William Shakespeare: A Critical Study. Georg Brandes

Adr. It was the copy of our conference. In bed, he slept not for my urging it: At board, he fed not for my urging it; Alone, it was the subject of my theme; In company, I often glanced it: Still did I tell him it was vile and bad. Abb. And therefore came it that the man was mad: The venom clamours of a jealous woman Poison more deadly than a mad dog's tooth. It seems, his sleeps were hinder'd by thy railing, And thereof comes it that his head is light. Thou say'st, his meat was sauc'd with thy upbraidings: Unquiet meals make ill digestions; Thereof the raging fire of fever bred: And what's a fever but a fit of madness?"

      At least as striking is the culminating point of Shakespeare's adaptation of the old play called The Taming of a Shrew. He took very lightly this piece of task-work, executed, it would seem, to the order of his fellow-players. In point of diction and metre it is much less highly finished than others of his youthful comedies; but if we compare the Shakespearian play (in whose title the Shrew receives the definite instead of the indefinite article) point by point with the original, we obtain an invaluable glimpse into Shakespeare's comic, as formerly into his tragic, workshop. Few examples are so instructive as this.

Many readers have no doubt wondered what was Shakespeare's design in presenting this piece, of all others, in the framework which we Danes know in Holberg's[1] Jeppe paa Bjerget. The answer is, that he had no particular design in the matter. He took the framework ready-made from the earlier play, which, however, he throughout remodelled and improved, not to say recreated. It is not only far ruder and coarser than Shakespeare's, but does not redeem its crude puerility by any raciness or power.

      Nowhere does the difference appear more decisively than in the great speech in which Katharine, cured of her own shrewishness, closes the play by bringing the other rebellious women to reason. In the old play she begins with a whole cosmogony: "The first world was a form without a form," until God, the King of kings, "in six days did frame his heavenly work":—

      "Then to his image he did make a man,

       Olde Adam, and from his side asleepe

       A rib was taken, of which the Lord did make

       The woe of man, so termd by Adam then,

       Woman for that by her came sinne to vs,

       And for her sin was Adam doomd to die.

       As Sara to her husband, so should we

       Obey them, loue them, keepe and nourish them

       If they by any meanes doo want our helpes,

       Laying our handes vnder theire feete to tread,

       If that by that we might procure there ease."

      And she herself sets the example by placing her hand under her husband's foot.

      Shakespeare omits all this theology and skips the Scriptural authorities, but only to arrive at the self-same result:—

      "Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow,

       And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,

       To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.

       . . . . . . . . .

       A woman mov'd is like a fountain troubled,

       Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;

       And, while it is so, none so dry or thirsty

       Will deign to sip, or touch one drop of it.

       Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,

       Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,

       And for thy maintenance; commits his body

       To painful labour, both by sea and land,

       To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,

       Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;

       And craves no other tribute at thy hands, But love, fair looks, and true obedience, Too little payment for so great a debt. Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband; And when she's froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel, And graceless traitor to her loving lord?"

      In these adapted plays, then, partly from the nature of their subjects and partly because his thoughts ran in that direction, we find Shakespeare chiefly occupied with the relation between man and woman, and specially between husband and wife. They are not, however, his first works. At the age of five-and-twenty or thereabouts Shakespeare began his independent dramatic production, and, following the natural bent of youth and youthful vivacity, he began it with a light and joyous comedy.

      We have several reasons, partly metrical (the frequency of rhymes), partly technical (the dramatic weakness of the play), for supposing Love's Labour's Lost to be his earliest comedy. Many allusions point to 1589 as the date of this play in its original form. For instance, the dancing horse mentioned in i. 2 was first exhibited in 1589; the names of the characters, Biron, Longaville, Dumain (Duc du Maine), suggest those of men who were prominent in French politics between 1581 and 1590; and, finally, when we remember that the King of Navarre, as the Princess's betrothed, becomes heir to the throne of France, we cannot but conjecture a reference to Henry of Navarre, who mounted that throne precisely in 1589. The play has not, however, reached us in its earliest form; for the title-page of the quarto edition shows that it was revised and enlarged on the occasion of its performance before Elizabeth at Christmas 1597. There are not a few places in which we can trace the revision, the original form having been inadvertently retained along with the revised text. This is apparent in Biron's long speech in the fourth act, sc. 3:—

      "For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,

       Have found the ground of study's excellence,

       Without the beauty of a woman's face?

       From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:

       They are the ground, the books, the academes,

       From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire."

      This belongs to the older text. Farther on in the speech, where we find the same ideas repeated in another and better form, we have evidently the revised version before us:—

      "For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,

       In leaden contemplation have found out

       Such fiery numbers, as the prompting eyes

       Of beauty's tutors have enrich'd you with?

       . . . . . . . .

       From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:

       They sparkle still the right Promethean fire,

       They are the books, the arts, the academes,

       That show, contain, and nourish all the world;

       Else none at all in aught proves excellent."

      The last two acts, which far surpass the earlier ones, have evidently been revised with special care, and some details, especially in the parts assigned to the Princess and Biron, now and then reveal Shakespeare's maturer style and tone of feeling.

      No original source has been found for this first attempt of the young Stratfordian in the direction of comedy. For the first, and perhaps for the last time, he seems to have sought for no external stimulus, but set himself to evolve everything from within. The result is that, dramatically, the play is the slightest he ever wrote. It has scarcely ever been performed even in England, and may, indeed, be described as unactable.

      It is a play of two motives. The first, of course, is love—what else should be the theme of a youthful poet's first comedy?—but love without a trace of passion, almost without deep personal feeling, a love which is half make-believe, tricked out in word-plays. For the second theme of the comedy is language itself, poetic expression—for its own sake—a subject round which all the meditations of the young poet must necessarily have centred, as, in the midst of a cross-fire of new impressions, he set about the formation of a vocabulary