Miranda a masque in which goddesses appear, and which is so majestic and
harmonious that to the young man, standing beside such a father and such
a wife, the place seems Paradise,--as perhaps the world once seemed to
Shakespeare. Then, at the bidding of Iris, there begins a dance of
Nymphs with Reapers, sunburnt, weary of their August labour, but now in
their holiday garb. But, as this is nearing its end, Prospero 'starts
suddenly, and speaks'; and the visions vanish. And what he 'speaks' is
shown in these lines, which introduce the famous passage just quoted:
_Pros._ [_Aside_] I had forgot that foul conspiracy
Of the beast Caliban and his confederates
Against my life: the minute of their plot
Is almost come. [_To the Spirits._] Well done! avoid; no more.
_Fer._ This is strange; your father's in some passion
That works him strongly.
_Mir._ Never till this day
Saw I him touch'd with anger so distemper'd.
_Pros._ You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels....
And then, after the famous lines, follow these:
Sir, I am vex'd:
Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled;
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity;
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind.
We seem to see here the whole mind of Shakespeare in his last years.
That which provokes in Prospero first a 'passion' of anger, and, a
moment later, that melancholy and mystical thought that the great world
must perish utterly and that man is but a dream, is the sudden
recollection of gross and apparently incurable evil in the 'monster'
whom he had tried in vain to raise and soften, and in the monster's
human confederates. It is this, which is but the repetition of his
earlier experience of treachery and ingratitude, that troubles his old
brain, makes his mind 'beat,'[192] and forces on him the sense of
unreality and evanescence in the world and the life that are haunted by
such evil. Nor, though Prospero can spare and forgive, is there any sign
to the end that he believes the evil curable either in the monster, the
'born devil,' or in the more monstrous villains, the 'worse than
devils,' whom he so sternly dismisses. But he has learned patience, has
come to regard his anger and loathing as a weakness or infirmity, and
would not have it disturb the young and innocent. And so, in the days of
_King Lear_, it was chiefly the power of 'monstrous' and apparently
cureless evil in the 'great world' that filled Shakespeare's soul with
horror, and perhaps forced him sometimes to yield to the infirmity of
misanthropy and despair, to cry 'No, no, no life,' and to take refuge in
the thought that this fitful fever is a dream that must soon fade into a
dreamless sleep; until, to free himself from the perilous stuff that
weighed upon his heart, he summoned to his aid his 'so potent art,' and
wrought this stuff into the stormy music of his greatest poem, which
seems to cry,
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need,
and, like the _Tempest_, seems to preach to us from end to end, 'Thou
must be patient,' 'Bear free and patient thoughts.'[193]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 158: Of course I do not mean that he is beginning to be
insane, and still less that he _is_ insane (as some medical critics
suggest).]
[Footnote 159: I must however point out that the modern stage-directions
are most unfortunate in concealing the fact that here Cordelia sees her
father again _for the first time_. See Note W.]
[Footnote 160: What immediately follows is as striking an illustration
of quite another quality, and of the effects which make us think of Lear
as pursued by a relentless fate. If he could go in and sleep after his
prayer, as he intends, his mind, one feels, might be saved: so far there
has been only the menace of madness. But from within the hovel
Edgar--the last man who would willingly have injured Lear--cries,
'Fathom and half, fathom and half! Poor Tom!'; the Fool runs out
terrified; Edgar, summoned by Kent, follows him; and, at sight of Edgar,
in a moment something gives way in Lear's brain, and he exclaims:
Hast thou given all
To thy two daughters? And art thou come to this?
Henceforth he is mad. And they remain out in the storm.
I have not seen it noticed that this stroke of fate is repeated--surely
intentionally--in the sixth scene. Gloster has succeeded in persuading
Lear to come into the 'house'; he then leaves, and Kent after much
difficulty induces Lear to lie down and rest upon the cushions. Sleep
begins to come to him again, and he murmurs,
'Make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains; so, so, so.
We'll go to supper i' the morning. So, so, so.'
