Few will question that such a line as this, in the first scene of the play—
"Romans—friends, followers, favourers of my right!"
comes from the pen which afterwards wrote Julius Cæsar. I may mention, for my own part, that lines which, as I read the play through before acquainting myself in detail with English criticism, had struck me as patently Shakespearian, proved to be precisely the lines which the best English critics attribute to Shakespeare. To one's own mind such coincidences of feeling naturally carry conviction. I may cite as an example Tamora's speech (iv. 4):—
"King, be thy thoughts imperious, like thy name.
Is the sun dimm'd, that gnats do fly in it?
The eagle suffers little birds to sing,
And is not careful what they mean thereby;
Knowing that with the shadow of his wings
He can at pleasure stint their melody.
Even so may'st thou the giddy men of Rome."
Unmistakably Shakespearian, too, are Titus's moving lament (iii. I) when he learns of Lavinia's mutilation, and his half-distraught outbursts in the following scene foreshadow even in detail a situation belonging to the poet's culminating period, the scene between Lear and Cordelia when they are both prisoners. Titus says to his hapless daughter:
"Lavinia, go with me:
I'll to thy closet; and go read with thee
Sad stories chanced in the times of old."
In just the same spirit Lear exclaims:
"Come, let's away to prison ...
. . . . . so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales."
It is quite unnecessary for any opponent of blind or exaggerated Shakespeare-worship to demonstrate to us the impossibility of bringing Titus Andronicus into harmony with any other than a barbarous conception of tragic poetry. But although the play is simply omitted without apology from the Danish translation of Shakespeare's works, it must by no means be overlooked by the student, whose chief interest lies in observing the genesis and development of the poet's genius. The lower its point of departure, the more marvellous its soaring flight.
[1] "Gallops the zodiac" (ii. I, line 7) occurs twice in Peele. The phrase "A thousand deaths" (same scene, line 79) appears in Marlowe's Tamburlaine.
IX
SHAKESPEARE'S CONCEPTION OF THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES—HIS MARRIAGE VIEWED IN THIS LIGHT—LOVES LABOUR'S LOST—ITS MATTER AND STYLE—JOHN LYLY AND EUPHUISM—THE PERSONAL ELEMENT
During these early years in London, Shakespeare must have been conscious of spiritual growth with every day that passed. With his inordinate appetite for learning, he must every day have gathered new impressions in his many-sided activity as a hard-working actor, a furbisher-up of old plays in accordance with the taste of the day for scenic effects, and finally as a budding poet, in whose heart every mood thrilled into melody, and every conception clothed itself in dramatic form. He must have felt his spirit light and free, not least, perhaps, because he had escaped from his home in Stratford.
Ordinary knowledge of the world is sufficient to suggest that his association with a village girl eight years older than himself could not satisfy him or fill his life. The study of his works confirms this conjecture. It would, of course, be unreasonable to attribute conscious and deliberate autobiographical import to speeches torn from their context in different plays; but there are none the less several passages in his dramas which may fairly be taken as indicating that he regarded his marriage in the light of a youthful folly. Take, for example, this passage in Twelfth Night (ii. 4):—
"Duke. What kind of woman is't? Vio. Of your complexion. Duke. She is not worth thee then. What years, i' faith? Vio. About your years, my lord. Duke. Too old, by Heaven. Let still the woman take An elder than herself; so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband's heart: For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, Than women's are. Vio. think it well, my lord. Duke. Then, let thy love be younger than thyself, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent; For women are as roses, whose fair flower, Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour."
And this is in the introduction to the Fool's exquisite song about the power of love, that song which "The spinsters and the knitters in the sun And the free maids, that weave their thread with bones, Do use to chant"—Shakespeare's loveliest lyric.
There are passages in other plays which seem to show traces of personal regret at the memory of this early marriage and the circumstances under which it came about. In the Tempest, for instance, we have Prospero's warning to Ferdinand (iv. I):—
"If thou dost break her virgin-knot before
All sanctimonious ceremonies may,
With full and holy rite, be minister'd,
No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall
To make this contract grow, but barren hate,
Sour-ey'd disdain, and discord, shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly,
That you shall hate it both."
Two of the comedies of Shakespeare's first period are, as we might expect, imitations, and even in part adaptations, of older plays. By comparing them, where it is possible, with these earlier works, we can discover, among other things, the thoughts to which Shakespeare, in these first years in London, was most intent on giving utterance. It thus appears that he held strong views as to the necessary subordination of the female to the male, and as to the trouble caused by headstrong, foolish, or jealous women.
His Comedy of Errors is modelled upon the Menœchmi of Plautus, or rather on an English play of the same title dating from 1580, which was not itself taken direct from Plautus, but from Italian adaptations of the old Latin farce. Following the example of Plautus in the Amphitruo, Shakespeare has supplemented the confusion between the two Antipholuses by a parallel and wildly improbable confusion between their serving-men, who both go by the same name and are likewise twins. But it is in the contrast between the two female figures, the married sister Adriana and the unmarried Luciana, that we catch the personal note in the play. On account of the confusion of persons, Adriana rages against her husband, and is at last on the point of plunging him into lifelong misery. To her complaint that he has not come home at the appointed time, Luciana answers:—
"A man is master of his liberty:
Time is their master; and, when they see time,
They'll go, or come: if so, be patient, sister.
Adriana. Why should their liberty than ours be more? Luciana. Because their business still lies out o' door. Adr. Look, when I serve him so, he takes it ill. Luc. O! know he is the bridle of your will. Adr. There's none but asses will be bridled so. Luc. Why, headstrong liberty is lash'd with woe. There's nothing situate under heaven's eye But hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky: The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls. Are their males' subjects, and at their controls. Men, more divine, the masters of all these, Lords of the wide world, and wild wat'ry seas, . . . . . . . . . Are masters to their females, and their lords: Then, let your will attend on their accords."
In the last act of the comedy, Adriana, speaking to the Abbess accuses her husband of running after other women:—
"Abbess. You should for that have reprehended him. Adriana. Why, so I did. Abb. Ay, but not rough enough. Adr. As roughly as my modesty would let me. Abb. Haply, in private. Adr. And in assemblies too. Abb. Ay,