FOOTNOTES
[1] This paper was first printed in The Nineteenth Century, January 1900.
[2] A minor practical objection, from the dramatic point of view, to realistic scenery is the long pause its setting on the stage often renders inevitable between the scenes. Intervals of the kind, which always tends to blunt the dramatic point of the play, especially in the case of tragic masterpieces, should obviously be as brief as possible.
[3] It is just to notice, among endeavours of the late years of the past century, to which I confine my remarks here, the efforts to produce Shakespearean drama worthily which were made by Charles Alexander Calvert at the Prince's Theatre, Manchester, between 1864 and 1874. Calvert, who was a warm admirer of Phelps, attempted to blend Phelps's method with Charles Kean's, and bestowed great scenic elaboration on the production of at least eight plays of Shakespeare. Financially the speculation saw every vicissitude, and Calvert's experience may be quoted in support of the view that a return to Phelps's method is financially safer than a return to Charles Kean's. More recently the Elizabethan Stage Society endeavoured to produce, with a simplicity which erred on the side of severity, many plays of Shakespeare and other literary dramas. No scenery was employed, and the performers were dressed in Elizabethan costume. The Society's work was done privately, and did not invite any genuine test of publicity. The representation by the Society on November 11, 1899, in the Lecture Theatre at Burlington House, of Richard II., in which Mr Granville Barker played the King with great charm and judgment, showed the fascination that a competent rendering of Shakespeare's text exerts, even in the total absence of scenery, over a large audience of suitable temper.
[4] This paper, which was first printed in "An English Miscellany, presented to Dr Furnivall in honour of his seventy-fifth birthday" (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1901), was written as a lecture for delivery on Tuesday afternoon, March 20, 1900, at Queen's College (for women) in Harley Street, London, in aid of the Fund for securing a picture commemorating Queen Victoria's visit to the College in 1898.
[5] Performances of plays in Shakespeare's time always took place in the afternoon.
[6] Professor Binz of Basle printed in September 1899 some extracts from Thomas Platter's unpublished diary of travels under the title: Londoner Theater und Schauspiele im Jahre 1599. Platter spent a month in London—September 18 to October 20, 1599. Platter's manuscript is in the Library of Basle University.
[7] Chapman's Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, Act I., Sc. i.
[9] This paper was first printed in The Nineteenth Century and After, February 1902.
[10] Such a compilation had been contemplated in 1614, two years before the dramatist died, by one of Shakespeare's own associates, Thomas Heywood. Twenty-one years later, in 1635, Heywood spoke of "committing to the public view" his summary Lives of the Poets, but nothing more was heard of that project.
[11] Iago says of Othello, in Othello I., iii. 405: "The Moor is of a free and open nature."
[12] Like almost all their colleagues, they had much literary taste. When public events compulsorily retired them from the stage, they, with the aid of the dramatist Shirley and eight other actors, two of whom were members with them of Shakespeare's old company, did an important service to English literature. In 1647 they collected for first publication in folio Beaumont and Fletcher's plays; only one, The Wild Goose Chase, was omitted, and that piece Taylor and Lowin brought out by their unaided efforts five years later.
[13] Aubrey's Lives, being reports of his miscellaneous gossip, were first fully printed from his manuscripts in the Bodleian Library by the Clarendon Press in 1898. They were most carefully edited by the Rev. Andrew Clark.
[14] A paper read at the sixth meeting of the Samuel Pepys Club, on Thursday, November 30, 1905, and printed in the Fortnightly Review for January, 1906.
[15] At the restoration of King Charles II., no more than two companies of actors received licenses to perform in public. One of these companies was directed by Sir William D'Avenant, Shakespeare's reputed godson, and was under the patronage of the King's brother, the Duke of York. The other was directed by Tom Killigrew, one of Charles II.'s boon companions, and was under the patronage of the King himself. In due time the Duke's, or D'Avenant's, company occupied the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the King's, or Killigrew's, company occupied the new building in Drury Lane.
[16] Charles II. formed this private theatre out of a detached building in St James's Park, known as the "Cockpit," and to be carefully distinguished from the Cockpit of Drury Lane. Part of the edifice was occupied by courtiers by favour of the King. General Monk had lodgings there. At a much later date, cabinet councils were often held there.
[17] For a fuller description of this theatrical practice, see pages 41-3 supra.
[18] Sir Frederick Bridge, by permission of the Master and Fellows of Magdalene College, Cambridge, caused this setting of "To be or not to be" (which bears no composer's signature) to be transcribed from the manuscript, and he arranged the piece to be sung at the meeting of the Pepys Club on November 30, 1905. Sir Frederick Bridge believes Pepys to be the composer.
