by Harold Bloom
When he confronts Banquo’s ghost, his reaction is superbly revelatory:
Blood hath been shed ere now, i’th’olden time,
Ere humane statute purg’d the gentle weal;
Ay, and since too, murthers have been perform’d
Too terrible for the ear: the time has been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end; but now, they rise again,
With twenty mortal murthers on their crowns,
And push us from our stools. This is more strange
Than such a murther is.
Act 3, Scene 4
Outrage will be Macbeth’s principal affect from this moment to the close of his drama. It is the outrage of confounded expectation, difficult for us to resist. The ultimate outrage is dying, and a protagonist who is eloquent in his outrage speaks to all of us, even if he is a bloody tyrant like Macbeth. It is more than Macbeth’s strangeness that we find attractive. Our own faculty for self-overseeing admits the murderous impulses that all of us sometimes entertain. When Macbeth is slain by Macduff, something in us dies also.
* * *
—
At this point in Possessed by Memory, I take leave of writing commentaries upon William Shakespeare. Three brief books on Lear, Iago, and Macbeth have already been composed and will join forerunners on Hamlet, Falstaff, and Cleopatra. I hope to teach Shakespeare for another few years, but time must have a stop. What have I learned most from Shakespeare? If I were to ask what Dante or Milton, Tolstoy or Victor Hugo had taught me, I might venture some answers. But with Shakespeare I am bewildered. I tend to think through metaphors, and they are mostly his. I taught myself to read English when I was about five, but I must have been nine or ten when I first read Shakespeare. I went from Julius Caesar, which I almost understood, on to Hamlet, where I was both fascinated and baffled. Hamlet still changes for me each time I return to it. How can you come to the end of it? Dante’s Paradiso still defeats me. Old age has not reconciled me to it. But, then, I am a Jew who evades normative Judaism. My religion is the appreciation of high literature. Shakespeare is the summit. Revelation for me is Shakespearean or nothing.
[ Part Three ]
IN THE ELEGY SEASON: JOHN MILTON, THE VISIONARY COMPANY, AND VICTORIAN POETRY
Ben Jonson on Shakespeare and Andrew Marvell on Milton
I HAVE ALWAYS found it fruitful to compare two great poems of praise. The first is Ben Jonson’s tribute to Shakespeare that led off the First Folio (1623):
To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy Booke, and Fame:
While I confesse thy writings to be such,
As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much.
’Tis true, and all mens suffrage. But these wayes
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise:
For seeliest Ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but eccho’s right;
Or blinde Affection, which doth ne’re advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty Malice, might pretend this praise,
And thinke to ruine, where it seem’d to raise.
These are, as some infamous Baud, or Whore
Should praise a Matron. What could hurt her more?
But thou art proofe against them, and indeed
Above th’ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin. Soule of the age!
The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage!
Ben Jonson was an extraordinary poet and dramatist. But it was his fate to be the exact contemporary of his close friend and rival, William Shakespeare. Jonson’s Roman comedies were laughed off the stage, while Shakespeare’s soared. Though Jonson devalued Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and responded to the players’ remark that Shakespeare rarely blotted a line with the observation, “Would he had blotted many!,” he had a considerable change of mind when he read many of the plays for the first time as the First Folio was gathered:
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye
A little further, to make thee a roome:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mixe thee so, my braine excuses;
I mean with great, but disproportion’d Muses,
For if I thought my judgement were of yeeres,
I should commit thee surely with thy peeres,
And tell, how farre thou didst our Lily out-shine,
Or sporting Kid, or Marlowes mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latine, and lesse Greeke,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seeke
For names; but call forth thund’ring Æschilus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life againe, to heare thy Buskin tread,
And shake a Stage: Or, when thy Sockes were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britaine, thou hast one to showe,
To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When like Apollo he came forth to warme
Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme!
Nature her selfe was proud of his designes
And joy’d to weare the dressing of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other Wit.
The merry Greeke, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please,
But antiquated and deserted lye,
As they were not of Natures family.
The famous and truthful “He was not of an age but for all time!” may stand out in this marvelous hymn of praise, yet even more powerful is the judgment that Shakespeare outshines all other tragic and comic dramatists, from the ancient Greeks and Romans on to contemporary Britain. The tribute to nature is warranted, but Jonson, who rightly regarded the poetic art as “hard work,” goes on to admire Shakespeare’s skill:
Yet must I not give Nature all: Thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the Poets matter, Nature be,
His Art doth give the fashion. And, that he,
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses anvile: turne the same
(And himeself with it) that he thinkes to frame;
Or for the lawrell he may gain a scorne.
