But perhaps the loftiness of Shakespeare’s conception of life is such as, even though he does not satisfy the demands of esthetics, discloses to us so new and important a view of life that in consideration of its value all his artistic defects become unnoticeable. This is indeed what some belauders of Shakespeare say. Gervinus plainly says that besides Shakespeare’s significance in the sphere of dramatic poetry, in which in his opinion he is the equal of “Homer in the sphere of the epic; Shakespeare being the greatest judge of the human soul, is a teacher of most indisputable ethical authority, and the most select leader in the world and in life.”
In what then does this indubitable authority of the most select teacher in the world and in life consist? Gervinus devotes the concluding chapter of his second volume (some fifty pages) to an explanation of this.
The ethical authority of this supreme teacher of life, in the opinion of Gervinus, consists in the following: “Shakespeare’s moral view starts from the simple point,” says Gervinus, “that man is born with powers of activity,” and therefore, first of all, says Gervinus, Shakespeare regarded it as “an obligation to use our inherent power of action.” (As if it were possible for man not to act!)[140]
“_Die thatkräftigen Männer, Fortinbras, Bolingbroke, Alcibiades, Octavius spielen hier die gegensätzlichen Rollen gegen die verschiedenen Thatlosen; nicht ihre Charaktere verdienen ihnen Allen ihr Glück und Gedeihen etwa durch eine grosse Ueberlegenheit ihre Natur, sondern trotz ihrer geringern Anlage stellt sich ihre Thatkraft an sich über die Unthätigkeit der Anderen hinaus, gleichviel aus wie schöner Quelle diese Passivität, aus wie schlechter jene Thatigkeit fliesse._”[141]
That is to say, that active people like Fortinbras, Bolingbroke, Alcibiades and Octavius, Gervinus informs us, are contrasted by Shakespeare with various characters who do not display energetic activity. And, according to Shakespeare, happiness and success are attained by people who possess this active character, not at all as a result of their superiority of nature. On the contrary, in spite of their inferior talents, their energy in itself always gives them the advantage over the inactive people, no matter whether their inactivity results from excellent impulses, or the activity of the others from base ones. Activity is good, inactivity is evil. Activity transforms evil into good, says Shakespeare, according to Gervinus. “Shakespeare prefers the principle of Alexander to that of Diogenes,” says Gervinus. In other words, according to him, Shakespeare prefers death and murder from ambition, to self-restraint and wisdom.[142]
According to Gervinus, Shakespeare considers that humanity should not set itself ideals, but that all that is necessary is healthy activity, and a golden mean in everything. Indeed Shakespeare is so imbued with this wise moderation that, in the words of Gervinus, he even allows himself to deny Christian morality, which makes exaggerated demands on human nature. “How thoroughly penetrated Shakespeare was with this principle of wise moderation,” says Gervinus, “is shewn perhaps most strongly in this, that he ventured even to oppose Christian laws which demand an overstraining of human nature; for he approved not that the limits of duty should be extended beyond the intention of nature. He taught therefore the wise and human medium between the Christian and heathen precepts” (p. 917)--a reasonable mean, natural to man, between Christian and pagan injunctions--on the one hand, love of one’s enemies, and on the other, hatred of them!
“That it is possible to do too much in good things, is an express doctrine of Shakespeare, both in word and example.... Thus excessive liberality ruins Timon, whilst moderate generosity keeps Antonio in honour; the genuine ambition which makes Henry V great overthrows Percy, in whom it rises too high. Exaggerated virtue brings Angelo to ruin; and when in those near him the excess of punishment proves harmful and cannot hinder sin, then mercy, the most Godlike gift that man possesses, is also exhibited in its excess, as the producer of sin.”
Shakespeare, says Gervinus, taught that one _may do too much good_. He teaches, says Gervinus, “that morality, like politics, is a matter so complicated with relations, conditions of life, and motives, that it is impossible to bring it to final principles” (p. 918).
“In Shakespeare’s opinion (and here also he is one with Bacon and Aristotle) there is no positive law of religion or morals which could form a rule of moral action in precepts ever binding and suitable for all cases.”
Gervinus most clearly expresses Shakespeare’s whole moral theory by saying that Shakespeare does not write for those classes for whom definite religious principles and laws are suitable (that is to say, for 999 out of 1000 of mankind), but for the cultivated, who have made their own a healthy tact in life and such an instinctive feeling as, united with conscience reason and will, can direct them to worthy aims of life. But even for these fortunate ones, in the opinion of Gervinus, this teaching may be dangerous if it is taken incompletely. It must be taken whole. “There are classes,” says Gervinus, “whose morality is best provided for by the positive letter of religion and law; but for such as these Shakespeare’s writings are in themselves inaccessible; they are only readable and comprehensible to the cultivated, of whom it can be required that they should appropriate to themselves the healthy measure of life, and that self-reliance in which the guiding and inherent powers of conscience and reason, united with the will, are, when consciously apprehended, worthy aims of life” (p. 919). “But even for the cultivated also, Shakespeare’s doctrine may not always be without danger.... The condition on which his doctrine is entirely harmless is this, that it should be fully and completely received and without any expurging and separating. Then it is not only without danger, but it is also more unmistakable and more infallible, and therefore more worthy of our confidence, than any system of morality can be,” (p. 919).
