Part 6 (1/2)
And then, with correct imperial conventionality, he proceeds to punish the offenders, locking up his daughter behind ”iron doors” and exiling her lover. Now, Horace--that is to say, Jonson--is supposed by the revellers to be responsible for having betrayed the inspirer of these antics. But this implication Jonson indignantly repudiates in a scene between Horace, the spy, and the Globe player, in which Horace severely upbraids them for their malice:
”To prey upon the life of innocent mirth And harmless pleasures bred of n.o.ble wit,”
a rebuke that found expression in almost similar words in the 1609 preface to Shakespeare's ”Troilus and Cressida”: ”For it is a birth of (that) brain that never undertook anything comical vainly: and were but the vain names of comedies changed for t.i.tles of commodities or of plays for pleas, you should see all those grand censors that now style them such vanities flock to them for the main grace of their gravities.” Now Jonson, if he, indeed, intended to defend the attacks made on his friend Shakespeare's play, has shown considerable adroitness in the delicate task he undertook, for since the ”Poetaster” was written to be acted at the Blackfriars, a theatre under Court patronage, Jonson could not there abuse ”the grand censors,” and this he avoids doing by making Caesar justly incensed at the impudence of the citizens in daring to counterfeit the divine G.o.ds, while Horace, out of reach of Caesar's ear, soundly rates the police spy and the actor for mistaking the shadow for the substance and regarding playacting as if it were political conspiracy. But what, it may be contended, connects the underplot in the ”Poetaster” directly with Shakespeare's play is the speech of citizen Mercury and its satirical insistence that immorality may be tolerated by the G.o.ds:
”The great G.o.d Jupiter, of his licentious goodness, willing to make this feast no fast from any manner of pleasure, nor to bind any G.o.d or G.o.ddess to be anything the more G.o.d or G.o.ddess for their names, he gives them all free licence to speak no wiser than persons of baser t.i.tles; and to be nothing better than common men or women. And, therefore, no G.o.d shall need to keep himself more strictly to his G.o.ddess than any man does to his wife; nor any G.o.ddess shall need to keep herself more strictly to her G.o.d than any woman does to her husband. But since it is no part of wisdom in these days to come into bonds, it should be lawful for every lover to break loving oaths, to change their lovers, and make love to others, as the heat of everyone's blood and the spirit of our nectar shall inspire. And Jupiter save Jupiter!”
Now this speech, it may be contended, is but a good-natured parody of Shakespeare's travesty of the Iliad story, as he wrote it in answer to Chapman's absurd claim for the sanct.i.ty of Homer's characters.
Shakespeare's consciousness of power might naturally have incited him to place himself immediately by the side of Homer, but it is more likely that he was interested in the ethical than in the personal point of view.
Unlike most of his plays, as Dr. Ward has pointed out, this comedy follows no single original source accurately, because the author's satire was more topical than anything he had previously attempted, except, perhaps, in ”Love's Labour's Lost.” But Shakespeare for once had miscalculated not his own powers, but the powers of the ”grand censors,” who could suppress plays which reflected upon the morality or politics of those who moved in high places; nor had he sufficiently allowed for the hostility of the ”sinners who lived in the suburbs.” Shakespeare, indeed, found one of the most striking compositions of his genius disliked and condemned not from its lack of merit, but for reasons that Jonson so forcibly points out in words put into the mouth of Virgil:
”'Tis not the wholesome sharp morality, Or modest anger of a satiric spirit, That hurts or wounds the body of the state; But the sinister application Of the malicious, ignorant, and base Interpreter, who will distort and strain The general scope and purpose of an author To his particular and private spleen.”
The stigma that rested on Shakespeare in his lifetime for having written this play rests on him still, for some unintelligible reason, since no man ever sat down to put his thoughts on paper with a loftier motive. But so it is! Then, as now, whenever a dramatist attempts to be teacher and preacher, all the other teachers and preachers in the world hold up their hands in horror and exclaim: ”What impiety! What stupendous ignorance!”
