absolute; if by chance some attempt in that line can be detected in his plays, it rarely improves matters: Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Italians, address each other as "Signor" and "Monsieur" in "Cymbeline," the scene of which is laid four hundred years before the Franks settled in Gaul. In "Hamlet," the Danish usurper calls his Swiss guard: "Where are my Switzers?" Shakespeare's Romans, his Greeks and his Trojans play cards, top and billiards, break spears for the honour of their ladies, turn down the corners of pages in their books-"Is not the leaf turned down, where I left reading?" says Brutus-they brandish their scimitars, quote Galen six centuries before his birth, have the alternative of dying at the "Tarpeian rock" or being broken "on the wheel," wear hose and doublets, nightgowns and nightcaps, say grace at their meals and threaten each other with their pistols. In "Winter's Tale," the hero consults the oracle at "sacred Delphos" at a time when heretics were being burned, when a king of Sicily married the Emperor of Russia's daughter, when puritans sang "psalms to hornpipes," and "that rare master Julio Romano" made himself famous by painting stone statues in oils as were painted those on English tombstones in Shakespeare's time, as his own statue was one day to be painted in Holy Trinity Church at Stratford. In "King Lear," the Britons of before Christ play cards, wear spectacles, plant cocks on their steeples, and fight very early Frenchmen, who have a marshal called "Monsieur Le Fer." Same unconcern as regards geography. For Shakespeare it is a general rule that all distant towns are by the sea shore. Let that pass for the fancy Bohemia of "Winter's Tale"; but the best known cities, Rome, Padua, Mantua, Verona, Florence, Milan, Aleppo are also by the sea. To start on their journey from Verona to Milan his men wait for the tide; Mantua is north of "The tide is now" ("Two Gentlemen," ii. 2). “Away, ass, you will lose the tide" (ibid. ii. 3). Milan, Padua is in Lombardy; from Padua to Pisa, the usual way is by sea. To go from Roussillon in France to "St. Jaques le Grand," that is to say St. James of Compostella in Spain, Helena goes by Florence, the usual port of embarkation, we are given to understand, for French pilgrims.2 In the forest of Arden, in France, grow palm-trees and olive-trees, beneath which lions fight snakes.3 Delphos is an island.4 His indifference equals that of mediaval romance writers, one of whom places Beaucaire by the seaside, on the border of a forest full of lions.5 Interested solely in the play of passions, writing in a fever, having studied little and travelled not at all, Shakespeare would not have stretched out his hand to take down a map or a chronicle from a shelf, in order to ascertain the position of a town or the date of a death or of a battle. Elsinore is a characteristic example. Those who like to picture to themselves a Shakespeare letting his thoughts. ripen slowly, weighing his words and verifying his facts, "Taming," i. 1, iv. 2. "Widow. God save you, pilgrim! Whither are you bound? Helena. To St. Jaques le Grand. Where do the palmers lodge, I beseech you? Widow. At the Saint Francis here, beside the port. . . Helena. I did so. ("All's well," iii. 5.) Like Boccaccio, Paynter, whom Shakespeare follows, had spoken of a pilgrim. age, but the specific mention of St. James is an addition of the dramatist's. St. James was one of the three most famous places of pilgrimage, the road to it being known of all: "Troi principal siéges sont devant tous les autres siéges du monde: Roume, Compostelle et Éphèse, si comme nostre sire establi devant tous les apostles Saint Pierre, Saint Jacque et Saint Jehan, à qui il révéla ses secres."-" Pseudo Turpin," in Bédier, "Les Légendes épiques," Paris, 1908, i. 337. 3 "As you like it," iii. 2, 5; iv. 3. "Fertile the isle” (“Winter's Tale," iii. 1); confusion being made, as it seems, between Delphos and Delos. 5 Such is the geography of the author of "Aucassin et Nicolette," above vol, I. p. 227. have wondered how he could have given, in "Hamlet," such a correct idea of that town and of the Danish realm. They have found very good explanations: fellow players of the poet had visited the country and performed in the very castle where the plot is laid, which is quite true. But in reality there is no need to wonder how the poet was so precise, for the good reason that he was not. The instance is a truly typical one, since, in this case, he could, without any trouble, have got accurate information, but he did not care to. The low flat shore about the castle becomes in his play, so abrupt and steep that many, for merely looking down and hearing the "roar" of the waves below (and from this he draws