6 66 which they throw up. The players have not even struck out the buffoonery of the shoemakers and cobblers who are introduced (in Julius Cæsar') in the same scene with Brutus and Cassius." Therefore it is not as a rigid dramatist that we can admire him, but as a painter of man. His plays," as Dr. Johnson observes, are not, "in the rigorous and critical sense, either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind, exhibiting the mingled good and evil, joy and sorrow, inseparable from this sublunary state." But instead of discussing his genius as a writer, we have to consider his teaching as a man, and see whether it contradicts or degrades that of Christianity. This is the standard-the only standard-by which members of christian churches can judge of their inconsistency or otherwise in honouring Shakspere. We assert, then, that the writing, reading, or acting of tragedy and comedy is not, in itself, necessarily opposed to the teachings of the gospel. Tragedy, as depicting the various conflicting passions in man's breast, and the terrible consequences in which they involve him, if not kept under proper control, ought to be a powerful moral teacher to all who read it, or witness its representation. It is, in a measure, analogous to the parable, and is capable of imparting quite as many moral lessons. The recognised preacher, who addresses his audience from the pulpit, has human nature as one side of the picture he continually sets before his hearers, and he will be most successful in healing its moral maladies who is best acquainted with it. But it is not only the recognised preacher who can advance Christianity, or minister to the moral well-being of the community. Every one may do so in his own sphere, both by example and precept. Writers have a great power over their readers; and he who faithfully depicts human nature, its noble and ignoble qualities, its virtues and its vices, showing the end to which the pursuit of each tends, is a great moral teacher, useful in his day and generation, and worthy of the respect and esteem of posterity. We consider Shakspere as a great moral teacher to his own and all succeeding ages, and, therefore, entitled to all honour. We think it impossible to peruse any of his great tragedies without becoming, if all feeling and sympathy have not been deadened, both wiser and better. This is not the opinion of a few, or of the unlettered. Dr. Warburton thus speaks of the productions of Shakspere: 66 Of all the literary exercitations of speculative men, whether designed for the use or entertainment of the world, there are none of so much importance as those which let us into the knowledge of our nature. Others may exercise the reason, or amuse the imagination; but these only can improve the heart, and form the mind to wisdom. Now, in this science Shakspere confessedly occupies the foremost place; whether we consider the amazing sagacity with which he investigates every hidden spring and wheel of human action, or his happy manner of communicating this knowledge in the just and living paintings which he has given us of all our passions, appetites, and pursuits." Dr. Young writes: "Whatever other learning he wanted, he was master of two books unknown to many of the profoundly read, though books which the last conflagration alone can destroy the book of nature, and that of man.' Dr. Johnson further observes, regarding Shakspere as a moral teacher, that a valuable system of civil and economical prudence may be collected from the plays of Shakspere; that they are filled with practical axioms and domestic wisdom; that almost every verse (as was formerly said of the writings of Euripides) is a precept; but that, at the same time, his real power is shown in the progress of the fable and tenor of the dialogue; and that he who tries to recommend him by select quotations will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house for sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen. 66 We do not think there is any need to recommend Shakspere to the present generation by select quotations; but, as still further corroboration of the assertion that Shakspere is a great moral teacher, whom all can and ought to honour, we may be allowed to point to the gradual progress of Macbeth in his career of guilt; how the better part of his nature struggles with his ambition, and the dark and powerful insinuations and taunts of the tempter to which it at length succumbs; how the assassination did not trammel up the consequences," but led on from crime to crime; that, nevertheless, he had judgment here, and even-handed justice commends the ingredients of the poisoned chalice to his own lips. The soliloquies of Hamlet, Gloster, the passage on mercy, or this from King Lear, which we do not remember to have seen quoted before," This is the excellent foppery of the world! that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour) we make guilty of our own disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and traitors by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on,"-all prove Shakspere to have been a moral teacher. Many of our opponents may, perchance, admit all, or a great part of what has been stated, and yet maintain that they cannot take part, consistent with their christian profession, in any demonstration in his honour. The only objection such persons can make is to the immoral and licentious passages which are strewn so thickly through his plays. In honouring him they think they would tacitly give their approbation to immoral and licentious writing. Far be it from us to weaken the conscientious scruples of anyone; but we think it is in reality not so. Let us examine the matter a little. Shakspere has undertaken to paint human nature as a whole. This he has eminently succeeded in. To do this it was necessary to represent all classes of mankind; peasants as well as princes, clowns as well as courtiers, philosophers and shepherds, kings and subjects, ministers of state and of grace, queens and serving women, brave knights and fair ladies, the mean and the noble, the virtuous and the vicious; to depict them in their true colours, without any gloss; "Nothing to extenuate or aught set down in malice." Hence it is we find those objectionable passages in the present day cannot be read or spoken publicly. That these passages are introduced to show men as they were will, we think, be evident to all who examine the clauses where they occur. The speech is almost invariably in harmony with the character depicted. Kings and courtiers are made to speak as kings and courtiers did speak; while the utterance of obscene and licentious language is left to clowns and waggoners, or to those whom it is the design of the poet to represent as immoral or vicious. Further, the plays depict the manners of particular countries at special epochs. The whole fashion and tenor of the dialogues and speeches, as well as the individual characters taking part in them, must be in harmony with the manners of the particular nation at this epoch. This distinction is in general carefully observed by our poet. Pope remarks that " Shakspere is found to be very knowing in the customs, rites, and manners of antiquity. In Coriolanus' and Julius Cæsar,' not only the spirit but the manners of the Romans are exactly drawn; and a still nicer distinction is shown between