us glimpses of the dim horizon of
conjecture. In the one as in the other there is
the possible, that window of the dream opening
upon reality. As for the real, we insist, Shake-
speare overflows with it; everywhere the quick
flesh. Shakespeare has emotion, instinct, the true
6
82 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
voice, the right tone, the whole human multitude
with its clamor. His poetry is himself, and at the
same time it is you. Like Homer, Shakespeare is
elemental. Men of genius, renewers, — that is the
name for them, — arise at all the decisive crises of
humanity; they epitomize epochs, and complete
revolutions. In civilization, Homer indicates the
end of Asia and the beginning of Europe ; Shake-
speare the end of the Middle Ages. Rabelais and
Cervantes also mark the close of the Middle Ages ;
but, being essentially satirists, they give but a
partial view. Shakespeare's mind is a total ; like
Homer, Shakespeare is a cyclic man. These two
intelligences, Homer and Shakespeare, close the
two gates of Barbarism, — the ancient gate, and
the Gothic. That was their mission — they have
fulfilled it; that was their task — they have accom-
plished it. The third great human crisis is the
French Revolution; the third huge gate of bar-
barism, the monarchical gate, is closing at this
moment. The nineteenth century hears it rolling
on its hinges. Thence for poetry, for the drama,
and for art, arises the present era, equally inde-
pendent of Shakespeare and of Homer.
CHAPTER III.
HOMER, Job, ^Eschylus, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Lucre-
tius, Juvenal, Saint John, Saint Paul, Tacitus, Dante,
Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, — that is the
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 83
avenue of the immovable giants of the human
mind.
Men of genius form a dynasty : indeed, there is
no other. They wear all the crowns, even that of
thorns. Each of them represents the sum-total of
absolute truth realizable to man.
We rep.eat it : to choose between these men, to
prefer one to the other, to point with the finger to
the first among these first, is impossible. All are
the Mind. Perhaps, by the strictest measurements,
— and yet every objection would be legitimate, —
one might mark out as the highest among these
summits, Homer, ^Eschylus, Job, Isaiah, Dante,
and Shakespeare.
It is understood that we speak here only from
the artistic standpoint ; to be still more specific,
from the standpoint of literary art.
Two men in this group, ^schylus and Shake-
speare, represent especially the drama.
^Eschylus, a kind of genius out of his time, wor-
thy to mark either a beginning or an end in hu-
manity, appears not to be placed in his right turn
in the series, and, as we have said, seems an elder
brother of Homer.
If we remember that ^Eschylus is nearly sub-
merged by the darkness rising over human mem-
ory; if we remember that ninety of his plays
have disappeared, that of that sublime hundred
there remain no more than seven dramas, which
are also seven odes, — we are astounded by what
we see of this genius, and almost terrified by what
we do not see.
What, then, was ^Eschylus ? What proportions
84 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
and what forms had he in all this shadow ?
chylus is up to his shoulders in the ashes of ages ;
his head alone rises above that burial, and, like the
colossus of the desert, with his head alone he is as
tall as all the neighboring gods, upright upon their
pedestals.
Man passes before the insubmergible wreck.
Enough remains for an immense glory. What
oblivion has swallowed, adds an unknown element
to his grandeur. Buried and eternal, his brow
projecting from the sepulchre, ^Eschylus looks
forth upon the generations of men.
CHAPTER IV.
To the eyes of the thinker, these men of genius
occupy thrones in the ideal kingdom. To the in-
dividual works that these men have left us must
be added various vast collective works, — the
Vedas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Edda,
the Nibelungen, the Heldenbuch, the Romancero.
Some of these works are revealed and sacred.
They bear the marks of unknown collaboration.
The poems of India, in particular, have the omi-
nous fulness of the possible, as imagined by in-
sanity or related in the vision. These works seem
to have been composed in common with beings
to whom our world is no longer accustomed. Leg-
endary horror covers these epics. " These books
were not composed by man alone," says the in-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 85
scription of Ash-Nagar. Djinns have alighted upon
them, polypteral magi have mused over them ;
the texts have been interlined by invisible hands,
the demi-gods have been aided by demi-demons ;
the elephant, which India calls the Sage, has been
consulted. Thence comes a majesty almost hor-
rible. The great enigmas are in these poems:
they are full of mysterious Asia. Their promi-
nent parts have the supernatural and hideous
outline of chaos. They form a mass above the
horizon, like the Himalayas. The distance of the
manners, beliefs, ideas, actions, persons, is extra-
ordinary. One reads these poems with that won-
dering droop of the head induced by the profound
distance between the book and the reader. This
Holy Writ of Asia has evidently been still more
difficult to reduce and to co-ordinate than our own.
It is in every part refractory to unity. In vain
have the Brahmins, like our priests, erased and
interpolated : Zoroaster is there ; Ized Serosch is
there. The Eschem of the Mazdaean traditions is
discernible under the name of Siva; Manicheism
is apparent between Brahma and Booddha. All
kinds of traces blend, cross, and recross each
other in these poems. One perceives in them the
mysterious footprints of a race of intelligences
who have worked at them in the darkness of the
centuries. Here is the enormous toe of the giant;
there, the claw of the chimera. These poems are
the pyramid of a vanished colony of ants.
The Nibelungen, another pyramid of another
multitudinous race, has the same greatness. What
the divinities did in Asia, the elves have done here.
86 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
These powerful epic legends, the testaments of
ages, tattooings stamped by races on history, have
no other unity than the unity of the people itself.
The collective and the successive, combining to-
gether, are one. Turba fit mens. These recitals
are clouds, laced by wonderful flashes of light.
As to the Romancero, which creates the Cid after
Achilles, and the chivalric after the heroic, it is
the Iliad of several lost Homers. Count Julian,
King Roderigo, Cava, Bernardo del Carpio, the
bastard Mudarra, Nufio Salido, the Seven Infantes
of Lara, the Constable Alvar de Luna, — no Orien-
tal or Hellenic type surpasses these figures. The
horse of Campeador is equal to the dog of Ulys-
ses. Between Priam and Lear you must place
Don Arias, the old man of Zamora's tower, sacri-
ficing his seven sons to his duty, and tearing them
from his heart one by one. There is grandeur in
that. In presence of these sublimities the reader
suffers a sort of sun-stroke.
These works are anonymous; and, owing to tfrs
great reason of the homo sum, while admiring
them, while assigning them a place at the summit
of art, we prefer the acknowledged works. With
equal beauty, the Ramayana touches us less than
Shakespeare. The ego of a man is more vast and
profound even than the ego of a people.
However, these composite myriologues, the great
testaments of India particularly, expanses of poetry
rather than poems, an expression, at once sidereal
and bestial, of vanished races, derive from their
very deformity an indescribable supernatural air.
The multiple ego expressed by those myriologues
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 87
makes them the polypi of poetry, vague and won-
derful monstrosities. The strange seams of the
antediluvian rough outline are visible there, as in
the ichthyosaurus or the pterodactyl. One of these
black, many-headed masterpieces throws upon the
horizon of art the silhouette of a hydra.
The Greek genius is not deceived by them, and
abhors them ; Apollo would attack them. Beyond
and above all these collective and anonymous pro-
ductions (the Romancero excepted), there are men
to represent the peoples. These men we have just
named. They give to nations and periods the
human countenance. They are, in art, the incar-
nations of Greece, of Arabia, of Judaea, of Pagan
Rome, of Christian Italy, of Spain, of France, of
England. As for Germany, — the matrix, like Asia,
of races, hordes, and nations, — she is represented
in art by a sublime man, equal, although in a differ-
ent category, to all those that we have characterized
above. That man is Beethoven. Beethoven is the
German soul.
What a shadow is this Germany! She is the
India of the West. She contains everything ; there
is no formation more colossal. In the sacred mist
where the German spirit moves, Isidore of Seville
places theology; Albertus the Great, scholasti-
cism ; Hrabanus Maurus, linguistics ; Trithemius,
astrology ; Ottni, chivalry ; Reuchlin, vast curi-
osity ; Tutilo, universality ; Stadianus, method ;
Luther, inquiry; Albrecht Diirer, art; Leibnitz, sci-
ence; Puffendorf, law; Kant, philosophy; Fichte,
metaphysics; Winkelmann, archaeology; Herder,
aesthetics ; the Vossii, — of whom one, Gerard
88 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
John, was of the Palatinate, — erudition ; Euler, the
spirit of integration ; Humboldt, the spirit of dis-
covery; Niebuhr, history; Gottfried of Strasburg,
fable ; Hoffmann, dreams ; Hegel, doubt ; Ancillon,
obedience ; Werner, fatalism ; Schiller, enthusiasm ;
Goethe, indifference; Arminius, liberty.
Kepler lights this shadow with the stars.
Gerard Groot, the founder of the Fratres Com-
munis Vita, makes in Germany a first attempt at
fraternity, in the fourteenth century. Whatever
may have been her infatuation for the indifference
of Goethe, do not deem her impersonal ; she is a
nation, and one of the most generous : for her,
Ruckert, the military poet, forges the ' Geharnischte
Sonnette ' ('Sonnets in Coat of Mail'), and she
shudders when Korner hurls at her the Song of the
Sword. She is the German fatherland, the great
beloved land, Teutonia mater. Galgacus was to
the Germans what Caractacus was to the Britons.
Within herself and at home, Germany has every-
thing. She shares Charlemagne with France, and
Shakespeare with England ; for the Saxon element
is mingled with the British element. She has an
Olympus, the Valhalla. She must needs have her
own style of writing. Ulfilas, bishop of Mcesia.
invents it for her, and the Gothic caligraphy will
henceforth form a pendant to the Arabic. The
capital letter of a missal rivals the fantastical
signature of a caliph. Like China, Germany has
invented printing. Her Burgraves (this remark has
been already made l) are to us what the Titans are
to ^Eschylus. To the temple of Tanfana, destroyed
1 Preface to the Burgraves, 1843.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 89
by Germanicus, she caused the cathedral of Cologne
to succeed. She is the ancestress of our history,
the grandam of our legends. From all parts, —
from the Rhine and from the Danube, from the
Rauhe Alp, from the ancient Sylva Gabresa, from
Upper Lorraine and from Lower Lorraine, through
the Wigalois and through the Wigamur, through
Henry the Fowler, through Samo King of the
Vends, through Rothe the chronicler of Thuringia,
through Zwinger the chronicler of Alsace, through
Gansbein the chronicler of Limburg, through all
those ancient popular songsters, Hans Folz, Jean
Viol, Muscatblut, through those rhapsodists the
Minnesingers, — from all sources the tale, that
form of dream, reaches her and enters into her
genius. At the same time languages flow from
her. From her fissures gush, to the North, the
Danish and Swedish ; to the West, the Dutch
and Flemish. The German passes the Channel
and becomes the English. In the intellectual or-
der, the German genius has other frontiers than
Germany. A given people may resist Germany
and yield to Germanism. The German spirit as-
similates to itself the Greeks by Miiller, the Servians
by Gerhard, the Russians by Goe'tre, the Magyars
by Mailath. When Kepler, in the presence of
Rudolph II., was preparing the Rudolphine Tables,
it was with the aid of Tycho Brahe.1 German af-
finities extend far. Without any alteration in the
local and national autonomies, it is with the great
1 The Rudolphine Tables, published in 1627, appear to have
been prepared long after the death of Tycho, which occurred in
1601. — TR.
9O WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Germanic centre that the Scandinavian spirit in
Oehlenschlager and the Batavian spirit in Vondel
are connected. Poland unites herself to it, with
all her glory, from Copernicus to Kosciusko, from
Sobieski to Mickiewicz. Germany is the wellspring
of nations. They pass out of her like rivers ; she
receives them as a sea.
The vast murmur of the Hercynian forest seems
to be heard throughout Europe. The German
nature, profound and subtle, distinct from the Eu-
ropean nature, but in harmony with it, volatilizes
and floats above the nations. The German mind
is misty, luminous, dispersed ; it is a kind of im-
mense beclouded soul, with stars. Perhaps the
highest expression of Germany can be given only
by music. Music, by its very want of precision,
which in this case is a quality, goes wherever the
German soul goes.
If the German spirit had as much density as ex-
pansion, — that is to say, as much will as power, —
she could, at a given moment, lift up and save the
human race. Such as she is, she is sublime.
In poetry she has not said her last word. At
this hour the indications are excellent. Since the
jubilee of the noble Schiller, particularly, there has
been an awakening, and a generous awakening.
The great definitive poet of Germany will be neces-
sarily a poet of humanity, of enthusiasm, of liberty.
Perchance — and some signs give token of it — we
may soon see him arise from the young group of
contemporary German writers.
Music (we beg indulgence for the figure) is the
vapor of art. It is to poetry what revery is to
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Qi
thought, what fluid is to liquid, what the ocean of
clouds is to the ocean of waves. If another analogy
is desired, it is the indefinite of this infinite. The
same insufflation impels, sweeps away, transports,
and overwhelms it, fills it with agitation and gleams
and unutterable sounds, saturates it with electri-
city, and causes it to give forth sudden discharges
of thunder.
Music is the Word of Germany. The German
people, so much curbed as a nation, so emanci-
pated as thinkers, sing with a sombre delight. To
sing, seems a deliverance from bondage. Music
expresses that which cannot be said, and which
cannot be suppressed. Therefore is Germany all
music, in anticipation of the time when she shall
be all freedom. Luther's choral is a kind of
Marseillaise. Everywhere are singing-clubs and
choral circles. In the fields of Swabian Esslingen,
on the banks of the Neckar, comes every year
the Festival of Song. The Liedermusik, of which
Schubert's ' Elf-King ' is the masterpiece, makes
a part of German life. Song is for Germany a
breathing: it is by singing that she respires and
conspires. The music-note being the syllable of a
kind of undefined universal language, Germany's
grand communication with the human race is made
through harmony, — an admirable prelude to unity.
It is by the clouds that the rains which fertilize the
earth ascend from the sea ; it is by music that ideas
emanate from Germany to take possession of the
minds of men. Therefore we may say that Ger-
many's greatest poets are her musicians, of which
wonderful family Beethoven is the head.
92 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Homer is the great Pelasgian; ^Eschylus, the
great Hellene; Isaiah, the great Hebrew ; Juvenal,
the great Roman ; Dante, the great Italian ; Shake-
speare, the great Englishman ; Beethoven, the great
German.
CHAPTER V.
THE dethroned " Good Taste," — that other
" right divine " which for so long a time weighed
upon Art, and which had succeeded in suppressing
the beautiful for the benefit of the pretty, — the an-
cient criticism, not altogether dead, like the ancient
monarchy, find from their point of view the same
fault, exaggeration, in those sovereign men of ge-
nius whom we have enumerated.1 These men of
genius are extravagant. This arises from the in-
finite element within them ; they are, in fact, not
circumscribed. They contain something unknown.
Every reproach that is addressed to them might
be addressed to the Sphinx. People reproach Ho-
mer for the carnage which fills his den, the Iliad ;
^Eschylus, for his monstrousness ; Job, Isaiah, Eze-
kiel, Saint Paul, for double meanings ; Rabelais,
1 To those unacquainted with the history of French literature
during the thirties and forties of this century, this sentence may
require explanation. Good taste (le bon gotit] and the ancient
criticism were the legitimate literary monarchs, against whose
regime Victor Hugo's career was a continuous insurrection. If
" Bon Gotit " is an ex-king, Victor Hugo is his Cromwell or his
Brutus. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 93
for obscene nudity and venomous ambiguity ; Cer-
vantes, for insidious laughter ; Shakespeare, for his
subtlety; Lucretius, Juvenal, Tacitus, for obscu-
rity; John of Patmos and Dante Alighieri, for
darkness.
There are other minds, very great, but less great,
who can be reproached with none of these faults.
Hesiod, ^Esop, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Thu-
cydides, Anacreon, Theocritus, Titus Livius, Sal-
lust, Cicero, Terence, Virgil, Horace, Petrarch,
Tasso, Ariosto, La Fontaine, Beaumarchais, Vol-
taire, have neither exaggeration nor darkness, nor
obscurity nor monstrousness. What, then, do they
lack? Something the others have; that some-
thing is the Unknown, the Infinite.
If Corneille had that " something," he would be
the equal of ^Eschylus. If Milton had that " some-
thing," he would be the equal of Homer. If Mo-
liere had that " something," he would be the equal
of Shakespeare.
It is the misfortune of Corneille that he muti-
lated and contracted the old native tragedy in
obedience to fixed rules. It is the misfortune of
Milton that, through Puritan melancholy, he ex-
cluded from his work Nature, the great Pan. It
is Moliere's failing that, in dread of Boileau, he
quickly extinguishes the luminous style of the
' iStourdi,' that, for fear of the priests, he writes
too few scenes like that of the poor man in * Don
Juan.' !
To give no occasion for attack, is a negative per-
fection. It is fine to be open to attack.
1 The scene referred to is the second of the third act — TR.
94 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Indeed, penetrate the meaning of those words,
placed as masks upon the mysterious qualities of
genius, and under obscurity, subtlety, and darkness,
you find depth ; under exaggeration, imagination ;
under monstrousness, grandeur.
Therefore in the upper region of poetry and
thought there are Homer, Job, Isaiah, Ezekiel,
Lucretius, Juvenal, Tacitus, John of Patmos, Paul
of Damascus, Dante, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shake-
speare.
These supreme men of genius do not form a
closed series. The author of ALL adds to it a
name when the needs of progress require it.
BOOK III.
ART AND SCIENCE.
CHAPTER I.
MANY people in our day, especially stock-
brokers, and often attorneys, say and re-
peat, " Poetry is passing away." It is almost as
if they said : " There are no more roses ; spring
has breathed its last; the sun has lost the habit of
rising ; you may roam all the fields of earth, and
not find a butterfly ; there is no more moonlight,
and the nightingale sings no more ; the lion's roar
is no longer heard ; the eagle no longer soars ; the
Alps and the Pyrenees have passed away; there
are no more lovely girls and handsome young
men ; no one ever muses now over a grave ; the
mother no longer loves her child ; heaven is
quenched ; the human heart is dead."
Were it permitted us to mingle the fortuitous
with the eternal, it would be rather the contrary
which would prove true. Never have the facul-
ties of the human mind, deepened and enriched
by the mysterious ploughing of revolution, been
profounder and loftier.
96 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
And wait a little ; give time for the realization
of that element of social well-being now impend-
ing,— gratuitous and compulsory education. How
long will it take? A quarter of a century. Im-
agine the incalculable sum of intellectual develop-
ment implied in this single expression : " Every one
can read." The multiplication of readers is the
multiplication of loaves. On the day when Christ
created that symbol, he caught a glimpse of print-
ing. His miracle is this marvel. Here is a book :
with it I will feed five thousand souls, a hundred
thousand souls, a million souls — all humanity. In
the action of Christ bringing forth the loaves, there
is Gutenberg bringing forth books. One sower
heralds the other.
What has the human race been since the begin-
ning of time? A reader. For a long time he has
spelled; he spells yet: soon he will read.
This child, six thousand years old, has been at
school from the first Where? In Nature. At
the beginning, having no other book, he spelled
the universe. He has had his primary instruc-
tion from the clouds, from the firmament, from
meteors, flowers, animals, forests, seasons, phe-
nomena. The Ionian fisherman studies the wave;
the Chaldaean shepherd spells the star. Then
came the first books, — a sublime advance. The
book is vaster yet than that grand scene, the
world; for to the fact it adds the idea. If any-
thing is greater than God seen in the sun, it is
God seen in Homer.
The universe without the book, is science be-
coming rudely outlined; the universe with the
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 97
book, is the ideal making its appearance. Thence
an immediate modification in human affairs ; where
there had been only force, power is revealed. The
application of the ideal to actual facts produces
civilization. Poetry written and sung begins its
work, — a gloriously effective deduction from the
poetry only seen. It is startling to perceive that
where science was dreaming, poetry acts. With
a touch of the lyre, the thinker dispels ferocity.
We shall return, later on, to this power of the
book; we do not -insist on it at present: it is
clear as light. Many writers then, few readers :
such has the world been up to this day. But a
change is at hand. Compulsory education is a
recruitment of souls for the light. Henceforth all
human advancement will be accomplished by swell-
ing the legions of those who read. The diameter
of the moral and ideal good corresponds always to
the calibre of men's minds. In proportion to the
worth of the brain is the worth of the heart.
The book is the tool of this transformation.
What humanity requires, is to be fed with light;
such nourishment is found in reading. Thence
the importance of the school, everywhere ade-
quate to civilization. The human race is at last
on the point of spreading the book wide open.
The immense human Bible, composed of all the
prophets, of all the poets, of all the philosophers,
is about to shine and blaze under the focus of that
enormous luminous lens, — compulsory education.
Humanity reading is humanity knowing.
What nonsense, then, it is to cry, " Poetry is pass-
ing away ! " We might say, on the contrary, poetry
7
98 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
is coming. For who says poetry, says philosophy
and light. Now, the reign of the book is begin-
ning; the school is its purveyor. Exalt the
reader, you exalt the book. Not, certainly, in
intrinsic value, — this remains what it was ; but in
efficient power: it influences where it had no
influence; men's souls become its subjects to
good ends. It was only beautiful; it becomes
useful.
Who would venture to deny this? The circle of
readers enlarging, the circle of books read will in-
crease. Now, the desire to read being a train of
powder, once lighted it will not stop : and this,
combined with the simplification of hand-labor by
machinery, and with the increased leisure of man,
the body less fatigued leaving the mind freer, vast
appetites for thought will spring up in all brains ;
the insatiable thirst for knowledge and meditation
will become more and more the human preoc-
cupation ; low places will be deserted for high
places, — an ascent natural to every growing in-
telligence ; people will quit * Faublas ' to read
' The Oresteia ; ' there they will taste the noble,
and, once tasting it, they will never be satiated;
men will make the beautiful their food, because
the refinement of minds augments in proportion
to their force; and a day will come when, the
fulness of civilization making itself manifest,
those mountain-tops, Lucretius, Dante, Shake-
speare, for ages almost deserted, and visited only
by the select few, will be crowded with intelli-
geaces seeking their food upon the heights.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 99
CHAPTER II.
THERE can be but one law; the unity of law
results from the unity of essence : Nature and Art
are the two slopes of the same fact. And in prin-
ciple, saving the restriction which we shall indicate
very shortly, the law of one is the law of the other.
The angle of reflection equals the angle of inci-
dence. All being equity in the moral order, and
equilibrium in the material order, all is equation in
the intellectual order. The binomial, that marvel
adjustable to everything, is included in poetry no
less than in algebra. Nature plus humanity, raised
to .the second power, give Art. Such is the intel-
lectual binomial. Now, replace this A -f- B by the
number proper to each great artist and each great
poet, and you will have, in its multiple physiog-
nomy and in its strict total, each of the creations
of the human mind. What more beautiful than the
variety of masterpieces resulting from the unity of
law? Poetry, like Science, has an abstract root.
Science produces from that root masterpieces of
metal, wood, fire, or air, — machine, ship, locomo-
tive, aerostat; Poetry causes to grow from it the
masterpiece of flesh and blood, Iliad, Song of
Songs, Romancero, Divine Comedy, Macbeth.
Nothing so starts and prolongs the thrill felt by
the thinker as those mysterious exfoliations of
abstraction into reality in the double region
(the one positive, the other infinite) of human
100 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
thought, — a region double, and nevertheless one :
the infinite is an exactitude. The profound word
" number" is at the base of man's thought; it is, to
our intelligence, elemental ; it signifies harmony as
well as mathematics. Number reveals itself to Art
by rhythm, which is the beating of the heart of
the Infinite. In rhythm, the law of order, God is
felt. A verse is numerous, like a crowd ; its feet
march with the cadenced step of a legion. Without
number, no science ; without number, no poetry.
The strophe, the epic, the drama, the riotous pal-
pitation of man, the bursting forth of love, the
irradiation of the imagination, the lightning-cloud
of passion, all are lorded over by this mysterious
word " number," even as are geometry and arith-
metic. Ajax, Hector, Hecuba, the seven chiefs
before Thebes, QEdipus, Ugolino, Messalina, Lear
and Priam, Romeo, Desdemona, Richard III.,
Pantagruel, the Cid, Alceste, all belong to it, as
well as conic sections and the differential and
integral calculus. It starts from "two and two
make four," and ascends to the region where the
lightning sits.
Yet between Art and Science let us note a radi-
cal difference. Science is perfectible ; Art, not.
Why?
WILLIAM SHAKESPEAR^.
CHAPTER III.
AMONG human things, and inasmuch as it is a
human thing, Art is a strange exception.
The beauty of everything here below lies in the
power of reaching perfection. Everything is en-
dowed with this property. To increase, to aug-
ment, to win strength, to make some gain, some
advance, to be worth more to-day than yesterday :
this is at once glory and life. The beauty of Art
lies in not being susceptible of improvement.
Let us insist on these essential ideas, already
touched upon in some of the preceding pages.
A masterpiece exists once for all. The first
poet who arrives, arrives at the summit. You
shall ascend after him, as high, not higher. Ah !
your name is Dante? Very well; but he who sits
yonder is named Homer !
Progress, its goal incessantly changing, its stages
constantly renewed, has a shifting horizon. Not
so the ideal.
Now, progress is the motive-power of Science ;
the ideal is the generator of Art.
Thus is explained why perfection is the charac-
teristic of Science, and not of Art.
A savant may outshine a savant ; a poet never
throws a poet into the shade.
Art progresses after its own fashion, it shifts its
ground, like Science ; but its successive creations,
containing the unchangeable, abide ; while the
SHAKESPEARE.
admirable guesses of Science, which are and can
be nothing but combinations of the contingent,
obliterate each other.
Science is relative ; Art definitive. The master-
piece of to-day will be the masterpiece of to-morrow.
Does Shakespeare change anything in Sophocles?
Does Moliere take anything from Plautus? Even
when he borrows Amphitryon, he does not take it
from him. Does Figaro blot out Sancho Panza?
Does Cordelia suppress Antigone? No. Poets do
not climb over each other. The one is not the
stepping-stone of the other. The poet rises alone,
without any other lever than himself. He does
not tread his equal under foot. The new-comers
respect their elders. They succeed, they do not
replace each other. The beautiful does not drive
out the beautiful. Neither wolves nor master-
pieces devour each other.
Saint-Simon says (I quote from memory) :
" There was through the whole winter but one cry
of admiration for M. de Cambray's book; when
suddenly appeared M. de Meaux's book, which
devoured it." If Fenelon's book had been Saint-
Simon's, the book of Bossuet would not have
devoured it.
Shakespeare is not above Dante, Moliere is not
above Aristophanes, Calderon is not above Euripi-
des ; the Divine Comedy is not above Genesis, the
Romancero is not above the Odyssey; Sirius is
not above Arcturus. Sublimity is equality.
The human mind is the infinite possible. The
master-works, immense worlds, are generated with-
in it unceasingly, and abide there forever. No
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1 03
crowding of one against the other ; no recoil. The
occlusions, when there are any, are but apparent,
and quickly cease. The expanse of the boundless
admits all creations.
Art, taken as art, and in itself, goes neither for-
ward nor backward. The transformations of
poetry are but the undulations of the beautiful,
useful to human movement. Human movement is
another side of the question, a side that we cer-
tainly do not overlook, and that we shall examine
farther on. Art is not susceptible of intrinsic
progress. From Phidias to Rembrandt, there is
movement, but not progress. The frescos of the
Sistine Chapel take absolutely nothing from the
metopes of the Parthenon. Retrace your steps as
far as you like, — from the palace of Versailles to
Heidelberg Castle, from Heidelberg Castle to Notre
Dame of Paris, from Notre Dame of Paris to the
Alhambra, from the Alhambra to St. Sophia, from
St. Sophia to the Colosseum, from the Colosseum
to the Propylaea, from the Propylaea to the Pyra-
mids ; you may go backward in centuries, you do
not go backward in art. The Pyramids and the
Iliad remain in the foreground.
Masterpieces have a level, the same for all, the
absolute.
The absolute once reached, all is said. That
cannot be excelled. The eye can bear but a
certain quantity of dazzling light.
Thence comes the assurance of poets. They
lean upon the future with a lofty grace. " Exegi
monumentum," says Horace; and on that occa-
sion he derides bronze. " Plaudite cives," says
104 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Plautus. Corneille, at sixty-five years, wins the
love (a tradition in the Escoubleau family) of the
very young Marquise de Contades, by promising
to send her name down to posterity : —
" Lady, to that future race
In whose clay I '11 have some credit,
You '11 be known as fair of face
But because my verse has said it."1
In the poet and in the artist there is something
of the infinite. It is this ingredient, the infinite,
which gives to this kind of genius an irreducible
grandeur.
This infinite element in art is independent of
progress. It may have, and it certainly has, duties
to fulfil toward progress ; but it is not dependent
upon it. It is dependent upon none of the more
perfect processes of the future, upon no transfor-
mation of language, upon no death or birth of
idioms. It has within itself the incommensurable
and the innumerable; it can be subdued by no
rivalry; it is as pure, as complete, as sidereal, as
divine, in the heart of barbarism as in the heart of
civilization. It is the beautiful, having the infi-
nite variety of genius, but always equal to itself,
always supreme.
Such is the law, scarcely known, of Art.
1 " Chez cette race nouvelle,
Ou j'aurai quelque credit,
Vous ne passerez pour belle
Qu'autant que je 1'aurai dit."
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 105
CHAPTER IV.
SCIENCE is different. The relative, which gov-
erns it, leaves its impression; and these successive
stamps of the relative, more and more resembling
the real, constitute the changing certainty of man.
In Science, certain things have been masterpieces
which are so no more. The hydraulic machine of
Marly was a masterpiece.
Science seeks perpetual motion. She has found
it : it is Science herself.
Science is continually changing in the benefit
she confers.
In Science, all tends to stir, to change, to form
fresh surfaces. All denies, destroys, creates, re-
places all. What was ground yesterday is put
into the hopper again to-day. The colossal
machine, Science, never rests. It is never satis-
fied; it is insatiable for improvement, of which
the absolute knows nothing. Vaccination is called
in question, the lightning-rod is called in question.
Jenner may have erred, Franklin may have been
mistaken ; let us search again. This agitation is
noble. Science is restless around man; she has
her own reasons. Science plays in progress the
part of utility. Let us reverence this superb
handmaiden.
Science makes discoveries ; Art composes works.
Science is an acquirement of man; Science is a
106 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
ladder : one savant mounts above his fellow. Poe-
try is a soaring flight.
Do you want examples? They abound. Here
is one, the first which comes to mind.
Jacob Metzu (scientifically Metius) discovers the
telescope by chance, as Newton discovered gravita-
tion, and Christopher Columbus, America. Let
us open a parenthesis : there is no chance in the
creation of ' The Oresteia ' or of * Paradise Lost.'
A masterpiece is the offspring of will. After Metzu
comes Galileo, who improves the discovery of
Metzu ; then Kepler, who improves on the im-
provement of Galileo ; then Descartes, who, al-
though going somewhat astray in taking a concave
glass for eyepiece instead of a convex one, makes
fruitful the improvement of Kepler; then the Ca-
puchin Reita, who rectifies the reversing of objects ;
then Huyghens, who makes a great step by plac-
ing the two convex glasses at the focus of the
objective; and in less than fifty years, from 1610
to 1659, during the short interval which separates
the ' Nuncius Sidereus ' of Galileo from the ' Oculus
Eliae et Enoch ' of Father Reita, behold the origi-
nal inventor, Metzu, obliterated. And it is con-
stantly the same in science.
Vegetius was count of Constantinople ; but that
did not prevent his tactics being forgotten, — for-
gotten like the strategy of Polybius, forgotten like
the strategy of Folard. The pig's-head of the pha-
lanx and the pointed order of the legion reappeared
for a moment, two hundred years ago, in the wedge
of Gustavus Adolphus ; but in our days, when
there are no more pikemen, as in the fourth cen-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
tury, nor lansquenets, as in the seventeenth, the
ponderous triangular attack, which was formerly
the basis of all tactics, is replaced by a swarm of
zouaves charging with the bayonet. Some day,
sooner perhaps than people think, the bayonet
charge will itself be superseded by peace, — at first
European, by-and-by universal ; and then the whole
military science will vanish away. For that science,
improvement lies in disappearance.
Science goes on unceasingly erasing itself, —
fruitful erasures ! Who knows now what is the
Homceomeria of Anaximenes, which perhaps be-
longs really to Anaxagoras? Cosmography is
notably amended since the time when this same
Anaxagoras told Pericles that the sun was almost
as large as the Peloponnesus. Many planets, and
satellites of planets, have been discovered since the
four stars of Medicis. Entomology has made some
advance since the time when it was asserted that
the scarabee was something of a god and a cousin
to the sun — first, on account of the thirty toes
on its feet, which correspond to the thirty days of
the solar month, secondly, because the scarabee
is without a female, like the sun — and the time
when Saint Clement of Alexandria, outbidding Plu-
tarch, made the remark that the scarabee, like the
sun, passes six months on the earth, and six months
under it. Would you verify this? Refer to the
' Stromata/ paragraph iv. Scholasticism itself, chi-
merical as it is, gives up the ' Holy Meadow ' of
Moschus, laughs at the ' Holy Ladder ' of John
Climacus, and is ashamed of the century in which
Saint Bernard, adding fuel to the pyre which the
IO8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Viscounts of Campania wished to put out, called
Arnaldo de Brescia " a man with the dove's head
and the scorpion's tail." The Cardinal Virtues are
no longer the law in anthropology. The Steyardes
of the great Arnauld are decayed. However un-
certain is meteorology, it is far from discussing
now, as it did in the second century, whether a rain
which saves an army from dying of thirst is due to
the Christian prayers of the Melitine legion or to the
pagan intervention of Jupiter Pluvius. The astrol-
oger Marcian Posthumus was for Jupiter ; Tertul-
lian was for the Melitine legion : no one was for
the cloud and the wind. Locomotion, if we go
from the antique chariot of Laius to the railway,
passing by \hepatache, the track-boat, the turgotine,
the diligence, and the mail-coach, has indeed made
some progress. The time has gone by for the fa-
mous journey from Dijon to Paris, lasting a month ;
and we could not understand to-day the amazement
of Henry IV., asking of Joseph Scaliger : " Is it
true, Monsieur 1'Escale, that you have been from
Paris to Dijon without relieving your bowels?"
Micrography is now far beyond Leuwenhoeck, who
was himself far beyond Swammerdam. Look at
the point at which spermatology and ovology have
already arrived, and recall Mariana reproaching Ar-
naud de Villeneuve (who discovered alcohol and
the oil of turpentine) with the strange crime of
having attempted human generation in a pumpkin.
Grand-Jean de Pouchy, the not over-credulous life-
secretary of the Academy of Sciences a hundred
years ago, would have shaken his head if any one
had told him that from the solar spectrum one
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1 09
would pass to the igneous spectrum, then to the
stellar spectrum, and that by aid of the spectrum
of flames and of the spectrum of stars would be
discovered an entirely new method of grouping the
heavenly bodies and what might be called the
chemical constellations. Orffyreus, who destroyed
his machine rather than allow the Landgrave of
Hesse to see inside it, — Orffyreus, so admired by
S'Gravesande, the author of the * Matheseos Uni-
versalis Elementa/ — would be laughed at by our
mechanicians. A country horse-doctor would not
inflict on horses the remedy with which Galen
treated the indigestions of Marcus Aurelius. What
is the opinion of the eminent specialists of our
times, Desmarres at the head of them, respecting
the learned discoveries of the seventeenth century
by the Bishop of Titiopolis concerning the nasal
chambers? The mummies have got on ; M. Gannal
makes them differently, if not better, than the Tari-
cheutes, the Paraschistes, and the Cholchytes made
them in the days of Herodotus, — the first by
washing the body, the second by opening it, and
the third by embalming. Five hundred years be-
fore Jesus Christ, it was perfectly scientific, when
a king of Mesopotamia had a daughter possessed
of the devil, to send to Thebes for a god to cure
her. It is not exactly our way of treating epilepsy.
In the same way we have given up expecting the
kings of France to cure scrofula.
In 371, under Valens, son of Gratian the rope-
maker, the judges summoned to the bar a table
accused of sorcery. This table had an accomplice
named Hilarius. Hilarius confessed the crime.
1 10 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Ammianus Marcellinus has preserved for us his
confession, received by Zosimus, count and fiscal
advocate. " Construximus, magnifici judices, ad
cortinae similitudinem Delphicae infaustam hanc
mensulam quam videtis; movimus tandem." Hi-
larius was beheaded. Who was his accuser ? A
learned geometrician and magician, the same who
advised Valens to decapitate all those whose names
began with Theod. To-day you may call yourself
Theodore, and even make a table tip, without the
fear of a geometrician causing your head to be
cut off.
One would very much astonish Solon the son of
Execestidas, Zeno the Stoic, Antipater, Eudoxus,
Lysis of Tarentum, Cebes, Menedemus, Plato, Epi-
curus, Aristotle, and Epimenides, if one were to
say to Solon that it is not the moon which regu-
lates the year ; to Zeno, that it is not proved that
the soul is divided into eight parts ; to Antipater,
that the heaven is not formed of five circles; to
Eudoxus, that it is not certain that, between the
Egyptians embalming the dead, the Romans burn-
ing them, and the Paeonians throwing them into
ponds, the Paeonians are those who are right ; to
Lysis of Tarentum, that it is not correct that the
sight is a hot vapor ; to Cebes, that it is false that
the principle of the elements is the oblong tri-
angle and the isosceles triangle ; to Menedemus,
that it is not true that, in order to know the secret
bad intentions of men, it suffices to stick on one's
head an Arcadian hat decorated with the twelve
signs of the zodiac ; to Plato, that sea-water does
not cure all diseases ; to Epicurus, that matter is
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1 1 1
infinitely divisible ; to Aristotle, that the fifth ele-
ment has not an orbicular movement, for the reason
that there is no fifth element; to Epimenides, that
the plague cannot be infallibly got rid of by letting
black and white sheep go at random, and sacrificing
to unknown gods in the places where the sheep
happen to stop.
If you should try to hint to Pythagoras how
improbable it is that he should have been wounded
at the siege of Troy — he, Pythagoras — by Men-
elaus, two hundred and seven years before his
birth, he would reply that the fact is incontestable,
and that it is proved by the fact that he perfectly
recognizes, as having already seen it, the shield of
Menelaus suspended under the statue of Apollo
at Branchidse, although entirely rotted away, ex-
cept the ivory face ; that at the siege of Troy his
own name was Euphorbus, and that before being
Euphorbus he was ^Ethalides, son of Mercury, and
that after having been Euphorbus he was Her-
motimus, then Pyrrhus, fisherman at Delos, then
Pythagoras ; that it is all evident and clear, — as
clear as that he was present the same day and the
same minute at Metapontum and at Crotona, as
evident as that by writing with blood on a mirror
exposed to the moon one may see in the moon
what one wrote on the mirror ; and lastly, that he
is Pythagoras, living at Metapontum, in the Street
of the Muses, the inventor of the multiplication-
table and of the square of the hypothenuse, the
greatest of mathematicians, the father of exact
science ; and that as for you, you are an imbecile.
Chrysippus of Tarsus, who lived about the
112 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
hundred and thirtieth olympiad, forms an era in
science. This philosopher (the same who died —
actually died — of laughter caused by seeing a don-
key eat figs out of a silver basin) had studied
everything, gone to the bottom of everything, and
had written seven hundred and five volumes, of
which three hundred and eleven were of dialectics,
without having dedicated a single one to a king, —
a fact which astounds Diogenes Laertius. He con-
densed in his brain all human knowledge. His
contemporaries named him " Light." Chrysippus
signifying " golden horse," they said that he had
got detached from the chariot of the sun. He
had taken for device " TO ME." He knew innu-
merable things ; among others, these, — the earth
is flat ; the universe is round and limited ; the best
food for man is human flesh ; the community of
wives is the basis of social order; the father ought
to espouse his daughter; there is a word which
kills the serpent, a word which tames the bear, a
word which arrests the flight of eagles, and a word
which drives the cattle from the bean-field ; by
pronouncing from hour to hour the three names
of the Egyptian Trinity, Amon- Mouth- Khons, An-
dron of Argos contrived to cross the deserts of
Libya without drinking; coffins ought not to be
made of cypress wood, the sceptre of Jupiter being
made of that wood ; Themistoclea, priestess of
Delphi, had given birth to children, yet remained
a virgin ; the just alone having authority to swear,
Jupiter very properly receives the name of " The
Swearer; " the phoenix of Arabia and the moths
live in the fire ; the earth is carried by the air as
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1 1 3
by a car; the sun drinks from the ocean, and the
moon from the rivers. For these reasons the Athe-
nians raised a statue to him on the Ceramicus,
with this inscription : " To Chrysippus, who knew
everything."
At very nearly the same time Sophocles wrote
'GEdipus Rex.'
And Aristotle believed in the story about An-
dron of Argos, and Plato in the social principle of
the community of wives, and Gorgisippus in the
earth's being flat, and Epicurus admitted as a fact
that the earth was supported by the air, and Her-
modamantes that magic words mastered the ox
and the eagle and the bear and the serpent, and
Echecrates believed in the immaculate maternity
of Themistoclea, and Pythagoras in Jupiter's scep-
tre made of cypress wood, and Posidonius in the
ocean affording drink to the sun and the rivers
quenching the thirst of the moon, and Pyrrho in
the moths living in fire.
Except in this one particular, Pyrrho was a
sceptic. He made up for his belief in that by
doubting everything else.
Such is the long groping course of Science.
Cuvier was mistaken yesterday, Lagrange the day
before yesterday; Leibnitz before Lagrange, Gas-
sendi before Leibnitz, Cardan before Gassendi,
Cornelius Agrippa before Cardan, Averroes, before
Agrippa, Plotinus before Averroes, Artemidorus
Daldian before Plotinus, Posidonius before Ar-
temidorus, Democritus before Posidonius, Em-
pedocles before Democritus, Carneades before
Empedocles, Plato before Carneades, Pherecydes
8
1 14 WILLIAM SHAKESPEAXE.
before Plato, Pittacus before Pherecydes, Thales
before Pittacus ; and before Thales, Zoroaster, and
before Zoroaster, Sanchoniathon, and before San-
choniathon, Hermes : Hermes, which signifies
science, as Orpheus signifies art. O wonderful
marvel, this mount swarming with dreams which
engender the real ! O sacred errors, slow, blind,
and sainted mothers of truth !
Some savants, such as Kepler, Euler, Geofifroy
St. Hilaire, Arago, have brought into science
nothing but light; they are rare.
At times Science is an obstacle to Science ; the
savants give way to scruples, and cavil at study.
Pliny is scandalized at Hipparchus; Hipparchus,
with the aid of an imperfect astrolabe, tries to
count the stars and to name them, — " A deed evil
in the sight of God," says Pliny (Ausus rem Deo
improbam).
To count the stars is to commit a sin toward
God. This accusation, started by Pliny against
Hipparchus, is continued by the Inquisition
against Campanella.
Science is the asymptote of truth ; it approaches
unceasingly, and never touches. Nevertheless, it
has every kind of greatness. It has will, precision,
enthusiasm, profound attention, penetration, shrewd-
ness, strength, patience in concatenation, permanent
watchfulness of phenomena, the ardor of progress,
and even fits of bravery. Witness La Perouse ;
witness Pilastre des Rosiers ; witness Sir John
Franklin ; witness Jacquemont ; witness Living-
stone; witness Mazet; witness, at this very hour,
Nadar.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1 15
But Science is series. It proceeds by proofs
superposed one above the other, whose obscure
stratification rises slowly to the level of Truth.
Art has nothing like it. Art is not successive.
All Art is ensemble.
Let us sum up these few pages.
Hippocrates is outrun, Archimedes is outrun,
Aratus is outrun, Avicennus is outrun, Paracelsus
is outrun, Nicholas Flamel is outrun, Ambroise
Pare" is outrun, Vesalius is outrun, Copernicus is
outrun, Galileo is outrun, Newton is outrun, Clair-
aut is outrun, Lavoisier is outrun, Montgolfier is
outrun, Laplace is outrun. Pindar is not, Phidias
is not
Pascal the savant is outrun; Pascal the writer
is not.
We no longer teach the astronomy of Ptolemy,
the geography of Strabo, the climatology of
Cleostratus, the zoology of Pliny, the algebra of
Diophantus, the medicine of Tribunus, the surgery
of Ronsil, the dialectics of Sphcerus, the myology
of Steno, the uranology of Tatius, the stenography
of Trithemius, the pisciculture of Sebastien de
Medicis, the arithmetic of Stifels, the geometry of
Tartaglia, the chronology of Scaliger, the meteor-
ology of Stoffler, the anatomy of Gassendi, the
pathology of Fernel, the jurisprudence of Robert
Barmne, the agronomy of Quesnay, the hydrog-
raphy of Bouguer, the navigation of Bourde de
Villehuet, the ballistics of Gribeauval, the veter-
inary practice of Garsault, the architectonics of
Desgodets, the botany of Tournefort, the scho-
lasticism of Abelard, the politics of Plato, the
1 1 6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
mechanics of Aristotle, the physics of Descartes,
the theology of Stillingfleet. We taught yesterday,
we teach to-day, we shall teach to-morrow, we
shall teach forever, the " Sing, goddess, the wrath
of Achilles."
Poetry lives a potential life. The sciences may
extend its sphere, not increase its power. Homer
had but four winds for his tempests ; Virgil who
has twelve, Dante who has twenty-four, Milton who
has thirty-two, do not make their storms grander.
And it is probable that the tempests of Orpheus
were as beautiful as those of Homer, although
Orpheus had, to raise the waves, but two winds,
the Phcenicias and the Aparctias ; that is to say,
the south wind and the north wind, — often con-
founded, by the way, with the Argestes, the west
wind of summer, and the Libs, the west wind of
winter.
Religions die away, and in dying bequeath a
great artist to other religions coming after them.
Serpio makes for the Venus Aversative of Athens
a vase which the Holy Virgin accepts from Venus,
and which serves to-day as a baptismal urn at
Notre Dame of Gae'ta.
0 eternity of Art !
A man, a corpse, a shade from the depth of the
past, stretching a hand across the centuries, lays
hold of you.
1 remember one day of my youth, at Romorantin,
in a hut we had there, with its vine-trellis through
which the air and light sifted in, that I espied a
book upon a shelf, the only book there was in the
house, — Lucretius, De Rerum Natura. My pro-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. \\J
fessors of rhetoric had spoken very ill of it, —
a circumstance which recommended it to me.
I opened the book. It must have been at that
moment about noonday. I happened on these
powerful and serene verses : l " Religion does not
consist in turning unceasingly toward the veiled
stone, nor in approaching all the altars, nor in
throwing one's self prostrate on the ground, nor in
raising the hands before the habitations of gods,
nor in deluging the temples with the blood of
beasts, nor in heaping vows upon vows; but in
beholding all with a peaceful soul." I stopped in
thought; then I began to read again. Some
moments afterward I could see nothing, hear
nothing; I was immersed in the poet. At the
dinner-hour, I made a sign that I was not hungry ;
and at sunset, when the flocks were returning to
their folds, I was still in the same place, reading
the wonderful book ; and by my side, my white-
haired father, indulgent to my prolonged reading,
was seated on the door-sill of the low room where
his sword hung on a nail, and was gently calling
the sheep, which came one after another to eat a
little salt in the hollow of his hand.
1 Nee pietas ulla est, velatum saepe videri
Vertier ad lapidem, atque omnes accedere ad aras,
Nee procumbere humi prostratum, et pandere palmas
Ante deum delubra, neque aras sanguine multo
Spargere quadrupedum, nee votis nectere vota ;
Sed mage placata posse omnia mente tueri.
1 1 8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER V.
POETRY cannot grow less. Why? Because it
cannot grow greater.
Those words, so often used, even by the let-
tered, " decadence," " renascence," show to what
an extent the essence of Art is unknown. Super-
ficial intellects, easily becoming pedantic, take for
renascence or decadence some effects of juxta-
position, some optical mirage, some event in the
history of a language, some ebb and flow of ideas,
all the vast movement of creation and thought, the
result of which is universal Art. This movement
is the very work of the Infinite passing through
the human brain.
Phenomena are seen only from the culminating
point, and poetry thus viewed is immanent. There
is neither rise nor decline in Art. Human genius
is always at its full; all the rain of heaven adds
not a drop of water to the ocean. A tide is an
illusion ; water ebbs on one shore, only to rise on
another. Oscillations are taken for diminutions.
To say " there will be no more poets," is to say
" there will never be flood-tide again."
Poetry is elemental. It is irreducible, incorrup-
tible, and refractory to manipulation. Like the
sea, it says on each occasion all it has to say;
then it begins anew with a tranquil majesty, and
with the inexhaustible variety which belongs only
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1 19
to unity. This diversity in what seems monoto-
nous is the marvel of immensity.
Wave upon wave, billow after billow, foam behind
foam, movement, and again movement. The Iliad
is moving away, the Romancero comes ; the Bible
sinks, the Koran surges up ; after the aquilon
Pindar comes the hurricane Dante. Does ever-
lasting poetry repeat itself? No. It is the same,
and it is different; the same breath, a different
sound.
Do you take the Cid for a plagiarist of Ajax?
Do you take Charlemagne for a copier of Aga-
memnon? "There is nothing new under the sun."
" Your novelty is the repetition of the old," etc.
Oh, the strange process of criticism ! Then Art is
but a series of counterfeits ! Thersites has a thief,
— Falstaff. Orestes has an ape, — Hamlet. The
Hippogriff is the jay of Pegasus. All these poets !
A crew of cheats ! They pillage each other, and
there 's an end. Inspiration is involved with swin-
dling. Cervantes plunders Apuleius, Alceste cheats
Timon of Athens. The Smynthian Wood is the
Forest of Bondy. Out of whose pocket was Shake-
speare seen to draw his hand? Out of the pocket
of ^Eschylus.
No ! neither decadence, nor renascence, nor
plagiarism, nor repetition, nor imitation. Identity
of heart, difference of spirit; that is all. Each
great artist, as we have already said, stamps Art
anew in his own image. Hamlet is Orestes in the
image of Shakespeare ; Figaro is Scapin in the
image of Beaumarchais ; Grangousier is Silenus in
the image of Rabelais.
I2O WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
With the new poet everything begins anew, and
at the same time nothing is interrupted. Each
new genius is an abyss. Nevertheless, tradition
exists. Tradition from abyss to abyss, such is —
in Art, as in the firmament — the mystery; and
men of genius communicate by their effluence, like
the stars. What have they in common? Nothing.
Everything.
From the pit that is called Ezekiel to the preci-
pice that is called Juvenal, there is no interruption
of continuity for the thinker. Lean over this anath-
ema, or over that satire, and the same vertigo is
whirling around both. The Apocalypse is reflected
from the Polar Sea of Ice, and you have that aurora
borealis, the Nibelungen. The Edda replies to the
Vedas.
Hence this, — our starting-point, to which we
return, — Art is not perfectible.
No possible decline for poetry, nor any possible
improvement. We lose our time when we say:
Nescio quid majtts nascitur Iliade. Art is subject
neither to diminution nor to enlargement. Art
has its seasons, its clouds, its eclipses, — even its
stains, which are perhaps splendors; its interpo-
sitions of sudden opacity, for which it is not re-
sponsible: but in the end it brings light into the
human soul always with the same intensity. It re-
mains the same furnace, emitting the same auroral
glow. Homer does not grow cold.
Let us insist, moreover, upon this, inasmuch as
the rivalry of intelligences is the life of the beauti-
ful : O poets ! the first rank is ever free. Let us
remove everything which may disconcert daring
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1 2 1
minds and break their wings. Art is a species of
valor. To deny that men of genius yet to come
may be the peers of men of genius of the past,
would be to deny the ever-working power of God.
Yes, and often do we return, and shall return
again, to this needed encouragement. Stimulation
is almost creation. Yes, those men of genius who
cannot be surpassed may be equalled.
How?
By being different.
BOOK IV.
THE ANCIENT SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER I.
THE ancient Shakespeare is ^Eschylus. Let us
return to ^schylus. He is the grandsire of
the stage. This book would be incomplete if
^Eschylus had not his separate place in it.
A man whom we do not know how to class
in his own century, so little does he belong to it,
being at the same time so much behind it and so
much in advance of it, the Marquis de Mirabeau,
— that ugly customer as a philanthropist, but a
very rare thinker after all, — had a book-case, at
the two corners of which he had caused a dog and
a she- goat to be carved, in remembrance of Socra-
tes, who swore by the dog, and of Zeno, who swore
by the goat. His library presented this peculiarity :
on one side there were Hesiod, Sophocles, Euripides,
Plato, Herodotus, Thucydides, Pindar, Theocritus,
Anacreon, Theophrastus, Demosthenes, Plutarch,
Cicero, Titus Livius, Seneca, Persius, Lucan,
Terence, Horace, Ovid, Propertius, Tibullus,
Virgil; and underneath could be read, engraved
in letters of gold: "AMO." On the other side
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 123
stood ^Eschylus alone, and underneath this word :
" TIMED."
jEschylus in reality is formidable. He cannot
be approached without trembling. He has magni-
tude and mystery. Barbarous, extravagant, em-
phatic, antithetical, bombastic, absurd, — such is
the judgment passed on him by the official rhetoric
of the present day. This rhetoric will be changed.
./Eschylus is one of those men whom superficial
criticism scorTs at or disdains, but whom the true
critic approaches with a sort of sacred fear. The
fear of genius is the beginning of taste.
In the true critic there is always a poet, be it
but in the latent state.
Whoever does not understand ^Eschylus is irre-
mediably commonplace. ^Eschylus is the touch-
stone of the intelligence.
The drama is a strange form of art. Its diameter
measures from 'The Seven against Thebes' to
' The Philosopher Without Knowing it/ and from
Brid'oison to QEdipus. Thyestes forms part of it;
Turcaret also. If you wish to define it, put into
your definition Electra and Marton.
The drama is disconcerting; it baffles the weak.
This comes from its ubiquity. The drama has
every horizon ; you may then imagine its capacity.
The drama has been capable of absorbing the epic ;
and the result is that marvellous literary novelty,
which is at the same time a social power, — the
romance.
The romance is bronze, an amalgamation of the
epic, lyric, and dramatic. ' Don Quixote ' is iliad,
ode, and comedy.
124 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Such is the expansion of which the drama is
capable.
The drama is the vastest reservoir of art, spacious
enough for both God and Satan : witness Job.
From the view-point of absolute art, the charac-
teristic of the epic poem is grandeur ; the charac-
teristic of the drama, vastness. The vast differs
from the great in this : that it excludes, if it
chooses, dimension ; that " it is beyond measure,"
as the common saying is ; and that it can, without
losing beauty, lose proportion. It is harmonious
like the Milky Way. It is by vastness that the
drama begins, four thousand years ago, in Job,
whom we have just recalled, and, two thousand five
hundred years ago, in ^Eschylus ; it is by vastness
that it continues in Shakespeare. What person-
ages does ^Eschylus take? Volcanoes: one of his
lost tragedies is called 'y£tna;f then the moun-
tains : Caucasus with Prometheus ; then the sea :
the Ocean on its dragon, and the waves, the
Oceanides ; then the vast Orient : ' The Persians ; '
then the bottomless darkness: 'The Eumenides.'
^Eschylus proves the man by the giant. In
Shakespeare the drama approaches nearer to
humanity, but remains colossal. Macbeth seems
a polar Atrides. You see that the drama re-
veals Nature, then reveals the soul; and there is
no limit to this horizon. The drama is life,
and life is everything. The epic poem can
be only great ; the drama is constrained to be
vast.
This vastness pervades ./Eschylus and Shake-
speare throughout.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 12$
The vast, in ^Eschylus, is a will. It is also
a temperament. ^Eschylus invents the buskin,
which makes the man taller, and the mask, which
increases the voice. His metaphors are enormous.
He calles Xerxes " the man with the dragon eyes."
The sea, which is a plain for so many poets, is for
yEschylus "a forest" (aXcro?). These magnifying
figures, peculiar to the highest poets, and to them
only, have the basal truth which springs from
imaginative musing. ^Eschylus excites you to the
very brink of convulsion. His tragical effects are
like blows struck at the spectators. When the
furies of ^Eschylus make their appearance, preg-
nant women miscarry. Pollux, the lexicographer,
affirms that at the sight of those serpent faces and
of those flickering torches, children were seized
with fits of epilepsy, of which they died. That
is evidently " going beyond the mark." Even in
the grace of ^Eschylus, that strange and sovereign
grace of which we have spoken, there is something
Cyclopean. It is Polyphemus smiling. At times
the smile is formidable, and seems to hide an
obscure rage. Put, by way of example, these two
poets, Homer and ^schylus, in the presence of
Helen. Homer is at once conquered, and ad-
mires ; his admiration is forgiveness. ^Eschylus
is moved, but remains grave. He calls Helen
" fatal flower ; " then he adds, " soul as calm as
the tranquil sea." One day Shakespeare will say,
" false as the wave." 1
i <
Othello,' V. ii. 1. 134: " She was false as water." — TR.
