on Loving

e. I have never seen an essay on Shakespeare I have not run to read. Whoever holds the cup, I will drain it dry, if filled with wine from this rare vintage. Practically all our great writers have dreamed of him, and told their dreams; and many a writer who makes no claim to greatness has done the same. Some people you can not keep your eyes off of; and of these Shakespeare is one. Who has n't talked of him? When Alfred Tennyson lay dying in the white moonlight, his son tells how he held the play of Cymbeline in his dying hands, as was fitting, seeing he had held it in his living hands through many gol

s with writing on the dramatist, and neglect to write upon the dramas. If this be true, may there not be an unoccupied plot of ground where a late-comer may pitch tent, as under the hemlocks by some babbling w

he ascent, and toiling on, on, still on, a little further-only a little further-till heart and flesh all but fail and faint, but for the might of will, we fall to rise again, and try once more, till we fall upon the summit, and lie on thresholds leading to the stars. The mountain understated its magnitude to us-not of intent, but in simple modesty. I think it did not itself know its mass. Greatness has a subtle self-depreciation; and we shall come to know our huge Shakespeare only by approaching him on foot. He must be studied in fragments. His plays, if I may be pardoned for coining a word, need not an omnigraph, but monographs. Let Shakespeare be, and give eye and ear to his history, comedy, tragedy; and when we have done with them, one by one, we shall discover how the aggregated mass climbs taller than highest mountains. This method, in tentative fashion, I propose to apply in some studies in this volume, or other volumes, believing that the company of those who love Shakespeare can never be large enough for his merits, and that many are kep

in! Though t

line, be t

but low aim

ds. We are not so greatly concerned that we find the sources of the

verbal, textual criticism the largest, truest criticism? Dust is not man, though man is dust. No geologist's biography of the marble from Carrara, nor a biographer's sketch of the sculptor, will explain the statue, nor do justice to the artist's conception. I, for one, want to feel the poet's pulse-beat, brain-beat, heart-beat. What does he mean? Let us catch this speaker's words. What was that he said? Let me feel sure I have his meaning. We may break a poem up into bits, like pieces of branches picked up in a woodland path; but is this what the poet would have desired? He takes lexicons and changes them into literatures, begins with words, ends with poems. His art was synthetic. He was not a crab,

and valley

t hail nor rai

blows loudly

happy, fair wit

ows crowned wit

terpreter. Dream over his plays by moonlit nights; pore over his pages till chilly skies grow gray with dawn; read a play without rising from the ingratiating task, and you, not a tragedian, will have a conception of the play. I will rather risk getting at an understanding of beautiful, bewitching Rosalind by reading and rereading "As You Like It," than by all theaters and stage-scenes and players. A dramatist is his own best interpreter. The most discerning critics of the great dramas are not theater-goers. The theater runs to eyes; study runs to thought. In a theater the actor thinks for us; in a study we think for ourselves. For contemporaries of "The Letters of Junius" to attempt guessing who

the dramatist's business. Here is Shakespeare always accurate. To argue with him savors of petulancy or childish ignorance or egotism. Some people ourselves have met had no sense of character, as some have no sense of color. They do not perceive logical continuity here, as in reasoning, but approach each person as an isolated fact, whereas souls are a series-men repeating men, women repeating women, in large measure, as a child steps in his father's tracks across a field of snow in winter. Other people seem intuitively t

sic unto no

akespeare would indicate that fair Ophelia, love-lorn and neglected; fair Ophelia, whose words and conduct were unexceptional, even to the sharp eyes of a precisian-fair Ophelia cherished thoughts not meet for maidenhood, and in her heart toyed with voluptuousness. I know nothing more accurate; and the penetration of this poet seems, for the moment, something more than human. After a single example, such as adduced, would not he be guilty of temerity who would question Shakespeare's accuracy in character delineation? The sum of what has been said on this point is, distrust yourself rather than Shakespeare; and when your notions and his are not coincident, or when, more strongly stated, you feel sure that here for once he is inaccurate, reckon that he is profounder than you, and do you begin to seek for a hidden path as one lost in a wilderness, when, in all probability, you will discover that what you deemed inexact was in reality a profounder truth than had come under your observation. Nor would a discussion of Shakespeare's truthfulness be rounded out should his value as historian be omitted. He is profoundest of philosophical historians, compelling the motives in historic personages to disclose themselves, wh

fice and rigorous self-denial when in love, which, as it is totally unconscious on her part, is as totally inexplicable on our part. Life is not a condition easily explained. The heart of simplest man or woman is a mystery, compared with which the sphinx is an open secret. The vagaries of love in life are the vagaries of love in Shakespeare. Life was his book, which he knew by heart.

