CHAPTER VI.

_HOW TO STUDY SHAKSPERE._

The best way to study Shakspere is to go to see his plays at the theatre, especially when they are presented as Edwin Booth or Henry Irving have played them. What a change from the way in which they were presented in Shakspere’s own time! Then the scenery was so crude that they had to put out a sign on the stage saying, “This is a Forest,” etc. And all the women’s parts were played by boys or young men. There were no Mrs. Siddonses or Ellen Terrys in those days. It is said that Beethoven himself was not a very good piano player, and probably never heard some of his most beautiful sonatas played as Paderewski plays them today. Shakspere probably never saw his plays acted so well as they have been acted many times since his day.

The first great actor to make Shakspere classic was David Garrick, a friend of Sam Johnson. He was graceful, light, airy, and gay, yet made an instant success by the naturalness with which he played Richard III, and then Lear, and then Macbeth. Garrick was not an ideal Hamlet, but he gave good support to the famous Peg Woffington, who made her fame in Ophelia on the same stage with Garrick. The most seductive of Woffington’s characters was Rosalind in As You Like It, and she played Portia in the Merchant of Venice with only less charm.

The stage mantle of Garrick fell on John Philip Kemble, who brought to Shakspere’s plays accurate and truthful scenery and costumes. Hamlet was his favourite part--and as he was a meditative and scholarly rather than a fiery actor, he made a deep impression with it. Sarah Siddons was his sister. She was called the Queen of Tragedy, and was indeed an ideal Roman matron in her impassioned acting of great parts, coupled with a dignified, almost commonplace everyday life. In a famous picture Sir Joshua Reynolds painted her as the tragic muse. She played Lady Macbeth as probably no one else has ever played it, indeed it is said when she was studying the part she became so frightened at her own impersonation that she rushed up stairs and jumped into bed with her clothes on. In Queen Katharine (Henry VIII), she played the part so realistically that the Surveyor, to whom she had said, “You were the Duke’s Surveyor, and lost your office on complaint of the tenants,” came off the stage perspiring with emotion and said, “That woman plays as if the thing were in earnest. She looked me so through and through with her black eyes that I would not for the world meet her on the stage again!”

Edmund Kean was a little man, but he played Shylock in the Merchant of Venice and Richard III as they had never been played before. Iago, too, was a famous character of his. He was admired by the aged widow of David Garrick, who called him David’s successor, and he was praised by Byron.

Each age seems to have had its actor. Garrick was Johnson’s friend. Kean belonged to Byron’s day, and the actor of Dickens’s time was Macready. The great American actor was Edwin Booth, who made us familiar with the whole line of Shaksperean tragic characters during nearly the whole of the last half of the nineteenth century. Who that has seen him slip on to the stage as the hunchback Richard III, or walk in the calm dignity of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, attired all in black velvet, can ever imagine those characters in any other personation!

The great tragedies seem to be the plays in which great actors have become most famous; but no play of Shakspere’s, not even the Merchant of Venice, has been more popular than Romeo and Juliet. In the time of Garrick a certain Barry Spanger was said to be the ideal Romeo. Charles Kemble, son of Philip, played it with great success. And his daughter Fanny Kemble was brought out as Juliet, much against her wish, to save her father’s fortunes. She had had no training for the stage; but the play ran for one hundred and twenty nights with the greatest success.

There have been other great actors and actresses, all of whom (if English) have been famous in Shaksperean roles--Adelaide Neilson, Charlotte Cushman, and the American Edwin Forrest--and even many foreigners have tried Shakspere. Salvini was the greatest of Othellos, and Adelaide Ristori was famous as Lady Macbeth. Even Bernhardt has taken the part of Hamlet. In our own time Henry Irving and Ellen Terry have been the best known performers of Shakspere’s characters; but it would seem that all talented actors and actresses sooner or later test their greatness by attempting these roles.

The true way to study Shakspere is by becoming fond of his characters; and this can be done most successfully only by seeing them on the stage. But we can learn to picture in our minds the parts they played in the great human drama, fashioning from imagination the scenes and personalities.

Children should be introduced to Shakspere in the delightful “Tales from Shakspere” by Charles and Mary Lamb. The first thing is to get the stories and the great characters, and the poetic antique language of Shakspere himself may make this a little difficult at first.

Then we may read such a book as Mrs. Jameson’s “Heroines of Shakspere,” in which we find the women of Shakspere’s plays described in simple modern language.

Then let us read the plays themselves, without thought of notes or comments, for the mere human interest of the story and the characters.

Probably the best play to begin with is the Merchant of Venice. Read it rapidly, passing lightly over the more commonplace portions. First you will come to the scene at Portia’s house, when the wooers are opening the caskets in the hope that they may be lucky enough to win the wealthy lady. But Portia really loves Bassanio and wants him to choose aright, as he does, and she is charmingly happy because he is successful.

But the great scene of the play is in the fourth act, when Shylock brings Antonio before the court, demanding his pound of flesh. Portia, disguised as a lawyer, appears to save his life. How graciously she does it! How much a man and woman too she is! How beautiful her speech about mercy, “dropping as the rain from heaven”!

Once having read the play through like this, for the story and the characters, lay it aside and at some future time read it again more thoroughly, stopping to enjoy Launcelot Gobbo, the clown, and the talkative Gratiano.

