Hero as a Poet : Shakespeare by Thomas Carlyle

Hero as a Poet : Shakespeare by Thomas Carlyle

Shakespeare as poet

• Thomas Carlyle opines that what Homer was to Greece, and Dante to the Middle Ages, likewise Shakespeare was to the Modern Age

• Carlyle claims that the “sovereign” poet, Shakespeare, “with his seeing eye, with his perennial singing voice, was sent to take note” of the changing times in Europe

• He calls him priceless; calmness of depth; placid of joyous strength; great soul, true and clear; like a tranquil unfathomable sea. Shakespeare is further on compared to an immaculately built house which makes us forget the rude disorderly raw material with which it was built. The finished product, that is, Shakespeare, is so perfect, that we forget from what raw material he was made with

• his finished plays are just as perfect as he is, and we can no longer discern the raw materials used to make the plays. The insight with which Shakespeare arranged the plot in his plays is in itself an art and shows the true intelligence of the man.

• Carlyle asserts that even the scientific works of intellect of Sir Francis Bacon is earthly and secondary in comparison to Shakespeare. What he implies is that Shakespeare’s work is divine. If anyone in the modern times can be compared to Shakespeare, Carlyle believes that only the German poet, Goethe is somewhat comparable to the English bard.

• Carlyle further draws attention to Shakespeare’s skill at amalgamating the intellectual and moral nature of man. He does this so perfectly in his works that there is always continuity in nature.

• He calls Shakespeare the greatest intellect that the world has ever seen. Carlyle terms this as the, ‘Unconscious Intellect’ and also claims that there is more virtue in Shakespeare than he is even aware off. Carlyle believes Shakespeare’s art is not artifice but something that grows from the depths of nature

• Despite knowing the poet so well, we don’t know much about his own life’s sorrows or struggles. It bewilders Carlyle how a man can delineate a Hamlet, a Coriolanus, a Macbeth and so many suffering heroic hearts, if his own heroic heart had never suffered. At the same time all of this is juxtaposed with overflowing love of laughter. Nonetheless, he had the fortitude and won the proverbial battle as far as comparison with Dante is concerned. This victory can be seen through all his writings

• Shakespeare’s work reflects the grandeur of his intellect. Indeed, for Carlyle he remains ‘‘the greatest of Intellects’’ (Heroes 98). Throughout his disquisition on the Bard, Carlyle comments on the liberality and the supple- ness of Shakespeare’s judgment, and the manner in which he combines these in his art.

• The ‘‘Force which dwells in him, is essentially one and indivisible,’’ Carlyle observes: ‘‘what we call imagination, fancy, under- standing, and so forth, are but different powers of the same Power of In- sight, all indissolubly connected with each other, physiognomically re- lated’’ (97). Shakespeare performed the noblest function of a hero by liberating the European mind from the fetters of ‘‘narrow superstition, harsh asceticism, intolerance, fanatical fierceness [and] perversion’’ (100–101).

If Dante exemplified ‘‘Middle-Age Catholicism’’ (94), Shakespeare went further by transforming himself into a ‘‘melodious Priest of a true Catholi- cism, the ‘Universal Church’ of the Future and of all times’’ (100). Through the power of his song, he transported spirituality to more expansive regions, where laughter and wisdom were compatible sides of an unfettered mental equilibrium. Among Carlyle’s heroes, Shakespeare stands out because he stubbornly resisted the temptation of factional prophecy: ‘‘Was it not per- haps far better that this Shakspeare, every way an unconscious man, was conscious of no Heavenly message? He did not feel, like Mahomet, because he saw into those internal Splendours, that he specially was the ‘Prophet of God:’ . . . was he not greater than Mahomet in that? Greater’’ (101).