The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

We do not need to apply the key of times to those indirectly historical remains in which the real history, the life and soul of a time, is always best found, and in which the history of such a time, if written at all, must necessarily be inclosed; we do not need to unlock these works to perceive the indications of suppressed movements in that age, in which the most illustrious men of the age were primarily concerned, the history of which has not yet fully transpired. We do not need to find the key to the cipher in which the history of that time is written, to perceive that there was to have been a change in the government here at one time, very different from the one which afterwards occurred, if the original plans of these men had succeeded. It is not the Plays only that are full of that frustrated enterprise.

These were the kind of men who are not easily baffled. They changed their tactics, but not their ends; and the enterprises which were conducted with so much secresy under the surveillance of the Tudor, began already to crown themselves as certainties, and compare their 'olives of endless age' with the spent tombs of brass' and 'tyrant's crests,' at that sure prospect which, a change of dynasties at that moment seemed to open, – at least, to men who were in a position then to estimate its consequences.

That this, at all events, was a state of things that was not going to endure, became palpable about that time to the philosophic mind. The transition from the rule of a sovereign who was mistress of 'the situation,' who understood that it was a popular power which she was wielding – the transition from the rule of a Queen instructed in the policy of a tyranny, inducted by nature into its arts, to the policy of that monarch who had succeeded to her throne, and whose 'CREST' began to be reared here then in the face of the insulted reviving English nationality, – this transition appeared upon the whole, upon calmer reflection, at least to the more patient minds of that age, all that could reasonably at that time be asked for. No better instrument for stimulating and strengthening the growing popular sentiment, and rousing the latent spirit of the nation, could have been desired by the Elizabethan politicians at that crisis, 'for the great labour was with the people' – that uninstructed power, which makes the sure basis of tyrannies – that power which Mark Antony takes with him so easily – the ignorant, tyrannical, humour-led masses – the masses that still roar their Elizabethan stupidities from the immortal groups of Coriolanus and Julius Caesar. We ourselves have not yet overtaken the chief minds of this age; and the gulf that separated them from those overpowering numbers in their own time, to whose edicts they were compelled to pay an external submission, was broad indeed. The difficulty of establishing an understanding with this power was the difficulty. They wanted that 'pulpit' from which Brutus and Mark Antony swayed it by turns so easily – that pulpit from which Mark Antony showed it Caesar's mantle. They wanted some organ of communication with these so potent and resistless rulers – some 'chair' from which they could repeat to them in their own tongue the story of their lost institutions, and revive in them the memory of 'the kings their ancestors' – some school in which they could collect them and instruct them in the scientific doctrine of the commons, the doctrine of the common-weal and its divine supremacy. They wanted a school in which they could tell them stories – stories of various kinds – such stories as they loved best to hear – Midsummer stories, or Winter's tales, and stories of their own battle-fields – they wanted a school in which they could teach the common people History (and not English history only), with illustrations, large as life, and a magic lantern to aid them, – 'visible history.'

But to wait till these slow methods had taken effect, would be, perhaps, to wait, not merely till their estate in the earth was done, but till the mischief they wished to avert was accomplished. And thus it was, that the proposal 'to go the beaten track of getting arms into their hands under colour of Caesar's designs, and because the people understood them not,' came to be considered. To permit the new dynasty to come in without making any terms with it, without insisting upon a definition of that indefinite power which the Tudors had wielded with impunity, and without challenge, would be to make needless work for the future, and to ignore criminally the responsibilities of their own position, so at least some English statesmen of that time, fatally for their favour with the new monarch, were known to have thought. 'To proceed by process,' to check by gradual constitutional measures that overgrown and monstrous power in the state, was the project which these statesmen had most at heart. But that was a movement which required a firm and enlightened popular support. Charters and statutes were dead letters till that could be had. It was fatal to attempt it till that was secured. Failing in that popular support, if the statesman who had attempted that movement, if the illustrious chief, and chief man of his time, who headed it, did secretly meditate other means for accomplishing the same end – which was to limit the prerogative – such means as the time offered, and if the evidence which was wanting on his trial had been produced in proof of it, who that knows what that crisis was would undertake to convict him on it now? He was arrested on suspicion. He was a man who had undertaken to set bounds to the absolute will of the monarch, and therefore he was a dangerous man. [He (Sir Walter Raleigh), together with the Lord Chobham, Sir J. Fortescue, and others, would have obliged the king to articles before he was admitted to the throne, and thought the number of his countrymen should be limited. —Osborne's Memorials of King James.] The charges that were made against him on that shameless trial were indignantly repelled. 'Do you mix, me up with these spiders?' (alluding, perhaps, more particularly to the Jesuit associated with him in this charge). 'Do you think I am a Jack Cade or a Robin Hood?' he said. But though the evidence on this trial is not only in itself illegal, and by confession perjured, but the report of it comes to us with a falsehood on the face of it, and is therefore not to be taken without criticism; that there was a movement of some kind meditated about that time, by persons occupying chief places of trust and responsibility in the nation – a movement not favourable to the continuance of 'the standing departments' in the precise form in which they then stood – that the project of an administrative reform had not, at least, been wholly laid aside – that there was something which did not fully come out on that trial, any one who looks at this report of it will be apt to infer.

