May 9, 1890.] 



SCIENCE. 



procession marclies past us, — the lewd, the unpleasant, the 

 coarse: along with the noble, the stately, the refined. It is 

 all in perspective, and the perspective of Shakespeare is the 

 perspective of history. 



And so: because these pages of Shakespeare are crowded 

 •with data for the student of civilization: are not a single 

 phase (much less a phrase) — of literature — not puzzles or 

 rebuses to find the meaning of which is beyond the single 

 intellect, but for which societies and clubs and guessing-par- 

 ties must be formed: therefore it is that a society for the il- 

 lustration of Shakespeare, and of the field of research which 

 his name implies, is not the fad or fashion of the moment. Its 

 work is not to worry and debate and wrangle as to the mean- 

 ing of this or that or the other, ellipsis: or as to what truth 

 of human nature the poet intended to refer in this or that or 

 the other, monologue, or cryptogram, or episode, or epigram : 

 its work is simply to trace, from the cufs they find in the 

 plays of Shakespeare, the origin of things now familiar, of 

 institutions now important, and of customs still fraught with 

 significance. So long as there is a substance to work, let us 

 have the society and the academy to work it. It matters 

 not much if the student's exuberance overbear him, or his 

 commentary biirst into apotheosis: what it behooves him, 

 rather, to beware of, is a confounding of the scientific uses 

 of the imagination with that considerable over-use of 

 the imagination which in time becomes the febrile, not 

 the scientific vision To see the Spanish fleet which is not 

 yet in sight requires only faith. It will materialize with 

 patience; but — for those who see insight and introspection 

 and dramatic power in whatever is beneath their analysis, 

 in whatever they cannot parse, or (and I am not now speak- 

 ing of Mr. Browning) which ofi'ends the ear polite — not faith, 

 hut the faith-cure, is the proper specific. Cumulative poetry 

 may have its uses, but it is hardly worth while to organize 

 societies to discuss it. 



I beg to repeat that I have only used Mr. Browning and 

 his poetry as illustrations, in this paper. I am very far from 

 wishing to be understood as implying that both are not 

 great, or that I do not honor the memory of the one or admire 

 the majestic qualities of the other. Still less do I propose 

 attempting prophecy on my own account, by asserting that 

 in three centuries, or one century, from this date, great so- 

 cieties and colleges will not be incorporated to sit at the feet 

 of Robert Browning's poetry, and to write volumes of £es- 

 thetic criticism, and to fill libraries with controversial biog- 

 raphies of Mr. Browning. 



Not to make too much of the pronouncement, then, in the 

 young ladies' magazine picturesquely called Poet-Lore,^ that 

 "Browning and Ibsen are the only two really dramatic 

 authors of this century," it is as good a text, perhaps, 

 as any other upon which to protest, not against the fad po- 

 etic (which is an institution, that, with one excuse or an- 

 other, — Browning, Tolstoi, or Ibsen, — is, like the poor, al- 

 ways with us), but against this cruel misuse of the word 

 "dramatic," and this (perhaps 1 may call it) over "bump- 

 tious" employment of the prophetic vision, which magnifies 

 our own taste of the moment into a judgment as to the prob- 

 able opinions of posterity. 



Certainly Browning is a dramatic poet, if writing plays 

 that cannot be acted constitutes one a dramatic poet. (The 



I March, 1890. 



answer to this is, of course, that Browning's dramas have 

 been acted: an equivalent argument would prove that women 

 are men, because, once in a while, certain women have acted 

 like men.) And as to Ibsen: well, one swallow makes a 

 summer — sometimes; and the Ibsen craze is some weeks old 

 already. As to the almost forgotten Tolstoi: if what is 

 called "realism" is dramatic, then Tolstoi, like a photo- 

 graph, is dramatic. Certainly, in this view, a photograph is 

 more dramatic than an oil painting. But one is perhaps to 

 be allowed his taste in photographs? One might, for ex- 

 ample, prefer a photograph of 1 is mother or of his lady-love 

 to a photograph of a dog fight or a pig-sticking; though the 

 latter, of course, everybody would pronounce much the more 

 dramatic. The fad poetic, in itself, is perfectly innocuous: 

 the only possible danger is, that young persons are often led 

 by it into the belief that any thing which is unpleasant or 

 repulsive, or which has the taste of forbidden fruit, — any 

 thing, in short, with which literature as a rule does not deal 

 largely, or as to which the less said the better, — is dramatic. 

 It is because I believe in the Shakespeare Society, and be- 

 cause it is to be feared that the Shakespeare Society (as an 

 Institution) may be thoughtlessly confounded, in the minds 

 of some, with this fad poetic (as an Institution), that T have 

 attempted to here briefly dwell upon a few points wherein 

 they differ. 



Let us repeat. There is much that is coarse in the pano- 

 rama cf Shakespeare: but it is there, in its place, and does 

 not dwarf the rest; nor is it the coarseness, any more than 

 (to speak mildly) any other single feature of his dramas, 

 which has made Shakespeare immortal. What is dirty is 

 not on that account dramatic; it certainly is not on that ac- 

 count scientific. We may all of us enjoy Brown, Jones, 

 and Robinson; but, keenly as we may enjoy them, Brown, 

 Jones, and Robinson are not, from tlie mere fact that we do 

 enjoy them yet (f quote again from the young ladies' mag- 

 azine). " the only really dramatic poets of the century." As 

 to that, it would seem rather the province of the centuries 

 which come after Brown, Jones, and Robinson, to judge. 



I believe that the great verdict as to who are, and who are 

 not, great, — great poets, great dramatists, great masters of 

 any art, — whose mortal labors deserve and justify and satis- 

 fy the founding of great societies, — are always, always have 

 been, and always will be, based upon some such proposition 

 as has been considered here. I believe that any thing which 

 survives its own century must have something of the prac- 

 tical (of the scientific if you will) about it — even if it be a 

 work of the imagination pure and simple. I believe that 

 the verdict of the centuries as to who are, and who are not, 

 dramatic poets, will be always based on just such tests 

 as the centuries so far have applied to William Shakespeare. 

 Were the "shapes" to which his pen turned "things un- 

 known " actual and practical? Have we seen them with our 

 own physical eyes? We know that the pages of Shakespeare 

 have stood these tests, and that they have proved Shake- 

 speare's poetry to be an orderly, symmetrical, proportionate, 

 and absolutely true, chronicle of his own age and vicinage: 

 not lifted into the clouds beyond the realm of human na- 

 ture's daUy food; glorified by an imagination none the less 

 superb because not hectic, — an imagination which "bodied 

 forth'' forms, not chimeras; and truths, not fantasies. And 

 I believe that it is because Shakespeare is the poet of the true 



