72 English Literature

More lovely than the monarch of the sky

In wanton Arethusa's azured arms, 9. William Shakespeare

And none but thou shalt be my paramour.

And just as remarkable is the long final speech of the play, when Faustus

is waiting for the Devil to carry him to hell-his c r y ' See where Christ's

blood streams in the firmament!' and his ultimate screams as, amid

thunder and lightning, he is dragged to the flames by demons:

My God, my God, look not so fierce on m e :

Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile:

Ugly hell, gape not, come not, Lucifer­

I'll burn my b o o k s . . . ah, Mephistophilis.

Despite faults of construction, obvious carelessness and other artistic

This chapter sho u ld begin and end with the ti tl e . F o r what more can I
flaws attendant on youth, Marlowe's achievement is a very important
say a b out Shakespeare than has already been said ? He is the s u bj e ct of
one. He is a great poet and dramatist who, had he not been killed un­
i n nu me ra ble b oo k s , w ritten in all the languages of the wo rl d . He has
timely in a tavern in L on d on , might we ll have b ecome g rea t er even than
been stu di ed e x h au stiv ely. Every line of every one of his pla y s has been
Sh a ke s p ea r e . An d not even Shakespeare could do all that Marlowe co uld
a n al y se d, re-analysed, e di ted , and re - edited ; the scanty details of his life
d o : the p e culia r p o w e r gained from car i cat ur e ; the pi led -u p magnificence
have been examined under countless mic ro sco p es ; the wo rl d has ju d g ed
of language; above all, 'Marlowe's mighty line'these are great indivi­
him and found him the greatest pla y wri g ht , p erha p s the greatest writer ,
dual achievements. There is nobo dy like Christo p her Marlowe.
of all time. This chapter can contain n o th i ng new .

A nd yet each age, p erha p s even each decade , can find some new as p ec t

of a great writer, sim p l y b eca u se , b ein g great, no one age, no one p erson

can see all of him. The twentieth - cent u r y Sha k espeare is different from

the nineteenth-century Sh akespeare; the Shakespeare of the 197os is

different from the Shakespeare of the 1 9 6 0 s . So it will go on as long as

civilisation lasts; and every new aspect of Shakespeare will be as true as

any other.

Is Sha k es p eare's life im p or t ant to u s ? Does it matter to us that he was

born in S tratford, made a p oss ib l y u n wise m arriage there, mi gra t ed to

Lon d on , a m assed a fortune, came b ack a wealthy citizen, and died­

according to tradition-of a fever after a drinking- b o u t? In a sense it

does, for, k nowing why S hakes p eare w ro te his pla y s, knowing what he Shakespeare's

wanted o u t of li fe, we can attune our view of the p lays to his view, under­ ams

stand them better for getting inside the skin of the man who wrote them.

It is conceivable that S hake s peare's main aim in life was to b ecome a

gentleman and not an artist, that the plays were a means to an end .

Sha k espeare w an t ed p ropert y -land and houses-and that meant ac­

qui r i n g mone y; the writing of the plays was p rima r ily a means of g ett i n g

m one y. The theatre was as good a means as any of making mo n ey, if

one ha pp ened to be a man of fair education and a certain verbal talent.

Shakespeare was such a man. His eye was never on posterity (except

perhaps in his p o e m s ) ; it was on the p resent . It was left to H emin g and

Condell-two fr iends of his-to bring out, after his death, the first col-

75
y English Literature William Shakespeare -r

lected edition of his plays; Shakespeare seemed to have little interest in

le zing an exact version of his life's work to the unknown future. Nor

did Shakespeare s e e "a to think of his plays as literature: he had no

interest in the reader in the study, only in the audience in the playhouse.

The playhouse was eve rything to Shakespeare the dramatist, and woe

betide us if we forget this fact. Whenever we start to read one of his plays

we should erect in our mind's eye a theatre something like Shakespeare's Conditions in