It was a project which had not yet proceeded to any overt act; there was no legal evidence of its existence produced on the trial; but suppose there were here, then, already, men 'who loved the fundamental part of state,' more than in such a crisis 'they doubted the change of it' – men 'who preferred a noble life before a long' – men, too, 'who were more discreet' than they were 'fearful,' who thought it good practice to 'jump a body with a dangerous medicine that was sure of death without it;' suppose there was a movement of that kind arrested here then, and the evidence of it were produced, what Englishman, or who that boasts the English lineage to-day, can have a word to say about it? Who had a better right than those men themselves, those statesmen, those heroes, who had waked and watched for their country's weal so long, who had fought her battles on land and sea, and planned them too, not in the tented field and on the rocking deck only, but in the more 'deadly breach' of civil office, whose scaling-ladders had entered even the tyrant's council chamber, – who had a better right than those men themselves to say whether they would be governed by a government of laws, or by the will of the most despicable 'one-only-man power,' armed with sword and lash, that ever a nation of Oriental slaves in their political imbecility cowered under? Who were better qualified than those men themselves, instructed in detail in all the peril of that crisis, – men who had comprehended and weighed with a judgment which has left no successor to its seat, all the conflicting considerations and claims which that crisis brought with it, – who better qualified than these to decide on the measures by which the hideous nuisances of that time should be abated; by which that axe, that sword, that rack, that stake, and all those burglar's tools, and highwayman's weapons, should be taken out of the hands of the mad licentious crew with which an evil time had armed them against the common-weal – those weapons of lawless power, which the people had vainly, for want of leaders, refused before-hand to put into their hands. Who better qualified than these natural chiefs and elected leaders of the nation, to decide on the dangerous measures for suppressing the innovation, which the Tudor and his descendants had accomplished in that ancient sovereignty of laws, which was the sovereignty of this people, which even the Norman and the Plantagenet had been taught to acknowledge? Who better qualified than they to call to an account – 'the thief,' the 'cut-purse of the empire and the rule,' who 'found the precious diadem on a shelf, and stole and put it in his pocket'?

['Shall the blessed Sun of Heaven prove a micher, and eat blackberries'? A question not to be asked! Shall the blessed 'Son of England' prove a thief, and take purses? A question to be asked. 'The poor abuses of the time want countenance.'

 

Lear. Take that from me, my friend, who have the power to seal the accuser's lips.]

Who better qualified could be found to head the dangerous enterprise for the deliverance of England from that shame, than the chief in whom her Alfred arose again to break from her neck a baser than the Danish yoke, to restore her kingdom and found her new empire, to give her domains, that the sun never sets on, – her Poet, her Philosopher, her Soldier, her Legislator, the builder of her Empire of the Sea, her founder of new 'States.'

But then, of course, it is only by the rarest conjunction of circumstances, that the movements and plans which such a state of things gives rise to, can get any other than the most opprobrious name and place in history. Success is their only certificate of legitimacy. To attempt to overthrow a government still so strongly planted in the endurance and passivity of the people, might seem, perhaps, to some minds in these circumstances, a hopeless, and, therefore, a criminal undertaking.

'That opportunity which then they had to take from us, to resume, we have again,' might well have seemed a sufficient plea, so it could have been made good. But it is not strange that some few, even then, should find it difficult to believe that the national ruin was yet so entire, that the ashes of the ancient nobility and commons of England were yet so cold, as that a system of despotism like that which was exercised here then, could be permanently and securely fastened over them. It is not strange that it should seem to these impossible that there should not be enough of that old English spirit which, only a hundred years before, had ranged the people in armed thousands, in defence of LAW, against absolutism, enough of it, at least, to welcome and sustain the overthrow of tyranny, when once it should present itself as a fact accomplished, instead of appealing beforehand to a courage, which so many instances of vain and disastrous resistance had at last subdued, and to a spirit which seemed reduced at last, to the mere quality of the master's will.

