A natural sentiment connected Shakespeare more closely with Stratford-on-Avon than with any other place. Whatever part London played in his career, the public mind was dominated by the fact that he was born at Stratford, died, and was buried there. If he left Stratford in youth in order to work out his destiny in London, he returned to it in middle life in order to end his days there "in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends."

In spite of this widespread feeling, it proved no easy task, nor one capable of rapid fulfilment, to consecrate in permanence to public uses the extant memorials of Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon. Stratford was a place of pilgrimage for admirers of Shakespeare from early days in the seventeenth century—soon, in fact, after Shakespeare's death in 1616. But local veneration did not prevent the demolition in 1759, by a private owner, of New Place, Shakespeare's last residence. That act of vandalism was long in provoking any effective resentment. Garrick, by means of his Jubilee Festival of 1769, effectively, if somewhat theatrically, called the attention of the English public to the claims of the town to the affectionate regard of lovers of the great dramatist. Nevertheless, it was left to the nineteenth century to dedicate in perpetuity to the public service the places which were the scenes of Shakespeare's private life in his native town.

Charles Mathews's effort of 1821 took its rise in an endeavour to purchase in behalf of the nation the vacant site of Shakespeare's demolished residence of New Place, with the great garden attached to it. But that scheme was overweighted by the incorporation with it of the plan for a London monument, and both collapsed ignominiously. In 1835 a strong committee was formed at Stratford to commemorate the poet's connection with the town. It was called "the Monumental Committee," and had for its object, firstly, the repair of Shakespeare's tomb in the Parish Church; and secondly, the preservation and restoration of all the Shakespearean buildings in the town. Subscriptions were limited to L1, and all the members of the royal family, including the Princess Victoria, who two years later came to the throne, figured, with other leading personages in the nation's life, in the list of subscribers. But the subscriptions only produced a sum sufficient to carry out the first purpose of the Monumental Committee—the repair of the tomb.

In 1847 the sale by public auction was announced of the house in which Shakespeare was born. It had long been a show-place in private hands. A general feeling declared itself in favour of the purchase of the house for the nation. Public sentiment was in accord with the ungrammatical grandiloquence of the auctioneer, the famous Robins, whose advertisement of the sale included the sentence: "It is trusted the feeling of the country will be so evinced that the structure may be secured, hallowed, and cherished as a national monument almost as imperishable as the poet's fame." A subscription list was headed by Prince Albert with L250. A distinguished committee was formed under the presidency of Lord Morpeth (afterwards the seventh Earl of Carlisle), then Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests, who offered to make his department perpetual conservators of the property. (That proposal was not accepted.) Dickens, Macaulay, Lord Lytton, and the historian Grote were all active in promoting the movement, and it proved successful. The property was duly secured by a private trust in behalf of the nation. The most important house identified with Shakespeare's career in Stratford was thus effectively protected from the risks that are always inherent in private ownership. The step was not taken with undue haste; two hundred and thirty-one years had elapsed since Shakespeare's death.

Fourteen years later, in very similar circumstances, the still vacant site of Shakespeare's demolished residence, New Place, with the great garden behind it, and the adjoining house, was acquired by the public. A new Shakespeare Fund, to which the Prince Consort subscribed L100, and Miss Burdett-Coutts (afterwards Baroness Burdett-Coutts) L600, was formed not only to satisfy this purpose, but to provide the means of equipping a library and museum which were contemplated at the Birthplace, as well as a second museum which was to be provided on the New Place property. It was appropriate to make these buildings depositories of authentic relics and books which should illustrate the poet's life and work. This national Shakespeare Fund was actively promoted, chiefly by the late Mr Halliwell-Phillipps, for more than ten years; a large sum of money was collected, and the aims with which the Fund was set on foot were to a large extent fulfilled. It only remained to organise on a permanent legal basis the completed Stratford Memorial of Shakespeare. By an Act of Parliament passed in 1891 the two properties of New Place and the Birthplace were definitely formed into a single public trust "for and in behalf of the nation." The trustees were able in 1892, out of their surplus income, which is derived from the fees of visitors, to add to their estates Anne Hathaway's Cottage at Shottery, a third building of high interest to students of Shakespeare's history.

The formation of the Birthplace Trust has every title to be regarded as an outward and visible tribute to Shakespeare's memory on the part of the British nation at large.[46] The purchase for the public of the Birthplace, the New Place property, and Anne Hathaway's Cottage was not primarily due to local effort. Justly enough, a very small portion of the necessary funds came from Stratford itself. The British nation may therefore take credit for having set up at least one fitting monument to Shakespeare by consecrating to public uses the property identified with his career in Stratford. Larger funds than the trustees at present possess are required to enable them to carry on the work which their predecessors began, and to compete with any chance of success for books and relics of Shakespearean interest—such as they are empowered by Act of Parliament to acquire—when these memorials chance to come into the market. But a number of small annual subscriptions from men of letters has lately facilitated the performance of this part of the trustees' work, and that source of income may, it is hoped, increase.

[Footnote 46: Nor is this all that has been accomplished at Stratford in the nineteenth century in the way of the national commemoration of Shakespeare. While the surviving property of Shakespearean interest was in course of acquisition for the nation, an early ambition to erect in Stratford a theatre in Shakespeare's memory was realised—in part by subscriptions from the general public, but mainly by the munificence of members of the Flower family, three generations of which have resided at Stratford. The Memorial Theatre was opened in 1879, and the Picture Gallery and Library which were attached to it were completed two years later. The Memorial Buildings at Stratford stand on a different footing from the properties of the Birthplace Trust. The Memorial institution has an independent government, and is to a larger extent under local control. But the extended series of performances of Shakespearean drama, which takes place each year in April at the Memorial Theatre, has something of the character of an annual commemoration of Shakespeare by the nation at large.]