So with each rereading the interest in the play will grow, till you have become very fond not only of Portia and her friends, but of Shakspere, too.

Next to the Merchant of Venice the most popular of Shakspere’s plays is Romeo and Juliet. In this the balcony scene is the most famous, in which Romeo comes to woo Juliet; but among the characters the most interesting will perhaps be Mercutio, Romeo’s talkative and jolly friend, and Juliet’s queer old nurse.

Of the tragedies, Hamlet is undoubtedly the greatest, but it is the hardest to read, and must be read many times to be fully appreciated. We are struck in the very first scene by the personality of the ghost, and of Hamlet’s friend, Horatio, that quiet, calm gentleman who looks sympathetically on throughout the play, and lives to tell the story of Hamlet’s infirm will. Polonius is a conventional old fool, but full of worldly wisdom, and the father of the brave Laertes and the sweet and pathetic Ophelia. How unhappy a girl she is! She is not very strong, not very brave; but we are sorry indeed for her, and in mere reading really shed tears when she sings her sweetly crazy songs. How strange and interesting, too, is Hamlet’s mother, and his scene with her toward the end of the play! And who can forget the conversation with the grave-diggers! Throughout we feel the atmosphere of philosophy and thought. Hamlet is indeed a very great and interesting play, but one requiring much time and leisurely thought. It is impossible to hurry in reading Hamlet.

Next in greatness to Hamlet is, perhaps, Lear. In the very first act we are struck with the beautiful nature of Cordelia, though she utters very few words. She does not appear again until the end; yet the poor interesting Fool is always talking about her to Lear. We detest the two ungrateful daughters, Goneril and Regan, and sympathize with Edgar, the outcast son of Gloucester. How strange it seems that this fool, this insane old man, this homeless son pretending to be crazy, and this absent daughter, should hold our interest so perfectly!

More romantic, more polished, more correct in stage-craft, so that many call it Shakspere’s greatest play, is Othello. Yet we have no such love for the beautiful Desdemona as we had for Cordelia, or Juliet, or Portia. Iago is a masterpiece of scheming treachery, and we are somewhat sorry for the handsome and abused Moor Othello; but we can never like him quite as well as some of the others.

Macbeth is another great tragedy, and Lady Macbeth is a marvellous portrayal of a bad woman. We are interested in the witches and their prophecies, and we know how true is Macbeth’s ambition, and the greater ambition of his wife who drives him on. But in Macbeth there is no one to love, as there is in others of the plays.

In Julius Caesar it is the patriotic fervour of Brutus, mistaken though it may be, that interests us most, though we like to declaim the speech of Antony at Caesar’s funeral.

Antony and Cleopatra makes an excellent play to read, for Cleopatra is so well known as a character that we already have a point of familiarity to start with. We feel that we are reading history, and these great Roman plays of Shakspere’s are probably the best history we shall ever get. With Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra we should also include Coriolanus, to be studied third in the series.

If we do not care for tragedy we shall have passed from Romeo and Juliet or the Merchant of Venice to As You Like It, one of the best of Shakspere’s lighter comedies. It is less deep, but not less charming than the heavier plays. The delightful Rosalind, disguised as a young man in the woods, the melancholy Jaques, and the amusing clown Touchstone, create an atmosphere of refinement which we will find nowhere else.

I myself like Much Ado About Nothing as well as any of the comedies. It tells the story of Benedick and Beatrice, who were never going to marry, they were such wits both of them! Yet they were tricked into it, and apparently enjoyed it after all. Where else will you find a woman joker?

The Taming of the Shrew is an interesting play if you admire a wilful, stubborn, pretty woman such as Kate was, and would like to know how her husband brought her into charming subjection. It is a very pretty play, and not less interesting for being somewhat out of date among our modern ideas of women.

But of all Shakspere’s comic characters, none is more original or famous than Falstaff. We meet him first in Henry V, perhaps the best of Shakspere’s historical plays. He is a wit, a coward, and a blow-hard, but Shakspere never makes him overdo any of these traits, and so we cannot but find him intensely amusing. He reappears in the Merry Wives of Windsor, which Shakspere is said to have written in order to please Queen Elizabeth.

The most intensely dramatic of the histories, and the first to read is Richard III. Richard is a scheming, daring fellow; and our love for the little princes put to death in the tower gives us a point of affection. Besides, this is the drama all the great tragic actors have been especially fond of playing.

Next to Richard III is Henry VIII, which is said to be only partly Shakspere’s. In it is Henry’s great minister Wolsey, whose fall from power we witness as an event more tragic than death.

Last of all let us read the Tempest, that romantic play which Shakspere probably wrote at the end of his career, as a sort of calm retrospect; for we may think of Prospero as Shakspere himself.

There are other good plays of Shakspere’s; but if we have not time to read all, these are the best to begin with.

The two poems, Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, are not the best of reading; but the sonnets are the very highest form of lyric poetry. They are entirely different from the plays, and those who like the plays often do not care at all for the sonnets, while many not familiar with the plays read the sonnets with admiration. Many believe they tell Shakspere’s own story of love for a man friend, and, in the last division from No. 126 on, for a dark woman. The sonnets to the man are the better, and if one reads them over a few times and feels the poet’s reflection on change, time, and human love, he will certainly not doubt that here we really do come face to face with Shakspere in his own proper character. These sonnets help us to a knowledge of the man and a personal liking for him such as we get for his characters when we read his plays.