At that moment Gloster enters with the news that he has discovered a
plot to kill the King; the rest that 'might yet have balm'd his broken
senses' is again interrupted; and he is hurried away on a litter towards
Dover. (His recovery, it will be remembered, is due to a long sleep
artificially induced.)]
[Footnote 161: III. iv. 49. This is printed as prose in the Globe
edition, but is surely verse. Lear has not yet spoken prose in this
scene, and his next three speeches are in verse. The next is in prose,
and, ending, in his tearing off his clothes, shows the advance of
insanity.]
[Footnote 162: [Lear's death is thus, I am reminded, like _père_
Goriot's.] This interpretation may be condemned as fantastic, but the
text, it appears to me, will bear no other. This is the whole speech (in
the Globe text):
And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never!
Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.
Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,
Look there, look there!
The transition at 'Do you see this?' from despair to something more than
hope is exactly the same as in the preceding passage at the word 'Ha!':
A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!
I might have saved her; now she's gone for ever!
Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little.
Ha!
What is't thou say'st? Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman.
As to my other remarks, I will ask the reader to notice that the passage
from Lear's entrance with the body of Cordelia to the stage-direction
_He dies_ (which probably comes a few lines too soon) is 54 lines in
length, and that 30 of them represent the interval during which he has
absolutely forgotten Cordelia. (It begins when he looks up at the
Captain's words, line 275.) To make Lear during this interval turn
continually in anguish to the corpse, is to act the passage in a manner
irreconcilable with the text, and insufferable in its effect. I speak
from experience. I have seen the passage acted thus, and my sympathies
were so exhausted long before Lear's death that his last speech, the
most pathetic speech ever written, left me disappointed and weary.]
[Footnote 163: The Quartos give the 'Never' only thrice (surely
wrongly), and all the actors I have heard have preferred this easier
task. I ought perhaps to add that the Quartos give the words 'Break,
heart; I prithee, break!' to Lear, not Kent. They and the Folio are at
odds throughout the last sixty lines of King Lear, and all good modern
texts are eclectic.]
[Footnote 164: The connection of these sufferings with the sin of
earlier days (not, it should be noticed, of youth) is almost thrust upon
our notice by the levity of Gloster's own reference to the subject in
the first scene, and by Edgar's often quoted words 'The gods are just,'
etc. The following collocation, also, may be intentional (III. iv. 116):
_Fool_. Now a little fire in a wild field were like an old
lecher's heart; a small spark, all the rest on's body cold.
Look, here comes a walking fire. [_Enter_ GLOSTER with a
torch.]
Pope destroyed the collocation by transferring the stage-direction to a
point some dozen lines later.]
[Footnote 165: The passages are here printed together (III. iv. 28 ff.
and IV. i. 67 ff.):
_Lear._ Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens just.
_Glo._ Here, take this purse, thou whom the heavens' plagues
Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched
Makes thee the happier: heavens, deal so still!
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,
That slaves your ordinance, that will not see
Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly;
So distribution should undo excess,
And each man have enough.]
[Footnote 166: Schmidt's idea--based partly on the omission from the
Folios at I. ii. 103 (see Furness' Variorum) of the words 'To his father
that so tenderly and entirely loves him'--that Gloster loved neither of
his sons, is surely an entire mistake. See, not to speak of general
impressions, III. iv. 171 ff.]
[Footnote 167: Imagination demands for Lear, even more than for Othello,
majesty of stature and mien. Tourgénief felt this and made his 'Lear of
the Steppes' a _gigantic_ peasant. If Shakespeare's texts give no
express authority for ideas like these, the reason probably is that he
wrote primarily for the theatre, where the principal actor might not be
a large man.]
[Footnote 168: He is not present, of course, till France and Burgundy
enter; but while he is present he says not a word beyond 'Here's France
and Burgundy, my noble lord.' For some remarks on the possibility that
Shakespeare imagined him as having encouraged Lear in his idea of
dividing the kingdom see Note T. It must be remembered that Cornwall was
Gloster's 'arch and patron.']