At any rate, the ancient objection to the erection of a national monument in London, which was based on the absence of any memorial in Stratford, is no longer of avail. In 1821, in 1847, and in 1864, when the acquisition of the Stratford property was unattempted or uncompleted, it was perfectly just to argue that Stratford was entitled to have precedence of London when the question of commemorating Shakespeare was debated. It is no just argument in 1906, now that the claims of Stratford are practically satisfied.

Byron, when writing of the memorial to Petrarch at Arqua, expressed with admirable feeling the sentiment that would confine outward memorials of a poet in his native town to the places where he was born, lived, died, and was buried. With very little verbal change Byron's stanza on the visible memorials of Petrarch's association with Arqua is applicable to those of Shakespeare's connexion with Stratford:—

They keep his dust in Stratford, where he died; The midland village where his later days Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride— An honest pride—and let it be their praise, To offer to the passing stranger's gaze His birthplace and his sepulchre; both plain And venerably simple, such as raise A feeling more accordant with his strain Than if a pyramid form'd his monumental fane.[47]

[Footnote 47: Cf. Childe Harold, Canto IV., St. xxxi.]

Venerable simplicity is hardly the characteristic note of Shakespeare's "strain" any more than it is of Petrarch's "strain." But there can be no just quarrel with the general contention that at Stratford, where Shakespeare gave ample proof of his characteristic modesty, a pyramidal fane would be out of harmony with the environment. There his birthplace, his garden, and tomb are the fittest memorials of his great career.

V

It may justly be asked: Is there any principle which justifies another sort of memorial elsewhere? On grounds of history and sentiment, but in conditions which demand most careful definition, the right answer will, I think, be in the affirmative. For one thing, Shakespeare's life was not confined to Stratford. His professional career was spent in London, and those, who strictly insist that memorials to great men should be erected only in places with which they were personally associated, can hardly deny that London shares with Stratford a title to a memorial from a biographical or historical point of view. Of Shakespeare's life of fifty-two years, twenty-four years were in all probability spent in London. During those years the work that makes him memorable was done. It was in London that the fame which is universally acknowledged was won.

Some valuable details regarding Shakespeare's life in London are accessible. The districts where he resided and where he passed his days are known. There is evidence that during the early part of his London career he lived in the parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, and during the later part near the Bankside, Southwark. With the south side of the Thames he was long connected, together with his youngest brother, Edmund, who was also an actor, and who was buried in the church of St Saviour's, Southwark.

In his early London days Shakespeare's professional work, alike as actor and dramatist, brought him daily from St Helen's, Bishopsgate, to The Theatre in Shoreditch. Shoreditch was then the chief theatrical quarter in London. Later, the centre of London theatrical life shifted to Southwark, where the far-famed Globe Theatre was erected, in 1599, mainly out of the materials of the dismantled Shoreditch Theatre. Ultimately Shakespeare's company of actors performed in a theatre at Blackfriars, which was created out of a private residence on a part of the site on which The Times office stands now. At a few hundred yards' distance from the Blackfriars Theatre, in the direction of Cannon Street, Shakespeare, too, shortly before his death, purchased a house.

Thus Shakespeare's life in London is well identified with four districts—with Bishopsgate, with Shoreditch, with Southwark, and with Blackfriars. Unhappily for students of Shakespeare's life, London has been more than once remodelled since the dramatist sojourned in the city. The buildings and lodgings, with which he was associated in Shoreditch, Southwark, Bishopsgate, or Blackfriars, have long since disappeared.

It is not practicable to follow in London the same historical scheme of commemoration which has been adopted at Stratford-on-Avon. It is impossible to recall to existence the edifices in which Shakespeare pursued his London career. Archaeology could do little in this direction that was satisfactory. There would be an awkward incongruity in introducing into the serried ranks of Shoreditch warehouses and Southwark wharves an archaeological restoration of Elizabethan playhouse or private residence. Pictorial representations of the Globe Theatre survive, and it might be possible to construct something that should materialise the extant drawings. But the genius loci has fled from Southwark and from Shoreditch. It might be practicable to set up a new model of an Elizabethan theatre elsewhere in London, but such a memorial would have about it an air of unreality, artificiality, and affectation which would not be in accord with the scholarly spirit of an historic or biographic commemoration. The device might prove of archaeological interest, but the commemorative purpose, from a biographical or historical point of view, would be ill served. Wherever a copy of an Elizabethan playhouse were brought to birth in twentieth-century London, the historic sense in the onlooker would be for the most part irresponsive; it would hardly be quickened.

VI

Apart from the practical difficulties of realising materially Shakespeare's local associations with London, it is doubtful if the mere commemoration in London of Shakespeare's personal connection with the great city ought to be the precise aim of those who urge the propriety of erecting a national monument in the metropolis. Shakespeare's personal relations with London can in all the circumstances of the case be treated as a justification in only the second degree. The primary justification involves a somewhat different train of thought. A national memorial of Shakespeare in London must be reckoned of small account if it merely aim at keeping alive in public memory episodes of Shakespeare's London career. The true aim of a national London memorial must be symbolical of a larger fact. It must typify Shakespeare's place, not in the past, but in the present life of the nation and of the world. It ought to constitute a perpetual reminder of the position that he fills in the present economy, and is likely to fill in the future economy of human thought, for those whose growing absorption in the narrowing business of life tends to make them forget it.

