Part 22 (1/2)

came from his heart He perceived with extreme clearness the connection of acts with their consequences; but his belief that in this sense 'the Gods are just' was accoht to follow repentance, and (if I ins 'Forgive us our trespasses' To conclude, I have fancied that he shows an unusual degree of disgust at slander and dislike of censoriousness; and where he speaks in the Sonnets of those who censured hi that a man's offences are his own affair and not the world's[29]

Some of the vices which seem to have been particularly odious to Shakespeare have, we may notice, a special connection with prosperity and power Men feign and creep and flatter to please the powerful and to win their oay to ease or power; and they envy and censure and slander their corateful to their friends and helpers and patrons; and they become hard and unmerciful, and despise and bully those who are now below them

So, perhaps, Shakespeare said to hiine, h they did not obscure his faith in goodness and much less his intellectual vision And prosperity and power, he may have added, come less frequently by merit than by those base arts or by oodness and poas, to Shelley, the 'woe of the world'; if we substitute for 'goodness' the wider word 'merit,' we may say that this divorce, with the evil bred by power, is to Shakespeare also the root of bitterness This fact, presented in its extre cruelty of the prosperous, and the heart-rending suffering of the defenceless, forms the problem of his most tremendous dras were calamitous; and the period which seems to be marked by melancholy and embitterment was one of outward, or at least financial, prosperity; but nevertheless we can hardly doubt that he felt on the small scale of his own life the influence of that divorce of power and ainst Fortune, who had so ill provided for his life, runs through the Sonnets

Even if we could regard as purely conventional the declarations that his verses would make his friend immortal, it is totally iulf between his own gifts and those of others, or can have failed to feel the disproportion between his position and his mind Hamlet had never experienced

the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

and that make the patient soul weary of life; the man who had experienced them was the writer of Sonnet 66, who cried for death because he was tired with beholding

desert a beggar born, And needy nothing tri in brave array Neither had Hamlet felt in his own person 'the insolence of office'; but the actor had doubtless felt it often enough, and we can hardly err in hearing his own voice in dramatic expressions of wonder and contempt at the stupid pride of mere authority and at men's slavish respect for it Two exa bark at a beggar, and the creature run froe of authority A dog's obeyed in office': so says Lear, when nation makes the Timon-like verses that follow The other example is al it:

norant of what he's ry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As els weep; ith our spleens, Would all theh mortal

It is Isabella who says that; but it is scarcely in character; Shakespeare hireat hesitation that I hazard a feords on Shakespeare's religion Any attempt to penetrate his reserve on this subjectimpertinence; and, since his dramas are almost exclusively secular, any impressions we may form must here be even more speculative than usual Yet it is scarcely possible to read him much without such speculations; and there are at least some theories which may confidently be dismissed It cannot be called absolutely impossible that Shakespeare was indifferent to music and to the beauty of Nature, and yet the idea is absurd; and in the same way it is barely possible, and yet it is preposterous, to suppose that he was an ardent and devoted atheist or Brownist or Roman Catholic, and that all the indications to the contrary are due to his artfulness and deteret into trouble There is no absurdity, on the other hand, nor of necessity anything hopeless, in the question whether there are signs that he belonged to this or that church, and was inclined to one ht within it rather than to another Only the question is scarcely worth asking for our present purpose, unless there is some reason to believe that he took a keen interest in these round to accept a tradition that he 'died a papist,' this would not tell us round to think that he lived a papist, and that his faith went far into his personality But in fact we receive fro impression that he concerned himself little, if at all, with differences of doctrine or church governo further Have we not reason to surmise that he was not, in the distinctive sense of the word, a religious s and actions are constantly and strongly influenced by thoughts of his relation to an object of worshi+p? If Shakespeare had been such ain tradition or in his works to indicate the fact; and is it likely that we should find in his works so with ether certain facts and i any conclusion from them

