The Pacific Monthly/Volume 1/The Genius of Shakespeare
Portland, Oregon.
Frederick Warde as "Macbeth."The Pacific Monthly.
The Genius of Shakespeare.
By FREDERICK WARDE.
A PREVAILING misconception of
the social condition of the parents
of William Shakespeare, the influences of his childhood, his opportunities
of education, his youthful environmnt
and the surroundings of his manhood
are, in a great measure, responsible for
the doubts that are so frequently expressed of the possibility of such a man
having the ability or knowledge to conceive, develop, and write the plays and
poems ascribed to his name. The popular error being that Shakespeare, having been born in such humble circumstances, had little or no education, and was of such a wild and dissipated character that the proposition was absurd and untenable.
John Shakespeare, the father of William, was not a peasant, but a sturdy yeoman, and belonged to that great middle class of England which has always been, and still is, the very backbone of the British Empire, and from whose loins sprang our own great American Republic of today. He was a man of substantial means at the time of the birth of his eldest son (William); one of the chamberlains of the borough of Stratford, 1564, and shortly afterwards was raised to the dignity of an alderman and thereafter was entitled to the honorable prefix of "Mr." Mary, his wife, was the daughter of a wealthy Warwickshire farmer, named Arden, whose family were afterwards ennobled. It was from such sturdy stock that William Shakespeare came.
It is but fair to assume that, under these conditions, the parents of Shakespeare were not without some little education and refinement, and, with the natural maternal pride that a mother takes in her first-born son (William was her third child), that he received his first knowledge at his mother's knee, and from the Holy Scriptures, a copy of which was doubtless to be found in almost every homestead in the country. If we could have looked, therefore, through the diamond-paned windows of the old gabled house in Henley street, Stratford, on some summer evening, after the shadows, had fallen we might have seen a little fellow attired for bed, kneeling at the feet of his gentle mother, with his hands uplifted, repeating after her, with his infant lips, the Lord's Prayer, and imbibing the first knowledge of the divine principles of the Christian faith, which he so frequently and beautifully expresses throughout his plays.
At the age of seven years Shakespeare entered the village grammar school of Stratford, of which Walter Roche, a man of considerable learning, was then master, and attended it for seven years. We have no absolute knowledge of the curriculum of study at that school, but the probabilities are that it consisted of English, rudimentary Latin and literature. There is no record of Shakespeare's progress or conduct while at school, but from the subsequent genius he displayed it is but reasonable to suppose that he was an apt scholar. Seven years under the direction of an able tutor, at an age (seven to fourteen) when the youthful mind is most capable of receiving and retaining impressions would form the foundation of a pretty substantial education and probably a very sound one for the period in which he lived. Ben Jonson, himself a university graduate, speaking somewhat slightingly of Shakespeare's classical knowledge, said that "he knew little Latin, and less Greek," and a perusal of his plays shows us that the Latin quoted therein is of just about the quality that an intelligent boy would gain at a public school, while the scenes, between the French princess, her maid, and the king in "Henry V," would indicate that his knowledge of that language was of the same rudimentary quality as his Latin.
Of his life on leaving school (about 1578) to assist his father, who, with a large family, was then in financial difficulties, we know little. In his moments of leisure he doubtless shared the recreations of the youths of his own age in the neighborhood, for in his plays we find constant references to and quotations of the terms used in bowls, quoits, archery, hawking, hunting, wrestling and other sports of the period. In his pastoral plays, such as "A Midsummer's Nights Dream" and "As You Like It," we find ample evidence of his powers of observation, unconscious doubtless at the time, of the beauties of nature, the variety of the wild flowers, the habits of the birds, the insects, the animals, and the reptiles that he found in the meadows by the Avon's banks.
"Where daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver white;
And cuckoo buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight."
Also of his wanderings in the woods of Shottery and Charlecotte, where he found
"Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
I can readily imagine that he, himself, saw
"The poor sequestered stag, that from the hunter's aim had taen a hurt"
augment the already swollen stream with his superfluous tears. It was, doubtless, from his own childish experience with some village Yorick, that he placed in Hamlet's mouth the line —
"He hath borne me on his back a thou aid times,"
And from the immature observations of his youthful days developed the philosophy of his maturer years. During the days of his courtship of Anne Hathway it is not difficult to understand how, to the eyes of the youthful lover nature took on an added beauty, and the natural poetry of his mind developed under the influence of "love's young dream." His indiscreet, and (for him) premature marriage followed, when he was little more than eighteen years of age — Anne Hathway was eight years older. With its realities and responsibilities, he awoke to the bitterness of an enforced cohabitation with a woman who, if not absolutely uncongenial, was certainly far inferior to himself in every quality of mind and imagination. His escapade on the estate of Sir Thomas Lucy probably led to his subsequent flight to London to avoid its consequences.
