The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

l owe another

lopment of that system of practical philosophy from which THE SCIENTIFIC ARTS of the Modern Ages proceed, and which has already become, ju

nd Reformations our organised advancements in speculation and practice have their origin;-Reformers, whose scientific acquaintance with historic laws forbade

learning in which it comes to us professionally as philosophy, but in that not less important department of learning in which it comes to us in the disguise of amusement,-in the form of fable and allegory and parable,-the proposition is, that this Elizabethan philosophy is, in these two forms of it,-not two philosophies,-not two Elizabethan philosophies, not two new and wondrous philosophies of nature and practice, not two new

tive, eminently conscious, designing mind; and that the coincidence which is manifest not in the desig

artistically contrived and triumphantly achieved:-the books of a new 'school' in philosophy; books in which the connection with the school is not always openly asserted; books in which the true names of

ich are involved in the bare statement of it, are suffi

ty, with its inducted precepts and dispersed directions, insinuating itself into all our practice, winding itself into every department of human affairs; speaking from the legislator's lips, at the bar, from the pulpit,-putting in its word every where, always at hand, always sufficient, constituting itself, in virtue of its own irresistible claims and in the face of what we are told of it, the oracle, the great practical, mysterious, b

ble fact which the surface of the inquiry exhibits. That these two so illustrious branches of the modern learning were produced for the ostensible purpose of illustrating and adorning the tyrannies which the men, under whose countenance and protection they are produced, were vainly attempting, or had vainly attempted to set bounds to or overthrow, is a

it will be found to be anything but irrelevant as this inquiry proceeds. The man who is said to have contributed a thousand pounds towards the purchase of the theatre and wardrobe and machinery, in which these philosophical plays were first exhibited, was obliged to stay away from the first appearance of Hamlet, in the perfected excellence of the poetic philosophic design, in consequence of being immured in the Tower at that time for an attempt to overthrow the government. This was the ostensible patron and friend of the Poet; the partner of his treason was the ostensible friend and patron of the Philosopher. So nearly did these philosophic minds, that were 'not for an age but for all time,

ends. This dramatist's connection with the stage of course belongs to this history. His connection with the author of these Plays, and with the player himself, are points not to be overlooked. But the literary history of this age is not yet fully developed. It is enough to say here, that he chanced to be honored with the patronage of three of the most illustrious personages of the age in which he lived. He had three patrons. One was Sir Walter Raleigh, in whose service he was; one was the Lord Bacon, whose well nigh idolatrous admirer he appears also to have been; the other was Shakspere, to whose favor he appears to have owed so much. With his pas

ccessible facts in this case, and without any evidence from any other source to stimulate the inquiry. These a

fact meet and unite in one stem, 'which has a quality of entireness and continuance throughout,' even to the most delicate fibre of them both, even to the 'roots' of their trunk, 'and the strings of those roots,' which trunk lies below the surface of that age, buried, carefully buried, f

ugh inquiry into their nature and design, of which the views contained in this volume are the result. At a certain stage of this inquiry,-in the later stages of it,-that discovery became inevitable. The primary question here is one of universal immediate practical concern and inter

was the part of the work first written, and the results of more recent research require to be incorporated in it, in order that it should represent adequately, in that particular aspect of

e ample historical confirmation which is at hand, not necessary for the support of the proposi

ous with the genius of our own time, that very lamp with which we are instructed to make this inquiry, that very light which we are told we must bring to bear upon the obscurities of these documents, that very light in which we are told, we must unroll them; for they come to us, as the interpreter takes pains to tell us, with an 'infolded' science in them. That light of 'times,' that k

the secret of an Association of 'Naturalists' applying science in that age to the noblest subjects of speculative inquiry, and to the highest departments of practice, a life and death secret. The physical impossibility of publishing at that time, anything openly relating to the questions in which the weal of men is most concerned, and which are the primary questions of the science of man's relief, the opposition which stood at that time prepared to crush any enterprise prop

ce, to ages in which the advancements they instituted had brought the common mind within hearing of these higher truths; that these were men whose aims were so opposed to the power that was still predominant then,-though the 'wrestling' that would shake that predominance, was already on foot,-that it became necessary for them to conceal their lives as well as their works,-to veil the true worth and nobility of them, to suffer those ends which they s

course of the world's history since then; it was the life in which these intents show themselves too boldly on the surface, in which they penetrate the artistic disguise, and betray themselves to the antagonisms which were waiting to crush them; it was the life which combined these antagonisms for its suppression; it was the life and death of the projector and founder of the liberties of the New World

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happily so remote from anything which the exigencies of our time have ever suggested to us, that we are not in a position to read at a glance the history of such an age; the history which lies on the surface of such an age when such men-men who are men-are at work in it. Thes