Samuel Taylor Coleridge

From the 1811-12 Lectures on Shakespeare

Recorded by John Payne Collier and published 1856.

[1]  It is a known but unexplained phenomenon that among the ancients statuary rose to such a degree of perfection as almost to baffle the hope of imitating it, and to render the chance of excelling it absolutely impossible; yet painting, at the same period, notwithstanding the admiration bestowed upon it by Pliny and others, has been proved to be an art of much later growth, as it was also of far inferior quality.  I remember a man of high rank, equally admirable for his talents and his taste, pointing to a common signpost, and saying that had Titian never lived, the richness of representation by colour, even there, would never have been attained.  In that mechanical branch of painting, perspective, it has been shown that the Romans were very deficient.  The excavations and consequent discoveries, at Herculaneum and elsewhere, prove the Roman artists to have been guilty of such blunders as to give plausibility to the assertions of those who maintain that the ancients were wholly ignorant of perspective.  However, that they knew something of it is established by Vitruvius in the introduction to his second book.

[2]  Something of the same kind, as I endeavoured to explain in a previous lecture, was the case with the drama of the ancients, which has been imitated by the French, Italians, and by various writers in England since the Restoration.  All that is there represented seems to be, as it were, upon one flat surface; the theme, if we may so call it in reference to music, admits of nothing more than the change of a single note, and excludes that which is the true principle of life — the attaining of the same result by an infinite variety of means.

[3]  The plays of Shakespeare are in no respect imitations of the Greeks; they may be called analogies, because by very different means they arrive at the same end; whereas the French and Italian tragedies I have read, and the English ones on the same model, are mere copies, though they cannot be called likenesses, seeking the same effect by adopting the same means, but under most inappropriate and adverse circumstances.

[4]  I have thus been led to consider, that the ancient drama (meaning the works of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, for the rhetorical productions of the same class by the Romans are scarcely to be treated as original theatrical poems) might be contrasted with the Shakespearean drama. — I call it the Shakespearean drama to distinguish it, because I know of no other writer who has realised the same idea, although I am told by some, that the Spanish poets, Lopez de Vega and Calderon, have been equally successful.  The Shakespearean drama and the Greek drama may be compared to statuary and painting.  In statuary, as in the Greek drama, the characters must be few, because the very essence of statuary is a high degree of abstraction, which prevents a great many figures being combined in the same effect.  In a grand group of Niobe, or in any other ancient heroic subject, how disgusting even it would appear if an old nurse were introduced.  Not only the number of figures must be circumscribed, but nothing undignified must be placed in company with what is dignified; no one personage must be brought in that is not an abstraction; all the actors in the scene must not be presented at once to the eye; and the effect of multitude, if required, must be produced without the intermingling of anything discordant.

[5]  Compare this small group with a picture by Raphael or Titian, in which an immense number of figures may be introduced, a beggar, a cripple, a dog or a cat; and by a less degree of labour, and a less degree of abstraction, an effect is produced equally harmonious to the mind, more true to nature with its varied colours, and, in all respects but one, superior to statuary.  The man of taste feels satisfied, and to that which the reason conceives possible, a momentary reality is given by the aid of imagination.

[6]  I need not here repeat what I have said before regarding the circumstances which permitted Shakespeare to make an alteration, not merely so suitable to the age in which he lived, but, in fact, so necessitated by the condition of that age.  I need not again remind you of the difference I pointed out between imitation and likeness, in reference to the attempt to give reality to representations on the stage.  The distinction between imitation and likeness depends upon the admixture of circumstances of dissimilarity; an imitation is not a copy, precisely as likeness is not sameness, in that sense of the word "likeness" which implies difference conjoined with sameness.  Shakespeare reflected manners in his plays, not by a cold formal copy, but by an imitation, that is to say, by an admixture of circumstances, not absolutely true in themselves, but true to the character and to the time represented.

[7]  It is fair to own that he had many advantages.  The great of that day, instead of surrounding themselves by the chevaux de frise of what is now called high breeding, endeavoured to distinguish themselves by attainments, by energy of thought, and consequent powers of mind.  The stage, indeed, had nothing but curtains for its scenes, but this fact compelled the actor, as well as the author, to appeal to the imaginations, and not to the senses of the audience; thus was obtained a power over space and time which in an ancient theatre would have been absurd, because it would have been contradictory.  The advantage is vastly in favour of our own early stage:  the dramatic poet there relies upon the imagination, upon the reason, and upon the noblest powers of the human heart; he shakes off the iron bondage of space and time; he appeals to that which we most wish to be when we are most worthy of being, while the ancient dramatist binds us down to the meanest part of our nature, and the chief compensation is a simple acquiescence of the mind in the position that what is represented might possibly have occurred in the time and place required by the unities.  It is a poor compliment to a poet to tell him that he has only the qualifications of a historian.

