CHAPTER XXIV

MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE AS SHOWN IN
'MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM," "HAMLET," AND
"THE TEMPEST." AND CONCLUSION
N the last two lectures we have found a great enlargement in the faculty of balancing and adjusting those opposi- tions which arise (i) out of man's re- lations to the supernatural, and (2) out of man's relations to his fellow- man.
We are now to complete this por- tion of our programme by inquiring if any correlative widening of Shakspere's horizon as to the relations of man to Nature displays itself as we examine this representative play of Shakspere's youth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, in contrast with this representative play of his maturity, The Tempest, through the transition period represented by Hamlet.
Let me remark in the outset of this inquiry, as I was obliged to in the last lecture, that here the embarrassment of riches is quite as great as there, and that — confined as it must be to one lecture — I must beg you to accept a single phase of a matter which can be looked on from many 297
298 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
points of view and which might be exhaustively treated only in many lectures or volumes.
Without more ado — come, then, let us take a walk into Nature with our young Master Shakspere in this dream- time of his, and see what he could see at that stage of him in flowers and grasses and trees. And for the most fresh and brilliant excursion in the world let us fare forth a-hunt- ing here with Theseus and Hippolyta into the woods, hounds capering and horns all busy, and then let us com- pare this hunt with a certain wild hunt in The Tempest. It will help my present purpose if we take with us the next finest open-air poet after Shakspere in the world, Dan Chaucer. And luckily nothing is easier than to bring these together on this particular hunt. The whole frame- work and atmosphere of A Midsummer Night^s Dream is drawn by Shakspere, as you remember, from that most symmetrically delightful of all Chaucer's poems, The Knight's Tale — the first of the Canterbury Tales as ordi- narily printed. We might very fairly call The Knight's Tale Chaucer's Midsummer Night's Dream. It is a temptation I can scarcely resist to go through The Knight's Tale and show from point to point the cunning transformations and enlargements which Shakspere made out of it in weaving his Midsummer Night's Dream. But this must be passed by ; and now, concentrating our attention on Theseus and Hippolyta, let us see for a moment how Chaucer carries them into the midst of Nature a-hunting in the greenwood, as bringing us nearer to the ideal Shakspere has in his mind. At the time of the hunt in Chaucer's story the situation is this: Theseus has just wedded Hippolyta, has just returned from the Theban wars with the two young captive knights Palamon and Arcite, and now, having served Mars, as Chaucer says, he eagerly turns to Diana — that is, he turns from war to hunting. It is early of a May morning, when lovers cannot sleep till sunrise, but
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 299
must up and forth to the woods and gather odorous chap- lets and do their observance to the season of love. Says Chaucer : ^
The busy larke messager of day, Salueth in hire song the morwe gray ; And fyry Phebus ryseth up so bright That al the orient laugheth of the light, And with his stremes dryeth in the greves The silver dropes, hongyng on the leves.
And in such a season we are now led to
mighty Theseus, That for to honte is so desirous And namely the grete hert in May, That in his bed ther daweth him no day. That he nys clad, and redy for to ryde With hont and horn, and houndes hym byside. For in his hontyng hath he such delyt That // is al his joye and appetyt To been himself the grete hertes bane. For after Mars he serveth now Dyane.
Cleer was the day, as I have told or this, And Theseus, with alle joye and blys, With his Ypolita, the fay re queene. And Emelye, clothed al in greene. On hontyng be thay riden ryally. And to the grove that stood ther faste by. In which ther was an hert as men him tolde, Duk Theseus the streyte wey hath holde. And to the launde he rydeth him ful right, Ther was the hert y-wont to have his flight. And over a brook, and so forth in his weye. This duk wol have of him a cours or tweye With houndes, which as him luste to commande. ^
^ Morris, Jldine Chaucer ^ vol. ii, page 46, line 633. ^ Ibid, page 52, lines 815-837.
300 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
Here, then, is Chaucer's hunting-party, Chaucer's Theseus and Hippolyta, Chaucer's horn and hounds. Flitting now along two hundred years, here is the same wood near Athens, the same fresh English air, the early morning, the dew, the glistening leaf, the mighty Theseus, the radiant llippolyta, the hunting-train, and all, in Shakspere's version. But this wood into which Shak- spere's Theseus and Hippolyta are now pacing is more alive than Chaucer's. Chaucer's, it is true, has the two young lovers Palamon and Arcite, who are met in the wood alone to fight until one shall kill the other and thus determine who shall have Emily ; and above the two lovers Chaucer allows us to see the dim forms of their patron gods. Mars and Venus. But Shakspere, closely following Chaucer in bringing his Theseus and Hippolyta, on a hunt, into a wood full of lovers, instead of the classic figures of Mars and Venus has put a Teutonic fairy in every flower-bell, and the whole forest has started into life in the dainty forms of Oberon and Titania and Puck and Peaseblossom and Cobweb and Mustardseed. The two scenes of Act I are indoors : Scene I in Theseus's palace, Scene II in Peter Quince's house. But in Act II, Scene I we are carried into the wood, and here straightway come sailing in Puck on one side and a Fairy on the other. Let me rapidly recall the Nature-pictures and Nature- personations up to the hunt of Theseus. The Fairy explains :
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier.
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere. . . .
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 301
The cowslips tall her pensioners be :
In their gold coats spots you see ;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours : I must go seek some dewdrops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
And then Puck prepares us for the quarrel of the fairy King and Queen ; it is about the Indian boy, and so on ; Oberon will have him,Titania will have him.
And now they never meet in grove or green. By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen. But they do square, that all their elves for fear Creep into acorn cups and hide them there.