[Footnote 169: In this she stands alone among the more notable
characters of the play. Doubtless Regan's exclamation 'O the blest gods'
means nothing, but the fact that it is given to her means something. For
some further remarks on Goneril see Note T. I may add that touches of
Goneril reappear in the heroine of the next tragedy, _Macbeth_; and that
we are sometimes reminded of her again by the character of the Queen in
_Cymbeline_, who bewitched the feeble King by her beauty, and married
him for greatness while she abhorred his person (_Cymbeline_, V. v. 62
f., 31 f.); who tried to poison her step-daughter and intended to poison
her husband; who died despairing because she could not execute all the
evil she purposed; and who inspirited her husband to defy the Romans by
words that still stir the blood (_Cymbeline_, III. i. 14 f. Cf. _King
Lear_, IV. ii. 50 f.).]
[Footnote 170: I. ii. 1 f. Shakespeare seems to have in mind the idea
expressed in the speech of Ulysses about the dependence of the world on
degree, order, system, custom, and about the chaos which would result
from the free action of appetite, the 'universal wolf' (_Troilus and
Cr._ I. iii. 83 f.). Cf. the contrast between 'particular will' and 'the
moral laws of nature and of nations,' II. ii. 53, 185 ('nature' here of
course is the opposite of the 'nature' of Edmund's speech).]
[Footnote 171: The line last quoted is continued by Edmund in the Folios
thus: 'Th' hast spoken right; 'tis true,' but in the Quartos thus: 'Thou
hast spoken truth,' which leaves the line imperfect. This, and the
imperfect line 'Make instruments to plague us,' suggest that Shakespeare
wrote at first simply,
Make instruments to plague us.
_Edm._ Th' hast spoken truth.
The Quartos show other variations which seem to point to the fact that
the MS. was here difficult to make out.]
[Footnote 172: IV. i. 1-9. I am indebted here to Koppel,
_Verbesserungsvorschläge zu den Erläuterungen und der Textlesung des
Lear_ (1899).]
[Footnote 173: See I. i. 142 ff. Kent speaks, not of the _injustice_ of
Lear's action, but of its 'folly,' its 'hideous rashness.' When the King
exclaims 'Kent, on thy life, no more,' he answers:
My life I never held but as a pawn
To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to lose it,
_Thy safety being the motive_.
(The first Folio omits 'a,' and in the next line reads 'nere' for 'nor.'
Perhaps the first line should read 'My life I ne'er held but as pawn to
wage.')]
[Footnote 174: See II. ii. 162 to end. The light-heartedness disappears,
of course, as Lear's misfortunes thicken.]
[Footnote 175: This difference, however, must not be pressed too far;
nor must we take Kent's retort,
Now by Apollo, king,
Thou swear'st thy gods in vain,
for a sign of disbelief. He twice speaks of the gods in another manner
(I. i. 185, III. vi. 5), and he was accustomed to think of Lear in his
'prayers' (I. i. 144).]
[Footnote 176: The 'clown' in _Antony and Cleopatra_ is merely an old
peasant. There is a fool in _Timon of Athens_, however, and he appears
in a scene (II. ii.) generally attributed to Shakespeare. His talk
sometimes reminds one of Lear's fool; and Kent's remark, 'This is not
altogether fool, my lord,' is repeated in _Timon_, II. ii. 122, 'Thou
art not altogether a fool.']
[Footnote 177: [This is no obstacle. There could hardly be a stage
tradition hostile to his youth, since he does not appear in Tate's
version, which alone was acted during the century and a half before
Macready's production. I had forgotten this; and my memory must also
have been at fault regarding an engraving to which I referred in the
first edition. Both mistakes were pointed out by Mr. Archer.]]
[Footnote 178: In parts of what follows I am indebted to remarks by
Cowden Clarke, quoted by Furness on I. iv. 91.]
[Footnote 179: See also Note T.]
[Footnote 180: 'Our last and least' (according to the Folio reading).
Lear speaks again of 'this little seeming substance.' He can carry her
dead body in his arms.]
