No More Learning

It did not occur
to the critics that you cannot know a man from his actions because
you cannot watch him in every kind of circumstance, and that men are
made useless to the State as often by abundance as by emptiness, and
that a man's business may at times be revelation, and not reformation.
Fortinbras was, it is likely enough, a better King than Hamlet would
have been, Aufidius was a more reasonable man than Coriolanus, Henry
V. was a better man-at-arms than Richard II. , but after all, were not
those others who changed nothing for the better and many things for
the worse greater in the Divine Hierarchies? Blake has said that 'the
roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea,
and the destructive sword are portions of Eternity, too great for the
eye of man,' but Blake belonged by right to the ages of Faith, and
thought the State of less moment than the Divine Hierarchies. Because
reason can only discover completely the use of those obvious actions
which everybody admires, and because every character was to be judged
by efficiency in action, Shakespearian criticism became a vulgar
worshipper of Success. I have turned over many books in the library at
Stratford-on-Avon, and I have found in nearly all an antithesis, which
grew in clearness and violence as the century grew older, between two
types, whose representatives were Richard II. , 'sentimental,' 'weak,'
'selfish,' 'insincere,' and Henry V. , 'Shakespeare's only hero. ' These
books took the same delight in abasing Richard II. that school-boys do
in persecuting some boy of fine temperament, who has weak muscles and
a distaste for school games. And they had the admiration for Henry V.
that school-boys have for the sailor or soldier hero of a romance in
some boys' paper. I cannot claim any minute knowledge of these books,
but I think that these emotions began among the German critics, who
perhaps saw something French and Latin in Richard II. , and I know that
Professor Dowden, whose book I once read carefully, first made these
emotions eloquent and plausible.
He lived in Ireland, where everything
has failed, and he meditated frequently upon the perfection of
character which had, he thought, made England successful, for, as we
say, 'cows beyond the water have long horns. ' He forgot that England,
as Gordon has said, was made by her adventurers, by her people of
wildness and imagination and eccentricity; and thought that Henry V. ,
who only seemed to be these things because he had some commonplace
vices, was not only the typical Anglo-Saxon, but the model Shakespeare
held up before England; and he even thought it worth while pointing
out that Shakespeare himself was making a large fortune while he was
writing about Henry's victories. In Professor Dowden's successors
this apotheosis went further; and it reached its height at a moment
of imperialistic enthusiasm, of ever-deepening conviction that the
commonplace shall inherit the earth, when somebody of reputation,
whose name I cannot remember, wrote that Shakespeare admired this
one character alone out of all his characters. The Accusation of
Sin produced its necessary fruit, hatred of all that was abundant,
extravagant, exuberant, of all that sets a sail for shipwreck, and
flattery of the commonplace emotions and conventional ideals of the
mob, the chief Paymaster of accusation.


IV

I cannot believe that Shakespeare looked on his Richard II. with any
but sympathetic eyes, understanding indeed how ill-fitted he was to be
King, at a certain moment of history, but understanding that he was
lovable and full of capricious fancy, 'a wild creature' as Pater has
called him. The man on whom Shakespeare modelled him had been full of
French elegancies, as he knew from Holinshed, and had given life a new
luxury, a new splendour, and been 'too friendly' to his friends, 'too
favorable' to his enemies. And certainly Shakespeare had these things
in his head when he made his King fail, a little because he lacked
some qualities that were doubtless common among his scullions, but
more because he had certain qualities that are uncommon in all ages.
To suppose that Shakespeare preferred the men who deposed his King is
to suppose that Shakespeare judged men with the eyes of a Municipal
Councillor weighing the merits of a Town Clerk; and that had he been
by when Verlaine cried out from his bed, 'Sir, you have been made by
the stroke of a pen, but I have been made by the breath of God,' he
would have thought the Hospital Superintendent the better man. He saw
indeed, as I think, in Richard II. the defeat that awaits all, whether
they be Artist or Saint, who find themselves where men ask of them a
rough energy and have nothing to give but some contemplative virtue,
whether lyrical phantasy, or sweetness of temper, or dreamy dignity, or
love of God, or love of His creatures. He saw that such a man through
sheer bewilderment and impatience can become as unjust or as violent as
any common man, any Bolingbroke or Prince John, and yet remain 'that
sweet lovely rose. ' The courtly and saintly ideals of the Middle Ages
were fading, and the practical ideals of the modern age had begun to
threaten the unuseful dome of the sky; Merry England was fading, and
yet it was not so faded that the Poets could not watch the procession
of the world with that untroubled sympathy for men as they are, as
apart from all they do and seem, which is the substance of tragic irony.

Shakespeare cared little for the State, the source of all our
judgments, apart from its shows and splendours, its turmoils and
battles, its flamings out of the uncivilized heart. He did indeed
think it wrong to overturn a King, and thereby to swamp peace in civil
war, and the historical plays from _Henry IV.