Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 19.djvu/732

722 character, be it little or colossal, good or evil, that peculiar Shakespearian quality which distinguishes it as his creation. This he does by being and living for the time the person he conceives. What Macaulay says of Bacon is more applicable to Shakespeare, namely, that his mind resembles the tent which the fairy gave to Prince Ahmed. "Fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady. Spread it, and the armies of powerful sultans might repose beneath its shade." Shakespeare could run his sentiment, passion, reason, imagination, into any mould of personality he was capable of shaping, and think and speak from that. The result is that every character is a denizen of the Shakespearian world; every character, from Master Slender to Ariel, is in some sense a poet, that is, is gifted with imagination to express his whole nature, and make himself inwardly known; yet we feel throughout that the "thousand-souled" Shakespeare is still but one soul, capable of shifting into a thousand forms, but leaving its peculiar birthmark on every individual it informs.

Now it is difficult, perhaps impossible, for a critic to reproduce synthetically in his own consciousness, or thoroughly to analyze into all its elements, any single prominent character that Shakespeare has drawn. His characters, however, are not represented apart from each other, but as acting on each other; and great as they separately are, as conceptions, they are but integral portions of a still mightier conception, which includes the whole drama in which they appear. The value of what we call the incidents of such a drama consists in their being such incidents as would most naturally spring from the mutual action of such persons, or as would best develop their natures. The plot is of small account as disconnected from the characters, but of great moment as vitally inwrought with them, and giving coherence to the living organism which results from the combination. It is for this reason that we pay little heed to improbable Incidents in the story, pro- vided the incidents serve to bring out the persons. It is very improbable that a bond should have been given payable in a pound of flesh, and still more so that any court in Christendom could have recognized its validity; but who thinks of this in the Shakespearian society of "The Merchant of Venice"?

Now it is doubtless true that a drama of Shakespeare thus organized, with characters comprehending an immense range of human character, and yielding to analysis laws of human nature which radiate light into whole departments of human life, produces on our minds, as we read, the effect of unity In variety. We perceive it as a whole, and think therefore we perceive the whole of it But is it true that we really receive the colossal conception of Shakespeare himself? Shakespeare, it is plain, can only convey to us what we are capable of taking in; the mind that perceives reduces greatness to its own mental stature; and persons according to their taste, culture, experience, height of intelligence, capacity of approaching Shakespeare himself, obtain different impressions, varying in depth and breadth, of each of his great plays. Who, for instance, has stated the general conception of the play of "Hamlet"? The idea of that drama, as given by different critics, is only so much of the idea as could be got into the beads of the critics. Their interpretation at best belongs to the class of Mémoires de Servir;—the rounded whole is described by minds that are angular; and Shakespeare's conception is measuring them, while they are felicitating themselves that they are measuring it.

Even Goethe, the most comprehensive intelligence since Shakespeare, failed to "pluck out the heart" of Hamlet's mystery. Indeed, It is beginning to be considered, that his remarks on the character, though delicate and profound in themselves, do not touch the essential individuality of Hamlet; that his ingenuity was exercised in the wrong direction; and that, in his criticism, he resembled the sturdy and rapid walker, who checked his pace to ask a boy how far it was to Taunton. "If