William Shakespear

William Shakespear

[Bradley was a major Shakespearean critic best known for his Shakespearean Tragedy (1904; revised edition, 1905), an examination of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. In the excerpt below, originally presented in a lecture at Oxford in 1904, he expresses his belief that the Sonnets are autobiographical and provide clear impressions of Shakespeare’s personality.]

 

Such phrases as `Shakespeare the man’ or `Shakespeare’s personality’ are, no doubt, open to objection. They seem to suggest that, if we could subtract from Shakespeare the mind that produced his works, the residue would be the man himself; and that his mind was more pure impersonal essence unaffected by the accidents of physique, temperament, and character. If this were so, one could but echo Tennyson’s thanksgiving that we know so little of Shakespeare. But as it is assuredly not so, and as ‘Shakespeare the man’ really means the one indivisible Shakespeare, regarded for the time from a particular point of view, the natural desire to know whatever can be known of him is not to be repressed merely because there are people so foolish as to be careless about his works and yet curious about his private life. For my own part I confess that, though I should care nothing about the man if he had not written the works, yet, since we possess them, I would rather see and hear him for five minutes in his proper person than discover a new one. And though we may be content to die without knowing his income or even the surname of Mr. W. H., we cannot so easily resign the wish to find the man in his writings, and to form some idea of the disposition, the likes and dislikes, the character and the attitude towards life, of the human being who seems to us to have understood best our common human nature.

The answer of course will be that our biographical knowledge of Shakespeare is so small, his writings are so completely dramatic, that this wish, however natural, is idle. But I cannot think so. Doubtless, in trying to form an idea of Shakespeare, we soon reach the limits of reasonable certainty; and it is also true that the idea we can form without exceeding them is far from being as individual as we could desire. But it is more distinct than is often supposed, and it is reasonably certain; and although we can add to its distinctness only by more or less probable conjectures, they are not mere guesses, they really have probability in various degrees. On this whole subject there is a tendency at the present time to an extreme scepticism, which appears to me to be justified neither by the circumstances of the particular case nor by our knowledge of human nature in general.

This scepticism is due in part to the interest excited by Mr. Lee’s discussion of the Sonnets in his [Life of William Shakespeare, 1898], and to the importance rightly attached to that discussion. The Sonnets are lyrical poems of friendship and love. In them the poet ostensibly speaks in his own person and expresses his own feelings. Many critics, no doubt, had denied that he really did so; but they had not Mr. Lee’s knowledge, nor had they examined the matter so narrowly as he; and therefore they had not much weakened the general belief that the Sonnets, however conventional or exaggerated their language may sometimes be, do tell us a good deal about their author. Mr. Lee, however, showed far more fully than any previous writer that many of the themes, many even of the ideas, of these poems are commonplaces of Renaissance sonnet-writing; and he came to the conclusion that in the Sonnets Shakespeare `unlocked,’ not `his heart,’ but a very different kind of armoury, and that the sole biographical inference deducible from them is that `at one time in his career Shakespeare disdained no weapon of flattery in an endeavor to monopolise the bountiful patronage of a young man of rank.’ Now, if that inference is correct, it certainly tells us something about Shakespeare the man; but it also forbids us to take seriously what the Sonnets profess to tell us of his passionate affection, with its hopes and fears, its pain and joy; of his pride and his humility, his self-reproach and self-defence, his weariness of life and his consciousness of immortal genius. And as, according to Mr. Lee’s statement, the Sonnets alone of Shakespeare’s works ‘can be held to throw any illumination on a personal trait,’ it seems to follow that, so far as the works are concerned (Mr. Lee is not specially sceptical as to the external testimony), the only idea we can form of the man is contained in that single inference.

