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The criticism on "Hamlet," which Wilhelm [Meister] makes, still remains the best criticism we have on that wonderful play. Very artfully is "Hamlet" made as it were a part of the novel; and Rosenkranz praises its introduction not only because it illustrates the affinity between Hamlet and Wilhelm, both of whom are reflective, vacillating characters, but because Hamlet is further allied to Wilhelm in making the Play a touchstone, whereby to detect the truth, and determine his own actions.
Goethe and Schiller, profoundly in earnest, and profoundly convinced of the great influences to be exercised by the Stage, endeavoured to create a German Drama which should stand high above the miserable productions then vitiating public taste. They aspired to create an Ideal Drama, in which the loftiest forms of Art should be presented. But they made a false step at the outset. Disgusted with the rude productions of the day, and distrusting the instincts of the public, they appealed to the cultivated few. Culture was set above Passion and Humour, Literature above Emotion. The stage was to be literary; which is saying, in other words, that it was not to be popular. Nor did experience enlighten them. ... The dramatic problem is: How to unite the demands of an audience, insisting on amusement, with the demands of Art, looking beyond amusement? There are many writers who can amuse, but who reach no higher aim; and there are writers who have lofty aims, but cannot amuse. In the Drama the first class is nearer the mark than the second; but the true dramatist is he who can unite the two. Shakespeare and Molière – to take the greatest examples – are as amusing as they are profound; and they live only because they continue to amuse. "Othello," "Hamlet," "Macbeth," "Tartuffe," "L'Ecole des Femmes," and the "Malade Imaginaire" may be enjoyed by the pit, and by the most cultivated critic. Goethe and Schiller fell into the error which in England, a few years ago, was preached as a gospel by a band of clever writers, who gloried in the title of "Unacted Dramatists;" the error of supposing a magnificent dome could be erected without a basis on our common earth, the error of supposing that a Drama could be more successful as Literature than as the reflection of national life. ...
So far did Goethe carry out his principle of placing Art foremost,[1] that he would not suffer the actors to forget the audience; his maxim was, that in a scene between two actors, the presence of the spectator should constantly be felt. Consequently the actors were not allowed to stand in profile, or to turn their backs upon the audience, or to speak at the back of the stage, under any pretext. They were to recite, not to be the characters represented. [Acclaimed actor] Heinrich Schmidt narrates how Goethe, in giving him lessons in acting, entered into the minutest details. In the celebrated monologue of Hamlet, "To be or not to be," he allowed Schmidt to place his right hand upon his chin, while the left hand supported the right elbow ; but would not permit this left hand to be closed like a fist, insisting that the two middle fingers should be held together, the thumb and the other two fingers kept apart.[2] In acting, he reversed his old artistic maxim, and insisted on Beauty first, Truth afterward: erst schön, dann wahr.[3] ...
[E]xperiments were made with Shakespeare, Calderon, Gozzi – with everything but the life of the people – and Weimar was proclaimed a great school of Art, in which the literary public religiously believed. But the other public? Goethe himself shall answer. "Here in Weimar they have done me the honour to perform my 'Iphigenia' and my 'Tasso,'" he said to Eckermann in his old age. "But how often? Scarcely once in three or four years. The public finds them tedious. Very probably. ... I really had the notion once that it was possible to found a German Drama ; but there was no emotion or excitement – all remained as it was before."
To found a German Drama by means of poetic works and antique restorations, was the delusion of one who was essentially not a dramatist. I have more than once denied to Goethe the peculiar genius which makes the dramatist; and my denial is not only supported by the evidence of his own works; it is, I think, conclusively established by his critical reflections on Shakespeare, and his theatrical treatment of Shakespeare's works. Profoundly as he appreciated the poet, he seems to me wholly to have misunderstood the dramatist. He actually asserts that Hamlet's Ghost, and the witches in "Macbeth," are examples of Shakespeare's representing what would better be imagined; "that in the reading, these figures are acceptable, but in the acting they disturb, nay repel, our emotion." So radical a misconception need not be dwelt on. The reader, who does not at once perceive it, may rest assured that he is wholly unacquainted with the secrets of dramatic art.
The cock in Aesop scratched a pearl into the light of day, and declared that to him it was less valuable than a grain of millet seed. The pearl is only a pearl to him who knows its value. And so it is with fine subjects; they are only fine in the hands of great artists. Where the requisite power exists, a happy subject is a fortune; without that power, it only serves to place the artist s incompetence in less doubtful light. Mediocre poets have tried their prentice hands at Faust; poets of undeniable genius have tried to master it; Goethe alone has seen it the object to which his genius was fully adequate; and has produced from it the greatest poem of modern times:
"An Orphic tale indeed,
A tale divine, of high and passionate thoughts,
To their own music chaunted."