a great dramatic effect), have become deranged in their mind. Few seas are, on the contrary, more habitually quiet and silent. He pictures to himself, on the west, a range of mountains that the island of Sjælland has never known; between the castle and the harbour, which in reality are contiguous, he inserts a plain where Hamlet meets the army of Fortinbras.2 Improbabilities were, we have seen, a means of pleasing. Shakespeare often has recourse to them, to such an extent even, that he sometimes happens to fear he may have gone too far: "Such a deal of wonder is broken out within this hour that ballad makers cannot be able to express it." 3 But this scruple is quite exceptional, and on that point, it must be said in his defence, not only that the public encouraged him, but that realities, so to speak, did the same. Firstly, it may be observed that, considering things ' The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch . . . (iv. 1). 2 IV. 4. ... 3 "Winter's Tale," v. 2. in their true light, the most ordinary lives are, time and again, filled with improbabilities; two brothers, two lovers, a husband and wife, tenderly united, come to detest each other, and why? For nothing, for so little that one cannot believe it: it is improbable and true at the same time. But of much more importance it is to note how, in that period, the great public events, of far-reaching consequences, happened with such suddenness and were so contrary to reason, probability, and expectation as to justify on the stage every temerity. It was so in all countries, but especially in England, and foreigners noticed it: "Now," writes one of them in 1558, "the English will love a prince; turn your hand, they will want to kill and crucify him." Under the names of Oxford and Knyvet, the Montagues and the Capulets fought and slew each other in Shakespeare's time, and Queen Elizabeth had to play between them the part of the Duke of Verona. Under the name of Bothwell, Macbeth cried treason before the body of his own victim; under the name of the same Bothwell, Claudius married the widow of the first Hamlet, killed by himself. Shall we wonder at the sudden impeachment of Hermione in "Winter's Tale"? No one wondered at it in London, where everybody remembered the trial and execution of Anne Boleyn, the Queen's own mother. And the heroines disguised as pages, the masters disguised as servants? . . . But Mary Stuart had disguised herself as a page; Melville had almost persuaded Elizabeth to do the same; James V. had visited France giving himself out as the squire of his favourite, John Tennant; Elizabeth Southwell, daughter of Sir Robert Southwell, had followed Leicester's son, Robert Dudley, disguised as his page, becoming first his mistress, then his wife. The counterfeit letters and counter* Perlin, "Description des Royaulmes d'Angleterre et d'Écosse," Paris, feit seals used by Hamlet to destroy the companions of his sea journey were among the methods of government of the period, and they were employed with so much art that, to this day, no agreement has been possible as to what is true and what is false in the famous "casket letters." People believed in sorcerers and witches, for they still burned them, and in ghosts and apparitions. The great scholar, the promoter of experimental knowledge, Bacon, speaks of apparitions as an averred fact. In a fit of fury, Hamlet, half-crazed, finding some one is concealed behind the arras, traverses it with his sword, to kill whosoever was there. Would one like to know what precedent in real life Shakespeare might have quoted? This one: "The many evil plots and designs have overcome all her Highness' sweet temper. She walks much in her privy chamber, and stamps with her feet at il news, and thrusts her rusty sword at times into the arras in great rage. . . . The dangers are over, and yet she always keeps a sword by her table." Essex's rebellion had just been quelled and the favourite put to death.1 On the stage, according to Boileau, when reality seems unreal, the dramatist must explain the mystery of it, and not leave the spectator face to face with improbable and, apparently, incoherent events. With the logicalminded French this rule was admitted without demur. Had he known of it, Shakespeare would not have discussed it: why encumber oneself with these justifications, since one can succeed and please without them? The only obligation, in London, is to make people know your intent, and this plain task is not such an easy one, after all, with a mixed and noisy public; to justify and connect, to show events to be probable, is useless, especially if the characters are historic, * Letter of Sir John Harington to Sir Hugh Portman, October 9, 1601; "Nugæ Antiquæ," 1804, vol. i. p. 318. |