Then Puck explains his own reason of being, which is mischief pure and simple : to skim milk, to make the churnings bootless, to mislead night wanderers, to beguile bean-fed horses and ancient gossips and amuse Oberon. And hereupon the whole company of Nature-figures float into the scene : enter from one side Oberon and train ; from the other side Titania and train ; they quarrel :
111 met by moonlight, proud Titania. What, jealous Oberon ! Fairies, skip hence.
And presently we have this wondrous Nature-picture, in which please note the storm — far unlike the Tempest — is merely a peevish result of a silly elfin quarrel. Titania is reproaching the jealous Oberon :
Never, since the middle summer's spring. Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead. By paved fountain or by rushy brook. Or in the beached margent of the sea. To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind.
302 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport. Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain. As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea Contagious fogs ; which, falling in the land. Have every pelting river made so proud, , "
That they have overborne their continents^ The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain, ' The ploughman lost his sweat ; and the green -ooni ' • Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard : - ' The fold stands empty in the drowned field, . And crows are fatted with the murrain flock ; . The nine men's morris is filled up with mud ;
■
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green.
For lack of tread, are undistinguishable :
The human mortals want their winter here';
No night is now with hymn or carol blest :
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods.
Pale in her anger, washes all the air.
That rheumatic diseases do abound :
And through this distemperature we see
The seasons alter : hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose ;
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set : the spring, the summer.
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries ; and the mazed world.
By their increase, now knows not which is which :
j/nd this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate^ from our dissension ;
ff^e are their parents and original.
And then Puck brings the juice of the flower love-lies- bleeding, and works with it about the wood, here and there :
Lord [he says] , what fools these mortals be ! . . .
[And when] two at once woo one ;
/■'rmn an tngraX'in^ iy Charlts M-irr
'i hy Sir Joshua Rtynaldt
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 303
That must needs be sport alone; And those things do best please me That befall preposterously.
And so, into this wood, alive with Puck and Oberon, alive with small soldiers warring with rere-mice for their wings, alive with spotted snakes of double tongue, with thorny hedgehogs, newts, and blindworms, with nightin- gales and clamorous owls, weaving spiders, beetles, worms ^nd snails, ounces, cats, bears, pards, and boars, ousel- cocks, so black of hue, with orange-tawny bill, throstles with notes so true, wrens with little quill, the finch, the sparrow, and the lark, the plain-song cuckoo gray, — into this wood, alive with Lysander loving Helena, Helena loving Demetrius, Demetrius Hermia, and Hermia Ly- sander, where Pyramus and Thisbe and Quince and Snug and Bottom translated to an ass are pranking to make the very trees split their sides — here, in Act IV, Scene I, while horns are being winded within, come pacing Theseus, Hippolyta, Egeus, and the hunting-train, and the talk is of hounds and their music.
Theseus. Go, one of you, find out the forester j For now our observation is performed ; And since we have the vaward of the day. My love shall hear the music of my hounds. Uncouple in the western valley ; let them go : Despatch, I say, and find the forester.
{Exit an attendant,) We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top, And mark the musical confusion Of hounds and echo in conjunction.
Hippolyta, I was with Hercules and Cadmus once, When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear With hounds of Sparta : never did I hear
304 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
Such gallant chiding ; for, besides the groves. The skies, the fountains, every region near Seem'd all one mutual cry : I never heard So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
Theseus. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flew'd, so sanded ; and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew \ Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls ; Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells. Each under each. A cry more tuneable Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn. In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly : Judge when you hear.
So ! What a brave world it is, of cowslips and dew and frolic and love and the King and Queen a-hunting ! Life, busy life, everywhere in Nature : little elves of life a-work down in the kingcups and clover, killing cankers in the musk-rose buds, foraging for Bottom's honey-bags, dis- tressing or blessing lovers — everywhere this Nature of Shakspere's in the Midsummer Night's Dream is all riant and rich with multiform life ; we may sum up the whole view of it in saying that here Nature is given to us as a debonair type of physical life.
But with this figure — Life — before our eyes, look what a grim opposite of it rises up and stares it in the face out of this Hamlet Period. Bring your pretty painted unreal figure of Life in Nature up here upon the cold platform of this castle of Elsinore, and hold it a moment ; here, under the sarcastic stars, in the mortal midnight, stalks forth out of the darkness another form which Physical Nature wears — the form of Death. The Ghost of Hamlet's father, the murdered King in the Mouse-trap masque, the stabbed body of Polonius, the skull of Yorick, the grave of Ophelia, the bare bodkin, the poisonous herb
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 305
of Laertes — this also is Nature. Was Nature all riotous with life in the dream ? Behold, she is quite as riotous with death in the reality : for, indeed, an you come to it, all life must turn into death.
This seems to be the essential Nature-utterance of the Hamlet epoch in Shakspere.
Let us pause upon it a moment.
I cannot think of the uprising of this sad face of death before our dear Master Shakspere in Hamlet from beneath the kingcups and clover and cowslips of the dream, as being the inevitable opposition into which Physical Nature resolves itself, and which every man must grapple with and manage at some time or other of his spiritual career, here — I cannot think of this dual form of Nature without recalling some memorable words in Mr. Darwin's Origin of Species. I am fond of bringing together people and books that never dreamed of being side by side : often I find nothing more instructive ; and so permit me to quote some words here and there in Mr. Darwin's book which seem to me to give a very precise and scientific account of the very opposition which I have here been trying to bring out as between Nature, the mother of life, in Mid- summer Night's Dreamy and Nature, the mother of death, in Hamlet.
