The pullulation of philosophical sententiousness or reflection, which distinguishes alike the drama of Euripides and of Voltaire, not only boded the event, but also pointed to the cause. It was the breaking (to recur to a preceding illustration) of the language of action into that of elocution. 3. If the great revolution thus delineated in the drama can be shewn to be the key to the writings of Shakespeare, the fact must add fresh laurels to even his fame, give new enjoyment to the world, a new career to exhausted criticism, and, above all, a new resource to commercial exploitation. But the problem is reduced, by the preceding explanations, to the limits of the fundamental category,—that of character. This is also what the critics all consider Shakespeare's forte. Their theme of praise and even apology is his fidelity as moral painter. It is true, as has been seen, that what he painted they could not tell. But they effectually supposed him to stop, like others, with the outside. This conclusion will be sufficiently clear from one reflection: they partake the common notion that men are naturally all the same, and varied merely by condition, climate, calling, or other circumstances. The essentials, the interior, they assumed throughout identical, and thus were forced upon the consequence that all character was there impossible. From this dilemma arose the air-beating exposed, to define Shakespeare. His speciality, it was discerned, could not have been the exterior, which belonged to the ancient drama, because most obvious and easy; for then he could not be so strikingly contrasted with that drama, as aped to pedantry by the least bad of his contemporaries, Jonson. And, on the other hand, since the alternative of The the interior was flat monotony, it was not seen where else could Shakespeare have found his "infinite variety." The dim reasoning was sound enough, the preconception was the confounder. What was fancied the interior is nothing of the kind the generalities of human nature are as exterior collectively, as the peculiarities of dress are individually. It is again the nullity of the extremes in all things. Between them lies, in this case, the central ground of race, this true interior of humanity, society, and history; and thus alone commensurate to Shakespeare's profusion. This inner man, in fact, is vastly more diversified than the exterior. latter takes the bent of social manners and physical circumstances, and exhibits men disguised by imitation, purpose, accident. Beneath these holiday externals works the enginery of race, in all the contrasts of its organism and all the nudity of its uncleanness. To overhaul-if a low expression, but an apt one, be allowed-to overhaul this inner man was the Shakespearian innovation; to pass in the portrayal of character from the curses of divinities, the incrustations of tradition, and the costumes of history, to the causes of human conduct, to the "livery of nature," as the poet himself expresses it, though he had better said philosophy: for nature is not, like philosophy, opposed to history, but includes it. It is not meant to say that Shakespeare was much deeper than his critics in the consciousness of the new province, or the conception of its characters. The true poet is a philoso pher by sentiment and not by system; and all great agents of human progress know but ill their real tendency. It was above explained in principle that the founder of the modern drama should be furnished, by the mythical crystallization At least on of romances, with an outline of the principal diversities of race in Europe, which would serve him as the germs and the types of his new creations. That such, accordingly, were Shakespeare's sources is a well-known fact of history. The logical unconsciousness would therefore argue nothing against the proposed theory of his characters and drama. But, moreover, was he really without the view of races ? one occasion he throws out a remark which, if it does not prove his consciousness, should have been sufficient to prompt his critics, and contains more anthropology than all the treatises on this subject. It will be after comprehended why the systematic statement is peculiarly appropriate to the character of Macbeth, who speaks it to the agents he is sounding to murder Banquo Ay! in the catalogue ye go for men; As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, That writes them all alike; and so oF MEN. Act iii. sc. 3. So, in fact, precisely, and in error as in truth; in the rough cataloguing of the notion still prevailing of human nature, as in the scale of valuation that should rectify by analyzing it; and in the form of its organic or social elements, as breeds or races, not either isolated individuals or aggregated species. The only difference is, that the argument is vastly stronger in the human breeds, in full proportion as they transcend the canine analogues in complication. For, while the extreme individuals touch alike in both the series, the main distinctions of the human must rise proportionably to development. It is, in fact, this higher mental development and complication that most conduces to dissemble the oppositions among human races. But is it, then, to be thought that Shakespeare lost all sight of his declared principle, in drawing the character of Hamlet, of Iago, of Macbeth, and even the secondary personages, who are portion of the picture? Nor in the process of the revolution thus effected in the drama does the poet renounce the ancient and exterior aspect wholly. It is a common-place among the critics, that he constantly attributes to his personages of all countries the manners of his own. But the dictum will be found afterwards to rest a good deal more on their own ignorance of Shakespeare's meaning, than on Shakespeare's of the laws of costume. The truth is, that he might have said, with Posthumus, in Cymbeline : I will begin The fashion LESS without and MORE within. It is a resumé of his reform, and the pithiest motto for his future monuments. 4. As to the manner of determining the races depicted, it will be, also, requisite to add a few preliminaries. Since the undertaking is by no means to furnish a complete exegesis of the writings of Shakespeare, but to establish and exemplify a new instrument for that purpose, it must be sufficient to test the leading pieces of the poet. These are held to be Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, and the part of Shylock, in the Merchant of Venice. And the thesis, in fine, is that the subject of these plays is the Italian, the Teutonic, the Celtic, and the Hebrew races. The tests or the evidence is of a twofold order, which may be distinguished as extrinsic and intrinsic. The external, as consisting of historical presumptions, and of which the facts are common to the several races named, may be sufficiently presented on this occasion once for all, and thus the special application be abridged as far as practicable. First among the grounds of these presumptions is the fact, that the heroes and the fables of the several plays in question have been taken almost literally from traditions or romances respectively relating to the races just mentioned; for as, according to the law of mythical formation above indicated, the real subject of these stories was the corresponding races, it will follow that this import would have passed into the copy, or the dramatic application, even unconsciously to the poet. But, in the next place, all those races were directly known to Shakespeare, and were those only that could have influenced him through sentiment or observation. The Italians were in closer intercourse with England then than now; they were too feeble to inspire the jealousy that kept a distance with France and Spain; they were, moreover, the general European merchants of the day; in fine, their literature and arts were at that time the English model, and their papacy intriguing against the new religion from all these sources the national character must have been familiar and striking, and would, though it had not already been embodied in Iago, have moulded Shakespeare's recast of the personage as Italian. The two next : |