Shakespeare's Tastes and Interests

Abstract

OUTDOOR LIFE W e have already (in Chapter III) looked generally at the subject-matter of Shakespeare's images. From that survey it is clear what his main interests are. It would be wearisome to go into each of these at length, but I will now give a few examples of the way in which the facts can be worked out in detail. We saw that one interest, above all others, stands out in Shakespeare's imagery. This is the life of the country-side and its varying aspects: the winds, the weather and seasons, the sky and clouds, birds and animals. One occupation, one point of view, above all others, is naturally his, that of a gardener; watching, preserving, tending and caring for growing things, especially flowers and fruit. All through his plays he thinks most easily and readily of human life and action in the terms of a gardener. This tendency to think of matters human as of growing plants and trees expresses itself in fullest detail in the central gardening scene in Richard II (3. 4), but it is ever present in Shakespeare's thought and imagination, so that nearly all his characters share in it. Thus, when Albemarle, in anger, sums up Goneril's deficiencies and inhumanity in character and action, he naturally sees her as the branch of a tree, and says, She that herself will sliver and disbranch From her material sap, perforce must wither And come to deadly use.