126 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER II.
THE theatre is a crucible of civilization. It is a
place of human communion. All its phases need
to be studied. It is in the theatre that the public
soul is formed.
We have just seen what the theatre was in the
time of Shakespeare and Moli&re; shall we see
what it was in the time of ^Eschylus?
Let us go to see this play.
It is no longer the cart of Thespis ; it is no
longer the scaffold of Susarion ; it is no longer the
wooden circus of Chcerilus. Athens, forecasting
the coming of ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripi-
des, has built theatres of stone. No roof, the sky
for a ceiling, the day for lighting, a long platform
of stone pierced with doors and staircases and
secured to a wall, the actors and the chorus go-
ing and coming upon this platform, which is the
logeum, and performing the play; in the centre,
where in our day is the prompter's box, a small
altar to Bacchus, the thymele; in front of the
platform a vast riemicycle of stone steps, on which
five or six thousand men are sitting pell-mell:
such is the laboratory. There it is that the swarm-
ing crowd of the Piraeus come to turn Athenians ;
there it is that the multitude becomes the pub-
lic, in anticipation of the day when the public
shall become the people. The multitude is in fact
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. \ 2 7
there, — the whole multitude, including the women,
the children, and the slaves, and Plato, who knits
his brows.
If it is a fete-day, if we are at the Panathenaea,
at the Lenaea, or at the great Dionysia, the magis-
trates form part of the audience ; the proedri, the
epistati, and the prytanes sit in their place of
honor. If the trilogy is to be a tetralogy ; if the
representation is to conclude by a piece with
satyrs; if the fauns, the aegipans, the maenades,
the goat-footed, and the evantes are to come at
the end to perform their pranks; if among the
comedians (who are almost priests, and are called
" Bacchus's men") is to appear the favorite actor
who excels in the two modes of declamation, in
paralogy as well as paracatology ; if the poet
is sufficiently liked by his rivals so that the
public may expect to see some celebrated men,
Eupolis, Cratinus, or even Aristophanes, figure
in the chorus (" Eupolis atque Cratinus Ari-
stophanesque poetae," as Horace will one day
say) ; if a play with women is performed, even
the old ' Alcestis ' of Thespis, — the whole place
is full, there is a crowd. The crowd is already
to ^Eschylus what, later on, as the prologue of
1 The Bacchides ' remarks, it will be to Plautus,
— " a swarm of men on seats, coughing, spit-
ting, sneezing, making grimaces and noises with
the mouth (ore concrepario), touching foreheads,
and talking of their affairs : " what a crowd is
to-day.
Students scrawl with charcoal on the wall — now
in token of admiration, now in irony — some well-
128 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
known verses ; for instance, the singular iambic of
Phrynichus in a single word, —
" Archaiomelesidonophrunicherata," l
of which the famous Alexandrine, in two words, of
one of our tragic poets of the sixteenth century,
was but a poor imitation, —
" Metamorphoserait Nabuchodonosor."2
There are not only the students to make a row,
there are the old men. Trust to the old men of
the 'Wasps' of Aristophanes for a noise. Two
schools are represented, — on one side Thespis,
Susarion, Pratinas of Phlius, Epigenes of Sicyon,
Theomis, Auleas, Chcerilus, Phrynichus, Minos
himself; on the other, young ^schylus. ^Eschy-
lus is twenty-eight years old. He gives his trilogy
of the ' Promethei, ' — ' Prometheus the Fire-
bearer,' ' Prometheus Bound,' * Prometheus Deliv-
ered;' followed by some piece with satyrs, — 'The
Argians,' perhaps, of which Macrobius has pre-
served a fragment for us. The ancient quarrel
between youth and old age breaks out, — gray
beards against black hair. They discuss, they dis-
pute : the old men are for the old school ; the
young are for ^Eschylus. The young defend
y£schylus against Thespis, as they will defend
Corneille against Gamier.
The old men are indignant. Listen to the Nes-
tors grumbling. What is tragedy? It is the song
of the he goat. Where is the he-goat in this ' Pro-
2 "He would transmogrify Nebuchadnezzar." —
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 129
metheus Bound?' Art is in its decline. And they
repeat the celebrated objection : Quid pro Bac-
cJw? (What is there for Bacchus?) Those of
severest taste, the purists, do not even accept
Thespis, and remind each other that Solon had
raised his stick against Thespis, calling him " liar/'
for the sole reason that he had detached and iso-
lated in a play an episode in the life of Bacchus, —
the story of Pentheus. They hate this innovator,
^Eschylus. They blame all these inventions, the
end of which is to bring about a closer connection
between the drama and Nature, — the use of the
anapaest for the chorus, of the iambus for the dia-
logue, and of the trochee for passion, — in the
same way that, later on, Shakespeare was blamed
for passing from poetry to prose, and the theatre
of the nineteenth century for what was termed
" broken verse." These are indeed unendurable
novelties. And then, the flute plays too high, and
the tetrachord plays too low ; and where is now the
ancient sacred division of tragedies into monodies,
stasimes, and exodes? Thespis put on the stage
but one speaking actor; here is ^Eschylus putting
two. Soon we shall have three. (Sophocles, in-
deed, was to come.) Where will they stop? These
are impieties. And how does this ^Eschylus dare
to call Jupiter "the prytanis of the Immortals?"
Jupiter was a god, and he is no longer anything
but a magistrate. What are we coming to? The
thymele, the ancient altar of sacrifice, is now a seat
for the corypheus ! The chorus ought to limit it-
self to executing the strophe, — that is to say, the
turn to the right; then the antistrophe, — that is
9
130 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
to say, the turn to the left; then the epode, — that
is to say, repose. But what means the entrance of
the chorus in a winged chariot? What is the gad-
fly that pursues lo? Why does the Ocean come
mounted on a dragon? This is show, not poetry.
Where is the antique simplicity? This spectacle
is puerile. Your ^Eschylus is but a painter, a deco-
rator, a maker of brawls, a charlatan, a machinist.
All for the eyes, nothing for the mind. To the
fire with all these pieces, and let us content our-
selves with a recitation of the ancient paeans of
Tynnichus ! Moreover, it is Chcerilus who, by his
tetralogy of the Curetes, started the evil. What
are the Curetes, if you please? Gods forging metal.
Well, then, he had simply to show their five fami-
lies at work upon the stage, the Dactyli finding the
metal, the Cabiri inventing the forge, the Coryban-
tes forging the sword and the ploughshare, the
Curetes making the shield, and the Telchines chas-
ing the jewelry. It was sufficiently interesting in
that form ; but by allowing poets to blend in it the
adventure of Plexippus and Toxeus, all is ruined.
How can you expect society to resist such excess?
It is abominable. ^Eschylus ought to be sum-
moned before the court, and sentenced to drink
hemlock, like that old wretch Socrates. You will
see that after all he will only be exiled. Every-
thing is degenerating.
And the young men burst into laughter. They
criticise as well, but in another fashion. What an
old brute is that Solon ! It is he who has insti-
tuted the eponymous archonship. What do they
want with an archon giving his name to the year?
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 131
Hoot the eponymous archon who has lately caused
a poet to be elected and crowned by ten generals,
instead of by ten men of the people. It is true that
one of the generals was Cimon, — an extenuating
circumstance in the eyes of some, for Cimon has
beaten the Phoenicians ; aggravating in the eyes of
others, for it is this very Cimon who, in order to
get out of prison for debt, sold his sister Elphinia,
and his wife into the bargain, to Callias. If ^Es-
chylus is a reckless person and deserves to be cited
before the Areopagus, has not Phrynichus also
been judged and condemned for having shown on
the stage, in ' The Taking of Miletus/ the Greeks
beaten by the Persians? When will poets be al-
lowed to suit their own fancy? Hurrah for the
liberty of Pericles, and down with the censure of
Solon ! And then what is this law that has just
been promulgated, by which the chorus is reduced
from fifty to fifteen? And how are they to play
'The Danai'des'? and won't there be chuckling at
the line of yEschylus, — " Egyptus, the father of
fifty sons? " The fifty will be fifteen. These magis-
trates are idiots. Quarrel, uproar all around. One
prefers Phrynichus, another prefers ^Eschylus, an-
other prefers wine with honey and benzoin. The
speaking-trumpets of the actors compete as well
as they can with this deafening noise, through
which is heard from time to time the shrill cry
of the public vendors of phallus and of the water-
bearers. Such is the Athenian uproar. During
all this time the play is going on. It is the
work of a living man. There is good cause for
the commotion. Later on, after the death of
132 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
^Eschylus, or after he has been exiled, there will
be silence. It is right to be silent before a god.
"^Equum est" — it is Plautus who speaks — "vos
deo facere silentum."
CHAPTER III.
A GENIUS is an accused man. As long as JEs-
chylus lived, his life was a strife. His genius was
contested, then he was persecuted : a natural pro-
gression. According to Athenian practice, his
private life was unveiled ; he was traduced, sland-
ered. A woman whom he had loved, Planesia,
sister of Chrysilla, mistress of Pericles, has dis-
honored herself in the eyes of posterity by the out-
rages that she publicly inflicted on ^Eschylus.
Unnatural amours were imputed to him ; for him,
as for Shakespeare, a Lord Southampton was
found. His popularity was broken down. Then
everything was charged to him as a crime, even
his kindness to young poets who respectfully of-
fered to him their first laurels. It is curious to
see this reproach constantly reappearing. Pezay
and St. Lambert repeat it in the eighteenth cen-
tury : " Why, Voltaire, in all thy notes to the au-
thors who address thee with complimentary verses,
dost thou reply with excessive praises ? " 1
1 " Pourquoi, Voltaire, a ces auteurs
Qui t'adressent des vers flatteurs,
Repondre, en toutes tes missives,
Par des louanges excessives ? "
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 133
^Eschylus, while alive, was a kind of public tar-
get for all haters. Young, the ancient poets, Tries-
pis and Phrynichus, were preferred to him; old,
the new ones, Sophocles and Euripides, were
placed above him. At last he was brought before
the Areopagus, and — according to Suidas, be-
cause the theatre had fallen in during the perform-
ance of one of his pieces ; according to y£lian,
because he had blasphemed, or, what is the same
thing, had revealed the mysteries of Eleusis — he
was exiled. He died in exile.
Then Lycurgus the orator cried : " We must raise
to ^schylus a statue of bronze."
Athens, which had expelled the man, raised the
statue.
Thus Shakespeare, through death, entered into
oblivion ; ^Eschylus into glory.
This glory, which was to have in the course of
ages its phases, its eclipses, its vanishings, and its
returns, was then dazzling. Greece remembered
Salamis, where ^Eschylus had fought. The Areop-
agus itself was ashamed. It felt that it had been
ungrateful toward the man who, in ' The Ores-
teia,' had paid to that tribunal the supreme honor
of summoning before it Minerva and Apollo. JEs-
chylus became sacred. All the phratries had
his bust, wreathed at first with fillets, afterward
crowned with laurels. Aristophanes made him
say, in ' The Frogs,' " I am dead, but my poetry
liveth." In the great Eleusinian days, the herald
of the Areopagus blew the Tyrrhenian trumpet in
honor of ^Eschylus. An official copy of his nine-
ty-seven dramas was made at the expense of the
134 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Republic, and placed under the special care of the
recorder of Athens. The actors who played his
pieces were obliged to go and collate their parts
with this perfect and unique copy. ^Eschylus
was made a second Homer. ^Eschylus had, like
Homer, his rhapsodists, who sang his verses at the
festivals, holding in their hands a branch of myrtle.
He had been right, the great and insulted man,
to write on his poems this proud and mournful
dedication : —
"To TIME."
There was no more said about his blasphemy :
it was enough that this blasphemy had caused him
to die in exile ; it was as though it had never been.
Besides, one does not know where to find the blas-
phemy. Palingenius seeks it in an ' Asterope,'
which, in our opinion, existed only in imagination.
Musgrave seeks it in 'The Eumenides.' Musgrave
probably was right; for 'The Eumenides' being a
very religious piece, the priests must have chosen
it for the purpose of accusing him of impiety.
Let us note an odd coincidence. The two sons
of ^Eschylus, Euphorion and Bion, are said to
have recast ' The Oresteia,' exactly as, two thou-
sand three hundred years later, Davenant, Shake-
speare's illegitimate son, recast ' Macbeth.' But
in the face of the universal respect for ^Eschylus
after his death, such impudent tamperings were
impossible; and what is true of Davenant is evi-
dently untrue of Bion and Euphorion.
The renown of ^Eschylus filled the world of
those days. Egypt, feeling with reason that he
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 135
was a giant and somewhat Egyptian, bestowed on
him the name of " Pimander," signifying " Superior
Intelligence." In Sicily, whither he had been
banished, and where they sacrificed he-goats before
his tomb at Gela, he was almost an Olympian.
Afterward he was almost a prophet for the Chris-
tians, owing to the prediction of Prometheus, which
they thought to apply to Jesus.
Strangely enough, it is this very glory which has
wrecked his work.
We speak here of the material wreck ; for,
as we have said, the mighty name of ^Eschylus
survives.
The disappearance of these poems is indeed a
drama, and an extraordinary drama. A king has
stupidly plundered the human mind.
Let us tell the story of this larceny.
CHAPTER IV.
HERE are the facts, — the legend, at least; for
at such a distance, and in such a twilight, history is
legendary.
There was a king of Egypt named Ptolemy
Evergetes, brother-in-law to Antiochus the god.
Let us mention, by the way, that all these peo-
ple were gods, — gods Soters, gods Evergetes,
gods Epiphanes, gods Philometors, gods Philadel-
phi, gods Phllopators. Translation : Gods saviors,
gods beneficent, gods illustrious, gods loving
1 3 6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
their mother, gods loving their brothers, gods
loving their father. Cleopatra was goddess Soter.
The priests and priestesses of Ptolemy Soter were
at Ptolemais. Ptolemy VI. was called " God-love-
Mother " (Philometor), because he hated his
mother Cleopatra ; Ptolemy IV. was " God-love-
Father" (JPhilopator)t because he had poisoned
his father; Ptolemy II. was " God-love-Brothers "
(JPhiladelpkus)t because he had killed his two
brothers.
Let us return to Ptolemy Evergetes.
He was the son of the Philadelphus who gave
golden crowns to the Roman ambassadors, the
same to whom the pseudo-Aristeus wrongly at-
tributes the version of the Septuagint. This
Philadelphus had much increased the library of
Alexandria, which during his lifetime counted
two hundred thousand volumes, and which in the
sixth century attained, it is said, the incredible
number of seven hundred thousand manuscripts.
This stock of human knowledge, formed un-
der the eyes of Euclid and by the efforts of
Callimachus, Diodorus Cronus, Theodorus the
Atheist, Philetas, Apollonius, Aratus, the Egyp-
tian priest Manetho, Lycophron, and Theocritus,
had for its first librarian, according to some
Zenodotus of Ephesus, according to others De-
me^rius of Phalerum, to whom the Athenians had
raised two hundred and sixty statues, which they
took one year to construct, and one day to destroy.
Now, this library had no copy of ^Eschylus. One
day the Greek Demetrius said to Evergetes,
" Pharaoh has not ^Eschylus," — exactly as, at
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 137
a later time, Leidrade, archbishop of Lyons and
librarian of Charlemagne, said to Charlemagne,
" The Emperor has not Scaeva Memor."
Ptolemy Evergetes, wishing to complete the
work of Philadelphus his father, resolved to give
^Eschylus to the Alexandrian library. He de-
clared that he would cause a copy to be made.
He sent an embassy to borrow from the Athenians
the unique and sacred copy, under the care of the
recorder of the Republic. Athens, not over-prone
to lend, hesitated, and demanded a security. The
King of Egypt offered fifteen silver talents. Now,
those who wish to comprehend the value of fif-
teen talents, have but to know that it was three
fourths of the annual tribute of ransom paid by
Judaea to Egypt, which was twenty talents, and
weighed so heavily on the Jewish people that the
high-priest Onias II., founder of the Onian Temple,
decided to refuse this tribute at the risk of* a war.
Athens accepted the security. The fifteen talents
were deposited. The complete copy of ^Eschylus
was delivered to the King of Egypt. The King
gave up the fifteen talents, and kept the book.
Athens, indignant, had some thought of declar-
ing war against Egypt. To reconquer ^Eschylus
would be as good as reconquering Helen. To
repeat the Trojan war, but this time to recover
Homer, seemed a fine thing. Yet time was
taken for consideration. Ptolemy was powerful.
He had forcibly taken back from Asia the two
thousand five hundred Egyptian gods formerly
carried there by Cambyses because they were in
gold and silver. He had, besides, conquered
138 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Cilicia and Syria and all the country from the
Euphrates to the Tigris. With Athens it was no
longer the day when she had improvised a fleet of
two hundred ships against Artaxerxes. She left
^Eschylus a prisoner in Egypt.
A prisoner-god. This time the word " god " is in
its right place. They paid ^Eschylus unheard-of
honors. The King refused, it is said, to allow the
works to be transcribed, stupidly bent on posses-
sing a unique copy.
Particular care was taken of this manuscript
when the library of Alexandria, augmented by
the library of Pergamus, which Antony gave to
Cleopatra, was transferred to the temple of Jupiter
Serapis. There it was that Saint Jerome came to
read, in the Athenian text, the famous passage in
the ' Prometheus ' prophesying Christ : " Go and
tell Jupiter that nothing shall make me name the
one who is to dethrone him."
Other doctors of the Church made, from the
same copy, the same verification. For in all
times orthodox asseverations have been com-
bined with what have been called the testimonies
of polytheism, and great pains have been taken
to make pagans say Christian things. " Teste
David cum Sibylla." People came to the Alexan-
drian library, as on a pilgrimage, to examine the
' Prometheus,' — constant visits which perhaps de-
ceived the Emperor Hadrian, making him write
to the Consul Servianus : " Those who worship
Serapis are Christians; those who profess to be
bishops of Christ are at the same time devotees
of Serapis."
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 139
Under the Roman dominion, the library of
Alexandria belonged to the Emperor. Egypt
was Caesar's property. " Augustus," says Tacitus,
" seposuit ^Egyptum." It was not every one who
could travel there. Egypt was closed. The
Roman knights, and even the senators, could not
easily obtain admittance.
It was during this period that the complete
copy of ^Eschylus was exposed to the perusal
of Timocharis, Aristarchus, Athenaeus, Stobaeus,
Diodorus of Sicily, Macrobius, Plotinus, Jambli-
chus, Sopater, Clement of Alexandria, Nepotian
of Africa, Valerius Maximus, Justin the Martyr,
and even of ^Elian, although ^Elian left Italy but
seldom.
In the seventh century a man entered Alexandria.
He was mounted on a camel and seated between
two sacks, one full of figs, the other full of corn.
These two sacks were, with a wooden platter, all
that he possessed. This man never seated himself
except on the ground. He drank nothing but
water, and ate nothing but bread. He had con-
quered half Asia and Africa, taken or burned
thirty-six thousand towns, villages, fortresses, and
castles, destroyed four thousand pagan or Chris-
tain temples, built fourteen hundred mosques, con-
quered Izdeger, King of Persia, and Heraclius,
Emperor of the East; and he called himself Omar.
He burned the library of Alexandria.
Omar is for that reason celebrated ; Louis, called
the Great, has not the same celebrity, — an in-
justice, for he burned the Rupertine library at
Heidelberg.
140 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER V.
Now, is not this incident a complete drama?
It might be entitled, ' ^Eschylus Lost' Exposition,
plot, and denouement. After Evergetes, Omar.
The action begins with a robber, and ends with
an incendiary.
Evergetes — this is his excuse — robbed from
the motive of love. The admiration of a fool has
its attendant inconveniences.
As for Omar, he is the fanatic. By the way, we
must mention that strange historical rehabilitations
have been attempted in our time. We do not
speak of Nero, who is the fashion ; but an attempt
has been made to exonerate Omar, as well as to
bring a verdict of " not guilty " for Pius V. Saint
Pius V. personifies the Inquisition ; to canonize
him was enough : why declare him innocent ?
We do not lend ourselves to these attempts at
appeal in trials which have received final judg-
ment. We have no taste for rendering such little
services to fanaticism, whether it be caliph or
pope, whether it burn books or men. Omar has
had many advocates. A certain class of historians
and biographical critics are easily moved to tears
over the sabre: a victim of slander, this poor
sabre ! Imagine, then, the tenderness that is felt
for a scimitar, — the scimitar being the ideal sabre.
It is better than brute, it is Turk. Omar, then,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 141
has been cleared as far as possible. A first fire
in the Bruchion district, where the Alexandrian
library stood, was used as an argument to prove
how easily such accidents happen. That fire was
the fault of Julius Csesar, — another sabre ! Then a
second argument was found in a second conflagra-
tion, only partial, of the Serapeum, in order to
accuse the Christians, the demagogues of those
days. If the fire at the Serapeum had destroyed
the Alexandrian library in the fourth century,
Hypatia would not have been able, in the fifth
century, to give in that same library those lessons
in philosophy which caused her to be murdered
with broken pieces of earthen pots. Touching
Omar, we are willing to believe the Arabs. Ab-
dallatif saw at Alexandria, about 1220, "a shaft
of the pillars supporting a cupola," 1 and said,
"There stood the library that Amroo-Ibn-Al-Aas
burned by permission of Omar." Aboolfaraj, in
1260, relates in precise terms in his * Dynastic His-
tory ' that by order of Omar they took the books
from the library, and with them heated the baths
of Alexandria for six months. According to Gib-
bon, there were at Alexandria four thousand baths.
Ibn-Khaldoon, in his ( Historical Prolegomena/ re-
lates another wanton destruction, — the annihila-
tion of the library of the Medes by Saad, Omar's
lieutenant. Now, Omar having caused the burn-
ing of the Median library in Persia by Saad, was
logical in causing the destruction of the Egyptian-
1 The original reads: "la colonne des piliers supportant une
coupole." — TR.
142 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Greek library in Egypt by Amroo. His lieuten-
ants have preserved his orders for us : " If these
books contain falsehoods, to the fire with them !
If they contain truths, these truths are in the
Koran : to the fire with them ! " In place of the
Koran, put the Bible, Veda, Edda, Zend-Avesta,
Toldos-Jeschut, Talmud, Gospel, and you have the
imperturbable and universal formula of all fanat-
icisms. This being said, we do not see any
reason to reverse the verdict of history ; we award
to the Caliph the smoke of the seven hundred
thousand volumes of Alexandria, ^Eschylus in-
cluded, and we maintain Omar in possession of
his conflagration.
Evergetes, through his wish for exclusive pos-
session, treating a library as a seraglio, has robbed
us of ^Eschylus. Imbecile contempt may have the
same results as imbecile adoration. Shakespeare
came very near meeting the fate of ^Eschylus.
He also has had his conflagration. Shakespeare
was so little printed, printing existing so little for
him, thanks to the stupid indifference of his im-
mediate posterity, that in 1666 there was still but
one edition of the poet of Stratford-on-Avon
(Hemynge and Condell's edition), three hundred
copies of which were printed. Shakespeare, with
this obscure and pitiful edition awaiting the public
in vain, was a sort of poor but proud relative of
the glorious poets. These three hundred copies
were nearly all stored up in London when the Fire
of 1666 broke out It burned London, and nearly
burned Shakespeare. The whole edition of He-
mynge and Condell disappeared, with the exception
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 143
of the forty-eight copies which had been sold in
fifty years. Those forty-eight purchasers saved
from death the works of Shakespeare.1
CHAPTER VI.
THE disappearance of ^Eschylus ! Extend this
catastrophe hypothetically to a few more names,
and it seems as though one perceived a vacuum
forming in the human mind.
The work of ^Eschylus was, by its extent, the
greatest, certainly, of all antiquity. By the seven
plays which remain to us, we may judge what that
universe was.
Let us point out what ' ^Eschylus Lost' imports :
Fourteen trilogies, — ' The Promethei/ of which
* Prometheus Bound ' formed a part ; ' The Seven
Chiefs against Thebes/ of which there remains
one piece ; ' The Dana'fdes/ which included ' The
Suppliants/ written in Sicily, and in which the
" Sicilianism " of ^Eschylus is traceable ; ' Lai'us/
1 In addition to Hemynge and Condell's edition (known as the
'First Folio, or Folio of 1623'), there had been, before the year
of the Great Fire, two editions, — the ' Second Folio,' 1632, and the
'Third Folio,' 1663-64. Besides these during the poet's lifetime,
and throughout a large part of the seventeenth century, single
plays of Shakespeare appeared in quarto form. See Dowden's
' Primer/ pp. 30-31. In the last chapter of this useful little book
some facts are given which show that Shakespeare was by no
means so unknown and unpopular throughout the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries as Victor Hugo would persuade us that he
was. — TR.
144 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
which included ' CEdipus; ' 'Athamas/ which end-
ed with ' The Isthmiastes ; ' ' Perseus/ the node of
which was ' The Phorcydes ; ' * y£tna/ which had
as prologue 'The JEtnean Women; ' ' Iphigenia/
the denouement of which was the tragedy of 'The
Priestesses ; ' ' The Ethiopid/ the titles of which
are nowhere to be found; * Pentheus,' in which
were ' The Hydrophori ' (Water-carriers) ; ' Teu-
cer,' which opened with * The Judgment of
Arms ; ' ' Niobe/ which began with ' The Nurses '
and ended with ' The Men of the Train ; ' a trilogy
in honor of Achilles, 'The Tragic Iliad,' composed
of ' The Myrmidons,' ' The Nereids/ and ' The Phry-
gians ; ' one in honor of Bacchus, ' The Lycurgia/
composed of ' The Edons/ ' The Bassarides/ and
' The Young Men/
These fourteen trilogies alone give a total of
fifty-six plays, if we consider that nearly all were
tetralogies ; that is to say, quadruple dramas,
and ended with a satyric after-piece. Thus ' The
Oresteia ' had as a satyric after-piece, ' Proteus ; '
and ' The Seven Chiefs against Thebes ' had ' The
Sphinx/
Add to these fifty-six pieces a probable trilogy
of ' The Labdacides ; ' add the tragedies of ' The
Egyptians/ * The Ransom of Hector/ ' Memnon/
undoubtedly connected with such trilogies ; add
all the satyric plays, ' Sisyphus the Deserter/
'The Heralds/ 'The Lion/ 'The Argians/ 'Amym-
one/ ' Circe/ ' Cercyon/ ' Glaucus the Mariner/
— comedies in which was found the mirth of that
wild genius.
That is what we have lost
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 145
Evergetes and Omar have robbed us of all
this.
It is difficult to fix precisely the total number
of pieces written by yEschylus. The statements
vary. The anonymous biographer speaks of
seventy-five, Suidas of ninety, Jean Deslyons of
ninety-seven, Meursius of a hundred. Meursius
enumerates more than a hundred titles; but some
probably do double service.
Jean Deslyons, doctor of the Sorbonne, lecturer
on divinity at Senlis, author of the ' Discours
ecclesiastique contre le paganisme du Roi boit,'1
published in the seventeenth century a work against
laying coffins one above another in cemeteries, in
which he took for his authority the twenty-fifth
canon of the Council of Auxerre : " Non licet
mortuum super mortuum mitti." Deslyons, in a
note added to that work, — which is now very
rare, and of which we believe Charles Nodier
possessed a copy, — quotes a passage from the
great antiquarian numismatist of Venloo, Hubert
Goltzius, in which, in reference to embalming,
Goltzius mentions * The Egyptians * of ^Eschylus,
and ' The Apotheosis of Orpheus,' — a title omitted
in the enumeration given by Meursius, Goltzius
adds that * The Apotheosis of Orpheus ' was recited
at the mysteries of the Lycomides.2
This title, 'The Apotheosis of Orpheus,' sets
one to thinking. yEschylus speaking of Orpheus,
the Titan measuring the hundred-handed, the god
1 ' Ecclesiastical Discourse against the Paganism of the King
drinks.* (?)
2 Sit in original.
10
146 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
interpreting the god, — what could be nobler,
and how one would long to read that work !
Dante speaking of Virgil and calling him his
master, does not fill up this gap, because Virgil,
a noble poet, but without invention, is less than
Dante ; it is between equals, from genius to genius,
from sovereign to sovereign, that such homage is
splendid. ^Eschylus raises to Orpheus a temple
of which he might occupy the altar himself: this
is grand !
CHAPTER VII.
AESCHYLUS is disproportionate. There is in him
something of India. The wild majesty of his
stature recalls those vast poems of the Ganges
which stride through Art with the steps of a mam-
moth, and which have, among the Iliads and the
Odysseys, the appearance of hippopotami among
lions. ^Eschylus, a thorough Greek, is yet some-
thing more than a Greek ; he has the Oriental
incommensurableness.
Salmasius declares that he is full of Hebraisms
and Syrianisms : " Hebraifsmis et Syrianismis."
/Eschylus makes the Winds bear Jupiter's throne,
as the Bible makes the Cherubim bear Jehovah's
throne, as the Rig- Veda makes the Marouts bear
the throne of Indra. The Winds, the Cherubim, and
the Marouts are the same beings, the Breathings.
For the rest, Salmasius is right. Plays upon words
so frequent in the Phoenician language, abound in
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 147
^Eschylus. He plays, for instance, in reference
to Jupiter and Europa, on the Phoenician word
ilpha, which has the double meaning of " ship" and
" bull." He loves that language of Tyre and Sidon,
and at times he borrows from it the strange gleams
of his style; the metaphor, "Xerxes with the
dragon eyes," seems an inspiration from the
Ninevite dialect, in which the word draka meant
at the same time " dragon " and " clear-sighted."
He has Phoenician heresies : his heifer, lo, is
rather the cow, Isis; he believes, like the priests
of Sidon, that the temple of Delphi was built by
Apollo with a paste made of wax and bees'-wings.
In his exile in Sicily he goes often to drink reli-
giously at the fountain of Arethusa; and never do
the shepherds who watch him hear him mention
Arethusa otherwise than by this mysterious name,
Alphaga, — an Assyrian word signifying " spring
surrounded with willows."
^Eschylus is, in the whole Hellenic literature,
the sole example of the Athenian mind with a
mixture of Egypt and Asia. These depths were
repugnant to the Greek intelligence. Corinth,
Epidaurus, QEdepsus, Gythium, Chaeroneia, which
was to be the birthplace of Plutarch, Thebes, where
Pindar's house was, Mantineia, where the glory of
Epaminondas shone, — all these golden towns repu-
diated the Unknown, a glimpse of which was seen
like a cloud behind the Caucasus. It seemed as
though the sun was Greek. The sun, used to the
Parthenon, was not made to enter the diluvian
forests of Grand Tartary, under the thick mould
of gigantic endogens, under the lofty ferns of
148 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
five hundred cubits, where swarmed all the first
dreadful models of Nature, and under whose
shadows existed unknown, shapeless cities, such
as that fabled Anarodgurro, the existence of which
was denied until it sent an embassy to Claudius.
Gagasmira, Sambulaca, Maliarpha, Barygaza, Ca-
veripatnam, Sochoth-Benoth, Tiglath-Pileser, Tana-
Serim, all these almost hideous names affrighted
Greece when they came to be reported by the
adventurers on their return, first by those with
Jason, then by those of Alexander. ^Eschylus
had no such horror. He loved the Caucasus. It
was there he had made the acquaintance of Pro-
metheus. One almost feels in reading ^Eschylus
that he had haunted the vast primitive thickets
now become coal-measures, and that he had
taken huge strides over the roots, snake-like and
half-living, of the ancient vegetable monsters,
^schylus is a kind of behemoth among the great
intelligences.
Let us say, however, that the affinity of Greece
with the East — an affinity hated by the Greeks
— was real. The letters of the Greek alphabet are
nothing but the letters of the Phoenician alphabet
reversed. ^Eschylus was all the more Greek from
the fact of his being something of a Phoenician.
This powerful mind, at times apparently shape-
less, on account of its very greatness, has the
Titanic gayety and affability. He indulges in
quibbles on the names of Prometheus, Polynices,
Helen, Apollo, Ilion, on the cock and the sun,
— imitating, in this respect, Homer, who made
about the olive that famous pun which caused
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 149
Diogenes to throw away his plate of olives and
eat a tart.
The father of ^Eschylus, Euphorion, was a disci-
ple of Pythagoras. The soul of Pythagoras, that
philosopher half magian and half Brahmin, seemed
to have entered through Euphorion into ^Eschylus.
We have already said that in the dark and myste-
rious quarrel between the celestial and the terres-
trial gods, the intestine war of paganism, ^Eschylus
was terrestrial. He belonged to the faction of the
gods of earth. The Cyclops having worked for
Jupiter, he rejected them, as we should reject a
corporation of workmen who had betrayed us, and
he preferred to them the Cabiri. He adored Ceres.
" O thou, Ceres, nurse of my soul ! " and Ceres
is Demeter, — that is, Ge-meter, the mother-earth.
Hence his veneration for Asia. It seemed then as
though the Earth was rather in Asia than elsewhere.
Asia is in reality, compared with Europe, a kind
of block almost without capes and gulfs, and little
penetrated by the sea. The Minerva of ^Eschylus
says "Asia the Great." " The sacred soil of Asia,"
says the chorus of the Oceanides. In his epitaph,
graven on his tomb at Gela and written by himself,
yEschylus attests " the long-haired Mede." 1 He
makes the chorus celebrate " Susicanes and Pega-
stagon, born in Egypt, and the chief of Memphis
the sacred city." Like the Phoenicians, he gives
the name " Oncea" to Minerva. In ' The JEtna '
1 The epitaph is translated by John Stuart Blackie as follows :
" Here ^Eschylus lies, from his Athenian home
Remote, 'neath Gela's wheat-producing loam ;
How brave in battle was Euphorion' s son,
The long-haired Mede can tell who fell at Marathon." — TR
150 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
he celebrates the Sicilian Dioscuri, the Palici, those
twin gods whose worship, connected with the local
worship of Vulcan, had reached Asia through Sa-
repta and Tyre. He calls them "the venerable
Palici." Three of his trilogies are entitled 'The
Persians,' ' The Ethiopid/ ' The Egyptians.' In
the geography of ^Eschylus, Egypt, as well as
Arabia, was in Asia. Prometheus says, " the flower
of Arabia, the hero of Caucasus." ^Eschylus was
in geography a notable specialist. He had a Gor-
gonian city, Cysthenes, which he placed in Asia,
as well as a River Pluto, rolling sands of gold, and
defended by men with a single eye, — the Arimas-
pians. The pirates to whom he makes allusion
somewhere are, according to all appearance, the
pirates of Angria,1 who inhabited the rock Vizin-
druk. He could see distinctly beyond the Pas-du-
Nil, in the mountains of Byblos, the source of the
Nile, still unknown to-day. He knew the precise
spot where Prometheus had stolen the fire, and he
designated without hesitation Mount Mosychlus, in
the neighborhood of Lemnos.
When this geography ceases to be fanciful, it is
exact as an itinerary. It becomes true, and remains
incommensurable. There is nothing more real
than that splendid transmission, in one night, of the
news of the capture of Troy, by bonfires lighted
one after the other, and answering from mountain
to mountain, — from Mount Ida to the promontory
of Hermes, from the promontory of Hermes to
Mount Athos, from Mount Athos to Mount Ma-
cispe, from Macispe to Messapius, from Mount
1 The original reads : " les pirates angrias." — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. \ 5 I
Messapius over the River Asopus to Mount Cythe-
ron, from Mount Cytheron over the morass of
Gorgopis to Mount Egiplanctus, from Mount Egi-
planctus to Cape Saronica (later Spireum), from
Cape Saronica to Mount Arachne, from Mount
Arachne to Argos. You may follow on the map
that train of fire announcing Agamemnon to
Clytemnestra.
This bewildering geography is mingled with an
extraordinary tragedy, in which you hear dia-
logues more than human : Prometheus. — " Alas ! "
Mercury. — " This is a word that Jupiter speaks
not." And again, where the Ocean plays the part
of a Geronte : 4< To appear mad," says the Ocean
to Prometheus, " is the secret of the sage," — a
saying as deep as the sea. Who knows the mental
reservations of the tempest? And the Power ex-
claims: "There is but one free god, — Jupiter."
^Eschylus has his own geography; he has also
his fauna.
This fauna, which strikes us as fabulous, is enig-
matical rather than chimerical. The author of
these lines has discovered and identified, in a glass
case of the Japanese Museum at the Hague, the
impossible serpent of ' The Oresteia,' having two
heads at its two extremities. There are, it may be
added, in the same case several specimens of a
monstrosity which would seem to be of another
world, and is, at all events, strange and unex-
plained,— as, for our part, we are little disposed
to admit the odd hypothesis of Japanese manufac-
turers of monsters.
^Eschylus at times sees Nature with simplifica-
I 5 2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
tions stamped with a mysterious disdain. Here
the Pythagorean disappears, and the magian shows
himself. All beasts are the beast, ^schylus seems
to see in the animal kingdom only a dog. The
griffin is a "dumb dog; " the eagle is a "winged
dog," — " the winged dog of Jupiter," says Pro-
metheus.
We have just used the word " magian." In fact,
this poet, like Job, performs at times the functions
of a priest. One would say that he exercises over
Nature, over human creatures, and even over gods,
a kind of magianism. He upbraids animals for
their voracity. A vulture which seizes a doe-hare
with young, in spite of its running, and feeds on it,
" eats a whole race stopped in its flight." He ad-
dresses the dust and the smoke : the first he calls
" thirsty sister of mire ; " the other, " black sister
of fire." He insults the dreaded bay of Salmy-
dessus, " stepmother of ships." He reduces to
dwarfish proportions the Greeks who took Troy by
treachery : he exhibits them whelped by a machine
of war ; he calls them " these foal of a horse." As
for the gods, he goes so far as to incorporate
Apollo with Jupiter. He finely calls Apollo " the
conscience of Jupiter."
His bold familiarity is absolute, — a mark of sove-
reignty. He makes the sacrificer take Iphigenia
"as a she-goat." A queen who is a faithful spouse
is for him "the good house-bitch." As for Orestes,
he has seen him when a babe, and he speaks of
him as " wetting his swaddling-clothes " (humec-
tatio ex urina). He goes even beyond this Latin.
The expression, which we do not repeat here, is
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 153
to be found in ' The Litigants.' l If you are bent
upon reading the word which we hesitate to write,
apply to Racine.
The whole is vast and mournful. The profound
despair of fate is in ^Eschylus. He portrays in
terrible lines " the impotence which chains down,
as in a dream, the blind living creatures." His
tragedy is nothing but the old Orphic dithyramb
suddenly bursting into tears and lamentations over
man.
CHAPTER VIII.
ARISTOPHANES loved ^schylus by that law of
affinity which causes Marivaux to love Racine.
Tragedy and comedy are made to understand
one another.
The same distracted and all-powerful breath fills
^Eschylus and Aristophanes. They are the two
inspired wearers of the antique mask.
Aristophanes, who is not yet finally judged, ad-
hered to the Mysteries, to Cecropian poetry, to
Eleusis, to Dodona, to the Asiatic twilight, to the
profound pensive dream. This dream, whence
sprang the art of ^Egina, was at the threshold of
the Ionian philosophy in Thales as well as at the
threshold of the Italic philosophy in Pythagoras.
It was the sphinx guarding the entrance.
This sphinx was a muse, — the great pontifical
and wanton muse of universal procreation ; and Ari-
1 ' Les Plaideurs,' act iii. scene iii.
154 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
stophanes loved it. This sphinx breathed trage-
dy into yEschylus, and comedy into Aristophanes.
It contained something of Cybele. The antique
sacred immodesty is found in Aristophanes. At
times he shows Bacchus foaming at the lips. He
comes from the Dionysia, or from the Ascolia,1 or
from the great trieterical Orgy, and he strikes one
as a raving maniac of the Mysteries. His stag-
gering verse recalls the Bacchant hopping giddily
upon air-bladders. Aristophanes has the sacerdo-
tal obscenity. He is for nudity against love. He
denounces the Phaedras and the Sthenobaeas, and
he creates " Lysistrata."
Let no one fail to note that this was religion,
and that a cynic was an austere mind. The
Gymnosophists formed the point of intersection
between lewdness and thought. The he-goat,
with its philosopher's beard, belonged to that sect.
That dark, ecstatic, and bestial Oriental spirit lives
still in the santon, the dervish, and the fakir.
Aristophanes, like Diogenes, belonged to that
family. ^Eschylus was related to it by his Oriental
temperament, but he retained the tragic chastity.
This mysterious naturalism was the antique Ge-
nius of Greece. It was called poetry and philo-
sophy. It had under it the group of the seven
sages, one of whom, Periander, was a tyrant. Now,
a certain vulgar spirit of moderation appeared
with Socrates; it was sagacity clarifying wis-
dom. Thales and Pythagoras reduced to im-
mediate truth: such was the operation, — a sort
1 "Aschosie" in the original. The translator supposes the
" Ascoliasmus " or " Ascolia " to be intended. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 155
of filtration, which, purifying and weakening,
allowed the ancient divine doctrine to perco-
late, drop by drop, and become human. These
simplifications disgust fanaticism; dogmas object
to a process of sifting. To ameliorate a religion
is to lay violent hands on it. Progress, offering its
services to Faith, offends it. Faith is an ignorance
which professes to know, and which in certain
cases does, perhaps, know more than Science. In
the face of the lofty affirmations of believers, So*
crates had an uncomfortable, sly half-smile. There
is in Socrates something of Voltaire. Socrates de-
nounces all the Eleusinian philosophy as unintelli-
gible and inconceivable ; and he said to Euripides,
that to understand Heraclitus and the old philoso-
phers/'one would have to be a swimmer of Delos,"
-that is, a swimmer capable of landing on an
island which recedes before him. That was im-
piety and sacrilege toward the ancient Hellenic
naturalism. One need seek no other cause for the
antipathy of Aristophanes for Socrates.
This antipathy was hideous: the poet has the
bearing of a persecutor; he lends assistance to the
oppressors against the oppressed, and his comedy
is guilty of crimes. Aristophanes — fearful pun-
ishment ! — has remained in the eyes of posterity
in the predicament of an evil genius. But there is
for him one extenuating circumstance, — he was an
ardent admirer of the poet of Prometheus, and to
admire him was to defend him. Aristophanes did
what he could to prevent his banishment; and if
anything can diminish one's indignation in reading
' The Clouds/ with its rabid satire of Socrates, it
156 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
is to see in the background the hand of Aristo-
phanes detaining by the mantle the departing
^Eschylus. -^Eschylus has likewise a comedy, — a
sister of the broad farce of Aristophanes. We
have spoken of his mirth : it goes very far in ' The
Argians.' It equals Aristophanes, and outstrips
the Shrove Tuesday of our Carnival. Listen : " He
throws at my head a chamber utensil. The full
vase falls on my head, and is broken, odoriferous,
but not precisely like an urn of perfume." Who
says that? ^Eschylus. And in his turn Shake-
speare will come and exclaim through Falstaff's
lips: " Empty the jorden." What can you say?
You have to deal with savages.
One of these savages is Moliere ; witness, from
one end to the other, ' Le Malade Imaginaire '
(' The Imaginary Invalid '). Racine also is, to
some extent, one of them ; see ' Les Plaideurs '
(' The Litigants '), already mentioned.
The Abbe Camus was a witty bishop, — a rare
thing at all times; and, what is more, he was a
good man. He would have deserved this re-
proach of another bishop, our contemporary, of
being " good to the point of silliness." Perhaps
he was good because he was clever. He gave to
the poor all the revenue of his bishopric of Belley.
He objected to canonization. It was he who said,
"There's no chase but with old dogs, and no shrine
but for old saints ; " l and although he did not
like new-comers in sainthood, he was the friend of
Saint Francois de Sales, by whose advice he wrote
1 This saw involves a quaint pun between chasse (chase) and
ch&sse (shrine). — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 157
romances. He relates in one of his letters that
Francois de Sales had said to him, " The Church
enjoys a laugh."
Art enjoys a laugh. Art, which is a temple, has
its laughter. Whence comes this hilarity? All at
once, in the midst of the stern faces of seri-
ous masterpieces, there bursts forth a buffoon,
— a masterpiece he also. Sancho Panza jostles
Agamemnon. All the marvels of thought are
there ; irony comes to complicate and complete
them. Enigma. Behold Art, great Art, seized
with a fit of gayety. Its problem, matter, amuses
it. It was forming it, now it deforms it. It was
shaping it for beauty, now it delights in extracting
from it ugliness. It seems to forget its responsi-
bility. It does not forget it, however; for sud-
denly, behind the grimace, there shines the
countenance of philosophy, — a smooth-browed
philosophy, less sidereal, more terrestrial, quite
as mysterious, as the gloomy philosophy. The
unknown in man and the unknown in things
confront each other; and in the act of meeting,
these two augurs, Fate and Nature, fail to keep
their faces straight. Poetry burdened with anxie-
ties, befools, — whom? Itself. A mirth, which is
not serenity, gushes out from the incomprehen-
sible. An unknown, austere, and sinister raillery
flashes its lightning through the human darkness.
The shadows piled around us play with our soul.
Formidable blossoming of the Unknown : the jest
issuing from the abyss.
This alarming mirth in Art is called, in antiquity,
Aristophanes ; and in modern times, Rabelais.
158 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
When Pratinas the Dorian had invented the
play with satyrs, — comedy making its appear-
ance face to face with tragedy, mirth by the side
of mourning, the two styles ready, perhaps, to
unite, — it was a matter of scandal. Agathon,
the friend of Euripides, went to Dodona to con-
sult Loxias. Loxias is Apollo. Loxias means
" crooked," and Apollo was called "The Crooked,"
because his oracles were always indirect, and full
of meanders and coils. Agathon inquired of
Apollo whether the new style was not impious,
and whether comedy existed by right as well
as tragedy. Loxias answered : " Poetry has two
ears."
This answer, which Aristotle declares obscure,
seems to us very clear. It sums up the entire law
of Art. The poet finds himself, in fact, confronted
by two problems. The first open to the sunlight :
the noisy, tumultuous, stormy, clamorous problem,
— problem of the crowded thoroughfare, of all the
paths open to the multitudinous tread of human
feet; problem of disputing tongues, of feuds, of
the passions with their " Wherefore? " problem
of evil, which is the beginning of sorrow, for to
be evil is worse than to do it; problem of pain,
dolor, tears, cries, groans. The other, the mute
problem of the shadow, the vast silence, of un-
speakable and dread significance. And poetry
has two ears : the one listens to the living, the
other to the dead.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 159
CHAPTER IX.
THE power that Greece had to throw out light
is marvellous, even now that we have the example
of France. Greece did not colonize without civi-
lizing, — an example that more than one modern
nation might follow ; to buy and sell is not all.
Tyre bought and sold ; Berytus bought and
sold ; Sidon bought and sold ; Sarepta bought and
sold. Where are these cities? Athens taught;
and she is to this hour one of the capitals of
human thought.
The grass is growing on the six steps of the
tribune where spoke Demosthenes ; the Ceramicus
is a ravine half-choked with the marble-dust which
was once the palace of Cecrops; the Odeon of
Herod Atticus, at the foot of the Acropolis, is now
but a ruin on which falls, at certain hours, the im-
perfect shadow of the Parthenon ; the temple of
Theseus belongs to the swallows ; the goats browse
on the Pnyx. Still the Greek spirit lives ; still
Greece is queen; still Greece is goddess. A
counting-house passes away : a school remains.
It is curious to remind one's self to-day that
twenty-two centuries ago, small towns, isolated
and scattered on the outskirts of the known world,
possessed, all of them, theatres. In the interest
of civilization, Greece began always by the con-
struction of an academy, of a portico, or of a
logeum. Whoever could have seen, at almost the
l6o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
same period, rising at a short distance one from
the other, in Umbria, the Gallic town of Sens
(now Sinigaglia), and, near Vesuvius, the Hellenic
city Parthenopea (at present Naples), would have
recognized Gaul by the big stone standing all red
with blood, and Greece by the theatre.
This civilization by Poetry and Art had such a
mighty force that sometimes it subdued even war.
The Sicilians, as Plutarch relates in speaking of
Nicias, gave liberty to the Greek prisoners who
sang the verses of Euripides.
Let us point out some very little known and
very singular facts.
The Messenian colony, Zancle, in Sicily ; the
Corinthian colony, Corcyra, distinct from the
Corcyra of the Absyrtides Islands ; the Cycladian
colony, Cyrene, in Libya; the three Phocaean
colonies, Helea in Lucania, Palania in Corsica,
Marseilles in France, — all had theatres. The
gadfly having pursued lo all along the Adriatic
Gulf, the Ionian Sea reached as far as the harbor
of Venetus, and Tergeste (now Trieste) had a
theatre. A theatre at Salpe, in Apulia ; a theatre
at Squillacium, in Calabria ; a theatre at Thernus,
in Livadia; a theatre at Lysimachia, founded by
Lysimachus, Alexander's lieutenant; a theatre at
Scapta-Hyla, where Thucydides had gold-mines;
a theatre at Byzia, where Theseus had lived ; a
theatre in Chaonia, at Buthrotum, where those
equilibrists from Mount Chimaera performed whom
Apuleius admired on the Poecile ; a theatre in Pan-
nonia, at Buda, where the Metanastes were, — that
is to say, " the Transplanted." Many of these
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. l6l
remote colonies were much exposed. In the Isle
of Sardinia — which the Greeks named Ichnusa, on
account of its resemblance to the sole of the foot
— Calaris (now Cagliari) was in some sort under
the Punic claw ; Cibalis, in Mysia, had to fear the
Triballi; Aspalathon, the Illyrians; Tomis, the
future resting-place of Ovid, the Scordiscae ; Mile-
tus, in Anatolia, the Massagetae ; Denia, in Spain,
the Cantabrians ; Salmydessus, the Molossians ;
Carsina, the Tauro-Scythians ; Gelonus, the Arym-
phaeans of Sarmatia, who lived on acorns ; Apol-
lonia, the Hamaxobians prowling in their chariots ;
Abdera, the birthplace of Democritus, the tattooed
Thracians. All these towns by the side of their
citadel had a theatre. Why? Because the theatre
keeps alive the flame of love for the fatherland.
Having the Barbarians at their gates, it was im-
perative that they should remain Greeks. The
national spirit is the strongest of bulwarks.
The Greek drama was profoundly lyrical. It
was often less a tragedy than a dithyramb. It had
upon occasion strophes as powerful as swords. It
rushed helmeted upon the stage; it was an ode
armed for battle. We know what a Marseillaise
can do.
Many of these theatres were of granite, some of
brick. The theatre of Apollonia was of marble.
The theatre of Salmydessus, which could be
moved to the Doric place or to the Epiphanian
place, was a vast scaffolding rolling on cylinders,
after the fashion of those wooden towers which
are thrust against the stone towers of besieged
towns.
ii
1 62 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
And what poet did they prefer to play at these
theatres? ^Eschylus.
^Eschylus was for Greece the autochthonal poet.
He was more than Greek, he was Pelasgian. He
was born at Eleusis ; and not only was he Eleu-
sinian, but Eleusiac,1 — that is to say, a believer.
It is the same shade as that between " English "
and " Anglican." The Asiatic element, a sublime
distortion of his genius, increased the popular
respect ; for people said that the great Dionysus
— that Bacchus common to Occident and Orient
— came in dreams to dictate to him his tragedies.
You find again here the " familiar spirit " of
Shakespeare.
^Eschylus, Eupatrid and ^Eginetic, struck the
Greeks as more Greek than themselves. In those
times of mingled code and dogma, to be sacer-
dotal was a lofty way of being national. Fifty-two
of his tragedies had been crowned. On leaving
the theatre after the performance of the plays of
^Eschylus, the men would strike the shields hung
at the doors of the temples, crying, " Fatherland,
fatherland ! " Let us add that to be hieratic
did not hinder him from being demotic. ^Eschy-
lus loved the people, and the people adored him.
There are two sides to greatness : majesty is one,
familiarity the other. ^Eschylus was familiar with
the turbulent and generous mob of Athens. He
often gave to that mob the noble part in his plays.
See in ' The Oresteia ' how tenderly the chorus,
which is the people, receives Cassandra! The
11 Victor Hugo's word is " eleusiaque." Neither the word nor the
distinction is to be found in the ordinary books of reference. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 163
Queen maltreats and frightens the slave whom the
chorus tries to reassure and soothe. ^Eschylus
had introduced the people in his grandest works, —
in ' Pentheus,' by the tragedy of ' The Wool-card-
ers ; ' in ' Niobe,' by the tragedy of ' The Nurses ; '
in ' Athamas,' by the tragedy of ' The Net-draw-
ers ; ' in ' Iphigenia,' by the tragedy of ' The Bed-
makers.' It was on the side of the people that he
turned the balance in the mysterious drama, ' The
Weighing of Souls.' : Therefore had he been
chosen to preserve the sacred fire.
In all the Greek colonies they played ' The
Oresteia ' and ' The Persians.' ^schylus being
present, the fatherland was no longer absent.
These almost religious representations were or-
dered by the magistrates. It was as if to the
gigantic ^Eschylean theatre the task had been in-
trusted of watching over the infancy of the colo-
nies. It threw around them the Greek spirit, it
protected them from the influence of bad neigh-
bors and from all temptations of being led astray.
It preserved them from contact with Barbarism, it
maintained them within the Hellenic circle. It
was there as a warning. All those young offspring
of Greece were, so to speak, placed under the care
of ^Eschylus.
In India they often give the children into the
charge of elephants. These mountains of good-
ness watch over the little ones. The whole group
of flaxen heads sing, laugh, and play under the
shade of the trees. The dwelling is at some dis-
tance. The mother is not with them, she is at
1 The Psychostasia.
1 64 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
home ; busy with her domestic cares, she gives no
heed to her children. Yet, merry as they are, they
are in danger. These beautiful trees are treach-
erous; they hide beneath their thickets thorns,
claws, and teeth. There the cactus bristles, the
lynx roams, the viper crawls. The children must
not wander away; beyond a certain limit they
would be lost. Nevertheless, they run about, call
to each other, pull and entice one another away,
some of them just beginning to stammer, and quite
unsteady on their feet. At times one of them
ventures too far. Then a formidable trunk is
stretched out, seizes the little one, and gently leads
him home.
CHAPTER X.
SOME copies, more or less complete, of ^Eschy-
lus were at one time in existence.
Besides the copies in the colonies, which were
limited to a small number of pieces, it is certain
that partial copies of the original at Athens were
made by the Alexandrian critics and scholiasts,
who have left us some fragments ; among others,
the comic fragment of ' The Argians,' the Bacchic
fragment of 'The Edons,' the lines cited by Sto-
bseus, and even the probably apocryphal verses
given by Justin the Martyr.
These copies, buried, but perhaps not destroyed,
have buoyed up the persistent hope of searchers,
- — notably of Le Clerc, who published in Holland,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 165
in 1709, the discovered fragments of Menander.
Pierre Pelhestre of Rouen, the man who had read
everything (for which the worthy Archbishop Pere-
fixe scolded him), affirmed that the greater part
of the poems of yEschylus would be found in the
libraries of the monasteries of Mount Athos, just
as the five books of ' The Annals ' of Tacitus had
been discovered in the convent of Corwey in Ger-
many, and ' The Institutes ' of Quintilian in an
old tower of the abbey of St. Gall.
A tradition, not undisputed, would have it that
Evergetes II. returned to Athens, not the original
draft of ^Eschylus, but a copy, leaving the fifteen
talents as compensation.
Independently of the story about Evergetes and
Omar which we have related, and which, while
true in substance, is perhaps legendary in more
than one particular, the loss of so many fine works
of antiquity is but too well explained by the small
number of copies. Egypt, in particular, tran-
scribed everything on papyrus. Papyrus," being
very dear, became very rare. People were re-
duced to the necessity of writing on pottery. To
break a vase was to destroy a book. About the
time when Jesus Christ was painted on the walls
at Rome with ass's hoofs and this inscription,
" The God of the Christians, hoof of an ass "
(namely, in the third century), to make ten man-
uscripts of Tacitus yearly, — or, as we should say
to-day, to strike off ten copies of his works, — a
Caesar must needs call himself Tacitus, and believe
Tacitus to have been his uncle. And yet Tacitus
is nearly lost. Of the twenty-eight years of his
1 66 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
' History of the Caesars/ extending from tjie year
69 to the year 96, we have but one complete year,
69, and a fragment of the year 70. Evergetes
prohibited the exportation of papyrus, which pro-
hibition caused parchment to be invented. The
price of papyrus was so high that Firmius the
Cyclops, manufacturer of papyrus about the year
270, made by his trade enough money to raise
armies, wage war against Aurelian, and declare
himself emperor.
