How much in Shakespeare lies hid;
his sorrows, his silent struggles known to himself; much that was not
known at all, not speakable at all: like _roots_, like sap and forces
working underground! Speech is great; but Silence is greater.
Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is notable. I will not blame
Dante for his misery: it is as battle without victory; but true
battle,--the first, indispensable thing. Yet I call Shakespeare greater
than Dante, in that he fought truly, and did conquer. Doubt it not, he
had his own sorrows: those _Sonnets_ of his will even testify expressly
in what deep waters he had waded, and swum struggling for his life--as
what man like him ever failed to have to do? It seems to me a heedless
notion, our common one, that he sat like a bird on the bough; and sang
forth, free and offhand, never knowing the troubles of other men. Not
so; with no man is it so. How could a man travel forward from rustic
deer-poaching to such tragedy-writing, and not fall-in with sorrows by
the way? Or, still better, how could a man delineate a Hamlet, a
Coriolanus, a Macbeth, so many suffering heroic hearts, if his own
heroic heart had never suffered?--And now, in contrast with all this,
observe his mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing love of laughter! You
would say, in no point does he _exaggerate_ but only in laughter.
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