Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher

Shakespeare Definition Of Poetry. Greek Drama. Progress Of The Drama. The Drama Generally, And Public Taste. Shakespeare, A Poet Generally. Shakespeare’s Judgment equal to his Genius. Recapitulation, And Summary Of the Characteristics of Shakespeare’s Dramas. Outline Of An Introductory Lecture Upon Shakespeare. Order Of Shakespeare’s Plays. Notes On The “Tempest.” “Love’s Labour’s Lost.” “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” “Comedy Of Errors.” “As You Like It.” “Twelfth Night.” “All’s Well That Ends Well.” “Merry Wives Of Windsor.” “Measure For Measure.” “Cymbeline.” “Titus Andronicus.” “Troilus And Cressida.” “Coriolanus.” “Julius Cæsar.” “Antony And Cleopatra.” “Timon Of Athens.” “Romeo And Juliet.” Shakespeare’s English Historical Plays. “King John.” “Richard II.” “Henry IV.—Part I.” “Henry IV.—Part II.” “Henry V.” “Henry VI.—Part I.” “Richard III.” “Lear.” “Hamlet.” “Macbeth.” “Winter’s Tale.” “Othello.” Notes on Ben Jonson. Whalley’s Preface. “Whalley’s ‘Life Of Jonson.’ ” “Every Man Out Of His Humour.” “Poetaster.” “Fall Of Sejanus.” “Volpone.” “Apicæne.” “The Alchemist.” “Catiline’s Conspiracy.” “Bartholomew Fair.” “The Devil Is An Ass.” “The Staple Of News.” “The New Inn.” Notes On Beaumont And Fletcher. Harris’s Commendatory Poem On Fletcher. Life Of Fletcher In Stockdale’s Edition, 1811. “Maid’s Tragedy.” “A King And No King.” “The Scornful Lady.” “The Custom Of The Country.” “The Elder Brother.” “The Spanish Curate.” “Wit Without Money.” “The Humorous Lieutenant.” “The Mad Lover.” “The Loyal Subject.” “Rule A Wife And Have A Wife.” “The Laws Of Candy.” “The Little French Lawyer.” “Valentinian.” “Rollo.” “The Wildgoose Chase.” “A Wife For A Month.” “The Pilgrim.” “The Queen Of Corinth.” “The Noble Gentleman.” “The Coronation.” “Wit At Several Weapons.” “The Fair Maid Of The Inn.” “The Two Noble Kinsmen.” “The Woman Hater.”

SHAKESPEARE, WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER ON POETRY, THE DRAMA, AND THE STAGE.

Definition Of Poetry.

Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure. This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and other works of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there must be some additional character by which poetry is not only divided from opposites, but likewise distinguished from disparate, though similar, modes of composition. Now how is this to be effected? In animated prose, the beauties of nature, and the passions and accidents of human nature, are often expressed in that natural language which the contemplation of them would suggest to a pure and benevolent mind; yet still neither we nor the writers call such a work a poem, though no work could deserve that name which did not include all this, together with something else. What is this? It is that pleasurable emotion, that peculiar state and degree of excitement, which arises in the poet himself in the act of composition;—and in order to understand this, we must combine a more than ordinary sympathy with the objects, emotions, or incidents contemplated by the poet, consequent on a more than common sensibility, with a more than ordinary activity of the mind in respect of the fancy and the imagination. Hence is produced a more vivid reflection of the truths of nature and of the human heart, united with a constant activity modifying and correcting these truths by that sort of pleasurable emotion, which the exertion of all our faculties gives in a certain degree; but which can only be felt in perfection under the full play of those powers of mind, which are spontaneous rather than voluntary, and in which the effort required bears no proportion to the activity enjoyed. This is the state which permits the production of a highly pleasurable whole, of which each part shall also communicate for itself a distinct and conscious pleasure; and hence arises the definition, which I trust is now intelligible, that poetry, or rather a poem, is a species of composition, opposed to science, as having intellectual pleasure for its object, and as attaining its end by the use of language natural to us in a state of excitement,—but distinguished from other species of composition, not excluded by the former criterion, by permitting a pleasure from the whole consistent with a consciousness of pleasure from the component parts;—and the perfection of which is, to communicate from each part the greatest immediate pleasure compatible with the largest sum of pleasure on the whole. This, of course, will vary with the different modes of poetry;—and that splendour of particular lines, which would be worthy of admiration in an impassioned elegy, or a short indignant satire, would be a blemish and proof of vile taste in a tragedy or an epic poem.

