It
must, therefore, be granted, and that joyfully, that there may be
meanings in Shakspere's writings which Shakspere himself did not see,
and to which therefore his art, as art, does not point.
But the probability, notwithstanding, must surely be allowed as well,
that, in great artists, the amount of conscious art will bear some
proportion to the amount of unconscious truth: the visible volcanic
light will bear a true relation to the hidden fire of the globe; so that
it will not seem likely that, in such a writer as Shakspere, we should
find many indications of present and operative _art_, of which he was
himself unaware. Some truths may be revealed through him, which he
himself knew only potentially; but it is not likely that marks of work,
bearing upon the results of the play, should be fortuitous, or that the
work thus indicated should be unconscious work. A stroke of the mallet
may be more effective than the sculptor had hoped; but it was intended.
In the drama it is easier to discover individual marks of the chisel,
than in the marble whence all signs of such are removed: in the drama
the lines themselves fall into the general finish, without necessary
obliteration as lines: Still, the reader cannot help being fearful,
lest, not as regards truth only, but as regards art as well, he be
sometimes clothing the idol of his intellect with the weavings of his
fancy.
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