Glob e and ima gine the p l a y p e rfo r m e d the re. T his wi ll sa ve us from which Shakespeare

thinking-as the nineteenth-century scholars did of Hamlet or Mac­ worked

beth as ' r e a l p e o p l e ' and asking such questions as 'What was Hamlet

doing before the action of the play b e g i n s ? ' or ' Was Macbeth's child­

hood unhappy?' (There was once a very popular book called The

Girlhood o
f Shakespeare's Heroines.) This view of Shakespeare's characters

as 'real people', who can be separated from the plays in which they

appear, is wide of the mark. To Shakespeare, Hamlet was a part for Dick

Burbage and Touchstone a part for Armin. What was Hamlet doing

before the opening of the p l a y ? Probably drinking beer, brushing his

pr
-e hair, dusting h i s doublet. Hamlet only begins to exist as soon as he is dis­
•
covered on the stage in Act I Scene i i ; before that, he is a rather nervous

a c to r.
.' $
Why do so many of Shakespeare's heroines suddenly change into boys'
+

clothes? Because his heroines were boys and felt more comfortable (prob­

. ably acted better too) dressed as boys. Why does the Queen say that

Hamlet is ' f a t and scant of b r e a t h ' ? Because Burbage, w h o played the

part, probably was fat and scant of breath and not fe n c i n g very well. Why

disguise the fact? Why not admit i t to the audience? There was very little

of the 'let's pretend' in Shakespeare's theatre. No scenery, no period

cos tumes , no attempt at convincing the audience that they were in

ancient Rome, Greece or Britain. Julius Caesar and Coriolanus proclaimed

i n their costumes that they were p l a y s about Elizabethan England, or

and this is too subtle for our modern age plays about Elizabethan

England and ancient Rome at one and the same time. Similarly the stage

could be a real stage and a forest at the same time, a stage and a ship at

sea at the same time. The s w i ft n e s s of Shakespeare's a c t i o n , his rapid

changes of s cene, de mand-if n a t u ra l i s m is wanted -a m e d i u m as fl ui d

as the cinema, and it is n

i fi lm s that Shake sp e a r e h as c ome into h is

own for many people today.

Shakespeare is cinematic in his swift scene-changes, his swift action. Shakespeare's

But not in his attitude to language. In the cinema what we see is still verbal genius

more important than what we hear things have not changed greatly

s i n c e the da y s o f the ea rl y silent fi lms. B u t wo rds ar e a ll - i m por t a n t to

lasked ladies in t h e ' p i t ' at the old Globe Theatre.
Sha kespeare-not just , or even pri marily, the meanin g of w or d s , b ut the

s ou n d o f words. Shakes p e a r e w anted to batter or w o o or enchant the ea rs

of his audience with language, and i n any one of his plays early orlate
76 English Literature
r
!
William Shakespeare
1

the word-hoards are opened wide and the gold scattered lavishly. In early he n o r m a l l y prefers to take somebody else's p l o t or dig out a story from

plays-Romeo and Juliet or Richard II, for example-Shakespeare's verbal a history book or a popular pamphlet his interest is more in the telling

genius is a lyric one, a musical one. Long speeches, which often hold up of the story than the story itself. However, of the plays I shall mention

the action of the play, weave lovely poetic images, play with words and now, Shakespeare is certainly the author, either wholly or mostly.

sounds. In later plays, such as /Antony and Cleopatra and King Lear, lan­ Shakespeare's poetic (as opposed to dramatic) fame began with two

guage becomes abrupt, compressed, sometimes harsh, and it is often long poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape o
f Lucrece-and with the

hard to understand. But the words still pour out-there is never any first of the Sonnets which he continued writing alongside his plays. In

impression of careful slow composition, the leisurely search for the right his early London days he had, as patron and friend, the Earl of South­

word. We have it on the evidence of Heming and Condell, and also Ben ampton, and so his knowledge of the great, of such power-seekers as the

Jonson, that Shakespeare wrote with great speed and facility, rarely Earl of Essex and the whole busy world of court intrigue and politics, is

crossing anything out. This explains a certain impatience with language: not wholly second - hand. Among his fi rst plays are the three parts of

Shakespeare often cannot wait for the right word to come, and so invents Henry VI1a pageant of history with a patriotic flavour which, as Shake­

a word of his own. speare well knew, was a factor unifying all the diverse elements of his

Attitude to A concern with the sound of words implies a concern with the ears that audience. This was the time when national pride was greatest-the

audience hear the sound. Shakespeare is always greatly aware of his own Eliza­ Armada defeated, the English navy the strongest of Europe, the country

bethan audience, that mixed bag of aristocrats, wits, gallants, cut-purses, itself unified under a powerful monarch. The popularity of these plays

sailors and soldiers on leave, schoolboys and apprentices, which bears a was such as to excite antagonism in at least one fe ll ow-dramatist­

greater resemblance to the modem cinema audience than the modem Robert Greene, whose posthumous A Groatsworth o
f Wit Bought with a

