Page:On Shakespeare, or, What You Will, Furness, 1908.djvu/4

2 I’ll not vex your ears with any eulogy of my own in praise of Shakespeare,—nor shall I attempt a subtle analysis of any of Shakespeare’s characters. My highest guerdon will be, that hereafter, when recalling this occasion, you shall swear, a pleasanter hour ne’er was—wasted there.

Let me begin then with assuming the truth of Dryden’s assertion that “of all poets, Shakespeare had the largest and most comprehensive soul.” And, next, that his knowledge of human nature is infinite and supreme. His arrangement of scenes, his archaic words, his obscure expressions, his anachronisms, his ill-timed levity, his verbal conceits, all have been criticised at one time or another, and condemned; but his knowledge of human nature, with all its springs of action and of emotion, has never been questioned. Dr. Johnson goes so far as boldly to assert that Shakespeare “has not only shown human nature as it acts in real exigencies, but as it would be found to act in trials to which it cannot be exposed.” Ridicule has been cast on this hyperbole, but did not the critics forget that the venerable and superstitious lexicographer had possibly in mind the Ghost of Hamlet’s father? Few things could be to his nerves more sedative than an assurance that to such an apparition his own share of human nature could never be exposed. Even to such a monster as Caliban, Shakespeare imparted so much of human nature as to make him appear at least possible. By the way, did it ever occur to you to wonder why this misshapen, abhorred slave speaks in rhythm, a privilege which Shakespeare does not, in general, accord even to well-behaved servants or country-folk? There is no character in the play whose words fall at times into sweeter cadences. Why did Shakespeare thus endow him with lofty words? Does not Caliban himself indirectly tell us, when he says to Prospero:

Prospero’s language was always of the highest and noblest. How then could the freckled whelp’s language be otherwise? When Caliban says that his mistress showed him the man in the moon with his dog and his bush, does no picture float before us of soft summer nights on the Enchanted Isle, where, under the full orbed moon, every hill and brook, and standing lake and grove, is peopled with elves, and, on the shore, overlooking the yellow sands,