Gutenberg is a redeemer. These submersions
of the works of the mind, inevitable before the
invention of printing, are now impossible. Printing
is the discovery of the inexhaustible; it is per-
petual motion found in social science. From time
to time a despot seeks to stop or to slacken it, and
he is worn away by the friction. Thought no more
to be shackled, progress no more to be impeded,
the book imperishable, — such is the result of
printing. Before printing, civilization was subject
to losses of substance. The indications essential
to progress, derived from such a philosopher or
such a poet, were all at once missing. A page
was suddenly torn from the human book. To
disinherit humanity of all the great bequests of
genius, the stupidity of a copyist or the caprice of
a tyrant sufficed. No such danger exists in the
present day. Henceforth the undistrainable reigns.
No one could serve a writ upon thought and take
up its body. The manuscript was the body of
the masterpiece; the manuscript was perishable,
and carried off the soul, — the work. The work,
made a printed sheet, is delivered. It is now only
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1 6?
a soul. Kill now this immortal ! Thanks to
Gutenberg, the copy is no longer exhaustible.
Every copy is a germ, and has in itself its own
possible regeneration in thousands of editions ; the
unit is pregnant with the innumerable. This
miracle has rescued universal intelligence. Guten-
berg in the fifteenth century emerges from the
awful obscurity, bringing out of the darkness that
ransomed captive, the human mind. Gutenberg
is forever the auxiliary of life; he is the per-
manent fellow-workman in the great task of
civilization. Nothing is done without him. He
has marked the transition from man enslaved to
man free. Try to deprive civilization of him, and
you have Egypt. The simple diminution of the
freedom of the press is enough to diminish the
stature of a people.
One of the great features in this deliverance of
man by printing is — let us insist on it — the in-
definite preservation of poets and philosophers.
Gutenberg is a second father of the creations of
the mind. Before him — yes, it was possible for
a masterpiece to die.
A mournful thing to say, — Greece and Rome
have left vast ruins of books. A whole facade of
the human mind half crumbled : such is antiquity.
Here the ruin of an epic, there a tragedy dis-
mantled ; great verses effaced, buried, and dis-
figured, pediments of ideas almost entirely fallen,
geniuses truncated like columns, palaces of thought
without ceiling and door, bleached bones of poems,
a death's-head which was once a strophe, immor-
tality in rubbish ! These things inspire bodeful
1 68 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
dreams. Oblivion, a black spider, hangs its web
between the drama of ./Eschylus and the history
of Tacitus.
Where is ^Eschylus? In scraps everywhere.
^Eschylus is scattered about in twenty texts. His
ruins must be sought in innumerable places. Athe-
naeus gives the dedication ' To Time/ Macrobius
the fragment of '^Etna' and the homage to the
Palici, Pausanias the epitaph; the biographer is
anonymous ; Goltzius and Meursius give the titles
of the lost pieces.
We know from Cicero, in the ' Disputationes
Tusculanae/ that ^Eschylus was a Pythagorean;
from Herodotus that he fought bravely at Mara-
thon ; from Diodorus of Sicily that his brother
Amynias behaved valiantly at Plataea ; from Justin
that his brother Cynegyrus was heroic at Salamis.
We know by the didascalies that * The Persians '
was represented under the archon Meno, ' The
Seven Chiefs against Thebes ' under the archon
Theagenides, and ' The Oresteia ' under the archon
Philocles ; we know from Aristotle that yEschylus
was the first to venture to make two personages
speak at once on the stage ; from Plato that the
slaves were present at his plays ; from Horace that
he invented the mask and the buskin ; from Pollux
that pregnant women miscarried at the appearance
of his Furies ; from Philostratus that he abridged
the monodies ; from Suidas that his theatre fell in
under the weight of the crowd ; from ^Elian that
he committed blasphemy; from Plutarch that he
was exiled ; from Valerius Maximus that an eagle
killed him by letting a tortoise fall on his head ;
WILLIAM ShAKESPEARE. 169
from Quintilian that his plays were recast; from
Fabricius that his sons are accused of this crime
of leze-paternity ; from the Arundel marbles the
date of his birth, the date of his death, and his age,
— sixty-nine years.
Now, take away from the drama the Orient and
replace it by the North, take away Greece and put
in England, take away India and put in Germany
(that other immense mother, Alemannia, All-men),
take away Pericles and put in Elizabeth, take away
the Parthenon and put in the Tower of London, take
away the //<?&$• and put in the mob, take away fatal-
ity and put in melancholy, take away the Gorgon
and put in the witch, take away the eagle and put
in the cloud, take away the sun and light the wind-
swept heath with a ghastly moonrise, — and you
have Shakespeare.
Given the dynasty of men of genius, the origi-
nality of each being absolutely reserved, the poet
of the Carlovingian formation being the natural
successor of the poet of the Jupiterian formation,
the Gothic mist succeeding the antique mystery, —
and Shakespeare is yEschylus II.
There remains the right of the French Revolu-
tion, creator of the third world, to be represented
in Art. Art is an immense gaping chasm, ready
to receive all that is within possibility.
BOOK V.
SOULS.
CHAPTER I.
THE production of souls is the secret of the un-
fathomable depth. The innate, what a shadow !
What is that concentration of the unknown which
takes place in the darkness ; and whence abruptly
breaks the light of genius? What is the law of
such advents, O Love? The human heart does its
work on earth, and by that the great deep is moved.
What is that incomprehensible meeting of material
sublimation and moral sublimation in the atom, in-
divisible from the point of view of life, incorruptible
from the point of view of death ? The atom, — what
a marvel! No dimension, no extent, nor height,
nor breadth, nor thickness, independent of every
possible measurement ; and yet, everything in this
nothing ! For algebra a geometrical point, for phi-
losophy a soul. As a geometrical point, the basis
of science : as a soul, the basis of faith. Such is
the atom. Two urns, the sexes, imbibe life from
the infinite, and the spilling of one into the other
produces the being. This is the norm for all, for
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. I /I
the animal as well as for man. But the man more
than man, whence comes he?
The supreme intelligence, which here below is
the great man, what is the power which evokes it,
incarnates it, and reduces it to a human state?
What part do flesh and blood take in this miracle?
Why do certain terrestrial sparks seek certain ce-
lestial molecules? Where do they plunge, those
sparks? Whither do they go? How do they pro-
ceed? What is this faculty of man to set fire to
the unknown? This mine, the infinite, this product,
a genius, — what more formidable? Whence does
it issue? Why, at a given moment, this one, and
not that one ! Here, as everywhere, the incalcula-
ble law of affinities appears but to escape our ken.
One gets a glimpse, but sees not. O forgeman
of the gulf! where art thou?
Qualities the most diverse, the most complex,
the most opposed in appearance, enter into the
composition of souls. Contraries are not mutually
exclusive ; far from that, they complete each other.
Such a prophet contains a scholiast ; such a magian
is a philologian. Inspiration knows its own trade.
Every poet is a critic : witness the excellent piece
of theatrical criticism that Shakespeare puts into
the mouth of Hamlet. A visionary mind may also
be precise, like Dante, who writes a book on rhet-
oric, and a grammar. A precise mind may be
also visionary, like Newton, who comments on the
Apocalypse ; like Leibnitz, who demonstrates, nova
inventa logica, the Holy Trinity. Dante knows the
distinctions between the three sorts of words, parola
piana, parola sdrucciola, parola tronca ; he knows
172 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
that the piana gives a trochee, the sdrucciola a dac-
tyl, and the tronca an iamb. Newton is perfectly
sure that the Pope is the Antichrist. Dante com-
bines and calculates ; Newton dreams.
There is no tangible law in this obscurity. No
system is possible. The currents of adhesion and
of cohesion cross each other at random. At times
one imagines that one detects the phenomenon of
the transmission of the idea ; one seems distinctly
to see a hand taking the torch from him who is
departing, and passing it on to him who arrives.
1642, for example, is a strange year. Galileo dies,
Newton is born in that year. Very good, it is a
clew; but try to tie it, it breaks at once. Here is
a disappearance: on the 23d of April, 1616, on
the same day, almost at the same minute, Shake-
speare and Cervantes die. Why are these two
flames extinguished at the same moment? No
apparent logic. A whirlwind in the night.
Questions unanswered at every turn : why does
Commodus issue from Marcus Aurelius?
These problems beset in the desert Jerome, that
man of the caves, that Isaiah of the New Testament.
He interrupted his preoccupation with eternity and
his attention to the trumpet of the archangel, in
order to meditate on the soul of some Pagan in
whom he felt interested ; he calculated the age of
Persius, connecting that research with some ob-
scure chance of possible salvation for that poet,
dear to the Cenobite on account of his austerity.
And nothing is so surprising as to see this wild
thinker, half naked on his straw like Job, dispute
on this question, apparently so frivolous, of the
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 173
birth of a man, with Rufinus and Theophilus of
Alexandria, — Rufinus observing to him that he is
mistaken in his calculations, and that Persius hav-
ing been born in December, under the consulship
of Publius Marius and Asinius Gallus, these periods
do not correspond rigorously with the year II. of
the two hundred and third olympiad and the year
II. of the two hundred and tenth, the dates fixed
by Jerome. It is thus that the mystery invites
contemplation.
These calculations, almost wild, of Jerome or
others like him, are made by more than one
dreamer. Never to find a stop, to pass from
one spiral to another like Archimedes, and from
one zone to another like Alighieri, to fall fluttering
down the circular shaft, — this is the eternal lot of
the dreamer. He strikes against the hard wall on
which the pale ray glides. Sometimes certainty
comes to him as an obstacle, and sometimes clear-
ness as a fear. He keeps on his way. He is the
bird beneath the vault. It is frightful; but no
matter, the dreamer goes on.
To muse is to think here and there, passim.
What means the birth of Euripides during the
battle of Salamis, where Sophocles, a youth, prays,
and where ^Eschylus, a mature man, fights? What
means the birth of Alexander the night which saw
the burning of the temple of Ephesus? What tie
exists between that temple and that man? Is it
the conquering and radiant spirit of Europe, which,
perishing in the form of the masterwork, reappears
in the form of the hero? For it must not be for-
gotten that Ctesiphon is the Greek architect of the
174 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
temple of Ephesus. We mentioned just now the
simultaneous disappearance of Shakespeare and
Cervantes. Here is another case not less sur-
prising. The day Diogenes dies at Corinth, Alex-
ander dies at Babylon. These two cynics — the
one of the tub, the other of the sword — depart
together; and Diogenes, eager to bathe in the
radiance of the vast unknown, will again say to
Alexander, " Stand out of my sunlight."
What is the meaning of certain harmonies in the
myths represented by divine men? What is that
analogy between Hercules and Jesus which struck
the Fathers of the Church, which shocked Sorel
but edified Duperron, and which makes Alcides a
kind of material mirror of Christ? Was there not
a community of soul and an unconscious commu-
nication between the Greek legislator and the He-
brew legislator, who (neither of them knowing the
other, or even suspecting his existence) created at
the same moment, the first the Areopagus, the
second the Sanhedrim? Strange resemblance be-
tween the jubilee of Moses and the jubilee of
Lycurgus ! What are these double paternities,
— paternity of the body, paternity of the soul, like
that of David for Solomon? Giddy heights, steeps,
precipices.
He who looks too long into this sacred horror
feels immensity unsettling his brain. What does
the sounding-line give you when thrown into that
mystery? What do you see? Conjectures waver,
doctrines shudder, hypotheses float; all human
philosophy shivers in the mournful blast rising
from that chasm.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 175
The expanse of the possible is in some sort under
your eyes. The dream that you have within your-
self, you discover beyond yourself. All is indis-
tinct. Confused white shadows are moving. Are
they souls? In the deeps of space there are pass-
ings of vague archangels: will they one day be
men? Grasping your head between your hands,
you strive to see and to know. You are at the
window opening into the unknown. On all sides
the deep layers of effects and causes, heaped one
behind the other, wrap you with mist. The man
who meditates not, lives in blindness ; the man who
meditates, lives in darkness. The choice between
darkness and darkness, — that is all we have. In
that darkness, which thus far is nearly all our sci-
ence, experience gropes, observation lies in wait,
supposition wanders about. If you gaze into it
very often, you become the vates. Protracted re-
ligious meditation takes possession of you.
Every man has within him his Patmos. He is
free to go, or not to go, out upon that frightful
promontory of thought from which one perceives
the shadow. If he goes not, he remains in the
common life, with the common conscience, with
the common virtue, with the common faith, or
with the common doubt; and it is well. For
inward peace it is evidently the best. If he goes
out upon those heights, he is taken captive. The
profound waves of the marvellous have appeared
to him. No one views with impunity that ocean.
Henceforth he will be the thinker, dilated, en-
larged, but floating; that is to say, the dreamer.
He will partake of the poet and of the prophet.
i;6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Henceforth a certain portion of him belongs to the
shadow. An element of the boundless enters into
his life, into his conscience, into his virtue, into
his philosophy. Having a different measure from
other men, he becomes extraordinary in their eyes.
He has duties which they have not. He lives in
a sort of diffused prayer, and, strange indeed, at-
taches himself to an indeterminate certainty which
he calls God. He distinguishes in that twilight
enough of the anterior life and enough of the
ulterior life to seize these two ends of the dark
thread, and with them to bind his soul to life.
Who has drunk will drink, who has dreamed will
dream. He will not give up that alluring abyss,
that sounding of the fathomless, that indifference
for the world and for this life, that entrance into
the forbidden, that effort to handle the impalpable
and to see the invisible : he returns to it, he leans
and bends over it, he takes one step forward, then
two; and thus it is that one penetrates into the
impenetrable, and thus it is that one finds the
boundless release of infinite meditation.
He who descends there is a Kant ; he who falls
there is a Swedenborg.
To preserve the freedom of the will in that
expansion, is to be great. But, however great
one may be, the problems cannot be solved. One
may ply the fathomless with questions: nothing
more. As for the answers, they are there, but
veiled by the shadow. The colossal lineaments of
truth seem at times to appear for a moment ; then
they fade away, and are lost in the absolute. Of
all these questions, that among them all which
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
besets the intellect, that among them all which
weighs upon the heart, is the question of the soul.
Does the soul exist? — question the first. The
persistence of self is the longing of man. -With-
out the persistent self, all creation is for him but
an immense cui bono? Listen, therefore, to the
tremendous affirmation which bursts forth from all
consciences. The whole sum of God that there is
on the earth, within all men, concentrates itself
in a single cry to affirm the soul. And then, —
question the second: Are there great souls?
It seems impossible to doubt it. Why not great
minds in humanity, as well as great trees in the
forest, as well as great peaks at the horizon? We
behold great souls as we behold great mountains :
hence they exist. But here the interrogation presses,
it becomes anxious : whence come they? What are
they ? Who are they ? Are these atoms more divine
than others? This atom, for instance, which shall
be endowed with irradiation here below, this one
which shall be Thales, this one ^Eschylus, this one
Plato, this one Ezekiel, this one Maccabaeus, this
one Apollonius of Tyana, this one Tertullian,
this one Epictetus, this one Marcus Aurelius, this
one Nestorius, this one Pelagius, this one Gama,
this one Copernicus, this one John Huss, this one
Descartes, this one Vincent de Paul, this one Pira-
nesi, this one Washington, this one Beethoven, this
one Garibaldi, this one John Brown, — all these
atoms, souls having a sublime function among
men, have they seen other worlds, and do they
bring to earth the essence of those worlds? The
master-souls, the guiding intelligences, — who sends
12
i;8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
them? who determines their advent? who is judge
of the actual want of humanity? who chooses the
souls? who musters the atoms? who ordains the
depastures? who premeditates the arrivals? Does
the link-atom, the atom universal, the atom binder
of worlds, exist? Is not that the great soul?
To complete one universe by the other ; to pour
upon the insufficiency of the one the excess of the
other; to increase here liberty, there science, there
the ideal ; to communicate to inferiors patterns of
superior beauty ; to effect an exchange of effluences ;
to bring the central fire to the planet ; to harmonize
the various worlds of the same system ; to urge for-
ward those which lag behind ; to mingle the crea-
tions,— does not that mysterious function exist?
Is it not unwittingly fulfilled by certain chosen
spirits who, during the moments of their earthly
pilgrimage, are in part unknown to themselves?
Is it not the function of such or such an atom, a
divine motive power called soul, to bring a solar
man to go and come among terrestrial men?
Since the floral atom exists, why should not the
stellar atom exist? That solar man will be, in
turn, the savant, the seer, the calculator, the thau-
maturgus, the navigator, the architect, the magian,
the legislator, the philosopher, the prophet, the
hero, the poet. The life of humanity will move
onward through them. The transport of civiliza-
tion will be their task ; these spirit-teams will
draw the huge chariot. One being unyoked, an-
other will start again. Each turn of a century will
be a stage, and there will never be a break in the
'connection. That which one mind begins, another
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 179
mind will finish, chaining phenomenon to phe-
nomenon, sometimes without suspecting the links.
To each revolution in fact will correspond an ade-
quate revolution in idea, and reciprocally. The
horizon will not be allowed to extend to the right
without stretching as much to the left. Men the
most diverse, the most opposite even, will find un-
expected points of contact, and in these alliances
the imperious logic of progress will be made plain.
Orpheus, Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Pythago-
ras, Moses, Manu, Mahomet, with many more, will
be links of the same chain. A Gutenberg dis-
covering a method for the sowing of civilization
and a means for the ubiquity of thought, will be
followed by a Christopher Columbus discovering a
new field. A Christopher Columbus discovering
a new world will be followed by a Luther discover-
ing a new liberty. After Luther, innovator in dog-
ma, will come Shakespeare, innovator in art. One
genius completes another.
But not in the same region. The astronomer
supplements the philosopher; the legislator is the
executor of the poet's wishes ; the fighting libera-
tor lends his aid to the thinking liberator; the
poet corroborates the statesman. Newton is the
appendix to Bacon ; Danton originates in Diderot;
Milton confirms Cromwell; Byron supports Boz-
zaris ; ^Eschylus, before him, -has assisted Miltia-
des. The work is mysterious even for the men
who perform it. Some are conscious of it, others
are not. At great distances, at intervals of centu-
ries, the correlations manifest themselves, wonder-
ful ; the softening of human manners begun by
180 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
the religious revealer, will be completed by the
philosophical reasoner, so that Voltaire continues
Jesus. Their work harmonizes and coincides. If
this concordance depended upon them, both would
resist, perhaps : the one, the divine man, indignant
in his martyrdom ; the other, the human man, hu-
miliated in his irony. But the fact remains. Some
power that is very high ordains it thus.
Yes, let us meditate upon these vast obscurities.
Revery fixes its gaze upon the shadow until there
issues from it light.
Properly speaking, civilization is humanity de-
veloping itself from within outward. Human
intelligence radiates, and, little by little, wins, sub-
dues, and humanizes matter. Sublime domestica-
tion ! This labor has phases, and each of these
phases, marking an age in progress, is opened
or closed by one of those beings called " men of
genius." These missionary spirits, these legates of
God, do they not carry in them a sort of partial
solution of the question, so abstruse, of free-will ?
The apostolate, being an act of will, is related on
one side to liberty; and on the other, being a
mission, is related by predestination to fatality.
The voluntary necessity. Such is the Messiah;
such is genius.
Now let us return — for all questions which per-
tain to mystery form the circle from which one
cannot escape — let us return to our starting-point
and to our first question: What is a genius? Is
it not perchance a cosmic soul, — a soul penetrated
by a ray from the unknown? In what deeps are
such souls prepared? What stages do they pass
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. l8l
through? What medium do they traverse? What
is the germination which precedes the hatching?
What is the antenatal mystery? Where was this
atom? It seems to be the point of intersection
of all the forces. How come all the powers to
converge and tie themselves into an invisible unity
in this sovereign intelligence? Who has brooded
upon this eagle? The incubation of genius by
the abysmal deep : what a riddle ! These lofty
souls, momentarily belonging to earth, have they
not seen something else? Is it for that reason
that they come to us with so many intuitions ?
Some of them seem full of the dream of a pre-
vious world. Is it thence that comes to them the
terror that they sometimes feel? Is it this which
inspires them with perplexing words? Is it this
which fills them with strange agitations? Is it
this which possesses them until they seem to see
and touch imaginary things and beings? Moses
had his burning bush; Socrates his familiar de-
mon ; Mahomet his dove ; Luther his goblin play-
ing with his pen, and to whom he would say, " Be
still, there ! " Pascal his open precipice, which he
hid with a screen.
Many of these majestic souls are evidently con-
scious of a mission. They act at times as if they
knew. They seem to have a confused certainty.
They have it. They have it for the mysterious
ensemble ; they have it also for the detail. John
Huss dying predicts Luther. He exclaims : " You
burn the goose (Huss), but the swan will come."
Who sends these souls? Who fills them with
life? What is the law of their formation anterior and
1 82 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
superior to life? Who provides them with force,
patience, fruitfulness, will, wrath? From what urn
of goodness have they drawn their austerity? In
what regions of the lightnings have they gathered
love ? Each of these great new-born souls renews
philosophy, or art, or science, or poetry, and re-
creates these worlds in its own image. They are
as if impregnated with creative power. At times
there emanates from these souls a truth which
lights up the questions on which it falls : such a
soul is like a star from which light should gutter.
From what wonderful source, then, do they pro-
ceed, that they are all different? No one springs
from the other, and yet they have this in common,
— that they all bring in the infinite. Incommen-
surable and insoluble question ! That does not
hinder worthy pedants and knowing people from
bridling up and saying, as they point to the
heights of civilization where shines the starry
group of men of genius : " You shall see no more
men like those. They cannot be matched. There
are no more of them. We declare to you that
the earth has exhausted its contingent of master-
spirits. Now for decadence and general closing
up. We must make up our minds to it. We shall
have no more men of genius." Ah ! you have
seen the bottom of the unfathomable, you !
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 183
CHAPTER II.
No, Thou art not worn out ! Thou hast not
before thee the bourn, the limit, the term, the
frontier. Thou hast nothing to bound Thee, as
winter bounds summer, as lassitude the birds, as
the precipice the torrent, as the cliff the ocean,
as the tomb man. Thou art without end. " Hither-
to shalt thou come, but no farther," is spoken by
Thee, and it is not spoken of Thee. No, Thou
windest not a diminishing skein of brittle thread.
No, Thou stoppest not short. No, Thy quantity
decreaseth not ; Thy breadth is not becoming
narrowness ; Thy faculty miscarrieth not. No, it is
not true that they begin to perceive in Thy om-
nipotence that transparence which announces the
end, and to get a glimpse of something else beyond
Thee. Something beyond! And what then? —
an obstacle: obstacle to whom? An obstacle to
creation ! an obstacle to the immanent ! an ob-
stacle to the necessary ! What a dream !
Men say, " This is as far as God advances. Ask
no more of Him. He starts from here and stops
there. In Homer, in Aristotle, in Newton, He has
given you all that He had. Leave Him at rest
now ; His strength is drained. God does not begin
again. He could do that once, He cannot do it
twice. He has quite spent Himself upon this man ;
enough of God does not remain to make a similar
man." At hearing such things, wert Thou a man
1 84 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
like them, Thou wouldst smile in Thy dreadful
deep ; but Thou art not in a dreadful deep, and,
being goodness, Thou hast no smile. The smile
is but a passing wrinkle, unknown to the absolute.
Thou stricken by a chill ! Thou cease ! Thou
suffer impediment ! Thou to cry " Halt ! " Never.
Shouldst Thou be compelled to take breath after
having created a man? No; whoever that man
may be, Thou art God. If this pale throng of
living beings, in presence of the unknown, must
feel wonder and dismay at something, it is not at
beholding the generative principle dry up, and
creative power grow sterile; it is, O God, at the
eternal unleashing of miracles. The hurricane of
miracles blows perpetually. Day and night the
phenomena surge around us on all sides, and (what
is not least marvellous) without disturbing the
majestic tranquillity of the Creation. This tumult
is harmony.
The huge concentric waves of universal life are
shoreless. The starry sky that we study is but a
partial appearance. We grasp but a few meshes
of the vast network of existence. The complica-
tion of the phenomenon, of which a glimpse can
be caught beyond our senses only by contempla-
tion and ecstasy, makes the mind giddy. The
thinker who reaches so far is to other men only
a visionary. The necessary interlacement of the
perceptible with the non-perceptible strikes the
philosopher with stupor. This plenitude is re-
quired by Thy omnipotence, which admits no gap.
The interpenetration of universe with universe
makes part of Thy infinitude. Here we extend
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1 8 5
the word " universe " to an order of facts that no
astronomer can reach. In the Cosmos, invisible to
fleshly eye, but revealed to vision, sphere blends
with sphere without change of form, the creations
being of diverse density ; so that, to all appearance,
with our world is inexplicably merged another,
invisible to us as we to it.
And Thou, centre and base of things, Thou, the
" I Am," exhausted ! Can the absolute serenities
be distressed, from time to time, by want of power
on the part of the Infinite? Shall we believe that
an hour may come when Thou canst no longer
furnish the light of which humanity has need;
that, mechanically unwearied, Thou mayst grow
faint in the intellectual and moral order, so that
men may say, " God is extinct upon that side"?
No! No! No! O Father!
Phidias created does not hinder Thee from mak-
ing Michael Angelo. Michael Angelo formed,
there still remains to Thee the material for Rem-
brandt. A Dante does not fatigue Thee. Thou
art no more exhausted by a Homer than by a star.
Auroras by the side of auroras, the indefinite re-
newal of meteors, worlds above worlds, the porten-
tous passage of those flaming stars called comets,
men of genius, Orpheus, then Moses, then Isaiah,
then ^Eschylus, then Lucretius, then Tacitus, then
Juvenal, then Cervantes and Rabelais, then Shake-
speare, then Moliere, then Voltaire, those who have
been and those to come, — all that does not weary
Thee. Chaos of constellations ! there is room in
Thy immensity.
PART II.
PART SECOND.
BOOK I.
SHAKESPEARE. — HIS GENIUS.
CHAPTER I.
" QHAKESPEARE," says Forbes, "had neither
O the tragic talent nor the comic talent. His
tragedy is artificial, and his comedy is but instinc-
tive." Dr. Johnson confirms the verdict. " His
tragedy is the product of industry, and his comedy
the product of instinct." After Forbes and John-
son have contested his claim to dramatic talent,
Greene contests his claim to originality. Shake-
speare is " a plagiarist;" Shakespeare is "a copy-
ist; " Shakespeare "has invented nothing; " he is
" a crow adorned with the plumes of others ; " he
pilfers from ^Eschylus, Boccaccio, Bandello, Hol-
linshed, Belleforest, Benoist de St. Maur; he pil-
fers from Layamon, Robert of Gloucester, Robert
of Wace, Peter of Langtoft, Robert Manning, John
de Mandeville, Sackville, Spenser; he pilfers from
the ' Arcadia ' of Sidney ; he pilfers from the
anonymous work called ' The True Chronicle of
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
King Leir ; ' he pilfers from Rowley, in * The
Troublesome Reign of King John' (1591), the
character of the bastard Faulconridge. Shake-
speare plunders Robert Greene ; Shakespeare plun-
ders Dekker and Chettle. Hamlet is not his;
Othello is not his. As for Green, Shakespeare
is for him not only "a bumbaster of blank verses,"
a " Shake-scene," a Joh&nnts factotum (allusion to
his former position as call-boy and supernumer-
ary) ; Shakespeare is a wild beast. Crow no
longer suffices; Shakespeare is promoted to a
tiger. Here is the text : " Tyger's heart wrapt in
a player's hide" ('A Groats-worth of Wit,' I592).1
Thomas Rymer thus judges ' Othello : ' " The
moral of this story is certainly very instructive;
it is a warning to good housewives to look after
their linen." Then the same Rymer condescends
to give up joking, and to take Shakespeare in
earnest: "What edifying and useful impression
can the audience receive from such poetry? To
1 It may be well to transcribe the familiar passage referred to,
noting that Hugo here distinguishes between Robert Greene, the
dramatist (whom he re-christens Thomas), and an imaginary critic,
"Green." In the 'Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million
of Repentaunce,' written by the unhappy Greene upon his death-bed,
he warns his fellow playwrights of certain " puppits that speak
from our mouths, those anticks garnished in our colours." " Yes,
trust them not ; for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our
feathers, that with his Tygers heart "wrapt in a players hide, sup-
poses he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best
of you ; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum* is in his owne
conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie." Greene's reference
to the line of ' Henry VI.' Part III., " O tiger's heart, wrapped in
a woman's hide ! " is of extreme interest, says Halliwell-Phillipps,
as including the earliest record of words composed by the great
dramatist. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 19 1
what can this poetry serve, unless it is to mislead
our good sense, to throw our thoughts into dis-
order, to trouble our brain, to pervert pur instincts,
to crack our imaginations, to corrupt our taste,
and to fill our heads with vanity, confusion, clatter,
and nonsense?" This was printed some four-
score years after the death of Shakespeare, in 1693.
All the critics and all the connoisseurs were of one
opinion.
Here are some of the reproaches unanimously
addressed to Shakespeare: Conceits, word-play,
puns. Improbability, extravagance, absurdity.
Obscenity. Puerility. Bombast, emphasis, exag-
geration. False glitter, pathos. Far-fetched ideas,
affected style. Abuse of contrast and metaphor.
Subtilty. Immorality. Writing for the mob.
Pandering to the rabble. Delighting in the horrible.
Want of grace. Want of charm. Overreaching
his aim. Having too much wit. Having no wit
Overdoing his work.
" This Shakespeare is a rude and savage mind,"
says Lord Shaftesbury. Dryden adds, " Shake-
speare is unintelligible." Mrs. Lennox applies the
ferule to Shakespeare as follows : " This poet
alters historical truth." A German critic of 1680,
Bentheim, feels himself disarmed, because, says
he, " Shakespeare is a mind full of drollery." Ben
Jonson, Shakespeare's prottgt, relates (ix. 175,
Gifford's edition) : " I recollect that the players of-
ten mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare that,
in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never
blotted out a line ; I answered, ' Would to God he
had blotted out a thousand ! ' " This wish, more-
192 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
over, was granted by the worthy publishers of
1623, Blount and Jaggard. They struck out of
' Hamlet ' alone, two hunjdred lines ; they cut out
two hundred and twenty lines of ' King Lear/1
Garrick played at Drury Lane only the ' King
Lear ' of Nahum Tate.2 Listen again to Rymer :
" * Othello' is a sanguinary farce without wit."
Dr. Johnson adds : " 'Julius Caesar,' a cold tragedy,
and lacking the power to move the public." " I
think," says Warburton, in a letter to the Dean of
St. Asaph, " that Swift has much more wit than
Shakespeare, and that the comic in Shakespeare,
altogether low as it is, is very inferior to the comic
in Shadwell." As for the witches in ' Macbeth/
" nothing equals," says that critic of the seven-
teenth century, Forbes, repeated by a critic of the
nineteenth, " the absurdity of such a spectacle."
Samuel Foote, the author of ' The Young Hypo-
crite/ makes this declaration: "The comic in
Shakespeare is too heavy, and does not make one
laugh; it is buffoonery without wit" Finally,
Pope, in 1725, finds a reason why Shakespeare
wrote his dramas, and exclaims, " One must eat ! "
After these words of Pope, one cannot under-
stand with what object Voltaire, aghast about
1 This statement is very wild. Readers unversed in literary
history should consult Dowden, or Halliwell-Phillipps, or Mrs.
Caroline H. Ball's popularization of the latter, entitled, ' What we
really know about Shakespeare.' — TR.
2 Furness says that Tate's version of ' Lear ' held the stage for
a hundred and sixty years, and in it all the greatest actors won
applause. Macready ('Reminiscences') says it "was the only
acting copy from the date of its production until the restoration of
Shakespeare's tragedy at Covent Garden in 1838." — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1 93
Shakespeare, writes : " Shakespeare, whom the
English take for a Sophocles, flourished about the
time of Lopez \_Lope, if you please, Voltaire] de
Vega." Voltaire adds: "You are not ignorant that
in * Hamlet ' the diggers prepare a grave, drinking,
singing ballads, and cracking over the heads of
dead people jokes appropriate to men of their pro-
fession." And, concluding, he characterizes the
whole scene by the term " these fooleries." He
characterizes Shakespeare's pieces as " monstrous
farces called tragedies," and completes the judg-
ment by declaring that Shakespeare " has ruined
the English theatre."
Marmontel comes to see Voltaire at Ferney.
Voltaire is in bed, holding a book in his hand ;
all at once he rises up, throws the book away,
stretches his thin legs out of the bed, and cries to
Marmontel : " Your Shakespeare is a Huron In-
dian." " He is not my Shakespeare at all," replies
Marmontel.
Shakespeare was an occasion for Voltaire to
show his skill at the target. Voltaire missed it
rarely. Voltaire shot at Shakespeare as peasants
shoot at a goose. It was Voltaire who had opened
in France the fire against this Barbarian. He nick-
named him the " Saint Christopher of Tragic Poets."
He said to Madame de Graffigny: "Shakespeare
for a jest." He said to Cardinal de Bernis, " Com-
pose pretty verses ; deliver us, monsignor, from
plagues, from bigots, from the Academy of the
King of Prussia, from the Bull Unigenitus and its
supporters, from the convulsionists, and from that
ninny Shakespeare. Libera nos, Domine" The
13
194 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
attitude of Freron toward Voltaire has in the eyes
of posterity as an extenuating circumstance the
attitude of Voltaire toward Shakespeare. Never-
theless, throughout the eighteenth century Voltaire
gives the law. The moment that Voltaire sneers at
Shakespeare, Englishmen of wit, such as my Lord
Marshal, follow suit. Dr. Johnson admits " the ig-
norance and vulgarity " of Shakespeare. Frederick
II. also puts in a word. He writes to Voltaire in
respect of Julius Caesar: " You have done well in
recasting, according to principles, the formless
piece of that Englishman." Thus stood Shake-
speare in the last century. Voltaire insults him ;
La Harpe protects him : " Shakespeare himself,
coarse as he was, was not without reading and
knowledge." l
In our days, the class of critics of whom we
have just seen some samples have not lost courage.
Coleridge speaks of ' Measure for Measure : ' " a
painful comedy," he hints. " Revolting," says Mr.
Knight. " Disgusting," responds Mr. Hunter.2
In 1804 the author of one of those idiotic Uni-
versal Biographies, — in which they contrive to
relate the history of Calas without mentioning
the name of Voltaire, and to which governments,
knowing what they are about, grant readily their
patronage and subsidies, — a certain Delandine,
feels himself called upon to be a judge, and to
1 La Harpe, ' Introduction to the Course in Literature.'
2 Victor Hugo could hardly have betrayed with more charming
simplicity his unique and delightful ignorance of English litera-
ture than by thus confusing with Shakespeare's revilers such
devout worshippers as Coleridge and Knight. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 195
pass sentence on Shakespeare ; and after having
said that " Shakespeare, which is pronounced
Chekspir," had, in his youth, " stolen the deer
of a nobleman," he adds : " Nature had brought
together in the head of this poet the highest great-
ness we can imagine, with the lowest coarseness,
without wit." Lately we read the following words,
written a short time ago by an eminent dolt who
is still living : " Second-rate authors and inferior
poets, such as Shakespeare," etc.
CHAPTER II.
THE poet is necessarily at once poet, historian,
and philosopher. Herodotus and Thales are in-
cluded in Homer. Shakespeare, likewise, is this
triple man. He is besides, a painter, a painter
upon a colossal scale. The poet in reality does
more than relate, he exhibits. Poets have in them
a reflector, observation, and a condenser, emotion ;
thence those grand, luminous spectres which issue
from their brain, and which go on shining forever
against the murky human wall. These phantoms
have life. To have an existence as real as that of
Achilles would be the ambition of Alexander.
Shakespeare has tragedy, comedy, fairy scenes,
hymn, farce, deep divine laughter, terror and
horror, — in one word, the drama. He touches
the two poles : he belongs to Olympus and to the
itinerant show. No possibility escapes him. When
196 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
he grasps you, you are subdued. Do not expect
pity from him. His cruelty is pathetic. He shows
you a mother, Constance, the mother of Arthur;
and when he has brought you to such a point of
tenderness that your heart is as her heart, he kills
the child. He goes farther in horror even than his-
tory, — a difficult feat : he does not content him-
self with killing Rutland and driving York to
despair ; he dips in the blood of the son the hand-
kerchief with which he wipes the father's eyes.
He causes Elegy to be choked by the Drama, Des-
demona by Othello. No respite to anguish : genius
is inexorable. It has its law, and follows it. The
mind also has its inclined planes, and these slopes
determine its direction. Shakespeare flows toward
the terrible. Shakespeare, ^Eschylus, Dante, are
great streams of human emotion pouring from the
depth of their cavern the urn of tears.
The poet is only limited by his aim ; he con-
siders nothing but the idea to be worked out; he
recognizes no sovereignty, no necessity, save the
idea : for since Art emanates from the Absolute,
in Art, as in the Absolute, the end justifies the
means. This is, it may be said in passing, one of
those deviations from the ordinary terrestrial law
which make the higher criticism muse and reflect,
and which reveal to it the mysterious side of Art.
In Art, above all, is visible the quid divinum. The
poet moves in his work as Providence in its own.
He excites, dismays, strikes ; then exalts or de-
presses, often in inverse ratio to your expectation,
ploughing into your very soul through surprise.
Now, consider. Art, like the Infinite, has a Because
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 197
superior to all the Whys. Go and ask of the
Ocean, that great lyric poet, the wherefore of a
tempest. What seems to you odious or absurd
has an inner reason for existing. Ask of Job why
he scrapes the pus from his ulcer with a potsherd,
and of Dante why he sews with a thread of iron
the eyelids of the ghosts in Purgatory, making the
stitches trickle with frightful tears?1 Job upon
his dungheap continues to clean his sore with his
potsherd, and Dante goes on his way. It is the
same with Shakespeare.
His sovereign horrors reign and force themselves
upon you. He mingles with them, when he
chooses, the charm, the august charm, of the
strong, excelling the feeble sweetness, the slender
attraction, of Ovid or of Tibullus, as the Venus of
Milo excels the Venus of Medici. The things of
the unknown; the metaphysical problems which
recede beneath the diving plummet ; the enigmas
of the soul and of Nature, which is also a soul ; the
far-off intuitions of the eventual included in des-
tiny; the amalgams of thought and event, — can be
translated into delicate traceries, filling poetry with
mysterious and exquisite types, the more lovely
that they are somewhat sorrowful, half clinging
to the invisible, and at the same time very real,
absorbed by the shadow behind them, and yet
endeavoring to give you pleasure. Profound
grace does exist.
1 " And as the sun does not reach the blind, so the spirits of
which I was just speaking have not the gift of light. An iron
wire pierces and fastens together their eyelids, as it is done to the
wild hawk in order to tame it." — Purgatory, canto xiii.
198 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Prettiness combined with greatness is possible;
it is found in Homer, — Astyanax is a type of
it ; but the profound grace of which we speak is
something more than this epic delicacy. It is
complicated with a certain agitation, and hints the
infinite. It is a kind of irradiance of blended light
and shade. Modern genius alone has that smiling
profundity which discloses the abyss while veiling
it with beauty.
Shakespeare possesses this grace, — the very
contrary of morbid grace, although resembling it,
emanating, as it also does, from the tomb. Sorrow,
the deep sorrow of the drama, which is but the
human social atmosphere transferred to Art, en-
velops this grace and this horror.
At the centre of his work is Hamlet, — doubt;
and at the two extremities, love, — Romeo and
Othello, the whole heart. There is light in the
folds of Juliet's shroud, but only blackness in the
winding-sheet of Ophelia disdained and of Desde-
mona suspected. These two innocents, to whom
love has broken faith, cannot be consoled. Desde-
mona sings the song of the willow, under which the
water sweeps away Ophelia. They are sisters
without knowing each other, and kindred souls,
although each has her separate drama. The willow
trembles over them both. In the mysterious song
of the calumniated woman who is about to die,
floats the dishevelled shadow of the drowned
Ophelia.
Shakespeare in philosophy goes at times deeper
than Homer. Beyond Priam there is Lear; to
weep at ingratitude is worse than to weep at death.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 199
Homer meets envy and strikes it with the sceptre ;
Shakespeare gives the sceptre to the envious, and
out of Thersites creates Richard III. Envy is
exposed in its nakedness all the more strongly for
being clothed in purple; its reason for existing
is then visibly altogether in itself: envy on the
throne, — what more striking?
Deformity in the person of the tyrant is not
enough for this philosopher; he must have it also
in the shape of the valet, and he creates Falstaff.
The dynasty of common-sense, inaugurated in
Panurge, continued in Sancho Panza, goes wrong
and miscarries in Falstaff. The rock which this
wisdom splits upon is, in reality, baseness. Sancho
Panza, in combination with the ass, is one with
ignorance; Falstaff — glutton, poltroon, savage,
obscene, a human face and belly with the lower
parts of the brute — walks on the four hoofs of
turpitude ; Falstaff is the centaur man and pig.
Shakespeare is, above all, imagination. Now —
and this is a truth to which we have already
alluded, and which is well known to thinkers —
imagination is depth. No faculty of the mind
penetrates and plunges deeper than imagination;
it is the great diver. Science, reaching the lowest
depths, meets imagination. In conic sections, in
logarithms, in the differential and integral calculus,
in the calculations of sonorous waves, in the ap-
plication of algebra to geometry, the imagination
is the coefficient of calculation, and mathematics
becomes poetry. I have no faith in the science
of stupid men of learning.
The poet philosophizes because he imagines.
200 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
That is why Shakespeare has that sovereign man-
agement of reality which enables him to have his
way with it. And his very whims are varieties
of the true, — varieties which deserve meditation.
Does not destiny resemble a constant whim ?
Nothing more incoherent in appearance, nothing
less connected, nothing worse as deduction. Why
crown this monster, John? Why kill that child,
Arthur? Why have Joan of Arc burned? Why
Monk triumphant? Why Louis XV. happy? Why
Louis XVI. punished? Let the logic of God pass.
It is from that logic that the fancy of the poet is
drawn. Comedy bursts forth in the midst of tears ;
the sob rises out of laughter; figures mingle and
clash ; massive forms, as of beasts, pass clumsily ;
spectres — women, perhaps, perhaps smoke — float
about; souls, dragon-flies of the shadow, flies of
the twilight, flutter among all those black reeds
that we call passions and events. At one pole
Lady Macbeth, at the other Titania: a colossal
thought, and an immense caprice.
What are ' The Tempest/ 'Troilus and Cressida,'
'The Two Gentlemen of Verona/ 'The Merry
Wives of Windsor/ * The Midsummer Night's
Dream/ ' The Winter's Tale ' ? They are fancy,
arabesque work. The arabesque in Art is the same
phenomenon as vegetation in Nature. The ara-
besque sprouts, grows, knots, exfoliates, multiplies,
becomes green, blooms, and entwines itself with
every dream. The arabesque is incommensurable ;
it has a strange power of extension and enlarge-
ment; it fills horizons, and opens up others; it
intercepts the luminous background by innumer-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 2OI
able interlacements ; and if you mingle the human
face with these entangled branches, the whole
thrills you and makes you giddy. Behind the
arabesque, and through its openings, all philosophy
can be seen ; vegetation lives ; man becomes pan-
theistic ; an infinite combination takes form in the
finite ; and before such work, in which are blended
the impossible and the true, the human soul
quivers with an emotion obscure, and yet supreme.
For all this, the edifice ought not to be overrun
by vegetation, nor the drama by arabesque.
One of the characteristics of genius is the sin-
gular union of faculties the most distant. To
design an astragal like Ariosto, then to scrutinize
the soul like Pascal, — such are -the poet's gifts.
Man's inner tribunal belongs to Shakespeare, and
he finds you constant surprises there. He extracts
from human consciousness whatever it contains of
the unforeseen. Few poets surpass him in this
psychical research. Many of the strangest pecu-
liarities of the human mind are indicated by him.
He skilfully makes us feel the simplicity of the
metaphysical fact under the complication of the
dramatic fact. That which the human creature
does not acknowledge to himself, the obscure thing
that he begins by fearing and ends by desiring, —
such is the point of junction and the strange place
of meeting for the heart of the virgin and the heart
of the murderer, for the soul of Juliet and the
soul of Macbeth ; the innocent girl fears and longs
for love, just as the wicked man for ambition. Peri-
lous kisses given furtively to the phantom, now
smiling, and anon austere.
2O2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
To all this prodigality — analysis, synthesis, cre-
ation in flesh and bone, revery, fancy, science,
metaphysics — add history: here the history of
historians, there the history of the tale. This
history contains specimens of everything: of the
traitor, from Macbeth, the assassin of his guest, up
to Coriolanus, the assassin of his country ; of the
despot, from the tyrant brain, Caesar, to the tyrant
belly, Henry VIII. ; of the carnivore, from the
lion down to the usurer. One may say to Shy-
lock, " Well bitten, Jew ! " And in the back-
ground of this wonderful drama, on the desert
heath, there appear in the twilight three black
shapes promising crowns to murderers, — sil-
houettes in which Hesiod, through the vista of
ages, perhaps recognizes the Parcae. Inordinate
force, exquisite charm, epic ferocity, pity, creative
faculty, gayety (that lofty gayety unintelligible to
narrow understandings), sarcasm (the cutting lash
for the wicked), sidereal grandeur, microscopic
tenuity, a universe of poetry, with its zenith and
its nadir, the vast whole, the profound detail, —
nothing is wanting in this mind. One feels, on
approaching the work of this man, a vast wind
blowing off the shores of a world. The irradiation
of genius on every side, — such is Shakespeare.
" Totus in antithesi," says Jonathan Forbes.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 203
CHAPTER III.
ONE of the characteristics which distinguish men
of genius from ordinary minds, is that they have a
double reflection, — just as the carbuncle, according
to Jerome Cardan, differs from crystal and glass in
having a double refraction.
Genius and carbuncle, double reflection, double
refraction : the same phenomenon in the moral and
in the physical order.
Does this diamond of diamonds, the carbuncle,
exist? It is a question. Alchemy says yes ; chem-
istry searches. As for genius, it does exist. It is
sufficient to read one verse of yEschylus or Juvenal
in order to find this carbuncle of the human brain.
This phenomenon of double reflection raises to
the highest power in men of genius what rheto-
ricians call " antithesis ; " that is to say, the sove-
reign faculty of seeing the two sides of things.
I dislike Ovid, — that proscribed coward, that
licker of bloody hands, that fawning cur of exile,
that far-away flatterer disdained by the tyrant, —
and I hate the literary elegance of which Ovid is
full ; but I do not confound that elegance with the
powerful antithesis of Shakespeare.
Complete minds have everything. Shakespeare
contains Gongora, as Michael Angelo contains Ber-
nini; and there are on that subject ready-made
sentences : " Michael Angelo is a mannerist, Shake-
speare is antithetical." These are the formulas of
204 WILLIAM SHAKESPEAKE.
the school which express the petty view of the
great question of contrast in Art.
Totus in antithesi. Shakespeare is all in an-
tithesis. Certainly it is not very just to see the
entire man, and such a man, in one of his qualities.
But, with this reservation, let us observe that this
saying, totus in antithesi, which pretends to be a
criticism, might be simply a statement of fact.
Shakespeare, in fact, has deserved, like all truly
great poets, this praise, — that he is like creation.
What is creation? Good and evil, joy and sorrow,
man and woman, roar and song, eagle and vulture,
lightning and ray, bee and drone, mountain and
valley, love and hate, the medal and its reverse,
beauty and ugliness, star and swine, high and low.
Nature is the eternal bifrons. And this antithesis,
whence comes the antiphrasis, is found in all the
habits of man ; it is in fable, in history, in philoso-
phy, in language. Are you the Furies, they call
you Eumenides, the Charming; do you kill your
brother, you are called Philadelphus; kill your
father, they will call you Philopator; be a great
general, they will call you the little corporal. The
antithesis of Shakespeare is the universal antithesis,
present always and everywhere ; it is the ubiquity
of opposites, — life and death, cold and heat, just
and unjust, angel and demon, heaven and earth,
flower and lightning, melody and harmony, spirit
and flesh, high and low, ocean and envy, foam and
slaver, hurricane and whistle, self and not-self,
objective and subjective, marvel and miracle, type
and monster, soul and shadow. It is from this
sombre, flagrant quarrel, from this endless ebb and
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 2O$
flow, from this perpetual yes and no, from this
irreconcilable opposition, from this vast, perma-
nent antagonism, that Rembrandt obtains his clare-
obscure, and Piranesi his vertiginous effects.
Before removing this antithesis from Art, we
should begin by removing it from Nature.
CHAPTER IV.
" HE is reserved and discreet. You may trust
him; he will take no advantage. He has, above
all, a very rare quality, — he is sober."
What is this — a recommendation for a domestic?
No. It is a eulogy upon a writer. A certain
school, called " serious," has in our days hoisted
this motto for poetry: sobriety. It seems that
the only question should be to preserve litera-
ture from indigestion. Formerly the device was
''fecundity and power; " to-day it is "barley-gruel."
You are in the resplendent garden of the Muses,
where those divine blossoms of the mind that the
Greeks call " tropes " blow in riot and luxuriance
on every branch ; everywhere the ideal image,
everywhere the thought-flower, everywhere fruits,
metaphors, golden apples, perfumes, colors, rays,
strophes, wonders : touch nothing, be discreet.
It is by plucking nothing there that the poet is
known. Be of the temperance society. A good
critical book is a treatise on the dangers of drink-
ing. Do you wish to compose the Iliad, put your-
206 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
self on diet. Ah ! them mayest well open wide
thine eyes, old Rabelais !
Lyricism is heady ; the beautiful intoxicates, the
noble inebriates, the ideal causes giddiness. One
who makes it his starting-point no longer knows
what he is about. When you have walked among
the stars, you are capable of refusing an under-
prefecture ; you are no longer in your right mind ;
they might offer you a seat in the senate of Do-
mitian, and you would refuse it; you no longer
render to Caesar what is due to Caesar ; you have
reached such a point of mental alienation that you
will not even salute the Lord Incitatus, consul and
horse. See what is the result of your having been
drinking in that shocking place, the Empyrean!
You become proud, ambitious, disinterested. Now
be sober. It is forbidden to haunt the tavern of
the sublime.
Liberty means libertinism. To restrain yourself
is well ; to emasculate yourself is better.
Pass your life in holding in.
Sobriety, decorum, respect for authority, irre-
proachable toilet. No poetry unless it is fashion-
ably dressed. An uncombed savannah, a lion which
does not pare its nails, an unregulated torrent, the
navel of the sea which exposes itself to the sight,
the cloud which forgets itself so far as to show
Aldebaran — Oh ! shocking. The wave foams on
the rock, the cataract vomits into the gulf, Juvenal
spits on the tyrant. Fie !
We like too little better than too much. No
exaggeration. Henceforth the rose-bush is to be
required to count its roses ; the meadow to be
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 2O?
requested not to be so prodigal of daisies ; the
spring to be commanded to calm itself. The nests
are rather too prolific. Attention, groves ! not so
many warblers, if you please. The Milky Way
will have the goodness to number its stars; there
are a good many.
Take example from the big Cereus serpentaria
of the Jardin des Plantes, which blooms but once
in fifty years : that is a flower truly respectable.
A true critic of the sober school is that garden-
keeper who, to the question, " Have you any night-
ingales in your trees?" replied, "Ah ! don't mention
it; during the whole month of May these ugly
fowls have been doing nothing but bawl."
M. Suard gave to Marie Joseph Chenier this
certificate: " His style has the great merit of not
containing comparisons." In our days we have
seen that singular eulogium reproduced. This
reminds us that a great professor of the Restora-
tion, indignant at the comparisons and figures
which abound in the prophets, put a crusher on
Isaiah, Daniel, and Jeremiah, with this profound
apothegm : " The whole Bible is in like" An-
other, a greater professor still, was the author of
this saying, still celebrated at the ficole Normale :
" I toss Juvenal back upon the romantic dunghill."
Of what crime was Juvenal guilty? Of the same
crime as Isaiah ; namely, of being fond of express-
ing the idea by image. Shall we return, little by
little, in the walks of learning, to metonymy as a
term of chemistry, and to the opinion of Pradon
touching metaphor?
One would suppose, from the demands and
208 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
clamors of the doctrinaire school, that it had to
furnish, at its own expense, the whole supply of
the metaphors and figures that poets may use, and
that it felt itself ruined by spendthrifts like Pin-
dar, Aristophanes, Ezekiel, Plautus, and Cervantes.
This school puts under lock and key passions,
sentiments, the human heart, reality, the ideal, life.
It looks with dismay upon men of genius, hides
from them everything, and says, " How greedy
they are ! " It has, accordingly, invented for wri-
ters this superlative praise: "He is temperate."
On all these points, vestry-room criticism frater-
nizes with doctrinaire criticism. The prude and
the devotee are cheek-by-jowl.
A curious bashful fashion tends to prevail. We
blush at the coarse manner in which grenadiers
meet death. Rhetoric has for heroes modest vine-
leaves termed " periphrases." It is assumed that the
bivouac speaks like the convent; the talk of the
guard-room is a calumny. A veteran drops his eyes
at the recollection of Waterloo, and the Cross of the
Legion of Honor is given to these downcast eyes.
Certain sayings which are in history, have no right
to be historical ; and it is well understood, for
example, that the gendarme who fired a pistol at
Robespierre at the Hotel de Ville rejoiced in the
name " The-guard-dies-and-never-surrenders." 1
From the combined effort of the two schools of
criticism, guardians of public tranquillity, there
1 It is said that an indecent word of Cambronne (a commander
of the Old Guard at Waterloo), in answer to the summons to sur-
render, was translated by some big-wig historian into this bit of
heroic claptrap. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 209
results a salutary reaction. This reaction has al-
ready produced some specimens of poets, — steady,
well-bred, prudent, whose style always keeps good
hours ; who never indulge in an outing with those
mad creatures, Ideas ; who are never met at the
corner of a wood, solus cum sold, with Revery, that
gypsy girl ; who are incapable of having relations
either with Imagination, dangerous vagabond, or
with the bacchante Inspiration, or with the grisette
Fancy ; who have never in their lives given a kiss
to that beggarly chit, the Muse ; who never sleep
away from home, and who are honored with the
esteem of their doorkeeper, Nicholas Boileau. If
Polyhymnia goes by with her hair floating a little,
what a scandal ! Quick ! they call the hairdresser.
M. de la Harpe comes hastily. These two sister
schools of criticism, that of the doctrinaire and
that of the sacristan, undertake to educate. They
bring up little writers. They keep a place to wean
them, — a boarding-school for juvenile reputations.
Thence a discipline, a literature, and art. Fall
into line, — right dress ! Society must be saved
in literature as well as politics. Every one knows
that poetry is a frivolous, insignificant thing, child-
ishly occupied in seeking rhymes, barren, vain ;
consequently nothing is more formidable. It be-
hooves us to tie up the thinkers securely. To the
kennel with him ! He is dangerous ! What is
a poet? For honor, nothing;, for persecution,
everything.
This race of writers requires repression; it is
useful to have recourse to the secular arm. The
means vary. From time to time a good banish-
14
2IO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
ment is expedient. The list of exiled writers opens
with yEschylus, and does not close with Voltaire.
Each century has its link in the chain. But there
must be at least a pretext for exile, banishment,
and proscription. Exile cannot be applied in all
cases. It is rather unhandy; it is important to
have a lighter weapon for every-day skirmishing.
A state criticism, duly sworn and accredited, can
render service. To organize the persecution of
writers is not a bad thing. To entrap the pen by
the pen is ingenious. Why not have literary
policemen?
Good taste is a precaution taken to keep the
peace. Sober writers are the counterpart of pru-
dent electors. Inspiration is suspected of love for
liberty. Poetry is rather outside of legality ; there
is, therefore, an official art, the offspring of official
criticism.
A whole special rhetoric proceeds from these
premises. Nature has in this particular art but a
narrow entrance, and goes in through the side-
door. Nature is infected with demagogism. The
elements are suppressed, as being in bad form and
making too much uproar. The equinoctial storm
is guilty of trespass ; the squall is a midnight row.
The other day, at the School of Fine Arts, a pupil-
painter having caused the wind to lift up the folds
of a mantle during a storm, a local professor,
shocked at this disordered apparel, said : " Style
does not admit of wind."
Moreover, reaction does not despair. We get
on ; some progress is made. A ticket of confes-
sion sometimes gets its bearer admitted into the
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 211
Academy. Jules Janin, Theophile Gautier, Paul
de Saint- Victor, Littre, Renan, please to recite
your credo.