[19] The Dryden-D'Avenant perversion of The Tempest which Pepys witnessed underwent a further deterioration in 1673, when Thomas Shadwell, poet laureate, to the immense delight of the playgoing public, rendered the piece's metamorphosis into an opera more complete. In 1674 the Dryden-D'Avenant edition was reissued, with Shadwell's textual and scenic amplification, although no indication was given on the title-page or elsewhere of his share in the venture. Contemporary histories of the stage make frequent reference to Shadwell's "Opera" of The Tempest; but no copy was known to be extant until Sir Ernest Clarke proved, in The Athenæum for August 25, 1906, that the second and later editions of the Dryden-D'Avenant version embodied Shadwell's operatic embellishments, and are copies of what was known in theatrical circles of the day as Shadwell's "Opera." Shadwell's stage-directions are more elaborate than those of Dryden and D'Avenant, and there are other minor innovations; but there is little difference in the general design of the two versions. Shadwell merely bettered Dryden's and D'Avenant's instructions.
[20] This paper was first printed in the Cornhill Magazine, May 1900.
[21] Mr Benson, writing to me on 13th January 1906, gives the following list of plays by Shakespeare which he has produced:—Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Coriolanus, Hamlet, Henry IV. (Parts 1 and 2), Henry V., Henry VI. (Parts 1, 2, and 3), Henry VIII., Julius Cæsar, King John, King Lear, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Pericles, Richard II., Richard III., Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Timon of Athens, Twelfth Night, and A Winter's Tale. Phelps's record only exceeded Mr Benson's by one. He produced thirty-one of Shakespeare's plays in all, but he omitted Richard II., and the three parts of Henry VI., which Mr Benson has acted, while he included Love's Labour's Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, All's Well that Ends Well, Cymbeline, and Measure for Measure, which Mr Benson, so far, has eschewed. Mr Phelps and Mr Benson are at one in avoiding Titus Andronicus and Troilus and Cressida.
[22] The performance occupied nearly six hours. One half was given in the afternoon, and the other half in the evening of the same day, with an interval of an hour and a half between the two sections. Should the performance be repeated, I would recommend, in the interests of busy men and women, that the whole play be rendered at a single sitting, which might be timed to open at a somewhat earlier hour in the evening than is now customary, and might, if need be, close a little later. There should be no difficulty in restricting the hours occupied by the performance to four and a half.
[23] This paper was first printed in the New Liberal Review, May 1902.
[24] This paper, which was originally prepared in 1899 for the purposes of a popular lecture, is here printed for the first time.
[25] Tranio, the attendant on the young Pisan, Lucentio, who has come to Padua to study at the university, counsels his master to widen the field of his studies:—
This virtue and this moral discipline,
Let's be no Stoics, nor no stocks, I pray,
Or so devote to Aristotle's checks,
As Ovid be an outcast quite adjured.
(The Taming of the Shrew, I., ii., 29-33.)
[26] The speeches of the clown in Twelfth Night are particularly worthy of study for the satiric adroitness with which they expose the quibbling futility of syllogistic logic. Cf. Act I., Scene v., ll. 43-57.
Olivia. Go to, you're a dry fool; I'll no more of you: besides you grow dishonest.
Clown. Two faults, Madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend: for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry: bid the dishonest man mend himself; if he mend, he is no longer dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him. Anything that's mended is but patched: virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue. If that this simple syllogism will serve, so; if it will not, what remedy?
[27] Hamlet, I., v., 166-7.
[28] Much Ado About Nothing, V., i., 35-6.
[29] In a paper on "Latin as an Intellectual Force," read before the International Congress of Arts and Sciences at St Louis in September 1904, Professor E.A. Sonnenschein sought to show that Portia's speech on mercy is based on Seneca's tract, De Clementia. The most striking parallel passages are the following:—
The throned monarch better than his crown.
(M. of V., IV., i. 189-90.)
Nullum clementia ex omnibus magis quam regem aut principem decet. (Seneca, De Clementia, I., iii., 3):—
Eo scilicet formosius id esse magnificentiusque fatebimur quo in maiore praestabitur potestate (I., xix., 1):—
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself.
(M. of V., IV., i., 193-5.)
Quod si di placabiles et aequi delicta potentium non statim fulminibus persequuntur, quanto aequius est hominem hominibus praepositum miti animo exercere imperium? (I., vii., 2):—
When mercy seasons justice.
(M. of V., IV., i., 196-7.)
Quid autem? Non proximum eis (dîs) locum tenet is qui se ex deorum natura gerit beneficus et largus et in melius potens? (I., xix., 9):—
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation.