The day is long since past when vague eulogy of Shakespeare is permissible. Shakespeare's literary supremacy is as fully recognised by those who justly appreciate literature as any law of nature. To the man and woman of culture in all civilised countries he symbolises the potency of the human intellect. But those who are content to read and admire him in the cloister at times overlook the full significance of his achievement in the outer world. Critics of all nationalities are in substantial agreement with the romance-writer Dumas, who pointed out that Shakespeare is more than the greatest of dramatists; he is the greatest of thinking men.

The exalted foreign estimate illustrates the fact that Shakespeare contributes to the prestige of his nation a good deal beyond repute for literary power. He is not merely a literary ornament of our British household. It is largely on his account that foreign nations honour his country as an intellectual and spiritual force. Shakespeare and Newton together give England an intellectual sovereignty which adds more to her "reputation through the world" than any exploit in battle or statesmanship. If, again, Shakespeare's pre-eminence has added dignity to the name of Englishman abroad, it has also quickened the sense of unity among the intelligent sections of the English-speaking peoples. Admiration, affection for his work has come to be one of the strongest links in the chain which binds the English-speaking peoples together. He quickens the fraternal sense among all who speak his language.

London is no nominal capital of the kingdom and the Empire. It is the headquarters of British influence. Within its boundaries are assembled the official insignia of British prestige. It is the mother-city of the English-speaking world. To ask of the citizens of London some outward sign that Shakespeare is a living source of British prestige, an unifying factor in the consolidation of the British Empire, and a powerful element in the maintenance of fraternal relations with the United States, seems therefore no unreasonable demand. Neither cloistered study of his plays, nor the occasional representation of them in the theatres, brings home to either the English-speaking or the English-reading world the full extent of the debt that England owes to Shakespeare. A monumental memorial, which should symbolise Shakespeare's influence in the universe, could only find an appropriate and effective home in the capital city of the British Empire. It is this conviction, and no narrower point of view, which gives endeavour to commemorate Shakespeare in London its title to consideration.

VII

The admitted fact that Shakespeare's fame is established beyond risk of decay does not place him outside the range of conventional methods of commemoration. The greater a man's recognised service to his fellows, the more active grows in normally constituted minds that natural commemorative instinct, which seeks outward and tangible expression. A strange fallacy underlies the objection that has been taken to any commemoration of Shakespeare on the alleged ground that Milton warned the English people of all time against erecting a monument to Shakespeare.

In 1630 Milton asked the question that is familiar to thousands of tongues:

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones?

By way of answer he deprecated any such "weak witness of his name" as "piled stones" or "star-y-pointing pyramid." The poet-laureate of England echoed Milton's sentiment in 1905. He roundly asserted that "perishable stuff" is the fit crown of monumental pedestals. "Gods for themselves," he concluded, "have monument enough." There are ample signs that the sentiment to which Milton and the laureate give voice has a good deal of public support.

None the less the poet-laureate's conclusion is clearly refuted by experience and cannot terminate the argument. At any rate, in the classical and Renaissance eras monumental sculpture was in habitual request among those who would honour both immortal gods and mortal heroes—especially mortal heroes who had distinguished themselves in literature or art.

A little reflection will show, likewise, that Milton's fervid couplets have small bearing on the question at issue in its present conditions. Milton's poem is an elegy on Shakespeare. It was penned when the dramatist had lain in his grave less that fourteen years, and when the writer was in his twenty-second year. The exuberant enthusiasm of youth was couched in poetic imagery which has from time immemorial been employed in panegyrics of great poets. The beautiful figure which presents a great man's work as his only lasting monument is as old as poetry itself. The conceit courses through the classical poetry of Greece from the time of Pindar, and through that of Italy from the time of Ennius. No great Renaissance writer of modern Italy, of sixteenth-century France, or of Elizabethan England, tired of arguing that the poet's deathless memorial is that carved by his own pen. Shakespeare himself clothed the conceit in glowing harmonies in his sonnets. Ben Jonson, in his elegy on the dramatist, adapted the time-honoured figure when he hailed his dead friend's achievement as "a monument without a tomb."

"The truest poetry is the most feigning," and, when one recalls the true significance and influence of great sculptured monuments through the history of the civilised world, Milton's poetic argument can only be accepted in what Sir Thomas Browne called "a soft and flexible sense"; it cannot "be called unto the rigid test of reason." To treat Milton's eulogy as the final word in the discussion of the subject whether or no Shakespeare should have a national monument, is to come into conflict with Sir Walter Scott, Tennyson, Ruskin, Dickens, and all the greatest men of letters of the nineteenth century, who answered the question in the affirmative. It is to discredit crowds of admirers of great writers in classical and modern ages, who have commemorated the labours of poets and dramatists in outward and visible monuments.

The genius of the great Greek dramatists was not underrated by their countrymen. Their literary efforts were adjudged to be true memorials of their fame, and no doubt of their immortality was entertained. None the less, the city of Athens, on the proposition of the Attic orator, Lycurgus, erected in honour of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides statues which ranked with the most beautiful adornments of the Greek capital. Calderon and Goethe, Camoens and Schiller, Sir Walter Scott and Burns enjoy reputations which are smaller, it is true, than Shakespeare's, but are, at the same time, like his, of both national and universal significance. In memory of them all, monuments have been erected as tokens of their fellow-countrymen's veneration and gratitude for the influence which their poetry wields.

The fame of these men's writings never stood in any "need" of monumental corroboration. The sculptured memorial testified to the sense of gratitude which their writings generated in the hearts and minds of their readers.

