CHAPTER III.

SHAKSPEARE DURING THE LATTER YEARS OF THE 18TH AND THE FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY.

SOON after the appearance of Johnson's criticisms, the æsthetic method of viewing Shakspeare's plays took a different turn. William Richardson, in his Philosophical Analysis and Illustration of some of Shakspeare's Dramatic Characters' (1774), discussed the characters of Macbeth, Hamlet, Jacques, and Imogen, with acute and psychological understanding, but in a diffuse and moralising manner. This first attempt to bring into view Shakspeare's mode of characterisation by the fulness of the life, the unity, and the completeness, the ethical depth and the psychological consistency of his dramatic personages, met with so much success that it was soon followed by a great number of imitators. Nay, it may be said that Richardson founded an entirely new branch of Shakspearian literature, which struck such firm root in the taste of the English nation, that it soon grew into a mighty tree, which, up to the most recent times, has brought forth numerous blossoms and fruits, but unfortunately has been cultivated too onesidedly.

Richardson's 'Analysis' was followed in 1777 by M. Morgan's Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff,' and one year later by his Modern Characters from Shakspeare, alphabetically arranged;' which, during the year of its first appearance, was republished no less than three times. In 1784, Richardson himself issued a continuation of his first work, under the title of "Essays on Shakspeare's Dramatic Characters of Richard III., King Lear, and Timon of Athens;' and in 1785 was published Th. Whately's Remarks on some of the Characters of Shakspeare' (2nd ed., 1808; 3rd, 1839), against which Kle directed his Macbeth Ronsidered: an Essay,

intended as an answer to part of the Remarks,' etc. (1790). These essays on the characters in Shakspeare could not fail to open the eyes of many, and give them a clearer insight into the dramatic construction of the poet's plays. People could not but perceive that characters like Macbeth and Othello formed, to a certain extent, complete dramas in themselves; at any rate, they must have begun to suspect that the many-sided development of such characters involved the inner, spiritual unity of the whole, which of itself might outweigh the outer, the material unity of action, of place, and of time. At all events it must have become evident that the representation of a full, complete, and diversified life of a great energetic character, is an infinitely higher and nobler work of art than, as it were, to stretch out a single deed on the rack of five acts in a succession of fine speeches, in order, after wearisome preparations, deliberations, and sentimental effusions, to have it, in the last act, accomplished by characters out of whom correctness had sucked all life and blood.

This knowledge was further supported by the general course of literary history. The French drama and the Italian opera-which was formed on the same principlescould satisfy only so-called connoisseurs who looked at them with the eyes of their theories, or the more highly cultured minds par excellence, whose sight was blinded by fashion. The people remained attached to the petites pièces, that is, to farces and to dramatic and musical 'entertainments.' However, this food contained as little nutriment as the French tragedy or the Italian opera: feeling and imagination were sent away empty, or at least felt the desire for more sustaining nourishment. No wonder that Sam. Richardson's Pamela' (1740) was seized upon as in the very fever of hunger, and that his 'Clarissa (1748) founded a new epoch in the domain of romance writing. The wide and enthusiastic reception met with by these romances was an unconscious reaction and protestation against the French taste, which up to that time had prevailed in this department of literature also; and this imitation of the French romances, with their long-winded de criptions of the love affairs of princes, had

encouraged the same unnaturalness, bombast, and mannerism which characterises the French drama. Richardson's diffuse moralising descriptions are distinguished only by simplicity and the naturalness of the subject and form, by sincerity of feeling, and by fine, faithful, and lifelike delineation of character. It was this that had eagerly been desired; and however much Richardson may in every other point differ from Shakspeare, in this respect he turned back, if not to Shakspeare himself, at all events to Shakspeare's principles in the art of poetry. After the path had once been opened, other and more gifted minds followed in the same direction: Fielding, Smollett, Sterne. Goldsmith, and others, soon even eclipsed Richardson, and made the novel a favourite style of reading with the whole nation, in fact, the predominant species of poetry.