Now, I venture to surmise that Mr. Lee’s words go rather beyond his meaning. But that is not our business here, nor could a brief discussion do justice to a theory to which those who disagree with it are still greatly indebted. What I wish to deny is the presupposition which seems to be frequently accepted as an obvious truth. Even if Mr. Lee’s view of the Sonnets were indisputably correct, nay, if even, to go much further, the persons and the story in the Sonnets were as purely fictitious as those of Twelfth Night, they might and would still tell us something of the personality of their author. For however free a poet may be from the emotions which he simulates, and however little involved in the conditions which he imagines, he cannot (unless he is a mere copyist) write a hundred an fifty lyrics expressive of those simulated emotions without disclosing something of himself, something of the way in which he in particular would feel and behave under the imagined conditions….

The remarks I am going to make can have an interest only for those who share the position I have tried to indicate; who believe that the most dramatic of writers must reveal in his writings something of himself, but who recognize that in Shakespeare’s case we can expect a reasonable certainty only within narrow limits, while beyond them we have to trust to impressions, the value of which must depend on familiarity with his writings, on freedom from prejudice and the desire to reach any particular result, and on the amount of perception we may happen to possess. I offer my own impressions, insecure and utterly unprovable as I know them to be, simply because those of other readers have an interest for me; and I offer them for the most part without argument, because even where argument might be useful it requires more time than [an essay] can afford….

I intend only to state the main reason why I believe the sonnets to be, substantially, what they purport to be, and then to touch upon one or two of the points where they seem to throw light on Shakespeare’s personality.

The sonnets to the friend are, so far as we know, unique in Renaissance sonnet literature in being a prolonged and varied record of the intense affection of an older friend for a younger, and of other feelings arising from their relations. They have no real parallel in any series imitative of Virgil’s second Eclogue, or in occasional sonnets to patrons or patron-friends couched in the high-flown language of the time. The intensity of the feelings expressed, however, ought not, by itself, to convince us that they are personal. The author of the plays could, I make no doubt, have written the most intimate of these poems to a mere creature of his imagination and without ever having felt them except in imagination. Nor is there any but an aesthetic reason why he should not have done so if he had wished. But an aesthetic reason there is; and this is the decisive point. No capable poet, much less a Shakespeare, intending to produce a merely `dramatic’ series of poems, would dream of inventing a story like that of these sonnets, or, even if he did, of treating it as they treat it. The story is very odd and unattractive. Such capacities as it has are but slightly developed. It is left obscure, and some of the poems are unintelligible to us because they contain allusions of which we can make nothing. Now all this is perfectly natural if the story is substantially a real story of Shakespeare himself and of certain other persons; if the sonnets were written from time to time as the relations of the persons changed, and sometimes in reference to particular incidents; and if they were written for one or more of these persons (far the greater number for only one), and perhaps in a few cases for other friends,—written, that is to say, for people who knew the details and incidents of which we are ignorant. But it is all unnatural, well-nigh incredibly unnatural, if, with the most sceptical critics, we regard the sonnets as a free product of mere imagination.

Assuming, then, that the persons of the story, with their relations, are real, I would add only two remarks about the friend. In the first place, Mr. Beeching seems to me right in denying that there is sufficient evidence of his standing to Shakespeare and the `rival’ poet or poets in the position of a literary patron; while, even if he did, it appears to me quite impossible to take the language of many of the sonnets as that of interested flattery. And in the second place I should be inclined to push even further Mr. Beeching’s view on another point. It is clear that the young man was considerably superior to the actor- dramatist in social position; but any gentleman would be so, and there is nothing to prove that he was more than a gentleman of some note, more than plain `Mr. W. H.’ (for these, on the obvious though not compulsory interpretation of the dedication, seem to have been his initials). It is remarkable besides that, while the earlier sonnets show much deference, the later show very little, so little, that, when the writer, finding that he has pained his young friend by neglecting him, begs to be forgiven, he writes almost, if not quite, as an equal. Read, for example, sonnets 109, 110, 120, and ask whether it is probable that Shakespeare is addressing here a great nobleman. It seems therefore most likely (though the question is not of much importance) that the sonnets are, to quote Meres’s phrase, his `sonnets among his private friends.’