theatre audience (in Europe, anyway). He tries to establish intimacy with f Repentance introduces a parodic form of Shakespeare's name
Million o

this audience, to bring it into the play, and his soliloquies are not speeches Shake-scene'-in a context of bitter envy. For the provision of new

which the actor pretends to be delivering to himself, but intimate com­ plays for the London theatres had been the responsibility, self-elected, of

munications with the audience. It was, anyway, difficult to pretend that men with Oxford and Cambr idge degrees University Wits, learned

the audience was not there: the daylight blazed on the audience, the poets like G reene, P eele, M a rl owe. Here was a newcomer from the pro­

audience surrounded three sides of the stage, some of the audience even vinc es, with no more than a g ra mmar-school ed u cation , who was beating

sat on the stage. The modern actor, cut off from his audience by foot­ the m asters of arts at their own game. Greene saw in Sha k es p eare a

lights and darkness, can pretend that they are rows of cabbages, not Johannes Factotum or jack-of-all-trades -a clever and ruthless oppor­

people at all. Not so the Elizabethan actor: he had to establish contact tunist who gave the pub li c what it wanted, not what it ought to have. If

with auditors who were critical , sometimes rowdy, certainly always day­ there was an appetite for the pornography of violence, Shakespeare was

lit fl esh - and - blood, not abstractions hidden by darkness. This audience well able to satisfy it, providing in Titus Andronicus a remarkable mixture

had to be given what it wanted, and, being a mixed bag, it wanted a of ra pe , torture, massacre , and even cannibalism. If the farce of mistaken

variet y of things - action and blood for the unle tt ered, fine ph ra ses and identity was required, Shakespeare cou l d , with his Comedy o
f Errors, out­

wit for the ga ll ants, thought and debate and learning for the more do Plautus and T erence in mad compli ca tion. F or those Roman comedi­

schola rl y, subtle humour for the re fi ned , boisterous clowning for the ans had been co nt ent to gain their laughs from the theme of twins who,

unrefined, love - interest for the ladies, song and dance for everybody. separated from birth, suddenly tu rn ed up in the same place unknown to

Shakespeare gives all these things; no other dramatist has given any­ each othe r. Shakespeare was not satis fi ed, as they had been , with one set

thing like as much. of twin s : he had to make their servants twins too. He was essentially an

Collaboration Before we take a bird's-eye view of Shakespeare's work, we had better outdoer, a writer who liked to go fu rther than his predecessors, whether

and competition remind o ur selves that it is not alwa y s easy or even possible to say of the in intrigue, violence, or sheer lyric beauty.

The lyrical Shakespeare first manifests himself in a series of romantic Early romantic
Elizabethan d ra ma , ' T his man w ro te that ; that man w ro te this .' C o ll ab ­

comedies of which the earliest Love's Labour's Lost-was conceivably comedies

oration was common, and Shakespeare p ro bably worked with Beaumont

and F letcher as well as other notable writers. M oreover, he occasiona ll r written for an aristocratic a udience, aimed indeed direc tly at the Earl of

took an existing play (such as the original Hamlet probably written by

Southampton ' s cir cl e. It is full of high-flown language in the manner of

J ohn Lyly, it m a kes subt le references to the court of Henry IV of France,

Kyd) and re -fa shioned it, always certainly imp ro ving i t. This re-fashio n ­

there is an attack undoubtedly meant to please Southampton-on that

ing was more congenial to him than the invention of new p l o t s ; in fact,
 William Shakespeare -q
78 English Literature