[8]  In dramatic composition the observation of the unities of time and place so narrows the period of action, so impoverishes the sources of pleasure, that of all the Athenian dramas there is scarcely one in which the absurdity is not glaring, of aiming at an object, and utterly failing in the attainment of it; events are sometimes brought into a space in which it is impossible for them to have occurred, and in this way the grandest effort of the dramatist, that of making his play the mirror of life, is entirely defeated.

[9]  The limit allowed by the rules of the Greek stage was twenty-four hours; but, inasmuch as, even in this case, time must have become a subject of imagination, it was just as reasonable to allow twenty-four months, or even years.  The mind is acted upon by such strong stimulants that the period is indifferent; and when once the boundary of possibility is passed, no restriction can be assigned.  In reading Shakespeare, we should first consider in which of his plays he means to appeal to the reason, and in which to the imagination, faculties which have no relation to time and place, excepting as in the one case they imply a succession of cause and effect, and in the other form a harmonious picture, so that the impulse given by the reason is carried on by the imagination.

[10]  We have often heard Shakespeare spoken of as a child of nature, and some of his modern imitators, without the genius to copy nature, by resorting to real incidents and treating them in a certain way, have produced that stage-phenomenon which is neither tragic nor comic, nor tragi-comic, nor comi-tragic, but sentimental.  This sort of writing depends upon some very affecting circumstances, and in its greatest excellence aspires no higher than the genius of an onion, — the power of drawing tears; while the author, acting the part of a ventriloquist, distributes his own insipidity among the characters, if characters they can be called which have no marked and distinguishing features.  I have seen dramas of this sort, some translated and some the growth of our own soil, so well acted, and so ill written, that if I could have been made for the time artificially deaf, I should have been pleased with that performance as a pantomime which was intolerable as a play.

[11]  Shakespeare's characters, from Othello and Macbeth down to Dogberry and the Grave-digger, may be termed ideal realities.  They are not the things themselves so much as abstracts of the things which a great mind takes into itself and there naturalises them to its own conception.  Take Dogberry:  are no important truths there conveyed, no admirable lessons taught, and no valuable allusions made to reigning follies, which the poet saw must for ever reign?  He is not the creature of the day, to disappear with the day, but the representative and abstract of truth which must ever be true, and of humour which must ever be humorous.

[12] The readers of Shakespeare may be divided into two classes:—

Between the two no medium can be endured.  The ordinary reader, who does not pretend to bring his understanding to bear upon the subject, often feels that some real trait of his own has been caught, that some nerve has been touched; and he knows that it has been touched by the vibration he experiences — a thrill which tells us that, by becoming better acquainted with the poet, we have become better acquainted with ourselves.

[13]  In the plays of Shakespeare every man sees himself, without knowing that he does so, as in some of the phenomena of nature, in the mist of the mountain, the traveller beholds his own figure, but the glory round the head distinguishes it from a mere vulgar copy.  In traversing the Brocken, in the north of Germany, at sunrise, the brilliant beams are shot askance, and you see before you a being of gigantic proportions, and of such elevated dignity, that you only know it to be yourself by similarity of action.  In the same way, near Messina, natural forms, at determined distances, are represented on an invisible mist, not as they really exist, but dressed in all the prismatic colours of the imagination.  So in Shakespeare:  every form is true, everything has reality for its foundation; we can all recognise the truth, but we see it decorated with such hues of beauty and magnified to such proportions of grandeur that, while we know the figure, we know also how much it has been refined and exalted by the poet.