[Footnote 181: Perhaps then the 'low sound' is not merely metaphorical
in Kent's speech in I. i. 153 f.:
answer my life my judgment,
Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least;
Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound
Reverbs no hollowness.]
[Footnote 182: I. i. 80. 'More ponderous' is the reading of the Folios,
'more richer' that of the Quartos. The latter is usually preferred, and
Mr. Aldis Wright says 'more ponderous' has the appearance of being a
player's correction to avoid a piece of imaginary bad grammar. Does it
not sound more like the author's improvement of a phrase that he thought
a little flat? And, apart from that, is it not significant that it
expresses the same idea of weight that appears in the phrase 'I cannot
heave my heart into my mouth'?]
[Footnote 183: Cf. Cornwall's satirical remarks on Kent's 'plainness' in
II. ii. 101 ff.,--a plainness which did no service to Kent's master. (As
a matter of fact, Cordelia had said nothing about 'plainness.')]
[Footnote 184: Who, like Kent, hastens on the quarrel with Goneril.]
[Footnote 185: I do not wish to complicate the discussion by examining
the differences, in degree or otherwise, in the various cases, or by
introducing numerous qualifications; and therefore I do not add the
names of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.]
[Footnote 186: It follows from the above that, if this idea were made
explicit and accompanied our reading of a tragedy throughout, it would
confuse or even destroy the tragic impression. So would the constant
presence of Christian beliefs. The reader most attached to these beliefs
holds them in temporary suspension while he is immersed in a
Shakespearean tragedy. Such tragedy assumes that the world, as it is
presented, is the truth, though it also provokes feelings which imply
that this world is not the whole truth, and therefore not the truth.]
[Footnote 187: Though Cordelia, of course, does not occupy the position
of the hero.]
[Footnote 188: _E.g._ in _King Lear_ the servants, and the old man who
succours Gloster and brings to the naked beggar 'the best 'parel that he
has, come on't what will,' _i.e._ whatever vengeance Regan can inflict.
Cf. the Steward and the Servants in _Timon_. Cf. there also (V. i. 23),
'Promising is the very air o' the time ... performance is ever the
duller for his act; and, _but in the plainer and simpler kind of
people_, the deed of saying [performance of promises] is quite out of
use.' Shakespeare's feeling on this subject, though apparently specially
keen at this time of his life, is much the same throughout (cf. Adam in
_As You Like It_). He has no respect for the plainer and simpler kind of
people as politicians, but a great respect and regard for their hearts.]
[Footnote 189: 'I stumbled when I saw,' says Gloster.]
[Footnote 190: Our advantages give us a blind confidence in our
security. Cf. _Timon_, IV. iii. 76,
_Alc._ I have heard in some sort of thy miseries.
_Tim._ Thou saw'st them when I had prosperity.]
[Footnote 191: Biblical ideas seem to have been floating in
Shakespeare's mind. Cf. the words of Kent, when Lear enters with
Cordelia's body, 'Is this the promised end?' and Edgar's answer, 'Or
image of that horror?' The 'promised end' is certainly the end of the
world (cf. with 'image' 'the great doom's image,' _Macbeth_, II. iii.
83); and the next words, Albany's 'Fall and cease,' _may_ be addressed
to the heavens or stars, not to Lear. It seems probable that in writing
Gloster's speech about the predicted horrors to follow 'these late
eclipses' Shakespeare had a vague recollection of the passage in
_Matthew_ xxiv., or of that in _Mark_ xiii., about the tribulations
which were to be the sign of 'the end of the world.' (I do not mean, of
course, that the 'prediction' of I. ii. 119 is the prediction to be
found in one of these passages.)]
[Footnote 192: Cf. _Hamlet_, III. i. 181:
This something-settled matter in his heart,
Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus
From fashion of himself.]
[Footnote 193: I believe the criticism of _King Lear_ which has
influenced me most is that in Prof. Dowden's _Shakspere, his Mind and
Art_ (though, when I wrote my lectures, I had not read that criticism
for many years); and I am glad that this acknowledgment gives me the
opportunity of repeating in print an opinion which I have often
expressed to students, that anyone entering on the study of Shakespeare,
and unable or unwilling to read much criticism, would do best to take
Prof. Dowden for his guide.]