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The novel could not but speedily exercise an influence upon the drama. For novels, although they may not have directly produced the so-called domestic, sentimental and moralising plays-which, as already said, appeared about the second half of the eighteenth century --were nevertheless the means of establishing them on the stage. And yet it was they which were again the means of removing, or at least modifying, this style of play, and of giving a new turn to the poetical taste. I the year 1765 Bishop Percy published his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,' a collection (subsequently much enlarged) of old English and Scottish songs, ballads and romances, more especially of such as treated of the same subjects as Shakspeare's plays, or were incidentally mentioned, quoted or interwoven in them. They gave the romantic element of Shakspeare's works in a different form, and in this more popular shape again brought them closer to the spirit of the age. For although-as has been recently proved the good bishop has in many instances altered these reliques of a poetical past, by so-called corrections, and not only formally modernized them, but also not unfrequently weakened and diluted their substance, still they met with a good reception, and doubtless exercised an important influence upon the further development of poetical literature. Their influence alone, however, would not have sufficed to introduce that change in

the taste of the age which commenced towards the end of the century; I allude to the fondness for romance, the romantic taste and style of poetry which since that time has gradually gained ascendency-a change with which we may date a new epoch in the history of Shakspeare's plays; for the novel came to their assistance and completed what they had begun. The first chords of this new style of poetry were struck by Mrs. Anna Radcliffe: her novels (apart from a few lyric poems) being, as far as I know, the first larger productions of modern romantic poetry in England. Her first novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne' (1789), strikes the chord but gently, and yet it marks the tone which, in her two following works, A Sicilian Romance' (1790) and 'The Romance of the Forest' (1791), is expressed in the most decided manner. The spirit of the mysterious, the marvellous, and the awful which pervades her writings, formed almost as great a contrast to Richardson's, Field ing's, and Goldsmith's poetical pictures of every-day life, as the latter did to the artificial unnaturalness of the French style. Mrs. Radcliffe not only found admirers, but soon also imitators, and even Sir Walter Scott's famous novels, although separated from hers by several decades, nevertheless in many respects show the same affinity of spirit which proceeds from the same general tendency of taste.

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It was about this time that German poetry—which had meanwhile entered its palmiest days-began to exercise its influence upon the English taste, and powerfully supported the new romantic tendency. For, in a wider sense, and in contrast to the French classic style, Goethe and Schiller, and more especially the whole Sturm und Drang period of German literature may be termed romantic. As early as 1786 Reynold published his ' Werter, a tragedy which, indeed, as was to be expected, did not meet with any success on the stage, because, in following Goethe's narrative rather closely, it was almost wholly wanting in action; yet it shows what a deep impression Goethe's immortal poem had made. In 1790 the end of Goethe's Clavigo' was published in The Spectator; 1792 saw translation of Schiller's Räuber; this was followed by

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translation of Goethe's Iphigenia in 1793; of Lessing's Emilia Galotti in 1794; of Schiller's Don Carlos and his Kabale und Liebe in 1795; of his Fiesco in 1796, and of Goethe's Stella and his Clavigo in 1798. Walter Scott, who as early as 1796 had published successful translations of some of Bürger's ballads, in 1799 translated Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen, and in 1800-1801 B. Thomson published under the title of The German Theatre,' a whole collection of German dramas, in which appeared, together with some of Kotzebue's better plays, Babo's Otto von Wittelsbach, Reitzenstein's Graf Königsmark, Schiller's Räuber and Don Carlos, Goethe's Stella, and Lessing's Emilia Galotti; these translations were better than the previous ones, and were played before English audiences.

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It is self-evident that this change of taste was also brought about by the great historical events of the eighteenth century, the War of Independence of the NorthAmerican States, and by the French Revolution with its far-reaching consequences; Rousseau and his disciples also contributed to it. These remoter causes, however, do not belong to our present sketch. More closely related to our discussion is the influence which the great actor J. P. Kemble exercised upon the æsthetic culture of the English public. In 1788 he stood at the head of Drury Lane Theatre, and since then had unweariedly endeavoured to re-introduce and re-establish upon the stage the earlier masterpieces of the English drama-Beaumont's, Fletcher's, Massinger's and others but more particularly most of Shakspeare's plays, many of which had for long lain unnoticed. In this attempt he remodelled some scenes to adapt them to the taste of the age, and this was generally well done. However, the new period in the history of the English drama first began with the results of the mighty influence which German literature exercised, not only upon the English taste but upon the development of the new and better spirit of English poetry itself, the first stirrings of which were felt at the beginning of the present century. With the rich fruits of this revival, the genius of the German nation repaid the British people for what, since the days of Lessing, it had received from their greatest poet. The most highly-gifted poets of the more recent age were