Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1895-05-01

IngersOll on Shakespeare.

lngersoll on Shakespeare.
If Shakespeare knew one fact. he
knew it's kindred and it's neighbors.
Looking at a coat of mail he instantly
imagined the society, the conditions
that produced it, and what it in turn
produced. He saw the castle, the moat,
the drawbridge, the lady in the tower,
and the knightly lover squirting across
the plain. He saw the bold baron and
the rude retainer, the trampled serf,
and all the glory and grief of feudal life
He was a man of imagination.
He lived the life of all.
He was citizen of Athens in the days
of Pericles. He listened to the eager
eloquence of the great orators, and sat
upon the cliffs, and with the tragic poet
heard "the multitudinous laughter of
| the sea-" He saw Socrates thrust the
spear of question through the heart of
falsehood. He, was present when the
great man drank hemlock, aud met the
night of death, tranquil as star meets
morning He listened to the peripa
tetic philosophers, and was unpuzzled
by the sophists. He watched Phidias
as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms
| of love and awe.
| He lived by the mysterious Nile, amid
the vast and monstrous He knew the
very thought that wrought the form
and features of the Sphinx. He heard
great Memnon's morning song when
| marble lips were smitten by the sun.
| He laid him down with the embalmed
and waiting dead, and felt within their
dust the expectation of another life,
mingled with cold and suffocating
doubts-the children born of long de-
| lay.
He walked the ways of mighty Rome
and sawgreat Caesar with his legions
| in the field. He stood with vast and
| motley thrOngs and watched the tri-
umphs given to victorious men, follow
ed by uncrowned kings, the captured
hosts, and all the spoils of ruthless war.
He heard the shout that shook the
Coliseum's roofiess walls, when from
the reeling gladiator's hand the short
sword fell, while from his bosom gush-
ed the stream of wasted life.
He lived the life of savage men. He
trOd the forests silent depths, and in
the desperate game of life or death he
matched his thought against the in
stinct of the beast.
He knew all crimes and all regrets,
all virtues and their rewards. He was
victim and victor, pursuer and pur-
sued, outcast and king. He heard the
applause and curses of the world, and
on his heart had fallen all the nights
and moons of failure and success.
He knew the unspoken thoughts, the
dumb desires, the wants and ways of
beasts. He felt the crouching tigers
thrill, the terror of the ambushed prey,
and with the eagles he had shared the
ecstacy of flight and poise and swoop,
and he had lain with sluggish serpents
ON the barren rocks uncoiling slowly in
the heart of noon.
He sat beneath the DO trees contem
plative shade, wrapped in Buddha' S
mighty thought, and dreamed all
dreams that light, the alchemist, has
| wrought from dust and dew, and stored
within the slumbrous poppy's subtle
blood
He knelt with awe and dread at ev
cry shrine-he offered every sacrifice
and every prayer-felt the consolation
and the shuddering fear-mocked and
worshiped all the gods-enjoyed all
heavens, and felt the pangs of every
hell
He lived and lives and through his
blood and brain there crept the shadow
and the chill of every death. and his
soul, like Mazeppa, was dashed naked
to the wild horse of every fear and love
and hate.
The imagination had stage in Shake
speare's brain, wherein sat all scenes
that lie between the morn of laughter
| and the night of tears, and where his
| players bodied forth the false and true,
the joys and griefs, the careless shall
lows and the tragic deeps of universal
| life.
From Shakespeare brain there pour
ed Niagara of gems spanned by
fancy's seven-hued arch. He was as
many sided as clouds are many form
ed. To him giving was hoarding-sow
| ing was harvest-and waste itself the
source of wealth. Within his marvel
Gus mind were the fruits of all
thought past, the seeds of all to be-
As a drop of dew contains the image
of the earth and sky SO all there is of
life was mirrored forth in Shakes peare's
brain.
Shakespeare was an intellectual
ocean, whose waves touched all the
shores of thought within which were
all the tides an0 waves of destiny and
will over which swept all the storms
of fate, ambition and revenge; upon
| which fell the gloom and darkness of
despair and death, and all the sunlight
of content and love, and within was the
inverted sky, lit with the eternal stars.
Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean,
| toward which all rivers ran, and from
which now the isles and continents of
| thought receive their dew and rain.