complacently recorded. The only contemporary allusion pointing to any asperity between the two men, is the well-known passage in the Returne from Pernassus, 1601; but besides being unsupported, it must be remarked that, firstly, it bears very well the interpretation given to it by Gifford; secondly, its import is greatly diminished by the fact that the words are attributed to Kemp, there represented as an ass and a blockhead ;' thirdly, Jonson's Sejanus was performed shortly after at the Globe, and Shakespeare assumed one of the parts, 1603. But the best proof that there was no real quarrel is Jonson's testimony: "I loved the man."

That with all his "gall" and "copperas" Jonson could be goodhumoured, friendly, and genial, there is no doubt. In his very harsh summing up of his visitor's character, written only for himself, Drummond said of him: "He is passionately kind and angry, careless either to gain or keep." Jonson has written with his usual sincerity, and with a modesty not frequent in him: "If in some things I dissent from others, whose wit, industry, diligence and judgement, I look up at and admire, let me not therefore presently hear of ingratitude and rashness If I err, pardon me." If he ever offended his friend, and some contemporaries certainly thought that he was, to use his own word, "malevolent" towards him, he was certainly at once and heartily pardoned. The tradition of a visit of Jonson to Stratford with Drayton, a few days before the death of Shakespeare, seems very probable. At all events we may be sure that Jonson, weighing together all that he admired and all that he objected to in his friend, expressed nothing but what he thought when, forestalling distant posterity's judgement he exclaimed: Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.

3

That one was the image of "Apollo," the "star of poets," the "sweet swan of Avon," William Shakespeare.

J. J. JUSSERAND.

16 Our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, ay, and Ben Jonson too;" he has given Jonson "a purge that made him beray his credit." IV. 3.-"He put him down," says Gifford, "as he put down every other dramatic writer." It must be noted, however, that the play or rather the group of plays is strongly anti-Shakespearean (without being favourable to Jonson) and that the author praises ironically here the great dramatist by the mouth of an ignorant (Kemp), who takes "Metamorphoses" for an author.

I

ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE.

"Book both my wilfulness & errors down,

And on just proof surmise accumulate."

F fault-finding were good criticism, it would be easy to criticise Shakespeare well; for his faults are like the prickles on a rose-bush: and what correlation between thorns and flowers? However, when I promised a friend to try to put into words the judgement which he supposed that years had matured in me, I was persuaded by the belief that there was a method of faultfinding which offered a sound basis for criticism, and might help to resolve some disputes. The appeal of poetry is primarily to the emotions and feelings: and since one can, without fear of intellectual disqualification, separate what one dislikes from what one likes, this first step may, even in Shakespeare, be taken with absolute security: and I thought that it led in a definite direction. Just as a chemist, who has some complicated mixture to analyse, will begin by treating the unknown compound with a simple reagent, and thereby find a precipitate, which will serve him as basis and clue to further examination, so I would begin by separating from Shakespeare's work the matters that most offend my simple feelings, and by the examination of the nature and cause of these offences find a clue to further procedure. Having thus indicated the logic which will govern the following essay, I devote my space to the illustration rather than to the process of the argument.

The first things which such an appeal to our instinctive feelings will unhesitatingly cast out, will be the bad jokes and obscenities; and the magnitude of these is of logical importance. As for the mere foolish verbal trifling, even if full allowance be made for Tudor fashions of speech, it shows a desire of Shakespeare to please a part of his audience with whom we have little sympathy, and proves that he did not aim at maintaining all parts of his work at a high level. As for the second item, the same judgement is inevitable: but he who reads for his pleasure will be unaware of the

extreme badness of passages which he has always disregarded or omitted. The fault is found chiefly in the earlier plays, and the history is generally free from it, but the women are tainted, and it is seldom entirely absent. In Shakespeare's work we cannot wholly account for it by any theory that does not embrace the supposition that he was making concession to the most vulgar stratum of his audience, and had acquired a habit' of so doing: and our supposition is confirmed by the speech of Hamlet to the players, where Shakespeare has put his own criticism into Hamlet's mouth. He complains that the play in which the speech of Æneas occurs, and which he is commending, did not run more than one night, because it did not please the million; and that the million did not relish it, because it was unseasoned with their common spice. Without pressing Shakespeare's apology beyond its necessary meaning, it is a confession that he had himself deliberately played false to his own artistic ideals for the sake of gratifying his audience. Now this

is just the piece of knowledge which we require, and it conveys the inference that Shakespeare would have met the taste of his audience in other matters also,—as, indeed, is implied in what he says about style and honest method, and by his praise of the speech :—I should therefore be prepared to find him disregarding other artistic proprieties for the sake of dramatic effect.