(M. of V., IV., i., 198-200.)
Cogitato ... quanta solitudo et vastitas futura sit si nihil relinquitur nisi quod iudex severus absolverit (I., vi., 1).
This remarkable series of parallelisms does not affect the argument in the text that Shakespeare, who reiterated Portia's pleas and phraseology in Isabella's speeches, had a personal faith in the declared sentiment. Whether the parallelism is to be explained as conscious borrowing or accidental coincidence is an open question.
The place is dignified by the doer's deed:
Where great additions swell's, and virtue none,
It is a dropsied honour: good alone
Is good without a name; vileness is so:
The property by what it is should go,
Not by the title; ... that is honour's scorn,
Which challenges itself as honour's born,
And is not like the sire: honours thrive
When rather from our acts we them derive
Than our foregoers: the mere word's a slave,
Debauch'd on every tomb; on every grave
A lying trophy; and as oft is dumb
Where dust and damn'd oblivion is the tomb
Of honour'd bones indeed.
(All's Well, II., iii., 130 seq.)
And therefore are they formed as marble will;
The weak oppressed, the impression of strange kinds
Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill.
Then call them not the authors of their ill,
No more than wax shall be accounted evil,
Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.
(Lucrece, 1240-6.)
In women's waxen hearts, to set their forms!
Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we;
For, such as we are made of, such we be.
(Twelfth Night, II., ii., 31.)
[32] This paper was first printed in the Cornhill Magazine, May 1901.
[33] The pun on "cant" and "recant" was not original, though Lord John's application of it was. Its inventor seems to have been Lady Townshend, the brilliant mother of Charles Townshend, the elder Pitt's Chancellor of the Exchequer. When she was asked if George Whitefield, the evangelical preacher, had yet recanted, she replied: "No, he has only been canting."
[34] In passing cursorily over the whole field I must ask pardon for dwelling occasionally on ground that is in detached detail sufficiently well trodden, as well as for neglecting some points which require more thorough exploration than is practicable within my present limits.
[35] On this point the Shakespearean oracle always speaks with a decisive and practical note:—
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
(Hamlet, I., iii., 65-7.)
[36] Cymbeline, III., iv., 139-43.
[37] Coriolanus, V., iii., 34-7.
[38] This paper was first printed in The Author, October 1903.
[39] Other independent publications of similar character appeared under the identical title of The Theatrical Review both in 1758 and 1772. The latter collected the ephemeral dramatic criticisms of John Potter, a well-known writer for the stage.
[40] William Young's History of Dulwich College, 1889, II., 41-2.
[41] This paper was first printed in The Nineteenth Century, June 1899.
[42] In the Introduction to a collection of Elizabethan Sonnets, published in Messrs Constable's re-issue of Arber's English Garner (1904), the present writer has shown that numerous sonnets, which Elizabethan writers issued as original poems, were literal translations from the French of Ronsard, Du Bellay, and Desportes. Numerous loans of like character were levied silently on Italian authors.
[43] Shakespeare in France under the Ancien Régime, by J.J. Jusserand. London: T. Fisher Unwin. 1899.
[44] This paper was first printed in The Nineteenth Century and After, April 1905.
[45] The proceedings of the committee which was formed in the spring of 1905 have been dilatory. Mr Badger informs me that he paid the organisers, nearly two years ago, the sum of £500 for preliminary expenses, and deposited bonds to the value of £3000 with Lord Avebury, the treasurer of the committee. The delay is assigned to the circumstance that the London County Council, which is supporting the proposal, is desirous of associating it with the great Council Hall which it is preparing to erect on the south side of the Thames, and that it has not yet been found practicable to invite designs for that work. (Oct. 1, 1906.)
[46] Nor is this all that has been accomplished at Stratford in the nineteenth century in the way of the national commemoration of Shakespeare. While the surviving property of Shakespearean interest was in course of acquisition for the nation, an early ambition to erect in Stratford a theatre in Shakespeare's memory was realised—in part by subscriptions from the general public, but mainly by the munificence of members of the Flower family, three generations of which have resided at Stratford. The Memorial Theatre was opened in 1879, and the Picture Gallery and Library which were attached to it were completed two years later. The Memorial Buildings at Stratford stand on a different footing from the properties of the Birthplace Trust. The Memorial institution has an independent government, and is to a larger extent under local control. But the extended series of performances of Shakespearean drama, which takes place each year in April at the Memorial Theatre, has something of the character of an annual commemoration of Shakespeare by the nation at large.
[47] Cf. Childe Harold, Canto IV., St. xxxi.