I read here and there from The Origin of Species}
Mr. Darwin is discussing the struggle for existence. ** Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difllicult . . . than con- stantly to bear this conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind, the whole economy of nature . . . will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright with gladness " ; as Shakspere in this dream-time; "we do not see, or we
1 Edition of D. Appleton Zl Co., 1877.
3o6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
fofget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constandy destroying life ; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey." Again : "In looking at nature, it is most necessary . . . never to forget that heavy destruc- tion inevitably falls either on the young or old, during each generation or at recurrent intervals." ^
Nay; from another point of view, science puts the matter before us with a wider sweep than this. Not only does Nature show us a lot of creatures living at each other's expense — the shortest summary of Darwin's view being that brief and terrible cyclus in this very Hamlet (of the man that eats the fish that ate the worm that ate the man in his grave) — not only do we live at the expense of others' deaths, but at the expense of our own. All acrion is death : the word that now goes to you goes leaving behind it some dead atoms of tissue that died to send it out; the very silent act of your attention to those words is main- tained by the death of tissue ; life is but a slow death. Nay, who says it all more cunningly than Chaucer in that very couplet I have sometime quoted for a mere rhythmic illustration ?
For sikerlik whan I was bom, anon
Deth drew the tappe of lyf and lete it goon.
This, then, is the pale apparition that raises its head out of Hamlet and confronts the rosy Puck of the dream. Here our Master Shakspere finds himself decisively called on to rise into some plane of thought where he can look with tolerance upon this Janus-faced Nature, one face life, one face death.
iSee also pages 55, 57, 58 of Tbe Origin of Species.
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 307
And here in The Tempest he does rise triumphantly into that plane. Here, with open eye, with unblenching front, he looks upon Nature, now as life, now as death. Why unblenching ? Because, whether as life or whether as death, she is equally his friend and helper. Of Nature as life take, for instance. Act IV, Scene I, line 60 and following. Iris, in the anti-masque, is calling :
Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas
Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and pease ;
Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep,
And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep ;
Thy banks with peonied and lilied brims,
Which spongy April at thy best betrims,
To make cold nymphs chaste crowns ; and thy broom-groves,
Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,
and so on. Here is Nature as fertility, as life : but Pros- pero has not forgotten Nature as death. She comes in upon this very sceqe. Presently, while the nymphs are dancing in the anti-masque, the stage-direction says :
Prospero starts suddenly^ and speaks ; after which j to a strange^ hoi" low,, and con/used noise^ they heavily vanish.
Pros. {Aside) I had forgot that foul conspiracy Of the beast Caliban and his confederates Against my life : the minute of their plot Is almost come. ( To the Spirits) Well done ! avoid ; no more ?
Per. This is strange : your father's in some passion That works him strongly.
Mir. Never till this day
Saw I him touch'd with anger so distemper'd.
Pros. You do look, my son, in a mov'd sort, As if you were dismay'd : be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
3o8 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces.
The solemn temples, the great globe itself.
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve.
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded.
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stufF
As dreams are made on ; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd ;
Bear with my weakness ; my old brain is troubled :
Be not disturbed with my infirmity :
If you be pleas'd, retire into my cell,
And there repose : a turn or two I'll walk.
To still my beating mind.
Fer, and Mir. We wish you peace. (Exeunt.)
And he has peace. Presently, in the end of the same scene, we look upon him using the powers of Nature to bring about good ends. Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano are seen. The stage-direction is :
jf noise of hunters heard. Enter divers spirits^ in shape of hounds^ and hunt them about [that is, Caliban and Trinculo, etc.] , Pros- pero and Ariel setting them on.
Here is a hunt to put beside that of Theseus and Hippo- lyta which we just now joined.
Pros. Hey, Mountain, hey !
Ariel. Silver ! there it goes, Silver !
Pros. Fury, Fury ! there, Tyrant, there ! hark, hark !
(Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo are driven out.) . . . Let them be hunted soundly. At this hour Lie at my mercy all mine enemies : Shortly shall all my labours end, and thou Shalt have the air at freedom : for a little Follow, and do me service. (^Exeunt.)
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 309
Mark these hounds of Prospero's. What a different breed they are from those of Theseus, bred out of the Spartan kind ! Nothing could more finely typify the great height of Nature-view to which Prospero is risen above Theseus than the comparison of these two hunts. Theseus's hunt is the sport of the young man in that bar- barian time of youth which recks not nor thinks at all of the pain of lower creatures, a time when the man is really a beast among beasts, taking his pleasure of the bear, the deer, the game, — as he calls it, — just as the pointer takes his pleasure of the partridge. To bay the bear, to hunt the great hart in May — noble sport : but sport for whom ? For Theseus and Hippolyta ? But how about the bear, the deer ? No sport for them to fly hither and thither in agonies of fright, and presently to be gashed and torn into reeking strips by the hot-toothed hounds.^ It could not be long before Shakspere would emerge into a life that looked with tenderness and reverence upon all creatures of Nature less in degree than himself; it could not be long before he would become incapable of any pleasure that hinged merely upon the pain of whatever brute beast; it could not be long before to him there was more glory in the contemplation of one violet than in all the bears Theseus's hounds ever baited, and more excitement in chasing the visions of beauty that rise and fly about the greenwood than in the wildest hunt of Theseus after the greatest hart round Athens. In this passage from the barbarian enmity of the boy against the beast to the gentle grandeur of the man which takes all the beasts of the field into its love, and is tender to them both because they are less powerful than man and because they are parts of a beautiful Nature, a process of change is involved which presents a most interesting phase in our more modern times as compared with Shakspere's. For I think it is
1 Cf. Charles Lamb's story of the mad dog.
3IO SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
clear that, what with modern physical science and modern landscape-painting and modern Nature-poetry, we have drawn even closer to Nature, we have gotten upon even sweeter terms with her, than Shakspere did or could in the state of Nature-knowledge at his time. The modern world has emerged, as Shakspere emerged, from what we may call the barbarism of youth into what we may simi- larly call the civilisation of maturity. And in the con- tinuation of just such a process as we have found in Shakspere from the brutal hunt of Theseus to the moral hunt of Prospero, the one with no greater aim than the blood of a poor beast, the other with so high an aim as the reformation of an erring fellow-man — in such a process the general spirit of our race has, I say, advanced beyond Shakspere until now this advance presents two phases, one in science, one in poetry, which are, I think, among the finest and most notable features of the modern time. The scientific phase shows itself in the extraordinary rise of physical science during the last hundred years.^ Puck is not dead : he has only changed his name to electricity and increased his speed.