the bad summer and harvest of the year 1 5 9 4 on the dissension of the
man so adept at making enemies, S i r Walter Raleigh. It was certainly not
K i n g a n d Queen of the fairies, and, in the Pyramus rhodomontade of
a play for the sausage-chewers of the public theatres. To balance its
Bottom the weaver, satirises the elocutionary technique of Edward
polished exquisitries, Shakespeare wrote The Taming o
f the Shrew, whose
A l l e y n , chief tragedian of the Lord Admiral's Men. Shakespeare was by
comparative crudities are tempered by being presented as a play within
now a shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain's Men and resident play­
a play. Christopher Sly, a drunken tinker, is the victim of a practical joke
wright of the Theatre in Shoreditch. He was beginning to do well.
which has him believe that he is a lord who has lost his memory, and the
With Richard II Shakespeare returned to English history and the serial Histories
interlude of wife-taming is presented before him. It is hard not to feel
composition of a dramatic epic on the troubled era that was to resolve
that Shakespeare has put something of himself in the part of Sly-a
itself gloriously in the establishment of the Tudor dynasty. Richard III
Warwickshire tinker (or tinkerer with plays) a sly man who is taking the
had come, apparently, on the hot heels of the Henry VI trilogy and,
place in the world of drama of poor dead ChristopherMarlowe, a lowly
despite its melodramatic power, must be regarded as a product of an
provincial who has become the friend and prot~g~ of a noble lord. The
apprentice phase; Richard II was lyrical, subtle and, again, topical.
play that Sly sees is set in Padua, and Shakespeare is beginning to show
Shakespeare undoubtedly learned from Marlowe's Edward II how to put
some second-hand knowledge of north-eastern Italy-perhaps know­
together an historical play that should be more than a mere pageant of
ledge gained from the Italian John Florio, secretary to the Earl of
violence, but in the theme of the weak monarch and the usurping strong
Southampton. f Verona which has the first of the
The Two Gentlemen o
noble (Henry Bolingbroke deposes Richard II and turns himself into
exquisite incidental songs, ' W h o is Sylvia?'is flooded with Italian sun­
Henry IV) the followers of the Earl of Essex saw a tract for the times.
light, which we may think of as London-bottled Chianti, and the Italian
Elizabeth was, so many thought, becoming senile; in the absence of a
ambience (or specifically the Venetian ambience) is to haunt Shake­
declared heir to the throne should not the rule go to that great popular
speare's next productions.
hero-soldier and flower of chivalry-Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex?
Romeo and Juliet, with another Verona setting, is a remarkable lyrical
Whether Shakespeare deliberately intended his Richard II as a work of
tragedy, in which Shakespeare, with his opportunist eyes wide open,
propaganda we cannot know, but we do know that the play was soon to
tries to produce something to please every section of his multi-layered
be regarded as inflammatory and, indeed, was used as an act of inflamma­
public audience fights, low comedy, philosophical truisms (for the men
tion when a special performance of it preceded the Essex rebellion in
of the Inns of Court to write down in their notebooks), young love star­
1601.
crossed, untimely death. There is even, underlying the tale he took from

Topicality King John, which appeared in 1596, is an interlude in the great pro­
a popular poem, that streak of topicality which i s usually to be found in

even the remotest-seeming dramatic subject of Shakespeare's a notori­ cession of plays about the Plantagenets, and perhaps intended primarily

-apart from its entertainment value-as a comment on the bad times.

ous and murderous quarrel between two English families, the Longs and
The Spanish were causing trouble again, the French had allowed them
the Danvers brothers, the latter friends of Southampton who, despite
to take Calais, and the play is full of fickle France and defiant England.
the issue of warrants for their arrest, arranged for them to escape to

France. There is the same topicality in The Merchant of Venice, which,

There are also evident references to the death of Shakespeare's son

though following Marlowe's f Malta in its conventional anti­

The Jew o
Hamnet, which took place in that year:

semitism, exploits the particular feelings aroused by the allegation (on Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

the part of the Earl of Essex, Southampton's friend and hero) that Queen Lies i n his bed, walks up and down with me,

Elizabeth's Jewish physician Lopez was a Spanish spy. Lopez was Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

hanged, drawn and quartered; Shylock, whose sole crime is usury, is too Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

complex for easy condemnation.

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.

AMidsummer Night's Dream has a mad sunlit, or moonlit, setting which

combines mythical thens with Shakespeare's own Warwickshire. It was a painful year for Shakespeare, and a certain failure of inspiration

Written for the nuptials, one supposes, of the Lady Elizabeth Vere makes this play the worst, probably, of his maturity, but the year ended

(whom Southampton had been ordered by his godfather Lord Burleigh with his being confirmed in the rank of gentleman, complete with coat

to marry, though he preferred to refuse and pay a fine of five thousand of arms, and his making arrangements to purchase New Place, the finest

pounds) and the Earl of Derby, it extends the fairy music of Mercutio's house in Stratford. F ro m then on the plays breathe maturity and

Queen Mab speech in Romeo and Juliet into a whole play. It also blames confidence.
 l
8o English Literature i William Shakespeare 8r

I
The two Henry I V plays are direct sequels of Richard II, but they are l references to the disgraced Mistress Mary Fitton, called Mall, and Sir

more than mere histories. The character of Sir J o h n Falstaff, who h o l d s W i l l i a m Knollys, Controller of the Queen's Household, who, though

up the act i on gloriousl y , i s , as L. C. Knights put it, the meat su rrounded married and old, fell in love with her. Mall voglio I want Mall; the

by dry his to rical bread. A character of huge popularity, he was to ap p e ar character of Malvoglio homes intimately to the court for which the play

again-it is believed by the Queen's own request-in The Merry Wies was written as an entertainment suitable for the last day of Christmas.