Again, the great musicians and the great painters live in their work in a singularly vivid sense. Music and painting are more direct in popular appeal than great poetry. Yet none can ridicule the sentiment which is embodied in the statue of Beethoven at Bonn, or in that of Paolo Veronese at Verona. To accept literally the youthful judgment of Milton and his imitators is to condemn sentiments and practices which are in universal vogue among civilised peoples. It is to deny to the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey a rational title to existence.

To commemorate a great man by a statue in a public place in the central sphere of his influence is, indeed, a custom inseparable from civilised life. The theoretic moralist's reminder that monuments of human greatness sooner or later come to dust is a doctrine too discouraging of all human effort to exert much practical effect. Monuments are, in the eyes of the intelligent, tributes for services rendered to posterity by great men. But incidentally they have an educational value. They help to fix the attention of the thoughtless on facts which may, in the absence of outward symbols, escape notice. They may act as incentives to thought. They may convert the thoughtless into the thoughtful. Wide as are the ranks of Shakespeare's readers, they are not, in England at any rate, incapable of extension; and, whatever is likely to call the attention of those who are as yet outside the pale of knowledge of Shakespeare to what lies within it, deserves respectful consideration.

It is never inconsistent with a nation's dignity for it to give conspicuous expression of gratitude to its benefactors, among whom great writers take first rank. Monuments of fitting character give that conspicuous expression. Bacon, the most enlightened of English thinkers, argued, within a few years of Shakespeare's death, that no self-respecting people could safely omit to erect statues of those who had contributed to the genuine advance of their knowledge or prestige. The visitors to Bacon's imaginary island of New Atlantis saw statues erected at the public expense in memory of all who had won great distinction in the arts or sciences. The richness of the memorial varied according to the value of the achievement. "These statues," the observer noted, "are some of brass, some of marble and touchstone, some of cedar and other special woods, gilt and adorned, some of iron, some of silver, some of gold." No other external recognition of great intellectual service was deemed, in Bacon's Utopia, of equal appropriateness. Bacon's mature judgment deserves greater regard than the splendid imagery of Milton's budding muse.

VIII

In order to satisfy the commemorative instinct in a people, it is necessary, as Bacon pointed out, strictly to adapt the means to the end. The essential object of a national monument to a great man is to pay tribute to his greatness, to express his fellow-men's sense of his service. No blunder could be graver than to confuse the issue by seeking to make the commemoration serve any secondary or collateral purpose. It may be very useful to erect hospitals or schools. It may help in the dissemination of knowledge and appreciation of Shakespearean drama for the public to endow a theatre, which should be devoted to the performance of Shakespeare's plays. The public interest calls loudly for a playhouse that shall be under public control. Promoters of such a commendable endeavour might find their labours facilitated by associating their project with Shakespeare's name—with the proposed commemoration of Shakespeare. But the true aim of the commemoration will be frustrated if it be linked with any purpose of utility, however commendable, with anything beyond a symbolisation of Shakespeare's mighty genius and influence. To attempt aught else is "wrenching the true cause the false way." A worthy memorial to Shakespeare will not satisfy the just working of the commemorative instinct, unless it take the sculpturesque and monumental shape which the great tradition of antiquity has sanctioned. A monument to Shakespeare should be a monument and nothing besides.

Bacon's doctrine that the greater the achievement that is commemorated the richer must be the outward symbol, implies that a memorial to Shakespeare must be a work of art of the loftiest merit conceivable. Unless those who promote the movement concentrate their energies on an object of beauty, unless they free the movement of all suspicion that the satisfaction of the commemorative instinct is to be a secondary and not the primary aim, unless they resolve that the Shakespeare memorial in London is to be a monument pure and simple, and one as perfect as art can make it, then the effort is undeserving of national support.

IX

This conclusion suggests the inevitable objection that sculpture in England is not in a condition favourable to the execution of a great piece of monumental art. Past experience in London does not make one very sanguine that it is possible to realise in statuary a worthy conception of a Shakespearean memorial. The various stages through which recent efforts to promote sculptured memorials in London have passed suggest the mock turtle's definition in Alice in Wonderland of the four branches of arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. Save the old statue of James the Second, at Whitehall, and the new statue of Oliver Cromwell, which stands at a disadvantage on its present site beneath Westminster Hall, there is scarcely a sculptured portrait in the public places of London which is not

A fixed figure for the time of scorn To point his slow unmoving finger at.

London does not lack statues of men of letters. There are statues of Burns and John Stuart Mill on the Thames Embankment, of Byron in Hamilton Place, and of Carlyle on Chelsea Embankment. But all convey an impression of insignificance, and thereby fail to satisfy the nation's commemorative instinct.

The taste of the British nation needs rigorous control when it seeks to pay tribute to benefactors by means of sculptured monuments. During the last forty years a vast addition has been made throughout Great Britain—with most depressing effect—to the number of sculptured memorials in the open air. The people has certainly shown far too enthusiastic and too inconsiderate a liberality in commemorating by means of sculptured monuments the virtues of Prince Albert and the noble character and career of the late Queen Victoria. The deduction to be drawn from the numberless statues of Queen Victoria and her consort is not exhilarating. British taste never showed itself to worse effect. The general impression produced by the most ambitious of all these memorials, the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, is especially deplorable. The gilt figure of the Prince seems to defy every principle that fine art should respect. The endeavour to produce imposing effect by dint of hugeness is, in all but inspired hands, certain to issue in ugliness.