But that does not suffice; the evil is deep-
rooted. The ancient Catholic society and the
ancient legitimate literature are threatened. Dark-
ness is in peril. To arms against the new gen-
erations ! To arms against the modern spirit !
And down with Democracy, the daughter of
Philosophy !
Cases of rabidness — that 'is to say, works of
genius — are to be feared. Hygienic prescriptions
are renewed. The public high-road is evidently
badly watched. It appears that there are some
poets wandering about. The prefect of police, a
negligent man, allows some spirits to rove. What
is Authority thinking of? Let us take care. There
is danger lest men's minds may be bitten. Indeed,
the rumor is confirmed that Shakespeare has been
met without a muzzle on.
This Shakespeare without a muzzle is the pres-
ent translation.1
CHAPTER V.
IF ever a man was undeserving of the good
character, " he is sober," 2 it is most certainly Wil-
liam Shakespeare. Shakespeare is one of the
1 The Complete Works of Shakespeare, translated by Fran-
9ois Victor Hugo.
2 See the beginning of the preceding chapter.— TR.
212 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
worst cases that serious aesthetics ever had to
regulate.
Shakespeare is fertility, force, exuberance, the
swelling breast, the foaming cup, the brimming
trough, sap in excess, lava in torrents, the univer-
sal rain of life, everything by thousands, everything
by millions, no reticence, no ligature, no economy,
the inordinate and tranquil prodigality of the
creator. To those who fumble in the bottom of
their pockets, the inexhaustible seems insane.
Will it stop soon? Never. Shakespeare is the
sower of dazzling wonders. At every turn, an
image; at every turn, contrast; at every turn,
light and darkness.
The poet, we have said, is Nature. Subtle,
minute, keen, microscopical like Nature, and yet
vast. Not discreet, not reserved, not parsimoni-
ous ; magnificently simple. Let us explain this
word " simple."
Sobriety in poetry is poverty; simplicity is
grandeur. To give to each thing the quantity of
space which fits it, neither more nor less : this
is simplicity. Simplicity is justice. The whole
law of taste is in that. Each thing put in its own
place and spoken with its own word. On the sin-
gle condition that a certain latent equilibrium is
maintained and a certain mysterious proportion is
preserved, simplicity may be found in the most
stupendous complication, either in the style or in
the ensemble. These are the arcana of great art.
The higher criticism alone, which takes its starting-
point from enthusiasm, penetrates and compre-
hends these profound laws. Opulence, profusion,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 21$
dazzling radiancy, may be simplicity. The sun is
simple.
Such simplicity evidently does not resemble the
simplicity recommended by Le Batteux, the Abbe
d'Aubignac, and Father Bouhours.
Whatever may be the abundance, whatever may
be the entanglement, even were it perplexing, con-
fused, and inextricable, all that is true is simple.
The only form of simplicity recognized by Art is
the simplicity that is profound.
Simplicity, being true, is artless. Artlessness is
the countenance of truth. Shakespeare is simple
in the grand manner ; he is infatuated with it : but
petty simplicity is unknown to him.
The simplicity which is impotence, the simpli-
city which is meagreness, the simplicity which is
short-winded, is a case for pathology. A hospital
ticket suits it better than a ride on the hippogriff.
I admit that the hump of Thersites is simple;
but the pectoral muscles of Hercules are simple
also. I prefer this simplicity to the other.
The simplicity proper to poetry may be as
bushy as the oak. Does the oak happen to pro-
duce on you the effect of a Byzantine and of a
delicate being? Its innumerable antitheses, —
gigantic trunk and small leaves, rough bark and
velvet mosses, absorption of rays and lavishness of
shade, crowns for heroes and mast for swine, — are
they marks of affectation, corruption, subtlety, and
bad taste? Could the oak be too witty? could the
oak belong to the H6tel Rambouillet? could the
oak be a finical prude? could the oak be tainted
with Gongorism? could the oak belong to an age
214 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
of decadence? Is it possible that all simplicity,
sancta simplicitas, is concentrated in the cabbage ?
Refinement, excess of wit, affectation, Congo rism,
— all that has been hurled at Shakespeare's head.
They say that these are the faults of littleness, and
they hasten to reproach the giant with them.
But then this Shakespeare respects nothing ; he
goes straight on, putting out of breath those who
wish to follow him. He strides over proprieties, he
overthrows Aristotle, he spreads havoc among
the Jesuits, the Methodists, the Purists, and the
Puritans ; he puts Loyola to disorderly rout, and
upsets Wesley; he is valiant, bold, enterprising,
militant, direct. His inkstand smokes like a crater.
He is always laborious, ready, spirited, disposed,
pressing forward. Pen in hand, his brow blazing,
he goes on, driven by the demon of genius. The
stallion is over-demonstrative; there are jack-
mules passing by, to whom this is displeasing. To
be prolific is to be aggressive. A poet like Isaiah,
like Juvenal, like Shakespeare, is, in truth, exorbi-
tant. By all that is holy, some attention ought
to be* paid to others ; one man has no right to
everything ! What ! virility always, inspiration
everywhere; as many metaphors as the meadow,
as many antitheses as the oak, as many contrasts
and depths as the universe ; incessant generation,
pubescence, hymen, gestation ; a vast unity with
exquisite and robust detail, living communion, fe-
cundation, plenitude, production ! It is too much ;
it infringes the rights of neuters.
For nearly three centuries Shakespeare, this
poet all brimming with virility, has been looked
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 21$
upon by sober critics with that discontented air
which certain bereaved spectators must have in the
seraglio.
Shakespeare has no reserve, no restraint, no
limit, no blank. What is wanting in him is that
he wants nothing. He needs no savings-bank. He
does not keep Lent. He overflows like vegetation,
like germination, like light, like flame. Yet this
does not hinder him from thinking of you, specta-
tor or reader, from preaching to you, from giving
you advice, from being your friend, like the first
good-natured La Fontaine you meet, and from
rendering you small services. You can warm your
hands at the conflagration he kindles.
Othello, Romeo, lago, Macbeth, Shylock, Rich-
ard III., Julius Caesar, Oberon, Puck, Ophelia,
Desdemona, Juliet, Titania, men, women, witches,
fairies, souls, — Shakespeare is the grand dis-
tributor ; take, take, take, all of you ! Do you
want more ? Here is Ariel, Parolles, Macduff,
Prospero, Viola, Miranda, Caliban. More yet ?
Here is Jessica, Cordelia, Cressida, Portia, Braban-
tio, Polonius, Horatio, Mercutio, Imogen, Panda-
rus of Troy, Bottom, Theseus. Ecce Dens ! It is
the poet, he offers himself: who will have me ?
He gives, scatters, squanders himself ; he is never
empty. Why ? He cannot be. Exhaustion is
impossible with him. In him is something of the
fathomless. He fills up again, and spends himself;
then recommences. He is the spendthrift of genius.
In license and audacity of language Shakespeare
equals Rabelais, whom, a few days ago, a swan-like
216 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Like all lofty minds in full riot of omnipotence,
Shakespeare decants all Nature, drinks it, and
makes you drink it. Voltaire reproached him for
his drunkenness ; and was quite right. Why on
earth, we repeat, why has this Shakespeare such a
temperament? He does not stop, he does not feel
fatigue, he is without pity for the poor weak stom-
achs that are candidates for the Academy. The
gastritis called " good taste " does not afflict him.
He is powerful. What is this vast intemperate
song that he sings through the centuries — war-
song, drinking-song, love-ditty — which passes from
King Lear to Queen Mab, and from Hamlet to
Falstaff, heart-rending at times as a sob, grand
as the Iliad? " I am stiff all over from reading
Shakespeare," said M. Auger.
His poetry has the sharp tang of honey made
by the vagabond hiveless bee. Here prose, there
verse ; all forms, being but receptacles for the idea,
suit him. This poetry mourns and jests. The
English tongue, a language little formed, now
serves, now hinders him ; but everywhere the deep
mind makes itself seen and felt. Shakespeare's
drama moves forward with a kind of distracted
rhythm ; it is so vast that it staggers ; it has and
gives the vertigo : but nothing is so solid as this
palpitating grandeur. Shakespeare, shuddering,
has within himself winds, spirits, magic potions,
vibrations ; he sways in the passing breeze, obscure
effluences pervade him, he is filled with the un-
known sap of life. Thence his agitation, at the
core of which is peace. It is this agitation which
is lacking in Goethe, wrongly praised for his im-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 2 1/
passiveness, which is inferiority. All minds of the
first order have this agitation. It is in Job, in JEs-
chylus, in Alighieri. This agitation is humanity.
On earth the divine must be human. It must pro-
pose to itself its own riddle, and be distressed by it.
Inspiration being a miracle, a sacred stupor min-
gles with it. A certain majesty of mind resembles
solitude and is blended with wonder. Shakespeare,
like all great poets, like all great things, is ab-
sorbed by a dream. His own vegetation dismays
him ; his own tempest appals him. It seems at
times as if Shakespeare terrified Shakespeare. He
shudders at his own depth. This is the sign of
supreme intelligence. It is his own vastness which
shakes him and imparts to him strange and mighty
oscillations. There is no genius without billows.
An intoxicated savage, it may be. He has the
savagery of the virgin forest ; he has the intoxica-
tion of the high sea.
Shakespeare — the condor alone gives some idea
of such gigantic flight — departs, arrives, starts
again, mounts, descends, hovers, sinks, dives, drops,
submerges himself in the depths below, merges
into the depths above. He is one of those ge-
niuses that God purposely leaves unbridled, so that
they may go headlong and in full flight into the
infinite.
From time to time there comes to this globe
one of these spirits. Their passage, as we have
said, renews art, science, philosophy, or society.
They fill a century, then disappear. Then it is
not one century alone that their light illumines, it
is humanity from the beginning to the end of time ;
2l8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
and we perceive that each of these men was the
human mind itself contained whole in one brain,
and coming, at a given moment, to impart new
impetus to earthly progress.
These supreme spirits, their life ended and their
work done, in death rejoin the mysterious group
of those who are at home in the infinite.
BOOK II.
SHAKESPEARE. — HIS WORK. — THE CULMI-
NATING POINTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE characteristic of men of genius of the first
order is to produce each a peculiar model of
man. All bestow on humanity its portrait, — some
laughing, some weeping, others pensive ; these last
are the greatest. Plautus laughs, and gives to man
Amphitryon; Rabelais laughs, and gives to man
Gargantua; Cervantes laughs, and gives to man
Don Quixote ; Beaumarchais laughs, and gives to
man Figaro ; Moliere weeps, and gives to man
Alceste; Shakespeare dreams, and gives to man
Hamlet; ^Eschylus meditates, and gives to man
Prometheus. The others are great ; yEschylus and
Shakespeare are vast.
These portraits of humanity (left to humanity as
a last farewell by those passing spirits, the poets)
are rarely flattering, always exact, — likenesses of
profound resemblance. Vice, or folly, or virtue
is extracted from the soul and stamped upon the
visage. The tear congealed, becomes a pearl ; the
220 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
smile petrified, at last appears a menace ; wrinkles
are the furrows of wisdom ; certain frowns are
tragic. This series of models of man is a perma-
nent lesson for the generations : each century adds
in some figures, sometimes done in full light and
strong relief, like Macette, Celimene, Tartuffe, Tur-
caret, and Rameau's Nephew; sometimes simple
profiles, like Gil Bias, Manon Lescaut, Clarissa
Harlowe, and Candide.
God creates by intuition ; man creates by inspi-
ration, strengthened by observation. This second
creation, which is nothing else but divine action
carried out by man, is what is called " genius."
The poet stepping into the place of destiny ; an
invention of men and events so strange, so true to
nature, and so masterly that certain religious sects
hold it in horror as an encroachment upon Provi-
dence, and call the poet "the liar; " the conscience
of man taken in the act and placed in surroundings
which it resists, governs, or transforms : such is the
drama. And there is in this something supreme.
This handling of the human soul seems a kind of
equality with God : equality, the mystery of which
is explained when we reflect that God is within
man. This equality is identity. Who is our con-
science? He; and He counsels right action. Who
is our intelligence? He ; and He inspires the
masterpiece.
God may be there; but this, as we have seen,
does not lessen the crabbedness of critics: the
greatest minds are the ones most called in ques-
tion. It even sometimes happens that real in-
telligences attack genius; the inspired, strangely
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 221
enough, do not recognize inspiration. Erasmus,
Bayle, Scaliger, St. Evremond, Voltaire, many of
the Fathers of the Church, whole families of phi-
losophers, the whole Alexandrian School, Cicero,
Horace, Lucian, Plutarch, Josephus, Dion Chryso-
stom, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Philostratus,
Metrodorus of Lampsacus, Plato, Pythagoras, have
severely criticised Homer. In this enumeration
we omit Zoi'lus. Men who deny are not critics.
Hatred is not intelligence. To insult is not to
discuss. Zoi'lus, Msevius, Cecchi, Green, Avella-
neda, William Lauder, Vise, Freron, — no cleansing
of these names is possible. These men have
wounded the human race in her men of genius ;
these wretched hands forever retain the color of
the mud that they have thrown.
Nor have these men even the miserable renown
that they seem to have amply earned, nor the
whole quantity of infamy that they had hoped for.
It is scarcely known that they have existed. They
are half forgotten, — a greater humiliation than to
be wholly forgotten. With the exception of two
or three among them who have become by-words
of contempt, despicable owls nailed up for a warn-
ing, all the wretched names are unknown. An
obscure notoriety follows their equivocal existence.
Look at that Clement who called himself the " hy-
percritic," and whose profession it was to bite and
denounce Diderot; he disappears, and is con-
founded, although born at Geneva, with Clement
of Dijon, confessor to Mesdames; with David
Clement, author of the ' Bibliotheque Curieuse ' ;
with Clement of Baize, Benedictine of St. Maur;
222 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
and with Clement d'Ascain, Capuchin, definitor
and provincial of Beam. What avails it him to
have declared that the work of Diderot is but
" obscure verbiage," and to have died mad at Cha-
renton, to be afterward submerged in four or five
unknown Clements? In vain did Famien Strada
rabidly attack Tacitus : he is scarcely distinguished
now from Famien Spada, called " the Wooden
Sword," the jester of Sigismond Augustus. In
vain did Cecchi vilify Dante: we are not certain
that his name was not Cecco. In vain did Green
fasten on Shakespeare : he is now confounded with
Greene.1 Avellaneda, the " enemy " of Cervantes,
is perhaps Avellanedo. Lauder, the slanderer of
Milton, is perhaps Leuder. The unknown De Vise,
who " smashed " Moliere, turns out to be a certain
Donneau ; he had surnamed himself De Vise
through a taste for nobility. Those men relied,
in order to create for themselves a little notoriety,
on the greatness of those whom they outraged.
But no ; they have remained obscure. These poor
insulters did not get their wages ; they are bank-
rupt of contempt. Let us pity them.
1 And rightly ; for he is indeed the same individual. See note,
p. 190. — TR.
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CHAPTER II.
LET us add that calumny's labor is lost. Then
what purpose can it serve? Not even an evil one.
Do you know anything more useless than the inju-
rious which does not injure?
Better still. This injury is beneficial. In good
time it is found that calumny, envy, and hatred,
thinking to work harm, have worked benefit.
Their insults bring fame; their blackening adds
lustre. They succeed only in mingling with glory
an outcry which increases it.
Let us continue.
Thus each great poet tries on in his turn this
immense human mask. And such is the strength
of the soul which shines through the mysterious
aperture of the eyes, that this look changes the
mask, and from terrible makes it comic, then pen-
sive, then grieved, then young and smiling, then
decrepit, then sensual and gluttonous, then relig-
ious, then outrageous ; and it is Cain, Job, Atreus,
Ajax, Priam, Hecuba, Niobe, Clytemnestra, Nausi-
caa, Pistoclerus, Grumio, Davus, Pasicompsa, Chi-
mene, Don Arias, Don Diego, Mudarra, Richard
III., Lady Macbeth, Desdemona, Juliet, Romeo,
Lear, Sancho Panza, Pantagruel, Panurge, Ar-
nolphe, Dandin, Sganarelle, Agnes, Rosine, Victo-
rine, Basile, Almaviva, Cherubin, Manfred.
From the direct divine creation proceeds Adam,
the prototype. From the indirect divine creation
224 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
— that is to say, from the human creation — pro-
ceed other Adams, the types.
A type does not reproduce any man in particu-
lar; it cannot be exactly superposed upon any
individual ; it sums up and concentrates under one
human form a whole family of characters and
minds. A type is no abridgment : it is a conden-
sation. It is not one, it is all. Alcibiades is but
Alcibiades, Petronius is but Petronius, Bassom-
pierre is but Bassompierre, Buckingham is but
Buckingham, Fronsac is but Fronsac, Lauzun is
but Lauzun ; but take Lauzun, Fronsac, Bucking-
ham, Bassompierre, Petronius, and Alcibiades, and
bray them in the mortar of the dream, and there
issues from it a phantom more real than them all,
— Don Juan. Take usurers individually, and no
one of them is that fierce merchant of Venice,
crying: "Go, Tubal, fee me an officer, bespeak him
a fortnight before ; 1 will have the heart of him if
he forfeit." Take all the usurers together, from the
crowd of them is evolved a total, — Shylock. Sum
up usury, you have Shylock. The metaphor of
the people, who are never mistaken, confirms una-
wares the invention of the poet ; and while Shake-
speare makes Shylock, the popular tongue creates
the bloodsucker.1 Shylock is the embodiment of
Jewishness ; he is also Judaism, — that is to say,
his whole nation, the high as well as the low, faith
as well as fraud ; and it is because he sums up a
whole race, such as oppression has made it, that
Shylock is great. The Jews are, however, right in
saying that none of them — not even the mediaeval
1 Happe-chair ; literally, "grab-flesh."— -TR.
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Jew — is Shylock. Men of pleasure may with rea-
son say that no one of them is Don Juan. No leaf
of the orange-tree when chewed gives the flavor of
the orange ; yet there is a deep affinity, an identity
of roots, a sap rising from the same source, a shar-
ing of the same subterranean shadow before life.
The fruit contains the mystery of the tree, and the
type contains the mystery of the man. Hence the
strange vitality of the type.
For — and this is the marvel — the type lives.
Were it but an abstraction, men would not recog-
nize it, and would allow this shadow to go its way.
The tragedy termed " classic " makes phantoms ;
the drama creates living types. A lesson which is
a man ; a myth with a human face so plastic that it
looks at you and that its look is a mirror; a para-
ble which nudges you ; a symbol which cries out
" Beware ! " an idea which is nerve, muscle, and
flesh, — which> has a heart to love, bowels to
suffer, eyes to weep, and teeth to devour or to
laugh ; a psychical conception with the relief of
actual fact, which, if it be pricked, bleeds red,
— such is the type. O power of all poetry !
These types are beings. They breathe, they pal-
pitate, their steps are heard on the floor, they
exist. They exist with an existence more intense
than that of any creature thinking himself alive
there in the street. These phantoms are more
substantial than man. In their essence is that
eternal element which belongs to masterworks,
which makes Trimalchio live, while M. Romieu is
dead.
Types are cases foreseen of God ; genius realizes
15
- : C> mtUAM SffAJCXSJTEAKE.
them. It seems that God prefers to teach man a
lesson through man, in order to inspire confidence,
The poet walks the street with living men ; he has
their ear. Hence the efficacy of types, Man is a
premise, the type the conclusion ; God creates the
phenomenon, genius gives it a name; God creates
the miser only, genius forms Harpagon; God
creates the traitor only, genius makes lago; God
creates the coquette, genius makes C£limene;
God creates the citizen only, genius makes Chry-
sale; God creates the king only, genius makes
Grandgousier, Sometimes, at a given moment,
the type issues full-grown from some unknown
collaboration of the mass of the people with a
great natural actor, an involuntary and powerful
realizer; the crowd is a midwife; in an epoch
which bears at one extreme Talleyrand, and at
another Chodruc-Duclos, there springs up sud-
denly, in a flash of lightning, under the mysterious
incubation of the theatre, that spectre Robert
Macaire.1
Types go and come on a common level in Aft
and in Nature; they are the ideal realized. The
good and the evil of man are in these figures.
From each of them springs, in the eyes of the
thinker, a humanity.
As we have said before, as many types, as many
Adams. The man of Homer, Achilles, is an
Adam : from him comes the species of the slayers ;
the man of JEschylus, Prometheus, is an Adam :
from him comes the race of the wrestlers; the
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 22/
man of Shakespeare, Hamlet, is an Adam : to him
belongs the family of the dreamers. Other Adams,
created by poets, incarnate, — this one, passion;
another, duty; another, reason; another, con-
science ; another, the fall ; another, the ascension.
Prudence, drifting into trepidation, passes from
the old man Nestor to the old man Geronte. Love,
drifting into appetite, passes from Daphne to Love-
lace. Beauty, entwined with the serpent, passes
from Eve to Melusina. The types begin in Gene-
sis, and a link of their chain passes through Restif
de la Bretonne and Vade. The lyric suits them,
— Billingsgate does not misbecome them. They
speak a country dialect by the mouth of Gros-
Rene, and in Homer they say to Minerva, who
takes them by the hair : " What wouldst thou with
me, Goddess?"
A surprising exception has been conceded to
Dante. The man of Dante is Dante. Dante has,
so to speak, recreated himself in his poem : he is
his own type; his Adam is himself. For the
action of his poem he has sought out no one. He
has taken Virgil only as a supernumerary. More-
over, he made himself epic at once, without even
giving himself the trouble to change his name.
What he had to do was in fact simple, — to
descend into hell, and remount to heaven. What
use was it to trouble himself for so little? He
knocks gravely at the door of the Infinite and
says: "Open! I am Dante."
228 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER III.
THE man of ^Eschylus, Prometheus, and the
man of Shakespeare, Hamlet, are as we have just
said, — two marvellous Adams.
Prometheus is action; Hamlet is hesitation.
In Prometheus the obstacle is exterior ; in
Hamlet it is interior.
In Prometheus the four limbs of incarnate Will
are nailed down with brazen spikes, and cannot
move : besides, it has by its side two watchers,
Force and Power. In Hamlet the Will is still more
enthralled : it is bound by preliminary meditation,
the endless chain of the irresolute. Try to get out
of yourself if you can ! What a Gordian knot is
our revery ! Slavery from within, is slavery in-
deed. Scale me the barricade of thought ! escape,
if you can, from the prison of love ! The only
dungeon is that which immures the conscience.
Prometheus, in order to be free, has but a bronze
collar to break and a god to conquer; Hamlet
must break and conquer himself. Prometheus can
rise upright, quit with lifting a mountain; in
order that Hamlet may stand erect, he must lift
his own thought. If Prometheus plucks the
vulture from his breast, all is done ; Hamlet must
rend from his flank Hamlet. Prometheus and
Hamlet are two livers laid bare: from the one
trickles blood, from the other doubt
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 229
We are in the habit of comparing ^Eschylus and
Shakespeare by Orestes and Hamlet, these two
tragedies being the same drama. Never in fact
was there more identity of subject. The learned
note an analogy between them ; the impotent, who
are also the ignorant, the envious, who are also
the imbecile, have the petty joy of thinking they
detect a plagiarism. There is here, for the rest,
a possible field for comparative erudition and for
serious criticism. Hamlet walks behind Orestes,
a parricide through filial love. This easy com-
parison, rather superficial than substantial, is less
striking than the mysterious confrontment of those
two captives, Prometheus and Hamlet.
Let it not be forgotten that the human mind,
half divine as it is, creates from time to time super-
human works. Furthermore, these superhuman
works of man are more numerous than is believed,
for they make up the whole of art. Outside of
poetry, where wonders abound, there is, in music,
Beethoven; in sculpture, Phidias; in architecture,
Piranesi ; in painting, Rembrandt ; and in painting,
architecture, and sculpture, Michael Angelo. We
pass over many, and not the least.
Prometheus and Hamlet are among these more
than human works.
A kind of gigantic prepossession: the usual
measure exceeded ; greatness everywhere, — the
dismay of commonplace minds ; the true demon-
strated, when necessary, by the improbable ;
destiny, society, law, religion, brought to trial and
judgment in the name of the Unknown, the abyss
of the mysterious equilibrium; the event treated
230 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
as a rdle to be played, and, on occasion, hurled as
a reproach against Fatality or Providence ; Passion,
terrible personage, going and coming in man ; the
audacity and sometimes the insolence of reason ;
the haughty forms of a style at ease in all extremes,
and at the same time a profound wisdom; the
gentleness of the giant, the good nature of a
softened monster ; an ineffable dawn which cannot
be accounted for and which lights up everything :
such are the signs of these supreme works. In
certain poems there is starlight.
This light is in ^Eschylus and in Shakespeare.
CHAPTER IV.
NOTHING can be more fiercely wild than Prome-
theus stretched on the Caucasus. It is gigantic
tragedy. The old punishment which our ancient
laws of torture called " extension," and which Car-
touche escaped because of a hernia, — this, Prome-
theus undergoes; only the rack is a mountain.
What is his crime? The Right. To characterize
right as crime, and movement as rebellion, is the
immemorial skill of tyrants. Prometheus has done
on Olympus what Eve did in Eden, — he has
taken a little knowledge. Jupiter — identical, in-
deed, with Jehovah (lovi, lova) — punishes this
temerity of having desired to live. The ^Eginetic
traditions, which localize Jupiter, deprive him of the
cosmic impersonality of the Jehovah of Genesis.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
The Greek Jupiter — bad son of a bad father, in
rebellion against Saturn, who has himself been a
rebel against Coelus, — is an upstart. The Titans
are a sort of elder branch which has its legitimists,
of whom ^Eschylus, the avenger of Prometheus, was
one. Prometheus is the right conquered. Jupiter
has, as is always the case, consummated the usur-
pation of power by the punishment of right.
Olympus claims the aid of Caucasus. Prometheus
is fastened there by the brazen collar. There is
the Titan, fallen, prostrate, nailed down. Mercury,
everybody's friend, comes to give him such coun-
sel as generally follows the perpetration of coups
d'etat. Mercury is the cowardice of intelligence;
the embodiment of all possible vice, but full of
cleverness : Mercury, the god Vice, serves Jupiter,
the god Crime. These flunkeys in evil are marked
to this day by the veneration of the thief for the
assassin. There is something of that law in the
arrival of the diplomatist behind the conqueror.
The masterworks are immense in this, — that they
are eternally present at the deeds of humanity.
Prometheus on the Caucasus, is Poland after 1772;
France after 1815 ; the Revolution after Brumaire.
Mercury speaks; Prometheus listens but little.
Offers of amnesty miscarry when it is the victim
alone who should have the right to grant pardon.
Prometheus, thrown to earth, scorns Mercury
standing proudly above him, and Jupiter standing
above Mercury, and Destiny standing above Jupi-
ter. Prometheus jests at the vulture which gnaws
at him ; he disdainfully shrugs his shoulders as
much as his chain allows. What does he care for
232 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Jupiter, and of what good is Mercury? There is
no hold upon this haughty sufferer. The scorch-
ing thunderbolt causes a smart, which is a constant
appeal to pride. Meanwhile tears flow around
him, the earth despairs, the cloud-women — the
fifty Oceanides — come to worship the Titan,
forests cry aloud, wild beasts groan, winds howl,
waves sob, the elements moan, the world suffers
in Prometheus, — his brazen collar chokes the
universal life. An immense participation in the
torture of the demigod seems to be henceforth
the tragic delight of all Nature ; anxiety for the
future mingles with it: and what is to be done
now? How are we to move? What will become
of us? And in the vast whole of created beings,
things, men, animals, plants, rocks, all turned
toward the Caucasus, is felt this unspeakable
anguish : the liberator is enchained.
Hamlet, less gigantic and more human, is not
less great.
Hamlet, that awful being complete in incom-
pleteness; all, in order to be nothing! He is
prince and demagogue, sagacious and extravagant,
profound and frivolous, man and neuter. He has
little faith in the sceptre, rails at the throne, has
a student for his comrade, converses with any one
passing by, argues with the first comer, understands
the people, despises the mob, hates violence, dis-
trusts success, questions obscurity, and is on
speaking terms with mystery. He communicates
to others maladies that he has not himself; his
feigned madness inoculates his mistress with real
madness. He is familiar with spectres and with
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 233
actors. He jests, with the axe of Orestes in his
hand. He talks literature, recites verses, composes
a theatrical criticism, plays with bones in a church-
yard, dumfounds his mother, avenges his father,
and closes the dread drama of life and death with
a gigantic point of interrogation. He terrifies, and
then disconcerts. Never has anything more over-
whelming been dreamed. It is the parricide
saying, "What do I know?"
Parricide? Let us pause upon that word. Is
Hamlet a parricide? Yes, and no. He confines
himself to threatening his mother ; but the threat
is so fierce that the mother shudders. " Thy word
is a dagger! . . . What wilt thou do? Thou wilt
not murder me? Help ! help ! ho ! " — and when
she dies, Hamlet, without grieving for her, strikes
Claudius with the tragic cry : " Follow my
mother ! " Hamlet is that sinister thing, the
possible parricide.1
Instead of the North, which he has in his brain,
let him have, like Orestes, the South in his veins,
and he will kill his mother.
This drama is stern. In it truth doubts, sin-
cerity lies. Nothing can be vaster, nothing subtler.
In it man is the world, and the world is zero.
Hamlet, even in full life, is not sure of his exist-
ence. In this tragedy — which is at the same time
a philosophy — everything floats, hesitates, shuffles,
staggers, becomes discomposed, scatters, and is
dispersed. Thought is a cloud, will is a vapor,
resolution a twilight; the action blows every
1 The quotation from ' Hamlet ' is left in the inexact form that
Hugo gave it. — TR.
234 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
moment from a different direction: the manner's
card governs man. A work which disturbs and
makes dizzy; in which the bottom of everything
is laid bare ; where the pendulum of thought
oscillates only from the murdered king to buried
Yorick; and where that which is most real is
kingliness impersonated in a ghost, and mirth
represented by a death's-head.
Hamlet is the supreme tragedy of the human
dream.
CHAPTER V.
ONE of the probable causes of the feigned mad-
ness of Hamlet has not been, up to the present
time, indicated by critics. It has been said,
" Hamlet acts the madman to hide his thought,
like Brutus." In fact, it is easy for apparent im-
becility to hatch a great project; the supposed
idiot can take aim deliberately. But the case of
Brutus is not that of Hamlet. Hamlet acts the
madman for his safety. Brutus screens his pro-
ject, Hamlet his person. Given the manners of
those tragic courts, from the moment that, through
the revelation of the ghost, Hamlet is acquainted
with the crime of Claudius, he is in danger. The
superior historian within the poet is manifested,
and one feels the deep insight of Shakespeare
into the darkness of the ancient royalty. In the
Middle Ages and in the Eastern Empire, and
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 235
even at earlier periods, woe unto him who found
out a murder or a poisoning committed by a
king ! Ovid, according to Voltaire's conjecture,
was exiled from Rome for having seen something
shameful in the house of Augustus. To know
that the King was an assassin, was a state crime.
When it pleased the prince not to have had a wit-
ness, it was a matter of life and death to know
nothing; it was bad policy to have good eyes.
A man suspected of suspicion was lost. He had
but one refuge, — madness; to pass for "an inno-
cent : " he was despised, and that was all. You
remember the advice that, in ^Eschylus, the Ocean
gives to Prometheus : " To seem mad is the secret
of the sage." When the Chamberlain Hugolin
found the iron spit with which Edric of Mercia1
had impaled Edmund II., " he hastened to put on
madness," says the Saxon chronicle of 1016, and
saved himself -in that way. Heraclides of Nisibis,
having discovered by chance that Rhinometer was
a fratricide, had himself declared insane by the
doctors, and succeeded in getting himself shut up
for life in a cloister. He thus lived peaceably,
growing old, and waiting for death with a vacant
stare. Hamlet runs the same risk, and has re-
course to the same means. He gets himself de-
clared insane like Heraclides, and puts on madness
like Hugolin. This does not prevent the uneasy
Claudius from twice making an effort to get rid
1 Freeman says : " The chronicles are silent as to the manner
of Eadmund's death." — Norman Conquest, i. 470. The reality
of the murder is very doubtful. The story of Hugolin is not men-
tioned by Freeman. — TR.
236 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
of him, — in the middle of the drama by the axe
or the dagger, and toward the end by poison.
The same indication is again found in ' King
Lear : ' the Earl of Gloucester's son takes refuge
also in apparent lunacy. Herein is a key to open
and understand Shakespeare's thought. To the
eyes of the philosophy of Art, the feigned madness
of Edgar throws light upon the feigned madness
of Hamlet.
The Hamblet of Belleforest is a magician ; the
Hamlet of Shakespeare is a philosopher. We
just now spoke of the singular reality which
characterizes poetical creations. There is no
more striking example than this type, Hamlet.
Hamlet is not in the least an abstraction. He has
been at the university ; he has the Danish savage-
ness softened by the Italian politeness ; he is short,
plump, somewhat lymphatic ; he fences well, but
is soon out of breath. He does not care to drink
too soon during the fencing-bout with Laertes, —
probably for fear of sweating. After having thus
supplied his personage with real life, the poet can
launch him into the full ideal; there is ballast
enough.
Other works of the human mind equal ' Hamlet;'
none surpasses it. There is in 'Hamlet' all the
majesty of the mournful. A drama issuing from
an open sepulchre, — this is colossal. 'Hamlet' is
to our mind Shakespeare's capital work.
No figure among those that poets have created
is more poignant and more disquieting. Doubt
counselled by a ghost, — such is Hamlet. Ham-
let has seen his dead father and has spoken to him.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Is he convinced? No; he shakes his head. What
shall he do? He does not know. His hands
clench, then fall by his side. Within him are con-
jectures, systems, monstrous apparitions, bloody
recollections, veneration for the ghost, hate, tender-
ness, anxiety to act and not to act, his father, his
mother, conflicting duties, — a profound storm.
His mind is occupied with ghastly hesitation.
Shakespeare, wonderful plastic poet, makes the
grandiose pallor of this soul almost visible. Like
the great spectre of Albrecht Diirer, Hamlet might
be named ' Melancholia.' Above his head, too,
there flits the disembowelled bat; at his feet are
science, the sphere, the compass, the hour-glass,
love ; and behind him, at the horizon, a great and
terrible sun, which seems to make the sky but
darker.
Nevertheless, at least one half of Hamlet is
anger, transport, outrage, hurricane, sarcasm to
Ophelia, malediction on his mother, insult to him-
self. He talks with the grave-diggers, almost
laughs, then clutches Laertes by the hair in the
very grave of Ophelia, and tramples furiously up-
on that coffin. Sword-thrusts at Polonius, sword-
thrusts at Laertes, sword-thrusts at Claudius. At
times his inaction gapes open, and from the rent,
thunderbolts flash out.
He is tormented by that possible life, interwoven
of reality and dream, concerning which we are all
anxious. Somnambulism is diffused through all
his actions. One might almost consider his brain
as a formation : there is a layer of suffering, a
layer of thought, then a layer of dream. It is
238 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
through this layer of dream that he feels, compre-
hends, learns, perceives, drinks, eats, frets, mocks,
weeps, and reasons. There is between life and
him a transparency, — the wall of dreams ; one
sees beyond it, but one cannot step over it. A
kind of cloudy obstacle everywhere surrounds
Hamlet. Have you never, while sleeping, had the
nightmare of pursuit or flight, and tried to hasten
on, and felt the anchylosis of your knees, the
heaviness of your arms, the horrible paralysis of
your benumbed hands? This nightmare Hamlet
suffers while awake. Hamlet is not upon the spot
where his life is. He has ever the air of a man
who talks to you from the other side of a stream.
He calls to you at the same time that he questions
you. He is at a distance from the catastrophe in
which he moves, from the passer-by he questions,
from the thought he bears, from the action he per-
forms. He seems not to touch even what he
crushes. This is isolation carried to its highest
power. It is the loneliness of a mind, even more
than the unapproachableness of a prince. Inde-
cision is, in fact, a solitude ; you have not even
your will to keep you company. It is as if your
own self had departed and had left you there.
The burden of Hamlet is less rigid than that of
Orestes ; it fits patter to his form : Orestes bears
fatality, Hamlet destiny.
And thus, apart from men, Hamlet still has
within him an undefined something which repre-
sents them all. Agnosco fratrem. If at certain
hours we felt our own pulse, we should be con-
scious of his fever. His strange reality is our own
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 239
reality, after all. He is the mournful man that
we all are in certain situations. Unhealthy as he
is, Hamlet expresses a permanent condition of
man. He represents the discomfort of the soul in
a life unsuited to it. He represents the shoe that
pinches and stops our walking: this shoe is the
body. Shakespeare delivers him from it, and
rightly. Hamlet — prince if you like, but king
never — is incapable of governing a people, so
wholly apart from all does he exist. On the other
hand, he does better than to reign ; he is. Take
from him his family, his country, his ghost, the
whole adventure at Elsinore, and even in the form
of an inactive type he remains strangely terrible.
This results from the amount of humanity and the
amount of mystery in him. Hamlet is formidable,
— which does not prevent his being ironical. He
has the two profiles of destiny.
Let us retract a word said above. The capital
work of Shakespeare is not ' Hamlet : ' the capital
work of Shakespeare is all Shakespeare. This is,
moreover, true of all minds of this order. They
are mass, block, majesty, bible ; and their unity is
what renders them impressive.
Have you never gazed upon a beclouded head-
land running out beyond eye-shot into the deep
sea? Each of its hills contributes to its make-up.
No one of its undulations is lost upon it. Its bold
outline is sharply marked upon the sky, and juts
far out amid the waves ; and there is not a useless
rock. Thanks to this cape, you can go amidst the
boundless waters, walk among the winds, see
closely the eagles soar and the monsters swim,
240 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
let your humanity wander in the eternal uproar,
penetrate the impenetrable. The poet renders
this service to your mind. A genius is a headland
into the infinite.
CHAPTER VI.
WITH ' Hamlet,' and upon the same level, must
be placed three noble dramas, — ' Macbeth,'
' Othello,' ' King Lear.'
Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Lear — these four
figures tower upon the lofty edifice of Shakespeare.
We have said what Hamlet is.
To say " Macbeth is ambition," is to say nothing.
Macbeth is hunger. What hunger? The hunger
of the monster, always possible in man. Certain
souls have teeth. Do not arouse their hunger.
To bite at the apple is a fearful thing. The ap-
ple is named " Omnia," says Filesac, that doctor of
the Sorbonne who confessed Ravaillac. Macbeth
has a wife whom the chronicle calls Gruoch. This
Eve tempts this Adam. Once Macbeth has taken
the first bite, he is lost. The first thing that Adam
produces with Eve is Cain; the first thing that
Macbeth accomplishes with Gruoch is murder.
Covetousness easily becoming violence, violence
easily becoming crime, crime easily becoming mad-
ness : this progression is in Macbeth. Covetous-
ness, Crime, Madness — these three night-hags have
spoken to him in the solitude, and have invited him
to the throne. The cat Gray-malkin has called him :
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 241
Macbeth will be cunning; the toad Paddock has
called him : Macbeth will be horror. The unsexed
being, Gruoch, completes him. It is done ; Mac-
beth is no longer a man. He is no longer anything
but an unconscious energy rushing wildly toward
evil. Henceforth, no notion of right; appetite is
everything. The transitory right of royalty, the
eternal right of hospitality — Macbeth murders
both. He does more than slay them : he ignores
them. Before they fell bleeding under his hand,
they already lay dead within his soul. Macbeth
begins by this parricide, — the murder of Duncan,
his guest; a crime so terrible that, as a conse-
quence, in the night when their master is stabbed,
the horses of Duncan become wild again. The
first step taken, the ground begins to crumble ; it
is the avalanche. Macbeth rolls headlong; he is
precipitated ; he falls and rebounds from one crime
to another, ever deeper and deeper. He undergoes
the mournful gravitation of matter invading the
soul. He is a thing that destroys. Pie is a stone
of ruin, a flame of war, a beast of prey, a scourge.
He marches over all Scotland, king as he is, his
barelegged kernes and his heavily armed gallow-
glasses slaughtering, pillaging, massacring. He
decimates the thanes, he murders Banquo, he mur-
ders all the Macduffs except the one that shall slay
him, he murders the nobility, he murders the peo-
ple, he murders his country, he murders " sleep."
At length the catastrophe arrives, — the forest of
Birnam moves against him. Macbeth has infringed
all, overstepped all, destroyed all, violated all ; and
this desperation ends in arousing even Nature.
16
242 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Nature loses patience, Nature enters into action
against Macbeth, Nature becomes soul against the
man who has become brute force.
This drama has epic proportions. Macbeth rep-
resents that frightful hungry creature who prowls
throughout history — in the forest called brigand,
and on the throne, conqueror. The ancestor of
Macbeth is Nimrod. These men of force, are they
forever furious? Let us be just; no. They have
a goal, which being attained, they stop. Give to
Alexander, to Cyrus, to Sesostris, to Caesar —
what? — the world; they are appeased. Geoffrey
St. Hilaire said to me one day : " When the lion
has eaten, he is at peace with Nature." For Cam-
byses, Sennacherib, Genghis Khan, and the like, to
have eaten is to possess the whole earth. They
would calm themselves down in the process of
digesting the human race.
Now what is Othello? He is the night. An
immense fatal figure. Night is amorous of day.
Darkness loves the dawn. The African adores the
white woman. Othello has for his light and for his
frenzy, Desdemona. And then, how easy to him
is jealousy ! He is great, he is dignified, he is ma-
j.estic, he soars above all heads ; he has as an escort
bravery, battle, the braying of trumpets, the banners
of war, renown, glory; he is radiant with twenty
victories, he is studded with stars, this Othello :
but he is black. And thus how soon, when jealous,
the hero becomes the monster, the black becomes
the negro ! How speedily has night beckoned to
death!
By the side of Othello, who is night, there is
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 243
Tago, who is evil — evil, the other form of darkness.
Night is hut the night of the world ; evil is the
night of the soul. How deeply black are perfidy
and falsehood ! It is all one whether what courses
through the veins be ink or treason. Whoever
has jostled against imposture and perjury, knows
it : one must blindly grope one's way with knavery.
Pour hypocrisy upon the break of day, and you
put out the sun ; and this, thanks to false religions,
is what happens to God.
lago near Othello is the precipice near the land-
slip. " This way ! " he says in a low voice. The
snare advises blindness. The lover of darkness
guides the black. Deceit takes upon itself to give
what light may be required by night. Falsehood
serves as a blind man's dog to jealousy. Othello
the negro and lago the traitor pitted against white-
ness and candor: what more formidable? These
ferocities of darkness act in unison. These two
incarnations of the eclipse conspire, the one roar-
ing, the other sneering, for the tragic suffocation
of light.
Sound this profound thing. Othello is the
night, and being night, and wishing to kill, what
does he take to slay with? Poison? the club?
the axe? the knife? No; the pillow. To kill is
to lull to sleep. Shakespeare himself perhaps did
not take this into account. The creator sometimes,
almost unknown to himself, yields to his type, so
truly is that type a power. And it is thus that
Desdemona, spouse of the man Night, dies, stifled
by the pillow upon which the first kiss was given,
and which receives the last sigh.
244 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Lear is the occasion for Cordelia. Maternity of
the daughter toward the father. Profound subject !
A maternity venerable among all other materni-
ties, so admirably translated by the legend of that
Roman girl who in the depth of a prison nurses
her old father. The young breast near the white
beard : there is no holier sight ! Such a filial
breast is Cordelia !
Once this figure dreamed of and found, Shake-
speare created his drama. Where should he put
this consoling vision? In an obscure age. Shake-
speare has taken the year of the world 3105, the
time when Joash was king of Judah, Aganippus
king of France, and Leir king of England. The
whole earth was at that time mysterious. Picture
to yourself that epoch. The temple of Jerusalem
is still quite new; the gardens of Semiramis, con-
structed nine hundred years before, are beginning
to crumble ; the first gold coin appears in yEgina ;
the first balance is made by Phydon, tyrant of
Argos ; the eclipse of the sun is calculated by the
Chinese; three hundred and twelve years have
passed since Orestes, accused by the Eumenides
before the Areopagus, was acquitted ; Hesiod is
just dead; Homer, if he still lives, is a hundred
years old ; Lycurgus, thoughtful traveller, re-enters
Sparta ; and one may perceive in the depth of the
sombre cloud of the Orient the chariot of fire
which carries Elijah away: it is at that period that
Leir — Lear — lives, and reigns over the dark is-
lands. Jonas, Holofernes, Draco, Solon, Thespis,
Nebuchadnezzar, Anaximenes who is to invent the
signs of the zodiac, Cyrus, Zorobabel, Tarquin,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 24$
Pythagoras, ^Eschylus, are not yet born ; Coriola-
nus, Xerxes, Cincinnatus, Pericles, Socrates, Bren-
nus, Aristotle, Timoleon, Demosthenes, Alexander,
Epicurus, Hannibal, are ghosts awaiting their hour
to enter among men ; Judas Maccabaeus, Viriatus,
Popilius, Jugurtha, Mithridates, Marius and Sylla,
Caesar and Pompey, Cleopatra and Antony, are far
away in the future ; and at the moment when Lear
is king of Britain and of Iceland, there must pass
away eight hundred and ninety-five years before
Virgil says, " Penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos,"
and nine hundred and fifty years before Seneca
says " Ultima Thule." The Picts and the Celts (the
Scotch and the English) are tattooed. A redskin
of the present day gives a vague idea of an Eng-
glishman then.1 It is this twilight that Shake-
speare has chosen, — a long, dreamy night in which
the inventor is free to put anything he likes : this
King Lear, and then a king of France, a duke of
Burgundy, a duke of Cornwall, a duke of Albany,
an earl of Kent, and an earl of Gloucester. What
matters your history to. him who has humanity?
Besides, he has with him the legend, which is also
a kind of science, and as true as history, perhaps,
although from another point of view. Shake-
speare agrees with Walter Mapes, archdeacon of
Oxford, — that is something ; he admits, from
Brutus to Cadwalla, the ninety-nine Celtic kings
who have preceded the Scandinavian Hengist and
the Saxon Horsa: and since he believes in Mul-
mutius, Cinigisil, Ceolulf, Cassibelan, Cymbeline,
1 Victor Hugo is responsible for the words " English " and
"Englishman," instead of "British" and " Briton." — TR.
246 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Cynulphus, Arviragus, Guiderius, Escuin, Cudred,
Vortigern, Arthur, Uther Pendragon, he has every
right to believe in King Lear and to create Corde-
lia. This site adopted, the place for the scene
marked out, the foundation laid deep, he takes all
in hand and builds his work, — unheard-of edifice.
He takes tyranny, of which at a later period he
will make weakness, — Lear ; he takes treason, —
Edmund ; he takes devotion, — Kent ; he takes
Ingratitude, which begins with a caress, and he
gives to this monster two heads, — Goneril, whom
the legend calls Gornerille, and Regan, whom the
legend calls Ragaii ; l he takes paternity ; he takes
royalty ; he takes feudality ; he takes ambition ;
he takes madness, which he divides, and he places
face to face three madmen — the King's buffoon,
madman by trade ; Edgar of Gloucester, mad for
prudence' sake ; the King, mad through misery.
It is at the summit of this tragic pile that he sets
the bending form of Cordelia.
There are some formidable cathedral towers, — as,
for instance, the Giralda of Seville, — which seem
made all complete, with their spirals, their stair-
cases, their sculptures, their cellars, their csecums,
their aerial cells, their sounding chambers, their
bells, their wailing, and their mass and their spire,
and all their vastness, in order to support at their
summit an angel spreading its golden wings. Such
is the drama, ' King Lear.'
The father is the pretext for the daughter.
1 In Holinshed's Chronicle, Shakespeare's source, the names
are, Gonorilla, Regan, and Cordeilla ; in Layamon's ' Brut/ Gor-
noille, Regan, and Cordoille or Gordoylle. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 247
That admirable human creature, Lear, serves as
a support to this ineffable divine creation, Cor-
delia. All that chaos of crimes, vices, manias, and
miseries finds its justification in this shining vision
of virtue. Shakespeare, bearing Cordelia in his
brain, in creating this tragedy was like a god who,
having an Aurora to establish, should make a
world to put her in.
And what a figure is that father ! What a
caryatid ! It is man stooping. He does nothing
but shift his burdens for others that are heavier.
The more the old man becomes enfeebled, the
more his load augments. He lives under an over-
burden. He bears at first power, then ingratitude,
then isolation, then despair, then hunger and thirst,
then madness, then all Nature. Clouds overcast
him, forests heap their shadow upon him, the hur-
ricane swoops down upon the nape of his neck, the
tempest makes his mantle heavy as lead, the rain
weighs upon his shoulders, he walks bent and
haggard as if he had the two knees of Night upon
his back. Dismayed and yet colossal, he flings to
the winds and to the hail this epic cry : " Why
do ye hate me, tempests? Why do ye persecute
me? Ye are not my daughters"**- And then all
is over; the light is extinguished; Reason loses
courage, and leaves him; Lear is in his dotage.
This old man, being childish, requires a mother.
His daughter appears, his only daughter, Cordelia.
1 " Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters :
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness ;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription."
Act iii., Scene ii.
248 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
For the two others, Regan and Goneril, are no
longer his daughters, — save so far as to entitle
them to the name of parricides.
Cordelia approaches, — " Sir, do you know me? "
" You are a spirit, I know," replies the old man,
with the sublime clairvoyance of frenzy. From
this moment the filial nursing begins. Cordelia
applies herself to nursing this old despairing soul,
dying of inanition in hatred. Cordelia nourishes
Lear with love, and his courage revives ; she
nourishes him with respect, and the smile returns ;
she nourishes him with hope, and confidence is
restored ; she nourishes him with wisdom, and
reason awakens. Lear, convalescent, rises again,
and step by step returns again to life ; the
child becomes again an old man, the old man
becomes a man again. And behold him happy,
this wretched one ! It is upon this expansion of
happiness that the catastrophe is hurled down.
Alas ! there are traitors, there are perjurers, there
are murderers. Cordelia dies. Nothing more
heart-rending than this. The old man is stunned ;
he no longer understands anything; and, embrac-
ing her corpse, he expires. He dies upon his
daughter's breast. He is saved from the supreme
despair of remaining behind her among the living,
a poor shadow, to feel the place in his heart empty,
and to seek for his soul, carried away by that sweet
being who is departed. O God ! those whom Thou
lovest Thou takest away.
To live after the flight of the angel ; to be the
father orphaned of his child ; to be the eye that no
longer has light; to be the deadened heart that
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 249
knows no more joy ; from time to time to stretch
the hands into obscurity and try to reclasp a being
who was there (where, then, can she be ?) ; to feel
himself forgotten in that departure ; to have lost all
reason for being here below; to be henceforth a
man who goes to and fro before a sepulchre, not
received, not admitted, — this is indeed a gloomy
destiny. Thou hast done well, poet, to kill this
old man.1
1 Perhaps the reader will pardon, in view of the remarkable
parallelism, a reference to Charles Lamb's ' Essay on the Trage-
dies of Shakespeare,' which Victor Hugo probably never saw.
" A happy ending ! as if the living martyrdom that Lear had
gone through, — the flaying of his feelings alive, — did not make a
fair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for
him." — TR.
BOOK III.
ZOILUS AS ETERNAL AS HOMER.
CHAPTER I.
" That vulgar flatt'rer of the ignoble herd." l
THIS line is by La Harpe, who aims it at
Shakespeare. Elsewhere La Harpe says :
" Shakespeare panders to the mob."
Voltaire, as a matter of course, reproaches Shake-
speare with antithesis : that is well. And La Beau-
melle reproaches Voltaire with antithesis: that is
better.
Voltaire, when it is a personal matter with him,
pro doma sua, gets angry. " But," he writes, " this
Langleviel, alias La Beaumelle, is an ass. I defy
you to find in any poet, in any book, a fine thing
which is not an image or an antithesis."
Voltaire's criticism is double-edged. He wounds
and is wounded. This is how he characterizes the
Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs : "Works
without order, full of low images and coarse ex-
pressions."
1 " Ce courtisan grossier du profane vulgaire."
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
A little while after he exclaims, furious, —
" The barb'rous Crebillon 's preferred to me I " l
An idler of the CEil-de-Boeuf, wearing the red
heel and the blue ribbon, a stripling and a marquis,
— M. de Crequi, — comes to Ferney, and writes
with an air of superiority : " I have seen Voltaire,
that old dotard."
That the unjust should receive a counterstroke
from injustice, is nothing more than right; and
Voltaire gets what he deserves. But to throw
stones at men of genius is a general law, and all
have to bear it. To be insulted is, it seems, a
coronation.
For Salmasius, ^Eschylus is nothing but farrago.2
Quintilian understands nothing of ' The Oresteia.'
Sophocles mildly scorned ^Eschylus. " When he
does well, he does not know it," said Sophocles.
Racine rejected everything, except two or three
scenes of ' The Choephori,' which, by a note in the
margin of his copy of yEschylus, he condescended
to spare. Fontenelle says in his 'Remarks' : "One
does not know what to make of the ' Prometheus '
of ^Eschylus. ^Eschylus is a kind of madman."
The eighteenth century, without exception, ridi-
cules Diderot for admiring 'The Eumenides.'
" The whole of Dante is a hotch-potch," says
Chaudon. " Michael Angelo wearies me," says
1 " On m'ose preferer Crebillon le barbare ! "
2 The passage in Salmasius is curious, and worth transcribing :
" Unus ejus Agamemnon obscuritate superat quantum est
librorum sacrorum cum suis hebraismis et synanismis et tota
hellenistica supellectile vel farragine." — De Re Hellenisticd, p. 38,
ep. dedic.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Joseph de Maistre. " Not one of the eight come-
dies of Cervantes is tolerable," says La Harpe.
" It is a pity that Moliere does not know how to
write," says Fenelon. " Moliere is a base mounte-
bank," says Bossuet. "A schoolboy would have
avoided the mistakes of Milton," says the Abbe
Trublet, — an authority as good as any other.
"Corneille exaggerates, Shakespeare raves," says
Voltaire again, — Voltaire, who must ever be re-
sisted, and ever defended.
" Shakespeare," says Ben Jonson, " talked heavily
and without any wit." How prove the contrary?
What is written abides ; talk passes away. Still, so
much stands denied to Shakespeare. That man of
genius had no wit : how that flatters the numberless
men of wit who have no genius !
Some time before Scudery called Corneille
"corneille deplumee" (unfeathered carrion-crow),
Greene had called Shakespeare "a crow beautified
with our feathers." In 1752 Diderot was sent to
the fortress of Vincennes for having published the
first volume of the ' Encyclopaedia/ and the great
success of the year was a print sold on the quays
which represented a Gray Friar flogging Diderot
Death is always an extenuating circumstance for
those guilty of genius ; but although Weber is dead,
he is ridiculed in Germany, and for thirty-three
years a masterpiece has been disposed of by a
pun. * Euryanthe ' is called the ' Ennuyante '
[tedious woman].
D'Alembert hits at one blow Calderon and
Shakespeare. He writes to Voltaire [letter cv.] :
" I have announced to the Academy your ' Herac-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 253
lius ' of Calderon. The Academy will read it with
as much pleasure as the harlequinade of Gilles
Shakespeare."
That everything should be perpetually re-exam-
ined, that everything should be contested, even the
incontestable, — what does it matter? The eclipse
is a good test of truth as well as of liberty. Genius,
being truth and liberty, has a claim to persecution.
What does genius care for what is transient? It
has been, and will be again. It is not toward the
sun that the eclipse casts a shadow.
Anything admits of being written. Paper is
very patient. Last year a grave review printed
this : " Homer is about to go out of fashion."
The judgment passed on the philosopher, on the
artist, on the poet, is completed by the portrait of
the man.
Byron killed his tailor ; Moliere married his
own daughter ; Shakespeare " loved " Lord
Southampton !
" At last, with their appetites whetted for vices,
The pit roared for the author/that compend of all." l
This compendium of all the vices is Beaumarchais.
As for Byron, we mention this name a second
time ; he is worth the trouble. Read ' Glenarvon/
and listen, on the subject of Byron's abominations,
to Lady Bl , whom he had loved, and who, of
course, resented it.
Phidias was a procurer ; Socrates was an apos-
tate and a thief, " a detacher of mantles ; " Spinoza
1 " Et pour voir a la fin tous les vices ensemble,
Le parterre en tumulte a demande 1'auteur."
