The Hero As Poet: Shakespeare by Thomas Carlyle summary, British Literature - III, 2nd Year 3rd Semester, B.A English Literature

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B.A English Literature

[2nd Year, 3rd Semester]

British Literature -III

UNIT 2: Prose

2.2. “On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History”

Lecture III - Shakespeare - By Thomas Carlyle

THE HERO AS POET: SHAKSPEARE

About Author:

Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher. He was born on December 4, 1795, in Ecclefechan, in the Galloway region of Scotland.

He was a contemporary of the Romantic poets, translator of Goethe and historian of the French Revolution. He wrote political essays, historiography, philosophical satires and fiction in which he often blurred the boundaries between literary genres.

Carlyle died on February 5, 1881, in London, England. Upon Carlyle's death in London interment, in Westminster Abbey was offered but rejected due to his explicit wish to be buried beside his parents. His final words were, "So, this is death. Well!"

He presented many lectures during his lifetime with certain acclaim in the Victorian era. One of those conferences resulted in his famous work On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History where he explains that the key role in history lies in the actions of the "Great Man", claiming that "History is nothing but the biography of the Great Man".

About Prose:

On Heroes and Hero worship comprises six lectures, delivered by Carlyle in 1840, and it was published in 1841.

In this series of lectures, Carlyle’s theme is the history of man, particularly of the great man in different capacities. The great man, in his conception, is the hero of the world, and he may function in any sphere of activities, religious, literary, social, or political. In his lectures, Carlyle treats the six different capacities of the hero-the hero as divinity, the hero as prophet, the hero as poet, the hero as priest, the hero as man of letters and the hero as king.

He deals with Odin and paganism (of Scandinavian mythology) as ‘divinity’, the Islam preceptor Mahomet, as ‘prophet’, Dante and Shakespeare, as ‘poet’, Luther and Knox, as ‘priest’, Johnson, Rousseau and Burns as ‘man of letters’ and Cromwell and Napolean, as ‘king’.

Shakespeare as Hero-Poet:

On May 12, 1840, Thomas Carlyle gave his third lecture in his series on Heroes. Titled "The Hero as Poet," it looked into the lives of Dante and Shakespeare. His previous lectures, he said, dealt with the production of older ages, "not be be repeated in the new." Divinity as hero and prophet as hero would never happen again, he said. Mankind had advanced to the point where he no longer stooped to such low intellectual things. Or, "if we do not now reckon a Great Man literally divine, it is that our notions of God, of the supreme unattainable Fountain of Splendor, Wisdom, and Heroism, are ever rising higher...."

Ah, but the poet! He believed we would always have poet-heroes. "...the hero...can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will according to the kind of world he finds himself born into."

Speaking about Shakespeare in his lecture, Thomas Carlyle opines that what Homer was to Greece, and Dante to the Middle Ages, likewise Shakespeare was to the Modern Age.

Shakespeare, Carlyle says, "has given us the Practice of body" whereas Dante "has given us the Faith or soul."

Shakespeare may well be placed on a pedestal at par with Homer and Dante. 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.

Shakespeare worked as the  Renaissance was unfolding, which gave him advantages Dante didn't have.

Carlyle is in all praise for Shakespeare. 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.

Carlyle believes Shakespeare could have done so much more than he did, in terms of politics or public leadership. In the same manner, 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 fusing 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.

In the end he says, "Yet I call Shakespeare greater than Dante, in that he fought truly, and did conquer."

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