TAMBURLÄINE. Menaphon. Of stature tall, and straightly fashion'd, A heaven of heavenly bodies in their spheres, Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion, Should make the world subdued to Tamburlaine.2 133 Born at Stratford-on-Avon in 1564, and there dying in 1616, William Shakespeare (who some would have us believe was an unlettered peasant, but whose father is proved, by undoubted evidence, to have been a man of some substance—a freeholder and trader, who had been high-bailiff of the town) produced in twenty-three years, 1591-1614, thirty-seven plays of the very highest order of merit, which are now, and will remain always, the wonder of the world. There is in them a depth of wisdom, with glimpses of learning, void of the parade and ostentation characteristic of the schools, continually accompanied by the profoundest thought that ever proceeded from the human brain. At him, not the 1 Shoulders. 2 These two specimens have been taken from the Rev. Alexander Dyce's excellent edition of the works of Marlowe. quidnuncs of a village, but the wisest and greatest of the earth wonder, as did the hinds in Goldsmith's poem at the village schoolmaster :— And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew And this wonder is continually increasing. Some have been so puzzled with the phenomenon that they have supposed that several men wrote the plays, and that Shakespeare put his name to them; others that Lord Bacon alone could have written them; others, that Shakespeare, the manager of a theatre, bought them of poor scholars. But all these theories are easily confuted, and when exposed are in themselves absurd. Not only was Shakespeare well known, beloved, and surrounded by his contemporaries, friends, and enemies, but the plays are consistent one with another; and the style of verse is at once so sweet, melodious, and easy, so strong yet so harmonious, that most students easily recognize the Shakespearian style. To account for his deep and intimate knowledge of things (for learning has been foolishly and impudently denied him) some of the wildest theories have been broached. Lord Campbell has endeavoured to prove him a lawyer; others have said he was a doctor. Dr. Conolly has brought all his learning and experience of the insane to show how intimately Shakespeare understood madness. The goldsmith quotes him for his own trade, the statesman listens to his precepts, the divine cites his golden sentences in the pulpit, the merchant on the exchange, the lawyer at the bar, the soldier in the field. He seems to have happily anticipated the discoveries of some of the moderns, and his words and SHAKESPEARE'S UNIVERSALITY. 135 wit are as fresh now as ever they were. His philosophy is deeper than that of Plato; his tenderness, Christian charity, and eloquence for the poor as golden as those of Chrysostom or Jeremy Taylor. He is not one, but many men. He has well been called the "myriadminded man" because in him everybody finds himself reflected. Like a steam-hammer, that can flatten tons of iron at a blow, and yet descend so gently as to crack a nut, the wit of Shakespeare is so constituted that it can deal with, suggest, or answer the deepest and most ponderous of human questions, and yet can, the next moment, jest or pun upon the slightest subject. And it is hard to say what he does best; for, in spite of those who cannot understand the wit of Shakespeare's minor characters, those who do understand it are well aware that the fun (say, for instance, of Costard), is just as wonderful, as proper for, and as well fitted to the person as is the deepest philosophy of Hamlet or the statecraft of Wolsey. Then, again, in every play there is a crowd of characters, and each of these is a living person—just as much alive to us as was Dr. Johnson or George III., and indeed better known to us than many of our predecessors. Sometimes he gives us a character in a few words; indeed, volumes have been written upon these minor creations, in endeavouring to prove them more wonderful than the more finished and larger portraits. No English author has ever engaged so much attention in his own or in any other country. The Germans are almost as proud of him as we are, and have gone over every syllable he has written with a loving care; nay, they attribute to him eight doubtful plays, which we, as might be expected from our superior knowledge, very justly reject, although it must be added that Mr. Dyce thinks there are weighty reasons for supposing that Shakespeare had a hand in the production of "The Two Noble Kinsmen." The French, a nation not much given to foreign literature, are beginning to appreciate him, and the Italians also; while the Americans are proud to have sprung from ancestors who were the countrymen of the greatest, wisest, and gentlest Englishman that ever lived. John Dryden says of him, "He was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily. When he describes anything, you more than see it—you feel it, Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation. He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature. He looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comic degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him. No man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of the poets,— too. Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi." This character the somewhat prosaic Doctor Johnson calls "a perpetual model of encomiastic criticism, exact without minuteness, and lofty without exaggeration." So much, indeed, has been written about Shakespeare that editions of his works, and other works upon him, STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE. 137 would fill a very large house; and the wonder still grows. "It is we who are Shakespeare,” said Coleridge, citing him as the one man who contained all the English nation. Yes, it is we, men and women too; for, until he wrote, the beauty, purity, nobility, and loving fondness of woman had received but slight poetic expression. His servants are the best servants, his dairymaids the freshest and prettiest, his hinds the quaintest and nattiest, his jesters the most piquant and wittiest, his gentlemen and soldiers the bravest, his ladies the noblest and fairest, his counsellors the most sage, and his kings the most kingly upon earth. What a man and what a woman should be, he knew; and this not only of the greatest, but of the most vicious and degraded. To be compared to a gentleman as drawn by Shakespeare, is the highest praise for man; to be paralleled with one of Shakespeare's women, the finest compliment that can be paid to any lady in the land. Now, all this said, much more could be written; for the poet went beyond the earth in his creations; or, as Dr. Johnson, moved to fervour in the contemplation, said Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new; and this is no high-flown description, but simply the barest truth. It follows, then, that the study of Shakespeare should be one of the principal studies of our lives. We should read him by day, and meditate on him by night. His lines are full of light, and of light that never leads astray. His purity is beyond praise, his proverbial wisdom wholesome, his religion sound. In short, there are two books which, attentively studied, will teach us all we want to know in this |