254 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
was a renegade and a legacy-hunter ; Dante was a
peculator ; Michael Angelo was cudgelled by Julius
II., and quietly put up with it for the sake of five
hundred crowns ; D' Aubigne was a courtier sleep-
ing in the king's closet, ill-tempered when he was
not paid, and to whom Henry IV. was too kind ;
Diderot was a libertine ; Voltaire a miser ; Milton
was venal, — he received a thousand pounds ster-
ling for his Latin apology for regicide : ' Defensio
pro se,'1 etc. Who says these things? who re-
lates these stories? That good person, your old
fawning friend, O tyrants; your old comrade, O
traitors ; your old auxiliary, O bigots ; your old
comforter, O imbeciles ! — Calumny.
CHAPTER II.
LET us add one particular, — diatribe is, upon
occasion, a means of government.
Thus in the print of ' Diderot flogged/ the
hand of the police appeared, and the engraver of
the Gray Friar must have been of close kin to the
turnkey of Vincennes. Governments, more pas-
sionate than is necessary, fail to keep aloof from
the animosities of the crowd below. The political
persecution of former days — it is of former days
that we are speaking — willingly availed itself of
a dash of literary persecution. Certainly, hatred
1 The work referred to is probably Milton's ' Defensio Populi
Anglicani/ written by way of reply to Salmasius. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 255
hates without being paid for it. Envy, to do its
work does not need a minister of state to encourage
and pension it, and there is such a thing as unofficial
calumny. But a money-bag does no harm. When
Roy, the court-poet, rhymed against Voltaire,
" Tell me, daring stoic," etc., the position of
treasurer of the excise office of Clermont, and the
cross of St. Michael, were not likely to damp his
enthusiasm for the court, and his spirit against Vol-
taire. A gratuity is pleasant to receive after a ser-
vice rendered. The masters upstairs smile; you
receive the agreeable order to insult some one you
detest ; you obey amply ; you are free to bite ad
libitum; you take your fill: it is all profit; you
hate, and you give satisfaction. Formerly, autho-
rity had its scribes. It was a pack of hounds as
good as any other. Against the free rebellious
spirit, the despot would let loose the scribbler. To
torture was not sufficient; teasing was resorted to
likewise. Trissotin would hold a confabulation
with Vidocq, and from their tete-a-tete a complex
inspiration would result. Pedantry, thus supported
by the police, felt itself an integral part of authority,
and strengthened its aesthetics with legal means.
It grew haughty. No arrogance is equal to that
of the base pedant raised to the dignity of bum-
bailiff. See, after the struggle between the Armin-
ians and the Gomarists, with what a superb air
Sparanus Buyter, his pockets full of Maurice of
Nassau's florins, denounces Joost Vondel, and
proves, Aristotle in hand, that the Palamedes of
Vondel's tragedy is no other than Barneveldt ! —
useful rhetoric, by which Buyter obtains against
256 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Vondel a fine of three hundred crowns, and for
himself a fat prebend at Dordrecht.
The author of the book, ' Literary Quarrels,' the
Abbe Irail, canon of Monistrol, asks of La Beau-
melle, " Why do you insult M. de Voltaire so
much ? " " It is because it sells well," replies La
Beaumelle. And Voltaire, informed of the ques-
tion and of the reply, concludes : " Precisely so :
the simpleton buys the writing, and the minister
buys the writer. It sells well."
Fran^oise d'Issembourg de Happoncourt, wife
of Francois Hugo, chamberlain of Lorraine, and
celebrated under the name of Madame de Graf-
figny, writes to M. Devaux, reader to King Stan-
islaus : " My dear Pampan, Atys being sent away
(Read: Voltaire being banished), the police cause
to be published against him a swarm of small writ-
ings and pamphlets, which are sold at a sou in the
cafes and theatres. That would displease the Mar-
quise,1 if it did not please the King."
Desfontaines, that other insulter of Voltaire, —
who had rescued him from the mad-house of
Bicetre, — said to the Abb6 Provost, who advised
him to make his peace with the philosopher: "If
Algiers did not make war, Algiers would die of
hunger."
This Desfontaines, also an abbe\ died of dropsy ;
and his well-known tastes gained for him this epi-
taph : " Periit aqua qui meruit igne."
Among the publications suppressed in the last
century by decree of parliament, is found a docu-
ment printed by Quinet and Besogne, and destroyed
1 Madame de Pompadour.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
doubtless because of the revelations which it con-
tained, and of which the title gave promise : ' The
Aretiniad ; : or, Price-list of Libellers and Abusive
Men of Letters.'
Madame de Stael, exiled to a distance of forty-
five leagues from Paris, stops exactly at the forty-
five leagues, — at Beaumont-sur-Loire, — and thence
writes to her friends. Here is a fragment of a let-
ter addressed to Madame Gay, mother of the illus-
trious Madame de Girardin : " Ah, dear madame,
what a persecution are these exiles ! " (We sup-
press some lines.) " You write a book ; it is for-
bidden to speak of it. Your name in the journals
displeases. Permission is, however, fully given to
speak ill of it"
CHAPTER III.
SOMETIMES the diatribe is sprinkled with quick-
lime.
All these black pen-nibs end by digging dismal
pits.
Among the writers abhorred for having been
useful, Voltaire and Rousseau stand in the first rank.
Living, they were lacerated ; dead, they were man-
gled. To have a hack at these renowned ones was
a splendid deed, and set down as such in the bills
of service of literary catchpolls. To insult Voltaire
even once, was enough to give one the rank of
1 From Pietro Aretino, the literary jackal of the sixteenth cen-
tury. — TR.
258 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
pedant-laureate. Men of power egged on the men
of libel. A swarm of mosquitoes settled upon
these two illustrious men, and the insects are still
humming.
Voltaire is the more hated, being the greater.
Everything was good for an attack on him, every-
thing was a pretext: the princesses of France,
Newton, Madame du Chatelet, the Princess of Prus-
sia, Maupertuis, Frederick, the Encyclopaedia, the
Academy, even Labarre, Sirven, and Galas. Never
a truce. His popularity suggested to Joseph de
Maistre this line: "Paris crowned him; Sodom
would have banished him." Arouet was translated
into A rouer.1 At the house of the Abbess of
Nivelles, Princess of the Holy Empire, half recluse
and half wordling, — having recourse, it is said, in
order to make her cheeks rosy, to the method of
the Abbess of Montbazon, — charades were played ;
among others, this one : " The first syllable is his
fortune; the second should be his duty." The
word was Vol-taire.2 A celebrated member of the
Academy of Sciences, Napoleon Bonaparte, seeing
in 1803, in the library of the Institute, this inscrip-
tion in the centre of a crown of laurels, " To the
Great Voltaire," scratched with his nail the last
three letters, leaving only " To the Great Volta ! "
Around Voltaire especially there is a sanitary
cordon of priests, the Abbe Desfontaines at the
head, the Abbe Nicolardot at the tail. Freron,
although a layman, is a critic after the priestly
fashion, and belongs to this band.
1 Deserving of being broken on the wheel. — TR.
2 Volt " theft," taire, " to be silent. " — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 2$$
It was at the Bastile that Voltaire made his debut.
His cell was next to the dungeon in which Bernard
Palissy had died. Young, he tasted the prison;
old, he tasted exile. He was kept twenty-seven
years away from Paris.
Jean-Jacques, being wild and somewhat solitary,
was, in consequence of these traits, hunted about.
Paris issued a writ against his person ; Geneva ex-
pelled him ; Neufchatel rejected him : Motiers-
Travers condemned him; Bienne stoned him;
Berne gave him the choice between prison and
expulsion; London, hospitable London, scoffed
at him.
Both died at about the same time.1 Death
caused no interruption to the outrages. A man is
dead; insult does not slacken pursuit for such a
trifle. Hatred can feast on a corpse. Libels con-
tinued, piously rabid against such glory.
The Revolution came, and placed them in the
Pantheon.
At the beginning of this century, children were
often brought to see these two graves. They were
told, " It is here ! " That made a strong impression
on their minds. They carried forever in their
thought that vision of two sepulchres side by
side: the elliptical arch of the vault, the antique
form of the two monuments provisionally covered
with wood painted like marble ; these two names,
ROUSSEAU, VOLTAIRE, in the twilight ; and the
hand bearing a torch which was thrust out of
the tomb of Jean-Jacques.
Louis XVIII. returned. The restoration of the
1 Voltaire died May 30, 1778 ; Rousseau, four days later. — TR.
26O WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Stuarts had torn Cromwell from his grave; the
restoration of the Bourbons could not do less for
Voltaire.
One night, in May, 1814, about two o'clock in
the morning, a cab stopped near the city-gate of
La Gare, opposite Bercy, at a door in a board fence.
This fence surrounded a large vacant piece of
ground, reserved for the projected warehouses, and
belonging to the city of Paris. The cab had come
from the Pantheon, and the coachman had been
ordered to take the most deserted streets. The
fence-gate was opened. Some men alighted from
the cab and entered the inclosure. Two carried
a sack between them. They were conducted, so
tradition asserts, by the Marquis de Puymaurin,
afterward deputy to the Invisible Chamber l and
Director of the Mint, accompanied by his brother,
the Comte de Puymaurin. Other men, some in
cassocks, were awaiting them. They proceeded
toward a hole dug in the middle of the field. This
hole — according to one of the witnesses, who has
since been a waiter at the Marronniers inn at La
Rapee — was round, and looked like a dry well.
At the bottom of the hole was quicklime. These
men said nothing, and had no lanterns. The wan
daybreak gave a ghastly light. The sack was
opened. It was full of bones. These were the
intermingled bones of Jean-Jacques and of Voltaire,
which had just been withdrawn from the Pantheon.
The mouth of the sack was brought close to the
hole, and the bones were thrown into that black
1 " Chambre introuvable," referring to the French Chamber of
Deputies of 1815. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 26 1
pit. The two skulls struck against each other: a
spark, not likely to be seen by such men as those
present, was doubtless exchanged between the head
that had made 'The Philosophical Dictionary' and
the head that had made 'The Social Contract/ and
reconciled them. When that was done, when the
sack had been shaken, when Voltaire and Rousseau
had been emptied into that hole, a digger seized a
spade, threw into the opening the heap of earth at
the side, and filled up the grave. The others
stamped with their feet on the ground, so as to
remove from it the appearance of having been
freshly disturbed; one of the assistants took for
his trouble the sack, — as the hangman takes the
clothing of his victim ; they left the inclosure,
shut the gate, got into the cab without saying a
word, and hastily, before the sun had risen, these
men got away.
CHAPTER IV.
SALMASIUS, that worse Scaliger, does not com-
prehend ^Eschylus, and rejects him. Who is to
blame? Salmasius much; ^Eschylus little.
The attentive man who reads great works feels
at times, in the midst of his reading, certain sudden
chills, followed by a kind of excess of heat, —
" I no longer understand ! . . . I understand ! " —
shivering and burning, something which causes
him to be a little upset at the same time that he
is very much struck. Only minds of the first
262 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
order, only men of supreme genius, subject to
absences in the infinite, give to the reader this
singular sensation, — stupor for the most, ecstasy for
a few. These few are the children of light. As
we have already observed, these select few, gather-
ing from century to century, and continually gain-
ing recruits, at last become numerous, and make
up the supreme company, the definitive public of
genius, and like it, sovereign.
It is with this public that, first or last, one must
deal.
Meanwhile there is another public ; there are
other appraisers, other judges, to whom we have
just now given a word. These are not content.
The men of genius, the great minds, — this
^Eschylus, this Isaiah, this Juvenal, this Dante,
this Shakespeare, — are beings imperious, tumul-
tuous, violent, passionate, hard riders of winged
steeds, " overleaping all boundaries," having their
own goal, which itself " is beyond the mark,"
" exaggerated," taking scandalous strides, flying
abruptly from one idea to another, and from the
North Pole to the South Pole, crossing the heavens
in three steps, making little allowance for the scant
of breath, shaken by all the winds of space, and
at the same time full of some unaccountable
equestrian confidence amidst their bounds across
the abyss, intractable to the " Aristarchs," refrac-
tory to official rhetoric, not amiable to asthmatic
literati, unsubdued to academic hygiene, preferring
the foam of Pegasus to ass's-milk.
The worthy pedants are kind enough to fear for
them. The ascent occasions a calculation of the
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 263
fall. Compassionate cripples lament for Shake-
speare. He is mad ; he mounts too high ! The
mob of college scouts (they are a mob) look on in
wonder, and get angry. ^Eschylus and Dante
make these connoisseurs blink every moment.
This ^Eschylus is lost ! This Dante is near falling !
A god spreads his wings for flight: the Philis-
tines cry out to him, " Mind yourself! "
CHAPTER V.
BESIDES, these men of genius are disconcerting.
There is no reckoning with them. Their lyric
fury obeys them ; they interrupt it when they like.
They seem wild. Suddenly they stop. Their
frenzy becomes melancholy. They are seen among
the precipices, alighting on a peak and folding
their wings ; and then they give way to meditation.
Their meditation is not less surprising than their
transport. Just now they were soaring, now they are
sinking shafts. But their audacity is ever the same.
They are pensive giants. Their Titanic revery
needs the absolute and the unfathomable for its
expansion. They meditate as the suns shine, con-
ditioned by the medium of the abyss around them.
Their roving to and fro in the ideal dizzies the
observer. Nothing is too high for them, and noth-
ing too low. They pass from the pigmy to the
Cyclops, from Polyphemus to the Myrmidons,
from Queen Mab to Caliban, from a love-affair to
a deluge, from Saturn's rings to a child's doll.
264 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Sinite parvulos venire. One of their eyes is a tele-
scope, the other a microscope. They investigate
familiarly those two frightful inverse depths, — the
infinitely great, and the infinitely little.
And one should not be angry with them ! and
one should not reproach them for all this ! In-
deed, what would result if such excesses were to
be tolerated ? What ! No scruple in the choice
of subjects, horrible or sad ; and the thought, even
if it be distressing and formidable, always relent-
lessly followed up to its extreme consequence !
These poets see only their own aim ; and in every-
thing they have an immoderate way of doing things.
What is Job? A maggot upon a sore. What is
the Divina Commedia? A series of torments.
What is the Iliad? A collection of plagues and
wounds. Not an artery cut which is not com-
placently described. Go about for opinions of
Homer ; ask Scaliger, Terrasson, Lamotte, what
they think of him. The fourth of a canto to the
shield of Achilles — what want of proportion ! He
who does -not know when to stop, never knew how
to write. These poets agitate, disturb, trouble,
upset, overwhelm, make everything shiver, break
things occasionally here and there ; they may do
mischief, — the thing is serious ! Thus speak the
Athenaea, the Sorbonnes, the sworn professors, the
societies called " learned," Salmasius, successor of
Scaliger at the University of Leyden, and the
Philistines after them, — all who represent in liter-
ature and art the great party of order. What can
be more natural? The cough quarrels with the
hurricane.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 26$
Those who are poor in wit are joined by those
who have too much wit. The sceptics join hands
with the simpletons. Men of genius, with few ex-
ceptions, are proud and stern ; that is in the very
marrow of their bones. They have in their com-
pany Juvenal, Agrippa d'Aubigne, and Milton;
they are prone to harshness ; they despise the
panetn et circenses ; they seldom grow sociable, and
they growl. People do well to rally them in a
pleasant way.
Aha, Poet ! Aha, Milton ! Aha, Juvenal ! So
you keep up resistance ! you perpetuate disinter-
estedness ! you bring together those two firebrands,
faith and will, in order to draw flame from them !
So there is something of the Vestal in you, old
grumbler ! So you have an altar, — your country !
you have a tripod, — the ideal ! you believe in the
rights of man, in emancipation, in the future, in
progress, in the beautiful, in the just, in what is
great ! Take care ; you are behindhand ! All
this virtue is infatuation. You emigrate with honor,
— but you emigrate. This heroism is no longer in
good form. It no longer suits the spirit of the
time. There comes a moment when the sacred
fire is no longer fashionable. Poet, you believe in
right and truth; you are behind your age. Your
very immortality makes you a thing of the past.
So much the worse, without doubt, for those
grumbling geniuses accustomed to greatness, and
scornful of what is not great. They are slow of
movement when honor is at stake; their back is
struck with anchylosis for anything like bowing
and cringing; when success passes along, deserved
266 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
or not, but saluted, they have an iron bar stiffening
their vertebral column. That is their affair. So
much the worse for those antique Romans. They
are ready to be relegated to antiquarian museums.
To bristle up at every turn may have been all very
well in former days ; these unkempt manes are no
longer worn ; lions went out of fashion with the
perukes. The French Revolution is nearly seventy-
five years old ; at that age dotage comes. The
people of the present time mean to belong to their
day, and even to their minute. Certainly, we find
no fault with this. Whatever is, must be; it is
quite right that what exists should exist ; the
forms of public prosperity are diverse ; one gen-
eration is not bound to imitate another. Cato took
example from Phocion ; Trimalchio, who is suf-
ficiently unlike either, embodies the idea of inde-
pendence. You bad-tempered old fellows, you
wish us to emancipate ourselves? Let it be so.
We disencumber ourselves of the imitation of
Timoleon, Thrasea, Artevelde, Thomas More,
Hampden. This is our way of emancipating our-
selves. You wish for a revolt, — there it is. You
wish for an insurrection, — we rise up against our
rights. We enfranchise ourselves from the solici-
tudes of freedom. Citizenship is a heavy burden.
Rights entangled with obligations are shackles to
one who desires mere enjoyment. It is fatiguing
to be guided by conscience and truth in all the
steps that we take. We mean to walk without
leading-strings and without principles. Duty is a
chain ; we break our shackles. What do you mean
by speaking to us of Franklin ? Franklin is a rather
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 267
too servile copy of Aristides. We carry our horror
of servility so far as to prefer Grimod de la Reyniere.
To eat and drink well is an aim in life. Each epoch
has its peculiar manner of being free. Feasting is
freedom. This way of reasoning is triumphant; to
adhere to it is wise. There have been, it is true,
epochs when people thought otherwise. In those
times the things which were trodden on would
sometimes resent it, and would rebel; but that
was the ancient fashion, ridiculous now; and tire-
some people and croakers must just be allowed to
go on affirming that there was a better notion of
right, justice, and honor in the paving-stones of
yore than in the men of the present.
The rhetoricians, official and officious, — we have
pointed out already their wonderful sagacity, — take
strong precautions against men of genius. Men of
genius are but slightly academic; what is more,
they do not abound in commonplaces. They are
lyrists, colorists, enthusiasts, enchanters, possessed,
exalted, " rabid," — we have read the word, — beings
who, when everybody is small, have a mania for
creating great characters ; in fact, they have every
vice. A doctor has recently discovered that genius
is a variety of madness. They are Michael Angelo
chiselling giants, Rembrandt painting with a pal-
ette all bedaubed with the sun's rays ; they are
Dante, Rabelais, Shakespeare, — excessive. They
bring with them a style of art wild, howling, flam-
ing, dishevelled like the lion and the comet. Oh,
shocking ! People are right in forming combina-
tions against them. It is a fortunate circumstance
that the " teetotallers " of eloquence and poetry
268 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
exist. " I admire pallor," said a literary Philistine
one day, — for there is a literary Philistine. Rhet-
oricians, solicitous on account of the contagions
and fevers which are spread by genius, recommend,
with a lofty wisdom which we have commended,
temperance, moderation, " common sense," the art
of keeping within bounds ; writers expurgated,
trimmed, pruned, regulated ; the worship of the
qualities that the malignant call negative, — conti-
nence, abstinence, Joseph, Scipio, the water-drinkers.
All this is excellent ; only young students must be
warned that by following these sage precepts too
closely they run the risk of glorifying the chastity
of the eunuch. Perhaps I admire Bayard; I ad-
mire Origen less.
CHAPTER VI.
SUMMARY statement: Great minds are impor-
tunate; it is judicious to restrain them a little.
After all, let us admit it at last, and complete
our statement : there is some truth in the re-
proaches that are hurled at them. This anger is
natural. The powerful, the grand, the luminous,
are, from a certain point of view, things calculated
to offend. To be surpassed is never agreeable;
to feel one's own inferiority is to feel a pang. The
beautiful exists so truly by itself that it certainly
has no need of pride; nevertheless, given human
mediocrity, the beautiful humiliates at the same
time that it enchants : it seems natural that beauty
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 269
should be a vase for pride, — a brimming vase;
so that the pleasure beauty gives is tainted with
resentment, and the word "superb " comes finally to
have two senses, one of which breeds distrust of the
other. This is the fault of the beautiful, as we
have already said. It wearies : a sketch by Pira-
nesi disconcerts you ; the hand-grasp of Hercules
bruises you. Greatness is sometimes in the wrong.
It is ingenuous, but obstructive. The tempest
thinks to sprinkle you : it drowns you ; the star
thinks to give light: it dazzles, sometimes blinds.
The Nile fertilizes, but overflows. Excess does
not comport with comfort: the deeps of space
form but an inhospitable dwelling-place ; the
infinite is scarcely tenantable. A cottage is badly
situated on the cataract of Niagara, or in the circus
of Gavarnie; it is awkward to keep house with
these fierce wonders : to frequent them regularly
without being overwhelmed, one must be a cretin
or a genius.
The dawn itself at times seems to us immoderate :
he who looks straight at it, suffers; the eye at
certain moments thinks very ill of the sun. Let
us not, then, be surprised at the complaints made,
at the incessant protests, at the fits of passion and
prudence, at the poultices applied by a certain
school of criticism, at the chronic ophthalmy of
academies and teaching bodies, at the precautions
suggested to the reader, at all the curtains drawn
and at all the shades set up against genius.
Genius is intolerant unawares, because it is genius.
What familiarity is possible with ^Eschylus, with
Ezekiel, with Dante?
2 70 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
The self is one's title to egoism. Now, the first
thing that those beings do, is to shock the self of
every man. Exorbitant in everything, — in thoughts,
in images, in convictions, in emotions, in passion,
in faith, — whatever may be the side of yourself
to which they address themselves, they disturb it.
They overshoot your intelligence ; they dazzle the
inner eye of imagination ; they question and search
your conscience; they wrench your deepest sen-
sibilities ; they tear your heart-strings ; they sweep
away your soul.
The infinite that is in them passes from them,
and multiplies them, and transfigures them before
your eyes every moment, — a fearful strain upon
the vision ! - With them, you never know where
you are. At every turn you encounter the unfore-
seen. You were looking for men only : there
come giants who cannot enter your chamber. You
expected only an Idea: cast down your eyes, for
they are the ideal. You expected only eagles :
these beings have six wings, they are seraphs.
Are they then beyond Nature? Are they lacking
in humanity?
Certainly not; and far from that, and quite the
reverse. We have already said, and we insist upon
it, Nature and humanity are in them more than in
any other beings. They are superhuman men, but
men. Homo sum. This word of a poet sums up
all poetry. Saint Paul strikes his breast, and says,
" Peccamus." Job tells you who he is : "I am the
son of a woman." They are men. What troubles
you is that they are men more than you ; they are
too much men. Where you have but the part, they
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 2/1
have the whole; they carry in their vast heart
entire humanity, and they are you more than your-
self; you recognize yourself too much in their
work, — hence your outcry. To that total of
Nature, to that complete humanity, to that clay
which is all your flesh, and which is at the same
time the whole earth, they add something; and
this marvellous reflection of the light of unknown
suns completes your terror. They have vistas of
revelation ; and suddenly, and without crying
"Beware ! " at the moment when you least expect
it, they burst the cloud, and make in the zenith a
gap whence falls a ray lighting up the terrestrial
with the celestial. It is quite natural that people
should have no great fancy for their company, and
no taste for neighborly intimacy with them.
Whoever has not a soul well attempered by a
vigorous education prefers to avoid them. For
colossal books there must be athletic readers. To
open Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Job, Pindar, Lucretius,
and this Alighieri, and this Shakespeare, one must
be robust. Let it be owned that commonplace
habits, a vulgar life, the dead calm of the con-
science, "good taste" and "common sense," — all
petty and placid egoism, — are disturbed by the
portents of the sublime.
Yet, when one plunges in and reads them,
nothing is more hospitable for the mind at certain
hours than these stern spirits. They suddenly as-
sume a lofty gentleness, as unexpected as the rest.
They say to you, " Come in !" They receive you
at home with an archangelic fraternity. They
are affectionate, sad, melancholy, consoling. You
2/2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
are suddenly at your ease. You feel yourself
loved by them ; you almost imagine yourself per-
sonally known to them. Their sternness and their
pride veil a profound sympathy ; if granite had a
heart, how deep would its goodness be ! Well,
genius is granite with goodness. Extreme power
goes with great love. They join you in your
prayers. Such men know well that God exists.
Apply your ear to these giants, and you will hear
their hearts beat. Would you believe, love, weep,
beat your breast, fall upon your knees, raise your
hands to heaven with confidence and serenity?
Listen to these poets : they will aid you to rise
toward a wholesome and fruitful sorrow; they will
make you feel the heavenly use of emotion. Oh,
goodness of the strong! Their emotion, which, if
they will, can be an earthquake, is at moments so
cordial and so gentle that it seems like the rocking
of a cradle. They have just quickened within you
something which they foster tenderly. There is
maternity in genius. Advance a step ; a new sur-
prise awaits you: these poets have a grace like
that of Aurora herself.
High mountains have upon their slopes all
climes, and the great poets all styles. It is suffi-
cient to change the zone. Go up, it is the tem-
pest; descend, the flowers are there. The inner
fire accommodates itself to the winter without; the
glacier makes an admirable crater; and the lava
has no finer outlet than through the snow. A
sudden blaze of flame is not strange on a polar
summit. This contact of the extremes is a law in
Nature, in which the theatrical strokes of the sub-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 273
lime are exhibited at every moment. A moun-
tain, a genius, — both possess an austere majesty.
These masses evolve a sort of religious intimida-
tion. Dante is not less precipitous than Etna;
Shakspeare's heights equal the steeps of Chimbo-
razo. The summits of the poets are not less cloud-
piercing than mountain peaks. There thunders
roll; while in the valleys, in passes, in sheltered
nooks, at the bottom of canons, are rivulets,
birds, nests, foliage, enchantments, extraordinary
floras. Above the frightful arch of the Aveyron,
in the middle of the Mer de Glace, there is that
paradise called " The Garden " — have you seen it?
What a freak of Nature ! A hot sun, a shade tepid
and fresh, a vague exudation of perfumes on the
grass-plots, an indescribable month of May per-
petually crouching amid precipices. Nothing can
be more tender and more exquisite. Such are the
poets ; such are the Alps. These vast, dreadful
heights are marvellous growers of roses and violets.
They avail themselves of the dawn and of the dew
better than all your meadows and all your hills,
whose natural business it is. The April of the
plain is flat and vulgar compared with their April,
and they have, those immense old mountains, in
their wildest ravine, their own charming spring-tide
well known to the bees.
18
BOOK IV.
CRITICISM.
CHAPTER I.
ALL Shakespeare's plays, with the exception
of ' Macbeth ' and ' Romeo and Juliet/ —
thirty-four plays out of thirty-six, — offer to the
observer one peculiarity which seems to have es-
caped, up to this day, the most eminent commen-
tators and critics ; one which is unnoticed by the
Schlegels, and even by M. Villemain himself, in
his remarkable labors, and of which it is impossible
not to speak. It is the double action which trav-
erses the drama and reflects it on a small scale.
Beside the tempest in the Atlantic is the tempest
in the tea-cup. Thus, Hamlet makes beneath him-
self a Hamlet ; he kills Polonius, father of Laertes,
— and there stands Laertes over against him ex-
actly as he stands over against Claudius. There
are two fathers to avenge. There might be two
ghosts. So, in ' King Lear/ side by side and
simultaneously, Lear, driven to despair by his
daughters Goneril and Regan, and consoled by
his daughter Cordelia, is repeated in Gloster,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 275
betrayed by his son Edmund and loved by his son
Edgar. The idea bifurcated, the idea echoing
itself, a lesser drama copying and elbowing the
principal drama, the action attended by its moon,
— a smaller action like it, — unity cut in two ;
surely the fact is a strange one. These double
actions have been strongly condemned by the few
commentators who have pointed them out. In
this condemnation we do not sympathize. Do we
then approve and accept as good these double
actions? By no means. We recognize them, and
that is all. The drama of Shakespeare — as we
said with all our force as far back as 1827,* in
order to discourage all imitation — the drama of
Shakespeare is peculiar to Shakespeare; it is a
drama inherent in this poet; it is his own essence;
it is himself. Thence his originalities, which are
absolutely personal ; thence his idiosyncrasies, ?
which exist without establishing a law. _J
These double actions are purely Shakespearian.
Neither yEschylus nor Moliere would admit them ;
and we should certainly agree with ^Eschylus and
Moliere.
These double actions are, moreover, the sign of
the sixteenth century. Each epoch has its own
mysterious stamp. The centuries have a signature
which they affix to masterpieces, and which it is
necessary to know how to decipher and recognize.
The signature of the sixteenth century is not that
of the eighteenth. The Renascence was a subtle
time, a time of reflection. The spirit of the six-
teenth century was reflected in a mirror. Every
1 Preface to ' Cromwell.'
2/6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
idea of the Renascence has a double compartment.
Look at the rood-lofts in the churches. The Re-
nascence, with an exquisite and fantastical art,
always makes the Old Testament an adumbration
of the New. The double action is there in every-
thing. The symbol explains the personage by
repeating his gesture. If, in a low-relief, Jehovah
sacrifices his son, he has for a neighbor, in the next
low-relief, Abraham sacrificing his son. Jonah
passes three days in the whale, and Jesus passes
three days in the sepulchre ; and the jaws of the
monster swallowing Jonah answer to the mouth of
hell engulfing Jesus.
The carver of the rood-loft of Fecamp, so stupidly
demolished, goes so far as to give for a counterpart
to St. Joseph — whom? Amphitryon.
These singular parallels constitute one of the
habits of the profound and far-sought art of the
sixteenth century. Nothing can be more curious
in that manner than the use which was made of
St. Christopher. In the Middle Ages and in the
sixteenth century, in paintings and sculptures, St.
Christopher — the good giant martyred by Decius
in 250, recorded by the Bollandists and accepted
imperturbably by Baillet — is always triple, an
opportunity for the triptych. To begin with, there
is a first Christ-bearer, a first Christophorus ; this is
Christopher with the infant Jesus on his shoulders.
Next, the Virgin with child is a Christopher, since
she carries Christ. Lastly, the cross is a Chris-
topher; it also carries Christ. This treble illus-
tration of the idea is immortalized by Rubens
in the cathedral of Antwerp. The twin idea, the
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 277
4
triple idea, — such is the stamp of the sixteenth
century.
Shakespeare, faithful to the spirit of his time,
must needs add Laertes avenging his father to
Hamlet avenging his father, and cause Hamlet
to be pursued by Laertes at the same time that
Claudius is pursued by Hamlet; he must needs
make the filial piety of Edgar a comment on the
filial piety of Cordelia, and bring out in contrast,
weighed down by the ingratitude of unnatural
children, two wretched fathers, each bereaved of
one of the two kinds of light, — Lear mad, and
Gloster blind.
CHAPTER II.
WHAT then? No criticisms? No strictures?
You explain everything? Yes. Genius is an en-
tity like Nature, and requires, like Nature, to be
accepted purely and simply. A mountain must
be accepted as such, or left alone. There are men
who would make a criticism on the Himalayas,
pebble by pebble. Mount Etna blazes and sput-
ters, throws out its glare, its wrath, its lava, and its
ashes; these men take scales and weigh these
ashes, pinch by pinch. Quot libras in monte
summo? Meanwhile genius continues its erup-
tion. Everything in it has its reason for existing.
It is because it is. Its shadow is the under-side of
its light. Its smoke comes from its flame. Its
precipice is the condition of its height. We love
2/8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
*
this more, and that less; but we remain silent
wherever we feel God. We are in the forest ; the
crossed grain of the tree is its secret. The sap
knows what it is doing; the root understands its
trade. We take things as they are; we are on
good terms with what is excellent, tender, or mag-
nificent; we acquiesce in masterpieces; we do not
make use of one to find fault with the other; we
do not insist that Phidias should sculpture cathe-
drals, nor that Pinaigrier should glaze temples.
The temple is harmony, the cathedral is mystery;
they are two different models of the sublime : we
do not claim for the minster the perfection of the
Parthenon, nor for the Parthenon the grandeur of
the minster.
We are so far whimsical as to be satisfied if a
thing is beautiful. We do not reproach for its
sting the insect that gives us honey. We renounce
our right to criticise the feet of the peacock, the
cry of the swan, the plumage of the nightingale,
the larva of the butterfly, the thorn of the rose,
the odor of the lion, the hide of the elephant, the
prattle of the cascade, the pips of the orange,
the immobility of the Milky Way, the saltness of
the ocean, the spots on the sun, the nakedness
of Noah.
The quandoque bonus dormitat is permitted to
Horace. We raise no objection. What is certain
is that Homer would not say this of Horace, he
would not take the trouble. But that eagle would
find this chattering humming-bird charming enough.
I grant it is pleasant to a man to feel himself supe-
rior, and to say, " Homer is puerile, Dante is child-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 279
ish." The smile accompanying such a remark is
rather becoming. Why not crush these poor ge-
niuses a little? To be the Abbe Trublet, and to
say, " Milton is a schoolboy," is agreeable. How
witty is the man who finds that Shakespeare has no
wit! That man is La Harpe, Delandine, Auger;
he is, was, or shall be, an Academician. " All
these great men are full of extravagance, bad
taste, and childishness." What a fine decision to
render ! These manners tickle their possessors
voluptuously; and, in reality, when they have said,
" This giant is small," they can fancy that they are
great. Every man has his own way. As for my-
self, the writer of these lines, I admire everything,
like a fool.
That is why I have written this book.
To admire, — to be an enthusiast, — it has struck
me that it was well to give, in our century, this
example of folly.
CHAPTER III.
LOOK, therefore, for no criticism. I admire
^Eschylus, I admire Juvenal, I admire Dante in the
mass, in the lump, all. I do not cavil at those
great benefactors. What you characterize as a
fault, I call accent. I accept, and give thanks. The
marvels of the human mind being my inheritance,
I claim no exemption from the liabilities of the
succession. Pegasus being given to me, I do not
28O WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
look the gift-horse in the mouth. A masterpiece
offers me its hospitality: I approach it hat in
hand, and I admire the countenance of my host.
Gilles Shakespeare, — be it so. I admire Shake-
speare, and I admire Gilles. Falstaff is proposed
to me, — I accept him, and I admire the " Empty
the jorden." I admire the senseless cry, " A rat ! "
I admire the quips of Hamlet; I admire the whole-
sale murders of Macbeth; I admire the witches,
"that ridiculous spectacle;" I admire "the but-
tock of the night; " I admire the eye plucked from
Gloucester. I have no more intelligence than that
comes to.
Having recently had the honor to be called
" silly" by several distinguished writers and critics,
and even by my illustrious friend M. de Lamar-
tine,1 I am determined to justify the epithet.
We close with a final observation of detail which
we have specially to make regarding Shakespeare.
Orestes, that fatal senior of Hamlet, is not, as
we have said, the sole link between yEschylus and
Shakespeare ; we have noted a relation, less easily
perceptible, between Prometheus and Hamlet.
The mysterious intimacy between the two poets
appears, with reference to this same Prometheus,
still more strangely striking in a particular which,
up to this time, has escaped the notice of observers
and critics. Prometheus is the grandsire of Mab.
Let us prove it.
Prometheus, like all personages who have be-
1 " The whole biography, sometimes rather puerile, even rather
silly, of Bishop Myriel." — LAMARTINE: Course in Literature (Dis-
course lxxxiv.},p. 385.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 28 1
come legendary, — like Solomon, like Caesar, like
Mahomet, like Charlemagne, like the Cid, like
Joan of Arc, like Napoleon, — has a double con-
tinuation, the one in history, the other in fable.
Now, the continuation of Prometheus in the fable
is this : —
Prometheus, creator of men, is also creator of
spirits. He is father of a dynasty of Divs, whose
filiation the old metrical romances have preserved :
Elf, that is to say, the Rapid, son of Prometheus ;
then Elfin, king of India; then Elfinan, founder
of Cleopolis, town of the fairies; then Elfilin,
builder of the golden wall ; then Elfinell, winner
of the battle of the demons; then Elfant, who
built Panthea all in crystal ; then Elfar, who killed
Bicephalus and Tricephalus; then Elfinor, the
magian, a kind of Salmoneus, who built over the
sea a bridge of copper, sounding like thunder,
" non imitabile fulmen sere et cornipedum pulsu
simularet equorum ; " then seven hundred princes;
then Elficleos the Sage ; then Elferon the Beauti-
ful; then Oberon; then Mab. Wonderful fable,
which, with a profound meaning, unites the si-
dereal and the microscopic, the infinitely great and
the infinitely small.
And it is thus that the animalcule of Shake-
speare is connected with the giant of ^Eschylus.
The fairy, — drawn athwart men's noses as they
lie asleep, in her chariot covered with the wings of
grasshoppers, by eight little atomies harnessed
with moonbeams and whipped with a lash of film,
— the fairy atom has for ancestor the huge Titan,
robber of stars, nailed on the Caucasus, having
282 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
one hand on the Caspian Gates, the other on the
Gates of Ararat, one heel on the source of the
Phasis, the other on the Validus-Murus, closing
the passage between the mountain and the sea, —
a colossus whose vast profile of shadow was pro-
jected by the sun, according to its rising or setting,
now over Europe as far as Corinth, now over Asia
as far as Bangalore.
Nevertheless, Mab — who is also called Tanaquil
— has all the wavering inconsistency of a dream.
Under the name of Tanaquil she is the wife of the
elder Tarquin, and she spins for young Servius
Tullius the first tunic worn by a young Roman
after leaving off the praetexta ; Oberon, who turns
out to be Numa, is her uncle. In ' Huon de
Bordeaux ' she is called Gloriande, and has for
a lover Julius Caesar, and Oberon is her son; in
Spenser she is called Gloriana, and Oberon is
her father ; in Shakespeare she is called Titania,
and Oberon is her husband. This name, Titania,
connects Mab with the Titan, and Shakespeare
with ./Eschylus.
CHAPTER IV.
AN eminent man of our day, a celebrated his-
torian, a powerful orator, an earlier translator of
Shakespeare, is in our opinion mistaken when he
regrets, or appears to regret, the slight influence
of Shakespeare upon the theatre of the nineteenth
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 283
century. We cannot share that regret. An in-
fluence of any sort, even that of Shakespeare,
could but mar the originality of the literary move-
ment of our epoch. " Xhe system of Shakespeare,"
says this honorable and grave writer, with refer-
ence to that movement, " may furnish, it seems to
me, the plans after which genius must henceforth
work." We have never been of that opinion, and
we said so, in anticipation, forty years ago.1 For
us, Shakespeare is a genius, and not a system. On
this point we have already explained our views,
and we mean soon to explain them at greater
length ; but let us say now that what Shakespeare
has done, is done once for all. There is no revert-
ing to it. Admire or criticise, but do not recast.
It is finished.
A distinguished critic, recently deceased, M.
Chaudesaigues, lays stress on this reproach.
" Shakespeare," says he, " has been revived with-
out being followed. The romantic school has not
imitated Shakespeare; that is its fault." That
is its merit. It is blamed for this; we praise it.
The contemporary theatre, such as it is, is itself.
The contemporary theatre has for device, " Sum,
non sequor." It belongs to no " system." It has
its own law, and it fulfils this law ; it has its own
life, and it lives this life.
The drama of Shakespeare expresses man at a
given moment. Man passes away; this drama
remains, having as its eternal background life,
the heart, the world, and as its foreground the
sixteenth century. This drama can neither be
1 Preface to ' Cromwell.'
284 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
continued nor begun anew. Another age, another
art.
The theatre of our day has no more followed
Shakespeare than it has followed ^Eschylus ! And
without enumerating all the other reasons that we
shall note farther on, how perplexed would he be
who wished to imitate and copy, in making a
choice between these two poets ! ^Eschylus and
Shakespeare seem made to prove that contraries
may be admirable. The point of departure of
the one is absolutely opposite to the point of de-
parture of the other. ^Eschylus is concentration,
Shakespeare is diffusion. One deserves applause
because he is condensed, and the other because he
is dispersed ; to ^schylus unity, to Shakespeare
ubiquity. Between them they divide God. And
as such intelligences are always complete, one
feels in the unit drama of ^Eschylus the free agi-
tation of passion, and in the diffusive drama of
Shakespeare the convergence of all the rays of
life. The one starts from unity and reaches the
multiple; the other starts from the multiple and
arrives at unity.
The evidence of this is striking, especially when
we compare ' Hamlet* with 'Orestes.' Extra-
ordinary double page, obverse and reverse of the
same idea, which seems written expressly to prove
how true it is that two different geniuses, making
the same thing, will make two different things.
It is easy to see that the theatre of our day has,
rightly or wrongly, traced out its own way be-
tween Greek unity and Shakespearian ubiquity.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 285
CHAPTER V.
LET us set aside, for the present, the question of
contemporary art, and take up again the general
question.
Imitation is always barren and bad.
As for Shakespeare, — since Shakespeare is the
poet who claims our attention now, — he is in the
highest degree a genius human and general ; but,
like every true genius, he is at the same time an
idiosyncratic and a personal mind. Axiom: the
poet starts from his own inner self to come to us.
It is that which makes the poet inimitable.
Examine Shakespeare, fathom him, and see how
determined he is to be himself. Expect from him
no concession. He is certainly not selfish, but what
he does he does of deliberate choice. He commands
his art, — within the limits, of course, of his proper
work. For neither the art of ^Eschylus, nor the art
of Aristophanes, nor the art of Plautus, nor the
art of Macchiavelli, nor the art of Calderon, nor
the art of Moliere, nor the art of Beaumarchais, nor
any of the forms of art, deriving life each of them
from the special life of a man of genius, would obey
the orders given by Shakespeare. Art thus under-
stood is vast equality and profound liberty; the
region of equals is also the region of the free.
It is an element of Shakespeare's grandeur that
he cannot be taken as a model. In order to realize
his idiosyncrasy, open one of his plays, — no matter
286 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
which, — it is always, foremost and above all,
Shakespeare.
What more personal than * Troilus and Cres-
sida' ? A comic Troy! Here is 'Much Ado
about Nothing/ — a tragedy which ends with a
burst of laughter. Here is ' The Winter's Tale ' —
a pastoral drama. Shakespeare is at home in his
work. Would you see a despotism? — consider
his imagination. What arbitrary determination to
dream ! What despotic resolution in his dizzy
flight ! What absoluteness in his indecision and
wavering ! The dream fills some of his plays to
such a degree that man changes his nature, and
becomes a cloud rather than a man. Angelo in
* Measure for Measure ' is a misty tyrant. He be-
comes disintegrated, and wears away. Leontes in
' The Winter's Tale ' is an Othello who fades out.
In ' Cymbeline ' one thinks that lachimo will be-
come an lago; but he dissolves. The dream is
there, — everywhere. Watch Manilius, Posthumus,
Hermione, Perdita, passing by. In ' The Tempest*
the Duke of Milan has " a brave son," who is like
a dream within a dream. Ferdinand alone speaks
of him, and no one but Ferdinand seems to have
seen him. A brute becomes reasonable : witness
the constable Elbow in * Measure for Measure.'
An idiot comes suddenly by his wits : witness
Cloten in ' Cymbeline.' A king of Sicily is jealous
of a king of Bohemia. Bohemia has a sea-coast;
the shepherds pick up children there. Theseus,
a duke, espouses Hippolyta, the Amazon. Oberon
comes in also. For here it is Shakespeare's will to
dream ; elsewhere he thinks.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 287
We say more : where he dreams, he still thinks ;
with a profundity different, but not inferior.
Let men of genius remain in peace in their ori-
ginality. There is something wild in these mysteri-
ous civilizers. Even in their comedy, even in their
buffoonery, even in their laughter, even in their
smile, there is the unknown. In them is felt the
sacred dread that belongs to art, and the all-power-
ful terror of the imaginary mingled with the real.
Each of them is in his cavern, alone. They hear
each other from afar, but never copy. We are not
aware that the hippopotamus imitates the roar of
the elephant.
Lions do not ape each other.
Diderot does not recast Bayle; Beaumarchais
does not copy Plautus, and has no need of Davus
to create Figaro; Piranesi is not inspired by
Daedalus; Isaiah does not begin again the work
of Moses.
One day, at St. Helena, M. de las Casas said,
" Sire, had I been like you, master of Prussia, I
should have taken the sword of Frederick the Great
from the tomb at Potsdam, and I should have worn
it." "Fool," replied Napoleon, "I had my own."
Shakespeare's work is absolute, sovereign, im-
perious, eminently solitary, unneighborly, sublime
in radiance, absurd in reflection, and must remain
without a copy.
To imitate Shakespeare would be as insane as to
imitate Racine would be stupid.
288 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER VI.
LET us agree, by the way, respecting a designa-
tion much used on every hand, — " profanum vul-
gus," a word of a poet emphasized by pedants.
This " profanum vulgus " seems to be everybody's
missile. Let us fix the meaning of this word.
What is the "vulgar herd"? The school says,
"It is the people." And we, for our part, say, " It
is the school."
But let us first define this expression, " the
school." When we say " the school," what must
be understood? Let us explain. The school is
the resultant of pedantry ; the school is the liter-
ary excrescence of the budget; the school is in-
tellectual mandarinship governing in the various
authorized and official teachings, either of the
press or of the state, from the theatrical feuilleton
of the prefecture to the biographies and encyclo-
paedias duly examined and stamped and hawked
about, and made sometimes, by way of refinement,
by republicans agreeable to the police; the school
is the classic and scholastic orthodoxy, with its
unbroken girdle of walls, Homeric and Virgilian
antiquity traded upon by official and licensed lit-
erati, — a sort of China calling itself Greece ; the
school is, summed up in one concretion which
forms part of public order, all the knowledge of
pedagogues, all the history of historiographers,
all the poetry of laureates, all the philosophy of
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 289
sophists, all the criticism of pedants, all the ferules
of the teaching friars, all the religion of bigots, all
the modesty of prudes, all the metaphysics of par-
tisans, all the justice of placemen, all the old age
of dapper young men bereft of their virility, all
the flattery of courtiers, all the diatribes of censer-
bearers, all the independence of flunkeys, all the
certitudes of short sights and of base souls. The
school hates Shakespeare. It detects him in the
very act of mingling with the people, going to and
fro in public thoroughfares, " trivial," having a
word for every man, speaking the language of
the people, uttering the human cry like any other,
accepted by those whom he accepts, applauded
by hands black with tar, cheered by the hoarse
throats of all those who come from labor and from
weariness. The drama of Shakespeare is for the
people; the school is indignant, and says, " Odi
profanum vulgus." There is demagogy in this
poetry roaming at large ; the author of ' Hamlet '
" panders to the mob."
Be it so. The poet " panders to the mob."
If anything is great, it is that.
In the foreground everywhere, in full light,
amidst the flourish of trumpets, are the powerful
men, followed by the gilded men. The poet does
not see them, or, if he does, he disdains them.
He lifts his eyes and looks at God ; then he drops
his eyes and looks at the people. There in the
depths of shadow, wellnigh invisible by reason of
its submersion in darkness, is that fatal crowd, that
vast and mournful heap of suffering, that venerable
populace of the tattered and of the ignorant, —
19
290 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
a chaos of souls. That crowd of heads undulates
obscurely like the waves of a nocturnal sea. From
time to time there pass over that surface, like
squalls over the water, catastrophes, — a war, a
pestilence, a royal favorite, a famine. This causes
a tremor of but brief duration, the deeps of sor-
row being calm, like the deeps of the sea. Despair
leaves in the soul a dreadful weight, as of lead.
The last word of the abyss is stupor. This is the
night. Such is, beneath the mournful glooms
amid which all is indistinct, the sombre sea of the
poor.
These burdened ones are silent ; they know
nothing, they can do nothing, they think nothing :
they simply endure. Plectuntur Achivi. They
are hungry and cold. Their indelicate flesh ap-
pears through their tatters. Who makes those
tatters? The purple. The nakedness of virgins
comes from the nudity of odalisques. From the
twisted rags of the daughters of the people fall
pearls for the Fontanges and the Chateauroux. It
is famine that gilds Versailles. The whole of this
living and dying shadow moves ; these spectral
forms are in the pangs of death; the mother's
breast is dry, the father has no work, the brain has
no light. If there is a book in that destitution it
resembles the pitcher, so insipid or corrupt is
what it offers to the thirst of the mind. Mournful
households !
The group of the little ones is wan. This whole
mass expires and creeps, not having even the
power to love; and perhaps unknown to them,
while they bow and submit, from all that vast
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 2QI
unconsciousness in which Right dwells, from the
inarticulate murmur of those wretched breaths
mingled together proceeds an indescribable, con-
fused voice, a mysterious fog of expression, suc-
ceeding, syllable by syllable in the darkness, in
uttering wonderful words : Future, Humanity,
Liberty, Equality, Progress. And the poet lis-
tens, and he hears; and he looks, and he sees;
and he bends lower and lower, and he weeps ; and
then, growing with a strange growth, drawing from
all that darkness his own transfiguration, he stands
erect, terrible and tender, above all these wretched
ones — those of high place as well as those of low
— with flaming eyes.
And with a loud voice he demands a reckoning.
And he says, Here is the effect ! And he says,
Here is the cause ! Light is the remedy. Eru-
dimini. He is like a great vase full of humanity
shaken by the hand within the cloud, from which
should fall to earth great drops, — fire for the
oppressors, dew for the oppressed. Ah ! you deem
that an evil? Well, we, for our part, approve it.
It seems to us right that some one should speak
when all are suffering. The ignorant who enjoy
and the ignorant who suffer have equal need of
instruction. The law of fraternity is derived from
the law of labor. The practice of killing one
another has had its day; the hour has come for
loving one another. It is to promulgate these
truths that the poet is good. For that, he must
be of the people; for that, he must be of the
populace: that is to say, the poet, as he leads in
progress, should not draw back before the elbow-
292 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
ing of facts, however ugly the facts may be. The
actual distance between the real and the ideal
cannot otherwise be measured. Besides, to drag
the ball and chain a little completes a Vincent de
Paul. To steel themselves, therefore, to promis-
cuous contact with trivial things, to the popular
metaphor, to the great life in common with those
exiles from joy who are called the poor, — such is
the first duty of poets. It is useful, it is necessary,
that the breath of the people should traverse these
all-powerful souls. The people have something to
say to them. It is good that there should be in
Euripides a flavor of the herb-dealers of Athens,
and in Shakespeare of the sailors of London.
Sacrifice to "the mob," O poet! Sacrifice to
that unfortunate, disinherited, vanquished, vaga-
bond, shoeless, famished, repudiated, despairing
mob ; sacrifice to it, if it must be and when it must
be, thy repose, thy fortune, thy joy, thy country,
thy liberty, thy life. The mob is the human race
in misery. The mob is the mournful beginning of
the people. The mob is the great victim of dark-
ness. Sacrifice to it ! Sacrifice thyself ! Let thy-
self be hunted, let thyself be exiled like Voltaire
to Ferney, like D'Aubigne to Geneva, like Dante
to Verona, like Juvenal to Syene, like Tacitus to
Methymna, like yEschylus to Gela, like John to
Patmos, like Elijah to Horeb, like Thucydides
to Thrace, like Isaiah to Ezion-geber! Sacrifice
to the mob. Sacrifice to it thy gold, and thy blood
which is more than thy gold, and thy thought
which is more than thy blood, and thy love which
is more than thy thought; sacrifice to it every-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 293
thing except justice. Receive its complaint;
listen to it touching its faults and touching the
faults of others ; hear its confession and its accu-
sation. Give it thy ear, thy hand, thy arm, thy
heart. Do everything for it, excepting evil. Alas !
it suffers so much, and it knows nothing. Correct
it, warn it, instruct it, guide it, train it. Put it to
the school of honesty. Make it spell truth, show
it the alphabet of reason, teach it to read virtue,
probity, generosity, mercy. Hold thy book wide
open. Be there, attentive, vigilant, kind, faithful,
humble. Light up the brain, inflame the mind,
extinguish selfishness; and thyself give the ex-
ample. The poor are privation ; be thou abnega-
tion. Teach ! irradiate ! they need thee ; thou art
their great thirst. To learn is the first step; to
live is but the second. Be at their command :
dost thou hear? Be ever there in the form of
light! For it is beautiful on this sombre earth,
during this dark life, brief passage to something be-
yond, — it is beautiful that Force should have Right
for a master, that Progress should have Courage as
a leader, that Intelligence should have Honor as a
sovereign, that Conscience should have Duty as
a despot, that Civilization should have Liberty as
a queen, and that the servant of Ignorance should
be the Light.
BOOK V.
THE MINDS AND THE MASSES.
CHAPTER I.
MEMORABLE things have been done during
the last eighty years. The pavement is
cluttered with the rubbish of a vast demolition.
What is done is but little compared with what
remains to be done.
To destroy, is mere task-work ; the work of the
artist is to build. Progress demolishes with the
left hand ; it is with the right hand that it builds.
The left hand of Progress is called Force; the
right hand is called Mind.
A great deal of useful destruction has, up to this
hour, been accomplished ; all the old cumbersome
civilization is, thanks to our fathers, cleared away.
It is well; it is finished, it is thrown down, it is
on the ground. Up, now, O intelligences ! gird
yourselves for work, for travail, for fatigue, for
duty ; it becomes necessary to construct.
Here are three questions, —
To construct what?
To construct where ?
To construct how?
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 295
We reply, —
To construct the people.
To construct it according to the laws of progress.
To construct it by means of light.
CHAPTER II.
To work for the people, — this is the great and
urgent need.
It is important, at the present time, to bear in
mind that the human soul has still greater need of
the ideal than of the real.
It is by the real that we exist ; it is by the ideal
that we live. Would you realize the difference?
Animals exist, man lives.1
To live, is to understand. To live, is to smile
at the present ; it is to be able to see over the
wall of the future. To live, is to have in one's self
a balance, and to weigh in it good and evil. To
live, is to have justice, truth, reason, devotion,
probity, sincerity, common-sense, right, and duty
welded to the heart. To live, is to know what one
is worth, what one can do and should do. Life is
conscience. Cato would not rise before Ptolemy.
Cato really lived.
Literature secretes civilization, poetry secretes
the ideal. That is why literature is one of the
1 Perhaps it should be noted that, in the original, existence is
made the higher, more absolute mode of being ; e. g., " Les ani-
maux vivent, Phomme existe." — TR.
296 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
wants of societies ; that is why poetry is a hunger
of the soul.
That is why poets are the first instructors of the
people.
That is why Shakespeare must be translated in
France.
That is why Moliere must be translated in
England.
That is why comments must be made on them.
That is why there must be a vast public literary
domain.
That is why all the poets, all the philosophers,
all the thinkers, all the producers of nobility of
soul must be translated, commented on, published,
printed, reprinted, stereotyped, distributed, hawked
about, explained, recited, spread abroad, given to
all, given cheaply, given at cost price, given for
nothing.
Poetry evolves heroism. M. Royer-Collard, that
original and ironical friend of routine, was, taken
for all in all, a wise and noble spirit. Some one
we know heard him say one day, " Spartacus is
a poet'*
That dreadful and consoling Ezekiel, the tragic
revealer of progress, has all kinds of singular pas-
sages full of a profound meaning : " The voice
said to me, Fill thine hand with coals of fire from
between the cherubim, and scatter them over the
city." And elsewhere: " The spirit having gone
into them, whithersoever the spirit was to go they
went." And again : " Behold, a hand was sent
unto me; and lo, a roll of a book was therein.
The voice said unto me : Eat this roll. Then did
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 2 97
I eat it; and it was in my mouth as honey for
sweetness." l To eat the book is a strange and
striking image, embodying the whole formula of
perfectibility, which is made up of knowledge
above, and of instruction below.
We have just said : " Literature secretes civiliza-
tion." Do you doubt it? Open the first statistics
you come across.
Here is one fact which we find under our hand :
Toulon Penitentiary, 1862. Three thousand and
ten prisoners. Of these three thousand and ten
convicts, forty know a little more than to read and
write, two hundred and eighty-seven know how to
read and write,. nine hundred and four read badly
and write badly, seventeen hundred and seventy-
nine can neither read nor write. In this wretched
crowd, all the merely mechanical trades are repre-
sented by numbers decreasing as you rise toward
the enlightened professions; and you arrive at
this final result, — goldsmiths and jewellers in the
prison, four; ecclesiastics, three; attorneys, two ;
actors, one; musicians, one; men of letters, not
one.
The transformation of the crowd into the people,
— profound task ! It is to this labor that the men
called Socialists have devoted themselves during
the last forty years. The author of this book,
however insignificant he may be, is one of the oldest
in this labor. ' The Last Day of a Condemned Pris-
oner' dates from 1828, and 'Claude Gueux ' from
1834. If he claims his place among these philoso-
1 In this passage, as elsewhere, the quotations appear to be
made from memory. — TR.