Hence it would appear that a knowledge of Shakespeare's audience would be the best key to many difficulties; and if we could have been present at a first performance of his plays, to witness what parts of them were applauded, and what parts were not duly appreciated, we should understand why they were written as they are. But though this is denied to us, we may with all confidence reverse the experiment wherever possible, and argue that certain scenes which offend our feelings, so that we cannot endure to see them in representation,—for instance, the murder of Macduff's child, the blinding of Gloster, "the piteous moan that Rutland made,"did not offend Shakespeare's audience : and indeed if such exhibitions were comfortably tolerated, they were demanded of a dramatist who would fully arouse the feelings. These examples

Thus, even in the Tempest, when Prospero, narrating to his daughter the story of the usurpation of his dukedom by Antonio, says, "Tell me if this might be a brother," Miranda, who is fifteen years old, and has been brought up on the island, wanders to the notion of her grandmother's possible adultery in a reply which is out of character, and untrue to the situation. This was a cliché of the time, and may be marked "passim" in Shakespeare. It was absolutely without significance, and thrust in wherever a fool might expect it.

"Hamlet, II. 2, "I heard thee speak me a speech once," etc. See Shakespearean Tragedy, by C. A. Bradley, Macmillan, 1905 (second edition)—a book which I mention with enthusiastic admiration. On p. 413, note F., Mr. Bradley examines this passage fully, and his general conclusions seem to me just. But the attitude of Polonius ("He's for a jig") cannot strictly be referred to the theatre; for it is evoked by the long recitation off the stage and again it must be remembered that whatever Shakespeare says here about style has to be dated.

:

alone assure us that Shakespeare's audience was far blunter in feeling than our normal.

And this provides an ample account of the next fault that offends my feelings, that is what may be called brutality, which, though often mingled with the indelicacy already spoken of, must be distinguished from it. It is essentially an error of manners, an unnecessary rudeness, reaching sometimes to sheer brutality in the dialogue. From the unimportant but self-damaging rudeness of Valentine to Thurio in the Two Gentlemen,-how much better courtesy would have been !-to the extravagant grossness of Leontes' language to Hermione, there is every grade. Even in the Tempest Gonzalo is allowed to introduce himself with a stale jest, that involves him in his companions' vilification of the honest boatswain; and in proximity to Prospero's romantic cell there is a "filthy mantled pool" which is the occasion of a disgusting utterance in the mouth of the delicate Ariel: for I would extend the objection to this kind of coarseness.

How essential good manners are to dramatic art, supposing a refined audience, needs no illustration: if a son should speak one rude word to his father, he may forfeit all esteem. The predicament cannot be put better than Shakespeare has worded it, "Defect of manners, . . . .. the least of which . . . loseth men's hearts, and leaves behind a stain upon the beauty of all parts besides": and yet he often disregards the propriety. The coarse terms in which Claudio repudiates Hero enfeeble the plot of Much Ado ; and Capulet's language to Juliet, being enough to provoke and justify her running away, betrays the open possibility of her escape. But if the audience enjoyed realistic horror, it is only in keeping that the dialogue should be pitched in extravagant tones; and they were well accustomed to the indulgence.

No man can assert of any one of the actual conditions under which Shakespeare produced his work, that it was dispensable: but neither should one say that it was an advantage to have to write for a public of "iron nerves." These iron nerves were no part of Shakespeare's constitution; and to welcome thus the brutality in his work implies the belief that if his audience had been more like himself, and more capable of understanding his best, he would not then have written so well. Insensibility is not incompatible with bravery, and in semi-barbarous natures may be even a part of it, but it is as cognate with cowardice. To order a fellow-creature to be burned alive in one's presence argues iron nerves, and the people of the sixteenth century being possessed of this sort of stupidity, Shakespeare knew that he must reckon with it. In his Richard II,