It is remarkable, by the way, that Milton in three incidental words has implied all which for the purposes of more distinct apprehension, which at first must be slow-paced in order to be distinct, I have endeavoured to develope in a precise and strictly adequate definition. Speaking of poetry, he says, as in a parenthesis, “which is simple, sensuous, passionate.” How awful is the power of words!—fearful often in their consequences when merely felt, not understood; but most awful when both felt and understood!—Had these three words only been properly understood by, and present in the minds of, general readers, not only almost a library of false poetry would have been either precluded or still-born, but, what is of more consequence, works truly excellent and capable of enlarging the understanding, warming and purifying the heart, and placing in the centre of the whole being the germs of noble and manlike actions, would have been the common diet of the intellect instead. For the first condition, simplicity,—while, on the one hand, it distinguishes poetry from the arduous processes of science, labouring towards an end not yet arrived at, and supposes a smooth and finished road, on which the reader is to walk onward easily, with streams murmuring by his side, and trees and flowers and human dwellings to make his journey as delightful as the object of it is desirable, instead of having to toil with the pioneers and painfully make the road on which others are to travel,—precludes, on the other hand, every affectation and morbid peculiarity;—the second condition, sensuousness, insures that framework of objectivity, that definiteness and articulation of imagery, and that modification of the images themselves, without which poetry becomes flattened into mere didactics of practice, or evaporated into a hazy, unthoughtful, day-dreaming; and the third condition, passion, provides that neither thought nor imagery shall be simply objective, but that the passio vera of humanity shall warm and animate both.

To return, however, to the previous definition, this most general and distinctive character of a poem originates in the poetic genius itself; and though it comprises whatever can with any propriety be called a poem (unless that word be a mere lazy synonym for a composition in metre), it yet becomes a just, and not merely discriminative, but full and adequate, definition of poetry in its highest and most peculiar sense, only so far as the distinction still results from the poetic genius, which sustains and modifies the emotions, thoughts, and vivid representations of the poem by the energy without effort of the poet’s own mind,—by the spontaneous activity of his imagination and fancy, and by whatever else with these reveals itself in the balancing and reconciling of opposite or discordant qualities, sameness with difference, a sense of novelty and freshness with old or customary objects, a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order, self-possession and judgment with enthusiasm and vehement feeling,—and which, while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature, the manner to the matter, and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the images, passions, characters, and incidents of the poem:—

“Doubtless, this could not be, but that she turns Bodies to spirit by sublimation strange, As fire converts to fire the things it burns— As we our food into our nature change!

“From their gross matter she abstracts their forms, And draws a kind of quintessence from things, Which to her proper nature she transforms To bear them light on her celestial wings!

“_Thus_ doth she, when from individual states She doth abstract the universal kinds, Which then reclothed in divers names and fates Steal access thro’ our senses to our minds.”

Greek Drama.

It is truly singular that Plato,—whose philosophy and religion were but exotic at home, and a mere opposition to the finite in all things, genuine prophet and anticipator as he was of the Protestant Christian æra,—should have given in his Dialogue of the Banquet, a justification of our Shakespeare. For he relates that, when all the other guests had either dispersed or fallen asleep, Socrates only, together with Aristophanes and Agathon, remained awake, and that, while he continued to drink with them out of a large goblet, he compelled them, though most reluctantly, to admit that it was the business of one and the same genius to excel in tragic and comic poetry, or that the tragic poet ought, at the same time, to contain within himself the powers of comedy. Now, as this was directly repugnant to the entire theory of the ancient critics, and contrary to all their experience, it is evident that Plato must have fixed the eye of his contemplation on the innermost essentials of the drama, abstracted from the forms of age or country. In another passage he even adds the reason, namely, that opposites illustrate each other’s nature, and in their struggle draw forth the strength of the combatants, and display the conqueror as sovereign even on the territories of the rival power.

Nothing can more forcibly exemplify the separative spirit of the Greek arts than their comedy as opposed to their tragedy. But as the immediate struggle of contraries supposes an arena common to both, so both were alike ideal; that is, the comedy of Aristophanes rose to as great a distance above the ludicrous of real life, as the tragedy of Sophocles above its tragic events and passions,—and it is in this one point, of absolute ideality, that the comedy of Shakespeare and the old comedy of Athens coincide. In this also alone did the Greek tragedy and comedy unite; in every thing else they were exactly opposed to each other. Tragedy is poetry in its deepest earnest; comedy is poetry in unlimited jest. Earnestness consists in the direction and convergence of all the powers of the soul to one aim, and in the voluntary restraint of its activity in consequence; the opposite, therefore, lies in the apparent abandonment of all definite aim or end, and in the removal of all bounds in the exercise of the mind,—attaining its real end, as an entire contrast, most perfectly, the greater the display is of intellectual wealth squandered in the wantonness of sport without an object, and the more abundant the life and vivacity in the creations of the arbitrary will.