Note footnote II.23 — Front matter

II.23.** This article is reprinted in Det Geniale Menneske above referred to. It forms the second of a group of essays in which Collin analyzes the work of Shakespeare as the finest example of the true contribution of genius to the progress and culture of the race. Preceding the study of Hamlet is a chapter called The Shakespearean Controversy, and following it is a study of Shakespeare the Man. This is in three parts, the first of which is a reprint of an article in Samtiden (1901).

In Det Geniale Menneske Collin defines civilization as that higher state which the human race has attained by means of "psychic organs"—superior to the physical organs. The psychic organs have been created by the human intellect and they are controlled by the intellect. Had man been dependent upon the physical organs solely, he would have remained an animal. His psychic organs have enabled him to create instruments, tangible, such as tools and machines; intangible, such as works of art. These are psychic organs and with their aid man has become a civilized being.

The psychic organs are the creation of the man of genius. To create such organs is his function. The characteristics, then, of the genius are an immense capacity for sympathy and an immense surplus of power; sympathy, that he may know the needs of mankind; power, that he may fashion those great organs of life by which the race may live and grow.

In the various chapters of his book, Collin analyzes in an illuminating way the life and work of Wergeland, Ibsen, and Bjørnson as typical men of genius whose expansive sympathy gave them insight and understanding and whose indefatigable energy wrought in the light of their insight mighty psychic organs of cultural progress.

He comes then to Shakespeare as the genius par excellence. The chapter on the Shakespearean Controversy gives first a survey of the development of modern scientific literary criticism from Herder to Taine and Saint Beuve. He goes on to detail the application of this method to the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare. Furnivall, Spalding, and Brandes have attempted to trace the genesis and the chronology of the plays. They would have us believe that the series of tragedies—Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Troilus and Cressida, Coriolanus, and Timon are the records of an increasing bitterness and pessimism. Brandes and Frank Harris, following Thomas Tyler have, on the basis of the sonnets, constructed a fascinating, but quite fantastic romance.

Vagaries such as these have caused some critics, such as Sidney Lee and Bierfreund, to declare that it is impossible on the basis of the plays to penetrate to Shakespeare the man. His work is too purely objective. Collin is not willing to admit this. He maintains that the scientific biographical method of criticism is fundamentally sound. But it must be rationally applied. The sequence which Brandes has set up is quite impossible. Goswin Kønig, in 1888, applying the metrical tests, fixed the order as follows: Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, Othello, Timon, and Lear, and, in another group, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. These results are confirmed by Bradley in his Shakespearean Tragedy.

Collin accepts this chronology. A careful study of the plays in this order shows a striking community of ethical purpose between the plays of each group. In the plays of the first group, the poet assails with all his mighty wrath what to him seems the basest of all wickedness, treachery. It is characteristic of these plays that none of the villains attains the dignity of a great tragic hero. They are without a virtue to redeem their faults. Shakespeare's conception of the good and evil in these plays approaches a medieval dualism. In the plays of the second group the case is altered. There is no longer a crude dualism in the interpretation of life. Shakespeare has entered into the soul of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, of Antony and Cleopatra, of Coriolanus, and he has found underneath all that is weak and sinful and diseased, a certain nobility and grandeur. He can feel with the regicides in Macbeth; he no longer exposes and scourges; he understands and sympathizes. The clouds of gloom and wrath have cleared away, and Shakespeare has achieved a serenity and a fine poise.

It follows, then, that the theory of a growing pessimism is untenable. We must seek a new line of evolution.