But besides the phase of Nature-communion which wc call physical science there is the other artistic phase. Who can walk among dear and companionable oaks without a certain sense of being in the midst of a sweet and noble company of friends ?
For to him who rightly understands Nature she is even more than Ariel and Ceres to Prospero ; she is more than a servant conquered, like Caliban, to fetch wood and draw water for us : she is a friend and comforter and sweetheart.
But, at any rate, Prospero is on far better terms with Nature than was Theseus, and far better than Hamlet
1 See also chapter iii.
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 311
And so, having used all the faculty of Nature for beneficent ends, even her tempests and her hounding spirits, — that is, having used Nature as life, — presently, at the end of Act V, we find him contemplating the use of Nature as death with a not despairing or unfriendly spirit. " Sir," he says to the King and his brother and all.
Sir, I invite your Highness and your train
To my poor cell, where you shall take your rest
For this one night ; which, part of it, I'll waste
With such discourse as, I not doubt, shall make it
Go quick away : the story of my life.
And the particular accidents gone by
Since I came to this isle : and in the morn
I'll bring you to your ship, and so to Naples,
Where I have hope to see the nuptial
Of these our dear-belov'd solemnis'd ;
And thence retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave.
As we have just seen, the attitude of man towards Nature now is even sweeter than that of Shakspere. When we think how beautifully the modern man is making love to her, with our modern physical science and our mod- ern landscape-painting and our modern Nature-poetry, — making love to Nature and wedding her, after the long war of our less happy ancestors with Physical Nature, — surely the modern man may say to her, as Theseus said to Hippolyta :
[Nature], I woo'd thee with my sword. And won thy love, doing thee injuries ; But I will wed thee in another key, With pomp, with triumph and with revelling.
In short, to review in one word the results of our study during the last five lectures, just as when we studied these
312 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
three plays with reference to their verse-structure by means of the Metrical Tests, and found an enormous advance from this Dream Period to this Ideal Period, in Shakspere's artistic management of those curiously opposed esthetic de- mands of the ear which must be satisfied in order to make beautiful verscj so now, when we have examined these same plays with reference to the moral ideals they show us of the attitude of man towards the supernatural, towards his fellow-man, and towards Physical Nature, we find the moral problem to be essentially like the artistic problem ; we find it to consist of moral oppositions meeting the man at every turn just as esthetic oppositions meet the artist at every turn ; we find that just as the ear would have regular- ity, and at the same time would have irregularity, through a hundred phases of opposition, in verse, so life insists upon its phases of opposition — the control of the super- natural against the free will of the man, the love of the fellow-man against the love of self, the helpfulness of Phy- sical Nature against the obstructiveness of Physical Nature : and just as we found Shakspere accepting the esthetic laws of opposition and using them to make heavenly ideals of music, so we have found him accepting the moral laws of opposi- tion — instead of blindly fighting them, as so many of us do in so many various ways — and using them in heavenly ideals of behaviour.
And now allow me to recall your attention for a brief moment to the ground we have passed over, so that I may leave you with some definite outline in your minds of at least the main points of our inquiry.
You will remember that we began by discovering that every formal poem is primarily a series of sounds, — either of sounds for the ear or of sound-signs for the eye which are translated into sounds by the ear, — and that, this bdng
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 313
the case, the science of verse was really one of the physical sciences, being the knowledge of the relations between the words of a poem considered strictly as sounds. We then found that sounds can differ from each other only in four ways, namely, in point of duration, as longer or shorter ; in point of pitch, as higher or lower ; in point of intensity, as louder or softer ; and in point of tone-colour, as flute- colour, violin-colour, horn-colour, reed-colour, and the like.^ Now when we took all the possible eflfects of verse and referred them to these four physical principles of the diflferences between sounds, we found them straightway ar- ranging themselves into three great classes, namely, of the rhythms of verse, the tunes of verse, and the colours of verse. I then proceeded to discuss these separately. I set before you several diflferent sorts of rhythm, especially the iambic, the dactylic, and the trochaic, explained the peculiar force of each, and illustrated them from both An- glo-Saxon and modern poetry ; and I ascended from these details of rhythm to that general view of the subject in the course of which we found that as modern science has gen- eralised the whole universe into a great congeries of modes of motion, so rhythm pervades all these modes : everything not only moves, but moves rhythmically, from the ether- atom in light to the great space globes ; and so we get back by the most modern scientific path to the old dream of Pythagoras which blindly guessed out the music of the spheres.
Passing from rhythm to the tunes of verse, we found first that a large part of the ordinary communications of speech are made by tunes which are spoken, not by words ; I showed that the intervals through which the
1 As noted in chapter i, much of this having been treated finally by Mr. technical discussion was omitted Lanier in The Science of English from the present work^ the subject Ferse.