It would, however, be a mistake to take too gloomy a view of the situation. The prospect may easily be painted in too dismal colours. It is a commonplace with foreign historians of art to assert that English sculpture ceased to flourish when the building of the old Gothic cathedrals came to an end. But Stevens's monument of the Duke of Wellington in St Paul's Cathedral, despite the imperfect execution of the sculptor's design, shows that the monumental art of England has proved itself, at a recent date, capable of realising a great commemorative conception. There are signs, too, that at least three living sculptors might in favourable conditions prove worthy competitors of Stevens. At least one literary memorial in the British Isles, the Scott monument in Edinburgh, which cost no more than L16,000, satisfies a nation's commemorative aspiration. There the natural environment and an architectural setting of impressive design reinforce the effect of sculpture. The whole typifies with fitting dignity the admiring affection which gathers about Scott's name. This successful realisation of a commemorative aim—not wholly dissimilar from that which should inspire a Shakespeare memorial—must check forebodings of despair.

There are obviously greater difficulties in erecting a monument to Shakespeare in London than in erecting a monument to Scott in Edinburgh. There is no site in London that will compare with the gardens of Princes Street in Edinburgh. It is essential that a Shakespeare memorial should occupy the best site that London can offer. Ideally the best site for any great monument is the summit of a gently rising eminence, with a roadway directly approaching it and circling round it. In 1864, when the question of a fit site for a Shakespeare memorial in London was warmly debated, a too ambitious scheme recommended the formation of an avenue on the model of the Champs-Elysees from the top of Portland Place across Primrose Hill; and at the end of the avenue, on the summit of Primrose Hill, at an elevation of 207 feet above the river Thames, the Shakespeare monument was to stand. This was and is an impracticable proposal. The site which in 1864 received the largest measure of approbation was a spot in the Green Park, near Piccadilly. A third suggestion of the same date was the bank of the river Thames, which was then called Thames-way, but was on the point of conversion into the Thames Embankment. Recent reconstruction of Central London—of the district north of the Strand—by the London County Council now widens the field of choice. There is much to be said for a site within the centre of London life. But an elevated monumental structure on the banks of the Thames seems to meet at the moment with the widest approval. In any case, no site that is mean or cramped would be permissible if the essential needs of the situation are to be met.

A monument that should be sufficiently imposing would need an architectural framework. But the figure of the poet must occupy the foremost place in the design. Herein lies another embarrassment. It is difficult to determine which of the extant portraits the sculptor ought to follow. The bust in Stratford Church, the print in the First Folio, and possibly the Chandos painting in the National Portrait Gallery, are honest efforts to present a faithful likeness. But they are crudely executed, and are posthumous sketches largely depending on the artist's memory. The sculptor would be compelled to work in the spirit of the historian, who recreates a past event from the indication given him by an illiterate or fragmentary chronicle or inscription. He would be bound to endow with artistic life those features in which the authentic portraits agree, but the highest effort of the imagination would be needed to create an impression of artistic truth.

The success of a Shakespeare memorial will ultimately depend on the pecuniary support that the public accord it. But in the initial stage of the movement all rests on the discovery of a sculptor capable of realising the significance of a national commemoration of the greatest of the nation's, or indeed of the worlds, heroes. It would be well to settle satisfactorily the question of such an artist's existence before anything else. The first step that any organising committee of a Shakespeare memorial should therefore take, in my view, would be to invite sculptors of every country to propose a design. The monument should be the best that artistic genius could contrive—the artistic genius of the world. There may be better sculptors abroad than at home. The universality of the appeal which Shakespeare's achievement makes, justifies a competition among artists of every race or nationality.

The crucial decision as to whether the capacity to execute the monument is available, should be entrusted to a committee of taste, to a committee of liberal-minded connoisseurs who command general confidence. If this jury decide by their verdict that the present conditions of art permit the production of a great memorial of Shakespeare on just principles, then a strenuous appeal for funds may be inaugurated with likelihood of success. It is hopeless to reverse these methods of procedure. If funds are first invited before rational doubts as to the possibility of a proper application of them are dispelled, it is improbable that the response will be satisfactory or that the issue of the movement of 1905 will differ from that of 1821 or 1864.

In 1864 Victor Hugo expressed the opinion that the expenses of a Shakespeare memorial in London ought to be defrayed by the British Government. There is small likelihood of assistance from that source. Individual effort can alone be relied upon; and it is doubtful if it be desirable to seek official aid. A great national memorial of Shakespeare in London, if it come into being at all on the lines which would alone justify its existence, ought to embody individual enthusiasm, ought to express with fitting dignity the personal sense of indebtedness and admiration which fills the hearts of his fellow-men.



INDEX

Acting, importance of, in Shakespearean drama, 13; evil effects of long runs, 14; Shakespeare on, 45, 47

Actor-manager, his merits and defects, 125, 126

Actors, training of, 139; English, in France, 203. (See also Benson, Mr F.R., and Boys.)

AEschylus, statue of, 233

Albert, Prince (Consort), and Shakespeare's birthplace, 222; statues of, 237

Alleyn, Edward, 191, 194

Annual Register of 1770, 194

Aristotle, Shakespeare's mention of, 144, 145; Bacon's study of, 145

Arnold, Matthew, on Shakespeare, 29

Astronomy, Shakespeare on, 146

Athens, statuary at, 233

Aubrey, John, his gossip about Shakespeare, 67, 68

Austria, subsidised theatres in, 131, 134

Bacon, Anthony, in France, 203

Bacon, Francis, philosophical method of, 143; on memorial monuments in New Atlantis, 234, 235

Bacon, Sir Nicholas, his fame in France, 204

Badger, Mr Richard, proposal for a Shakespeare monument, 219

Bannister, John, his music for The Tempest, 107

Barker, Mr Granville, as Richard II., 13 n.