If then there is, as it appears, no obstacle of any magnitude to our taking the sonnets as substantially what they purport to be, we may naturally look in them for personal traits (and, indeed, to repeat a remark made earlier, we might still expect to find such traits even if we knew the sonnets to be purely dramatic). But in drawing inferences we have to bear in mind what is implied by the qualification `substantially.’ We have to remember that some of these poems may be mere exercises of art; that all of them are poems, and not letters, much less affidavits; that they are Elizabethan poems; that the Elizabethan language of deference, and also of affection, is to our minds habitually extravagant and fantastic; and that in Elizabethan plays friends openly express their love for one another as Englishmen now rarely do. Allowance being made, however, on account of these facts, the sonnets will still leave two strong impressions—that the poet was exceedingly sensitive to the charm of beauty, and that his love for his friend was, at least at one time, a feeling amounting almost to adoration, and so intense as to be absorbing. Those who are surprised by the first of these traits must have read Shakespeare’s dramas with very inactive minds, and I must add that they seem to be somewhat ignorant of human nature. We do not necessarily love best those of our relatives, friends, and acquaintances who please our eyes most; and we should look askance on anyone who regulated his behavior chiefly by the standard of beauty; but most of us, I suppose, love any human being, of either sex and of any age, the better for being beautiful, and are not the least ashamed of the fact. It is further the case that men who are beginning, like the writer of the sonnets, to feel tired and old, are apt to feel an increased and special pleasure in the beauty of the young. If we remember, in addition, what some critics appear constantly to forget, that Shakespeare was a particularly poetical being, we shall hardly be surprised that the beginning of this friendship seems to have been something like a falling in love; and, if we must needs praise and blame, we should also remember that it became a ‘marriage of true minds’ [Sonnet 116]. And as to the intensity of the feeling expressed in the sonnets, we can easily believe it to be characteristic of the man who made Valentine and Proteus [in Two Gentlemen of Verona], Brutus and Cassius [in Julius Caesar], Horatio and Hamlet; who painted that strangely moving portrait of Antonio, middle-aged, sad, and almost indifferent between life and death, but devoted to the young, brilliant spendthrift Bassanio [in The Merchant of Venice]; and who portrayed the sudden compelling enchantment exercised by the young Sebastian over the Antonio of Twelfth Night. ‘If you will not murder me for your love, let me be your servant’ [II.i. 35-6]. Antonio is accused of piracy: he may lose his life if he is identified:

 

I have many enemies in Orsino’s court,

But, come what may, I do adore thee so

That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.

[II. i. 45-7]

The adoration, the `prostration,’ of the writer of the sonnets is of one kind with this.

I do not remember what critic uses the word ‘prostration.’ It applies to Shakespeare’s attitude only in some of the sonnets, but there it does apply, unless it is taken to suggest humiliation. That is the term used by Hallam, but chiefly in view of a particular point, namely the failure of the poet to ‘resent,’ though he ‘felt and bewailed,’ the injury done him in the ‘seduction of his mistress.’ Though I think we should substitute ‘resent more strongly’ for the mere ‘resent,’ I do not deny that the poet’s attitude in this matter strikes us at first as surprising as well as unpleasant to contemplate. But Hallam’s explanation of it as perhaps due to the exalted position of the friend, would make it much more than unpleasant; and his language seems to show that he, like many critics, did not fully imagine the situation. It is not easy to speak of it in public with the requisite frankness; but it is necessary to realise that, whatever the friend’s rank might be, he and the poet were intimate friends; that, manifestly, it was rather the mistress who seduced the friend than the friend the mistress; and that she was apparently a woman not merely of no reputation, but of such a nature that she might readily be expected to be mistress to two men at one and the same time. Anyone who realises this may call the situation `humiliating’ in one sense, and I cannot quarrel with him; but he will not call it `humiliating’ in respect of Shakespeare’s relation to his friend; nor will he wonder much that the poet felt more pain than resentment at his friend’s treatment of him. There is something infinitely stranger in a play of Shakespeare’s, and it may be symptomatic. Then Brink called attention to it. Proteus actually offers violence to Sylvia, a spotless lady and the true love of his friend Valentine; and Valentine not only forgives him at once when he professes repentance, but offers to resign Sylvia to him! The incident is to us so utterly preposterous that we find it hard to imagine how the audience stood it; but, even if we conjecture that Shakespeare adopted it from the story he was using, we can hardly suppose that it was so absurd to him as it is to us. And it is not the Sonnets alone which lead us to surmise that forgiveness was particularly attractive to him, and the forgiveness of a friend much easier than resentment. From the Sonnets we gather—and there is nothing in the plays or elsewhere to contradict the impression—that he would not be slow to resent the criticisms, slanders, or injuries of strangers or the world, and that he bore himself towards them with a proud, if silent, self-sufficiency. But, we surmise, for anyone whom he loved.