That was a narrow dominion apparently to which King James consigned his great rival in the arts of government, but that rival of his contrived to rear a 'crest' there which will outlast 'the tyrants,' and 'look fresh still' when tombs that artists were at work on then 'are spent.' 'And when a soldier was his theme, my name – my name [namme de plume] was nor far off.' King James forgot how many weapons this man carried. He took one sword from him, he did not know that that pen, that harmless goose-quill, carried in its sheath another. He did not know what strategical operations the scholar, who was 'an old soldier' and a politician also, was capable of conducting under such conditions. Those were narrow quarters for 'the Shepherd of the Ocean,' for the hero of the two hemispheres, to occupy so long; but it proved no bad retreat for the chief of this movement, as he managed it. It was in that school of Elizabethan statesmanship which had its centre in the Tower, that many a scholarly English gentleman came forth prepared to play his part in the political movements that succeeded. It was out of that school of statesmanship that John Hampden came, accomplished for his part in them.

The papers that the chief of the Protestant cause prepared in that literary retreat to which the Monarch had consigned him, by means of those secret channels of communication among the better minds which he had established in the reign of Elizabeth, became the secret manual of the revolutionary chiefs; they made the first blast of the trumpet that summoned at last the nation to its feet. 'The famous Mr. Hamden' (says an author, who writes in those 'next ages' in which so many traditions of this time are still rife) 'a little before the civil wars was at the charge of transcribing three thousand four hundred and fifty-two sheets of Sir Walter Raleigh's MSS., as the amanuensis himself told me, who had his close chamber, his fire and candle, with an attendant to deliver him the originals and take his copies as fast as he could write them.' That of itself is a pretty little glimpse of the kind of machinery which the Elizabethan literature required for its 'delivery and tradition' at the time, or near the times, in which it was produced. That is a view of 'an Interior' 'before the civil wars.' It was John Milton who concluded, on looking over, a long time afterwards, one of the unpublished papers of this statesman, that it was his duty to give it to the public. 'Having had,' he says, 'the MS. of this treatise ["The Cabinet Council"] written by Sir Walter Raleigh, many years in my hands, and finding it lately by chance among other books and papers, upon reading thereof, I thought it a kind of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent an author from the public; it being both answerable in style to other works of his already extant, as far as the subject would permit, and given me for a true copy by a learned man at his death, who had collected several such pieces.'

'A kind of injury.' – That is the thought which would naturally take possession of any mind, charged with the responsibility of keeping back for years this man's writings, especially his choicest ones – papers that could not be published then on account of the subject, or that came out with the leaves uncut, labouring with the restrictions which the press opposed then to the issues of such a mind.

That great result which the chief minds of the Modern Ages, under the influence of the new culture, in that secret association of them were able to achieve, that new and all comprehending science of life and practice which they made it their business to perfect and transmit, could not, indeed, as yet be communicated directly to the many. The scientific doctrines of the new time were necessarily limited in that age to the few. But another movement corresponding to that, simultaneous in its origin, related to it in its source, was also in progress here then, proceeding hand in hand with this, playing its game for it, opening the way to its future triumph. This was that movement of the new time, – this was that consequence, not of the revival of learning only, but of the growth of the northern mind which touched everywhere and directly the springs of government, and made 'bold power look pale,' for this was the movement in 'the many.'

This was the movement which had already convulsed the continent; this was the movement of which Raleigh was from the first the soldier; this was 'the cause' of which he became the chief. It was as a youth of seventeen, bursting from those old fastnesses of the Middle Ages that could not hold him any longer, shaking off the films of Aristotle and his commentators, that he girded on his sword for the great world-battle that was raging already in Europe then. It was into the thickest of it, that his first step plunged him. For he was one of that company of a hundred English gentlemen who were waiting but for the first word of permission from Elizabeth to go as volunteers to the aid of the Huguenots. This was the movement which had at last reached England. And like these other continental events which were so slow in taking effect in England when it did begin to unfold here at last; there was a taste of 'the island' in it, in this also.

It was not on the continent only, that Raleigh and other English statesmen were disposed to sustain this movement. It was not possible as yet to bring the common mind openly to the heights of those great doctrines of life and practice which the Wisdom of the Moderns also embodies, but the new teachers of that age knew how to appreciate, as the man of science only can fully appreciate, the worth of those motives that were then beginning to agitate so portentously so large a portion of the English people. The Elizabethan politicians nourished and patronised in secret that growing faction. The scientific politician hailed with secret delight, hailed as the partner of his own enterprise, that new element of political power which the changing time began to reveal here then, that power which was already beginning to unclasp on the necks of the masses, the collar of the absolute will – that was already proclaiming, in the stifled undertones of 'that greater part which carries it,' another supremacy. They gave in secret the right hand of a joyful fellowship to it. At home and abroad the great soldier and statesman, who was the first founder of the Modern Science, headed that faction. He fought its battles by land and sea; he opened the New World to it, and sent it there to work out its problem.