Basse, William, his tribute to Shakespeare, 50

Beeston, Christopher, Elizabethan actor, 64

Beeston, William the first, patron of Nash, 64

Beeston, William the second, his theatrical career, 65, 66; his gossip about Shakespeare, 65; his conversation, 66; Aubrey's account of, 67

Beethoven, statue of, 233

Beljame, Alexandre, on English literature, 201; death of, 201

Benson, Mr F.R., his company of actors, 111; his principles, 112 seq.; list of Shakespeare plays produced by, 114 n.; his production of Hamlet unabridged, 116-118; his training of actors, 119; his services to Shakespeare, 121; his pupils on the London stage, 130

Berkenhout, John, 195

Betterton, Thomas, at Stratford-on-Avon, 73; contributes to Rowe's biography, 73, 76; his rendering of Hamlet, 101, 102

Biography, art of, in England, 51

Bishop, Sir William, 76

Bishopsgate (London), Shakespeare at, 226, 227

Blackfriars, Shakespeare's house at, 227

Boileau, and English literature, 199

Bolingbroke, in Richard II., patriotism of, 173

Bowman, John, actor, 69; at Stratford-on-Avon, 76

Boys in women's parts in Elizabethan theatres, 19, 41; abandonment of the practice, 43; superseded by women, 88, 89

Buchanan, George, his plays, 204

Burbage, Richard, Shakespeare's friend and fellow-actor, 33

Burns, Mr John, 131

Burns, Robert, French study of, 201; monument to, 233, 237

Byron, Lord, on Petrarch at Arqua, 225; statue of, 237

Calderon, 136; monument to, 233

Calvert, Charles A., his Shakespearean productions at Manchester, 12 n.

Camoens, monument to, 233

Capital and the literary drama, 124, 126, 127, 128

Carlyle, Thomas, statue of, 237

Cataline's Conspiracy, by Ben Jonson, 30, 31

Ceremony, Shakespeare on, 157, 158

Chantrey, Sir Francis, and commemoration of Shakespeare, 216

Charlecote, Shakespeare's escapade at, 76

Chaucer, Geoffrey, French influence on, 199

Clarendon, Lord, on Shakespeare, 78

Cockpit theatre, Drury Lane, 65, 86

Cockpit theatre, Whitehall, 87 and n.

Coleman, John, on the subsidised theatre, 132

Coleridge S.T., and commemoration of Shakespeare, 216

Congreve, William, 91

Coriolanus and the patriotic instinct, 178, 179

Cromwell, Oliver, statue of, 237

Davenant, Robert, Sir William's brother, 70

D'Avenant, Sir William: theatrical manager, 67; his youth at Oxford, 69; relations in boyhood with Shakespeare, 70; elegy on Shakespeare, 71; champion of Shakespeare's fame, 71; his story of Shakespeare and Southampton, 72; his influence on Betterton, 72; manager of the Duke's Company, 87 n.; as dramatist, 91; his adaptations of Shakespeare, 103-105, 106 n., 108

Deschamps, Eustace, on Chaucer, 199

Desportes, Philippe, and Elizabethan poetry, 199

D'Israeli, Isaac, on Steevens's forgery, 195

Downs, John, prompter and stage annalist, 63

Dramatic societies in England, 129

Dress, Shakespeare on extravagant, 185

Drunkenness, Shakespeare on, 185

Dryden, John, on William Beeston, 66; as dramatist, 91; his share in the adaptation of The Tempest, 105

Du Bellay, Joachim, and Elizabethan poetry, 199

Ducis, Jean Francois, his translation of Shakespeare, 207, 208

Dugdale, Sir William, 74

Dumas pere, on Shakespeare, 206; his translation of Hamlet, 209-211

Dyce, Alexander, on Steevens's forgery, 196

Elizabeth, Queen, summons Shakespeare to Greenwich, 31

Elizabethan Stage Society, 13 n.

England, Shakespeare on history of, 180

Ennius on poetic fame, 232

Etherege, Sir George, 91

Eton College, debate about Shakespeare at, 78

Euripides, statue of, 233

Evelyn, John, on Hamlet, 90

Farquhar, George, 91

Faulconbridge (in King John), patriotism of, 174

Fletcher, John, his Custom of the Country, 92, 93; its obscenity, 93

Folio, the First [of Shakespeare's plays], actors' co-operation in, 59; list of actors in, 61; rejected by Pepys, 94

Folio, the Second [of Shakespeare's plays], in France, 205

Folio, the Third [of Shakespeare's plays], purchased by Pepys, 94

Folio, the Fourth [of Shakespeare's plays], in Pepysian library, 94

France, subsidised theatres in, 131, 134; Shakespeare in, 198 seq.; English actors in, 203

Freedom of the will, Shakespeare on, 166

Fuller, Thomas, his Worthies of England, 52; notice of Shakespeare, 52

Garrick, David, his stage costume, 18

Gentleman's Magazine of 1801, 195

George IV. and commemoration of Shakespeare, 215

German drama, 129, 135, 136

Germany, subsidised theatres in, 131, 134

Goethe, 136; monument to, 233

Greene, Robert, French translation of romance by, 199

Grendon, tradition of Shakespeare at, 77

"Grenovicus" contributes to Gentleman's Magazine, 195

Hales, John, of Eton, 78

Hall, Bishop Joseph, French translation of works by, 199

Hart, Charles, Shakespeare's grand-nephew, actor, 59, 68

Hauptmann, Gerhart, 135

Henry V., on kingly ceremony, 157; patriotism of, 175, 182

Heywood, Thomas, projected Lives of the Poets, 54 n.; affection for Shakespeare, 65; his Apology for Actors, 65