... In "Faust" we see as in a mirror the eternal problem of our intellectual existence; and, beside it, varied lineaments of our social existence. It is at once a problem and a picture. Therein lies its fascination. The problem embraces questions of vital importance; the picture represents opinions, sentiments, classes, moving on the stage of life. The great problem is stated in all its nudity; the picture is painted in all its variety.
This twofold nature of the work explains its popularity ; and, what is more to our purpose, gives the clue to its secret of composition; a clue which all the critics I am acquainted with have overlooked; and although I cannot but feel that considerable suspicion must attach itself to any opinion claiming novelty on so old a subject, I hope the contents of this chapter will furnish sufficient evidence to justify its acceptance. The conviction first arose in my rnind as the result of an inquiry into the causes of the popularity of "Hamlet." The two works are so allied, and so associated together in every mind, that the criticism of the one will be certain to throw light on the other.
"Hamlet," in spite of a prejudice current in certain circles that if now produced for the first time it would fail, is the most popular play in our language. It amuses thousands annually, and it stimulates the minds of millions. Performed in barns and minor theatres oftener than in Theatres Royal, it is always and everywhere attractive. The lowest and most ignorant audiences delight in it. The source of the delight is twofold: First, its reach of thought on topics the most profound; for the dullest soul can feel a grandeur which it cannot understand, and will listen with hushed awe to the out-pourings of a great meditative mind obstinately questioning fate; Secondly, its wondrous dramatic variety. Only consider for a moment the striking effects it has in the Ghost; the tyrant murderer; the terrible adulterous queen; the melancholy hero, doomed to so awful a fate; the poor Ophelia, broken-hearted and dying in madness; the play within a play, entrapping the conscience of the King; the ghastly mirth of the gravediggers; the funeral of Ophelia interrupted by a quarrel over her grave betwixt her brother and her lover; and, finally, the horrid bloody dénouement. Such are the figures woven in the tapestry by passion and poetry. Add thereto the absorbing fascination of profound thoughts. It may indeed be called the tragedy of thought, for there is as much reflection as action in it; but the reflection itself is made dramatic, and hurries the breathless audience along, with an interest which knows no pause. Strange it is to notice in this work the indissoluble union of refinement with horrors, of reflection with tumult, of high and delicate poetry with broad, palpable, theatrical effects. The machinery is a machinery of horrors, physical and mental: ghostly apparitions – hideous revelations of incestuous adultery and murder – madness – Polonius killed like a rat while listening behind the arras – gravediggers casting skulls upon the state and desecrating the churchyard with their mirth – these and other horrors form the machinery by which moves the highest, the grandest, and the most philosophic of tragedies.
It is not difficult to see how a work so various should become so popular. "Faust," which rivals it in popularity, rivals it also in prodigality. Almost every typical aspect of life is touched upon; almost every subject of interest finds an expression in almost every variety of rhythm. It gains a large audience because it appeals to a large audience:
"Die Masse konnt ihr nur durch Masse zwingen,
Ein jeder sucht sich endlich selbst was aus.
Wer Vieles bringt wird manchein Etwas bringen,
Und jeder geht zufrieden aus dem Haus."[4]
... The rapidity and variety of the scenes give the work an air of formlessness, until we have seized the principle of organic unity binding these scenes into a whole. The reader who first approaches it is generally disappointed: the want of visible connection makes it appear more like a Nightmare than a work of Art. Even accomplished critics have been thus misled. Thus Coleridge, who battled so ingeniously for Shakespeare's Art, was utterly at a loss to recognise any unity in "Faust." "There is no whole in the poem," he said; "the scenes are mere magic-lantern pictures, and a large part of the work is to me very flat."[5] Coleridge, combating French critics, proclaimed (in language slightly altered from Schlegel), that the unity of a work of Art is "organic, not mechanic;" and he was held to have done signal service by pointing out the unity of Shakespeare's conception underlying variety of detail; but when he came to Goethe, whom he disliked, and of whom he always spoke unworthily, he could see nothing but magic-lantern scenes in variety of detail. If "Hamlet" is not a magic-lantern, "Faust" is not. The successive scenes of a magic-lantern have no connection with a general plan; have no dependence one upon the other. In the analysis just submitted to the reader, both the general plan and the interdependence of the scenes have, it is hoped, been made manifest. A closer familiarity with the work removes the first feeling of disappointment. We learn to understand it, and our admiration grows with our enlightenment. The picture is painted with so cunning a hand, and yet with so careless an air, that Strength is veiled by Grace, and nowhere seems straining itself in Effort.