For a good Poet’s made, as well as borne.
And such wert thou. Looke how the fathers face
Lives in his issue, even so, the race
Of Shakespeares minde, and manners brightly shines
In his well torned, and true-filed lines:
In each of which, he seemes to shake a Lance,
As brandish’t at the eyes of ignorance.
Here Jonson assimilates Shakespeare to himself, which is both moving and revelatory. Even Jonson’s three great comedies—Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair—though they are permanent works, are not quite of Shakespearean ambience and potency. The culmination is an extraordinary transformation of Shakespeare into a celestial constellati
on, a “star of poets”:
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appeare,
And make those flights upon the bankes of Thames,
That so did take Eliza, and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the Hemisphere
Advanc’d, and made a Constellation there!
Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage,
Or influence, chide, or cheere the drooping Stage;
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn’d like night,
And despaires day, but for thy Volumes light.
“Rage” is hardly appropriate for Shakespeare, though the hope for benign influence is touching. Shakespeare, who has influenced everyone, rendered all English verse drama to follow rather inadequate. Ben Jonson himself, like Edmund Spenser and John Donne, was a prince of poets, and his fond elegy for Shakespeare is worthy of its subject.
The second great poem of praise is Andrew Marvell’s introduction to the second edition of Paradise Lost (1674):
WHEN I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold,
In slender Book his vast Design unfold,
Messiah Crown’d, Gods Reconcil’d Decree,
Rebelling angels, the Forbidden Tree,
Heav’n, Hell, Earth, Chaos, All; the Argument
Held me a while misdoubting his Intent,
That he would ruine (for I saw him strong)
The sacred Truths to Fable and old Song,
(So Samson grop’d the Temples Posts in spight)
The World o’rewhelming to revenge his Sight.
With subtle irony, Marvell catches the essential strangeness of Milton’s epic. It does indeed ruin the sacred truths, but hardly “to fable and old song.” In a splendid premonition of Samson Agonistes, Marvell invokes the story of Samson’s final act that brought destruction to himself and a multitude of Philistines. Since Milton invokes a Holy Spirit that prefers his own pure and upright heart to all temples, his poem indeed is heretical, personal, passionate, and a transformation of the poetic and religious traditions.
Yet as I read, soon growing less severe,
I lik’d his Project, the success did fear;
Through that wide Field how he his way should find
O’re which lame Faith leads Understanding blind;
Lest he perplext the things he would explain,
And what was easie he should render vain.
Marvell’s irony is so complex here that it scarcely can be unraveled. What should we do with the antithesis between “I lik’d his project” and the momentous “the success did fear”? Faith is dismissed as lame, and Marvell is so good a reader that he recognizes the perplexity of the poem.
Or if a Work so infinite he spann’d,
Jealous I was that some less skilful hand
(Such as disquiet alwayes what is well,
And by ill imitating would excell)
Might hence presume the whole Creations day
To change in Scenes, and show it in a Play.
This is an attack on John Dryden, who received permission from Milton to revise Paradise Lost into an opera, The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man (alternatively titled The Fall of Angels and Man in Innocence in some early versions), which seems never to have been performed.
Pardon me, mighty Poet, nor despise
My causeless, yet not impious, surmise.
But I am now convinc’d, and none will dare
Within thy Labours to pretend a Share.
Thou hast not miss’d one thought that could be fit,
And all that was improper dost omit;
So that no room is here for Writers left,
But to detect their Ignorance or Theft.
That Majesty which through thy Work doth Reign
Draws the Devout, deterring the Profane;
And things divine thou treatst of in such state
As them preserves, and Thee inviolate.
At once delight and horrour on us seize,
Thou singst with so much gravity and ease;
And above humane flight dost soar aloft,
With Plume so strong, so equal, and so soft.
The Bird named from that Paradise you sing
So never Flags, but alwaies keeps on Wing.
Where couldst thou Words of such a compass find?
Whence furnish such a vast expanse of Mind?
Just Heav’n Thee, like Tiresias, to requite,
Rewards with Prophecy thy loss of Sight.