History plays of Shakespeare, character of, 180

Hobbes, Thomas, in France, 200

Howe, Josias, on a Shakespeare tradition, 77

Hugo, Victor, on Shakespeare, 206; on Shakespeare memorial, 241

Imagination in the audience, 22, 47, 48

Ingres, Jean, his painting of Shakespeare, 206

Irving, Sir Henry, experience of Shakespearean spectacle, 10; and the literary drama, 123; and the municipal theatre, 132; and French drama, 200

Irving, Washington, and commemoration of Shakespeare, 216

James I., his alleged letter to Shakespeare, 72

James II., statue of, 236

John of Gaunt in Richard II., dying speech of, 115-116, 181

Johnson, Dr, on false patriots, 171

Jonson, Ben, testimony to Shakespeare's popularity, 29; his classical tragedies compared with Shakespeare's, 30; his elegy on Shakespeare, 50, 232; his dialectical powers contrasted with Shakespeare's, 53; on the players' praise of Shakespeare, 60; his son, Shakespeare's godson, 61; Beeston's talk of, 67; popularity of his plays at Restoration, 91, 92

Jusserand, Jules, on English literature, 202; his Shakespeare in France, 203

Kean, Charles, experience of Shakespearean spectacle, 9; Macready's criticism of, 14

Kemp, William, Elizabethan comedian, 33

Killigrew, Tom, manager of the King's Company, 87 n.

Kingship, Shakespeare on, 155-160, 180-182

Kirkman, Francis, his account of William Beeston the second, 66

Lacy, John, actor, 67; acquaintance with Ben Jonson, 68; adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, 108

Lawrence, Sir Thomas, and commemoration of Shakespeare, 216

Lessing, 136

Lincoln's Inn Fields (Portugal Row), Theatre at, 86, 87 and n.

Literary drama, on the modern stage, 123; antagonism of capital to, 126-128

Lives of the Poets of the seventeenth century, 54

Locke, John, in France, 200

Locke, Matthew, Shakespearean music of, 105, 108

Logic, Shakespeare on, 146

London, Shakespeare's association with, 226 seq.; statues in, 236, 237; proposed sites for Shakespeare monument in, 239

London County Council, and the theatre, 130, 131; and subsidised enlightenment, 133; and Shakespeare monument, 219

London Trades Council and the theatre, 132

Lowin, John, original actor in Shakespeare's plays, 61; coached by Shakespeare in part of Hamlet, 63, 71, 72

Lycurgus, Attic orator, 233

Macready, W.C., his criticism of spectacle, 14

Marlowe, Christopher, Shakespeare's senior by two months, 37, 193

Massinger, Philip, his Bondman, 92, 93

Mathews, Charles, on a monument of Shakespeare, 214

Mercy, Shakespeare on, 152, 153

Metaphysics, Shakespeare on, 146-148

Mill, John Stuart, statue of, 237

Milton, his elegy on Shakespeare, 51, 231

Moliere, accepted methods of producing his plays, 16, 18, 136

Montaigne, Michel de, and Anthony Bacon, 203; his essays in English, 204

Moore, Thomas, and commemoration of Shakespeare, 216

More, Sir Thomas, his Utopia in France, 204

Municipal theatre, its justification, 122; in Europe, 134

Musset, Alfred de, on Shakespeare, 206

Nash, John, and commemoration of Shakespeare, 216

Nash, Thomas, 64

Nodier, Charles, his Pensees de Shakespeare, 211-213

Norwegian drama, 129

Obedience, the duty of, 161

Oldys, William, antiquary, 68, 69

Opera in England, 131

Oxford, the Crown Inn at, 69; Shakespeare at, 70; visitors from, to Stratford, 75-77

Patriotism, Shakespeare on, 170 seq.

Peele, George, alleged letter of, 189 seq.

Pepys, Samuel, his play-going experience, 81-86; on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, 91-93; on Shakespeare, 94 seq.; his attitude to poetic drama, 95, 96; his musical setting of "To be or not to be," 100

Petrarch, his tomb at Arqua, 225

Phelps, Samuel, at Sadler's Wells, 11; list of plays produced by, 11, 114 n.; his mode of producing Shakespeare, 12; on a State theatre in London, 120; on public control of theatres, 140, 141

Philosophy, Shakespeare's attitude to, 143 seq.

Pindar on poetic fame, 232

Platter, Thomas, journal of his London visit (1599), 38

Playhouses in London, Blackfriars, 227; Drury Lane, 86, 87 and n.; "The Globe," 38, 227; "The Red Bull," 86; Sadler's Wells, 11; Salisbury Court, Whitefriars, 66, 86; "The Theatre" at Shoreditch, 37, 227

Pope, Alexander, and French literature, 199; on the Shakespeare cenotaph, 216

Richardson, Samuel, in France, 200

Robinson, Richard, actor, 68

Ronsard, Pierre de, and Elizabethan poetry, 199; in England, 203

Rousseau, J.J., and English literature, 200

Rowe, Nicholas, Shakespeare's first formal biographer, 54; his acknowledgment to Betterton, 73; his biography of Shakespeare, 79, 80

Royal ceremony, irony of, 158

Russell, Lord John, on patriotism, 172

Sadler's Wells Theatre, 11

Sand, George, on Shakespeare, 206

Sardou, Victorien, work of, 200

Scenery, its purpose, 5; uselessness of realism, 23

Schiller, on the German stage, 136; monument to, 233

Scott, Sir Walter, and commemoration of Shakespeare, 216, 232; Edinburgh monument of, 238

Sedley, Sir Charles, 91

Seneca on mercy, 153 n.

Shadwell, Thomas, 67, adaptation of The Tempest, 106 n.

