The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

'What is the end of study?' – let me know.

'O they have lived long in the alms-basket of WORDS,' is the criticism on this learning with which this showman, whoever he may he, explains his exhibition of it. And surely he must be, indeed, of the school of Antony Dull, and never fed with the dainties bred in a book, who does not see what it is that is criticised here; – that it is the learning of an unlearned time, of a barbarous time, of a vain, frivolous debased, wretched time, that has been fed long – always from "the alms-basket of words." And one who is acquainted already with the style of this school, who knows already its secret signs and stamp, would not need to be told to look again on the intellect of the letter for the nomination of the party writing, to the person written to, in order to see what source this pastime comes from, – what player it is that is behind the scene here. 'Whoe'er he be, he bears a mounting mind,' and beginning in the lowness of the actual, and collecting the principles that are in all actualities, the true forms that are forms in nature, and not in man's speech only, the new IDEAS of the New Academy, the ideas that are powers, with these 'simples' that are causes, he will reconstruct fortuitous conjunctions, he will make his poems in facts; he will find his Fairy Land in her kingdom whose iron chain he wears.

'The gentles were at their games,' and the soul of new ages was beginning its re-creations.

For this is but the beginning of that 'Armada' that this Don Armado – who fights with sword and pen, in ambush and in the open field – will sweep his old enemy from the seas with yet.

O like a book of sports thou'lt read me o'er,
But there's more in me than thou'lt understand.

Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue; even so the race
Of Shake-spear's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well turn'd and true filed lines,
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandished in the eyes of – [what? – ]Ignorance!

    BEN JONSON.
Ignorance!– yes, that was the word.

It is the Prince of that little Academe that sits in the Tower here now. It is in the Tower that that little Academe holds its 'conferences' now. There is a little knot of men of science who contrive to meet there. The associate of Raleigh's studies, the partner of his plans and toils for so many years, Hariot, too scientific for his age, is one of these. It is in the Tower that Raleigh's school is kept now. The English youth, the hope of England, follow this teacher still. 'Many young gentlemen still resort to him.' Gilbert Harvey is one of this school. 'None but my father would keep such a bird in such a cage,' cries one of them – that Prince of Wales through whom the bloodless revolution was to have been accomplished; and a Queen seeks his aid and counsel there still.

It is in the Tower now that we must look for the sequel of that holiday performance of the school. It is the genius that had made its game of that old love's labour's lost that is at work here still, still bent on making a lore of life and love, still ready to spend its rhetoric on things, and composing its metres with them.

Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.

He is building and manning new ships in his triumphant fleet. But they are more warlike than they were. The papers that this Academe issues now have the stamp of the Tower on them. 'The golden shower,' that 'flowed from his fruitful head of his love's praise' flows no more. Fierce bitter things are flung forth from that retreat of learning, while the kingly nature has not yet fully mastered its great wrongs. The 'martial hand' is much used in the compositions of this school indeed for a long time afterwards.

Fitter perhaps to thunder martial stower

When thee so list thy tuneful thoughts to raise, said the partner of his verse long before.

With rage

Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage,

says his protegé.

It was while this arrested soldier of the human emancipation sat amid his books and papers, in old Julius Caesar's Tower, or in the Tower of that Conqueror, 'commonly so called,' that the 'readers of the wiser sort' found, 'thrown in at their study windows,' writings, as if they came 'from several citizens, wherein Caesar's ambition was obscurely glanced at' and thus the whisper of the Roman Brutus 'pieced them out.'

Brutus thou sleep'st; awake, and see thyself.
Shall Rome [soft – 'thus must I piece it out.']
Shall Rome stand under one man's awe? What Rome?

* * * * *

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves that we are underlings.

* * * * *

Age, thou art shamed.

It was while he sat there, that the audiences of that player who was bringing forth, on 'the banks of Thames,' such wondrous things out of his treasury then, first heard the Roman foot upon their stage, and the long-stifled, and pent-up speech of English freedom, bursting from the old Roman patriot's lips.

Cassius. And let us swear our resolution.

Brutus. No, not an oath: If not the face of men, The sufferance of our soul's, the time's abuse, If these be motives weak, break off betimes, And every man hence to his idle bed; So let high-sighted tyranny range on, Till each man drop by lottery.

It was while he sat there, that the player who did not write his speeches, said —

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; If I know this, know all the world beside, That part of tyranny that I do bear, I can shake off at pleasure.

And why should Caesar be a tyrant then? Poor Man! I know he would not be a wolf, But that he sees the Romans are but sheep: He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.

But I, perhaps, speak this
Before a willing bondman.

Hamlet. My lord, – you played once in the university, you say?

Polonius. That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.

Hamlet. And what did you enact?

Polonius. I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i'the Capitol;

Brutus killed me.

Hamlet. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf

there. – Be the players ready?

Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ, and the liberty. These are the only men.

Hamlet. Why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you

would drive me into a toil?

Guild. O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too

unmannerly.

Hamlet. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?

Guild. My lord, I cannot.

Hamlet. I pray you.