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perhaps because we have become too much accustomed to them also: we daily hear extensive quibbling of words at meetings, assemblies and associations of all kinds, we are daily regaled with rebuses and calembours both good and bad. In addition to this we must consider the realistic tendency of our age; even in comedy we demand a more compact and palpable form. The play upon words which is invariably also a play of thought, the dashes of humour, the sarcasms and witty ideas have to be understood and reflected in thoughts; the finer and more ingenious they are the greater is their demand for acuteness of judgment and quickness of reflection; but, nowadays when people go to the theatre they are tired and worn out by the practical activity of the day-therefore, farces, burlesques and drollery give more pleasure.

Nevertheless, the excess of word-play in Shakspeare's comedies will always remain a defect, the more so as it frequently delights in moving on the slippery ground of dirty allusions and equivoques. In general, however, many of Shakspeare's comedies rise too little above the level of the eccentricities, one-sidednesses, weaknesses, and failings of his time; hence, they cannot well appear on the modern stage in their original form. Managers of theatres are therefore quite right in requiring these comedies to be altered and remodelled for the stage, provided only that this is done by an able hand, and with a dramatico-poetical understanding. Criticism, on the other hand, here, as everywhere, must be just, and must therefore estimate Shakspeare's works not according to the demands of the taste of the present day, nor merely according to the standard of the æsthetic ideal, but, at the same time, judge them from an historical standpoint, as the productions of their age, of a certain period of development, and a stage of culture in dramatic art. For this reason it was necessary before turning to a critical examination of Shakspeare's separate pieces to give a sketch of the history of the Shakspearean, that is, of the English drama, and to explain the aesthetic principles upon which it is based.

BOOK IV.

SHAKSPEARE'S TRAGEDIES.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE CRITICISM OF HIS DRAMAS.

THE object of criticising a genuine work of art is to obtain a profound and clear understanding of it. To understand a work of art, however, is the same thing as perceiving all the details in their internal, living relation to the whole, and the whole in the unity and harmony, design and necessity of its organisation; a work of art admitting of being understood in this sense is, at the same time, a proof of its beauty. True criticism, therefore, has nothing in common with that comparative reflection which eitheras is most frequently done, because most easy-compares a work of art with one similar or dissimilar, measures it by some standard from without, and metes out praise or blame by self-made principles and ideas in order to bestow praise or blame, or which examines it from some external, historical, philosophical or other stand-point in order to assign to it its position and importance, that is, to enrol it well or ill in some system of æsthetics or some pragmatical form of history. There is, however, but one stand-point for the examination of a work of art, and that lies within the work itself. To criticise, does indeed signify to distinguish, to analyse, to judge; the work must certainly, so to say, be dissected, not, however, in order to form comparisons, to apply theories, or to vindicate certain stand points, but in order to become acquainted with its structure, to penetrate into its inmost life, and to make it again rise up out of the latter, hence, to recognise the internal design and

harmony of its organism, and the unity of the body and spirit which pervades its formation and composition, and all its various parts and members. The object of true criticism is to comprehend the work of art in its own significance. The significance of a thing, however, is its relation to what is general, its value and applicability to what is general; the greater its significance, the more general is its applicability. To comprehend the significance of a work of art, therefore, is to recognise that, and how far, it represents not only single characters, deeds, and destinies, but, in them, the general essence of nature, of man, of the world and the world's history; how, and how far it has succeeded in raising the special into the image and likeness of what is general, such as affects and surrounds our own selves. True criticism, consequently, is essentially a reproduction. The critic acts in the same manner as the poet; not, however, by the power of the artistic imagination, but by the power of perceptive thought, which seeks to penetrate the given work, and to prove it to be a thought of the creative mind. The poet introduces and produces his inner views into the world of phenomena, so that the thought itself becomes the phenomenon; the critic, on the other hand, acts conversely, he reduces this phenomenon to the thought. The act of reducing is, however, at the same time a producing, and both together form a reproducing, inasmuch as the thought embodied in it grows out of the recognising and the comprehending the work of art. And in the same way, conversely, the artistic production contains a reduction (one, indeed, that is accomplished unconsciously, in so far as the wide, varied, unsurveyable world of forms and phenomena must first be condensed into an inner perception, and thus become a solid nucleus) before it can rise out of the latter in an artistic shape, that is, in the form of beauty. Hence the critic's production also is in reality a reproduction; beauty itself is a mental act, which consists of a reproduction of the phenomenal, natural existence, according to its innate, but invisible laws and designs, and whose peculiar object is only to exhibit the internal harmony of these designs and laws.

