growth and fruiting and decay of the finest spirit that has yet been
born among men. This tragedy of tragedies, in which "Lear" is only one
scene--this rise to intensest life and widest vision and fall through
abysms of despair and madness to exhaustion and death--can be followed
experience by experience, from Stratford to London and its thirty years
of passionate living, and then from London to village Stratford again,
and the eternal shrouding silence.
As soon as this astonishing drama discovered itself to me in its tragic
completeness I jumped to the conclusion that it must have been set forth
long ago in detail by Shakespeare's commentators, and so, for the first
time, I turned to their works. I do not wish to rail at my forerunners
as Carlyle railed at the historians of Cromwell, or I should talk, as he
talked, about "libraries of inanities...conceited dilettantism and
pedantry...prurient stupidity," and so forth. The fact is, I found all
this, and worse; I waded through tons of talk to no result. Without a
single exception the commentators have all missed the man and the story;
they have turned the poet into a tradesman, and the unimaginable tragedy
of his life into the commonplace record of a successful tradesman's
career. Even to explain this astounding misadventure of the host of
critics is a little difficult. The mistake, of course, arose from the
fact that his contemporaries told very little about Shakespeare; they
left his appearance and even the incidents of his life rather vague.
Being without a guide, and having no clear idea of Shakespeare's
character, the critics created him in their own image, and, whenever
they were in doubt, idealized him according to the national type.
Still, there was at least one exception. Some Frenchman, I think it is
Joubert, says that no great man is born into the world without another
man being born about the same time, who understands and can interpret
him, and Shakespeare was of necessity singularly fortunate in his
interpreter. Ben Jonson was big enough to see him fairly, and to give
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