Montaigne and Shakspere Part 11

[155] Edition cited, i, 622-623.

[156] _Port Royal_, 4ieme edit., ii. 400, _note_.

[157] B. iii, Chap. 13.

[158] "In the midst of our compa.s.sion, we feel within I know not what bitter sweet touch of malign pleasure in seeing others suffer." (Comp. La Rochefoucauld, _Pensee_ 104.)

[159] B. iii, Chap. 1.

[160] i, Chap. 38.

[161] _L'Angleterre au Seizieme Siecle_, p. 133.

[162] This seems to be the ideal implied in the criticisms even of Mr. Lowell and Mr. Dowden.

[163] _Hamlet: ein Tendenzdrama Sheakspere's_ [_sic_ throughout book] _gegen die skeptische und cosmopolitische Weltanschanung des Michael de Montaigne_, von G. F.

Stedefeld, Kreisgerichtsrath, Berlin. 1871.

[164] B. i, Chap. 26.

[165] It is not disputed that the plot existed beforehand in Whetstone's _Promos and Ca.s.sandra_; and there was probably an intermediate drama.

[166] Edit. Firmin-Didot, i, 590.

[167] _Oxford Essays_, p. 279. Sterling, from his Christian-Carlylese point of view, declared of Montaigne that "All that we find in him of Christianity would be suitable to apes and dogs rather than to rational and moral beings" (_London and Westminster Review_, July, 1838, p.

340.)

[168] Sainte-Beuve has noted how in the essay on Prayer he added many safeguarding clauses in the later editions.

[169] See Mr. Spedding's essay, so ent.i.tled, in the _Cornhill Magazine_, August, 1880.

[170] Art. cited, _end_.

[171] Note cited by Mr. Spedding. Cp. Introd. to _Leopold_ Shakspere p. lx.x.xvii.

[172] Lear once (iii. 4) says he will pray; but his religion goes no further.

[173] See the pa.s.sage cited above in section iii in connection with _Measure for Measure_.

[174] Act iv, Sc. 2.

[175] Act i, Sc. 2.

[176] B. i, Chap. 20.

[177] B. i, Chap. 30.

[178] Edit. Firmin-Didot, i, 202.

[179] _Ibid._, pp. 477-478.

[180] _Here_, it may be said, there is a trace of the influence of Bruno's philosophy; and it may well be that Shakspere did not spontaneously strike out the thought for himself. But I am not aware that any parallel pa.s.sage has been cited.

[181] Fleay's _Life_, pp. 138, &c.

[182] B. i, Chap. 42.

[183] B. ii, Chap. 12. (Edit. cited, i. 501.)

[184] _Midsummer Nights Dream_, Act ii. Sc. 2.

[185] See his Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden

[186] Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines of the Life of Shakspere_, 5th ed., p. 175.

[187] I find even Mr. Appleton Morgan creating a needless difficulty on this head. In his _Shakspere in Fact and Criticism_, already cited, he writes (p. 316): "I find him ... living and dying so utterly unsuspicious that he had done anything of which his children might care to hear, that he never even troubled himself to preserve the ma.n.u.script of or the literary property in a single one of the plays which had raised him to affluence." As I have already pointed out, there is no reason to suppose that Shakspere could retain the owners.h.i.+p of his plays any more than did the other writers who supplied his theatre. They belonged to the partners.h.i.+p. Besides, he could not possibly have published as _his_ the existing ma.s.s, so largely made up of other men's work. His fellow-players did so without scruple after his death, being simply bent on making money.

[188] Sonnet 110. Compare the next.

[189] B. ii, Chap. 10.

[190] B. i, Chap. 38.

[191] This may be presumed to have been written between 1603 and 1609, the date of the publication of the Sonnets. As Mr.

Minto argues, "the only sonnet of really indisputable date is the 107th, containing the reference to the death of Elizabeth" (_Characteristics_, as cited, p. 220). As the first 126 sonnets make a series, it is reasonable to take those remaining as of later date.

[192] It more particularly echoes, however, two pa.s.sages in the nineteenth essay: "There is no evil in life for him that hath well conceived, how the privation of life is no evil.

To know how to die, doth free us from all subjection and constraint." "No man did ever prepare himself to quit the world more simply and fully ... than I am fully a.s.sured I shall do. The deadest deaths are the best"

[193] ii, 12.

[194] iii, 11.

[195] iii, 4.

[196] In all probability this character existed in the previous play, the name being originally, as was suggested last century by Dr. Farmer, a mere variant of "Canibal."

[197] iii, 4.

[198] Act ii, Sc. 2.

[199] iii, 9.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.