314 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
voice moves in speech constitute tunes just as well marked as those which are sung ; and that we had some- how accumulated a great stock of these little speech-tunes, which so modified the meanings of tunes that the same words might be made to have a dozen different significa- tions, according to the tunes in which they were spoken. I then illustrated several of these tunes by writing them in musical notes, explaining that they could only be written approximately, because the present system of musical notation provides signs only for whole tones and half-tones, while the speaking voice uses not only these intervals but a great many smaller ones — thirds, fourths, fifths, and certainly as small as eighths of tones. I went on to show how enormously the resources of language were increased by the use of these tunes, with which the simplest set of ordinary words might be made to take on the most delicate shades of meaning, now tender, now savage, now ironical, now non-committal, and so on. An example of this is the German comedy called Come Here^ in which the powers of a young actress are tested by making her entire role consist of the two words Come here^ with which she carries her auditors through many phases of emotion by simply uttering the same words in diflferent tunes. I finally showed how, in the long development of art, music and words had gradually dissolved the close union which subsisted between them in the Egyptian and Greek times, when the song and the musical declama- tion were the main forms of music, and how they had finally differentiated themselves into two arts, the one an art of pure tone distinct from words and finding its ex- pression in the purely instrumental orchestra, the other an art of pure speech-tunes, distinct from musical tones and finding its expression in the recitation and public reacting which have become so popular in modern dmes.
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 315
I then advanced to the third class of poetic effects, to wit, that of the colours of verse. We found that the vowels and consonants which make up words would be wholly undistinguishable from each other except for their differences in that peculiar matter which is called tone- quality, or tone-colour, or, as Mr. Tyndall translates the German Klang-Farie, clang-tint. As the flute-quality or colour differs from the oboe-quality or colour, that from the violin-quality, and that from the horn-quality, so the vowel differs from the vowel e, that from the vowel ay and so on ; and only in this way. I proved this to you, and illustrated it in several ways, mentioning Wheatstone and Helmholtz as the scientists to whom we owe the most weighty obligations for their brilliant discoveries in this matter. Inasmuch, then, as all vowels and consonants, scientifically considered, are phenomena of tone-colour, all those great verse-effects which depend upon vowels and consonants are effects of tone-colour, and we agreed to call them the Colours of Verse. I then directed your attention to four great varieties of effects based upon vowels and consonants as such, to wit, rimes, alliterations, agreeable distributions of successive vowels in a line, and agreeable junctions of the terminal consonants of one word with the initial consonant of the next word. Treat- ing these separately, I defined exactly what a rime is, in contradistinction to the vague ideas commonly held upon it ; and I then showed how the finest use of rimes is not for mere jingle, but to mark off rhythms for the ear. I then gave you various examples of the artistic use by poets of the other colours of verse, the alliterations, the distribution of vowels, the junctions of consonants, and several other matters which make or mar a verse but which would not ordinarily be thought of by those who have never done the actual work of the poet. I then
3i6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
showed you how the rime, which brings together two sounds differing as to their consonant-quality but alike as to their vowel-quality {^o, so)y was a physical analogue of the metaphor which links together two conceptions, that differ generally, by some special point of resemblance; and I advanced from this to the conception that the poet, who deals in metaphor, thus puts the universe together, while the scientist pulls it to pieces, the poet being a synthetic workman, the scientist an analytic workman ; and how thus it is clear that while the scientist plucks apart the petals of faith, it is the business of the modern poet to set them together again and so keep the rose of religion whole.
This ended the first division of lectures on the Tech- nic of Verse. I then passed on to the next division.
Starting at the very beginning of English poetry in the seventh century, I gave you some account of Anglo-Saxon poetry, of its relations to Chaucer in the fourteenth cen- tury and to the Scotch poets of the fifteenth century, and finally to Shakspere. In the course of these lectures I en- deavoured to place before you in some vivid way the change in man's attitude towards the supernatural (or God), towards Nature, and towards his fellow-man — illus- trating these contrasts by three sets of poems : The Ad- dress of the Soul to the Dead Body and Hamlet y Beowulf and Midsummer Nighfs Dream^ and St. Juliana and Love's Labour s Lost. We found in Midsummer Night* s Dream an entire breaking down of the restraint and terror between man and Nature — so noticeable in Beowulf and all the early poetry — and almost as startling a change in the atti- tude of the Elizabethan towards woman. I introduced to you Cynewulf, whose name, but not whose figure, has come to us ; and I read you the Anglo-Saxon poem in which we find his name cunningly concealed in Runic letters which are embedded in the body of the texL
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 317
In the course of these lectures I read you in full three notable Anglo-Saxon poems, The Phcenixy The Legend of St. Julianay and The Address of the Soul to the Dead Bodyy and gave you some illustrations of the Anglo-Saxon text. In the course of these lectures I also presented several readings from Chaucer, from the Scotch poets William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas, and from the mystery plays of the Towneley Series. Having thus placed before you some idea of the relations of Shakspere to the first thousand years of our poetry, — for we found some of the Anglo- Saxon poems (notably Beowulf in its earlier form) taking us back at least to the sixth century, a thousand years be- fore Shakspere was born, — I passed to the minor poetry of the sixteenth century, with the view of showing his re- lations to his own time, and gave you four lectures on the sonnet-writers from Surrey and Wyatt to Drummond and Habington. In the course of these we found that the sonnet has never been allowed its full importance as the primal form of modern English poetry ; that Surrey and Wyatt, while they borrowed the form from Italy, soon nat- uralised it, and it became then, as it has remained ever since, the favourite poetic vehicle for every poet who wishes to express his own most private personal emotions. In- vestigating, then, the nature of the sonnet, we found that every good sonnet is nothing more nor less than a little drama, with an opening, a plot, and a crisis or catastrophe at the end. We then examined with special detail the sonnets of Henry Constable, Samuel Daniel, William Habington, Sir Philip Sidney, William Drummond of Haw- thornden, Barnaby Barnes, and Shakspere ; for the son- nets of my old favourite Bartholomew Grifllin I referred you to my paper on that poet, which, by the way, has since appeared in the International Review for March.^ In dis-
1 Sec, in Music and Poetry^ " A Forgotten English Poet."
31 8 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
cussing the sonnets of Shakspere we came upon many clear features which would go to make up a good representation of the spiritual visage of the man : we found him tender ; we found him looking to the fate of his poetry in future times; we found him setting forth the very loftiest ideal of manly friendship ; we found him forgiving freely the most desper- ate crime which man can commit against man ; we found him suffering anguish without bitterness and contemplating death without regret.
