The Shakespearean Myth, Part I [pp. 112-126]

APPLETONS' JO URNAL.
a fact). If they did-with a single exception
to be noticed hereafter-they certainly kept their
own counsel. On the one hand, then, the question of the authorship was never raised, and, on
the other hand, if it had been, the scholars and
critics who studied the plays (supposing that
there were any such) in those days could not possibly have recognized them as immortal. If they
had so recognized them, they would doubtless
have left us something more satisfactory as to
the authorship of the compositions than the
mere " impression that they were informed" that
the manager of the theatre where they were produced wrote them; that they supposed he was
clever enough to have done so, and that they
therefore took it for granted that he did. That
is all there is of the evidence of Shakespeare's
own day; as to the question-if it still is a question-before us.
But how about the presumption - the legal
presumption, arising from such lapse of time as
that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary-the presumption springing from tradition
and common report-that William Shakespeare
composed the Shakespearean plays? It is, of
course, understood that one presumption is as
good as another until it is disturbed. It is never
safe to underrate an existing presumption; as
long as it stands at all, it stands as conclusive;
once overthrown, however, it is as if it had never
existed.
A presumption three hundred years old may
be a very strong one to overthrow. But if its
AGE is all there is of it-if it be only strong in
years-it can yet be toppled over. Once overthrown, it is no more venerable because it is
three hundred years old than if it were only three.
An egg-shell will toss upon the crest of an angry
surf and, for very frailty, outride breakers when
the mightiest ship man ever framed could not
survive an instant. But it is only an egg-shell, for
all that, and a touch of the finger will crush and
destroy it. And so, formidable as it was in age,
the presumption as to William Shakespeare's
authorship of the great dramas which for three
hundred years had gone by his name had only
to be touched by the thumb and finger of common sense to crackle and shrivel like the egg
that sat on the wall in the Kindergarten rhyme,
which all the king's army and all the king's men
could not set up again, once it had tumbled over.
But as the world advanced and culture increased, why did not the question arise before?
Simply because the times were not ripe for it.
This is t'he age and generation for the explosion
of myths, and, as one after another of them falls
to pieces and disappears, who does not wonder
that they'have not fallen sooner? For how
many years has the myth of William Tell been
cherished as history! And yet there was no
element of absolute impossibility or even of improbability-much less of miracle-in the story
of an archer with a sure eye and a steady arm.
Or, in the case of physical myths-which only
required an exploration by physical sense for
their explosion-the maps of two centuries or so
ago represented all inaccessible seas as swarming with krakens and ship-devouring reptiles.
And it is not twenty years since children were
taught in their geographies that upon the coast
of Norway there was a whirlpool which sucked
down ships prow foremost. And here, in our
midst, a cannon-shot from the office where this
paper is printed, there was believed to be and
exist a Hell Gate, which was a very portal of
death and slaughter to hapless mariners. But
there are no krakens, and not much of a Maelstrom; and for twenty years before General Newton blew up a few rocks at Hell Gate people had
laughed at the myth of its ferocity. And so, in
the case of the Shakespearean authorship, the
day has come for truth to dispel fiction, and reason to scout organic miracle.
Besides, it is to be remembered that it is only
our own century that has comprehended the masterliness and matchlessness of the "Hamlet"
and "Macbeth," and the rest of those transcripts
of nature, the prophetic insight of whose author
"spanned the ages that were to roll up after
him, mastered the highest wave of modem learning and discovery, and touched the heart of all
time, not through the breathing of living characters, but by lifting mankind up out of the loud
kingdom of earth into the silent realm of infinity;
who so wrote that to his all-seeing vision schools
and libraries, sciences and philosophies, were
unnecessary, because his own marvelous intuition had grasped all the past and seen through
all his present and all his future, and because,
before his superhuman power, time and space
had vanished and disappeared."* The age for
which the dramas were written had not come, in
that Elizabethan era. The tongues of the actors
were tied, the ears of the audience were deaf to
syllables whose burden was for the centuries that
were to come after; and so, again, the question
was not "worth while." Let us remember that
during the three hundred years -to speak in
round numbers -since the first public production of these dramas, their now everywhere conceded superiority, to say nothing of their immortality, was very far from being constantly and
universally recognized. Periods there were when
scholars and men of taste preferred stilted rhymes
like Addison's, or metrical platitudes like Pope's,
or sesquipedalian derivatives like old Samuel
* Jean Paul Richter, "Titan."
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