Roman manners in the time of the former and of the latter." Of the latter play Dr. Johnson observes that "it is cold and unaffecting, compared with some other of Shakspere's plays; his adherence to the real story and to Roman manners seems to have impeded the natural vigour of his genius." Again, the state of the morals of the Court and people, of their tastes and antipathies, must be taken into account ere we attempt to class Shakspere with immoral writers. Man, upon the whole, is possibly and probably better than in the days of Shakspere, and in the times of which he wrote; but there can be no question that there are still numbers who fully equal the most vicious and licentious he has drawn. In our days, however, though we still tolerate villains in our dramatic characters, the villany must be smooth, and deep, licentious speeches are not tolerated—at least, not in a plain and unglossed form. It is carefully concealed beneath the delicately-worded inuendo. We shut our eyes to the vice around us, or speak of it with bated breath and in involved and softened phrases. Whether we are any better for so doing may, perhaps, be doubted. In Shakspere's time it was different; things were called by their real names; the manners of the Court and people were different; courtiers garnished their speech with oaths; and it was not an uncommon thing for the Sovereign to swear. Hence Shakspere had no special inducement to retrench or gloss over any such passages, or to depict men other than he found them. In our own day, this plea for the insertion of oaths and other immoralities has been made by authors and authoresses, members of Christian churches, and accepted by the members of Christian churches to whom their productions were addressed. For instance, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, in her preface to "Uncle Tom's Cabin," defends her 66. self against the charge of using language which should not be heard by ears polite," by asserting that she feels herself bound to paint men and things in their true colours. Whether she has done so or not does not matter; the vindication was deemed sufficient by the five hundred English ladies who forwarded her an address, thanking her for her work, detailing its effects upon themselves, and encou raging her in the good work she had begun. The same may be said of "Illustrations of Border Life," "Scottish Reminiscences," and many others, the authors of which we still respect and esteem. It cannot, we think, be proved that Shakspere was an immoral or licentious man. His life leads to quite a contrary conclusion. He may, as De Quincey alleges, have committed an immoral act before his marriage, for which he atoned, and of which, if we may judge from the following speech of Prospero, in "The Tempest," he fully repented: "As my gift and thine own acquisition, Worthily purchased, take my daughter: but Had he been naturally licentious, we should never have had any of those moving appeals to our inmost feelings; of those touches of nature which make the world akin; of the exalted sentiment and profound philosophy of his dialogues and soliloquies; nor, in short, any of those thousand beauties which all men have admired, and which all will continue to admire. The noble and inoffensive part of his works far outbalances the low and objectionable portions. That this is so may be inferred from the fact that the Messrs. Chambers have published an edition of Shakspere, in which every objectionable phrase has been carefully expunged, and that the plot of each play has not materially suffered thereby. We may be told that Shakspere might also have omitted such passages. He might; but he would have but partially fulfilled his aim in depicting men in his own and past ages; and therefore, though the above edition becomes the drawing-room, it is quite out of place in the study. Had Shakspere been licentious himself, we should have had his works overloaded with it, without a single redeeming quality, as is the case with Congreve, Colley Cibber, and others of the period of the Restoration, when,— "Like a bow long forced into a curve, The mind, released from too constrained a nerve, That made the vaulted roofs of pleasure ring." Of the refinement of the commonalty in Shakspere's time we may judge from the fact, that the wholesale massacre in the play of "Titus Andronicus," which would not now be tolerated on the stage, was then, according to Ben Jonson, not only tolerated, but applauded. The belief in witchcraft was fixed on, with no less a sanction than that of royalty, and hence witches are introduced into "Macbeth," one of the most moral pieces existing. It is this sound moral which counteracts the effects of any otherwise objectionable passages. Even in "Troilus and Cressida" “ the vicious characters sometimes disgust, but they cannot corrupt, for both Cressida and Pandarus are detested and condemned." Respecting the plot of some of the plays, which some may object to, as turning upon the commission of a heinous crime, it may be observed, that "in proportion to the enormity of such a crime as adultery, should be the caution with which the suspicion of it is permitted to be entertained; and our great dramatic moralist was, no doubt, desirous of enforcing this axiom, when he made it, as he has done, the subject of no less than four of his most finished productions." The same observation holds good respecting other crimes or predominate passions, on which plays are founded. Shakspere's aim, however, is to correct and reprove; not, like the dramatist of a century and a half later, to embellish and inculcate licentiousness. To this end, in the words of Charles Knight, "he has not represented mere abstract qualities, such as a good man and a bad man, a mild and a hasty, an humble and proud; but he has painted men as they are, with mixed qualities and mixed motives, the result of temperament and education; and so painting them, he has not only succeeded in keeping and cherishing within us the highest admiration and love of what is noble and generous, and just and true, but in making us kind and tolerant towards the errors of our fellow-creatures, compassionate even to their vices; but the same man has never broken down the distinction, as other writers have done, between what is to be loved and imitated, and what is to be pitied and shunned. We have no moral monsters in Shakspere, no generous housebreakers, no philanthropic murderers; we see men as they are; but we see them also with a clearness that it would be vain to expect from our own unassisted vision. The same great moralist of all the secrets of the human heart is also the expounder of the very highest and noblest philosophy." We forbear to urge as an argument a thought which has presented itself to our mind while writing these lines, and will, perhaps, occur to others. It is this,-that those who maintain that Christians-for "members of Christian churches" means, I presume, the same thing -cannot consistently take part in the tercentenary demonstration, tacitly declare that all who do take part in it are acting inconsistently with their profession; and that those who have devoted the best hours of their lives to the study of Shakspere, and have endeavoured, by cheap and corrected editions of the poet, to infuse a love and reverence of him into the cottage homes of England, can scarcely |