The Art of Shakespeare

The Art of Shakespeare

The dramatic work of Shakespeare includes comedies, romantic dramas, historical plays, tragedies in which we are made to follow the path leading to insanity and crime, to the catastrophe which no human power can prevent. Such variety of inspiration is unparalleled in the world’s literature. It seems as though, by a caprice of destiny, the rare gifts which have been bestowed severally on the greatest playwrights of all nations had merged and combined into the genius of Shakespeare.
Furthermore, Shakespeare knows of no such restraint as the classification of “genres”.

Here we touch on one of the essential differences between the Shakespearian system and the French classical system as represented by Corneille, Racine and Molière. The dominant tendency on the French system is choice and limitation; tragedy has its aims and rules which are not those of comedy. On the other hand, Corneille and Racine submit to the famous “unities”: if action, of time and on place. Shakespeare never dreamt of such ordinances. His sole aim is to divert or move his audiences, and his only judge in the public. And the English public of the closing years of the sixteenth century did it want a “psychological crisis” within the narrow limits of twenty-four hours, but thirsted for the utmost variety of entertainment, and was by no means reluctant to travel in imagination across time and space as stage directions required.

It follows that in Shakespeare the tragical, the romantic, the humorous, the farcical elements are often interwoven. The noble declamation of Henry V is interspersed with scenes of coarse comedy, and there are farcical interludes in the gravest tragedies. This disregard of rules was extolled by the French Romanticists of the XIXth century, who, in their revolt against the “Pseudo-Classics”, enrolled themselves under the Shakespearian banner. They failed however to acquire the secret of Shakespeare’s dramatic power. It is for accuracy of detail, nor even for ingeniousness in inventing incidents, that Shakespeare is remarkable. As Emerson has very extent said “Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality. If were quire the originality which consists in weaving, like a spider, their web from their own bowels; in finding clay, and making bricks, and building the house; no great man is original... A great poet who appears in illiterate times absorbs into his sphere all the light which is everywhere radiating. He is therefore little solicitous whence his thoughts have been derived; whether by inspiration.; from whatever source, they are equally welcome to his uncritical audience”.
Like Molière, Shakespeare i a great “borrower”. He does not scruple to copy previous plays; and if he takes his subject from Holinnnshed’s Chronicles, Plutarch’s Lives, Boccaccio’s Decameron, or other Italian stories, he often follows his text line for line, if not word for word. Viewed in the light of verisimilitude, some of his plots (e.g. the plot of A Winter’s Tale) are hardly acceptable. And yet there is a spell which works on us irresistibly, and we submit to the poet’s caprice without questioning. This spell which in the face of improbabilities and absurdities, sets all criticism at naught, is Shakespeare’s unique gift of characterisation. NO other dramatist has ever, either before or since Shakespeare, created types endowed with a like intensity or individual life. From king to page, from the purest flower of womanhood to the filthiest-mouthed villain, all personages stand out before us, with features as vividly delineated as those of any being of flesh and blood with whom we may ever have been acquainted.