It was the first stage of an advancement that would not rest till it found its true consummation. That infinity which was speaking in its confused tones, as with the voice of many waters, was resolved into music and triumphal marches in the ear of the Interpreter. It gave token that the nobler nature had not died out under the rod of tyranny; it gave token of the earnestness that would not be appeased until the ends that were declared in it were found.

But at the same time, this was a power which the wise men of that age were far from being willing to let loose upon society then in that stage of its development; very far were they from being willing to put the reins into its hands. To balance the dangers that were threatening the world at that crisis was always the problem. It was a very narrow line that the policy which was to save the state had to keep to then. There were evils on both sides. But to the scientific mind there appeared to be a choice in them. The measure on one side had been taken, and it was in all men's hearts, but the abysses on the other no man had sounded. 'The danger of stirring things,' – the dangers, too, of that unscanned swiftness that too late ties leaden pounds to his heels were the dangers that were always threatening the Elizabethan movement, and defining and curbing it. The wisest men of that time leaned towards the monarchy, the monarchy that was, rather than the anarchy that was threatening them. The will of the one rather than the wills of the many, the head of the one rather than 'the many-headed.' To effect the change which the time required without 'wrenching all' – without undoing the work of ages – without setting at large from the restraints of reverence and custom the chained tiger of an unenlightened popular will, this was the problem. The wisest statesmen, the most judicious that the world has ever known were here, with their new science, weighing in exactest scales those issues. We must not quarrel with their concessions to tyranny on the one hand, nor with their determination to effect changes on the other, until we are able to command entirely the position they occupied, and the opposing dangers they had always to consider. We must not judge them till they have had their hearing. What freedom and what hope there is of it upon the earth to-day, is the legacy of their perseverance and endurance.

They experienced many defeats. The hopes of youth, the hopes of manhood in turn grew cold. That the 'glorious day' which 'flattered the mountain tops' of their immortal morning with its sovereign eye would never shine on them; that their own, with all its unimagined splendours obscured so long, would go down hid in those same 'base clouds,' that for them the consummation was to 'peep about to find themselves dishonourable graves' was the conviction under which their later tasks were achieved. It did not abate their ardour. They did not strain one nerve the less for that.

Driven from one field, they showed themselves in another. Driven from the open field, they fought in secret. 'I will bandy with thee in faction, I will o'errun thee with policy, I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways,' the Jester who brought their challenge said. The Elizabethan England rejected the Elizabethan Man. She would have none of his meddling with her affairs. She sent him to the Tower, and to the block, if ever she caught him meddling with them. She buried him alive in the heart of his time. She took the seals of office, she took the sword, from his hands and put a pen in it. She would have of him a Man of Letters. And a Man of Letters he became. A Man of Runes. He invented new letters in his need, letters that would go farther than the sword, that carried more execution in them than the great seal. Banished from the state in that isle to which he was banished, he found not the base-born Caliban only, to instruct, and train, and subdue to his ends, but an Ariel, an imprisoned Ariel, waiting to be released, able to conduct his masques, able to put his girdles round the earth, and to 'perform and point' to his Tempest.

'Go bring the RABBLE, o'er whom I give thee power, here to this place,' was the New Magician's word.

[Here is another version of it.

'When Sir Nicholas Bacon, the Lord Keeper, lived, every room in Gorhambury was served with a pipe of water from the pond distant about a mile off. In the lifetime of Mr. Anthony Bacon the water ceased, and his lordship coming to the inheritance could not recover the water without infinite charge. When he was Lord Chancellor, he built Verulam House close by the pond yard, for a place of privacy when he was called upon to dispatch any urgent business. And being asked why he built there, his lordship answered that, seeing he could not carry the water to his House, he would carry his House to the water.]

This is not the place for the particulars of this history or for the barest outline of them. They make a volume of themselves. But this glimpse of the circumstances under which the works were composed which it is the object of this volume to open, appeared at the last moment to be required, in the absence of the Historical Key which the proper development of them makes, to that Art of Delivery and Tradition by means of which the secrets of the Elizabethan Age have been conveyed to us.