Alious and Christian in phraseology and spirit are placed in the mouths of persons to whom they are obviously appropriate, either fro_ bishops, friars, nuns), or fro_ Henry IV, V, and VI), or for some other plain reason We cannot build, therefore, on these speeches in the least On the other hand (except, of course, where they are hypocritical or politic), we perceive in Shakespeare's tone in regard to them not the faintest trace of dislike or contes, or of irreverence, towards Christian ideas, institutions, or customs (mere humorous irreverence is not relevant here); and in the case of 'sy in Christian tiious, no disposition is visible to suppress or ignore their belief in, and use of, religious ideas Soain, Christian or heathen, who appear to be draith rather ious convictions (eg Horatio, Edgar, Hermione); and in others, of whohtly or wrongly, as having a good deal of Shakespeare in the_ Romeo and Hamlet), we observe a quiet but deep sense that they and other men are neither their own masters nor responsible only to themselves and otherpowers 'above'[33]

To this I will add two remarks To every one, I suppose, certain speeches sound peculiarly personal Perhaps othersabout Hamlet's words:

There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them hoill;

and about those other words of his:

There are s in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy;

and about the speech of Prospero ending, 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on'[34] On the other hand, we observe that Hamlet seems to have arrived at that conviction as to the 'divinity' after reflection, and that, while he usually speaks as one who accepts the received Christian ideas, yet, when nore them[35] In the same way the Duke in _Measure for Measure_ is for the uess it froreat speech, 'Be absolute for death,' addressed by a supposed friar to a youth under sentence to die, yet containing not a syllable about a future life[36]

Without adducingmaterial for a conclusion, I will offer the result left on my mind, and, merely for the sake of brevity, will state it with hardly any of the qualifications it doubtless needs Shakespeare, I ined to the word soious ood and evil, better and worse, habitually froical point of view But (this appears certain) he had a lively and serious sense of 'conscience,' of the pain of self-reproach and self-condeht rise[37]

He was not in the least disposed to regard conscience as soht of it (I use the most non-committal phrase I can find) as connected with the power that rules the world and is not escapable by man He realised very fully and felt very keenly, after his youth was past and at certain tith of evil, the hideousness of certain forms of it, and its apparent incurability in certain cases And he must sometimes have felt all this as a terrible problem But, however he may have been tempted, and may have yielded, to exasperation and even despair, he never doubted that it is best to be good; felt ive;[38]

and probably maintained unbroken a conviction, practical if not forood is to be at peace with that unescapable power But it is unlikely that he attempted to theorise further on the nature of the power All was for him, in the end, mystery; and, while we have no reason whatever to attribute to hihosts and oracles he used in his dramas, he had no inclination to play the spy on God or to limit his power by our notions of it That he had dreas about the mystery such as he never put into the ine they were no s about in worlds unrealised

Whether to this 'religion' he joined a more or less conventional acceptance of some or all of the usual Christian ideas, it is ireat improbability to me in the idea that he did not, but it is h he was never so tormented as Hamlet, his position in this matter was, at least in e), ht naturally happen that, as he grew older and wearier of labour, and perhaps of the tuion, the natural piety which seeht and serenity in the latest plays, came to be more closely joined with Christian ideas But I can find no clear indications that this did happen; and though some have believed that they discovered these ideas displayed in full, though not explicitly, in the _Tempest_, I am not able to hear therewith its fullest volu its deepest and h its subject is endless, and I will touch on only one point more,--one that estions I have offered

If ere obliged to answer the question which of Shakespeare's plays contains, not indeed the fullest picture of his mind, but the truest expression of his nature and habitual teloom, I should be disposed to choose _As You Like It_ It wants, to go no further, the addition of a touch of Sir Toby or Falstaff, and the ejection of its miraculous conversions of ill-disposed characters But the ratitude of men, form the basis of its plot, and are a frequent topic of co it has a s lips, and a heart that race, That can translate the stubbornness of fortune Into so quiet and so sweet a style

And it is full not only of sweetness, but of roht in the oddities of huh spirit and patience, dislike of scandal and censure, conte that in the end we are allthat

Then is there ether

And, finally, it breathes the serene holiday mood of escape from the toil, competition, and corruption of city and court into the sun and shadow and peace of the country, where one can be idle and drea, and pursue or watch the deer as the fancy takes one, and e[40]