Gervinus, in his criticism of this play, compares the satire of the Elizabethen poet with that of Aristophanes, and points out that the Greek dramatist directed his sallies against the living. This, he contends, should ever be the object of satire, because a man must not war against the defenceless and dead. Yet Shakespeare's instincts as a dramatist were too unerring for him to be unconscious of this fundamental principle of his art. The stage in his time supplied the place now occupied by the Press, and political discussions were carried on in public through the mouth of the actor, of which few indications can now be traced on the printed page, owing to the difficulty of fitting the date of composition with that of the performance. Heywood, the dramatist, in his answer to the Puritan's abuse of the theatre, alludes to the stage as the great political schoolmaster of the people. And yet until recent years the labours of commentators have been chiefly confined to making literary comparisons, to discovering sources of plots, and the origin of expressions, so that there still remains much investigation needed to discover Shakespeare's political, philosophical, and religious affinities as they appear reflected in his plays. Mr. Richard Simpson, the brilliant Shakespearian scholar, many years ago pointed out the necessity for a new departure in criticism, and added that it was still thought derogatory to Shakespeare ”to make him an upholder of any principles worth a.s.sertion,”
or to admit that, as a reasoner, he took any decided part in the affairs which influenced the highest minds of his day. Now, in regard to politics, government by factions was then the prevailing feature; factions consisting of individuals who centred round some n.o.bleman, whom the Queen favoured and made, or weakened, according to her judgment or caprice. In the autumn of 1597 Ess.e.x's influence over the Queen was waning, and after a sharp rebuke received from her at the Privy Council table, he abruptly left the Court and sullenly withdrew to his estate at Wanstead, where he remained so long in retirement that his friends remonstrated with him against his continued absence. One of them, who signed himself ”Thy true servant not daring to subscribe,” urged him to attend every Council and to let nothing be settled either at home or abroad without his knowledge. He should stay in the Court, and perform all his duties there, where he can make a greater show of discontent than he possibly could being absent; there is nothing, adds this writer, that his enemies so much wish, enjoy, and rejoice in as his absence. He is advised not to sue any more, ”because necessity will entreat for him.” All he need do now is to dissemble like a courtier, and show himself outwardly unwilling of that which he has inwardly resolved. For by retiring he is playing his enemies' game, since ”the greatest subject that ever is or was greatest, in the prince's favour, in his absence is not missed.” In ”Troilus and Cressida” we have a similar situation, and we hear similar advice given. Achilles, like Ess.e.x, has withdrawn unbidden and discontentedly to his tent, refusing to come again to his general's council table. For doing so Ulysses remonstrates with him in almost the same words as the writer of the anonymous letter.
”The present eye praises the present object.
Then marvel not, thou great and complete man, That all the Greeks begin to wors.h.i.+p Ajax; Since things in motion sooner catch the eye Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee, And still it might, and yet it may again, If thou would'st not entomb thyself alive, And case thy reputation in thy tent; Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late, Made emulous missions 'mongst the G.o.ds themselves And drave great Mars to faction.”
Then Achilles replies:
”Of this my privacy I have strong reasons.”
And Ulysses continues:
”But 'gainst your privacy The reasons are more potent and heroical, 'Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love With one of Priam's daughters.
ACHILLES: Ha! known?
ULYSSES: Is that a wonder?
All the commerce that you have had with Troy As perfectly is ours as yours, my lord; And better would it fit Achilles much To throw down Hector than Polyxena.”
If, again, we turn to the life and letters of Ess.e.x, we find there that upon the 11th of February, 1598, ”it is spied out by some that my Lord of Ess.e.x is again fallen in love with his fairest B.: it cannot chance but come to her Majesty's ears, and then he is undone.” The lady in question was Mary Brydges, a maid-of-honour and celebrated beauty. Again, in the same month Ess.e.x writes to the Queen, ”I was never proud till your Majesty sought to make me too base.” And Achilles is blamed by Agamemnon for his pride in a remarkably fine pa.s.sage. Then after news had come of the disaster to the Queen's troops in Ireland, in the summer of 1598, Ess.e.x reminds the Queen that, ”I posted up and first offered my attendance after my poor advice to your Maj. But your Maj. rejected both me and my letter: the cause, as I hear, was that I refused to give counsel when I was last called to my Lord Keeper.” A similar situation is found in the play.