2Q8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
phers, it is because it is a place of persecution. A
certain hatred of Socialism, very blind, but very
general, has raged for fifteen or sixteen years, and
is still raging most bitterly among the influential
classes (classes, then, are still in existence?). Let it
not be forgotten that true Socialism has for its end
the elevation of the masses to the civic dignity, and
that, therefore, its principal care is for moral and
intellectual cultivation.
The first hunger is ignorance ; Socialism wishes,
then, above all, to instruct. That does not hinder
Socialism from being calumniated, and Socialists
from being denounced. To most of the infuriated
tremblers who have the public ear at the present
moment, these reformers are public enemies ; they
are guilty of everything that has gone wrong. " O
Romans ! " said Tertullian, " we are just, kind,
thinking, lettered, honest men. We meet to pray,
and we love you because you are our brethren. We
are gentle and peaceable like little children, and
we wish for concord among men. Neverthe-
less, O Romans, if the Tiber overflows, or if the
Nile does not, you cry, * To the lions with the
Christians ! ' "
CHAPTER III.
THE democratic idea, the new bridge of civiliza-
tion, is just now undergoing the formidable trial
of overweight. Every other idea would certainly
give way under the load that it is made to bear.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 299
Democracy proves its solidity by the absurdities
that are heaped upon it without shaking it. It
must bear everything that people choose to place
upon it. At this moment they are attempting to
make it carry despotism.
" The people have no need of liberty," — such
was the password of a certain innocent but deluded
school, the head of which has been dead some
years. That poor honest dreamer sincerely be-
lieved that progress can continue without freedom.
We have heard him put forth, probably without in-
tention, this aphorism : " Freedom is good for the
rich." Such maxims have the disadvantage of not
being prejudicial to the establishment of empires.
No, no, no ; nothing without freedom !
Servitude is the soul blinded. Can you picture
to yourself a man voluntarily blind? This terrible
thing exists. There are willing slaves. A smile
in irons! Can anything be more hideous? He
who is not free is not a man ; he who is not free
has no sight, no knowledge, no discernment, no
growth, no comprehension, no will, no faith, no
love; he has no wife and children, he has only
a female with young: he lives not. Ab luce
principium. Freedom is the apple of the eye;
freedom is the visual organ of progress.
To attempt, because freedom has inconveniences
and even perils, to produce civilization without it,
would be like attempting to cultivate the ground
without the sun, — which is also a not unexcep-
tionable star. One day, in the too beautiful summer
of 1829, a critic, now forgotten, — and wrongly, for
he was not without some talent, — M. P., feeling
300 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
too warm, exclaimed as he mended his pen: "I
am going to write down the sun."
Certain social theories, very distinct from Social-
ism as we understand it and desire it, have gone
astray. Let us discard all that resembles the con-
vent, the barrack, the cell, and the straight line.
Paraguay minus the Jesuits is Paraguay just the
same. To give a new shape to the evil is not a useful
task. To remodel the old slavery would be stupid.
Let the nations of Europe beware of a despotism
made anew from materials which to some extent
they have themselves supplied. Such a thing,
cemented with a special philosophy, might easily
endure. We have just mentioned the theorists,
some of them otherwise upright and sincere, who,
through fear of a dispersion of activities and ener-
gies, and of what they call " anarchy," have arrived
at an almost Chinese acceptance of absolute social
centralization. They turn their resignation into a
doctrine. Provided man eats and drinks, all is
right. The happiness of the beast is the solution.
But this is a happiness which others might call by
a different name.
We dream for nations something besides a felicity
made up solely of obedience. The bastinado sums
up that sort of felicity for the Turkish fellah, the
knout for the Russian serf, and the cat-o'-nine-tails
for the English soldier. These Socialists outside
of Socialism derive from Joseph de Maistre and
from Ancillon, perhaps without suspecting it; for
these ingenious theorists, the partisans of the " deed
accomplished," have — or fancy they have — dem-
ocratic intentions, and speak energetically of " the
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 30 1
principles of '89." Let these involuntary philoso-
phers of a possible despotism reflect that to indoc-
trinate the masses against freedom, to allow appetite
and fatalism to get a hold upon the minds of men,
to saturate them with materialism and expose them
to the results, — this would be to understand pro-
gress in the fashion of that worthy man who ap-
plauded a new gibbet and exclaimed, " Excellent !
We have had till now only an old wooden gallows ;
but times have changed for the better, and here
we are with a good stone gibbet, which will do for
our children and our grandchildren ! "
CHAPTER IV.
To enjoy a full stomach, a satisfied digestion, a
satiated belly, is doubtless something, for it is the
enjoyment of the brute. However, one may set
one's ambition higher.
Certainly, a good salary is a fine thing. To
have beneath one's feet the firm ground of good
wages, is pleasant. The wise man likes to want
nothing. To assure his own position is the char-
acteristic of an intelligent man. An official chair,
with ten thousand sesterces a year, is a graceful
and convenient seat; liberal emoluments give a
fresh complexion and good health ; one lives to an
old age in pleasant well-paid sinecures; the high
financial world, abounding in profits, is a place
agreeable to live in; to be on a good footing at
302 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
court settles a family well and brings a fortune.
As for myself, I prefer to all these solid comforts
the old leaky vessel in which Bishop Quodvultdeus
embarks with a smile.
There is something beyond satisfying one's ap-
petite. The goal of man is not the goal of the
animal.
A moral lift is necessary. The life of nations,
like the life of individuals, has its moments of de-
pression; these moments pass, certainly, but no
trace of them ought to remain. Man, at this day,
tends to fall into the stomach: man must be re-
placed in the heart, man must be replaced in the
brain. The brain, — this is the bold sovereign that
must be restored ! The social question requires
to-day, more than ever, to be examined on the side
of human dignity.
To show man the human goal; to ameliorate
intelligence first, the animal afterward ; to contemn
the flesh as long as the thought is despised, and to
set the example upon their own flesh, — such is
the actual, immediate, urgent duty of writers.
This is what men of genius have done at all
times.
You ask in what poets can be useful. Simply
this, — in permeating civilization with light.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 303
CHAPTER V.
UP to this day there has been a literature for
the lettered. In France particularly, as we have
already said, literature tended to form a caste. To
be a poet was something like being a mandarin.
Words did not all belong by right to the language ;
registration was granted or refused by the dictio-
nary. The dictionary had a will of its own. Imag-
ine the botanist declaring to a vegetable that it
does not exist, and Nature timidly offering an in-
sect to entomology which refuses it as incorrect !
Imagine astronomy cavilling at the stars ! We
recollect having heard an academician, now dead,
say before the full Academy that French had been
spoken in France only in the seventeenth century,
and then for but twelve years, — we no longer re-
collect which years. Let us abandon — for it is
time — this order of ideas; democracy requires
it. The present enlargement of thought demands
something else. Let us forsake the college, the
conclave, the cell, trivial tastes, trivial art, the
trivial chapel.
Poetry is not a coterie. An effort is now being
made to galvanize things that are defunct. Let us
strive against this tendency. Let us insist on the
truths that are urgent. The masterpieces recom-
mended by the manual for the bachelorship, com-
pliments in verse and in prose, tragedies serving
merely as canopies over the head of some king,
304 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
inspiration in full dress, decorated big-wigs laying
down the laws of poetry, the manuals of poetic art
which forget La Fontaine and for which Moliere is
a "-perhaps," the Planats emasculating the Cor-
neilles, prudish tongues, thought shut in between
the four walls of Quintilian, Longinus, Boileau,
and La Harpe : all this — although the official
public instruction is soaked and saturated with it
— all this is of the past. A certain epoch called
the great century — which was certainly, for litera-
ture, a fine century — is after all, at bottom, noth-
ing but a literary monologue. Is it possible to
realize such a thing, — a literature which is an
aside? A certain form of art seems to bear upon
its pediment the legend, " No admittance." As
for ourselves, we understand poetry only with the
door wide open. The hour has struck for hoisting
the "All for All." What is needed by civiliza-
tion, henceforth a grown-up matron, is a popular
literature.
The year 1832 opened a debate, on the surface
literary, at bottom social and human. The time has
come to conclude the debate. We conclude it in
favor of a literature having in view this goal:
-The People."
Thirty-one years ago the author of these pages
wrote, in the preface to ' Lucretia Borgia,' a word
often repeated since: "The poet feels the burden
of souls." Were it worth while, he would add here
that, possible error apart, this utterance of his con-
science has been the rule of his life.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 305
CHAPTER VI.
MACCHIAVELLI cast upon the people a strange
glance. To heap the measure, to overflow the cup,
to exaggerate the horror of the prince's deed, to
make the burden more crushing in order to make
the revolt more certain, to cause idolatry to grow
into execration, to push the masses to extremities,
— such seems to be his policy. His Yes signifies
No. He charges despotism to the muzzle in order
to explode it ; the tyrant becomes in his hands a
hideous projectile which will shatter itself. Mac-
chiavelli conspires. For whom? Against whom?
Guess ! His apotheosis of kings is thus the thing
to make regicides. On the head of his Prince he
places a diadem of crimes, a tiara of vices, a halo
of baseness, and he invites you to adore his mon-
ster with the air of a man expecting an avenger.
He glorifies evil with a sidelong glance toward the
shadow where Harmodius lurks. Macchiavelli,
this getter up of princely outrages, this servant of
the Medici and of the Borgias, had in his youth
been put to the rack for admiring Brutus and Cas-
sius. He had perhaps plotted with the Soderini
for the deliverance of Florence. Does he remem-
ber this? Does he continue? His advice is fol-
lowed, like the lightning, by a low rumbling in
the cloud, an alarming reverberation. What did
he mean to say? Against whom has he a design?
Is the advice for or against him to whom he gives
it? One day at Florence, in the garden of Cosmo
20
306 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Ruccelai, there being present the Duke of Mantua
and John de' Medici, who afterward commanded
the Black Bands of Tuscany, Varchi, the enemy
of Macchiavelli, heard the latter say to the two
princes, " Let the people read no book, not even
mine." It is curious to compare with this remark
the advice given by Voltaire to the Due de
Choiseul, — at once advice to the minister, and in-
sinuation for the King : " Let the noodles read our
nonsense ; there is no danger in reading, my lord.
What can a great monarch like the King of France
fear? The people are but rabble, and the books are
but trash." Let them read nothing — let them
read everything. These two pieces of contrary ad-
vice coincide more than one would think. Vol-
taire with hidden claws is purring at the feet of
the King. Voltaire and Macchiavelli are two for-
midable, indirect revolutionists, dissimilar in every-
thing, and yet really identical by their profound
hatred disguised as flattery of their master. The
one is sly, the other is sinister. The princes of
the sixteenth century had as theorist upon their
infamies, and as enigmatical courtier, Macchiavelli,
a dark enthusiast. It is a dreadful thing to be
flattered by a sphinx ! Better to be flattered, like
Louis XV, by a cat.
Conclusion : Make the people read Macchiavelli,
and make them read Voltaire.
Macchiavelli will inspire them with horror, and
Voltaire with contempt, for crowned guilt.
But the hearts should turn, above all, toward the
grand, pure poets, be they sweet like Virgil, or
bitter like Juvenal.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 307
CHAPTER VII.
THE progress of man through intellectual ad-
vancement : there is no safety but in that. Teach \
learn ! All the revolutions of the future are en-
closed and engulfed in this phrase : Gratuitous and
obligatory instruction.
This large scheme of intellectual instruction
should be crowned by the exposition of works of
the first order. The highest place to the men of
genius !
Wherever there is a gathering of men, there
ought to be, in a special place, a public expositor
of the great thinkers.
By a great thinker we mean a beneficent thinker.
The perpetual presence of the beautiful in their
works makes the poets the highest of teachers.
No one can foresee the quantity of light that
will be evolved by placing the people in commu-
nication with men of genius. The combination of
the heart of the people with the heart of the poet
will be the voltaic pile of civilization.
Will the people understand this magnificent
teaching? Certainly. We know of nothing too
high for the people. The soul of the people is
great. Have you ever gone, of a holiday, to a
theatre open gratuitously to all? What do you
think of that audience. Do you know of any
other more spontaneous and intelligent? Do you
know, even in the forest, a vibration more pro-
308 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
found? The court of Versailles admires like a
well-drilled regiment; the people throw them-
selves passionately into the beautiful. They pack
together, crowd, amalgamate, combine, and knead
themselves in the theatre, — a living paste, which
the poet is about to mould. The powerful thumb
of Moliere will presently make its mark on it; the
nail of Corneille will scratch this shapeless mass.
Whence does that mass come? From the Cour-
tille, from the Porcherons, from the Cunette ; it is
barefoot, barearmed, ragged. Silence ! This is
the raw material of humanity.1
The house is crowded ; the vast multitude looks,
listens, loves ; all consciences, deeply moved, throw
out their internal fire; all eyes glisten; the huge,
thousand-headed beast is there, the Mob of Burke,
the Plebs of Titus Livius, the Fex Urbis of Cicero.
It caresses the beautiful, smiling at it with the
grace of a woman. It is literary in the most
refined sense of the word ; nothing equals the
delicacy of this monster. The tumultuous crowd
trembles, blushes, palpitates; its modesty is sur-
prising: the crowd is a virgin. No prudery, how-
ever; this creature is no fool. It is wanting in
no kind of sympathy; it has in itself the whole
keyboard, from passion to irony, from sarcasm to
the sob. Its pity is more than pity, it is real
mercy. God is felt in it. Suddenly the sublime
passes, and the sombre electricity of the deep
instantly arouses all that mass of hearts ; enthusi-
asm works its transfiguration. And now, is the
1 The places mentioned are banlieuesy or low quarters of Paris,
full of drinking-dens. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 309
enemy at the gates? is the country in danger?
Give the word to this populace, and it will re-enact
Thermopylae. What has produced this transfor-
mation? Poetry.
The multitude — and in this lies their grandeur
— are profoundly open to the ideal. When they
come in contact with lofty art they are pleased,
they palpitate. Not a detail escapes them. The
crowd is one liquid and living expanse capable of
vibration. A mob is a sensitive-plant. Contact
with the beautiful stirs ecstatically the surface of
multitudes, — a sure sign that the deeps are
sounded. A rustling of leaves — a mysterious
passing breath — the crowd trembles beneath the
sacred insufflation of the deep.
And even when the man of the people is not
of the crowd, he is still a good auditor of great
things. His ingenuousness is honest, his curiosity
healthy. Ignorance is a longing. His near rela-
tion with Nature renders him open to the holy
emotion of the true. He has secret absorbents
for poetry which he himself does not suspect.
Every kind of instruction is due to the people.
The more divine the light, the more is it made for
this simple soul. We would have in every village
a chair from which Homer should be explained to
the peasants.
310 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER VIII.
EXCESSIVE devotion to the material is the evil
of our epoch ; hence a certain sluggishness.
The great problem is to restore to the human
mind something of the ideal. Whence shall we
draw the ideal ? Wherever it is to be found. The
poets, the philosophers, the thinkers are its urns.
The ideal is in yEschylus, in Isaiah, in Juvenal, in
Alighieri, in Shakespeare. Thro w^Eschylus, throw
Isaiah, throw Juvenal, throw Dante, throw Shake-
speare into the deep soul of the human race.
Pour Job, Solomon, Pindar, Ezekiel, Sophocles,
Euripides, Herodotus, Theocritus, Plautus, Lucre-
tius, Virgil, Terence, Horace, Catullus, Tacitus, Saint
Paul, Saint Augustine, Tertullian, Petrarch, Pascal,
Milton, Descartes, Corneille, La Fontaine, Montes-
quieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Beaumarchais, Sedaine,
Andre" Chenier, Kant, Byron, Schiller, — pour all
these souls into man.
Pour in all the wits from ^Esop up to Moliere,
all the intellects from Plato up to Newton, all the
encyclopaedists from Aristotle up to Voltaire.
By this means you will cure the present malady
and establish forever the health of the human mind.
You will cure the middle-class, and found the
people.
As already indicated, after the destruction which
has delivered the world, you will construct the
home for the permanent life of the race.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 311
What an aim — to construct the people ! Prin-
ciples combined with science, all possible quantity
of the absolute introduced by degrees into the fact,
Utopia treated successively by every mode of reali-
zation, — by political economy, by philosophy, by
physics, by chemistry, by dynamics, by logic, by
art ; union gradually replacing antagonism, and
unity replacing union; for religion God, for priest
the father, for prayer virtue, for field the whole
earth, for language the word, for law the right, for
motive-power duty, for hygiene labor, for economy
universal peace, for canvas the very life, for the
goal progress, for authority freedom, for people
the man. Such is the simplification.
And at the summit the ideal.
The ideal ! — stable type of ever-moving progress.
To whom belong men of genius, if not to thee,
O people? They do belong to thee ; they are thy
sons and thy fathers. Thou givest birth to them,
and they teach thee. They open in thy chaos
vistas of light. As children, they have drunk at
thy breasts. They have leaped in the universal
matrix of humanity. Each of thy phases, O people,
is an avatar. The deep action of life, — it is in thee
that it must be sought. Thou art the great mother.
From thee issue the mysterious company of the
intelligences : to thee, therefore, let them return.
To thee, O people, they are dedicated by their
author, God !
BOOK VI.
THE BEAUTIFUL THE SERVANT OF THE
TRUE.
CHAPTER I.
AH, minds, be useful ! Be of some service. Do
not be fastidious when so much depends
upon being efficient and good. Art for art's sake
may be very fine, but art for progress is finer still.
To dream of castles in Spain is well ; to dream of
Utopia is better. Ah ! you must think? Then
think of making man better. You must have a
vision? Here is a vision for you, — the ideal. The
prophet seeks solitude, but not isolation. He un-
ravels and untwists the threads of humanity, tied
and rolled in a skein within his soul ; he does not
break them. He goes into the desert to think —
of whom? Of the multitudes. It is not to the
forests that he speaks, it is to the cities. It is not
a reed that he sees shaken with the wind, it is
man ; it is not against lions that he cries aloud,
it is against tyrants. Woe unto thee, Ahab ! woe
unto thee, Hoshea ! woe unto you, kings ! woe
unto you, Pharaohs ! is the cry of the great solitary.
Then he weeps.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 313
Over what? Over that eternal Babylonish cap-
tivity suffered long ago by Israel ; suffered by Po-
land, by Roumania, by Hungary, by Venice to-day.
He grows old, the good and gloomy thinker ; he
watches, he lies in wait, he listens, he looks, his
ear inclined to the silence, his eye straining into
the night, his claw half unsheathed toward the
wicked. Go, then, and talk of " art for art's sake "
to this cenobite of the ideal. He walks straight
toward his goal, which is this : the best. To this
he is consecrated.
He is not his own ; he belongs to his apostleship.
To him is intrusted the great duty of impelling the
human race upon its forward march. Genius is not
made for genius, it is made for man. Genius on
earth is God giving himself. Whenever a master-
piece appears, a distribution of God is taking
place. The masterpiece is a variety of the mira-
cle. Thence, in all religions and among all peoples,
comes faith in divine men. They deceive them-
selves who think that we deny the divinity of the
Christs.
At the point now reached by the social question,
all action should be in common. Isolated forces
frustrate one another; the ideal and the real are
solidary. Art should aid science. These two
wheels of progress should turn together.
Generation of new talents, noble group of writers
and poets, legion of young men, O living future of
my country, your elders love and salute you !
Courage ! let us consecrate ourselves. Let us
devote ourselves to the good, to the true, to the
just; it is well for us to do so.
314 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Some pure lovers of art, moved by a solicitude
which is not without its dignity and its nobility,
discard the formula, " Art for Progress," the Beau-
tiful Useful, fearing lest the useful should deform
the beautiful. They tremble to see the drudge's
hand attached to the muse's arm. According to
them, the ideal may become perverted by too
much contact with reality. They are solicitous
for the sublime if it descends as far as to humanity.
Ah ! they are in error.
The useful, far from circumscribing the sublime,
enlarges it. The application of the sublime to
human affairs produces unexpected masterpieces.
The useful, considered in itself and as an element
combining with the sublime, is of several kinds:
there is the useful which is tender, and there is the
useful which is indignant. Tender, it cheers the un-
fortunate and creates the social epopee ; indignant,
it flagellates the wicked and creates the divine satire.
Moses passes the rod to Jesus; and after having
caused the water to gush from the rock, that same
august rod drives the vendors from the Temple.
What! could art decrease by being expanded?
No ; a further service is an added beauty.
But people protest: To undertake the cure of
social evils, to amend the codes, to impeach law in
the court of right, to utter those hideous words,
" penitentiary," " convict-keeper," " galley-slave,"
" girl of the town ; " to inspect the police registers,
to contract the business of dispensaries, to study
the questions of wages and want of work, to taste
the black bread of the poor, to seek labor for the
working-woman, to confront fashionable idleness
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 3 1 5
with ragged sloth, to throw down the partition of
ignorance, to open schools, to teach little children
how to read ; to attack shame, infamy, error, vice,
crime, want of conscience ; to preach the multiplica-
tion of spelling-books, to proclaim the equality of the
sun, to improve the food of intellects and of hearts,
to give meat and drink, to demand solutions for prob-
lems and shoes for naked feet, — these things are
not the business of the azure. Art is the azure.
Yes, art is the azure ; but the azure from above,
whence falls the ray which swells the wheat, yellows
the maize, rounds the apple, gilds the orange,
sweetens the grape. Again I say, a further ser-
vice is an added beauty. At all events, where is
the diminution? To ripen the beet-root, to water
the potato, to increase the yield of lucern, of clover,
or of hay ; to be a fellow-workman with the plough-
man, the vine-dresser, and the gardener, — this does
not deprive the heavens of one star. Ah ! immen-
sity does not despise utility, — and what does it
lose by it? Does the vast vital fluid that we call
magnetic or electric flash through the cloud-masses
with less splendor because it consents to perform
the office of pilot to a bark, and to keep constant
to the north the little needle intrusted to it, the
gigantic guide ? Is Aurora less splendid, clad
less in purple and emerald ; suffers she any dimi-
nution of majesty and of radiant grace, — because,
foreseeing an insect's thirst, she carefully secretes
in the flower the dewdrop needed by the bee?
Yet people insist that to compose social poetry,
human poetry, popular poetry ; to grumble against
the evil and laud the good, to be the spokesman of
3 1 6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
public wrath, to insult despots, to make knaves
despair, to emancipate man before he is of age,
to push souls forward and darkness backward, to
know that there are thieves and tyrants, to clean
penal cells, to flush the sewer of public unclean-
ness, — shall Polyhymnia bare her arm to these
sordid tasks? Fie !
Why not?
Homer was the geographer and historian of his
time, Moses the legislator of his, Juvenal the judge
of his, Dante the theologian of his, Shakespeare the
moralist of his, Voltaire the philosopher of his. No
region, in speculation or in fact, is shut to the mind.
Here a horizon, there wings ; freedom for all to soar.
For certain sublime beings, to soar is to serve.
In the desert, not a drop of water ; the wretched file
of pilgrims drag along, overcome with a horrible
thirst; suddenly, in the horizon, above an undula-
tion in the sands, a lammergeier is seen soaring,
and all the caravan cry out, " There is a spring ! "
What thinks ^Eschylus of art for art's sake? If
ever there was a poet, ^Eschylus is certainly he.
Listen to his reply. It is in the ' Frogs ' of Ari-
stophanes, line 1039. ^schylus speaks: "From
the beginning the illustrious poet has served men.
Orpheus has taught the horror of murder, Musaeus
oracles and medicine, Hesiod agriculture, and
divine Homer heroism. And I, after Homer, have
sung Patroclus, and Teucer the lion-hearted, to
the end that every citizen may endeavor to imi-
tate great men."
Just as the whole sea is salt, the whole Bible is
poetry. This poetry takes its own time for talking
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 317
politics. Open I. Samuel, chapter viii. The
Jewish people demand a king. " . . . And the
Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice
of the people in all that they say unto thee : for
they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected
me, that I should not reign over them. . . . And
Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the peo-
ple that asked of him a king. And he said, This
will be the manner of the king that shall reign over
you : He will take your sons, and appoint them for
himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen ;
and some shall run before his chariots. . . . And
he will take your daughters to be confectionaries,
and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will
take your fields, and your vineyards, and your
oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them
to his servants. . . . And he will take your men-
servants, and your maid-servants, and your good-
liest young men, and your asses, and put them to
his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep :
and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out
in that day because of your king which ye shall
have chosen you ; and the Lord will not hear you
in that day." Samuel, we see, denies the right
divine ; Deuteronomy shakes the altar, — the false
altar, let us observe; but is not the next altar
always the false altar? " Ye shall demolish the
altars of the false gods. Ye shall seek God
where he dwells." It is almost Pantheism. Be-
cause it takes part in human affairs, because it is
democratic here, iconoclastic there, is this book
less magnificent and less supreme? If poetry is
not in the Bible, where is it?
3 1 8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
You say : The muse is made to sing, to love, to
believe, to pray. Yes, and no. Let us understand
each other. To sing whom? The void? To love
whom? One's self? To believe what? The
dogma? To pray to what? The idol? No; here
is the truth : to sing the ideal, to love humanity, to
believe in progress, to pray toward the infinite.
Take care, ye who trace these circles about the
poet ; ye place him outside of humanity. That the
poet should be beyond humanity in one way, — by
his wings, by his immense flight, by his possible
sudden disappearance in the fathomless, — is well,
it must be so ; but on condition of reappearance.
He may go, but he must return. Let him have
wings for the infinite, provided he has feet for the
earth, and that, after having been seen flying, he is
seen to walk. Having gone beyond humanity, let
him become man again. After he has been seen
as an archangel, let him be once more a brother.
Let the star which is in that eye shed a tear, and
let it be a human tear. Thus, human and super-
human, he shall be the poet. But to be altogether
beyond man, is not to be. Show me thy foot,
genius, and let us see if, like myself, thou hast the
dust of earth upon thy heel. If thou hast never
walked in the dusty footpath which I tread, thou
knowest not me, nor I thee. Depart ! Thou who
believest thyself an angel art but a bird.
Help from the strong for the weak, help from
the great for the small, help from the free for the
.slaves, help from the thinkers for the ignorant,
help from the solitary for the multitudes, — such
is the law, from Isaiah to Voltaire. He who does
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 319
not follow this law may be a genius, but he is only
a genius of luxury. By not handling the things
of the earth, he thinks to purify himself; but he
annuls himself. He is the refined, the delicate, he
may be the exquisite genius : he is not the great
genius. Any one, roughly useful, but useful, has
the right to ask, on seeing this good-for-nothing
genius, " Who is this idler? " The amphora which
refuses to go to the fountain deserves the hisses of
the water-pots.
Great is he who consecrates himself! Even
when overcome, he remains serene, and his misfor-
tune is happiness. No, it is not a bad thing for the
poet to be brought face to face with duty. Duty
has a stern likeness to the ideal. The task of
doing one's duty is worth undertaking. No, the
jostling with Cato is not to be avoided. No, no,
no ; truth, honesty, the instruction of the masses,
human liberty, manly virtue, conscience, are not
things to disdain. Indignation and compassion for
the mournful slavery of man are but two sides of
the same faculty ; those who are capable of wrath
are capable of love. To level the tyrant and the
slave, — what a magnificent endeavor! Now, the
whole of one side of actual society is tyrant, and
all the other side is slave. A grim settlement is
impending, and it will be accomplished. All
thinkers must work with that end in view. They
will gain greatness in that work. To be the ser-
vant of God in the task of progress, and the
apostle of God to the people, — such is the law
which regulates the growth of genius.
320 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER II.
THERE are two poets, — the poet of caprice, and
the poet of logic; and there is a third poet, a
composite of the other two, correcting and com-
pleting the one by the other, and summing up both
in a higher entity, so that the two forms are
blended in one. This last is the first. He has
caprice, and he follows the divine breath ; he has
logic, and he follows duty. The first writes the
Song of Songs, the second writes Leviticus, the
third writes the Psalms and the Prophecies.
The first is Horace, the second is Lucan, the third
is Juvenal ; the first is Pindar, the second is
Hesiod, the third is Homer.
No loss of beauty results from goodness. Is the
lion less beautiful than the tiger because he has
the faculty of compassionate emotion? Is that
mane deprived of its majesty because the jaw
opens to drop the child into its mother's arms?
Does the roaring vanish from that terrible mouth
because it has licked Androcles? The unhelpful
genius, no matter how graceful, is really ugly. A
prodigy without love is a monster. Let us love !
let us love !
To love has never hindered' from pleasing.
Where have you seen one form of the good ex-
cluding the other? On the contrary, all that is
good is allied. Let me, however, be understood :
it does not follow that to have one quality implies
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 32 1
necessarily the possession of the other; but it
would be strange that one quality added to an-
other should produce diminution. To be useful,
is but to be useful ; to be beautiful, is but to be
beautiful ; to be both useful and beautiful, is to be
sublime. Such are Saint Paul in the first century,
Tacitus and Juvenal in the second, Dante in the
thirteenth, Shakespeare in the sixteenth, Milton
and Moliere in the seventeenth.
We have just now recalled a saying that has
become famous, " Art for art's sake." Let us,
once for all, explain ourselves touching this ex-
pression. If an assertion very general and very
often repeated (in good faith, we believe) can be
credited, the shibboleth, "Art for art's sake,"
must have been written by the author of this book.
Written? never. You may read, from the first
to the last line, all that we have published ; you
will not find these words. It is the contrary that
is written throughout our works, and, we insist,
in our entire life. As to the expression in itself,
what reality has it? Here is the fact, which sev-
eral of our contemporaries remember as well as
we do. One day, thirty-five years ago, in a dis-
cussion between critics and poets on Voltaire's
tragedies, the author of this book threw out this
interruption : " This tragedy is not a tragedy. It
does not contain living men ; it contains glib max-
ims. Rather, a hundred times, ' Art for art's
sake.' " This remark, turned — doubtless invol-
untarily— from its true sense to serve the ends
of the discussion, has since assumed, to the great
surprise of him who had uttered it, the propor-
21
322 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
tions of a formula. It is this phrase, limited to
' Alzire ' and to the * Orphan of China,' and in-
contestable in that restricted application, which has
been turned into a perfect declaration of principles,
and an axiom to inscribe on the banner of Art.
This point settled, let us go on.
Between two verses, — the one by Pindar, deifying
a coachman or glorifying the brazen nails of a
chariot wheel ; the other by Archilochus, so pow-
erful that, after having read it, Jeffreys would leave
off his career of crime and would hang himself on
the gallows prepared by him for honest people, —
between two such verses of equal beauty, I prefer
that of Archilochus.
In times anterior to history, when poetry is fabu-
lous and legendary, it has a Promethean grandeur.
What forms this grandeur? Utility. Orpheus
tames wild animals; Amphion builds cities; the
poet, tamer and architect, Linus aiding Hercules,
Musaeus assisting Daedalus, poetry a civilizing
power, — such are the origins. Tradition agrees
with reason : in that, the good sense of the nations
is not deceived. The people have always invented
fables in the interest of truth. Magnified by that
hazy remoteness, everything is great. Now, the
beast-taming poet whom you admire in Orpheus,
you may recognize again in Juvenal.
We insist on Juvenal. Few poets have been
more insulted, more contested, more calumniated.
Calumny against Juvenal has been drawn at such
long date that it still lasts. It passes from one
knave of the pen to another. These grand haters
of evil are hated by all the flatterers of power and
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 323
success. The mob of servile sophists, of writers
who have the mark of the collar about their necks,
of bullying historiographers, of scholiasts kept and
fed, of court and school followers, stand in the way
of the punishers and avengers. They croak around
these eagles. Scant and grudging justice is ren-
dered to dispensers of justice. They hinder the
masters, and rouse the indignation of the lackeys,
— for there is such a thing as the indignation of
baseness.
Moreover, the diminutives cannot do less than
help each other, and Caesarion must at least have
Tyrannion as a support. The pedant breaks ferules
for the satrap. For such jobs there are lettered
courtiers and official pedagogues. These poor,
dear vices, so open-handed, these excellent conde-
scending crimes, his Highness Rufinus, his Majesty
Claudius, the august Madame Messalina who en-
tertains so sumptuously and grants pensions out of
her privy purse, and who abides and perpetuates
her reign under the names of Theodora, Frede-
gonde, Agnes, Margaret of Burgundy, Isabel of
Bavaria, Catherine de' Medici, Catherine of Russia,
Caroline of Naples, etc., etc., — all these great lords
the crimes, all these fine ladies the turpitudes, shall
they have the sorrow of witnessing the triumph
of Juvenal? No. War with the scourge in the
name of sceptres ! War with the rod in the name
of the cliques ! That is well ! Go on, courtiers,
clients, eunuchs, and scribes. Go on, publicans
and pharisees. You will not hinder the republic
from thanking Juvenal, or the temple from approv-
ing Jesus.
324 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Isaiah, Juvenal, Dante, are virgins. Observe their
downcast eyes. There is chastity in the wrath of
the just against the unjust. The Imprecation can
be as holy as the Hosanna ; and indignation, honest
indignation, has the very purity of virtue. In point
of whiteness, the foam has no reason to envy the
snow.
CHAPTER III.
ALL history proves the working partnership of
art and progress. Dictus ob hoc lenire tigres.
Rhythm is a power, — a power that the Middle
Ages recognize and submit to not less than an-
tiquity. The second barbarism, feudal barbarism,
also dreads the power of verse. The barons, not
over-timid, are abashed before the poet, — who is
this man? They fear lest " a manly song be sung."
Behind this unknown man is the spirit of civilization.
The old donjons full of carnage open their wild
eyes and scan the darkness ; anxiety seizes them.
Feudality trembles, the den is disturbed. The
dragons and the hydras are ill at ease. Why?
Because an invisible god is there.
It is curious to find this power of poetry in
countries where barbarism is densest, particularly
in England, in that extreme feudal darkness, " pe-
nitus toto divisos orbe Britannos." If we believe
the legend, — a form of history as true and as false
as any other, — it is due to poetry that Colgrim,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 325
besieged by the Britons, is relieved in York by his
brother Bardulf the Saxon ; that King Awlof pene-
trates into the camp of Athelstan ; that Werburgh,
prince of Northumbria, is delivered by the Welsh, —
whence, it is said, that Celtic device of the Prince
of Wales, Ich dien; l that Alfred, King of England,
triumphs over Gitro, King of the Danes, and that
Richard the Lion-hearted escapes from the prison
of Losenstein. Ranulf, Earl of Chester, attacked in
his castle of Rothelan, is saved by the intervention
of the minstrels, — the legend is confirmed by the
privileges still enjoyed under Elizabeth by the
minstrels, who were patronized by the Lords of
Dalton.
The poet had the right of reprimand and menace.
In 1316, at Whitsuntide, Edward II. being at table
in the grand hall of Westminster with the peers of
England, a female minstrel entered the hall on
horseback, rode all around, saluted Edward II.,
predicted in a loud voice to the minion Spencer
the gibbet and castration by the hand of the exe-
cutioner, and to the King the horn by means of
which a red-hot iron should be buried in his intes-
tines, placed on the table before the King a letter,
and departed, unchallenged and unmolested.
At the festivals, the minstrels passed before the
priests, and were more honorably treated. At
Abingdon, at the festival of the Holy Cross, each
of the twelve priests received fourpence, and each
of the twelve minstrels two shillings. At the
priory of Maxtoke, the custom was to give supper
1 Welsh etch dyn, "behold your man." See Stormonth's Dic-
tionary, s. v. — TR.
326 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
to the minstrels in the Painted Chamber lighted
by eight huge wax candles.
As we advance toward the North, the rising fogs
seem to magnify the poet. In Scotland, his pro-
portions are colossal. If anything surpasses the
legend of the rhapsodists, it is the legend of the
scalds. At the approach of Edward of England,
the bards defend Stirling as the three hundred had
defended Sparta; and they have their Thermopylae,
equal to that of Leonidas. Ossian, perfectly cer-
tain and real, has had a plagiarist. That is nothing ;
but this plagiarist has done more than rob him, —
he has made him insipid. To know Fingal only
through Macpherson is as if one knew Amadis only
through Tressan. They show at StafFa the poet's
stone, Clachan an Bairdh, — so named, according
to many antiquaries, long before the visit of Walter
Scott to the Hebrides. This Bard's Chair, a great
hollow rock furnishing a proper seat for a giant, is
at the entrance of the grotto. Around it are the
waves and the clouds. Behind the Clachan an
Bairdh is piled the superhuman geometry of the
basaltic prisms, the chaos of colonnades and waves,
and all the mystery of that dread edifice. The
gallery of Fingal runs next to the poet's chair,
and there the sea breaks before entering beneath
that terrible ceiling. At nightfall the fishermen
of the Mackinnon clan think they see in that chair
a leaning figure. " It is the ghost," they say ; and
no one would venture, even in full daylight, to
ascend to that awful seat; for to the idea of the
stone is linked the idea of the tomb, and none but
the shadow-man may sit upon that granite chair.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. $2?
CHAPTER IV.
THOUGHT is power.
All power is duty. Should this power enter into
repose in our age? Should duty shut its eyes?
and is the moment come for art to disarm? Less
than ever. Thanks to 1789, the human caravan
has reached a high plateau ; and, the horizon being
vaster, art has more to do. This is all. To every
widening of the horizon, an enlargement of con-
science corresponds.
We have not reached the goal. Concord con-
densed into felicity, civilization summed up in
harmony, — that is yet far off. In the eighteenth
century that dream was so distant that it seemed
guilty. The Abbe de St. Pierre was expelled from
the Academy for having dreamed that dream, —
an expulsion which appears rather severe at a
period when pastorals carried the day even with
Fontenelle, and when St. Lambert invented the
idyl for the use of the nobility. The Abbe" de St.
Pierre has left behind him a word and a dream;
the word is his own, — ' Beneficence ; ' his dream is
the dream of us all, — 'Fraternity.' This dream,
which made Cardinal de Polignac foam, and Vol-
taire smile, is now less hidden than it once was
in the mist of the improbable; it is a little nearer:
but we have not attained it. The people, those
orphans seeking their mother, do not yet hold in
their hand the hem of the robe of peace.
328 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
There remains about us enough of slavery, of
sophistry, of war, and of death, to make it essential
that the spirit of civilization should relinquish none
of its resources. The idea of the right divine is
not yet entirely dissipated. The spirit which ani-
mated Ferdinand VII. in Spain, Ferdinand II.
in Naples, George IV. in England, Nicholas in
Russia, is still in the air. A spectral remnant
still flits about. From that fatal cloud inspira-
tions descend upon wearers of crowns bent in dark
meditation.
Civilization has not yet done with the granters of
constitutions, with the proprietors of nations, and
with the legitimate and hereditary madmen who
assert themselves kings by the grace of God, and
think that they have the right of manumission over
the human race. It is becoming important to raise
some obstacle, to show bad will to the past, and to
bring some check to bear on these men, on these
dogmas, on these chimeras which stand in the way.
Intelligence, thought, science, austere art, philoso-
phy, ought to watch and beware of misunderstand-
ings. False rights contrive very easily to put
actual armies in the field. There are murdered
Polands at the horizon. "All my anxiety/' said
a contemporary poet, recently deceased, " is the
smoke of my cigar." My anxiety is also a smoke,
— the smoke of the cities which are burning
yonder. Let us, therefore, bring the tyrants to
grief, if we can.
Let us again, in the loudest possible voice, re-
peat the lesson of the just and the unjust, of right
and usurpation, of sworn truth and perjury, of
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 329
good and evil, of fas et nefas ; let us display all
our old antitheses, as they say. Let us contrast
what ought to be with what actually is. Let us
dispel all confusion touching these things. Bring
light, ye that have it ! Let us oppose dogma to
dogma, principle to principle, energy to obstinacy,
truth to imposture, dream to dream, — the dream
of the future to the dream of the past, — liberty to
despotism. We shall be able to stretch ourselves
at full length and smoke out the cigar of fanciful
poetry, and laugh over Boccaccio's ' Decameron/
with the soft blue sky over our heads, on the day
when the sovereignty of a king shall be exactly
of the same dimensions as the liberty of a man.
Until then, little sleep ; I am distrustful.
Place sentinels everywhere. Do not expect from
despots a large share of liberty. Let all the Po-
lands effect their own deliverance. Unlock the
future with your own hand. Do not hope that
your chain will forge itself into the key of freedom.
Up, children of the fatherland ! O mowers of the
steppes, arise ! Trust to the good intentions of
orthodox czars just enough to take up arms.
Hypocrisies and apologies, being traps, are an
added danger.
We live in a time when orators are heard prais-
ing the magnanimity of white bears and the tender
feelings of panthers. Amnesty, clemency, grandeur
of soul ; an era of felicity opens ; fatherly love is
the order of the day; behold all that is already
done ; it must not be thought that the spirit of the
time is not understood ; august arms are open ;
rally still closer round the Emperor; Muscovy is
33O WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
kind-hearted. See how happy the serfs are ! the
streams are to flow with milk, prosperity, liberty
for all; your princes groan, like you, over the
past ; they are excellent. Come, fear nothing, little
ones ! All very good ; but candidly, we are of
those who put no faith in the lachrymal gland of
crocodiles.
The reigning public monstrosities impose stern
obligations on the conscience of the thinker, the
philosopher, or the poet. Incorruptibility must
resist corruption. It is more than ever requisite
to show men the ideal, — that mirror reflecting the
face of God.
CHAPTER V.
IN literature and philosophy we encounter now
and then a man with tears and laughter at com-
mand, — Heraclitus masked as Democritus ; often
a very great man like Voltaire. Such a man is
an irony, sometimes tragic, which keeps its coun-
tenance.
These men, under the pressure of the influences
and prejudices of their time, speak with a double
meaning. One of the most profound is Bayle, the
man of Rotterdam, the powerful thinker. (Do not
write Beyle.) When Bayle coolly utters this max-
im : " It is better to weaken the grace of a thought
than to anger a tyrant," I smile, for I know the
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 331
man ; I think of him persecuted, almost proscribed,
and I know well that he has given way to the temp-
tation of affirming merely to give me the itch of
contradiction. But when it is a poet who speaks,
a poet wholly free, rich, happy, prosperous, invio-
lable, one expects clear, frank, and wholesome
instruction ; one cannot believe that such a man
can be guilty of anything like desertion of con-
science ; and it is with a blush that one reads this :
" Here below, in time of peace, let every man sweep
before his own door. In war, if conquered, one
must make terms with the enemy. . . . Let every
enthusiast be put on a cross when he reaches his
thirtieth year. When once he comes to know the
world, he ceases to be a dupe, and becomes a
rogue. . . . What utility, what result, what ad-
vantage does the holy liberty of the press offer
you? You have the certain demonstration of it,
— a profound contempt for public opinion. . . .
There are people who have a mania for railing
at everything that is great; they are men who
have attacked the Holy Alliance : and yet nothing
has been invented more august and more salutary
for humanity." These things, belittling to the man
who wrote them, are signed Goethe. When he
wrote them, Goethe was sixty years old. Indif-
ference to good and evil is heady, liable to intoxi-
cate ; and this is what comes of it. The lesson is
sad, the sight mournful; for here the helot is an
intelligence.
A quotation may be a pillory. We post on the
public highway these lugubrious sentences ; it is
our duty. Goethe wrote that. Let it be remem-
332 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
bered, and let no one among the poets fall again
into the same error.1
To become impassioned for the good, for the
true, for the just; to suffer with the sufferers; to
feel upon one's soul all the strokes inflicted by
tormentors upon human flesh ; to be scourged with
Christ and flogged with the negro ; to be strength-
ened and to lament; to scale, a Titan, that frowning
summit where Peter and Caesar make their swords
fraternize, gladium cum gladio copulemus ; to pile
for that escalade the Ossa of the ideal on the
Pelion of the real ; to make a vast apportionment
of hope ; to avail one's self of the ubiquity of the
book in order to be everywhere at the same time
with a consoling thought ; to push pell-mell men,
women, children, whites, blacks, peoples, hangmen,
tyrants, victims, impostors, the ignorant, proletaries,
serfs, slaves, masters, toward the future (a preci-
pice to some, to others a deliverance) ; to go forth,
to awaken, to hasten, to march, to run, to think,
1 Never having known the real Goethe, Victor Hugo never
could do justice to him ; and possibly the relation would not have
been improved by better acquaintance. The character and works
that we call " Goethe " make up an exceedingly complex whole ; to
condemn it is akin to condemning an entire civilization. Burke
professed himself unable to draw up an indictment against a whole
nation ; and in Goethe's case any one broadly acquainted with the
facts would probably find the task almost equally awkward. Hith-
erto, at least, it is observable that the severe judgments have not
emanated from the most patient and competent investigators. It
would be lamentable indeed should sensible people be misled, by
the garbled scraps here cited, into hasty prejudgment of him
whose spirit and work are so much more accurately indicated by
this line of his, —
" Wouldst thou give freedom to many, first dare to do service to many."
— TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 333
to will, — that is indeed well ; that makes it worth
while to be a poet. Take care ! You are losing
your temper. Certainly, but I am gaining wrath.
And now for thy blast in my pinions, O hurricane !
There was, of late years, a moment when impas-
sibility was recommended to poets as a condition
of divinity. To be indifferent was called being
Olympian. Where had they seen that? That is
an Olympus very unlike the real one. Read
Homer. The Olympians are passion, and nothing
else. Boundless humanity, — such is their divinity.
They fight incessantly. One has a bow, another
a lance, another a sword, another a club, another
thunderbolts. One of them compels the leopards
to draw him. Another — Wisdom she — has cut
off the serpent-bristling head of Night, and nailed it
to her shield. Such is the calm of the Olympians.
Their wraths cause the thunders to roll from end
to end of the Iliad and of the Odyssey. These
wraths, when just, are good. The poet who has
them is the true Olympian. Juvenal, Dante,
Agrippa d'Aubigne", and Milton were subject to
these wraths, Moliere too. From the soul of
Alceste flashes constantly the lightning of " vig-
orous hatreds." It was the hatred of evil which
Jesus meant when he said, " I am come to bring
war."
I like Stesichorus, indignant, preventing the alli-
ance of Greece with Phalaris, and fighting the
brazen bull with strokes of the lyre.
Louis XIV. found it good to have Racine sleep-
ing in his chamber when he, the King, was ill, — thus
turning the poet into an assistant to his apothe-
334 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
cary. Wonderful patronage of letters ! But he
asked nothing more from the men of letters, and
the horizon of his alcove seemed to him sufficient
for them. One day Racine, somewhat urged by
Madame de Maintenon, conceived the thought of
leaving the King's chamber and of visiting the
garrets of the people. Thence a memoir on the
public distress. Louis XIV. cast at Racine a kill-
ing look. Poets fare ill when, being courtiers, they
do what royal mistresses ask of them. Racine,
at the suggestion of Madame de Maintenon, risks
a remonstrance which causes him to be driven
from court, and he dies of it; Voltaire, at the in-
stigation of Madame de Pompadour, ventures a
madrigal, — an awkward one, it appears, — which
causes him to be driven from France, and he does
not die of it. Louis XV. on reading the madrigal
("Etgardez tous deux vos conquetes ") had ex-
claimed, " What a fool this Voltaire is ! "
Some years ago " a well-authorized pen," as
they say in official and academic cant, wrote this :
" The greatest service that poets can render us is
to be good for nothing. We ask of them nothing
else." Observe the scope and sweep of this word,
— "the poets," — which includes Linus, Musaeus,
Orpheus, Homer, Job, Hesiod, Moses, Daniel,
Amos, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, ^Esop, David,
Solomon, ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Pin-
dar, Archilochus, Tyrtaeus, Stesichorus, Menander,
Plato, Asclepiades, Pythagoras, Anacreon, Theoc-
ritus, Lucretius, Plautus, Terence, Virgil, Horace,
Catullus, Juvenal, Apuleius, Lucan, Persius, Ti-
bullus, Seneca, Petrarch, Ossian, Saadi, Firdusi,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 335
Dante, Cervantes, Calderon, Lope de Vega, Chau-
cer, Shakespeare, Camoens, Marot, Ronsard, Reg-
nier, Agrippa d'Aubigne, Malherbe, Segrais, Racan,
Milton, Pierre Corneille, Moliere, Racine, Boileau,
La Fontaine, Fontenelle, Regnard, Lesage, Swift,
Voltaire, Diderot, Beaumarchais, Sedaine, Jean-
Jacques Rousseau, Andre Chenier, Klopstock, Les-
sing, Wieland, Schiller, Goethe, Hofmann, Alfieri,
Chateaubriand, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Burns,
Walter Scott, Balzac, Musset, Beranger, Pellico,
Vigny, Dumas, George Sand, Lamartine, — all
declared by the oracle " good for nothing," and
having uselessness for their excellence. That sen-
tence— a " success," it appears — has been very
often repeated. We repeat it in our turn. When
the conceit of an idiot reaches such proportions, it
deserves registration. The writer who uttered
that aphorism is, so they assure us, one of the
high personages of the day. Wre have no objec-
tion ; dignities shorten no ears.
Octavius Augustus, on the morning of the battle
of Actium, met an ass called by its driver " Tri-
umphus." This Triumphus, endowed with the
faculty of braying, seemed to him of good omen.
Octavius Augustus won the battle ; and remem-
bering Triumphus, had him cast in bronze and set
up in the Capitol. That made a Capitoline ass;
but still — an ass.
One can understand kings saying to the poet,
" Be useless ; " but one does not understand the peo-
ple saying so to him. The poet is for the people.
" Pro populo poe'ta," wrote Agrippa d'Aubigne".
" All things to all men," exclaims Saint Paul.
336 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
What is an intelligence? A feeder of souls. The
poet is at the same time a menace and a promise.
The distress he arouses in oppressors calms and
consoles the oppressed. It is the glory of the
poet to place a restless pillow on the purple bed
of the tormentors. It is often thanks to him that
the tyrant awakes, saying, " I have slept badly."
Every slave, every despondency, every sorrow,
every misfortune, every distress, every hunger,
and every thirst has a claim upon the poet; he
has one creditor, — the human race.
Certainly it detracts nothing from the poet to be
the great servant. All the mysterious voices sing
within him none the less because upon occasion,
and impelled by duty, he has uttered the cry of a
race, because his bosom must needs swell with
the deep human sob. Speaking so loudly does
not prevent his speaking low. He is not less the
confidant, and sometimes the confessor, of hearts.
He is not less intimately connected with those who
love, with those who think, with those who sigh,
thrusting his head in the darkness between the
heads of lovers. Andre Chenier's love-verses are
deprived of none of their tender serenity by their
proximity to the wrathful iambic : " Weep thou,
O virtue, if I die ! " The poet is the only living
being to whom is given both the voice of thunder
and the whisper, having, like Nature, within himself
the rumbling of the cloud and the rustling of the
leaf. This is a double function, individual and
public; and it is for this reason that he needs, as
it were, two souls.
Ennius said, " I have three of them, — an Oscan
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 337
soul, a Greek soul, and a Latin soul." It is true
that he referred only to the place of his birth, to
the place of his education, and to the place where
he was a citizen ; and moreover Ennius was but a
rough cast of a poet, vast, but shapeless.
No poet can exist without that activity of soul
which is the resultant of conscience. The primal
moral laws need to be confirmed ; the new moral
laws need to be revealed : these two series do not
coincide without some effort. This effort is in-
cumbent on the poet. At every turn he performs
the function of the philosopher. He must defend,
according to the side attacked, now the liberty of
the human mind, now the liberty of the human
heart, — to love being no less holy than to think.
There is nothing in all that of " Art for art's sake."
Into the midst of those goers and comers that
we call the living, comes the poet, to tame, like
ancient Orpheus, the tiger in man, — his evil in-
stincts,— and, like legendary Amphion, to pull down
the walls of prejudice and superstition, to mount
the new blocks, to relay the foundations and the
corner-stones, and to build anew the city of human
society.
That such a service, — to co-operate in the work
of civilization, — should involve loss of beauty for
poetry and of dignity for the poet, is a propo-
sition which one cannot enunciate without smiling.
Useful art preserves and augments all its graces,
all its charms, all its prestige. In truth ^Eschylus
is not degraded by taking part with Prometheus,
the man progress crucified by force on Caucasus,
and gnawed alive by hate; Lucretius is no less
22
338 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
great for having loosened the grave-clothes of
idolatry and disentangled human thought from the
knotted bonds of religions (arctis nodis religionum) ;
the branding of tyrants with the red-hot iron of
prophecy does not lessen Isaiah; the defence of
his country does not taint Tyrtaeus. The beautiful
is not degraded by serving the ends of freedom
and the amelioration of the human multitudes.
The words, " a people liberated," would fitly end
a strophe. No, patriotic or revolutionary useful-
ness robs poetry of nothing. For having screened
under its cliffs the three peasants who took the
terrible oath from which sprang Switzerland free,
the huge Griitli is none the less at nightfall a lofty
mass of serene shadow alive with herds, whence
falls afar the soft tintinnabulation of innumera-
ble little bells tinkling unseen through the clear
twilight air.
PART III.
CONCLUSION.
PART THIRD.
CONCLUSION.
BOOK I.
AFTER DEATH. - SHAKESPEARE. — ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
IN 1784, Bonaparte, then fifteen years old, arrived
at the military school of Paris from Brienne,
being one among four under the conduct of a
minim priest. He mounted one hundred and
seventy-three steps, carrying his small valise, and
reached, in the attic, the barrack chamber he was
to occupy. This chamber had two beds, and a
small window opening on the great yard of the
school. The young predecessors of Bonaparte had
bescrawled the whitewashed wall with charcoal, and
the new-comer could read in this little cell these
four inscriptions, which we ourselves read there
thirty-five years ago : " An epaulet is very long to
win." — De Montgivray. "The finest day in life
is that of a battle." — Vicomte de Tinteniac. " Life
is but a prolonged lie." — Le Chevalier Adolphe
Delmas. " The end of all is six feet of earth." —
342 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Le Comte de la Villette. With the trifling substitu-
tion of the word " empire " for " epaulet," these
four sentences contained the whole destiny of
Bonaparte, and formed a kind of " Mene, Tekel,
Upharsin," written in advance upon that wall.
Desmazis, junior, who accompanied Bonaparte,
being his room-mate, and about to occupy one of
the two beds, saw him take a pencil — Desmazis
himself has related the incident — and draw, under
the inscriptions that he had just read, a rough
sketch of his house at Ajaccio ; then, by the side
of that house, — without suspecting that he was
thus bringing near the Island of Corsica another
mysterious island then hid in the far future, — he
wrote the last of the four sentences : " The end of
all is six feet of earth."
Bonaparte was right. For the conqueror, for
the soldier, for the man of material fact, the end of
all is six feet of earth ; for the man of thought, all
begins there.
Death is a power.
For him who has had no activity but that of the
mind, the tomb is the elimination of the obstacle.
To be dead is to be all-powerful.
The man of war is formidable while alive ; he
stands erect; the earth is silent, siluit ; he has
extermination in his gesture ; millions of haggard
men rush after him, a fierce horde, sometimes a
ruffianly one ; it is no longer a human head, it is a
conqueror, it is a captain, it is a king of kings, it is
an emperor, it is a dazzling crown of laurels which
passes, throwing out lightning flashes, and showing,
in a starry light beneath, a vague profile of Caesar.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 343
This vision is splendid and astounding; but a little
gravel in the liver, or an abrasion of the pylorus,
— six feet of earth, and all is over. This solar
spectrum vanishes. This tumultuous life falls into
a hole; the human race pursues its way, leaving
behind this emptiness. If this man-hurricane has
made some lucky rupture, — like Alexander in
India, Charlemagne in Scandinavia, and Bonaparte
in old Europe, — that is all that remains of him.
But let some passer-by who has in him the ideal ;
let a poor wretch like Homer throw out a word
in the darkness, and die, — that word lights up
the gloom, and becomes a star.
This defeated man, driven from town to town, is
called Dante Alighieri, — take care ! This exile is
called yEschylus, this prisoner is called Ezekiel, —
beware ! This one-handed man is winged, — it
is Miguel Cervantes. Do you know whom you see
wayfaring there before you? It is a sick man,
Tyrtaeus; it is a slave, Plautus; it is a laborer,
Spinoza; it is a valet, Rousseau. Well, that
abasement, that labor, that servitude, that infirm-
ity, is power, — the supreme power, mind.
On the dunghill like Job, under the stick like
Epictetus, under contempt like Moliere, mind re-
mains mind. It is destined to have the last word.
The Caliph Almanzor makes the people spit on
Averroes at the door of the mosque of Cordova;
the Duke of York himself spits on Milton; a
Rohan, almost a prince, " Due ne daigne, Rohan
suis," 1 attempts to cudgel Voltaire to death ;
Descartes is driven from France in the name of
1 " I would not stoop to be a duke ; I am Rohan." — TR.
