NEW LIGHTS ON SHAKESPEARE.
E feel inclined to apologise for noticing conjointly instead separately two books so admirable as these, and so portent in the literature of a great subject ; but we nsole ourselves by reflecting that neither Mr. Lee nor Jusserand can quarrel with the company in which he dB himself. The works are very different in character, t resemble each other by the extraordinary complete- s of the literary equipment which their writers display. Jusserand breaks new ground, and has room to turn in his bject; Mr. Lee, whose task it has been to sift a vast cumulation both of sense and nonsense, has achieved a el of condensation, but the very conditions of his work .bid him to be so readable. The amazing thing is that, ding a lengthy biography which must of necessity be based n a number of details mostly petty and trivial, he has con- ved to be readable at all ; but so it is ; thanks to a very ful grouping of material, few people interested in Shake- re will find his close-packed pages other than interesting those with a taste for curious and recondite information light upon a mine of miscellaneous facts relating to ters, publishers, and patrons in the days of Elizabeth and es. Mr. Lee's is the sort of work of which the Germans gate the monopoly ; but to a more than German thorough- s of investigation he has added a most un-German lucidity.
(5.) A 10 of William Shakespeare. By Sidney Lee. With Portraits and es. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. (7a. 6d.]—(2.) Shakespeare on ' l'altaett Regi7718. Par 3.3. Jusserand. Paris: Armand Colin.
The two books only touch each other at one point. Mr. Lee in his chapter on "The Posthumous Reputation of Shake- speare" gives in bald outline most of the facts out of which M.
Jusserand develops two-thirds of his narrative. But the most interesting point made by M. Jusserand relates to the French stage in Shakespeare's day. The French at that time were, as he proves, totally ignorant of English ; to speak the lan- guage was all but an unknown accomplishment among them, and the existence of our vernacular literature was almost unsuspected. The literature of Great Britain represented itself to them by the Latin writings of More, Buchanan, and others. Yet—and here is the strange point—there was the closest correspondence between the two dramatic literatures. The theatre was less popular in France—Paris had only one theatre—but the playa represented were of the same type, dealing, not with classical subjects, but often with recent, or even with contemporary, history ; murder was done nightly on the boards ; ghosts walked; and every unity of Aristotle and precept of the Are Poetica was violated without remorse.
Just as in England Sidney and his group generally denounced this barbarism, and voted for plays on the Senecan model, Gorboduc and the rest, so did the academic critics in France. But the result was very different. In London Gorboduc was
rejected with contumely,—the Gothic taste prevailed ; in France Mairet produced his very mediocre Sophonisbe con- forming to famous "rules," and he swept the board at once. The Classical theory commended itself to theorists in both countries ; in France it paid in practice :— "Nothing can better prove," says M. Jusserand, "the difference between the genius of the two nations. The same literary creed is preached to them at the same time by critics of equal autho- rity ; it is accepted in France alike by educated men and by the public, but rejected in England; ` classical ' playwrights are literary curiosities among our neighbours; dramatists who defy the rules soon become curiosities among us. The severe doctrines of theorists were welcomed in France from the outset by the best thinkers and writers, and gradually with growing enthusiasm by the whole public. We did not learn the antique in the 16th century, we recognised it ; the Greeks and Romans were our kin ; Aristotle and Horace were our ancestors.
Aristotle,' says M. Fagnet, ` is really the first French dramatic critic.' Thus a complete and intimate understanding established itself between the theorists and the public, so close and so popu. lar, that when a reaction makes itself felt in the 18th century, and new theorists teach new doctrines and preach a revolt against the Rules,' it is from the public that resistance proceeds, and a century will not suffice to overcome it."
Not less interesting is the history of the reaction, in which Voltaire at first had some hand, but which in later life he so bitterly opposed. French as he was to the core, the literary idols of his people were sacrosanct in his eyes. "He would attack God on the altar, but he shuddered if a sacrilegious voice were raised against the Alexandrine ; he would pardon his friends any iniquity, but not a tragedy written in prose." These
things, however, are better known ; BO is the connection of Shakespeare with the Romantic movement; we have only space to add that the first critical judgment passed on Shakespeare in the French language is found in the catalogue of the library of Le Boi Soleil ; and to express our admira-
tion and gratitude for M. Jusserand's fascinating book.