It may indeed be (as von Friesen, in his ingenious letters

At

on Hamlet,' thinks) that the poet, in the first place, is only attracted by the poetical halo of the phenomenon, in which an incident, an action, or character, reveal themselves to his eye, that he is then induced to give a representation of them, and that, accordingly, his only object is clearly and distinctly to exhibit this phenomenon in its poetical aspect. But the poetical phenomenon is, after all, only the form and expression of a poetical substance, consequently the expression of a poetical thought which, even though deeply concealed, must of necessity be contained in it, because it becomes a poetical phenomenon only by being expressed. A poet proves himself to be great by the fact that, in and with the poetic phenomenon-by working it out in its inner perception into an object of scenic representation --he at the same time (at first perhaps only instinctively, half unconsciously) brings into view the poetical substance, and contrives to give it a general significance and those ideal relations which raise the poetical thought into the idea, in the above-stated sense of the word. all events, the dramatic poet cannot rest satisfied with the poetical part of the mere phenomenon, for his object is to describe full, living, human characters, and their inner, mental, and moral life, to make the action proceed from these, and hence, in all cases, to explain the motives which determine the wishes and actions, the sufferings and destinies of men. These motives, however, and the designg and intentions formed by them, are thoughts, and if these thoughts are purely individual ideas, representing entirely individuals' interests, desires, and inclinations, if, in fact, they are not founded upon some definite conception of human life, and do not give a reflection of it, in other words, if they are devoid of all general significance, then the representation will in no way appeal to the heart and mind of the spectator; it will leave him perfectly indifferent, or, at most, awaken the interest of a passing anecdote. If, on the other hand, it possesses a general significance, then this very significance is its poetical substance, the thought by which it is pervaded, and the idea which is manifested in it. It naturally determines the whole form of the work, and therein lies the unity and the appropriateness of its organism, the harmony of its arrangement and

composition. We may, therefore, say that the business of the critic is essentially confined to pointing out the idea upon which the whole work is based.

There are two ways by which the critic may arrive at his object-the historical and the aesthetic. In the present day the former is generally the more popular, partly because both genuine and counterfeit thoughts are daily brought into the market in such quantities, that the price of the commodity is falling, partly because the realistic. tendency of our age is inclined to consider all æsthetic criticism and philosophy, all ideas and regulating conceptions, as mere freaks of the imagination. Historical criticism, on the other hand, not only agrees better with this realistic tendency, but also requires thorough study and knowledge, which are not such cheap articles and are still held in some estimation. For historical criticism looks upon the work of art as an historical phenomenon, and, accordingly, endeavours to show how its origin has, in the first place, to be explained by given conditions, the co-operation of different circumstances and relations, etc., secondly, in what way it has sprung from the life, the mind and the character of the artist; and lastly, how, as the product of the history of art and the development of the human mind in general, it may have proceeded from the character of the age, its mood, its tendency, or its relation to the past and future. Historical criticism, in this way, endeavours to ascertain the meaning of the work of art and the intention of the poet. Esthetic criticism, on the other hand, views the artistic work purely by itself, apart from all such relations, as a special world shut up within itself, and endeavours to understand it simply by the power of perceptive thought, and to point out its meaning from within itself. Both methods have their rocks and shallows. The historical critic is apt to see in every work of art only the thoughts, tendencies, and interests of his time, and does not recognise just that which is generally applicable in it-that which at once raises it above its time he is also apt to confound the poet's individuality with his poems, so that one might perhaps become acquainted with the former, but not with the independent value of the latter, and again he is apt to over

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