[14]  It is humiliating to reflect that, as it were, because heaven has given us the greatest poet, it has inflicted upon that poet the most incompetent critics; none of them seem to understand even his language, much less the principles upon which he wrote and the peculiarities which distinguish him from all rivals.  I will not now dwell upon this point, because it is my intention to devote a lecture more immediately to the prefaces of Pope and Johnson.  Some of Shakespeare's contemporaries appear to have understood him, and imitated him in a way that does the original no small honour; but modern preface-writers and commentators, while they praise him as a great genius, when they come to publish notes upon his plays, treat him like a schoolboy, as if this great genius did not understand himself, was not aware of his own powers, and wrote without design or purpose.  Nearly all they can do is to express the most vulgar of all feelings, wonderment — wondering at what they term the irregularity of his genius, sometimes above all praise, and at other times, if they are to be trusted, below all contempt.  They endeavour to reconcile the two opinions by asserting that he wrote for the mob; as if a man of real genius ever wrote for the mob.  Shakespeare never consciously wrote what was below himself; careless he might be, and his better genius may not always have attended him, but I fearlessly say that he never penned a line that he knew would degrade him.  No man does anything equally well at all times, but because Shakespeare could not always be the greatest of poets, was he therefor to condescend to make himself the least?

[15]  Yesterday afternoon a friend left a book for me by a German critic, of which I have only had time to read a small part; but what I did read I approved, and I should be disposed to applaud the work much more highly were it not that in so doing I should, in a manner, applaud myself.  The sentiments and opinions are coincident with those to which I gave utterance in my lectures at the Royal Institution.  It is not a little wonderful that so many ages have elapsed since the time of Shakespeare and that it should remain for foreigners first to feel truly, and to appreciate justly, his mighty genius.  The solution of this circumstance must be sought in the history of our nation; the English have become a busy commercial people, and they have unquestionably derived from this propensity many social and physical advantages; they have grown to be a mighty empire — one of the great nations of the world, whose moral superiority enables it to struggle successfully against him who may be deemed the evil genius of our planet [Napoleon].

[16]  On the other hand, the Germans, unable to distinguish themselves in action, have been driven to speculation; all their feelings have been forced back into the thinking and reasoning mind.  To do, with them is impossible, but in determining what ought to be done, they perhaps exceed every people of the globe.  Incapable of acting outwardly, they have acted internally; they first rationally recalled the ancient philosophy and set their spirits to work with an energy of which England produces no parallel since those truly heroic times, heroic in body and soul, the days of Elizabeth.

[17]  If all that has been written upon Shakespeare by Englishmen were burned, in the want of candles, merely to enable us to read one half of what our dramatist produced, we should be great gainers.  Providence has given England the greatest man that ever put on and put off mortality, and has thrown a sop to the envy of other nations by inflicting upon his native country the most incompetent critics.  I say nothing here of the state in which his text has come down to us, farther than that it is evidently very imperfect:  in many places his sense has been perverted, in others, if not entirely obscured, so blunderingly represented, as to afford us only a glimpse of what he meant, without the power of restoring his own expressions.  But whether his dramas have been perfectly or imperfectly printed, it is quite clear that modern inquiry and speculative ingenuity in this kingdom have done nothing; or I might say, without a solecism, less than nothing (for some editors have multiplied corruptions) to retrieve the genuine language of the poet.  His critics among us during the whole of the last century have neither understood nor appreciated him; for how could they appreciate what they could not understand?

[18]  His contemporaries and those who immediately followed him were not so insensible of his merits or so incapable of explaining them, and one of them, who might be Milton when a young man of four and twenty, printed, in the second folio of Shakespeare's works, a laudatory poem, which, in its kind, has no equal for justness and distinctness of description, in reference to the powers and qualities of lofty genius.  It runs thus, and I hope that when I have finished I shall stand in need of no excuse for reading the whole of it.

This poem is subscribed J. M. S., meaning, as some have explained the initials, "John Milton, Student"; the internal evidence seems to me decisive, for there was, I think, no other man of that particular day capable of writing anything so characteristic of Shakespeare, so justly thought, and so happily expressed.

[19]  It is a mistake to say that any of Shakespeare's characters strike us as portraits; they have the union of reason perceiving, of judgment recording, and of imagination diffusing over all a magic glory.  While the poet registers what is past, he projects the future in a wonderful degree and makes us feel, however slightly, and see, however dimly, that state of being in which there is neither past nor future but all is permanent in the very energy of nature.

[20]  Although I have affirmed that all Shakespeare's characters are ideal, and the result of his own meditation, yet a just separation may be made of those in which the ideal is most prominent — where it is put forward more intensely — where we are made more conscious of the ideal, though in truth they possess no more nor less ideality; and of those which, though equally idealised, the delusion upon the mind is of their being real.  The characters in the various plays may be separated into those where the real is disguised in the ideal, and those where the ideal is concealed from us by the real.  The difference is made by the different powers of mind employed by the poet in the representation....