 

He carried anger as a fling bears fire;

Who, much enforced, shows a nasty spark

And straight is cold again;

[Julius Caesar, IV. iii. 111-13]

and towards anyone so fondly loved as the friend of the Sonnets he was probably incapable of fierce or prolonged resentment.

Full Text:  COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale.

Source Citation

 

Bradley, A. C. “Shakespeare the Man.” DISCovering Authors. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resources in Context. Web. 22 Jan. 2016.

URL

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Gale Document Number: GALE|EJ2101207337

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

English Literature to 1785, Edition 1992

• Born: April 23, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, England
• Died: April 23, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, England
• Nationality: English
• Occupation: Playwright

 

 

 

 

 

Most scholars consider Shakespeare to be the greatest dramatist of the English language. The son of a businessman, he was born in the provincial town of Stratford-on-Avon. Shakespeare’s father is listed in town records as a “glover,” or one who sells gloves, but records also show that he engaged in a variety of other enterprises. Although Shakespeare’s formal education ended at the local school, his plays show that he was extremely learned and widely read. At eighteen he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had a daughter the next year and twins two years later. Shakespeare did not remain in Stratford; records from 1592 show that he was at that time active in the theatrical world of London. About 1593, when theaters were temporarily closed in London on account of the plague, Shakespeare composed and published the narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, both of which he dedicated to his patron, the earl of Southampton. When the theaters reopened in 1594, Shakespeare became a member of the theatrical company called Lord Chamberlain’s Men. He worked with this company as an actor, playwright, and stockholder for the rest of his career, and he wrote his best plays, including the great tragedies, for its actors. Shakespeare retired in 1610 and went back to Stratford, where he bought a substantial house and wrote The Tempest, his final play. He died in April 1616, probably on his fifty-second birthday.

Myths about Shakespeare

There are two widely circulated myths about Shakespeare. One is that he was an “untutored genius”; that is, that he was not formally educated but had a natural and spontaneous insight, a sort of wild creative inspiration. However, it is obvious from Shakespeare’s many allusions to characters and situations of classical literature, the Bible, and history that in fact he had an extensive store of knowledge at his command. He knew the literary conventions of the various types of poetry and drama of his time, although he did not always follow them religiously in his own works.

The second myth is that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him. This myth, tends to ignore the many town documents, entries of the acting company, and contemporaries’ comments revolving around his life and activities as a dramatist. The myth also rests on the conclusion that a person of little education would not be able to write such great plays. Both of these myths, then, seem to arise from a prejudice about the necessary relationship between a university education and solid intellectual or artistic achievement.

Source Citation

 

Harlan, Judith A.V., and Kathleen McCoy. “William Shakespeare (1564-1616).” English Literature to 1785. Kathleen McCoy and Judith Harlan. New York: HarperPerennial, 1992. 77+. Student Resources in Context. Web. 28 Jan. 2016.

URL

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