In the next two lectures, wishing to bring Shakspere before us in a sort of physical and tangible way, I endea- voured to show how he talked ; and for this purpose I dis- cussed the pronunciation of English in Shakspcre's time. We found it differing widely from our own pronunciation, the as being greatly broader, the /"s being rounder, the ^'s less reedy than our own. I then gave you more exact de- tails of this pronunciation, explained the palaeotype sys- tem of indicating it, and put you in possession of the main researches of Mr. Alexander J. Ellis, the English scholar to whose monumental work on this subject we owe most of our knowledge of it. I mentioned also the labours of our own countrymen Messrs. Noyes and Peirce, and Mr. Richard Grant White, in this connection. I then illus- trated the whole matter by reading you part of a play in the Shakspere pronunciation as it has been recovered by Ellis and his co-labourers.
After this side-glance at some of the literary conditions of Shakspere's time, we proceeded to study other condi- tions, artistic and social.
In the next two lectures I discussed the music of Shakspere's time. I gave you numerous citations from Shakspere's works to show not only that music was the art which he loved best of all, but that he had an insight into the depths of music which was quite wonderful con-
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 319
sidering what kind of music he must have been accus- tomed to hear. In this connection I unfolded to you with some detail the slight progress which was made by music from the time of Gregory to that of Palestrina, and showed you how almost all that we call music, especially orchestral music, is a wholly abrupt modern development dating from nearly a hundred years after Shakspere died. I then explained the discant, and passed to the different ' kinds of music in vogue in the sixteenth century : the church music, with its motetts, its canons, its endless fugues ; the secular song-music, with its rounds, catch and Northern tunes, or Scotch music ; the instrumental music for the organ, the virginals, the lute, etc. ; the dance-tunes — the pavan, the galliard, the paspy, the morris, etc. I showed by numerous quotations from Shakspere and contemporary works how universal was the knowledge of music — that is, of pricksong, as it was called — in his time, and how it was a common part of every man's education that he should be able to sing his part in a part- song ; and I gave some account of the musical instruments of the time, the virginals, the lute, the chests of viols, the recorder, and the like.
I then took up the domestic life of Shakspere's time. For the purpose of bringing his whole daily environment vividly before you, I constructed a little thread of story which showed us Shakspere now in his home in Henley Street, Stratford; now wandering through the sweet War- wickshire woods to the cottage of the Hathaways a mile off; now happening by a lucky accident to witness the gorgeous pageants with which Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth in 1575 ; now attending the performance of Heywood's interlude of The Four P*s at Warwick ; now hearing a neighbour read Gosson's Schoole of Abuse y a lively book of the period ; now running ofF to London and hear-
320 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
ing a sermon at Paul's Cross and two plays at the Black- friars Theatre. In this connection I sketched also those wonderful world-events which had happened in various countries since 1492 up to Shakspere's birth, and side by side with them I placed a number of small events, such as the wearing of the first silk stockings, the raising of the first garden vegetables, the beginning of the use of forks at table, and the like, in England, which belong to this period. In close conjunction with these outer events I laid before you a chronological arrangement of Shakspere's plays as representing the inner events which took place in his soul during his marvellous life. In one or two of these con- nections I read before you, in their complete forms, the following works : Robert Laneham's letter describing the Kenilworth festivities; John Heywood's interlude of The Four P^s; Latimer's sermons before King Edward VI, in the Westminster Palace garden, during Lent of 1 549 ; Nicholas Udall's play of Ralph Royster Doyster^ the first English comedy ; and Sackville and Norton's play of GorboduCj the first English tragedy.
Next I gave a brief glance at the verse tests with which modern criticism has begun to confirm those chron- ological arrangements of Shakspere's plays that give us such a startling insight into his moral growth — tests which mark the rise of exact method in the science of criticism. We then went on, in the light of the physical theory of verse already enunciated, to study the Metrical Tests. Thus armed, we proceeded to try both the verse theory and the Metrical Tests by examining three plays, representing the three periods of Shakspere's artistic and moral growth, to see if the results of technical analysis and the results of moral analysis would agree : and we have now just found that nothing could be more perfect than the precisely parallel advance which Shakspere displays in
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 321
The Tempest over the Midsummer Night^s Dream^ both in the technical beauty of his verse and the moral beauty of his ideals of behaviour; and we have finally connected these two, technical beauty and moral beauty, finding that technical beauty consists in the harmonious adjustment of esthetic oppositions, while moral beauty consists in the harmonious adjustment of moral oppositions : so that, pass- ing to their common element, we find the verse technic and the moral technic to be simply two phases of the artistic adjustment of oppositions.
This appears much plainer in the concrete than in the abstract. Here is a little strain from the Midsummer Night^s Dream, which I have opposed with one from The Tempest.
Midsummer Night* s Dream, Act I, Scene I :
Helena. How happy some o'er other some can be ! Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that ? Demetrius thinks not so ; He will not know what all but he do know : . . . Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind j And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
The Tempest :
Prospero. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves ; And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make. Whereof the ewe not bites ; and you whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew ; by whose aid — Weak masters though ye be — I have bedimm'd The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault
322 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
Set roaring war : to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt ; the strong-bas'd promontory Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up The pine and cedar : groves at my command Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let 'em forth By my so potent art.