344 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Aristotle; Tasso pays for a kiss given a princess
by twenty years in a prison cell ; Louis XV. sends
Diderot to Vincennes : these are mere incidents ;
must there not be some clouds? Those appear-
ances that were taken for realities, those princes,
those kings, melt away ; there remains only what
should remain, — the human mind on the one side,
the divine minds on the other ; the true work and
the true workers ; society to be perfected and made
fruitful, science seeking the true, art creating the
beautiful, the thirst of thought, — the torment and
the happiness of man; the lower life aspiring to
the higher. Real questions are to be dealt with ;
progress in intelligence and by intelligence is to be
secured. The aid of the poets, the prophets, the
philosophers, the inspired thinkers is invoked. It
is perceived that philosophy is a nourishment, and
poetry a need. Man cannot live by bread alone.
Give up the poets, and you give up civilization.
There comes an hour when the human race is com-
pelled to reckon with Shakespeare the actor, and
with Isaiah the beggar.
They are the more present when they are no
longer seen. Once dead, these beings live.
What life did they lead? What kind of men
were they? What do we know of them? Some-
times but little, as of Shakespeare ; often nothing,
as of those of ancient days. Did Job exist? Is
Homer one, or several ? Meziriac makes ^Esop
straight, and Planudes makes him a hunchback.
Is it true that the prophet Hosea, in order to show
his love for his country, even when she was fallen
into opprobrium and infamy, espoused a harlot,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 345
and named his children Mourning, Famine, Shame,
Pestilence, and Misery? Is it true that Hesiod
must be divided between Cyme in ^Eolis, where
he was born, and Ascra in Bceotia, where he is
said to have been brought up? Velleius Paterculus
places him one hundred and twenty years after
Homer, with whom Quintilian makes him con-
temporary. Which of the two is right? What
matters it? The poets being dead, their thought
reigns. Having been, they are.
They do more work among us to-day than when
they were alive. Others who have departed this
life rest from their labors: dead men of genius
work.
They work upon what? Upon minds. They
make civilization.
The end of all is six feet of earth ? No ; there all
begins, germinates, flowers, grows, issues, streams
forth. Such maxims are very well for you, O men
of the sword !
Lay yourselves down, disappear, lie in the grave,
rot. So be it.
While life lasts, gilding, caparisons, drums and
trumpets, panoplies, banners in the wind, tumults,
delude the senses. The crowd gazes with admi-
ration on these things. It imagines that it sees
something grand. Who wears the casque? Who
the cuirass? Who the sword-belt? Who is spurred,
helmeted, plumed, armed ? Hurrah for that one !
At death the difference becomes plain. Juvenal
takes Hannibal in the hollow of his hand.
It is not Caesar, it is the thinker, who can say
when he expires, " Deus fio." So long as he
346 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
remains a man, his flesh interposes between other
men and him. The flesh is a cloud upon genius.
Death, that immense light, comes and penetrates
the man with its aurora. No more flesh, no more
matter, no more shadow. The unknown which was
within him manifests itself and beams forth. In
order that a mind may give all its light, death is
required. When that which was a genius becomes
a soul, the human race begins to be dazzled. A
book within which there is something of the phan-
tom is irresistible.
He who is still living does not appear disinter-
ested. People mistrust him. People dispute him
because they jostle against him. Both to be alive
and to be a genius is too much. This being goes
and comes as you do ; it walks the earth ; it has
weight; it casts a shadow; it obstructs. There
seems a kind of importunity in the presence of too
great a man; men find him not sufficiently like
themselves. As we have said before, they owe
him a grudge. Who is this privileged person?
This functionary cannot be dismissed. Persecu-
tion makes him greater, decapitation crowns him.
Nothing can be done against him, nothing for him,
nothing with him. He is responsible, but not to
you. He has his instructions. What he executes
may be discussed, not modified. It seems as
though he had a mission to accomplish from
some one who is not a man. Such an exception
displeases ; hence more hisses than applause.
Once dead, he is out of the way. The useless
hiss dies out. Living, he was a rival ; dead, he is
a benefactor. He becomes, in the beautiful ex-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 347
pression of Lebrun, " the irreparable man." Lebrun
says this of Montesquieu ; Boileau says the same
thing of Moliere. " Avant qu'un peu de terre,"
etc.1 This handful of earth has equally exalted
Voltaire. Voltaire, so great in the eighteenth cen-
tury, is still greater in the nineteenth. The grave
is a crucible. The earth thrown on a man cleanses
his name, and allows it not to pass forth till puri-
fied. Voltaire has lost his false glory and retained
the true. To lose the false is gain. Voltaire is
neither a lyric poet, nor a comic poet, nor a tragic
poet; he is the indignant yet tender critic of the
Old World ; he is the mild reformer of manners ;
he is the man who softens men. Voltaire, having
lost ground as a poet, has risen as an apostle. He
has done what is good rather than what is beautiful.
The good being included in the beautiful, those
who, like Dante and Shakespeare, have produced
the beautiful, surpass Voltaire ; but below the poet,
the place of the philosopher is still very high, and
Voltaire is the philosopher. Voltaire is good-sense
in a continual stream. Excepting literature, he is a
good judge of everything. In spite of his insulters,
Voltaire was almost adored during his lifetime;
to-day he is, on thoroughly valid grounds, admired.
The eighteenth century saw his mind; we see his
soul. Frederick II., who liked to banter him, wrote
1 Part of the nineteenth line of Boileau's seventh epistle, which
is dedicated to Racine. The whole sentence may be roughly ren-
dered as follows : —
" Before a little earth, obtained by intercession,
Had forever hidden Moliere from human sight,
A thousand of those beauties, so highly praised to-day,
Were by silly people rejected before our very eyes."
— TR.
348 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
to D'Alembert: " Voltaire plays the buffoon. This
century resembles the old courts ; it has its fool,
and Arouet is he." This fool of the century was
its sage.
Such, for great minds, are the issues of the tomb.
That mysterious entrance otherwhere leaves light
behind. Their setting is resplendent. Death makes
their authority free and effective.
CHAPTER II.
SHAKESPEARE is the chief glory of England.
England has in politics, Cromwell ; in philosophy,
Bacon; in science, Newton: three lofty men of
genius. But Cromwell is stained with cruelty, and
Bacon with meanness; as to Newton, his edifice
is at this moment tottering. Shakespeare is pure,
as Cromwell and Bacon are not, and unshaken, as
Newton is not Moreover, his genius is loftier.
Above Newton are Copernicus and Galileo ; above
Bacon are Descartes and Kant; above Cromwell
are Danton and Bonaparte ; above Shakespeare
there is no one. Shakespeare has equals, but no
superior. It is a singular honor for a land to have
borne such a man. One may say to that land,
Alma par ens ! The native town of Shakespeare is
a chosen city ; an eternal light falls on that cradle ;
Stratford-on-Avon has a security that Smyrna,
Rhodes, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, and
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 349
Athens, the seven towns which dispute the birth-
place of Homer, do not possess.
Shakespeare is a human mind; he is also an
English mind. He is very English — too English;
he is English so far as to subdue the horror sur-
rounding the abominable kings whom he places
on the stage, — when they are kings of England ;
so far as to depreciate Philip Augustus in com-
parison with John Lackland ; so far as to make a
scapegoat, Falstaff, expressly in order to load him
with the princely misdeeds of the young Henry V. ;
so far as in a certain measure to share the hypoc-
risies of a history alleged to be national. Lastly,
he is English so far as to attempt to exculpate
Henry VIII. ; it is true that the eye of Elizabeth is
fixed upon him. But at the same time we insist,
— for therein consists his greatness, — this English
poet is a humane genius. Art, like religion, has
its Ecce Homo. Shakespeare is one of those to
whom may be applied the noble name of Man.
England is selfish : selfishness is an island. This
Albion, who minds her own business and is apt to
be eyed askance by other nations, is a little lacking
in disinterested greatness; of this, Shakespeare
gives her some portion. With that purple robe
he drapes his country's shoulders. By his fame
he is universal and cosmopolitan. He overflows
island and egotism on every side. Deprive Eng-
land of Shakespeare, and consider how soon this
nation's far-shining light would fade. Shakespeare
modifies the English countenance and makes it
beautiful. He lessens the resemblance of England
to Carthage.
350 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Strange meaning of the apparition of men of
genius ! No great poet is borne at Sparta, no
great poet at Carthage. This condemns these two
cities. Search, and you shall find this : Sparta is
but the city of logic ; Carthage is but the city of
matter ; love is wanting to both. Carthage immo-
lates her children by the sword, and Sparta sacri-
fices her virgins by nudity; here innocence is
killed, and there modesty. Carthage knows only
her crates and bales ; Sparta blends herself wholly
with the law, — there is her true territory : it is for
the laws that her men die at Thermopylae. Carth-
age is hard, Sparta is cold. They are two republics
based on stone. Therefore no books. The eter-
nal sower, who is never deceived, has scattered
none of the seed of genius on their thankless soil.
Such wheat is not to be confided to the rock.
Heroism, however, is not denied to them; they
will have, if necessary, either the martyr or the
captain. Leonidas is possible for Sparta, Han-
nibal for Carthage ; but neither Sparta nor Carthage
is capable of Homer. They are devoid of a certain
sublime tenderness which makes the poet spring
from the loins of a people. This latent tenderness,
this flebile nescio quid, England possesses, — wit-
ness Shakespeare; one might also add, witness
Wilberforce.
England, mercantile like Carthage, legal like
Sparta, is better than Sparta and Carthage. She
is honored by that august exception, a poet; to
have given birth to Shakespeare makes England
great.
Shakespeare's place is among the most sublime
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 351
in that select company of absolute intelligences
who, ever and anon reinforced by some noble
newcomer, form the crown of civilization, lighting
the human race with a wide radiance. Shake-
speare is legion. Alone, he forms the counter-
poise to our grand French seventeenth century,
and almost to the eighteenth.
When one arrives in England, the first thing the
eye seeks is the statue of Shakespeare; it falls
upon the statue of Wellington.
Wellington is a general who, in collaboration
with chance, gained a battle.
If you insist, you are taken to a place called
Westminster, where there are kings, — a crowd
of kings ; there is also a nook called " The Poets'
Corner." There, in the shade of four or five mag-
nificent monuments where some royal nobodies
shine in marble and bronze, you are shown a
statuette upon a little bracket, and beneath this
statuette the name, ," William Shakespeare."
Furthermore, there are statues everywhere, —
statues to the heart's content. Statue of Charles,
statue of Edward, statue of William, statues of
three or four Georges, of whom one was an idiot.
Statue of the Duke of Richmond at Huntley;
statue of Napier at Portsmouth ; statue of Father
Mathew at Cork ; statue of Herbert Ingram — I
forget where. A man has well drilled the rifle-
men, — a statue to him ; a man has commanded
a manoeuvre of the Horse Guards, — a statue to
him. Another has been a supporter of the past,
has squandered all the wealth of England in pay-
ing a coalition of kings against 1789, against
352 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
democracy, against light, against the upward move-
ment of the human race, — quick ! a pedestal for
that, a statue to Mr. Pitt. Another has knowingly
fought against truth, in the hope that it might be
vanquished; but finding, one fine morning, that
truth is hard-lived, that it is strong, that it might
come to be intrusted with forming a cabinet, has
then passed abruptly over to its side, — one more
pedestal, a statue to Mr. Peel. Everywhere, in
every street, in every square, at every step, gigan-
tic notes of admiration in the shape of columns,
— a column to the Duke of York, which should
take the form of a point of interrogation; a col-
umn to Nelson, with Caraccioli's ghost pointing
the finger at it ; a column to Wellington, already
mentioned ; columns for everybody : it is suffi-
cient to have trailed a sabre a little. At Guernsey,
by the seaside, on a promontory, there is a high
column — almost a tower — resembling a light-
house. This one is struck by lightning. ^Eschylus
would have contented himself with it. To whom
is this? To General Doyle. Who is General
Doyle? A general. What did this general do?
He constructed roads. At his own expense? No,
at the expense of the inhabitants. A column
to him. None to Shakespeare, none to Milton,
none to Newton; the name of Byron is obscene.
Such is England, that illustrious and powerful
nation.
It avails little that this nation has for pioneer
and guide the generous British press, which is
more than free, which is sovereign, and which
through innumerable excellent journals throws
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 353
light upon every question, — that is where Eng-
land is ; and let not France laugh too loudly, with
her statue of Negrier; nor Belgium, with her
statue of Belliard; nor Prussia, with her statue
of Bliicher; nor Austria, with the statue that she
probably has of Schwartzenberg ; nor Russia, with
the statue that she must have of Souwaroff. If it
is not Schwartzenberg, it is Windischgratz ; if it is
not Souwaroff, it is Kutusoff.
Be Paskiewitch or Jellachich, statue ; be Auge-
reau or Bessieres, statue; be an Arthur Welles-
ley, they will make you a colossus, and the ladies
will dedicate you to yourself, quite naked, with
this inscription : " Achilles." A young man, twenty
years of age, performs the heroic action of marry-
ing a beautiful young girl ; they prepare for him
triumphal arches ; they come to see him out of
curiosity; the garter is sent to him as on the
morrow of a battle; the public squares are bril-
liant with fireworks; people who perhaps have
gray beards put on perukes to come and harangue
him almost on their knees ; they shoot into the
air millions sterling in squibs and rockets, amid
the applause of a multitude in tatters who will
have no bread to-morrow.; starving Lancashire
forms a companion-piece to the wedding ; people
are in ecstasies, they fire guns, they ring the bells,
" Rule Britannia ! " " God save the prince." What!
this young man has the kindness to do this? What
a glory for the nation ! Universal admiration, —
a great people becomes frantic, a great city falls
into a swoon, a balcony looking upon the passage
of the young man is rented for five hundred
23
354 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
guineas, people crowd themselves together, press
upon each other, thrust each other beneath the
wheels of his carriage, seven women are crushed
to death in the enthusiasm, their little children are
picked up dead under the trampling feet, a hun-
dred persons, partially stifled, are carried to the
hospital; the joy is inexpressible. While this
is going on in London, the cutting of the Isthmus
of Panama is postponed by a war ; the cutting of
the Isthmus of Suez depends on some Ismail
Pasha; a company (limited) undertakes the sale
of the water of Jordan at a guinea a bottle ; walls
are invented proof against any cannon-ball, after
which missiles are invented which will go through
any wall ; an Armstrong cannon-shot costs fifty
pounds ; Byzantium contemplates Abdul- Azis,
Rome goes to confession; the frogs, encouraged
by the stork, call for a heron, — Greece, after Otho,
again wants a king; Mexico, after Iturbide, again
wants an emperor ; China wants two of them, the
Middle King, a Tartar, and the Celestial Emperor
(Tien Wang), a Chinaman. . . . O earth! throne
of stupidity.
CHAPTER III.
THE glory of Shakespeare reached England from
abroad. There was almost a definite day and hour
when one might have been present at the landing
of his fame at Dover.
WILLIAM SHA KESPEARE. 355
It required three hundred years for England to
catch those two words that the whole world shouted
in her ear, — " William Shakespeare."
What is England? She is Elizabeth. No incar-
nation is more complete. In admiring Elizabeth,
England worships her own image in the glass.
Proud and magnanimous, but strangely hypo-
critical, great but pedantic, able but haughty,
at once daring and prudish, having favorites but
no masters, even in her bed her own mistress, all-
powerful queen, inaccessible woman, — Elizabeth
is a virgin as England is an island. Like England,
she calls herself Empress of the sea, Basilea maris.
A dreadful deep, swept by the wraths that spare
not even Essex, and by the tempests that engulf
armadas, defends this virgin and this island from
all approach. The ocean is the guardian of this
modesty. A certain celibacy, in fact, constitutes
the genius of England. Alliances there may be,
but no marriage. The world must always keep
its distance. To live alone, to go alone, to reign
alone, to be alone, — such is Elizabeth, such is
England.
On the whole, a remarkable queen, and a won-
derful nation.
Shakespeare, on the contrary, is a sympathetic
genius. To him, insularity, far from being a source
of strength, is a bond which he would gladly break.
A little more, and Shakespeare would be European.
He loves and praises France ; he calls her " the
soldier of God." Moreover, in that prudish nation
he is the free poet.
England has two books, one which she has
356 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
made, the other which has made her, — Shakespeare
and the Bible. These two books do not altogether
agree ; the Bible opposes Shakespeare.
Certainly, as a literary book, the Bible — that
vast Oriental beaker, brimming with poetry even
more than Shakespeare — might harmonize with
him ; but from a social and religious point of view
it abhors him. Shakespeare thinks, Shakespeare
dreams, Shakespeare doubts. There is in him
something of that Montaigne whom he loved.
The " To be, or not to be," comes from the "What
do I know?" of Montaigne.
Moreover, Shakespeare has the grievous habit
of invention. Faith excommunicates imagination.
In respect to fables, Faith is a bad neighbor, and
licks none but her own cubs. One recollects
Solon's staff raised against Thespis ; one recol-
lects Omar's firebrand waved over Alexandria.
The situation is always the same. Modern fanati-
cism has inherited that staff and that firebrand.
This is true in Spain, and is not false in England.
I have heard an Anglican bishop, in discussing
the Iliad, sum up all in this crushing assertion :
" It is not true." Now, Shakespeare can be de-
scribed, much more truly than Homer, as " a liar."
Two or three years ago the journals announced
that a French writer had just sold a novel for four
hundred thousand francs. This made a noise in
England. A conformist paper exclaimed, " How
can a falsehood be sold at such a price?"
Besides, two words, all-powerful in England,
range themselves against Shakespeare and block
his way, — " Improper ! " " Shocking ! " Let it be
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 357
noted that in a multitude of places the Bible also is
"improper," and Holy Writ is "shocking." The
Bible, even in French, and through the rough lips
of Calvin, does not hesitate to say, "Tu as paillarde,
Jerusalem." l These crudities form a part of poe-
try as well as of anger, and the prophets, those angry
poets, do not abstain from them. Coarse words
are constantly on their lips. But England, which
is continually reading the Bible, pretends not to
notice this. Nothing equals the power of volun-
tary deafness in fanatics. Would you have another
example of this deafness? Roman orthodoxy has
not to this day admitted the brothers and sisters of
Jesus Christ, although authenticated by the four
Evangelists. It is in vain that Matthew says:
" Behold, his mother and his brethren stood with-
out. . . . And his brethren, James, and Joses, and
Simon, and Judas. And his sisters, are they
not all with us?" In vain Mark insists: " Is not
this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother
of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon?
and are not his sisters here with us?" In vain
Luke repeats : " Then came to him his mother
and his brethren." In vain John adds : " He, and
his mother and his brethren. . . . Neither did
his brethren believe in him. . . . But when his
brethren were gone up," — Catholicism does not
hear.
To make up for this deafness, Puritanism turns
a sensitive ear toward Shakespeare, — of whom the
Rev. John Wheeler says, he is " like all poets,
something of a Pagan." Intolerance and incon-
1 Ezekiel xvi. 28, and passim. — TR.
358 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
sistency are sisters. Besides, in the matter of
proscribing and damning, logic is superfluous.
When Shakespeare, by the mouth of Othello,
calls Desdemona " whore," there is general in-
dignation, unanimous revolt, universal scandal.
Who is this Shakespeare? All the Biblical sects
stop their ears, forgetting that Aaron applies
exactly the same epithet to Sephora, wife of
Moses. It is true that this occurs in an apoc-
ryphal work, ' The Life of Moses ; ' but the
apocryphal works are quite as authentic as the
canonical ones.
Hence the dogged coldness of England toward
Shakespeare. Her attitude toward him is still that
of Elizabeth, — at least we fear so ; we should be
happy to be contradicted. We are more ambitious
for the glory of England than England is herself.
This cannot displease her.
England has a strange institution, " the poet
laureate," which attests the official, and perhaps
the national admirations. Under Elizabeth, and
during Shakespeare's life, England's poet was
named Drummond.1
Past, indeed, are the days when the playbills
read : " Macbeth, Opera of Shakespeare, altered
by Sir William Davenant." But if ' Macbeth ' is
played, it is before a small audience. Kean and
Macready have failed in it.
1 This " strange institution " seems not to have existed in
Elizabeth's time; and it is difficult to understand in what sense
Scotch Drummond of Hawthornden can be called " England's
poet " under Elizabeth, since he was but eighteen when Elizabeth
died, and published his first volume of poetry ten years later. —
TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 359
At this hour they would not play Shakespeare
on any English stage without erasing from the text
the word "God " wherever they find it. In the full
tide of the nineteenth century, the Lord Chamber-
lain is still an incubus upon Shakespeare. In
England, outside the church, the word " God " is
not made use of. In conversation they replace
"God" by "Goodness." In the editions or in the
representations of Shakespeare, " God " is replaced
by " Heaven." What matters it that the sense is
perverted, that the verse limps? "Lord! Lord!
Lord ! " the last outcry of expiring Desdemona,
was suppressed by official command in the edition
of Blount and Jaggard in 1623. They do not utter
it on the stage.1 " Sweet Jesus ! " would be a
blasphemy ; a devout Spanish woman on the Eng-
lish stage is bound to exclaim " Sweet Jupiter ! "
Do we exaggerate? Would you have a proof?
Let us open ' Measure for Measure.' There is a
nun, Isabella. Whom does she invoke? Jupiter.
Shakespeare wrote it " Jesus." 2
1 The last words of Desdemona are, —
" Commend me to my kinde Lord: oh farewell."
Her " kinde Lord " is not, as a Frenchman might naturally think,
her God, but her husband. — TR.
2 On the other hand, however, in spite of all the Lord Cham-
berlains, it is difficult to beat the French censorship. Religions
are diverse, but bigotry is one, and is the same in all its specimens.
What we are about to write is an extract from the notes added to
his translation by the new translator of Shakespeare : —
" ' Jesus ! Jesus ! ' This exclamation of Shallow was expunged in the
edition of 1623, conformably to the statute which forbade the utterance of
the name of the Divinity on the stage. It is worthy of remark that our
modern theatre has had to undergo, under the scissors of the Bourbon
censorship, the same stupid mutilations to which the censorship of the
360 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
The tone of a certain Puritanical criticism toward
Shakespeare is, most certainly, improved ; yet the
cure is not complete.
It is not many years since an English economist,
a man of authority, making, in the midst of social
questions, a literary excursion, affirmed, in a lofty
digression, and without showing the slightest diffi-
dence, this : " Shakespeare cannot live because he
has treated subjects for the most part foreign or
ancient, — 'Hamlet,' 'Othello/ 'Romeo and Juliet,'
' Macbeth,' ' Lear,' ' Julius Caesar,' ' Coriolanus,'
' Timon of Athens/ etc. Now, nothing is viable in
literature except matters of immediate observation,
and works relating to subjects of contemporary
interest." What say you to this theory? We
should not mention it if it had not found ap-
provers in England and propagators in France.
Besides Shakespeare, it simply excludes from lit-
erary "life" Schiller, Corneille, Milton, Virgil,
Euripides, Sophocles, ^Eschylus, and Homer. It
is true that it surrounds with a halo of glory Aulus
Stuarts condemned the theatre of Shakespeare. I read what follows in the
first page of the manuscript of ' Hernani,' which I have in my hands : —
' Received at the Theatre- Francais, Oct. 8, 1829.
* The Stage-manager.
' ALBERTIN.'
And below, in red ink :
' On condition of expunging the name of " Jesus " wherever found, and con-
forming to the alterations marked at pages 27, 28, 29, 62, 74, and 76.
' The Secretary of State for the Department of the Interior,
' LA BOURDONNAYE.*
(Vol. XL Notes on < Richard IT.' and ' Henry IV.,' note 71, p. 462.) "
We may add that in the scenery representing Saragossa (second
act of ' Hernani') it was forbidden to introduce any belfry or any
church, — a prohibition which made resemblance rather difficult,
Saragossa having had, in the sixteenth century, three hundred and
nine churches, and six hundred and seventeen convents.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 361
Gellius and Restif de la Bretonne. O critic, this
Shakespeare is not viable, — he is only immortal !
About the same time another — English also,
but of the Scotch school, a Puritan of that dis-
contented variety of which Knox is the head —
declared poetry to be childishness ; rejected beauty
of style as an obstacle interposed between the
thought and the reader ; saw in Hamlet's soliloquy
only " a cold lyricism," and in Othello's adieu to
camps and banners only " a declamation ; " likened
the metaphors of poets to colored prints in books,
fit only to amuse babies ; and showed a particular
contempt for Shakespeare, as " bedaubed from one
end to the other with those bright pictures."
Not longer ago than last January, a witty London
paper was asking with indignant irony who is the
more celebrated in England, Shakespeare, or " Mr.
Calcraft, the hangman," " There are localities in
this enlightened country where, if you utter the
name of Shakespeare, they will answer you : ' I
don't know what this Shakespeare may be, about
whom you make all this fuss, but I will back
Hammer Lane of Birmingham to fight him for
five pounds.' But no mistake is made about
Calcraft." *
1 'Daily Telegraph,' Jan. 13, 1864.
362 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER IV.
AT all events, Shakespeare has not the monu-
ment that England owes to him.
France, let us admit, is not, in like cases, much
prompter. Another glory, very different from
Shakespeare, but not less grand, Joan of Arc,
waits also, and has waited long, for a national
monument — a monument worthy of her.
This land, which was once Gaul, and where the
Velledas reigned, has, in a Catholic and historic
sense, as patronesses two august figures, Mary and
Joan. The one, holy, is the Virgin; the other,
heroic, is the Maid. Louis XIII. gave France to
the one; the other gave back France to France.
The monument of the second should not be less
lofty than the monument of the first. Joan of Arc
must have a trophy as grand as Notre Dame.
When shall she have it?
England is insolvent toward Shakespeare, but
France is bankrupt toward Joan of Arc.
These ingratitudes need to be sternly denounced.
Doubtless the governing aristocracies, which blind
the eyes of the masses, are, in the first instance,
guilty. But on the whole, conscience exists for a
people as for an individual; ignorance is only an
extenuating circumstance; and when these denials
of justice last for centuries, they remain the fault of
governments, while becoming the fault of nations.
Let us know, when necessary, how to tell nations
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 363
of their shortcomings. France and England, you
are both wrong !
To flatter a people would be worse than to flat-
ter a king. The one is base, the other would be
dastardly.
Let us go farther, and, since the thought presents
itself, make a useful generalization from it, even
should it take us for a moment from our subject.
No, the people are not right in ascribing the blame
indefinitely to the governments. The acceptance
of oppression by the oppressed ends in complicity ;
cowardice is consent whenever the duration of a
bad thing, which weighs upon a people, and which
that people could prevent if it would, goes beyond
the bounds of an honest man's patience ; there is
an appreciable solidarity and a partnership in
shame between the government guilty of the evil
and the people submitting to it. It is venerable
to suffer ; to submit is contemptible. — Let us
pass on.
It is a coincidence worthy of note that Voltaire,
the denier of Shakespeare, is also the reviler of
Joan of Arc. What are we to think of Voltaire?
Voltaire (we say it with mingled joy and grief)
is the French mind, — the French mind up to
the Revolution, solely. Since the Revolution, the
French mind has grown with the growth of France,
and tends to become the European mind. It is
less local and more fraternal, less Gallic and more
human. It represents more and more Paris, the
urban heart of the world. As for Voltaire, he
remains what he is, — the man of the future ; but
also the man of the past. He is one of those
364 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
glories which make the thinker say yes and no ;
he has against him two sarcasms, — Joan of Arc,
and Shakespeare. He is punished through what
he sneered at.
CHAPTER V.
WHEREFORE, indeed, a monument to Shake-
speare? The statue he has made for himself, with
all England for a pedestal, is better. Shakespeare
has no need of a pyramid ; he has his work.
What do you suppose marble could do for him?
What can bronze do, where there is glory? Mala-
chite and alabaster are of no avail ; jasper, serpen-
tine, basalt, red porphyry like that at the Invalides,
granite, marble of Paros and Carrara, are a waste
of pains : genius is genius without them. What
though every variety of stone had its place there,
would that add a cubit to this man's stature?
What arch shall be more indestructible than this, —
' The Winter's Tale,' ' The Tempest/ ' The Merry
Wives of Windsor,' ' The Two Gentlemen of Verona/
' Julius Caesar/ ' Coriolanus ' ? What monument
sublimer than ' Lear/ sterner than ' The Merchant
of Venice/ more dazzling than ' Romeo and Juliet/
more amazing than ' Richard III/ ? What moon
could shed about the pile a light more mystic than
that of 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream'? What
capital, were it even London, could rumble around
it as tumultuously as Macbeth's perturbed soul?
What framework of cedar or of oak will last as
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 365
long as ' Othello ' ? What bronze can equal the
bronze of ' Hamlet'? No construction of lime, of
rock, of iron, and of cement, is worth the deep
breath of genius, which is the respiration of God
through man. A head containing an idea, such is
the summit; no heaps of brick and stone can rival
it. What edifice equals a thought? Babel is less
lofty than Isaiah ; Cheops is smaller than Homer ;
the Colosseum is inferior to Juvenal ; the Giralda of
Seville is dwarfish by the side of Cervantes; St.
Peter's of Rome does not reach to the ankle of
Dante. What architect has skill to build a tower
as high as the name of Shakespeare?
Add anything, if you can, to a mind !
Imagine a monument. Suppose it splendid,
suppose it sublime. A triumphal arch, an obelisk,
a circus with a pedestal in the centre, a cathedral.
No people is more illustrious, more noble, more
splendid, more high-minded, than the English peo-
ple. Wed these two ideas, England and Shake-
speare, and let their issue be a monument. Such
a nation celebrating such a man, — the spectacle
would be superb. Imagine the monument, imagine
the inauguration. The Peers are there, the Com-
mons follow, the bishops officiate, the princes join
the procession, the Queen is present. The virtuous
woman, in whom the English people, royalist as we
know, see and revere their living personification,
this worthy mother, this noble widow, comes, with
the deep respect which is befitting, to incline ma-
terial majesty before ideal majesty, — the Queen
of England salutes Shakespeare; the homage of
Victoria repairs the disdain of Elizabeth. As for
366 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Elizabeth, she is probably there also, sculptured
somewhere on the surbase, with Henry VIII. her
father, and James I. her successor, — pigmies be-
neath the poet. Cannons boom, the curtain drops,
the unveiled statue seems to say: "At length!"
It has grown in the darkness for three hundred
years, — three centuries, the youth of a colossus;
how vast it is ! To compose it, the bronze statues
of York, of Cumberland, of Pitt, and of Peel, have
been utilized ; the public squares have been re-
lieved of a heap of unjustifiable castings; all sorts
of Henries and Edwards have been blended in that
lofty figure ; for it the various Williams and the
numerous Georges have been melted down; the
Hyde Park Achilles forms its great toe : it is
noble, — behold Shakespeare almost as great as a
Pharaoh or a Sesostris ! Bells, drums, trumpets,
applause, hurrahs.
What then?
To England this is honorable; to Shakespeare
indifferent.
What is the salutation of royalty, of aristocracy,
of the army, and even of the English populace, —
like almost all other nations, still ignorant, — what
is the acclamation of all these variously enlightened
groups, to one who has the eternal and well-con-
sidered applause of all centuries and of all men?
What oration of the Bishop of London or of the
Archbishop of Canterbury is worth the cry of a
woman before Desdemona, of a mother before
Arthur, of a soul before Hamlet?
When, therefore, a universal voice demands of
England a monument to Shakespeare, it is not for
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 367
the sake of Shakespeare, it is for the sake of
England.
There are cases in which the repayment of a
debt is of greater import to the debtor than to
the creditor.
A monument is an example. The lofty head of
a great man is a light. Crowds, like the waves,
require beacons above them. It is good that the
passer-by should know that there are great men.
People may not have time to read : they are forced
to see. One passes that way, and stumbles against
the pedestal; one is almost obliged to raise the
head and to glance a little at the inscription. Men
escape a book ; they cannot escape the statue.
One day on the bridge of Rouen, before the
beautiful statue carved by David d'Angers, a
peasant mounted on a donkey said to me, " Do
you know Pierre Corneille?" "Yes," I replied.
" So do I," he rejoined. " And do you know
'The Cid'?" I resumed. " No," said he.
To him the statue was Corneille.
The people need such an introduction to their
great men. The monument incites them to know
more of the man. They desire to learn to read,
in order to know what this bronze means. A statue
is a nudge to ignorance.
The erection of such monuments is therefore not
merely a matter of national justice, but of populaf
utility.
In the end, England will certainly yield to the
temptation of performing an act at once useful
and just. She is the debtor of Shakespeare. Te
leave such a debt in abeyance is an attitude hardly
368 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
compatible with national pride. It is a point of
morality that nations should pay their debts of
gratitude. Enthusiasm is probity. When a man
is a glory upon his nation's brow, the nation that
fails to recognize the fact excites the amazement
of the race.
CHAPTER VI,
As it was easy to foresee, England will build a
monument to her poet.
At the very moment when we finished writing
the pages you have just read, announcement was
made in London of the formation of a committee
for the solemn celebration of the three-hundredth
anniversary of the birth of Shakespeare. This
committee will dedicate to Shakespeare, on the
23d of April, 1864, a monument and a festival,
which will surpass, we doubt not, the incomplete
programme we have just sketched out. They will
spare nothing. The act of admiration will be a
striking one. One may expect everything, in
point of magnificence, from the nation which has
created the prodigious palace at Sydenham, that
Versailles of a people. The initiative taken by the
committee will certainly receive support from the
powers that be. We discard, for our part, and
the committee will discard, we think, all idea of
a testimonial by subscription. A subscription,
unless of one penny, — that is to say, open to all
the people, — is necessarily fractional. What is
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 369
due to Shakespeare is a national testimonial, — a
holiday, a public festival, a popular monument,
voted by the Chambers and entered in the Budget.
England would do it for her king. Now, what is
the King of England beside the Man of England ?
All confidence is due to the Shakespeare Jubilee
Committee, — a committee composed of persons
highly distinguished in the Press, the peerage,
literature, the theatre, and the Church. Eminent
men from all countries, representing the intelli-
gence of France, of Germany, of Belgium, of Spain,
of Italy, complete this committee, which is from all
points of view excellent and competent. Another
committee, formed at Stratford-on-Avon, seconds
the London committee. We congratulate England.
Nations are hard of hearing, but so long of life
that their deafness is in no way irreparable. They
have time to change their minds. The English are
at last awakening to their glory. England begins
to spell that name, Shakespeare, upon which the
World has laid her finger.
In April, 1664, a hundred years after Shake-
speare's birth, England was engaged in applauding
Charles II., — who had sold Dunkirk to France
for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling,
— and in looking at something, that was a skeleton
and had been Cromwell, whitening in the northeast
wind and the rain on the gallows at Tyburn. In
April, 1764, two hundred years after Shakespeare's
birth, England was contemplating the aurora of
George III., — a king destined to imbecility, who,
at that epoch, in secret councils, and in somewhat
unconstitutional asides with the Tory chiefs and
24
370
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
the German Landgraves, was sketching out that
policy of resistance to progress which was to
strive, first against liberty in America, then against
democracy in France, and which, under the single
ministry of the first Pitt, had in 1778 raised the
debt of England to the sum of eighty millions
sterling. In April, 1864, three hundred years
after Shakespeare's birth, England raises a statue
to Shakespeare. It is late, — but it is well.
BOOK II.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
THE nineteenth century holds tenure of itself
only ; it receives its impulse from no ancestor ;
it is the offspring of an idea. Doubtless Isaiah,
Homer, Aristotle, Dante, Shakespeare, have been
or could be great starting-points for important
philosophical or poetical growths; but the nine-
teenth century has for its august mother the
French Revolution. This redoubtable blood flows
in its veins. It honors men of genius, and if need
be salutes them when despised, proclaims them
when ignored, avenges them when persecuted, re-
enthrones them when dethroned : it venerates them,
but it does not proceed from them. The nineteenth
century has for family itself, and itself alone. It
is the characteristic of its revolutionary nature to
dispense with ancestors.
Itself a genius, it fraternizes with men of genius.
As for its source, it is where theirs is, — beyond
man. The mysterious gestations of progress suc-
ceed each other according to a providential law.
3/2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
The nineteenth century is a birth of civilization.
It has a continent to bring into the world. France
has borne this century, and this century bears
Europe.
When civilization was coexistent with Greece, it
was at first circumscribed by the narrow limits of
the Morea, or Mulberry Leaf; then, widening by
degrees, it spread over the Roman group of na-
tions. To-day it distinguishes the French group ;
that is to say, all Europe, with beginnings in
America, in Africa, and in Asia.
The greatest of these beginnings is a democracy,
the United States, whose first tender growth was
fostered by France in the last century. France,
sublime essayist in progress, founded a republic in
America before making one in Europe. Et vidit
quod esset bonum. After having lent to Washington
an auxiliary, Lafayette, France, returning home,
gave to Voltaire, dismayed within his tomb, that
formidable successor, Danton. When the Past,
that grisly monster, being brought to bay, was
hurling all its thunderbolts, exhaling all its mias-
mas, belching black vapors, protruding horrible
talons, Progress, forced to use the same weapons,
suddenly put forth a hundred arms, a hundred
heads, a hundred fiery tongues, a hundred bel-
lowings. The good took the form of the hydra.
And this is what is called the Revolution.
Nothing can be more august.
The Revolution ended one century and began
another.
An agitation in the world of mind preparatory
to an upheaval in the world of fact: such is the
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 373
eighteenth century. The political revolution, once
accomplished, seeks its expression, and the literary
and social revolution takes place : such is the nine-
teenth century. It has been said with truth, al-
though with hostile intent, that romanticism and
socialism are the same fact. Hatred, wishing to
injure, often affirms, and, so far as in it lies,
consolidates.
A parenthesis. This word " romanticism " has,
like all war-cries, the advantage of sharply epito-
mizing a group of ideas ; it is brief, which pleases
in the contest: but it has, to our mind, through
its militant signification, the inconvenience of ap-
pearing to limit to a warlike action the movement
that it represents. Now this movement is intelli-
gence, an act of civilization, an act of soul; and
this is why the writer of these lines has never used
the words " romanticism " and " romantic." They
will be found in none of the pages of criticism that
he has had occasion to write. If to-day he departs
from his usual prudence in polemics, it is for the
sake of greater rapidity, and with every reservation.
The same observation may be made on the subject
of the word " socialism," which admits of so many
different interpretations.
The triple movement — literary, philosophical,
and social — of the nineteenth century, which is
one single movement, is nothing but the current of
the revolution in ideas. This current, after having
swept away so many facts, flows on, broad and
deep, through the minds of men.
The term " literary '93," so often repeated in
1830 against the contemporaneous literature, was
374 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
not so much an insult as it was meant to be. It
was certainly as unjust to employ it to characterize
the whole literary movement as it is wrong to em-
ploy it to describe the whole political revolution ;
there is in these two phenomena something besides
'93. But this term, " literary '93," was so far rela-
tively exact that it indicated, confusedly but truth-
fully, the origin of the literary movement of our
epoch, while endeavoring to dishonor that move-
ment. Here again the clairvoyance of hatred was
blind. Its daubings of mud upon the face of Truth
are gilding, light, and glory.
The Revolution, that grand climacteric of hu-
manity, is made up of several years. Each of these
years expresses a period, represents an aspect, or
realizes a phase of the phenomenon. Tragic '93
is one of these colossal years. Good news must
sometimes be spoken through a brazen mouth;
such a mouth is '93.
Listen to the tremendous proclamation issuing
from it. Bow down, remain awestruck, and be
touched. In the beginning God himself said,
" Fiat lux ; " the second time, He had it said.
By whom?
By '93-
Hence it is that we men of the nineteenth century
glory in the reproach, " You are of '93."
But we must not stop here. We are of '89 as
well as of '93. The Revolution, the whole Revo-
lution,— this is the source of the literature of the
nineteenth century.
Then put this literature on trial, or seek its
triumph; hate it or love it; according to the
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 375
amount of your faith in the future, insult it or
salute it: little does it care for your animosity and
fury. It is a logical deduction from the great
chaotic and primordial fact which our fathers wit-
nessed, and which has given the world a new point
of departure. He who is against that fact is against
that literature ; he who is for that fact is on its side.
What the fact is worth the literature is worth.
Reactionary writers are not at fault. Wherever
there is revolution, patent or latent, the Catholic
and Royalist scent is unerring. These ancient
men of letters award to contemporary literature
an honorable portion of diatribe; their aversion
is convulsive. One of their journalists, who is,
I believe, a bishop, pronounces the word "poet"
with the same accent as the word " Septembrist ; "
another, less episcopal but equally angry, writes :
"I feel in all this literature Marat and Robes-
pierre." This latter writer is slightly in error;
Danton, rather than Marat, is to be felt in this
literature.
But the fact is true; this literature is full of
democracy.
The Revolution forged the bugle ; the nineteenth
century sounds it.
Ah ! this avowal suits us, and in truth we do
not shrink from it; let us admit our glory, — we
are the Revolutionists. The thinkers of this time
— poets, publicists, historians, orators, philoso-
phers— trace their lineage, every one, to the French
Revolution. From it they descend, and from it
alone. '89 demolished the Bastile ; '93 discrowned
the Louvre. Deliverance sprang from '89 ; victory
3/6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
from '93. '89 and '93, — from that source issue
the men of the nineteenth century. This is their
father and their mother. Seek for them no other
lineage, no other inspiration, no other breath of
life, no other origin. They are the democrats of
thought, successors to the democrats of action.
They are liberators. Freedom was the nurse that
bent over their cradles ; that ample breast suckled
them all ; they all have her milk in their bodies,
her marrow in their bones, her granite in their
will, her rebellion in their reason, her fire in their
intelligence.
Even those among them (and there are some)
who were by birth aristocrats, who came into the
world strangers in old-time families, who received
that fatal early training whose stupid endeavor - it
is to counteract progress, and who began their
message to the century by some unmeaning stam-
mering of royalism, — even these (they will not
contradict me) felt within them, even from their
infancy, the sublime monster. They felt the in-
ward ferment of the vast reality. In the deeps of
consciousness they felt an uprising of mysterious
thoughts ; their souls were shaken by the profound
perturbation of false certitudes ; little by little they
perceived the sombre surface of their monarchism,
Catholicism, and aristocracy, trembling, quaking,
gaping open. One day the swelling of truth
within them abruptly culminated, and suddenly
the crust was rent, the eruption took place, and
behold them opened, shivered by a light which fell
not upon them from without, but — nobler miracle !
— issued from these astonished men, and illumi-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 377
nated them while it set them aflame. All unawares,
they had become volcanic craters.
They have been reproached with this phenom-
enon, as with treason. In fact, they passed over
from right divine to human rights. They turned
the back upon false history, false tradition, false
dogmas, false philosophy, false daylight, false truth.
That dawn-summoned bird, the free-soaring spirit,
is offensive to minds saturated with ignorance and
to embryons preserved in alcohol. He who sees,
offends the blind ; he who hears, enrages the deaf;
he who walks, insults the cripple in his wooden
bowl. In the eyes of dwarfs, abortions, Aztecs,
myrmidons, and pigmies forever stunted with the
rickets, growth is apostasy.
The writers and poets of the nineteenth century
have the admirable good fortune of proceeding
from a genesis, of arriving after an end of the
world, of accompanying a reappearance of light,
of being the organs of a new beginning. This
imposes on them duties unknown to their prede-
cessors, — the duties of intentional reformers and
direct civilizers. They continue nothing; they
form everything anew. The new time brings new
duties. The function of thinkers in our days is
complex: it no longer suffices to think, — one
must love; it no longer suffices to think and to
love, — one must act. To think, to love, and to
act, no longer suffice, — one must suffer. Lay
down the pen, and go where you hear the grape-
shot. Here is a barricade ; take your place there.
Here is exile; accept it. Here is the scaffold, —
be it so. Let the Montesquieu be able, in case of
378 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
need, to act the part of John Brown. The Lucre-
tius of this travailing century should contain a
Cato. ^Eschylus, who wrote ' The Oresteia/ had
a brother, Cynegirus, who grappled the enemy's
ships ; that was sufficient for Greece at the time of
Salamis, but it no longer suffices for France after
the Revolution. That ^Eschylus and Cynegirus
are brothers, is but little ; they must needs be the
same man. Such are the present requirements of
progress. Those who devote themselves to great
and urgent causes can never be too great. To set
ideas in motion, to heap up evidence, to scaffold
up principles, — such is the formidable endeavor.
To heap Pelion on Ossa is the labor of infants
beside that work of giants, the establishing of right
upon truth. Afterward to scale that height, and
to dethrone usurpations in the midst of thunders,
— such is the task.
The future presses. To-morrow cannot wait.
Humanity has not a minute to lose. Quick !
quick ! let us hasten. The wretched have their
feet on red-hot iron; they hunger, they thirst,
they suffer. Alas ! terrible emaciation of the poor
human body. Parasitism laughs, the ivy - grows
green and thrives, the mistletoe flourishes, the
solitary slug is happy. How frightful is the pros-
perity of the tapeworm ! To destroy that which
devours, in that is safety. Within your life death
itself lives and thrives robustly. There is too
much poverty, too much privation, too much im-
modesty, too much nakedness, too many houses of
shame, too many convict prisons, too many tat-
ters, too many defalcations, too many crimes, too
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 379
much darkness; not enough schools; too many
little innocents growing up for evil ! The pallet
of the poor girl is suddenly covered with silk and
lace, — and in that is the worst misery; by the
side of misfortune there is vice, the one urging on
the other. Such a society requires prompt suc-
cor. Let us seek out the best. Go, all of you, in
this search! Where are the promised lands?
Civilization must march forward ; let us test theo-
ries, systems, ameliorations, inventions, reforms,
until the shoe for that foot shall be found. The
experiment costs nothing, or costs but little. To
try is not to adopt. But before all, above all, let
us be lavish of the light. All sanitary purifica-
tion begins by opening the windows wide. Let
us open wide all intellects; let us supply souls
with air.
Quick, quick, O thinkers ! Let the human race
breathe. Shed abroad hope, sow the ideal, do
good. One step after another, horizon after hori-
zon, conquest after conquest; because you have
given what you promised, do not hold yourself
quit of obligation. To perform is to promise.
To-day's dawn pledges the sun for to-morrow.
Let nothing be lost. Let not one force be iso-
lated. Every one to work ! the urgency is supreme.
No more idle art. Poetry the worker of civili-
zation,— what could be more admirable? The
dreamer should be a pioneer; the strophe should
mean something. The beautiful should be at the
service of honesty. I am the valet of my con-
science; it rings for me: I come. " Go." I go.
What do you require of me, O Truth ! sole mon-
3 SO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
arch of this world? Let each one have within
him an eagerness for well-doing. A book is some-
times looked forward to for succor. An idea is a
balm ; a word may be a dressing for wounds ;
poetry is a physician. Let no one delay. While
you tarry, suffering man grows weaker. Let men
throw off this dreamy laziness. Leave hashish to
the Turks. Let men labor for the welfare of all ;
let them rush forward, and put themselves out of
breath. Do not be sparing of your strides. Let
nothing remain useless. No inertia. What do
you call dead nature? Everything lives. The
duty of all is to live. To walk, to run, to fly, to
soar, — such is the universal law. What are you
waiting for? Who stops you? Ah! there are
times when one might wish to hear the stones cry
out against the sluggishness of man.
Sometimes one wanders away into the woods.
To whom does it not sometimes happen to be
dejected? — one sees so many sad things. The
goal does not appear, the results are long in com-
ing, a generation is behindhand, the work of the
age languishes. What! so many sufferings yet?
One would say there had been retrogression.
There is everywhere increase of superstition, of
cowardice, of deafness, of blindness, of imbecility.
Brutishness is weighted down by penal laws. The
wretched problem has been set, — to augment
comfort by neglecting right ; to sacrifice the supe-
rior side of man to the inferior side ; to yield up
principle to appetite. Caesar takes charge of the
belly, I make over to him the brains : it is the old
sale of the birthright for the mess of lentils. A
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 381
little more, and this fatal counter-movement would
set civilization upon the wrong road. The swine
fattening for the knife would no longer be the king,
but the people. . . . Alas ! this ugly expedient
does not even succeed ; there is no diminution
of wretchedness. For the last ten years — for the
last twenty years — the low-water mark of prostitu
tion, of mendicity, of crime, has been constantly
visible; evil has not fallen a single degree. Of
true education, of free education, there is none.
Nevertheless, the child needs to be told that he is
a man, and the father that he is a citizen. Where
is the promise? Where is the hope? Oh! poor,
wretched humanity, one is tempted to shout for
help in the forest, one is tempted to claim sup-
port and material assistance from vast and sombre
Nature. Can this mysterious union of forces be
indifferent to progress? We supplicate, we call,
we lift our hands toward the shadow. We listen,
wondering if the rustlings will become voices.
The duty of the springs and streams should be to
babble forth the word " Forward ! " and one could
wish to hear the nightingales sing new Marseil-
laises.
But, after all, these seasons of halting have in
them nothing but what is normal. Discourage-
ment would be weakness. There are halts, rests,
breathing-times in the march of nations, as there
are winters in the progress of the seasons. The
gigantic step, '89, is none the less a fact. To
despair would be absurd, but to stimulate is
necessary.
To stimulate, to press, to chide, to awaken, to
382 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
suggest, to inspire, — these are the functions which,
fulfilled everywhere by writers, impress on the
literature of this century so marked a stamp of
power and originality. To remain faithful to all
the laws of art, while combining them with the law
of progress, — such is the problem triumphantly
solved by so many noble and lofty minds.
Thence the word " Deliverance," shining aloft in
the light as if it were written on the very brow of
the Ideal.
The Revolution is France sublimated.
There came a day when France entered the fur-
nace, — the furnace breeds wings upon such warrior
martyrs, — and from these flames the giantess came
forth an archangel. Throughout the earth to-day the
name of France is revolution ; and henceforth this
word " revolution" will be the name of civilization,
until it can be replaced by the word " harmony."
Seek nowhere else, I repeat, the starting-point and
the birthplace of the literature of the nineteenth
century. Ay! every one of us, great and small,
powerful and despised, illustrious and obscure, in
all our works, good or bad, whatever they may
be, poems, dramas, romances, history, philosophy,
at the tribune of assemblies as before the crowds
of the theatre or in solitary meditation ; ay !
everywhere and always ; ay ! to combat violence
and imposture ; ay ! to restore those who are
stoned and run down; ay! to draw logical con-
clusions and to march straight onward ; ay ! to
console, to succor, to relieve, to encourage, to
teach ; ay ! to dress wounds, in hope of curing
them ; ay ! to transform charity into fraternity,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 383
alms into helpfulness, sloth into industry, idleness
into usefulness, to make centralized power give
place to the family, to convert iniquity to justice,
the bourgeois into the citizen, the populace into
the people, the rabble into the nation, nations
into humanity, war into love, prejudice into free
inquiry, frontiers into welded joints, barriers into
thoroughfares, ruts into rails, vestry-rooms into
temples, the instinct of evil into the desire of good,
life into right, kings into men ; ay ! to deprive
religions of hell, and societies of the prison-den;
ay ! to be brothers to the wretched, the serf, the
fellah, the poor laborer, the disinherited, the
victim, the betrayed, the conquered, the sold,
the shackled, the sacrificed, the harlot, the con-
vict, the ignorant, the savage, the slave, the negro,
the condemned, the damned, — ay ! for all these
things we are thy sons, O Revolution !
Ay! men of genius; ay! poets, philosophers,
historians ; ay ! giants of that great art of the
early ages which is all the light of the past, — O
men eternal, the minds of this day salute you, but
do not follow you. Concerning you they hold
this law: Admire everything, imitate nothing.
Their function is no longer yours. They have to
do with the manhood of the human race. The
hour of man's majority has struck. We assist, un-
der the full light of the ideal, at the majestic union
of the Beautiful with the Useful. No present or
possible genius can surpass you, ye ancient men of
genius ; to equal you is all the ambition allowed :
but to equal you we must provide for the needs
of our time, as ye supplied the wants of yours !
384 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Writers who are sons of the Revolution have a
holy task. Their epic must sob, O Homer ! their
history must protest, O Herodotus ! their satire
must dethrone, O Juvenal ! their " thou shalt be
king " must be said to the people, O Shakespeare !
their Prometheus must smite down Jupiter, O
.^Eschylus ! their dunghill must be fruitful, O Job !
their hell must be quenched, O Dante ! thy Baby-
lon crumbles, O Isaiah ! theirs must be radiant
with light ! They do what you have done, — they
contemplate creation directly, they observe human-
ity directly ; they accept as lodestar no refracted
ray, not even yours. Like you, they have for their
sole starting-point, outside themselves the Uni-
versal Being, within themselves the soul ; as the
source of their work they have the one source
whence flows Nature and whence flows Art, the
Infinite. As the writer of these lines declared
nearly forty years ago : l " The poets and the
writers of the nineteenth century have neither
masters nor models." No, in all that vast and
sublime art of all nations, among all those grand
creations of all epochs, they find neither masters
nor models, — not even thee, O ^schylus ! not
even thee, O Dante ! not even thee, O Shakespeare !
And why have they neither masters nor models?
It is because they have one model, Man, and be-
cause they have one master, God.
1 Preface to ' Cromwell.'
BOOK III.
TRUE HISTORY.— EVERY ONE PUT IN HIS
PLACE.
CHAPTER I.
BEHOLD the rising of the new constellation !
It is now certain that what has hitherto been
the light of the human race begins to pale its inef-
fectual fire, and that the ancient beacons are flick-
ering out.
From the beginning of human tradition men of
force alone have glittered in the empyrean of his-
tory; theirs was the sole supremacy. Under the
various names of king, emperor, chief, captain,
prince, — epitomized in the word " hero," — this
apocalyptic group shone resplendent. Terror
raised acclamations to salute them, dripping with
the blood of victories. They were followed by a
train of tumultuous flames ; their dishevelled light
gleamed portentous upon the children of men. If
they lit the sky, it was with flames. They seemed
to wish to extend their sway over the Infinite.
Amid their glory was heard the crash of ruin.
That red glare — was it the purple? was it blood?
was it shame? Their light suggested the face of
25
386 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Cain. They hated one another. They exchanged
flashing bolts. At times these vast stars crashed
together amid volleys of lightning. Their look
was furious. Their radiance stretched into sword-
blades. All this hung terrible above us.
Such is the tragic glare that fills the past; to-
day it is rapidly waning.
There is decline in war, decline in despotism,
decline in theocracy, decline in slavery, decline in
the scaffold. The sword-blade grows shorter, the
tiara is fading away, the crown is vulgarized, war
is coming to seem but madness, the plume is
abased, usurpation is circumscribed, shackles are
growing lighter, the rack is out of joint. The
antique violence of the few against all, called right
divine, is nearing its end. Legitimate sovereignty
by the grace of God, the Pharamond monarchy,
nations branded on the shoulder with the fleur-de-
lys, the possession of nations by the fact of birth,
rights over the living acquired through a long line
of dead ancestors, — these things still maintain the
struggle for existence here and there, as at Naples,
in Prussia, etc. ; but it is a struggle, not a battle, —
it is death straining after life. A stammering, which
to-morrow will be speech, and the day after to-
morrow a gospel, proceeds from the bruised lips
of the serf, of the vassal, of the laboring-man, of
the pariah. The gag is breaking between the teeth
of the human race. The patient human race has
had enough of the path of sorrow, and refuses to
go farther.
Already certain kinds of despots are no longer
possible. The Pharaoh is a mummy, the Sultan is
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 387
a phantom, the Cassar is a counterfeit. This sty-
lite of the Trajan columns is anchylosed upon its
pedestal ; its head is covered with the excrement of
the free eagles ; it is nonentity rather than glory ;
this laurel garland is bound on with grave-clothes.
The period of the men of violence is past. They
have been glorious, certainly, but with a glory that
melts away. That species of great men is soluble
in progress. Civilization rapidly oxidizes these
bronzes. The French Revolution has already
brought the universal conscience to such a degree
of maturity that the hero can no longer be a hero
without rendering account; the captain is dis-
cussed, the conqueror is inadmissible. A Louis
XIV. invading the Palatinate would, in our day, be
regarded as a -robber. Already in the last century
these truths began to dawn. Frederick II. in the
presence of Voltaire felt and owned himself some-
thing of a brigand. To be, materially, a great
man, to be pompously violent, to reign by virtue
of the sword-knot and the cockade, to forge a legal
system upon the anvil of force, to hammer out
justice and truth by dint of accomplished facts, to
possess a genius for brutality, — this is to be great,
if you will, but it is a coarse way of being great.
Glory advertised by drum-beats is met with a shrug
of the shoulder. These sonorous heroes have, up
to the present day, deafened human reason, which
begins to be fatigued by this majestic uproar.