LECTURE IX
MACBETH
_Macbeth_, it is probable, was the last-written of the four great
tragedies, and immediately preceded _Antony and Cleopatra_.[194] In that
play Shakespeare's final style appears for the first time completely
formed, and the transition to this style is much more decidedly visible
in _Macbeth_ than in _King Lear_. Yet in certain respects _Macbeth_
recalls _Hamlet_ rather than _Othello_ or _King Lear_. In the heroes of
both plays the passage from thought to a critical resolution and action
is difficult, and excites the keenest interest. In neither play, as in
_Othello_ and _King Lear_, is painful pathos one of the main effects.
Evil, again, though it shows in _Macbeth_ a prodigious energy, is not
the icy or stony inhumanity of Iago or Goneril; and, as in _Hamlet_, it
is pursued by remorse. Finally, Shakespeare no longer restricts the
action to purely human agencies, as in the two preceding tragedies;
portents once more fill the heavens, ghosts rise from their graves, an
unearthly light flickers about the head of the doomed man. The special
popularity of _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ is due in part to some of these
common characteristics, notably to the fascination of the supernatural,
the absence of the spectacle of extreme undeserved suffering, the
absence of characters which horrify and repel and yet are destitute of
grandeur. The reader who looks unwillingly at Iago gazes at Lady Macbeth
in awe, because though she is dreadful she is also sublime. The whole
tragedy is sublime.
In this, however, and in other respects, _Macbeth_ makes an impression
quite different from that of _Hamlet_. The dimensions of the principal
characters, the rate of movement in the action, the supernatural effect,
the style, the versification, are all changed; and they are all changed
in much the same manner. In many parts of _Macbeth_ there is in the
language a peculiar compression, pregnancy, energy, even violence; the
harmonious grace and even flow, often conspicuous in _Hamlet_, have
almost disappeared. The cruel characters, built on a scale at least as
large as that of _Othello_, seem to attain at times an almost superhuman
stature. The diction has in places a huge and rugged grandeur, which
degenerates here and there into tumidity. The solemn majesty of the
royal Ghost in _Hamlet_, appearing in armour and standing silent in the
moonlight, is exchanged for shapes of horror, dimly seen in the murky
air or revealed by the glare of the caldron fire in a dark cavern, or
for the ghastly face of Banquo badged with blood and staring with blank
eyes. The other three tragedies all open with conversations which lead
into the action: here the action bursts into wild life amidst the sounds
of a thunder-storm and the echoes of a distant battle. It hurries
through seven very brief scenes of mounting suspense to a terrible
crisis, which is reached, in the murder of Duncan, at the beginning of
the Second Act. Pausing a moment and changing its shape, it hastes again
with scarcely diminished speed to fresh horrors. And even when the speed
of the outward action is slackened, the same effect is continued in
another form: we are shown a soul tortured by an agony which admits not
a moment's repose, and rushing in frenzy towards its doom. _Macbeth_ is
very much shorter than the other three tragedies, but our experience in
traversing it is so crowded and intense that it leaves an impression not
of brevity but of speed. It is the most vehement, the most concentrated,
perhaps we may say the most tremendous, of the tragedies.
1
A Shakespearean tragedy, as a rule, has a special tone or atmosphere of
its own, quite perceptible, however difficult to describe. The effect of
this atmosphere is marked with unusual strength in _Macbeth_. It is due
to a variety of influences which combine with those just noticed, so
that, acting and reacting, they form a whole; and the desolation of the
blasted heath, the design of the Witches, the guilt in the hero's soul,
the darkness of the night, seem to emanate from one and the same source.
This effect is strengthened by a multitude of small touches, which at
the moment may be little noticed but still leave their mark on the
imagination. We may approach the consideration of the characters and the
action by distinguishing some of the ingredients of this general effect.