Shakespeare, Edmund, actor, 227

Shakespeare, Gilbert, actor, 68

Shakespeare, William, his creation of the Ghost in Hamlet, 27; contemporary popularity of, 29; at Court, 31; early London career, 32; advice to the actor, 45; his modest estimate of the actor's powers, 47; elegies on death of, 49; Fuller's notice of, 52; early biographies of, 54; oral tradition of, in seventeenth century, 55; similarity of experience with that of contemporary dramatists and actors, 57; Elizabethan players' commendation of, 60; resentment with a publisher, 65; William Beeston's reminiscences of, 67; Stratford gossip about, 74-76; present state of biographical knowledge, 81; his attitude to philosophy, 143 seq.; his intuition, 149-150; concealment of his personality, 150; his private sentiments, 151; on mercy, 152-153; on rulers of states, 154; on divine right of kings, 159; on obedience, 161; on social order, 162-163; on freedom of the will, 166; on women's will, 168; his humour and optimism, 169; on patriotism, 170 seq.; on English history, 180; on social foibles, 184-186; commemoration of, in London, 214 seq.; portraits of, 239

Shakespearean drama, attitude of students and actors to, 1; costliness of modern production, 2; the simple method and the public, 8; Charles Kean's spectacular method, 9; Irving's method, 10; plays produced by Phelps, 11; reliance on the actor, 13; in Vienna, 17; advantage of its performance constantly and in variety, 23; importance of minor roles of, 115; its ethical significance, 164, 165; in France, 198 seq.; and British prestige, 229

——, (separate plays):— Antony and Cleopatra in Vienna, 17 Coriolanus, political significance of, 164; and patriotism, 178 Cymbeline (III. i., 16-22), on patriotism, 183 Hamlet, Shakespeare's performance of the Ghost, 27; early popularity of the play, 29; Pepys's criticism of, 95, 99-101; the stage abridgment contrasted with the full text, 117-119 Henry IV. (Part I.), Pepys's criticism of, 97, 98 Henry V., meaning of first chorus, 19, 46; quoted, 157, 158, 162 Julius Caesar, preferred by contemporary playgoers to Jonson's Cataline, 31; political significance of, 164 Lear, King, performed at Elizabeth's Court, 36; quarto of, 36 Love's Labour's Lost, performed at Court, 34; title-page of the quarto, 35 Macbeth, Pepys's criticism of, 104-105; quoted, 156 Measure for Measure, ethics of, 164 Merry Wives of Windsor, The, title-page of the quarto, 36; Pepys's criticism of, 97 Midsummer Night's Dream, A, Pepys's criticism of, 96 Othello, Pepys's criticism of, 95, 98, 99 Richard II., purport of John of Gaunt's dying speech, 115-116, 181 Romeo and Juliet, Pepys's criticism of, 96 Tempest, The, Pepys's criticism of, 105-108; spectacular production of, at Restoration, 107 Troilus and Cressida (II. ii., 166), on Aristotle, 144, 145; (I. iii., 101-124), on social equilibrium, 163 Twelfth Night, Pepys's criticism of, 96

Sheffield, John, Earl of Mulgrave and Duke of Buckinghamshire, 72

Shoreditch, the theatre in, 227

Sidney, Sir Philip, French translations of Arcadia, 199, 204

Somerset, the "proud" Duke of, on Shakespeare, 79

Sophocles, statue of, 233

Southampton, Earl of, and Shakespeare, 72

Southwark, the Globe Theatre at, 227

Spenser, Edmund, Beeston's gossip about, 67

Steevens, George, character of, 191; a forged letter by, 192, 193

Sterne, Laurence, in France, 200

Stevenson, R.L., his imaginary discovery of lost works by Shakespeare, 25

Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's tomb at, 50; Betterton at, 73; visitors from Oxford to, 75, 76, 77; Shakespeare tradition at, 75, 76; Shakespeare memorials at, 218; destruction of New Place, 221; the monumental committee of, 221; sale of Shakespeare's birthplace, 222; purchase of New Place site, 223; the Birthplace Trust, 223, 224

Suckling, Sir John, his love for Shakespeare, 71

Sudermann, Hermann, 135

Tate, Nahum, his adaptations of Shakespeare, 103, 104

Theatres in Elizabethan London, 36; seating arrangements, 39; prices of admission, 39; the scenery, 40; the costumes, 41; contrast between their methods of production and those of later date, 44

Theatres, at Restoration, 86; characteristics of, 87-90. (See also Playhouses.)

Theatrical Review of 1763, 190

Theatrical spectacle in Shakespearean drama, effect of excess, 3; its want of logic, 4; its costliness, 7; at the Restoration, 89, 109; at the present day, 110

Thomson, James, French study of, 201

Tuke, Sir Samuel, his Adventures of Five Hours, 98-99

Taylor, Joseph, original actor in Shakespeare's plays, 61; coached by Shakespeare in part of Henry VIII., 63, 71, 72

Vanbrugh, Sir John, 91

Veronese, Paolo, statue of, 233

Victoria, Queen, and Stratford-on-Avon, 222; statues of, 237

Vienna, production of Antony and Cleopatra at the Burg-Theater, 17; types of subsidised theatres at, 136, 138; conservatoire of actors at, 139

Voltaire on Shakespeare, 205, 206

War, popular view of, 177

Ward, John, vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, 74; his Diary, 74

Warner, Mrs, at Sadler's Wells, 11

Wellington, Duke of, monument to, 238

Westminster Abbey, Shakespeare's exclusion from, 50; his cenotaph in, 215-216

Will, freedom of, 166

Women, Shakespeare's views on, 168

Wordsworth, William, French study of, 201

Wycherley, William, 91

Young, Edward, French study of, 201

THE END