Footnotes
[Renumbered for purposes of this transcription.]
All great authors are seers. "Perhaps if we should meet Shakspeare," says Emerson, "we should not be conscious of any steep inferiority: no, but of great equality; only he possessed a strange skill of using, of classifying his facts, which we lacked. For, notwithstanding our utter incapacity to preduce anything like HAMLET or OTHELLO, we see the perfect reception this wit and immense knowledge of life and liquid eloquence find in us all." This aggrandisement of our common stature rests on questionable ground. If our capacity of being moved by Shakspeare discloses a community, our incapacity of producing HAMLET no less discloses our inferiority. It is certain that could we meet Shakspeare we should find him strikingly like ourselves---with the same faculties, the same sensibilities, though not in the same degree. The secret of his power over us lies, of course, in our having the capacity to appreciate him. Yet we seeing him in the unimpassioned moods of daily life, it is more than probable that we should see nothing in him but what was ordinary; nay, in some qualities he would seem inferior. ...
Shakspeare, then, would probably not impress us with a sense of our inferiority if we were to meet him tomorrow. Most likely we should be bitterly disappointed; because, having formed our conception of him as the man who wrote HAMLET and OTHELLO we forget that these were not the preducts of his ordinary moods, but the manifestations of his power at white heat. In ordinary moods he must be very much as ordinary men, and it is in these we meet him. How notorious is the astonishment of friends and associates when any man's achievements suddenly emerge into renown. "They could never have believed it." Why should they? Knowing him only as one of their circle, and not being gifted with the penetration which discerns a latent energy, but only with the vision which discerns apparent results, they are taken by surprise. ...
It stands to reason that we should not rightly appreciate Shakspeare if we were to meet him simply because we should meet him as an ordinary man, and not as the author of HAMLET. Yet if we had a keen insight we should detect even in his quiet talk the marks of an original mind.
It is the special aim of Philosophy to discover and systematise the abstract relations of things; and for this purpose it is forced to allow the things themselves to drop out of sight, fixing attention solely on the quality immediately investigated, to the neglect of all other qualities. ... The aim of the poet is very different. He wishes to kindle the emotions by the suggestion of objects themselves; and for this purpose he must present images of the objects rather than of any single quality.
Imagination is obviously active in both. ... There is a slighter strain on the imagination of the poet, because of his greater freedom. He is not, like the philosopher, limited to the things which are, or were. ... Talking trees do not startle us in Virgil and Tennyson. Puck and Titania, Hamlet and Falstaff, are as true for us as Luther and Napoleon so long as we are in the realm of Art. We grant the poet a free privilege because he will use it only for our pleasure. In Science pleasure is not an object, and we give no licence.
Of late years there has been a reaction against conventionalism which called itself Idealism, in favour of DETAILISM which calls itself Realism. As a reaction it has been of service; but it has led to much false criticism, and not a little false art, by an obtrusiveness of Detail and a preference for the Familiar, under the misleading notion of adherence to Nature. If the words Nature and Natural could be entirely banished from language about Art there would be some chance of coming to a rational philosophy of the subject; at present the excessive vagueness and shiftiness of these terms cover any amount of sophism. The pots and pans of Teniers and Van Mieris are natural; the passions and humours of Shakspeare and Moliere are natural; the angels of Fra Angelico and Luini are natural; the Sleeping Fawn and Fates of Phidias are natural; the cows and misty marshes of Cuyp and the vacillations of Hamlet are equally natural. In fact the natural means TRUTH OF KIND. Each kind of character, each kind of representation, must be judged by itself. Whereas the vulgar error of criticism is to judge of one kind by another, and generally to judge the higher by the lower, to remonstrate with Hamlet for not having the speech and manner of Mr. Jones, to wish that Fra Angelico could have seen with the eyes of the Carracci, to wish verse had been prose, and that ideal tragedy were acted with the easy manner acceptable in drawing-rooms.
G. H. Lewes: The Life and Works of Geothe (Smith, Elder and co., London, 1864, republished by Robertson, Ashford and Bentley/Francis A. Niccolls & Co., London, UK, 1902), and The Principles of Success in Literature (1865; republished by Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish, MT, USA, 2006); online version made available by Project Gutenberg.
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