Agamemnon sends for Achilles to attend the Council and he refuses to come, and later on, when he desires a reconciliation, the Council pa.s.s him by unnoticed. It is almost impossible to read the third act of this play without being reminded of these and other incidents in Ess.e.x's life. Nor would Shakespeare forget the stir that had been created in London when in 1591 it was known at Court that Ess.e.x, at the siege of Rouen, had sent a personal challenge to the governor of the town couched in the following words: ”Si vous voulez combattre vous-meme a cheval ou a pied je maintiendrai que la querelle du rois est plus juste que celle de la ligue, et que ma Maitresse est plus belle que la votre.” And aeneas, the Trojan, brings a challenge in almost identical words from Hector to the Greeks. It is true that this incident is in the Iliad together with the incidents connected with the withdrawal of Achilles, but Shakespeare selected his material from many sources and appears to have chosen what was most likely to appeal to his audience. Now it is not presumed that Achilles is Ess.e.x, nor that Ajax is Raleigh, nor Agamemnon Elizabeth, or that Shakespeare's audience for a moment supposed that they were; although it is to be noticed that the Achilles who comes into Shakespeare's play is not the same man at the beginning and end of the play as he is in the third act, where, in conversation with Ulysses he suddenly becomes an intelligent being and not simply a prize-fighter. To the injury of his drama, Shakespeare here runs away from his Trojan story, and does so for reasons that must have been special to the occasion for which the play was written. For about this time, the Privy Council wrote to some Justices of the Peace in Middles.e.x, complaining that certain players at the Curtain were reported to be representing upon the stage ”the persons of some gentlemen of good descent and quality that are yet alive,” and that the actors were impersonating these aristocrats ”under obscure manner, but yet in such sorte as all the hearers may take notice of the matter and the persons that are meant thereby. This being a thing very unfit and offensive.” The protest seems almost to suggest that the Achilles's scenes in Shakespeare's play express, ”under obscure manner,” reflections upon contemporary politicians. But, indeed, the growing political unrest which marked the last few years of Elizabeth's reign could not fail to find expression on the stage.
It must be remembered, besides, that the years 1597 to 1599 were marked by a group of dramas which may be called plays of political adventure. Nash had got into trouble over a performance of ”The Isle of Dogs” at the Rose in 1597. In the same year complaints were made against Shakespeare for putting Sir John Oldcastle on the stage in the character of Falstaff. Also at the same period Shakespeare's ”Richard the Second” was published, but not without exciting suspicions at Court, for the play had a political significance in the eyes of Catholics: Queen Mary of Scotland told her English judges that ”she remembered they had done the same to King Richard, whom they had degraded from all honour and dignity.” Then on the authority of Mr. H. C. Hart we are told that Ben Jonson brought Sir Walter Raleigh, the best hated man in England, on to the stage in the play of ”Every Man Out of His Humour,” in 1599, and, as a consequence, in the summer of the same year it was decided by the Privy Council that restrictions should be placed on satires, epigrams, and English histories, and that ”noe plays be printed except they be allowed by such as have an authoritie.” Dramatists, therefore, had to be much more circ.u.mspect in their political allusions after 1599 than they were before.
There are two new conjectures therefore put forward in this article: (1) That the underplot in the ”Poetaster” contains allusions to Shakespeare's play, and (2) that the withdrawal of Achilles is a reflection on the withdrawal of Ess.e.x from Elizabeth's Court. Presuming that further evidence may one day be found to support these suppositions, it is worth while to consider them in relation to the history of the play.
And first to clear away the myth in connection with the idea that this is one of Shakespeare's late plays, or that it was only partly written by the poet, or written at different periods of his life. It may be confidently a.s.serted that Shakespeare allowed no second hand to meddle with a work so personal to himself as this one, nor was he accustomed to seek the help of any collaborator in a play that he himself initiated. We know, besides, that he wrote with facility and rapidly. As to the date of the play, the evidence of the loose dramatic construction, and the preference for dialogue where there should be drama, place it during the period when Shakespeare was writing his histories. The grip that he ultimately obtained over the stage handling of a story so as to produce a culminating and overpowering impression on his audience is wanting in ”Troilus and Cressida.” In fact, it is impossible to believe that this play was written after ”Julius Caesar,” ”Much Ado,” or ”Twelfth Night.” Nor is there evidence of revision in the play, since there are no topical allusions to be found in it which point to a later date than 1598 except perhaps in the prologue, which could hardly have been written before 1601, and did not appear in print before 1623. Again, it is contended that there is too much wisdom crammed into the play to allow of its being an early composition.
But the false ethics underlying the Troy story, which Shakespeare meant to satirize in ”Troilus and Cressida,” had been previously exposed in his poem of ”Lucrece”:
”Show me the strumpet that began this stir, That with my nails her beauty I may tear.
Thy heat of l.u.s.t, fond Paris, did incur This load of wrath that burning Troy did bear: Thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here; And here in Troy, for trespa.s.s of thine eye The sire, the son, the dame, and daughter die.