And in order to accept it all, one should understand that according to his teaching it is insane and harmful for an individual to rise against, or “disregard the bonds of religion and the state” (p. 921). For Shakespeare would abhor a free and independent personality who strong in spirit should oppose any law in politics or morals and should disregard the union of the state and religion “which has kept society together for centuries” (p. 921). “For in his opinion the practical wisdom of man would have no higher aim than to carry into society the utmost possible nature and freedom, but for that very reason, and that he might maintain sacred and inviolable the natural laws of society, he would respect existing forms, yet at the same time penetrate into their rational substance with sound criticism, not forgetting nature in civilization, nor, equally, civilization in nature.” Property, the family, the state, are sacred. But the aspiration to recognize the equality of man, is insane. “It’s realization would bring the greatest harm to humanity” (p. 925).
“No man has fought more strongly against rank and class prejudices, than Shakespeare, but how could his liberal principles have been pleased with the doctrines of those who would have done away with the prejudices of the rich and cultivated, only to replace them with the interests and prejudices of the poor and uncultivated? How would this man, who allures so eloquently to the course of honour, have approved, if in annulling rank, degrees of merit, distinction, we extinguish every impulse to greatness, and by the removal of all degrees, ‘shake the ladder to all high designs’? If indeed no surreptitious honour and false power were longer to oppress mankind, how would the poet have acknowledged the most fearful force of all, the power of barbarity? In consequence of these modern doctrines of equality, he would have apprehended that everything would resolve itself into power; or if this were not the final lot which awaited mankind from these aspirations after equality, if love between nationalities and endless peace were not that ‘nothing’ of impossibility, as Alonso expresses it in the _Tempest_, but could be an actual fruit of these efforts after equality, then the poet would have believed with this time the old age and decrepitude of the world to have arrived, in which it were worthless to the active to live” (p. 925).
Such is Shakespeare’s view of life as explained by his greatest exponent and admirer. Another of the recent belauders of Shakespeare, Brandes, adds the following:
“No one, of course, can preserve his life quite pure from injustice, from deception, and from doing harm to others, but injustice and deception are not always vices, and even the harm done to other people is not always a vice: it is often only a necessity, a legitimate weapon, a right. At bottom, Shakespeare had always held that there were no such things as unconditional duties and absolute prohibitions. He had never, for example, questioned Hamlet’s right to kill the King, scarcely even his right to run his sword through Polonius. Nevertheless he had hitherto been unable to conquer a feeling of indignation and disgust when he saw around him nothing but breaches of the simplest moral laws. Now, on the other hand, the dim divinations of his earlier years crystallised in his mind into a coherent body of thought: no commandment is unconditional; it is not in the observance or non-observance of an external fiat that the merits of an action, to say nothing of a character, consists: everything depends upon the volitional substance into which the individual, as a responsible agent, transmits the formal imperative at the moment of decision.”[143]
In other words Shakespeare now sees clearly that the morality of the aim is the only true, the only possible one; so that, according to Brandes, Shakespeare’s fundamental principle, for which he is extolled, is that _the end justifies the means_. Action at all costs, the absence of all ideals, moderation in everything, the maintenance of established forms of life, and the maxim that “the end justifies the means.”
If one adds to this a Chauvinistic English patriotism, expressed in all his historical plays: a patriotism according to which the English throne is something sacred, the English always defeat the French, slaughtering thousands and losing only scores, Jeanne d’Arc is a witch, Hector and all the Trojans--from whom the English are descended--are heroes while the Greeks are cowards and traitors, and so forth: this is the view of life of the wisest teacher of life according to his greatest admirer. And anyone who reads attentively the works of Shakespeare cannot but acknowledge that the attribution of this view of life to Shakespeare by those who praise him is perfectly correct.
The value of every poetical work depends on three qualities:
1) The content of the work: the more important the content, that is to say, the more important it is for the life of man, the greater is the work.
2) The external beauty achieved by the technical methods proper to the particular kind of art. Thus in dramatic art the technical method will be: that the characters should have a true individuality of their own, a natural and at the same time a touching plot, a correct presentation on the stage of the manifestation and development of feelings, and a sense of proportion in all that is presented.
3) Sincerity, that is to say that the author should himself vividly feel what he expresses. Without this condition there can be no work of art, as the essence of art consists in the infection of the contemplator of a work by the author’s feeling. If the author has not felt what he is expressing, the recipient cannot become infected by the author’s feeling, he does not experience any feeling, and the production cannot be classed as a work of art.
The content of Shakespeare’s plays, as is seen by the explanations of his greatest admirers, is the lowest, most vulgar view of life, which regards the external elevation of the great ones of the earth as a genuine superiority; despises the crowd, that is to say, the working classes; and repudiates not only religious, but even any humanitarian, efforts directed towards the alteration of the existing order of society.
The second condition is also absent in Shakespeare except in his handling of scenes in which a movement of feelings is expressed. There is in his works a lack of naturalness in the situations, the characters lack individuality of speech, and a sense of proportion is also wanting, without which such works cannot be artistic.
The third and chief condition--sincerity--is totally absent in all Shakespeare’s works. One sees in all of them an intentional artificiality; it is obvious that he is not in earnest but is playing with words.