What a revelation to this country youth must have been the vastness of that great city, for it was great, even in the days of "good Queen Bess," with its life, its wealth, its palaces, its pageants, and its play-houses. It was to the latter that he naturally drifted, first finding employment outside its doors, then within as "call boy" or prompter's assistant, and finally as an actor. Here he found his proper and natural sphere, here the natural trend of his mind and heart found a congenial atmosphere, and here his natural amiability and intellectual accomplishments found speedy recognition, and secured his rapid advancement to fame and fortune. Then commenced his life's great work. Fired with ambition, and filled with emulation of the brilliant minds with whom he was brought in contact in that exceptionally brilliant period of the world's literary history, the genius of his soul gave to time and posterity that series of plays and sonnets that have never been equalled for exquisite poetry and sublime philosophy, and made him recognized as the greatest dramatic poet that the world has ever known.
The works of Shakespeare! What an area they cover! What worlds of passion! What flights of fancy! What exquisite wit! What unctious humor! and what marvelous descriptions are to be found within them! There is not a single chord in the whole gamut of human passion that he has not touched, delicately, yet firmly, from the ambition of a monarch to the first faint flush of love in a young maid's heart.
It is marvelous to contemplate that in the brief span of a human life so much knowledge could be acquired. And it was acquired; but how? Not by the systematic education of a school, college or university, but by contact with men and manners, and by the marvelous genius of observation that he possessed to an almost superhuman degree. The physician marvels at his knowldge of physiology and medicine, the lawyer at his cognizance of law and legal phraseology, the scientist at his possession of his secrets, and the philosopher at his familiarity with the mysteries of nature. But analyse his words, and you will find that they are the result of acute observation and philosophic reflection, and not of study or application. He clearly described the circulation of the blood, long before Harvey discovered it, but not its application and use in the treatment of disease. The principle of gravitation was clearly defined by Shakespeare in "Troilius and Cressida" before Sir Isaac Newton was born, but I doubt if he realized its scientific value. His knowledge of legal terms and the general principles of law could easily have been obtained, but his application of law is very defective; in the "Merchant of Venice," for instance, the decision of Portia would hardly be upheld as "sound" by any of our courts. His skill in navigation and seamanship, together with his apparent familiarity with nautical phrases, as shown in "The Tempest," may be attributed to his acquaintance and conversation with the sailors that frequented the taverns, near the theatre at Bankside, while the adaptation of many of the old Italian stories upon which some of his plays are founded does not of a necessity imply a knowledge of that language, but may have been gathered from the narratives of persons who had read or heard them, and related them in the hearing of the poet. Shakespeare evidently possessed the faculty of remembering everything he ever read, heard or saw, and preserving the same for use and reference whenever occasion might require it.
The three books that Shakespeare certainly did read are the Bible, "Plutarch's Lives" and "Holinshed's Chronicles." Of the first we find evident familiarity from frequent reference and quotations in all his plays. In "Julius Caesar" and other classic works he follows Plutarch closely, in some instances almost verbatim; while in his historical dramas he has — with the poet's license — used Holinshed almost exclusively. There is nothing, in my mind, in Shakespeare's use of the old stories, plays and poems in "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," or his combination of them in "The Merchant of Venice" or "King Lear," etc., that is inconsistent with the suggestions I have made. Institutional education up to a certain point develops the mind; beyond that it contracts it.
The works of Shakespeare show him to be a man of fairly good rudimentary learning, but with a mind unfettered by the discipline of systematic study, soaring with undipped wings to the heights of his own poetic imagination, and not confined by the dogmas of circumscribed thought or the orthodoxy of any philosophic sect or creed. We must concede Shakespeare's genius, and genius cannot be judged by the common standards of ordinary humanity; it is not amenable to law, custom or rule; it soars where it lists, and is controlled by a power "greater than we can contradict." I therefore cannot doubt the authenticity of the works of William Shakespeare, or find in them anything that is inconsistent or incompatible with the accepted facts that are in our possession of the birth, parentage, education, youthful environments and the mature associations of the man.
NOTE. — I am indebted for the confirmation of the facts stated above to a recent work entitled "A Life of Shakespeare," by Sydney Lee, whose patient and exhaustive researches into Elizabethian literature entitle him to be classed as an authority that should forever dispose of that absurdity — the Baconian theory. F. W.