These difficulties and complexities of the instrument are, nevertheless, the least part of the ordeal that is to be undergone by the writer.The same musical note or phrase affects different ears in much the same way; not so the word or group of words.The pure idea, let us say, is translated into language by the literary composer; who is to be responsible for the retranslation of the language into idea? Here begins the story of the troubles and weaknesses that are imposed upon literature by the necessity it lies under of addressing itself to an audience, by its liability to anticipate the corruptions that mar the understanding of the spoken or written word.A word is the operative symbol of a relation between two minds, and is chosen by the one not without regard to the quality of the effect actually produced upon the other.Men must be spoken to in their accustomed tongue, and persuaded that the unknown God proclaimed by the poet is one whom aforetime they ignorantly worshipped.The relation of great authors to the public may be compared to the war of the sexes, a quiet watchful antagonism between two parties mutually indispensable to each other, at one time veiling itself in endearments, at another breaking out into open defiance.He who has a message to deliver must wrestle with his fellows before he shall be permitted to ply them with uncomfortable or unfamiliar truths.The public, like the delicate Greek Narcissus, is sleepily enamoured of itself; and the name of its only other perfect lover is Echo.Yet even great authors must lay their account with the public, and it is instructive to observe how different are the attitudes they have adopted, how uniform the disappointment they have felt.Some, like Browning and Mr.Meredith in our own day, trouble themselves little about the reception given to their work, but are content to say on, until the few who care to listen have expounded them to the many, and they are applauded, in the end, by a generation whom they have trained to appreciate them.Yet this noble and persevering indifference is none of their choice, and long years of absolution from criticism must needs be paid for in faults of style."Writing for the stage," Mr.Meredith himself has remarked, "would be a corrective of a too-incrusted scholarly style into which some great ones fall at times." Denied such a corrective, the great one is apt to sit alone and tease his meditations into strange shapes, fortifying himself against obscurity and neglect with the reflection that most of the words he uses are to be found, after all, in the dictionary.It is not, however, from the secluded scholar that the sharpest cry of pain is wrung by the indignities of his position, but rather from genius in the act of earning a full meed of popular applause.Both Shakespeare and Ben Jonson wrote for the stage, both were blown by the favouring breath of their plebeian patrons into reputation and a competence.Each of them passed through the thick of the fight, and well knew that ugly corner where the artist is exposed to cross fires, his own idea of masterly work on the one hand and the necessity for pleasing the rabble on the other.When any man is awake to the fact that the public is a vile patron, when he is conscious also that his bread and his fame are in their gift - it is a stern passage for his soul, a touchstone for the strength and gentleness of his spirit.
Jonson, whose splendid scorn took to itself lyric wings in the two great Odes to Himself, sang high and aloof for a while, then the frenzy caught him, and he flung away his lyre to gird himself for deeds of mischief among nameless and noteless antagonists.Even Chapman, who, in THE TEARS OF PEACE, compares "men's refuse ears"to those gates in ancient cities which were opened only when the bodies of executed malefactors were to be cast away, who elsewhere gives utterance, in round terms, to his belief that No truth of excellence was ever seen But bore the venom of the vulgar's spleen, - even the violences of this great and haughty spirit must pale beside the more desperate violences of the dramatist who commended his play to the public in the famous line, By God, 'tis good, and if you like't, you may.
This stormy passion of arrogant independence disturbs the serenity of atmosphere necessary for creative art.A greater than Jonson donned the suppliant's robes, like Coriolanus, and with the inscrutable honeyed smile about his lips begged for the "most sweet voices" of the journeymen and gallants who thronged the Globe Theatre.Only once does the wail of anguish escape him -Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear.
And again -
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand, Pity me then, and wish I were renewed.
Modern vulgarity, speaking through the mouths of Shakesperian commentators, is wont to interpret these lines as a protest against the contempt wherewith Elizabethan society regarded the professions of playwright and actor.We are asked to conceive that Shakespeare humbly desires the pity of his bosom friend because he is not put on the same level of social estimation with a brocaded gull or a prosperous stupid goldsmith of the Cheap.No, it is a cry, from the depth of his nature, for forgiveness because he has sacrificed a little on the altar of popularity.Jonson would have boasted that he never made this sacrifice.But he lost the calm of his temper and the clearness of his singing voice, he degraded his magnanimity by allowing it to engage in street-brawls, and he endangered the sanctuary of the inviolable soul.