o
f WWindsor, where he is much diminished by being shown ridiculously in Julius Caesar and Troilus and Cressida the one a dark tragedy of Roman

love, or lust . Lechery does not suit Falstaff; and he has played out his w i t history, the other a dark comedy of Greek myth seem to reflect Shake­

in a more co n g enial setting. Henry V, the most swingeingly patriotic of speare's own perturbations about the troubled times in which the re­

all the p la y s , one may think of as perhaps opening up the new G lo b e bellion of the Earl of Essex, disgraced at court but s t i ll the flower of

Theatre in 1599. Although the theme was the conquest of France, chivalry to many, was preparing itself. Shakespeare's concern is with the

Shakespeare undoubtedly had in mind the impending conquest of Ire­ need for order to be maintained in the state ' Take but degree away,

land-a conquest unfulfilled, alas-by the Earl of Essex. The C h oru s of untune that string,/ And hark! what discord fo l l o w s . . . ' If Troilus and

Henry V, who reminds us that the new theatre is a ' w ooden O ' , makes a Cressida failed as a play (and there is evidence that i t had only one per­

direct reference to hi m : formance), it was because it preached too much about order and the need

to maintain degree. When the Earl of Essex revolted and tried to smash
Were now the general of our gracious empress­
the order of the English commonweal, Shakespeare gave up political
As in good time he may-from Ireland coming,
preaching. He was silent for a whole year, or very nearly, and then he
Bringing rebellion broach~d on his sword,
summed up the whole of the dying Elizabethan age-the conflict be­
How many would the peaceful City quit
tween inherited mediaeval thought and the new scepticism, the inherent
To welcome h i m !
sickness of the world-in Hamlet. It is perhaps this one play, of all the

But, with the shamed return of unvictorious Essex, these patriotic en­ plays ever written, that the world would least willingly be without, and

largements turned sour, and, indeed, English history became a danger­ it ushers in a period of Shakespeare's maturity which is marked by dis­

ous thing to present upon the stage: it was too easy to find, in any aspect illusion and hopelessness.

of England's past, seditious parallels to the present. History from now That great phase belongs to the Jacobean period, not the Elizabethan. Disillusion

on had to be remote and foreign--Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, and any other Queen Elizabeth I died in 1 6 0 3 , and James VI of Scotland united two

tales of ancient Rome Shakespeare could filch from Suetonius and kingdoms as James I of England. The Lord Chamberlain'sMen became

Plutarch. the King's Men, and Shakespeare became a Groom of the Royal Bed­

More comedies But first there was a new vein of comedy to tap, along with a new chamber. None of the euphoria of this promotion, and his undoubted

approach to that essential element in Elizabethan comedy-the clown. establishment as greatest poet of his time, is found reflected in his work,

Will Kemp, with his leers, trippings and lewd improvisations, had been even in the comedies. All's Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure

the highly popular funny man of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, but now are not meant primarily for laughs. Macbeth, which, with its Scottish

Sha_kespeare was conceiving of a more subtle, complex clown, one who setting, honours a Scottish king, is, on one level, a compendium of

could sing sad songs and stick to the script. Kemp left the company, and things that interested James I-his own ancestry, the prevalence of

Robin Armin took his place. For him Shakespeare wrote the parts of witchcraft-but, on another, it is a very bitter vision of l i fe : ' O u t , out,

Touchstone in As You Like It and Feste in Twelfth Night. As You Like It brief candle.' King Lear and Timon o
f Athens are near-hysterical denuncia­

is a fine pastoral comedy with a melancholy character called Jaques­ tions of ingratitude (what ingratitude had the poet himself had recently

Shakespeare's attempt at outdoing Chapman, who had created a notable to suffer?). Coriolanus has, in its title role, a man who despises the mob,

black-suited melancholic called Dowceser-who recites a speech that perhaps as Shakespeare was learning to despise it. Antony and Cleopatra

makes a direct reference to the motto of the Globe Theatre, woven on its soars above mere history and finds the one reality though bitterly

flag under the representation of Hercules carrying the world on his destroyed by the world-in a human love built on corruption and

shoulders: Totus mundus agit histrionem, loosely translated as 'All the irresponsibility.

