SHAKESPEARE'S MODERNITY.

[To Tar EDITOR OP THE " Srameron."1 Ste,—After considering your anthology of Shakespeare's modernisms (Spectato,., February 25th), I am confirmed in an old opinion of mine that his two most modern characters are Philip Faulconbridge and Jaques. There is a tinge of dawn- ing modernity in the passages in which Faulconbridge analyses and, so to say, moralizes his cynicism ; for example, in his plea for "Commodity," ending with the line in which, after the fashion of introspective thinkers, he made himself

out worse than he was :

"Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee."

But the cynicism of this passage would find parallels in the writings of Bacon, whose self-revelations had the advantage of being unhampered by the trammels of verse. Perhaps, therefore, a more characteristic outburst of the royal bastard is that which hints at wonder whether he has done wisely in bartering his estate against a knighthood :

"A foot of honour bettor than I was, But many a many foot of land the worse. Well, now can I make any Joan a lady :— Good don, Sir Richard.—God-a-nterey, fellow ;— And if his name be George, I'll call him Peter ; For new-made honour doth forget men's names : 'Tis too respective, and too sociable,

For your conversion."

It is interesting to contrast the line of conduct sketched in this passage with the advice given by the more prudent

Chesterfield to his son, who was, by the way, like Faulconbridge, illegitimate. The son is directed to be always careful to call his acquaintances by their right names ; just as be is told to let his guests see that he has taken note of any likes or dis- likes that they may have formerly shown in their choice of food and wine. But, if thus far the princely scion has fallen short of the ideal of worldly prudence, even Bacon could not have bettered him in the "Wisdom for a Man's Self" with which he further on sought, as it were, to efface the bar sinister from his social escutcheon (11fajores pennas nide extendisse loqueris); for he sot himself "to deliver

Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth: Which, though I will not practise to deceive, Yet, to avoid deceit, I mean to learn,

For it shall strew the footsteps of my rising."

Thus, in making for "self-help," he became an adept in what is now sometimes called "pragmatism," but what Mark Patti- son more appropriately described as "economy of truth." As

Bacon would have said, he bad "dissimulation in seasonable use."

Jaques is modern in several ways, but especially in reference to the practical outlawry of the lower animals. Herbert

Spencer used the term "animal-ethics" in regard to the benefits bestowed by some animals on members of their own species and, in particular, to the loving help often given by dogs to men. But Mill trod on more dangerous ground when he said that men are bound to seek the greatest happiness of

the greatest number of all sentient beings. In thus arguing he claimed to be putting the keystone on the Utilitarian ar ;

but, perhaps, he was, in truth, unwittingly making a reduetio ad absurdum of Utilitarian logic. If the ethical bond is drawn so extra-tight, is there not a fear of its snapping ? Well, Shakespeare has approached this labyrinth, this ethical aweate, in "As You Like It." When the exiled Duke had regretted

the necessity of killing the deer of the forest, a lord-in-waiting rejoined : "Indeed, my lord, The melancholy Jaques grieves at that ; And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp Than doth your brother that bath banish'd you."

Now the point is that Jaques could not possibly have meant that the banished Duke, who shot the deer, was as immoral as

his usurping brother. But, through this inconsistency, he half-consciously played fast and loose with ethical logic. He, in fact, was thus led to feel that "all the world's a stage." To apply to him the phrase of a great French critic, he learned " consid6rer le monde comme un dOroulement de tableaux vivant's," or, as we might now say, human life had to him the semblance of a. cinematograph. In the last scene of the play, when the surprising news came that the usurping Duke, "after some question" with "an old religious man," was suddenly converted, Jaques merely exclaimed :

"Out of these convertitos

There is much matter to be hoard and learn d.

This recalls Walpole's saying that "the world is a comedy to those who think," for certainly the word " convertites " is

pitched in an ironic key. Jaques would doubtless have inquired whether all the followers of the penitent usurper were as easily converted as their master. If not, would they have been willing to exchange the luxury of buccaneering grandees for the sackcloth and ashes of confessed traitors and would- have-been murderers ? Even as to their master, it might have been questioned whether the seeds of goodness, which had

sprouted in him with the rapidity of Jonah's gourd, might not as rapidly have withered away. " Conversio pessimi perieulosa " would be nearer to the truth than the hackneyed motto which assuredly ought to be turned into "Corruptio fortissimi pessima." A rigid moralist—I think Johnson— regretted that Shakespeare has not given an edifying account of the moral miracle wrought by the "old religious man." The comparative lukewarmness of the dramatist may be illustrated

by some remarks of Ruskin which Mr. Gladstone described to me as "not interesting merely, but wonderful":

"It was necessary he [Shakespeare] should lean no way; that he should contemplate with absolute equality of judgment the life of the court, cloister, and tavern, and be able to sympathize no completely with all creatures as to deprive himself, together with his personal identity, oven of his conscience, as he casts himself lute their hearts. He must be able to enter into the soul of Falstaff or Shylock with no more sense of contempt or horror than Falstaff or Shylock themselves feel for or in themselves. He must be utterly without anger, utterly without purpose, for if a man has any serious purpose in life that which runs counter to it, or is foreign to it, will be looked at frowningly or carelessly by him" The foregoing sentence may throw light on a sentence in " Measure for Measure" which, though questionable in morals as well as in grammar, is at least eminently modern: " Best men are moulded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad."

To this sentiment a modern counterpart may be found in the taunt levelled at Page Wood by Bethel: "He has not even a redeeming vice." Was not the saintly lawyer here satirized as a monstrum null° vitio a virtute redemptunt P Let me conclude by saying that the note of modernity is the more conspicuous in Shakespeare through its coming only by tits and starts. It is immeasurably commoner in Bacon.—