Part 5 (2/2)

Collins states the hypothesis--not his own--”that BY A CERTAIN NATURAL AFFINITY Shakespeare caught also the accent and tone as well as some of the most striking characteristics of Greek tragedy.”

Though far from accepting most of Mr. Collins's long array of Greek parallels, I do hold that by ”natural affinity,” by congruity of genius, Shakespeare approached and resembled the great Athenians.

One thing seems certain to me. If Shakspere read and borrowed from Greek poetry, he knew it as well (except Homer) as Mr. Collins knew it; and remembered what he knew with Mr. Collins's extraordinary tenacity of memory.

Now if ”Shakespeare” did all that, he was not the actor. The author, on Mr. Collins's showing, must have been a very sedulous and diligent student of Greek poetry, above all of the drama, down to its fragments. The Baconians a.s.suredly ought to try to prove, from Bacon's works, that he was such a student.

Mr. Collins, ”a violent Stratfordian,” overproved his case. If his proofs be accepted, Shakspere the actor knew the Greek tragedians as well as did Mr. Swinburne. If the author of the plays were so learned, the actor was not the author, in my opinion--he WAS, in the opinion of Mr. Collins.

If Shakespeare's spirit and those of Sophocles and AEschylus meet, it is because they move on the same heights, and thence survey with ”the poet's sad lucidity” the same ”pageant of men's miseries.” But how dissimilar in expression Shakespeare can be, how luxuriant and apart from the austerity of Greece, we observe in one of Mr. Collins's parallels.

Polynices, in the Phoenissae of Euripides (504-506), exclaims:

”To the stars' risings, and the sun's I'd go, And dive 'neath earth,--if I could do this thing, - Possess Heaven's highest boon of sovereignty.”

Then compare Hotspur:

”By Heaven, methinks it were an easy leap To pluck bright honour from the pale faced moon, Or dive into the bottom of the deep, Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, And pluck up drowned honour by the locks, So he that doth redeem her thence, might wear Without corrival all her dignities.”

What a hurrying crowd of pictures rush through Hotspur's mind! Is Shakespeare thinking of the Phoenissae, or is he speaking only on the promptings of his genius?

CHAPTER V: SHAKESPEARE, GENIUS, AND SOCIETY

A phrase has been used to explain the Greek element in Shakespeare's work, namely, ”congruity of genius,” which is apt to be resented by Baconians. Perhaps they have a right to resent it, for ”genius” is hard to define, and genius is invoked by some wild wits to explain feats of Shakespeare's which (to Baconians) appear ”miracles.” A ”miracle” also is notoriously hard to define; but we may take it (”under all reserves”) to stand for the occurrence of an event, or the performance of an action which, to the speaker who applies the word ”miracle,” seems ”impossible.” The speaker therefore says, ”The event is impossible; miracles do not happen: therefore the reported event never occurred. The alleged performance, the writing of the plays by the actor, was impossible, was a miracle, therefore was done by some person or persons other than the actor.” This idea of the IMPOSSIBILITY of the player's authors.h.i.+p is the foundation of the Baconian edifice.

I have, to the best of my ability, tried to describe Mr. Greenwood's view of the young provincial from Warwicks.h.i.+re, Will Shakspere. If Will were what Mr. Greenwood thinks he was, then Will's authors.h.i.+p of the plays seems to me, ”humanly speaking,” impossible. But then Mr.

Greenwood appeared to omit from his calculations the circ.u.mstance that Will MAY have been, not merely ”a sharp boy” but a boy of great parts; and not without a love of stories and poetry: a pa.s.sion which, in a bookless region, could only be gratified through folk- song, folk-tale, and such easy Latin as he might take the trouble to read. If we add to these very unusual but not wholly impossible tastes and abilities, that Will MAY have been a lad of genius, there is no more ”miracle” in his case than in other supreme examples of genius. ”But genius cannot work miracles, cannot do what is impossible.” Do what is impossible to whom? To the critics, the men of common sense.

Alas, all this way of talking about ”miracles,” and ”the impossible,”

and ”genius” is quite vague and popular. What do we mean by ”genius”? The Latin term originally designates, not a man's everyday intellect, but a spirit from without which inspires him, like the ”Daemon,” or, in Latin, ”Genius” of Socrates, or the lutin which rode the pen of Moliere. ”Genius” is claimed for Shakespeare in an inscription on his Stratford monument, erected at latest some six years after his death. Following this path of thought we come to ”inspiration”: the notion of it, as familiar to Australian savages as to any modern minds, is that, to the poet, what he produces is GIVEN by some power greater than himself, by the Boilyas (spirits) or Pundjel, the Father of all. This palaeolithic psychology, of course, is now quite discredited, yet the term ”genius” is still (perhaps superst.i.tiously) applied to the rare persons whose intellectual faculties lightly outrun those of ordinary mortals, and who do marvels with means apparently inadequate.

In recent times some philosophers, like Mr. F. W. H. Myers, put--in place of the Muses or the Boilyas, or the Genius--what they call the ”Subliminal Self,” something ”far more deeply interfused than the everyday intellect.” This subconscious self, capable of far more than the conscious intelligence, is genius.

On the other side, genius may fairly be regarded as faculty, only higher in degree, and not at all different in kind, from the everyday intellect which, for example, pens this page.

Thus as soon as we begin to speak of ”genius,” we are involved in speculations, psychological, psychical, physical, and metaphysical; in difficulties of all sorts not at present to be solved either by physiological science or experimental psychology, or by psychical research, or by the study of heredity. When I speak of ”the genius of Shakespeare,” of Jeanne d'Arc, of Bacon, even of Wellington, I possibly have a meaning which is not in all respects the meaning of Mr. Greenwood, when he uses the term ”genius”; so we are apt to misunderstand each other. Yet we all glibly use the term ”genius,”

without definition and without discussion.

At once, too, in this quest, we jostle against ”that fool of a word,”

as Napoleon said, ”impossible.” At once, on either side, we a.s.sume that we know what is possible and what is impossible,--and so pretend to omniscience.

Thus some ”Stratfordians,” or defenders of the actor's authors.h.i.+p, profess to know--from all the signed work of Bacon, and from all that has reached us about Bacon's occupations and preoccupations, from 1590 to 1605--that the theory of Bacon's authors.h.i.+p of the plays is ”impossible.” I, however, do not profess this omniscience.

On the other side the Baconian, arguing from all that HE knows, or thinks he knows, or can imagine, of the actor's education, conditions of life, and opportunities, argues that the authors.h.i.+p of the actor is ”impossible.”

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