Mr. Lee disowns all intention of writing criticism, but on certain critical points we are glad to note his attitude. He is not one of those extremists who would deny to Shakespeare any hand in Henry VIII. (a theory which involves the wildest overestimate of Messinger). At the same time, he deals hardly by Fletcher in refusing to him the credit of Wolsey's speech to Cromwell, which is written, as he admits, in Fletcher's unmistakable manner. We refnse to believe that Shakespeare in the maturity of his powers either would or could have adopted another writer's manner, whatever he might have done in his period of discipleship. While treating of that period, Mr. Lee states better than we have seen it put elsewhere the debt to Marlowe ; noting the successive re- semblances in Richard II. to Tamburlaine, Richard II. to Edward II., and The Merchant of Venice to The Jew of Malta. In this last, however, one sees not so much a resemblance as the conscious rivalry of a famous portrait. Among the most curious things in the book is the discovery of a historical reason for Shylock?s existence. Jew-baiting was in the air, since in June, 1594, Roderigo Lopez, the Queen's Jew physician, was executed for conspiracy to poison his mis- tress, and popular feeling was strongly roused against the Israelites. Six weeks after the execution, the " Venezyon Comedy" was played. If Mr. Lee be right, and we have little doubt he is, in connecting the two facts, the episode is very typical of Shakespeare's practical mind. How practical that mind was nothing can so clearly make us realise as the
minute study in this book of the poet's money concerns. Most readers will be surprised to hear how rich this waif
upon London came to be within a space of twenty years after he left Stratford. He owed his income not to his work as a dramatist, for the price paid for a play ranged from 26 to
Ell before 1600, and after that would not exceed £20. Taking an average of two plays per annum, Shakespeare earned by his from 212 to £30, or possibly £40. These sums should be multiplied by eight to give their present value. That is to say, as a playwright Shakespeare never earned above £300 of our money in a year. But the profits of actors were very different. "An efficient actor received in 1635 as large a regular salary as £180. The lowest known valuation set an actor's wages at 3s. a day, or about £45 a year. Shake- speare's emoluments as an actor before 1599 are not likely to have fallen below £100." After that date he was much enriched by the receipt of shares in the Globe Theatre. In 1635 these were worth £200 a year each, and the actor received in addition to them his salary. If, therefore, Shakespeare held two shares, which Mr. Lee puts as a minimum, he would have drawn from the Globe, "at the lowest estimate, more than 2500 a year,"—say £4,000. Besides this he owned a share in the Blackfriars Theatre, and this with his writings would have brought in another £100. That is, Shakespeare from 1600 onward, was probably earning at the rate of 25,000 a year, as we count money ; and from these earnings he derived capital, which he invested at Stratford. His investments and the record of his lawsuits show a man keen in business ; indeed, in one instance, if Mr. Lee be right, more shrewd than honest. This, however, is a point that we do not care to go into ; but the estimate formed of the poet's character from such biographical material as the sonnets afford is one from which we must dissent.
Mr. Le es thesis is as follows, in the briefest possible state- ment. "Mr. W. H." to whom the edition is dedicated by "T. T." (Thomas Thorpe), the publisher, is not the beautiful youth of the sonnets, but Mr. William Hall, a stationer's clerk who procured the MS. Grounds for this view are stated in one of the appendices, which serve as safety-valves for Mr. Lee's amazing pressure of detailed knowledge, and they con- vince us, at all events, that Shakespeare had no hand in the dedication. The beautiful youth is identified with South- ampton, Shakespeare's only known patron, and Mr. Lee labours to prove that the sonnets addressed to him were merely magnificent examples of a language of compliment current among the sonnetteers of that day. He cannot, however, refuse to admit that there is a core of bio- graphical incident suggested in the story of the youth, the poet, and the dark lady. It is not an agreeable story, take it how you will, but Mr. Lee puts the most disagreeable construction on it that we have yet seen, and one totally opposed to the impression of passionate sincerity which the poems have always left on our mind. He suggests that the pardon extended by the poet to his friend for treachery with the poet's mistress is merely a picturesque way of describing the complaisance of a shrewd dependant towards a bountiful patron. Again, we do not agree with him in believing that the sonnets were written so early nor so close together as he puts them andicertainly not as an academical exercise. A man with the lyrical gift almost inevitably feels the desire to express his own emotions, and we hold that the sonnets were probably written at intervals ranging over a consider- able period of years, and that they expressed Shakespeare's strong and real feelings, though the prevalent convention sug- gested not merely a particular form, but particular phrases and turns of thought, which indeed are common to almost all lyrical poetry. If a poet writes of the feeling produced in him by spring's coming, he writes of a theme as old as the world, and he inevitably uses metaphors that have seen much service, but he is not the less sincere. We think, also, that Mr. Lee underrates the case made out by Mr. Carter for believing that Shakespeare was brought up in the reformed religion. His father was a recusant, therefore either Puritan or Catholic. Mockery of the Puritans in the plays proves nothing, for Shakespeare had his public to con- sider as well as his fellows, whose livelihood was threatened, and he could no more have spoken praise of Puritans in a comic scene than could a music-hall singer eulogise the in- vestigators of the London County Council. Guillim's retual that the Puritans regarded coat armour with abhorrence is nc to be taken seriously. Surely many good Puritans bore arm But the points where we feel obliged to differ from Mr. Lt —except in the matter of the sonnets—are of slight imper ance, and the mass of obscure and tangled controversit which he has ravelled out is immense. His book is unquQ tionably one of the most remarkable achievements of metier, English scholarship.
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