world's a stage'. Twelfth Night, a strangely melancholy tapestry, despite Shakespeare ha lf-retired to his great house in Stratford in 161o, and, The late

hard-drinking Sir Toby Belch and the foolish Sir Andrew Aguecheek, finding comfort in his daughters J udith and Susannah, reflects some­ comedies

has lost topicalities (lost to all but the probing scholar of court-life) in its thing of the redemptive power of an innocent female s o u l in the last great
 ors

82 English Literature

comedies. The Winter's Tale, Pericles (perhaps not so great and perhaps

o n l y h a l f Shakespeare's work) and The Tempest are in a new and d e l i c i o u s

10. Other Elizabethan
vein of l y r i c i s m ; the tragic bitterness has been purged, the magician

buries his staff and awaits his serene end. In 1 6 1 35 the Globe Playhouse Dramatists
was burned to the ground during the first performance of Henry VIII,

which Shakespeare seems to have written in collaboration with J o h n

Fletcher, one of the coming young men. Another Globe was to be b u i l t

but it would not concern the living Shakespeare. He had put so much of

himself into the life of that ' w o o d e n O ' that its destruction must have

been like the destruction of a faculty or a limb. Although he still had

three years to live, the end of the great Globe marks the end of his

career. It was, to put it mildly, one of the most astonishing literary

careers in all historv. ·

Wherein chiefly lies Shakespeare's greatness? It would seem that i t When we study Shakespeare at school, we have a vague picture of him

lies in a consistency of achievement. Many men who wrote plays in h i s as not merely dominating the Elizabethan theatre, but standing alone.

lifetime produced single works of great excellence, but none achieved This is because plays by his contemporaries are so rarely set for exam­

the same consistency of excellence as, from about 1593 on, he showed inations below the Un iversity or University Entrance level. It should be

in play after play. He could do as well in tragedy as the tragic specialists, the task of a history like this to co rrect the impression of Sha k espeare's

and in astonishing works like Hamlet-far better. He could match the ' u n i q u e n e s s ' and to show the ri c hness of the El i za bethan theatre gener­

comic specialists and, moreover, was able to do strange and great things all. The t ro u b le is that the ri c hness is so incredible , the men of t a lent so

in fields which hardly anyone else touched ' d a r k ' comedy like Meri. many, and space so short, that only the most superficial impression of the

for Measure, the exalted vision of The Tempest. It is an all-round dramatic dra matic achievements of that age can be given . I s h a ll attem p t to do

excellence, and it is served by a supreme gift of language. We remember li t tl e m ore than m ention p lays that are wo rt h y to s ta nd by plays of

a few characters from other playwrights-superb creations like the S hakespeare , and to give the names of their authors .

Duchess of Mal or Tamburlaine or De Flores or Volpone- but nobodr Shakespeare's greatest contemporary (afterMarlowe) was Ben J o n s o n Ben Jonson

gives us so vast a gallery of living personages as Shakespeare. He en­ (1574-1637). Jonson's aims were different from those of his frie nd:

closes the playwrights of his time; he is twenty men in one, and he is also indeed, so different, that we feel from J o n s o n ' s writings about Shake­

himself, enigmatic but curiously sympathetic. His greatness was summed speare that he did not fully a pp reciate, or even like, the works of his

up by D u m a s : ' N e x t to God, Shakespeare has created most.' We ma senior. Shakes p eare fo ll owed no rules and had no dramatic theory;
well leave it at that. ·
J onson was a classicist, whose masters were the an c ients, and whose

every play was composed on an established ancient pattern. Jonson's

plays genera ll y obey the rules o f ' u n i t y ' : the action t a kes less than a day

and the scene never moves from the initial settin g -Venice in Volpone,

a London house in The Alchemist. Moreover, Jonson had a theory of

dramatic character already out-of-date in his own day. While Shake­

speare sees human beings as strange mixtures, walkin g m asses of conflict

and c ontradiction, unpredi c table, always surprising, Jonson sees them

as very simple and al m ost mechanical c om b inations of four elements.

This was a mediaeval idea: the human soul was made out o f ' hu m ours'

-sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, melan c holic-whi c h, mixed in various

proportions, gave different hu m an ' t y p e s ' . J o ns o n ' s characters are all

humours', and his comedy Every Man in His Humour seems to be little

more than a de m onstration of the theory. In e ac h character one quality

predominates: a m orousness, cowardice, avarice, irascibility, boastful-

83