Let us in the briefest way run over the technical particulars in which the latter verse is superior to the former. You remember we found that a number of patterns run throughout every verse-structure which in effect constitute two opposing systems, the regular system and the irr^u- lar system. Now here in this Midsummer Nighfs Dream passage the regular system predominates to such an extent as to make the verse palpably stiff. If we examine it with reference to all the divisions of verse-phenomena we studied, its stiffness and over-regularity become more apparent. Those divisions were the tunes, the rhythms, and the tone-colours of verse. Well, consider these tunes. Each line, you observe, has its tune, precisely balanced by the tune of the next line ; the cadence of the tune falls always at the same point — the end of the line; and thus all the tune-cadences belong to the regular system. Again, in the rhythms the regular system prevails just as overwhelmingly : the primary rhythm is perfect, aU along, short syllable, long syllable, short, long :
^\ ^\ A\ ^\ X\
How hap- I py some | o'er oth- | er some | can be
Again, the secondary rhythm, the bar system, is unbroken; each bar has exactly two sounds to the bar. Again, the tertiary rhythm, the line system, is rigidly maintained; every line has exactly five bars, exactly ten syllables, and this group of five bars is inexorably marked off for
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 323
the ear by the recurrent rime at the end of each line. And thirdly, to go no farther with the rhythmic examina- tion, if we look at the tone-colours we find the e — e^
— Oy ind — ind linking themselves together into perfectly regular patterns of tone-colour strikingly marked ofF for the ear. All rime ; every line end-stopped ; not a single weak ending, or double ending, or change of the rhythmic accent.
But now, if we turn from this to The Tempest passage, we must needs be amazed at the multitudinous means which are here used of varying all this regular system of verse-efFects. Here, pursuing the same order of exam- ination, if we look at the tunes, we find that the first line has its tune-cadence at the end, while the second opposes this with a grand, long, sweeping phrase of two lines and a half, like the long phrases of Bach and Beethoven, to which
1 referred when we were studying this eflTect ; here, again, we have a long tune-phrase, here a shorter one, here a shorter one, here a great sweeping one, then a shorter one, a shorter one, and a grand one ; and so on — the regular- ity nobly relieved with irregularity. Leaving the tunes of verse, if we look at the rhythms we get the same result. The primary rhythm, that is, the alternation of short and long sound, and the secondary rhythm, that is, the regular grouping of a short and a long sound into bars, is still kept up, for the regular system ; but the larger rhythmic groups, the line group and phrase group, are greatly more irregular. First, there is no rime to mark oflF the line into regular groups of five bars and ten sounds each ; secondly, the end-stopped line (regular) is finely relieved by these run-on lines ending in " foot," " that," "rejoice," "aid," "bedimm'd," "vault," "up," and so on ; in fact, the whole line-grouping is broken up, and nearly every phrase, instead of ending rigidly at the end of
324 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
the line, ends somewhere in the body of the line ; again, the weak ending, that carries out the same principle with the run-on line ; again, the double endings, " fly him," " pastime," " thunder," " promontory " (four double end- ings, you see, in this short passage, though there are only twenty-nine in the whole of the Midsummer Night* s Dream)y relieve the bar system by presenting the ear with bars consisting of three sounds to relieve the long succes- sion of bars which consist of only two sounds ; and finally the frequent shiftings of the rhythmic accent from its normal place, as "and do fly him," "when he comes back," " puppets that," " green-sour," " to the dread rat- tling thunder," etc., all show us a great number of irregular elements charmingly introduced into the rhythmic pattern.
And finally, as to the tone-colour patterns : we find the vowel-colours varying in almost every contiguous word, we find the consonant-colours varying, scarcely any alliteration, scarcely any consonant-syzygies, in short, all the tone- colour effects making for the irregular system, as pleas- ingly opposed to the regular system. And with what a result ! These lines are a purely vocal pleasure to pro- nounce, a purely auditory pleasure to hear as the ear goes on and coordinates the elements of all these rhythmic pat- terns, without reference to the wondrous ideal pictures which they set before the mind !
Surely the genius which in the heat and struggle of ideal creation has the enormous control and temperance to arrange and adjust in harmonious proportions all these esthetic antagonisms of verse, surely that is the same genius which in the heat and battle of life will arrange the moral antagonisms with similar self-control and temper- ance. Surely there is a point of technic to which the merely clever artist may reach, but beyond which he may never go, for lack of moral insight ; surely your Robert Greene, your Kit Marlowe, your Tom Nash, clever poets
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 325
all, may write clever verses and arrange clever dramas ; but if we look at their own flippant lives and pitiful deaths and their small ideals in their dramas, and compare them, tech- nic for technic, life for life, morality for morality, with this majestic Shakspere, who starts in a dream, who presently encounters the real, who after a while conquers it to its proper place (for Shakspere, mind you, does not forget the real ; he will not be a beggar nor a starveling ; we have documents which show how he made money, how he bought land at Stratford ; we have Richard Quincy's letter to " my lovveinge good frend and contreyman Mr. Wm. Shakspere, deliver thees," asking the loan of thirty pounds "uppon Mr. Bushells and my securytee," showing that Shakspere had money to lend), and finally turns it into the ideal in T^he Tempest ; if we compare, I say, Greene, Mar- lowe, Nash, with Shakspere, surely the latter is a whole heaven above them in the music of his verse, as well as in the temperance and prudence of his life, as well also as in the superb height of his later moral ideals. Surely, in fine, there is a point of mere technic in art beyond which nothing but moral greatness can attain, because it is at this point that the moral range, the religious fervour, the true seership and prophethood of the poet, come in and lift him to higher views of all things.
