workmanship-The fate of Antigonus-The part of Autolycus-The recognition scene-Deliberate faery-- Date of The Tempest-Cunningham's discovery-Discredit and rehabilitation-Dr. Garnett's theory-Elizabeth of Workmanship is evidence of date of The Tempest-Compari- son with The Winter's Tale-Gonzalo's commonwealth- Youthful love stronger than Prospero's magic-An ex- quisite surprise-The most beautiful love-scene in Shake- speare Supposed sources of the play-Its central theme -Difficulty of handling reconciliation in a three-hours' scene Landlubber criticisms-Coleridge on Prospero's retrospective narration "-The dignity of Perdita and Miranda-Shakespeare's sympathy extending to Caliban -The contribution of Stephano-Comparison of The SHAKESPEARE'S WORKMANSHIP CHAPTER I MACBETH I Ways of studying Shakespeare-Method proposed for these notes-Macbeth to be considered as a piece of workmanship -The Elizabethan Theatre, its audience and its stageShakespeare's conditions "His "material"- The "material" of Macbeth-The capital difficulty of Macbeth as a tragedy-How Shakespeare might have extenuated it-How, rather, before setting to work, he made his problem as hard as possible. (1) I PROPOSE to take a single work of art, of admitted excellence, and consider its workmanship. I choose Shakespeare's tragedy of Macbeth as being eminently such a work: single or complete in itself, strongly imagined, simply constructed, and in its way excellent beyond any challenging. There are, of course, many other aspects from which so unchallengeable a masterpiece deserves to be studied. We may seek, for example, and seek usefully, to fix its date and define its place in order of time among Shakespeare's writings; but this has been done for us, nearly enough. Or we may search it for light on Shakespeare, the man himself, and on his history, so obscure in the main, though here and there lit up by flashes of evidence, contemporary and convincing so far as they go. For my part, while admitting such curiosity to be human, and suffering myself now and again to be intrigued by it, I could never believe in it as a pursuit that really mattered. All literature must be personal: yet the artist-the great artist-dies into his work, and in that survives. What dread hand designed the Sphinx? What dread brain conceived its site, there, overlooking the desert? What sort of man was he who contrived Memnon, with a voice to answer the sunrise? What were the domestic or extra-domestic habits of Pheidias? Whom did Villon rob or Cellini cheat or Molière mock? Why did Shakespeare bequeath to his wife his second-best bed? These are questions which, as Sir Thomas Browne would say, admit a wide solution, and I allow some of them to be fascinating. Men are we," and must needs wonder, a little wistfully, concerning the forerunners, our kinsmen who, having achieved certain things we despair to improve or even to rival, have gone their way, leaving so much to be guessed. "How splendid," we say, "to have known them! Let us delve back and discover all we can about them!" Brave lads in olden musical centuries |