cases-as with Naomi in "The Scape Goat," and Greeba, wife of Michal Sunlocks; though Naomi is little more than a figure seen at a doorway, standing in the sun; for she has not forged a character up to the time when her lover puts arm about her, as she droops above her dying father, when his vast love would make him immortal for her sake. Glory Quayle is interesting, but unsatisfactory. My belief is that Tolstoi has drawn no man approaching his astonishing Anna Karenina. Shakespeare is ambidexter here. All things are seemingly native to him; for he is never at a loss. Not words, thoughts, dreams, image

ust be done with Shakespeare. A great painting is always at more of an advantage in a room of its own than in a gallery, since each picture is in a way a distraction, stealing a trifle of beauty from its fellow, though adding nothing to itself thereby. "Come," we say to a dear friend from whom we have been parted for a long time, "come, let me have you alone," and you walk across a field, and sit in the singing shadows of the pines-you appropriate your friend. Do the same with a poem; for in such a wilderness of beauty send majesty as Shakespeare's plays this need becomes imperative. Pursuant to this suggestion, I recur to a previous thought on Shakespearean criticism that, rich as it is, is defective in this individualization-so much being written on the whole, so little in comparison on the parts. Each drama fills our field of vision, and justifies a di

nd everybody may have and should have an opinion. Great productions have never had their meaning exhausted, since meanings are an infinite series. So, to get an interpretation of Cymbeline, say, get into the midst of the drama, as if it were a stream and you a boatman in your boat. Commit you to the drama's flood, omitting for a time what others have thought, and read as if the poem were a fresh manuscript found by you, and read with such avidity as scholars of the Renaissance knew when a palimpsest of Tacitus or Theocritus was found. Let your imagination, as well as the poet's, spread wings. Become creative yourself; for this is true: No one can rightly conceive any work of imagination and be himself unimaginative. Read an

shine across water touched by the wind. In Shakespeare's turn of phrase and use of figure is a fertility of suggestion such as even Dante can not approximate. He is unusual, which is a merit; for thus is mind kept on the alert, like a sentinel fearing surprise. Of this an essay might be filled with illustrations. He does not try to use figures,

rn day

world 's

th sword s

a thing enski

li

dom larg

and prospect

swan-l

g in

ed candles o

lboy, with

ng, morni

seasonable

silver rivers dr

roud tops of th

st I ra

ed-up f

leave awhil

s subm

abbling, and

o the bosom

soul of goodnes

servingly di

ear for pity

for meltin

fed the w

id it

come

estament of

ke patience

g at g

again; it had

r my ear like

s upon a ban

and giv

e mounts wi

and sorr

ne; bid kings c

dateles

edious as a t

ull ear of a

gues of

ntion like d

f sweats

lean earth as

t my life

and the hazar

ter to be

h humble live

ed up in gli

a golde

ken with the st

watch in every

s are burnt out

on the misty m

ook and volum

of Edward's b

precious l

ally expresses a thought. Shakespeare's figures express a series of thoughts as varied landscapes seen in pictures; in consequence, to read him is to see resemblances in things, because we have sharpened vision and can not, after reading him, be blind as we were before, but feel the plethora of our world with the poetic. After he has spoken for us and to us, the world's capac

but scales it by bounds, like a deer when pursued by the hunter and the hound. He is not tonic, but bracing air and perfect health and youth, which makes labor a holiday and care a jest. Shakespeare is never morose. Dante is the picture of melancholy, Shakespeare the picture of resilient joy. Tennyson beheld "three spirits, mad with joy, dash down upon a wayside flower;" and our dramatist is like them. Life laughs on greeting him; the grave grows dim to sight when he is near, and you see the deep sky instead, and across it wheel wild birds in happy motion. In Tennyson is perpetual melancholy-the mood and destiny of poetry, as I suppose-but Shakespeare is not melancholy, nor does he know how to be. His face is never sad, I think, and he is fonder of Jack Falstaff than we are apt to suppose; for

tabbed wit

in a spiritual sense, this world's animal delight in life. There is a view of life sullen as November; and to be sympathetic with this mood is to ruin life and put out all its lights. Shakespeare's resiliency of spirit would teach us what a dispassionate study of our own nature would have taught us, that to succumb to this gloom is not natural; to feel the weight of burdens all the time would conduct to insanity or death

l to have a sense of the invisible world. He is love's poet. His lovers are imperishable because real. He is love's laureate. Yet are his loves of this world. True, there are spurts of flight, a

flutterin

rer, sailing all seas and climbing tallest altitudes to their f

wings, we c

feet to scal

ton was not. This world made appeal to this poet of the Avon on the radiant earthly side; the very clouds flamed

world a

e he was hopeless. Can you conceive Shakespeare writing "In Memoriam?" Tennyson was pre-eminently spiritual, and "In Memoriam" is his breath dimming the window-pane on which he breathed. That was Tennyson's life, but was patently no brave pa

red country, f

eler re

eare's will as

landscapes have not lain like a picture beneath his eyes; he

range faces,

wh

taken, much ab

t strength whi

heaven; that whi

emper of he

me and fate, bu

eek, to find, a