Like Tiresias and the blind Homer, Milton is acclaimed as a prophetic poet. Again, the insight is valuable, since so much of Romanticism stems from Paradise Lost.
Well mightst thou scorn thy Readers to allure
With tinkling Rhime, of thy own Sense secure,
While the Town-Bayes writes all the while and spells,
And like a Pack-Horse tires without his Bells.
Their Fancies like our bushy Points appear,
The Poets tag them; we for fashion wear.
I too, transported by the Mode offend,
And while I meant to Praise thee, must Commend;
Thy verse created like thy Theme sublime,
In Number, Weight, and Measure, needs not Rhime.
“The Town-Bayes” is another smack at Dryden. Marvell ends both grandly and with another irony. He himself is unrepentantly given to rhyme, but recognizes the “number, weight, and measure” of Milton’s sublime style. Marvell inspired the rejoinder of one of William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell”: “Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.” Blake’s rebellion against Milton’s blank verse was his extraordinary revival of the septenarius with its seven beats, the verse form of his epics The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem.
Paradise Lost:
The Realm of Newness
EVEN AS AN UNDERGRADUATE, I would recite all of Paradise Lost to myself during many sleepless nights. In old age, this persists, yet with a melancholy difference. I no longer have patience with most of what passes as the scholarly criticism of Milton. The eminent Angel C. S. Lewis and I fell out at the Anchor Pub in Cambridge, England, in 1954. Despite his seniority and distinction at the age of fifty-six, and my status as a twenty-four-year-old Fulbright research student, he had been very kind to me before this occasion. The break had to be inevitable, since my Jewish Gnosticism and his “mere Christianity” were incompatible. The quarrel concerned Milton’s God, and the Satan in Paradise Lost. Fifty-three years later, I smile in recollection, though Lewis held on to his grudge. In 1962, he reviewed my early book on the English Romantics, The Visionary Company, quite mercilessly in Encounter magazine.
In 1977, William Empson came to Yale and lectured on Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. At a reception after the lecture, he approached me and said: “You are that fellow Bloom who wrote that dotty book on influence. I like dotty books.” We conversed amiably for a while, and though I attempted to talk about Empson’s splendid Milton’s God, the Chinese-bearded Sir William wanted to discuss Hart Crane, for whom he had developed a late affinity. C. S. Lewis came up as a topic; Empson spoke of him with some warmth, and I said nothing. Before we parted, I did express my admiration for Empson’s Shelleyan championing of Milton’s Satan against the nasty God of Paradise Lost.
It would be a weariness to resume the ceaseless academic debate concerning Milton’s God. Whoever we are, Milton is always out ahead, and you catch up as best you can. G. K. Chesterton spoke of Chaucer’s irony as being too large for us to see. That is true of Shakespeare and of Milton. Hamlet often does not say what he means or mean what he says. Milton’s Hamlet is his Satan. C. S. Lewis, concerning whom my great mentor Frederick Pottle once said to me, “St
op beating dead woodchucks, Harold,” henceforth will be exiled from these pages. I allow him one of his admonitions: “Start with a good morning’s hatred of Satan.” I might prefer “Start with a good morning’s disdain for Milton’s God.”
A lover of poetry cannot reread Paradise Lost without finding both God the Father and the Son aesthetic disasters. Milton had to have known just how bad they sound:
Hear all ye Angels, Progeny of Light,
Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Vertues, Powers,
Hear my Decree, which unrevok’t shall stand.
This day I have begot whom I declare
My only Son, and on this holy Hill
Him have anointed, whom ye now behold
At my right hand; your Head I him appoint;
And by my Self have sworn to him shall bow
All knees in Heav’n, and shall confess him Lord:
Under his great Vice-gerent Reign abide
United as one individual Soul
For ever happy: him who disobeys
Mee disobeys, breaks union, and that day
Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls
Into utter darkness, deep ingulft, his place
Ordain’d without redemption, without end.
Book V, lines 600–615
Son, thou in whom my glory I behold
In full resplendence, Heir of all my might,
Neerly it now concernes us to be sure
Of our Omnipotence, and with what Arms
We mean to hold what anciently we claim
Of Deity or Empire, such a foe
Is rising, who intends to erect his Throne
Equal to ours, throughout the spacious North;
Nor so content, hath in his thought to try
In battle, what our Power is, or our right.
Let us advise, and to this hazard draw
With speed what force is left, and all imploy
In our defense, lest unawares we lose