Reason stops eyes and ears before those author-
ized butcheries called battles. The sublime cut-
throats have had their day. Henceforth they can
remain illustrious and august only in a certain rela-
388 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
live oblivion. Humanity, grown older, asks to be
relieved of them. The cannon's prey has begun
to think, and, thinking twice, loses its admiration
for being made a target.
A few figures, in passing, would do no harm.
Our subject includes all tragedy. The tragedy
of the poets is not the only one; there is the
tragedy of the politicians and the statesmen.
Would you know how much the latter tragedy
costs?
Heroes have an enemy named finance. For a
long time the amount of money paid for that kind
of glory was unknown. In order to disguise the
total, there were convenient little fireplaces, like
that in which Louis XIV. burned the accounts of
Versailles. That day the smoke of one thousand
millions of francs issued from the royal stove-pipe.
The nations did not so much as look. Nowadays
the nations have one great virtue, — they are stingy.
They know that prodigality is the mother of hu-
miliation. They keep score, they understand
double-entry book-keeping. Henceforth there is a
debit and credit account with Warlike Glory, which
is thus rendered impossible.
The greatest warrior of modern times is not
Napoleon, it is Pitt. Napoleon waged war; Pitt
created war. It is Pitt who willed all the wars of
the Revolution and of the Empire. He is their
fountain-head. Replace Pitt by Fox, and that
outrageous battle of twenty- three years would be
deprived of its motive-power ; there would be no
coalition. Pitt was the soul of the coalition ; and,
he dead, his soul still animated the universal war.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 389
Here is what Pitt cost England and the world;
we add this bas-relief to his pedestal : —
First, the expenditure of men. From 1791 to
1814, France, constrained and forced, wrestling
alone against Europe confederated by England,
expended in slaughter for military glory — and
also, let us add, for the defence of her territory —
five millions of men ; that is, six hundred men per
day. Europe, including France, expended sixteen
millions six hundred thousand men ; that is, two
thousand men destroyed daily for a period of
twenty-three years.
Secondly, the expenditure of money. Unfortu-
nately, we have no authentic account, except the
account of England. From 1791 to 1814, Eng-
land, in order to get France crushed by Europe, in-
curred a debt of twenty milliards three hundred
and sixteen millions four hundred and sixty thou-
sand and fifty-three francs. Divide this sum by
the number of men killed, at the rate of two thou-
sand per day for twenty-three years, and you arrive
at the result that each corpse stretched on the
field of battle cost England alone fifty pounds
sterling.
Add the figures for all Europe, — numbers un-
known, but enormous.
With these seventeen millions of men the Euro-
pean population of Australia might have been
formed. With the eight hundred millions of Eng-
lish pounds sterling shot from the cannon's mouth,
the face of the earth might have been changed,
civilization planted everywhere, and ignorance and
poverty suppressed throughout the world.
3QO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
England pays eight hundred millions sterling
for the two statues of Pitt and of Wellington.
It is fine to have heroes, but it is a costly luxury.
Poets are less expensive.
CHAPTER II.
THE discharge of the warrior is signed. His
splendor is fading in the distance. Nimrod the
Great, Cyrus the Great, Sennacherib the Great,
Sesostris the Great, Alexander the Great, Pyrrhus
the Great, Hannibal the Great, Frederick the
Great, Caesar the Great, Timour the Great, Louis
the Great, still other Greats, — all this greatness is
passing away.
To think that we indiscriminately reject these
men would be a mistake. Five or six of those
just named have in our eyes a legitimate title to
glory; they have even mingled some good with
their havoc ; a final estimate of them is embarrass-
ing to the thinker of absolute equity, who is forced
to weigh in almost equal scale the harmful and the
useful.
Others have been nothing but harmful. These
are numerous, innumerable even ; for the masters
of the world are legion.
The thinker is the weigher ; clemency is his dis-
tinction. Let us then admit that those who have
done only evil may plead one extenuating circum-
stance, — imbecility.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 391
They have still another excuse, — the mental
condition of the race at the time of their advent;
the modifiable but obstructive realities of their
environment.
Not men, but things, are tyrants. The true
tyrants are the frontier, the beaten track, routine,
the blindness of fanaticism, deafness and dumbness
caused by diversity of language, dispute caused by
diversity of weights and measures and coin, hate
born of dispute, war born of hate. All these ty-
rants have a single name, — Separation. Division,
whence issues the Reign, is the despot in the
abstract state.
Even the tyrants of flesh are mere things. Ca-
ligula is much more a fact than a man, a result
rather than a living being. The Roman proscriber,
dictator, or caesar, prohibits fire and water to the
vanquished, — that is, deprives them of life. One
day of Gelon represents twenty thousand pro-
scripts ; one day of Tiberius, thirty thousand ; one
day of Sulla, seventy thousand. Vitellius, being
ill one evening, sees a house lighted up for a
merry-making. " Do they think me dead ? " says
Vitellius. It is Junius Blesus supping with Tus-
cus Caecina. The Emperor sends a cup of poison to
these drinkers, that, by the fatal conclusion of too
merry a night, they may feel that Vitellius still
lives.1 Otho and this Vitellius make friendly ex-
changes of assassins. Under the Caesars, to die
in one's bed is a marvel. Piso, to whom this hap-
pened, is remarked for this eccentricity. Valerius
1 " Reddendam pro intempestiva licentia mcestam et funebrem
noctem qua sentiat vivere Vitellium et imperare."
392 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Asiaticus has a garden that pleases the Emperor ;
Statilius a face that displeases the Empress : trea-
son ! Valerius is strangled for having a garden,
and Statilius for having a face. Basil II., Emperor
of the East, captures fifteen thousand Bulgarians ;
he divides them into bands of a hundred each, and
puts out the eyes of all save one in each band.
This one leads his ninety-nine blind comrades
home to Bulgaria. History characterizes Basil II.
as follows: " He loved glory too much" (Delan-
dine). Paul of Russia utters this axiom: "No
man possesses power except whom the Emperor
addresses, and his power continues only so long as
the word he hears." Philip V. of Spain, so fero-
ciously calm at the auto-da-fe, is stricken with
fright at the thought of changing his shirt, and
lies in bed six months at a time without washing
and without trimming his nails, for fear of being
poisoned by the scissors, or by the water in his
basin, or by his shirt, or by his shoes. Ivan,
grandfather of Paul, puts a woman to the rack
before admitting her to his bed; hangs a bride
and sets the bridegroom on guard to keep the rope
from being cut; has the father executed by the
son ; invents a method of sawing men in two with
a cord ; burns Bariatinsky by a slow fire, and, deaf
to his victim's shrieks, adjusts the firebrands with
the end of his stick. Peter aspires to excel as an
executioner; he practises the art of decapitation.
At first he can cut off but a trifle of five heads a
day; by strict application, however, he becomes
expert enough to cut off twenty-five. What an
accomplishment for a Czar, to be able to tear out
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 393
a woman's breast with a stroke of the knout !
What are all these monsters? Symptoms, angry
pustules, pus issuing from an unhealthy body.
They are hardly more responsible'than the sum of
a column is responsible for the figures. Basil, Ivan,
Philip, Paul, and the rest, are the product of the
vast environing stupidity. The Greek clergy hav-
ing, for example, this maxim, " Who could make
us judges of those who are our masters? " it fol-
lows as a matter of course that a Czar, this same
Ivan, should sew an archbishop in a bearskin and
have him eaten by dogs. It is right that the Czar
amuse himself. Under Nero, the man whose
brother, has been put to death goes to the temple
to give thanks to the gods; under Ivan, an im-
paled boyard employs his death-agony of twenty-
four hours in repeating : " O Lord, protect the
Czar ! " The Princess Sanguzko comes weeping
and upon her knees to present a petition to Nicho-
las; she begs mercy for her husband, she im-
plores the master to spare Sanguzko — a Pole guilty
of loving Poland — the terrible journey to Siberia.
Nicholas mutely listens, takes the petition, and
writes at the bottom the words, " On foot." Then
Nicholas goes into the street, and the people throw
themselves on the ground to kiss his boot. What
can you say ? Nicholas is mad, his people im-
bruted. From the khan comes the knez, from the
knez the tzar, from the tzar the czar, — a series of
phenomena rather than a lineage of men. What is
more logical than that after this Ivan should come
this Peter, after Peter, Nicholas, after Nicholas,
Alexander ? You all desire it more or less. The
394 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
tortured consent to the rack. You have yourselves
made u this Czar, half putrefied, half frozen," as
says Madame de Stael. To be a nation, to be a
force, and to witness these things, is to approve
them. To be present is to assent. He who as-
sists at the crime assists the crime. The presence
of the inert is an encouraging sign of abjection.
Let it be added that, even before the commission
of the crime, some pre-existing corruption has
given rise to the complicity; some foul fermenta-
tion of original baseness engenders the oppressor.
The wolf is the fact of the forest. He is the
wild fruit of the defenceless solitude. Group and
combine silence, darkness, ease of conquest, mon-
strous infatuation, abundance of prey, security in
murder, the connivance of all present, weakness,
want of weapons, abandonment, isolation, — from
the point of intersection of all these things springs
the ferocious beast. A gloomy region, where no
cries for succor can be heard, produces the tiger.
A tiger is blindness armed and hungry. Is it a
creature ? Hardly. The beast's claw is no more
conscious than the thorn of the plant. The fatal
condition of things brings forth the unconscious
organism. In point of personality, and apart from
the power of killing for a living, the tiger does not
exist. If Mourawieff thinks himself some one, he
is mistaken.
Bad men spring from bad things ; hence, let us
correct the things.
And here we return to our starting-point :
the extenuating circumstance of despotism is —
idiocy.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 395
We have just pleaded this extenuating circum-
stance.
The idiotic despots, a legion, are the mob of the
purple ; but beyond and above them, at the im-
measurable distances separating that which shines
from that which stagnates, are the despots of
genius.
Among them are captains, conquerors, strong
men of war, civilizers by force, ploughmen of the
sword.
These we have just now recalled. The really
great among them are Cyrus, Sesostris, Alexander,
Hannibal, Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon; and,
with the restrictions mentioned, we admire them.
But we admire them on condition of their disap-
pearance.
Make room for better, greater men !
Are these greater, these better men anything
new? No. Their line is as ancient as the other,
— more ancient, perhaps, for the thought must have
preceded the deed, and the thinker goes before the
fighter ; but their place was taken, — taken by
violence. This usurpation is about to cease; the
thinker's hour has struck at last, his predominance
becomes evident. Civilization, returning to its
truer vision, recognizes him as its sole founder;
the brightness of his line outshines the rest; the
future, like the past, belongs to him ; and his line it
is that God will henceforward establish.
396 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER III.
IT is evident that history must be re-written.
Up to the present time it has nearly always been
written from the petty standpoint of fact; it is
time to write it from the standpoint of principle.
And this under penalty of becoming null and
void.
Royal deeds, warlike uproar, coronations, the
marriage, baptism, and mourning of princes, exe-
cutions and festivals, the splendor of one crushing
all, the insolence of regal birth, the prowess of
sword and axe, great empires, heavy taxes, the
tricks which chance plays chance, the world swayed
by the haps of the first best head, — provided it be
a crowned head ; the destiny of a century changed
by a lance thrust by a giddy fellow against the
skull of an imbecile ; Louis XIV.'s majestic fistula
in ano ; the grave words of the dying Emperor
Matthias to his physician, who was groping under
his coverlet to feel his pulse for the last time:
" Erras, amice, hoc est membrum nostrum imperi-
ale sacrocaesareum ; " Cardinal Richelieu, in the
disguise of a shepherd, performing a castanet dance
before the Queen of France in the little villa of the
Rue de Gaillon; Hildebrand completed by Cisne-
ros ; the little dogs of Henri III. ; the various
Potemkins of Catherine II., — here OrlofT, there
Godoy, etc. ; a great tragedy with a paltry intrigue,
— such, down to our own day, was history, oscilla-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 397
ting between throne and altar, giving one ear to
Dangeau, the other to Dom Calmet, sanctimonious
rather than severe, not comprehending the real
transitions from age to age, incapable of distin-
guishing the turning-points of civilization, exhibit-
ing the human race as climbing up by ladders of
stupid dates, learned in puerilities while ignorant
of law, of justice, and of truth, — a history modelled
rather upon Le Ragois than upon Tacitus.
So true is this that Tacitus has, in our time, been
made the object of an official requisition.
We are not to be weary of repeating the fact that
Tacitus is, like Juvenal, Suetonius, and Lampridius,
the object of special and well-earned hatred. The
day when the professors of rhetoric in the col-
leges place Juvenal above Virgil, and Tacitus above
Bossuet, will be the morrow of humanity's day of
deliverance. Before this happens, all forms of op-
pression shall have disappeared, — from the slave-
dealer to the Pharisee, from the cabin where the
slave weeps, to the chapel where the eunuch sings.
Cardinal du Perron, who received for Henri IV.
the strokes of the Pope's staff, was kind enough to
say: "I despise Tacitus."
Down to the present time, history has been a
courtier.
The double identification of the king with the
nation and with God, is the work of this courtly
history. The Grace of God begets the Right Di-
vine. Louis XIV. declares : " I am the state."
Madame du Barry, a plagiarist of Louis XIV.,
gives to Louis XV. the name of France ; and the
pompously haughty saying of the great Asiatic
398 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
King of Versailles ends with the words : " France,
thy coffee is going to the devil ! "
Bossuet wrote without winking, although palli-
ating the facts here and there, the frightful legend
of the crime-laden thrones of antiquity ; and, apply-
ing to the surface of things his vague theocratic
declamation, he satisfies himself with this formula :
"God holds in his hand the heart of kings." Such
is not the case, for two reasons, — God has no hand,
and kings have no heart. But of course we are
speaking of the kings of Assyria only.
This elder History is a good old dame to princes.
When a Royal Highness says, " History, do not
look this way," she shuts her eyes. With the face
of a harlot, she has imperturbably denied the
dreadful skull-crushing helmet with its inner spike,
intended by the Archduke of Austria for the Swiss
magistrate, Gundoldingen. This instrument is to-
day hanging upon a nail in the town-hall of Lucerne,
— any one can see it for himself; but History denies
it still. Moreri calls the massacre of Saint Bar-
tholomew " a disturbance." Chaudon, another bi-
ographer, thus characterizes the author of the
witticism for Louis XV. cited above : " A lady
of the court, Madame du Barry." History accepts
as an attack of apoplexy the mattress under which
John II. of England smothers the Duke of Glouces-
ter at Calais.1 Why, in his coffin at the Escurial,
is the head of the Infante Don Carlos severed from
the trunk? The father, Philip II., replies : "Because,
the Infante having died a natural death, the coffin
when made was found too short, and the head had
1 So in the original. Richard II. is probably meant. — TR.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 399
to be cut off." History blandly accepts this coffin
story. But that the father should have had his
son beheaded, — out upon it ! Only demagogues
would say such things.
The ingenuousness with which History glorifies
the fact, whatever and however impious it be,
appears nowhere better than in Cantemir and
Karamsin, — the one the Turkish, the other the
Russian historian. The Ottoman fact and the
Muscovite fact evince, when confronted and com-
pared, the Tartar identity. Moscow is no less
darkly Asiatic than Stamboul. Ivan bears sway
over the one as Mustapha over the other. Be-
tween this Christianity and this Mahometanism the
distinction is imperceptible. The pope is brother
to the ulema, the boyard to the pasha, the knout
to the cord, and the moujik to the mute. To the
passers in the streets there is little to choose between
Selim who transfixes them with arrows, and Basil
who lets bears loose upon them. Cantemir, a man
of the South, a former Moldavian hospodar and
long a Turkish subject, feels, although he has
passed over to the Russians, that in deifying des-
potism he does not displease the Czar Peter; and
he prostrates his metaphors before the sultans.
This grovelling is Oriental, and somewhat Occi-
dental too. The sultans are divine, their scimitar
is sacred, their dagger sublime, their extermina-
tions magnanimous, their parricides good. They
call themselves clement, as the Furies call them-
selves Eumenides. The blood they shed smokes
with an odor of incense in Cantemir, and the pro-
longed assassination which constitutes their reign
400 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
expands into an aureole. They massacre the peo-
ple for the people's good. When some padisha,
I forget which, — Tiger IV. or Tiger VI., —
strangles his nineteen young brothers one after
another, as they run terrified about the room, the
historian of Turkish birth declares that " this was
a wise execution of the law of the empire." The
Russian historian Karamsin is no less tender to
the czar than Cantemir to the sultan. Neverthe-
less it must be admitted that, compared with Can-
temir, Karamsin's fervor is lukewarm. Thus Peter
is glorified by Karamsin for killing his brother
Alexis ; but the tone is apologetic. This is not
the pure and simple acceptance of Cantemir, who
is more natural in the kneeling posture. The Rus-
sian historian only admires; the Turkish historian
adores. In Karamsin there is no fire, no dash ;
his enthusiasm is sluggish, his deifications want
unction, his good-will is congealed, his caresses are
numb ; his flattery is not first-rate. The climate
evidently counts for something, — Karamsin is a
half-frozen Cantemir.
Such is the history dominant to this day; it
passes from Bossuet to Karamsin by way of the
Abbe Pluche. This history is based upon the prin-
ciple of obedience. Obedience to whom? To
Success. Heroes are well treated, but kings are
preferred. To reign is to be successful every
morning. To-morrow belongs to the king. He
is solvent. It is foreseen that a hero may turn out
ill; in that case he is only a usurper. Before
this history, genius itself, were it the highest
expression of force served by intelligence, is held
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 401
to continual success : if it trips, ridicule ; if it
falls, insult. After Marengo, you are the hero of
Europe, the man of Providence, anointed of the
Lord ; after Austerlitz, Napoleon the Great ; after
Waterloo, the Corsican ogre. It was an ogre
that the Pope anointed.
Nevertheless, in consideration of the services ren-
dered, impartial Father Loriquet dubs you marquis.
The man of our time who has best swept this
astonishing scale, from the hero of Europe to the
ogre of Corsica, is Fontanes, — the man chosen
during so many years to cultivate, develop, and
direct the moral sense of youth.
This history keeps alive the notions of legiti-
macy, divine right, denial of universal suffrage ;
it regards the throne as a fief, and nations as en-
tailed estates. The hangman figures in it largely,
— Joseph de Maistre identifies him, delightfully
enough, with the king. This kind of history is
called in England " loyal." The English aristoc-
racy, which is subject to these happy inspirations,
has bethought itself to give to a political opinion
the name of a virtue, Instrumentum regni. In
England, to be a royalist is to be loyal ; a democrat
is disloyal, — a variety of the dishonest man.
This man believes in the people? For shame!
He would like universal suffrage, — he is a Chart-
ist; are you sure of his honesty? There goes a
republican : beware of pickpockets ! This method
is ingenious. Society in general is cleverer than
Voltaire ; the English aristocracy is shrewder than
Macchiavelli.
The king pays, the people do not pay : such is
26
4O2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
pretty much the whole secret of this species of
history. It also has its sale of indulgences.
Honor and profit are divided : the master gets
the honor, the historian the profit. Procopius is
a prefect, and, what is more, Illustrious by decree,
— a fact which in no wise debars him from being a
traitor; Bossuet is a bishop; Fleury is prelate-
prior of Argenteuil; Karamsin is a senator; Can-
temir is a prince. Best of all is to be paid succes-
sively by For and by Against, and, like Fontanes,
to be made a senator for idolatry, and a peer of
France for spitting upon the idol.
What is going on at the Louvre? at the Vatican?
in the Seraglio? at Buen Retire? at Windsor? at
Schonbrunn? at Potsdam? at the Kremlin? at
Oranienbaum? That is the question. The hu-
man race is interested in nothing outside of these
half-score of houses, of which history is the
door-keeper.
Nothing that relates to war, to the warrior, to
the prince, to the throne, to the court, is trifling.
He who lacks a talent for solemn puerility cannot
be a historian. A question of etiquette, a hunt, a
gala, a grand levee, a retinue, Maximilian's triumph,
the number of carriages bearing ladies to the King's
camp before Mans, the necessity of having vices
in conformity with his Majesty's foibles, the clocks
of Charles V., the locks of Louis XVI. ; how Louis
XV. announced himself to be a good king by refus-
ing a broth before his coronation ; and how the
Prince of Wales sits in the House of Lords not as
Prince of Wales but as Duke of Cornwall ; and
•how drunken Augustus made Prince Lubormirsky,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 403
Starost of Kasimiroff, under-cupbearer to the
Crown ; and how Charles of Spain gave the com-
mand of the army of Catalonia to Pimentel, be-
cause the Pimentels had been lords of Benavente
since 1308; and how Frederick of Brandenburg
granted a fief of forty thousand crowns to a hunts-
man who had enabled him to kill a fine stag ; and
how Louis Antoine, Grand Master of the Teutonic
Order and Prince Palatine, died at Liege of disap-
pointment at not having been able to get himself
elected bishop ; and how the Princess Borghese,
dowager of Mirandola, and related to the Pope,
married the Prince of Cellamare, son of the Duke
of Giovenazzo ; and how my Lord Seaton, a Mont-
gomery, followed James II. to France; and how
the Emperor ordered the Duke of Mantua, a vassal
of the Empire, to drive the Marquis Amorati from
his court; and how there came to be always two
Cardinals Barberini living, etc., — all that is impor-
tant business. A snub-nose is made historic. Two
little meadows adjacent to the ancient Mark and
to the Duchy of Zell are memorable for having
almost caused a war between England and Prussia.
In fact the skill of the governing and the apathy
of the obeying classes have so arranged and
confused affairs that all these regal nothings
take their places in human destiny, and war and
peace, the movement of armies and fleets, the re-
coil or the advance of civilization, depend upon
Queen Anne's cup of tea or the Dey of Algiers'
fly-flap.
History stands behind the royal seat, registering
these fooleries.
4C>4 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Knowing so many things, it is quite natural that
it should be ignorant of some. Should you be so
curious as to ask it the name of the English mer-
chant who first, in 1612, entered China from the
north; of the glass-workman who first, in 1663,
established a manufactory of crystal glass ; of the
citizen who, under Charles VIII., carried in the
States-General at Tours the fruitful principle of
the elective magistracy, — a principle subsequently
adroitly suppressed; of the pilot who, in 1405,
discovered the Canary Isles; of the Byzantine
lute-maker who, in the eighth century, by the
invention of the organ, gave to music its most
sonorous voice; of the Campanian mason who
originated the clock by placing the first sun-dial
upon the temple of Ouirinus at Rome; of the
Roman toll-collector who, by the construction of
the Appian Way in the year 312 B. C., invented the
paving of towns ; of the Egyptian carpenter who
conceived the dove-tail, — one of the keys of archi-
tecture, found under the obelisk of Luxor; of the
Chaldaean goatherd who, by the observation of the
signs of the zodiac, founded astronomy and gave a
starting-point to Anaximenes ; of the Corinthian
calker who, nine years before the first Olympiad,
calculated the force of the triple lever, conceived
the trireme, and built a towboat two thousand six
hundred years before the first steamboat ; of the
Macedonian ploughman who discovered the first
gold-mine on Mount Pangaeus, — these names
history cannot give you ; these people are un-
known to history.
Who are these? A ploughman, a calker, a goat-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 405
herd, a carpenter, a toll-gatherer, a mason, a lute-
maker, a sailor, a burgher, and a merchant. The
dignity of history must be preserved.
In Nuremberg, near the Aegidienplatz, in a
room on the second floor of a house facing the
church of St. Aegidius, there lies upon an iron
tripod a wooden globe twenty inches in diameter,
covered with a dingy vellum streaked with lines
which were once red and yellow and green. Upon
this globe is a sketch of the earth's divisions as
they could be conceived in the fifteenth century.
At the twenty-fourth degree of latitude, under the
sign of Cancer, there is vaguely indicated a kind of
island called " Antilia," which attracted, one day,
the attention of two men. The one who had made
the globe and drawn Antilia, showed this island to
the other, laid his finger upon it, and said, " There
it is." The man looking on was Christopher Co-
lumbus ; the man who said, " There it is," was
Martin Behaim. Antilia was America. Of Fer-
nando Cortez, who ravaged America, history-
speaks ; but not of Martin Behaim, who guessed
its existence.
If a man has " cut to pieces " his fellow-men, if
he has " put them to the edge of the sword," if he
has " made them bite the dust," — horrible phrases,
which have grown hideously familiar, — whatever
this man's name may be, you will find it in history.
Search there for the name of him who invented the
compass, — you will not find it !
In 1747, in the full tide of the eighteenth cen-
tury, under the very eyes of the philosophers, the
battles of Raucoux and of Laffeld, the siege of the
406 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Sas van Ghent, and the taking of Bergen-op-Zoom,
overshadow and hide the sublime discovery of
electricity, which is to-day effecting the trans-
formation of the world.
Voltaire himself at about that time is distractedly
celebrating who knows what exploit of Trajan
(read, Louis XV.).
From this history is evolved a kind of public
stupidity. This history is almost everywhere
superposed upon education. If you doubt this,
see, among others, the publications of Perisse
Brothers, — designed, says a parenthesis, for pri-
mary schools.
It makes us laugh if a prince assumes the name
of an animal. We ridicule the Emperor of China
for having himself styled " His Majesty the Dra-
gon," and we ourselves complacently talk of
" Monseigneur the Dauphin."
History is domestic; the historian is a mere
master-of-ceremonies to the centuries. In the
model court of Louis the Great there are four
historians, as there are four bedchamber violinists.
Lulli leads the latter, Boileau the former.
In this old-fashioned history — the only style
authorized down to 1789, and classic in the com-
plete sense of the word — the best narrators, even
the honest ones, of whom there are a few, even
those who think themselves free, remain mechani-
cally subordinate, make a patchwork of traditions,
yield to the force of habit, receive the countersign
in the antechamber, go with the crowd in accept-
ing the stupid divinity of the coarse personages of
the foreground, — kings, " potentates," " pontiffs,"
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 407
soldiers, — and, though devoutly believing them-
selves historians, end by wearing the livery of
historiographers, and are lackeys without know-
ing it.
This history is taught, imposed, commanded, and
recommended ; all young minds are more or less
imbued with it. The mark remains ; their thought
suffers from it, recovering only with difficulty;
school-boys are compelled to learn it by heart, and
I, who am speaking, was, as a child, its victim.
This history contains everything except history,
— displays of princes, of " monarchs," and of cap-
tains. Of the people, the laws, the manners, very
little; of letters, arts, sciences, philosophy, the
trend of universal thought, '• — in one word, of man,
— nothing. Civilization is made to date by reigns,
not by progress. Some king forms a stage. The
true relays, the relays of great men, are nowhere
indicated. It is explained how Francis II. suc-
ceeds Henri II., how Charles IX. succeeds Fran-
cis II., and Henri III. Charles IX.; but no one
teaches how Watt succeeds Papin, and how Fulton
succeeds Watt. Behind the heavy upholstery of
hereditary monarchy the mysterious dynasty of
genius is scarcely glimpsed. The smoky torch
upon the opaque facade of royal accessions hides
the starry light streaming down upon the centuries
from the creators of civilization. Not a single one
of this series of historians points to the divine
lineage of human miracles, that applied logic of
Providence ; not one exhibits the manner in which
progress gives birth to progress. It would be
shameful not to know that Philip IV. comes after
408 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Philip III., and Charles II. after Philip IV. ; but
that Descartes continues Bacon and that Kant
continues Descartes, that Las Casas continues
Columbus, that Washington continues Las Casas
and that John Brown continues and rectifies Wash-
ington, that John Huss continues Pelagius, that
Luther continues John Huss and that Voltaire
continues Luther, — it is almost a scandal to be
aware of these things.
CHAPTER IV.
IT is time to change all this. It is time that
men of action should step back, and that men of
thought should take the lead. The summit is the
head. Where thought is, there power exists. It
is time that the genius take precedence of the hero.
It is time to render to Caesar the things that are
Caesar's, and to the book the things that belong to
the book. Such a poem, such a drama, such a
novel, is doing more service than all the courts of
Europe put together. It is time that history
should proportion itself to reality, that it should
give every influence its ascertained value, that it
should cease to thrust regal masks upon epochs
made in the image of poets and of philosophers.
To whom belongs the eighteenth century, — to
Louis XV., or to Voltaire? Compare Versailles
and Ferney, and consider from which of the two
sources civilization flows.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 409
A century is a formula; an epoch is an ex-
pressed thought. One such thought expressed,
Civilization passes to another. The centuries are
the phrases of Civilization; what she says here
she does not repeat there. But these mysterious
phrases are linked together ; logic — the logos —
is within them, and their series constitutes pro-
gress. In all these phrases, expressions of a single
thought, the divine thought, we are slowly deci-
phering the word Fraternity.
All light is at some point condensed into a
flame; likewise every epoch is condensed in a
man. The man dead, the epoch is concluded.
God turns over the leaf. Dante dead, a period is
placed at the end of the thirteenth century ; John
Huss may come. Shakespeare dead, a period is
placed at the end of the sixteenth century. After
this poet, who contains and epitomizes all philoso-
phy, may come the philosophers, — Pascal, Des-
cartes, Moliere, Le Sage, Montesquieu, Rousseau,
Diderot, Beaumarchais. Voltaire dead, a period
is placed at the end of the eighteenth century.
The French Revolution, that winding-up of the
first social form of Christianity, may come.
Each of these various periods, which we call
epochs, has its dominant note. What is this dom-
inant, — a head wearing a crown, or a head bearing
a thought? Is it an aristocracy, or an idea? Make
your own answer. Consider where the power lies.
Weigh Francis I. against Gargantua; put the
whole of chivalry into the balance with ' Don
Quixote.'
Each one to his own place, therefore. About
410 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
face ! And now consider the centuries as they
are. In the first rank, mind ; in the second, third,
twentieth, soldiers and princes. Down with the
warrior; the thinker retakes possession of the
pedestal. Pull down Alexander, and set up Aris-
totle. Strange that to this day people should have
read the Iliad in such a manner as to overshadow
Homer by Achilles !
It is time, I repeat, to change all this. The
initiative, indeed, is taken. Noble minds are al-
ready at work ; the future history is approaching ;
some superb partial rehandlings exist as speci-
mens; a general recasting is about to take place.
Ad usum populi. Compulsory education requires
true history; true history is begun, and will be
made.
The old medals will be re-minted : that which
was the reverse will become the face ; that which
was the head will become the tail ; Urban VIII. will
be the reverse of Galileo.
The true profile of humanity will reappear upon
the various prints of civilization offered by the
succession of the centuries.
The historical effigy will no longer be the man
king, it will be the man people.
No one shall reproach us with failing to insist
that real and veracious history, while pointing to
the real sources of civilization, will not underesti-
mate the appreciable utility of the sceptre-holders
and sword-racks at certain moments and in pres-
ence of certain human conditions. Wrestling-
matches require some equality between the two
combatants; barbarity must sometimes be pitted
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 41 1
against barbarism. There are cases of violent
progress. Caesar is good in Cimmeria, and Alex-
ander in Asia. But to Alexander and to Caesar
the second rank suffices.
The veracious history, the true history, the de-
finitive history, charged henceforward with the
education of that royal child, the people, will
reject all fiction, will be wanting in complaisance,
will logically classify phenomena, will unravel
hidden causes, will study, philosophically and
scientifically, the successive disorders of humanity,
and will take less account of great sabre-strokes
than of great strokes of thought. The deeds of
the light will form the van ; Pythagoras will be a
greater event than Sesostris. We said just now
that heroes, crepuscular men, are relatively bright
in the darkness ; but what is a conqueror beside a
sage? what is the invasion of kingdoms compared
with the opening of the mind? The winners of
minds overshadow the winners of provinces. The
true conqueror is the man who does the thinking
for others. In the coming history, the slave y£sop
and the slave Plautus will take precedence of
kings ; such a vagabond will outweigh such a
victor, such an actor will outweigh such an emperor.
To make what we are saying obvious by examples,
it is certainly useful that a man of power should
have marked the period of stagnation between the
crumbling of the Latin world and the outgrowth
of the Gothic world ; it is useful that another man
of power, following the first, the shrewd after the
bold, should have outlined, in the form of a
catholic empire, the future universal group of
4 1 2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
nations and the wholesome encroachments of
Europe upon Africa, Asia, and America. But it
is still more useful to have made the ' Divina Corn-
media' and 'Hamlet; ' no wicked deed is mingled
with these master-works ; here the account of the
civilizer bears no debit charge of nations crushed ;
and the enlargement of the human mind being
taken as a result, Dante counts for more than
Charlemagne, Shakespeare for more than Charles
the Fifth.
In history, as it is to be made upon the pattern
of absolute truth, that commonplace intelligence,
that unconscious and vulgar being, the "Non pluri-
bus impar," the sultan-sun of Marly, becomes
merely the almost mechanical fabricator of the
shelter required by the thinker who wore the
theatrical mask, — of the environment of ideas and
of men requisite for the philosophy of Alceste.
Louis XIV. is bed-maker to Moliere.
These reversals of role will exhibit characters
in their true light; the new historical optics will
map out the still chaotic sky of civilization ; per-
spective, that geometrical justice, will take pos-
session of the past, placing this in the foreground,
that in the background ; every man will resume his
real stature ; tiaras, crowns, and other head-dresses
will serve simply to render dwarfs ridiculous ; stupid
prostrations will disappear. From such readjust-
ments will stream forth the right.
That great judge, We All, having henceforth as
a standard a clear conception of that which is ab-
solute and of that which is relative, the deductions
and restitutions will take place of themselves.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 413
The innate moral sense of man will find its bear-
ings. It will no longer be forced to ask itself
questions like this: Why do people revere in Louis
XV., and in the rest of the royalty, the act for
which they are at the same moment burning
Deschauffours in the Place de Greve? The author-
ity of the king will no longer impose a false moral
weight. The facts, well balanced, will balance con-
science well. A good light will arise, mild to the
sons of men, serene, equitable. Henceforward
there is to be no interposition of clouds between
the truth and the brain of man. Definitive ascen-
sion of the good, the just, the beautiful, to the
zenith of civilization.
Nothing can escape the law of simplification.
By the sheer force of things, the material side of
events and of men scales off and vanishes. There
is no such thing as solidity of darkness. What-
ever the mass or the block, every compound of
ashes — and matter is nothing else — returns to
ashes. The idea of the grain of dust is embodied
in the very word " granite." Pulverization is
inevitable. All those granites, oligarchy, aristoc-
racy, theocracy, are the promised prey of the four
winds. The ideal alone is indestructible.
Nothing is abiding but mind.
In this indefinite inundation of light called civili-
zation, phenomena of levelling and of setting up
are taking place. The imperious dawn penetrates
everywhere, enters as master, and enforces obedi-
ence. The light is working ; under the great eye
of posterity, before the light of the nineteenth
century, a simplification is going on, the fungus
414 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
is collapsing, glory falls like the leaf, great names
are divided up. Take Moses, for example. In
Moses there are three glories, — the captain, the
lawgiver, the poet. Of these three men contained
in Moses, where is the captain to-day? In the
dark, with the brigands and assassins. Where is
the lawgiver? Buried under the rubbish of dead
religions. Where is the poet? By the side of
yEschylus.
The day has an irresistible corrosive power upon
the things of night. Hence a new historic sky over
our heads. Hence a new philosophy of cause and
effect. Hence a new aspect of facts.
Some minds, however, whose honest and austere
solicitude is not displeasing, object: "You have
said that men of genius form a dynasty; we are
as unwilling to submit to this dynasty as to any
other." This is to misunderstand, to be fright-
ened by a word when the thought is reassuring.
The very law which requires that mankind should
have no owners, requires that it should have guides.
To be enlightened is the reverse of being subjected.
Between " Homo sum " and " I am the state " is
the whole space between fraternity and tyranny.
The march forward requires a directing hand ; to
rebel against the pilot scarcely advances the ship ;
one does not see what would be gained by throw-
ing Columbus overboard. The word, " This way,"
never humiliated the man who was seeking the
road. At night, I accept the authority of the
torches. Furthermore, there is little that is op-
pressive in the dynasty of genius, whose kingdom
is Dante's exile, whose palace is Cervantes' donjon,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 415
whose budget is Isaiah's wallet, whose throne is
Job's dunghill, whose sceptre is Homer's staff.
Let us resume.
CHAPTER V.
MANKIND no longer owned, but guided: such
is the new aspect of things.
Henceforward history is bound to reproduce this
new aspect of things. It is a strange thing to alter
the past; but that is what history is about to un-
dertake. By lying ? No ; by telling the truth.
History has been only a picture; it is about to
become a mirror.
This new reflection of the past will modify the
future.
The former King of Westphalia, a man of wit,
was one day examining an inkstand upon the table
of some one we know. The writer at whose house
Jerome Bonaparte was at that moment, had brought
back from a trip to the Alps, made in company
with Charles Nodier some years before, a bit of
steatitic serpentine, carved and hollowed into an
inkstand, which he had purchased of a chamois-
hunter of the Mer-de-Glace. Jerome Bonaparte
was looking at this. "What is it?" he asked.
" My inkstand," replied the writer. Then he
added : " It is steatite. Admire Nature, who
makes this charming green stone out of a little
dirt and oxide." "I admire much more the men,"
41 6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
responded Jerome Bonaparte, " who make an ink-
stand out of this stone."
For a brother of Napoleon, this was not a bad
reply; and he should be credited with it, for the
inkstand is to destroy the sword.
The diminution of the men of war, of violence,
of prey; the indefinite and superb expansion of
the men of thought and of peace; the entrance
of the real giants upon the scene of action : this
is one of the greatest facts of our great era.
There is no more sublime and pathetic spectacle,
— mankind's deliverance from above, the potentates
put to flight by the dreamers, the prophet crushing
the hero, the sweeping away of violence by thought,
the heaven cleansed, a majestic expulsion !
Lift up your eyes, the supreme drama is enact-
ing ! The legions of light are in full pursuit of the
hordes of flame.
The masters are going out, the liberators are
coming in.
The hunters of men, the trailers of armies, Nim-
rod, Sennacherib, Cyrus, Rameses, Xerxes, Cam-
byses, Attila, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Alexander,
Csesar, Bonaparte, — all these vast, ferocious men
are vanishing.
Slowly they flicker out ; now they touch the
horizon ; mysteriously the darkness attracts them ;
they have kinship with the shades, — hence their
fatal descent ; their resemblance to the other phe-
nomena of night draws them on to this dreadful
union with blind immensity — submersion of all
light. Oblivion, that shadow of darkness, awaits
them.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 417
They are hurled down, but they remain formi-
dable. Insult not what has been great. Hootings
would be misbecoming at the burial of heroes ; the
thinker should remain grave in presence of this
enshrouding. The old glory abdicates ; the strong
are lying down. Clemency to these vanquished
conquerors ! Peace to these fallen warriors ! The
shades of the grave interpose between their light
and ours. Not without a kind of pious terror can
one behold stars changing to spectres.
While smitten with the fatal wanness of approach-
ing doom, the flamboyant pleiad of the men of
violence descends the steep slope to the gulf of de-
vouring time ; lo ! at the other extremity of space,
where the last cloud has but now faded, in the deep
sky of the future, azure forevermore, rises, resplen-
dent, the sacred galaxy of the true stars, — Orpheus,
Hermes, Job, Homer, -^Eschylus, Isaiah, Ezekiel,
Hippocrates, Phidias, Socrates, Sophocles, Plato,
Aristotle, Archimedes, Euclid, Pythagoras, Lucre-
tius, Plautus, Juvenal, Tacitus, Saint Paul, John of
Patmos, Tertullian, Pelagius, Dante, Gutenberg,
Joan of Arc, Christopher Columbus, Luther,
Michael Angelo, Copernicus, Galileo, Rabelais,
Calderon, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Rembrandt,
Kepler, Milton, Moliere, Newton, Descartes, Kant,
Piranesi, Beccaria, Diderot, Voltaire, Beethoven,
Fulton, Montgolfier, Washington; and the mar-
vellous constellation, brighter from moment to
moment, radiant as a tiara of celestial diamonds,
shines in the clear horizon, and, as it rises, blends
with the boundless dawn of Jesus Christ.
27
INDEX.
yEscHYLUS, characterized, 47-48 ; a
grand ruin, 83, 84 ; not understood
by commonplace minds, 123 ; vast
and terrible nature of his drama,
123-125 ; representation of a play
described, 126-131 ; a target for
hate during life, 132, 133 ; glory
after death, 133-135 ; how his
works were added to the Alexan-
drian library, 135-137; consulted
by Fathers of the Church, 138, 139;
destroyed by Omar, 139—142 ;
Christ prophesied in the ' Prome-
theus,' 138; the lost dramas, 143-
146; Oriental character and style,
146-148 ; a Pythagorean, 149;
epitaph, 149 ; his geography, 149-
151; his fauna, 151, 152; a priest
of Nature, 152; his bold familiar-
ity, 152, 153; his comedy, 156; a
favorite in the Greek colonies, 159-
164; may copies of his works be
discovered? 164, 165; sources of
our knowledge of him, 168, 169;
affinity with Shakespeare, 169 ;
Prometheus compared with Ham-
let, 228-239; ^Eschylus contrasted
with Shakespeare, 284; his opin-
ion of art for art's sake, 316; not
degraded by his partisanship, 337.
Agrippina, mother of Nero, 61.
Alexandrian library, its size, 136;
possessed the unique copy of
^Eschylus, 137-139; destroyed by
Omar, 139-142.
Anaxagoras, his cosmography, 107.
Aristophanes, his opinion of ^Eschy-
lus, 133 ; his affinity with /Eschy-
lus, 153-156; his antique, sacred
immodesty, 154, 155 ; his antipathy
for Socrates, 155.
Art, and Nature, 36, 37; relation of
God to human art, 37; unity of
art and nature, 99, 100; non-
perfectibility the law of art, 101-
104; art contrasted with science,
105-116; enjoys a laugh, 157; art
not degraded by descending to
humanity, 314-316; no loss of
beauty from goodness, 320 ; origin
of the phrase, " Art for art's sake,"
321, 322. (See Poetry.)
BAYLE of Rotterdam, his profound
irony, 330.
Beethoven, the typical man of Ger-
many, 87, 91.
Behaim, Martin, and Columbus, 405.
Bible, the, poetry of, 316. 317; not
less poetical for taking part in
human affairs, ib. ; contrasted
with Shakespeare, 355, 356.
Bonaparte, Jerome, anecdote of, 415,
416.
Books, the best civilizers, 96-98;
their immortality due to Guten-
berg, 166-167; Ezekiel's allegory
of, 296, 297.
Bossuet, his opinion of Moliere,
252; his history, 398.
Bourgeois. (^Philistines.)
420
INDEX.
CALCRAFT, the hangman, more re-
nowned in England than Shake-
speare, 361.
Caligula, the emperor, characterized,
59-
Calumny against men of genius, 252-
254.
Cantemir, historian of Turkey, 399,
400.
Carthage, like England, except that
she had no poet, 349, 350.
Cervantes, characterized, 76-80; La
Harpe on comedies, 252.
Chrysippus of Tarsus, erroneous be-
liefs of, 111-113.
Civilization, not yet at its goal of
beneficence and fraternity, 327-
33°-
Classic school of letters (ecole clas-
sigue), eschews imagination, 205-
21 1 ; characterized, 288, 289; out-
grown, 303, 304; its view of the
poet's service, 334, 335.
Claudius, the emperor, characterized,
59, 60.
Columbus and Behaim, anecdote of,
405.
Cordelia, characterized, 243, 244,
246-248.
Corneille, and the Marquise de Con-
tades, 104; anecdote of his statue
at Rouen, 367.
DANTE, characterized, 69-71 ; quot-
ed, 197 ; re-created himself in his
poem, 227 ; Chaudon's opinion
of, 251 ; his work greater than
that of Charlemagne, 411, 412.
Danton, a successor of Voltaire, 372.
Death, the end of all to the great
captain, 341-345 ; the beginning
of life to the thinker, 345-348.
Desdemona and Ophelia, sisters,
198 ; Desdemona characterized,
242, 243.
ELIZABETH, QUEEN, her want of
regard for Shakespeare, 30 ; char-
acterized, 355; typical of Eng-
land, ib.
England, her debt to Shakespeare,
348, 349 5 selfishness, 349 ; com-
pared to Carthage and Sparta,
349, 350: made superior to them
by Shakespeare, ib. ; her statue
of Shakespeare, 351 ; her statues
of kings, generals, and states-
men, 351, 352 ; her generous
press, 352 ; her flunkeyism, 353,
354 ; tardiness in rendering jus-
tice to Shakespeare, 354, 355 ;
her prudishness, 356-360 ; dog-
ged coldness toward Shake-
speare, 358 ; tone of some
English critics of Shakespeare,
360, 361.
Epic poetry, Oriental, 84-86 ; Span-
ish and German, 85, 86.
Ezekiel, characterized, 49-53.
FALSTAFF, characterized, 199..
Fe"nelon, his opinion of Moliere,
252.
Freedom, essential to humanity,
298-301.
GENIUS, extravagance and mon-
strousness, 92-94 ; its divine mis-
sion, 178-182 ; subject to calumny,
251-254 ; its unshackled nature,
261-263 ; attitude of Philistinism
toward, 263-267 ; to be accepted
like nature, 277-279 ; humanity
of true genius, 318, 319 ; death a
liberation of, 345-348.
Germany, characterized, and her art
described, 87-92.
God, meaning of word, 37 ; His crea-
tive force unexhausted, 183-185 ;
use of His name prohibited upon
the English stage, 359. (See Jesus.)
Goethe, his indifference to good and
evil, 331 ; Hugo unjust to him,
332 (note).
Good taste, an incubus upon art,
92 ; sobriety, bashfulness, and
weakness of the French ecole
dassique, 205-211.
INDEX.
421
Greece, cause of her immortality,
159 ; how the drama was fostered
in her colonies, 159-164.
Greene, Robert, attack upon Shake-
speare, 190 (and note).
Gutenberg, a redeemer, 166, 167.
HAMLET, contrasted with Prome-
theus, 228-230 ; characterized, 232
-239; greatness of, 412.
History, the false, with many ex-
emplifications, 396-408 ; the true,
408-413.
Homer, characterized, 42-44 ; his
Olympians far from impossible,
333-
Hugo, Frangois-Victor, translator of
Shakespeare, Preface ; the unmuz-
zler of Shakespeare, 211.
Hugo, Victor, exile at Marine Ter-
race, 3-7 ; anecdote of youth, 116,
117; his ignorance of English
literature, 194 (note) ; his enthu-
siastic admiration for works of ge-
nius, 279, 280 ; unjust to Goethe,
332 (note).
IAGO, characterized, 242, 243.
Imagination, abhorred by the ecole
classique> 205-209.
Inspiration, nature of poet's, 37-40.
Isaiah, characterized, 48, 49.
JESUS, use of the name in ' Hernani '
prohibited, 359 (note); dawn of
his era of peace, 417.
Joan of Arc, her greatness, 362 ; like
Shakespeare, without a monument,
ib. ; like him, sneered at by Vol-
taire, 363, 364.
Job, characterized, 44-47.
John the apostle, characterized, 62-
65.
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, opinion of
Shakespeare, 189, 192.
Jonson, Ben, relation to Shake-
speare, 29, 30 ; remark on Shake-
speare's conversation, 252.
Juvenal, characterized, 56-58 ; a great
justiciary, 322-324.
KARAMSIN, historian of Russia,
399, 400.
LEAR, characterized, 243-249.
Literature. (See Poetry.)
Locomotion, improvements in, 108.
London, in Shakespeare's time, 12,
13-
Lucretius, characterized, 53-56 ; his
view of religion, 117; liberated
thought from superstition, 338.
MACBETH, characterized, 240-242.
Macchiavelli, his real meaning, 305,
306.
Malone, critic and whitewasher of
Shakespeare, 35.
Man, his goal not that of the brute,
301, 302; his progress must be
through intellectual advancement,
3°7» 3°9-
Marine Terrace, 3, 7.
Military science, improvements in,
106, 107.
Milton, the Abb6 Trublet on, 252 ;
accused of venality, 254.
Mind, compared to ocean, 7, 8.
Mirabeau, his opinion of ^Eschylus,
122, 123.
Mob. (See People.)
Moliere, disapproved of by Fe"nelon
and Bossuet, 252 ; Louis XIV. his
bed-maker, 412.
Monument to a great man, value of,
367. (See Statues.)
Muses, the, dangerous companions
for the " sober" poet, 209.
Music, the highest expression of the
German spirit found in, 90, 91.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, anecdote
of, 258; anecdote of, 287; his view
of the end of all, 341, 342 ; com-
pared with Pitt, 388; his treat-
ment by historians, 401.
Nero, the emperor, characterized,
60.
Nineteenth century, the child of the
French Revolution, 371, 376.
422
INDEX.
OCEAN, compared with mind, 7, 8.
Omar, destroys the Alexandrian li-
brary and /Eschylus, 139-142.
Ophelia and Desdemona, sisters,
198.
Oriental literature, 84-87.
Orthodoxy, literary, in France, char-
acterized, 205-211, 288,289. (See
Sobriety) ; outgrown, 303, 304 ;
its view of the poet's service, 334,
335-
Ossian, a real poet, 326.
Othello, characterized, 242, 243.
PAUL the apostle, characterized, 65,
69.
People (the masses), their behavior
at the theatre, 307, 309 ; their need,
the ideal, 310 ; their servants, the
thinkers, 311 ; to them minds
must be useful, 312, 313 ; com-
plicity in their own oppression,
362, 363-
Philistines (les bourgeois), their
attitude toward works of poetic
genius, 263-268.
Pitt, William, his cost to England,
388, 389.
Poet, the, his relation to the super-
human, 37-40; his dangers and
obstacles, 41 ; reality of his crea-
tions, 195, 196 ; a philosopher and
an historian, 195-202 ; the well-
bred poet of the classic school,
209 ; the poet's method of crea-
tion, 220 ; his function to produce
types of human character, 219,
220, 223-227 ; his brusque ways,
268-271 ; his hospitality and ten-
derness, 271-273 ; panders to the
mob, 289-293 ; an instructor of
the people, 296 ; his high duty,
301-302; his humanity, 318, 319;
a civilizer, 322 ; need of vigilance.
328-330 ; of enthusiasm for useful
work, 332, 333 ; capable of wrath,
333 ; sufferings of, 343~345- (See
Poetry; Genius; Thinker.)
Poetry, its ennobling and humaniz-
ing influences, 95-98 ; its potential
life, 116; its absolute and definitive
nature, 118-121 ; its two ears, 158 ;
sovereign horror of great poetry,
196, 197; for the benefit of the
people, 289-293 ; not for the let-
tered alone, 303, 304 ; utility the
true test of, 312, 324 ; goodness
involves no loss of beauty, 320 ;
poetry feared by oppressors, 324 ;
honored in Middle Ages, 325 ; in
Scotland, 326 ; dignified by its co-
operation in the work of civiliza-
tion, 335-338.
Printing, its value illustrated by the
destruction of the works of JEs-
chylus and others, 165-168.
Prometheus, contrasted with Hamlet,
228-230 ; characterized, 230-232 ;
the grandsire of Mab and Titania,
280-282.
Ptolemy Evergetes, adds ^schylus
to the Alexandrian library, 135-
138.
Puritanism, its voluntary deafness,
357 ; its sensitiveness to Shake-
speare's alleged impurity, 356-
360 ; its criticism of Shakespeare,
360, 361.
Pythagoras, erroneous beliefs of, in ;
greater than Sesostris, 411.
RABELAIS, characterized, 71-76.
Racine, his relation to Louis XIV.,
333, 334 ; contrasted with Voltaire,
ib.
Revolution, the French, the mother
of the nineteenth century, 371,
372 ; characterized, 372 ; roman-
ticism and socialism sprung from
'93, 373-376.
Romanticism, called "literary '93,"
373-376.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, persecuted
during life, 259 ; desecration of his
grave, 260, 261.
SALMASIUS, his opinion of jEschy-
lus, 251.
Scaliger, Joseph, anecdote of, 108.
INDEX.
423
Science, the mission of, 38 ; its ten-
tative, perfectible nature contrasted
with the absolute nature of art,
105-116; erroneous science of an-
tiquity, 109, 113.
Service, greatness to be gained in,
3'9-
Shakespeare, William, birthplace, 9 ;
coat of arms, 9 (and note); spelling
of name, 10 (and note); a butcher,
10 ; frolics of youth, 10-12; mar-
riage, 1 1 ; appearance and man-
ners, 18; dates of plays, 19-
23 ; composition and publication
of plays, 23-25 ; death of Hamnet
and of John Shakespeare, 25 ; in-
hibition of plays, 26; Quiney's
letter, ib. ; New Place, 27 ; the
Davenant story, ib. ; daughters,
28 ; he returns to Stratford, ib. ;
the will and signatures, ib. ; death,
29 ; life embittered, ib. ; his great
popularity, 31 (note) ; " eclipse "
of his fc.me at the Restoration and
in the eighteenth century, 32, 33;
revisions of his plays, 34, 35 ; his
genius characterized, 80-82 ; com-
pared with Lucretius, 80 ; with
Dante, 81 ; with Homer, 82 ; affin-
ity with ^Eschylus, 169; disparag-
ing criticisms upon him, 189-195 ;
his tragic horror, 195-197; his
philosophy immanent in his imag-
ination, 198-202 ; his psychological
insight, 201 ; his antithesis the an-
tithesis of creation, 203-205 ; his
freedom from "sobriety," 211-
216; his simplicity, 212-214; his
virility, 214-216 ; his agitation,
216, 217; compared with ./Eschy-
lus by Prometheus and Hamlet,
228-239; double action in his
dramas, 274-277 ; contrasted with
^Eschylus, 284 ; his independence
and originality, 285-287; panders
to the mob, 289-292 ; he is the
chief glory of England, 348 ; con-
trasted with Cromwell, Bacon,
Newton, ib. ; too English, 349 ;
indecency of, no greater than tjat
of the Bible, 356-358 ; less re-
nowned in England than Calcraft,
the hangman, 361 ; superfluity of
a monument to him, 364-367 ; his
centennial anniversaries, 368-370 ;
his work greater than that of
Charles V., 411, 412.
Shylock, 224, 225.
Sobriety in poetry, its emasculating
effect, 205-211 ; not found in
Shakespeare, 211-216. (See Ortho-
doxy.)
Socialism, the true, 297, 298 ; aims
at freedom, 298-301.
Socrates, his scepticism, 154-155.
Sophocles, his opinion of ^Eschylus,
251.
Soul, the, its genesis, 170-172; real-
ity of its existence, 177, 178.
Sparta, city of law, 349, 350; com-
pared with England, ib.
Stael, Madame de, on her exile, 257.
Staffa, the bard's chair, 326.
Stage. (See Theatre.)
Statues (See Monument), England's
statue of Shakespeare, 351 ; her
statues of kings, generals, and
statesmen, 351, 352.
Swinburne's ' Study of Shakespeare,'
8 (note).
TABLE-TIPPING, in the time of
Homer, 39; of Theodosius, 39;
in 371 A. D., 109, no.
Tacitus, characterized, 58-62; hate-
ful to official instructors, 397.
Telescope, improvements in the, 106.
Theatre, the English, in Shake-
speare's time, 13-16; that of
Moliere, 16-18; in England under
the Puritans, 31; under the Stuart
Restoration, 31, 32 ; that of Athens
in the time of yEschylus, 126-131 ;
that of the nineteenth century in-
dependent of models, 282-284;
God's name prohibited in English,
359-
Thinker, his mission to-day, 377-
380; his discouragements, 380,
381 ; his beneficence and indepen-
424.
INDEX.
dence, 382-384; his place above
the warrior and the monarch, 395 ;
2^.408-417. (See Poet ; Genius.)
Tiberius, the emperor, characterized,
58, 59'.
Types of character produced by the
poets, 223-227.
Tyrants, not to be trusted, 328-330 ;
acceptance of their oppression be-
comes complicity, 362, 363; their
blind cruelty, 391-394.
VOLTAIRE, reproached with kindness
to young poets, 132 ; attacks upon
Shakespeare, 192-194; reproaches
Shakespeare with antithesis, 250,
251 ; is himself reproached with it,
ib.; his remark upon Corneille and
Shakespeare, 252; writers paid to
insult him, 255, 256, 257-259;
desecration of his grave, 260, 261 ;
his advice to Louis XV., 306; com-
pared with Macchiavelli, ib.; Louis
XV. calls him fool, 334 : contrasted
with Racine, ib.; typical of the
French mind, 363 ; and Frederick
the Great, 387; a civilizer, 408.
Vondel, Joost, denounced by Buy-
ter, 255, 256.
WAR, the decline of, 385-390.
Writer. (See Poet; Thinker; Genius.)
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