For, indeed, when we look upon man, vibrating between these oppositions, what is he more like, each in his little life making his little round of moral rhythm, than one of these tone-colours, one of these tunes, one of these rhythmic elements, here in the verse ?
I once had a quaint illustration of all these complex re- lations to other lives, and to the final form and purpose of things, with which perhaps I may fitly conclude this lec- ture and this course, particularly as showing the power of the small to illustrate the large. I was one day wandering on a lonesome horseback stroll along the beach of the At-
326 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
lantic Ocean on the Georgia coast. It was late in an afternoon of the early summer, and the sun was near the horizon. Presently I left the beach and turned into a captivating side road that curved ofF through the deep woods. The air was heavy with the half-tropical perfumes of wood flowers ; the sparkleberry hung in great clusters along the narrow roadway, the long vines trailed and wove their tangles about oak and pine, and between the big trunks of the trees the level sun sent shafts of rich yellow light slanting across the road. Presently one of these shafts of light happened to fall upon a great swarm of a sort of large silver-winged gnats which is peculiar to that region, and I stopped my horse and sat still to observe the motions of the swarm. They were dancing in the light, just in front of me, immediately above a shrub which is their home. This singular gnat-dance seemed — and I believe that is the conclusion of naturalists — to be sim- ply for pleasure ; and it was most curious to note the gen- eral outline of the figures formed by the myriads of tiny silver creatures in the sunbeam. Apparently in response to the commands of some leader, this general outline would change every moment : sometimes the swarm would suddenly extend upward and make a quite perfect column ; then it would contract into a lozenge-shaped figure ; then swell into a circle ; then form a square ; and so on — each of these outlines being formed by minute variations in the direction of flight of each individual gnat, for each was vi- brating rapidly in his own little independent round ; and as each extended his excursion this way or that, the msun figure of the entire swarm would result. Each gnat was, in short, a rhythmic atom^ and nothing could better illustrate the varieties of form producible in nature by the changing motions of the atoms underlying those forms. Then the swarm, as it ever kept dancing, changing, would make me
MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 327
think of that pretty conceit of Sir William Davenant's, who, in describing a dance in the seventeenth century, said :
And had the music silent been The eye a moving tune had seen.
The swarm was a moving tune. And again, as with a sudden whir of all the little dancers the figure would change to a loz- enge, it was like those ludicrous attempts in the sixteenth century to make rhythm visible to the eye by changing the length of each line so that the words would present a defi- nite form, such as this, which was called the Lozenge form. This is a love-letter from Temir the warrior to Kermesine, who has captured him.
THE LOZENGE : FROM PUTTENHAM
Fiue
Sore batailes
Manfully fought
In blouddy fielde
With bright blade in hand
Hath Temir won & forst to yeld
Many a Captaine strong & stoute
And many a king his Crowne to vayle,
Conquering large countreys and land, Yet ne uer wanne I vie to ric,
I speake it to my greate glo rie
So deare and joy full vn to me.
As when I did first con quere thee
O Kerme sine, of all myne foes
The most cruell, of all myne woes
The smartest, the sweetest
My proude Con quest
My ri chest pray
O once a daye Lend me thy sight
Whose only light
Keepes me
Aliue.
9
328 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
But again sometimes the whole swarm, animated by a sudden impulse, would sweep down into the dark leaves of its home shrub like magic : nothing would be seen, and I could scarcely realise that the air was so suddenly vacant ; then it would as suddenly sweep out again, and there would be the little dancers, each holding his litde rhythmic round. And here, as the sunbeam lighted up these dancing gnats, now rushing forth into space, now collapsing into a central point, one could not but think of that enormous idea of Edgar Poe's in his Eureka^ where he developes from the simple postulates of attraction and repulsion and a uniform matter the course of creation: how the matter is diffused out into space, how the two opposite principles immediately set individual portions of it whirling off" into worlds and stars and systems, how the very same principle must after a while compel these same worlds to cluster back about their systems and the whole to return into a central point, the Creator, to be again diffused into space, again reabsorbed, and so on, until he winds up with that comparison which I think sometimes is the mightiest in our language — that comparison^ of this successive outsending and inbringing of the worlds by the Creator at the centre of things to the beating of the heart of God. So the great swarm of gnats had its systole and diastole, and beat like the pulse of the worlds. And thus, finally, with each ever-dancing gnat repre- senting, now the round of the atom in all those forms which we call nature, now the function of the sound- vibration as an element in that form which we call verse, now the huge periodicity of the whirling world in space, — and with all these individual elements vibrating each in his own little sphere of life, combining into larger forms which perhaps no individual gnat dreamed of, just as our little spheres of activity in life surely combine into some
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greater form or purpose which none of us dream of, and which no one can see save some unearthly spectator that stands afar off in space and looks upon the whole of things, — I was impressed anew with the fact that it is the poet who must get up to this point and stand off in thought at the great distance of the ideal, look upon the complex swarm of purposes as upon these dancing gnats, and find out for man the final form and purpose of man's life. In short, — and here I am ending this course with the idea with which I began it, — in short, it is the poet who must sit at the centre of things here, as surely as some great One sits at the centre of things Yonder, and who must teach us how to control, with temperance and perfect art and unforgetfulness of detail, all our oppositions, so that we may come to say with Aristotle, at last, that poetry is more philosophical than philosophy and more historical than history.
Permit me to thank you earnestly for the patience with which you have listened to many details that must have been dry to you ; and let me sincerely hope that, whatever may be your oppositions in life, whether of the verse kind or the moral kind, you may pass, like Shak- spere, through these planes of the Dream Period and the Real Period, until you have reached the ideal plane from which you clearly see that wherever Prospero's art and Prospero's love and Prospero's forgiveness of injuries rule in behaviour, there a blue sky and a quiet heaven full of sun and stars are shining over every tempest.
I