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THE STUDY OF SHAKSPEARE.

AN INAUGURAL LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE SHAKSPEARIAN

SOCIETY OF KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON.1

GENTLEMEN,-I must first congratulate you on your success in forming this Society; and, secondly, on the purposes for which it has been established. You propose to read carefully and aloud among yourselves some great English author; and you have chosen for this purpose the greatest of all English authors-Shakspeare. It is the first time, I believe, that any such resolution has been taken in this College certainly it is the first since I have been connected with it; and I expect from this Society many useful results. The value and the merits of this new mode of study would appear at once, if for the name of Shakspeare I were to substitute that of Sophocles or of Homer. You and everyone else would see directly how much might be gained for a thorough appreciation of either of these authors, if they were to be studied in the way in which you propose to study an English poet. If a number of you were to unite, and dividing the poems of either of these great writers among

' Neither the subject nor the publication of this Lecture is of my own choosing. The Students of King's College requested me to deliver an Inaugural Address on a subject in which they were deeply interested; and as I thought that they had a just claim on any reasonable services I could render them, I would not oppose their desire, notwithstanding my numerous engagements and the little time I had for preparation. The same motive which induced me to comply with their first request, has induced me to consent to their second request, and suffer the Lecture to be published.-J.B.

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yourselves, were diligently to examine and master them, each one of you bringing his quota of observation into a general fund, nothing would more conduce to the understanding of your author than such a living conference. It s only because we undervalue classical authors and philology in general,-because we do not see the deep truths which underlie their words,-because we are not moved by the calm, the simple, the manly, the majestic beauty of the thoughts they are endeavouring to reveal unto us,-that we have not yet approached the task of mastering the classical authors with due reverence, hardly even with the sense that they were living men like ourselves. It is only for these reasons that we have never yet felt but that we were all-sufficient to interpret whatever they might have to say to us; and that a grammar and a lexicon, and a few German notes, were competent ministers, and priests enough, for these great apostles of Humanity.

Gentlemen, how august that Humanity is, you, I think, can have no doubt. Your ordinary studies in this place, and the careful study of that poet whom you now propose to examine and sift more deeply for yourselves, have not been without their use in helping you to the knowledge of this truth. You have, I think, been led to feel in the study of one play of Shakspeare, that we are not to call that common or unclean which God has cleansed; that in the highest, and the weakest, and the most unintelligible aspirations of the poorest as well as of the noblest humanity, there is some thing much too deep and sacred to be trifled with; that that Humanity has been taken into God, and that if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy; and second only in importance to the actual indwelling was the expectation of God's incoming to His temple. If then, as I believe, the whole ancient world was lying in sorrow, groaning and travailing for that great deliverance; if that deliverance is, as

I believe, the centre, the gravitating point of all history and all literature, old or new; if it be the insensible law which, in spite of themselves, was shaping men's acts, and thoughts, and words, towards one end; and if the clearest exponents of those thoughts-if the truths underlying all that confusion are to be found in those great writers whom you mainly study within these walls-you will confess at once how solemn a task that study is. You will feel that much is needful for the due fulfilment of it, beyond the mere mastery of the formal grammar or vocabulary of a language-that if it were possible for you to institute a sort of division of labour for the reading of a great Greek or Latin author, as you now propose to do for Shakspeare, appoint a chairman, confer with one another, and invest the whole subject with a truly practical interest, much more would be gained for the understanding of your author than any grammar or lexicon, more than any private study in your own chamber, could accomplish.

Now, I hope it will not be imagined from these remarks that I think you might have chosen some author of the ancient world, instead of your own great countryman. I do not; I think you could not have made a better choice than you have done. I recognise the claim most heartily which your own language and literature have upon your attention. You must think it strange indeed if I did not, considering the position which I hold. And in all the literature of this country, there is no author more deserving of the preference you have given him than Shakspeare. But I have made these remarks in order to set forth more distinctly what appear to me to be the general objects of your Society; why they have decided upon this course, and in what spirit they propose to carry out their plan; not as a mere amusement, as it might be thought--not to read Shakspeare as he is too often read-not to realise imperfectly the dramatic effect of

his plays; but to study him thoughtfully, examining him with the same minute care and attention as you would have done had you selected a classical author.

First, then, permit me to make some remarks upon the advantages you will derive by reading Shakspeare aloud; and next, upon the author you have chosen, in reference to your immediate object and your general studies. Many of those advantages have, I doubt not, presented themselves to your minds already, and many more will occur to you in the course of your practice: first, in the mere exercise of the voice, one of the most neglected and yet most divine of human faculties. Go where you will, the singular indifference with which the human voice has been treated is most striking. In the senate, in the pulpit, in the lecture-room, and even on the stage, this neglect is most apparent. The capabilities of the voice are never cultivated, its functions never developed, its treasures of music and eloquence never mastered. As the Romans, when they first fell in with our forefathers, were offended, somewhat needlessly, at their hoarse, thick, and undisciplined tones, so I doubt whether they would be better pleased now. I am afraid that if Cicero, or Virgil, or Horace, could hear our orators and actors declaim, they would scarcely believe that we were nineteen centuries older in arts and civilisation. We have abandoned the rude adornments in which our fierce Teutonic fathers delighted; we have parted with the undressed skins in which the stout limbs of the stalwart Germans displayed themselves to the gaze of shrinking and sentimental Italy; but the hoarse and undisciplined voice remains still, and time has made but little difference. The husky orator, with his unmastered organ, hovering through all incredible notes of the gamut, within these very walls and other walls not far distant, insensibly reminds one of the rudeness, without the freshness, of the primæval forest.

Now much of this is to be traced, I believe, to the extinction of an excellent custom which once prevailed universally in educated households in England, and remained till a very late period; I mean, the custom of reading aloud in families. No long time has elapsed since the evenings, in this country at least, were devoted to this occupation. The book circled from hand to hand, the voice of the readers was heard in succession, the rest sate by, and worked or listened. The scarcity and dearness of books might have done something to foster this practice, but it did not do all; for the custom had grown up from earliest times; it was linked with homely associations; and it lingered in this country longer than elsewhere, because of its connexion with those feelings. Like many other economic and domestic habits, it passed over from the monastic institutions to our English households. In all monasteries, which had been framed originally, as near as the founders of them could conceive, on the model of a holy household, this practice of reading aloud in the dormitory or refectory prevailed universally. At their meals the fathers and mothers of England generally appointed one or other of their children to read aloud to them. King James had all the controversies of Bellarmine read aloud to him at his dinner time. In the poems of Cowper, we have references to the same pleasant habit, not as peculiar to himself and the fireside of Mrs. Unwin, as indeed it was not, but as a common characteristic of a winter's evening throughout the country.

Now this habit alone, without any pretensions to what may be termed fine reading, was of no little service in training the voice, and giving it an air of cultivation and refinement; that inexpressible charm, which in well-bred men and women engages us in spite of ourselves, and is often far more prevailing than the most forcible rhetoric. It was almost impossible for the men of that generation, when they